Light My Fire

Ah, yes, the delightful Kindle I mentioned in an earlier post finally arrived yesterday. To my surprise, almost no one I know was aware of this ebook device and I've spent a good bit of time today demonstrating how it works. To no surprise at all, I spent a good two hours last night trying to decide what my first download would be! The winner was The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs.

You may notice that a picture of the cover of that book appears, for the time being, to the right of this post. Seems like a good time to mention the new widget I put over there recently, but hadn't gotten around to talking about yet. In case you don't know it, I'm a voracious reader. I've thought for quite a while that there should be a way to catalog easily all the books I've read, preferably online, but hadn't found it. I'd begun a clunky Excel spreadsheet (with the help of the very useful "My Reading History" feature that my library has online) of the books I could recall reading recently, but it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for and I wasn't all that enthusiastic about using it.

In the midst of that project, while visiting other blogs, I discovered that LibraryThing existed and did pretty much exactly what I'd envisioned. Not only that, but I could also do something else I'd hoped to do (but hadn't had the time or energy to figure out how to do on my own) -- put a short list up here of what I'm currently reading with just a few clicks. At any given time I'm reading at least two, if not three, different books and I plan to keep that list up to date by having whatever I'm reading show up there.

I'm not really a book club kind of girl. I don't like being told what to read. Throughout high school and college I probably read a couple thousand books, but very few of the ones that were assigned in English class. A personality flaw, to be sure, but it has gotten me this far. The point is, I'm not looking to turn this into a book blog, get a group going, have this turn into a Kindle discussion spot or anything like that, but I'm always interested in learning about new authors or books that someone thinks I might enjoy and sharing the same with others. I've checked out the discussion boards on Amazon for the Kindle and on LibraryThing and, frankly, some of those people are a little too nutso-passionate for my taste. But if you've read this far and I haven't already bored you to tears, maybe the same kinds of things appeal to you, too. So I hope you'll share some thoughts if something appears over there and it kindles your interest. :-)

Randomness

- On my drive home tonight, I saw two cars in traffic with the license plates IBM GUY and INTL LADY. You wouldn't guess that I live in Silicon Valley, would you?

- There's nothing quite as odd as your mother telling you, apropos of nothing, "They got rid of Chikezie last night."

- You can make a damn fine frittata out of a bunch of leftovers. Correction: I can make a damn fine frittata out of a bunch of leftovers!

- I started as new book today, the second in a relatively new series from an author I enjoy, Victoria Laurie. I've read all of the books in her Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye, series. I like her style and they're entertaining. If you're not into psychic "mumbo jumbo," you probably wouldn't go for her work. If you're a fan of the show Medium, though, you probably would.

- Speaking of books, I'm anxiously waiting for my Kindle to arrive. I've pretty much stopped buying paper books in anticipation of downloading them wirelessly.

- Yahoo! has really improved its search functionality with the addition of Search Assist. I find myself using it more and Google somewhat less recently.