Kindle lovin'

I had only one (material) wish for Christmas and it was the Amazon Kindle e-reader. 

Amazing husband made my wishes come true and when I opened my package there it was; Kindle Paperwhite 3 G!

So excited to open this!

Here's the catalog photo courtesy of Amazon.com:

I've never had a Kindle before, but I assume they're all pretty much the same size. It's pretty lightweight and really flat. I checked the measurements from Amazon and it's 6.7" x 4.6" x 0.36" (16.9cm x 11.7 cm x 9.1 cm) and it weighs 7.8 oz (222g). It holds about 1100 books, which is plenty. The battery lasts for about 28 hours of reading (with the light and the wireless on). I read a lot, so I've had to charge it like every 5 days.

I also purchased a case for it, so I can easily take it with me to the university and not worry about scratching it. This case is from Amazon.co.uk and it's a purple ForeFront case. I actually just bought the cheapest one (with good reviews) I could find, since I figured I'd get bored with the color at some point anyways. So far it's been a pleasant surprise.

The Kindle is pretty handy sized even with the case, here's a scale comparison to my Blackberry phone.

Kindle in sleep mode. When I'm not using it, it shows some advertisements for books and tv shows. You can get rid of the advertisements, if you pay more, but I figured the ads wouldn't bother me that much, and they haven't. It's got a touch screen, which is really handy as well. Just tap it and it'll switch pages. If you tap on the left side, it'll go back a page and if you tap on the top of the page, you get the menu. It comes with an experimental browser, so you can check your emails, Facebook/Twitter, news etc. whatever you want with it as well. You can also easily go to Kindle store on Amazon.com and purchase a  new book. Paperwhite 3G has free global 3G so it should work wherever there's a 3G connection available. You can also download some games to it,  but I haven't yet felt the need for them.

Here's Kindle Paperwhite with full lights on. I told husband I didn't need the Paperwhite version, since I didn't think I'd need the background light and I was worried I'd get a migraine from any sorts of light. I'm happy to say I was wrong, the light is extremely handy, since I read mostly in bed. Now I don't need a reading light and the build-in light does not bother me at all. No migraines or even the feeling of getting one :)

Here's how I usually read, with minimal light. 

I have about 300 books downloaded it already, so I have plenty of reading to be done :) Besides the books available for purchase, Amazon.com Kindle store has a ton of free books available and I've also downloaded free books from the Project Gutenberg site, which has a ton more.

In a nutshell, I really really love my new Kindle :) If you read a lot and want to downsize your library, I would recommend Kindle Paperwhite wholeheartedly. I'll still probably purchase some of the books, the ones I know I'll read and read again, as paper-versions, but the books that I probably won't read more than one (as in a bunch of fiction) I'll only get as e-books.

Hope everyone's been having a wonderful weekend!

p.s Stay tuned for next week, since I'm having the first ever The Sugar Antelope Giveaway! 

I absolutely love giveaways and raffles and I'm so excited to have one in this blog too!

Raffle Prize: Vera Vala's book!

I won a raffle prize from Vera Vala's blog Vera(n) Italia, which was Vera's own detective novel Kuolema Sypressin Varjossa, thank you Vera! 

I'm a big fan of detective fiction, so I'm really looking forward to reading Vera's book. I have yet to dive into the book, but you can read a review of the book from Savon Sanomat (in Finnish).

My prize, yay!

I have another book waiting to be read as well. I'm not really into this genre, but everyone and their cousin is talking about it on facebook, so I thought I'd give it a chance.

Perhaps you've heard of it ;)

Hope everyone is having a sunny Monday!

Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries

This summer I stumbled upon Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple books and absolutely fell in love with them. I think I was looking for another Mrs. Jeffries book on Better World Books website and ran into Death At Wentwater Court, the first book in the series. The series is set in 1920s England and the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple is a 20-something magazine writer who happens to run into all sorts of murders and other mysteries. In the first book she meets Mr. Alec Fletcher, the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard,  whom she starts solving crimes with and also falls in love with. Chief Inspector Fletcher is also smitten with Daisy from the start, but worried about the fact that she is upper-class and he is a policeman. He is also trying, without much success, to get Daisy to stop meddling with murder cases for her own safety's sake. But Daisy keeps finding herself in the middle of them and enjoys snooping around :)

Besides the fact the book series describes the 1920s England in a very entertaining way (I love the 1920s!), it's also a love story, which works for a romantic person like me :) The murder mysteries are thoroughly enjoyable as well. I love the humor and wittiness that the characters have in them and the language used - it's just spiffing! 

Here are the books so far (from Wikipedia):

Death At Wentwater Court (1994)

The Winter Garden Mystery (1995)

Requiem For A Mezzo (1996)

Murder On The Flying Scotsman (1997)

Damsel In Distress (1997)

Dead In The Water (1999)

Styx And Stones (1999)

Rattle His Bones (2000)

To Davy Jones Below (2001)

The Case Of The Murdered Muckraker (2002)

Mistletoe And Murder (2002)

Die Laughing (2003)

A Mourning Wedding (2004)

Fall Of A Philanderer (2005)

Gunpowder Plot (2006)

The Bloody Tower (2007)

Black Ship (2008)

Sheer Folly (2009)

Anthem For Doomed Youth (2011)

Gone West (2012)

So far I've read the first six books and just started reading Styx and Stones today. They are a light read, I usually finish a book in two days (I usually read them while lil man is napping). If you like light murder mysteries with a hint of romance, you'll love the Daisy Dalrymple books!

Hope everyone is having the most wonderful week!

The Hunger Games trilogy

Earlier in this blog, I was talking about my love for books. I mentioned that I was reading The Hunger Games and really really liked it. After reading the first book I decided to order the two other books from the trilogy, and once I started reading them, I couldn't stop :)

I read Catching Fire in a day and Mockingjay in two days. Husband says I was totally consumed by those books :D and I have to admit that they were pretty captivating. The two first books were my favorites, although Mockingjay was pretty darn good as well. It just had a lot more combat strategy and I'm not that into war stories. Despite being overly dystopian, I found the story scarily realistic. Reality tv is everywhere and I don't think it's completely unrealistic to assume that at one point it will turn brutal, maybe even deadly. I mean people already love tv shows like Survivor and the Hunger Games isn't that far away from it. Eitherway, if you enjoy good books and are open to reading young adult fiction, I recommend the Hunger Games trilogy :)

Bookstores

After posting what I miss about the Midwest and my favorite books I thought of something else that I miss in the U.S, the bookstores! There's nothing wrong with the Finnish bookstores, except most of them are way too expensive for my taste and somewhat limited in selection. I love browsing books and finding bargain books. I also buy a lot of my books used to save money and absolutely love libraries :-) Nowadays I don't have as much time to hang out at bookstores or libraries, so I buy most of my books online.

Books purchased used in various conditions :)

My favorite major bookstore in the U.S is Barnes & Noble. Their selection is excellent and they have in-store Starbucks, yay! The B&N's that I've been to have had huge comfy chairs and some of them have a massive selection of $1 used books: a heaven for a bookworm like me :) They also have a pretty good website with an even bigger selection of new and used books. Their 25$ a year membership pays itself back quite fast if you purchase a lot of books, since you get 10-40% of off your purchases and free shipping on any item. B&N does ship internationally, but they do charge quite a bit for it. Besides B&N I also bought a lot of books from Borders, but I hear they've gone bankrupt? In Nebraska I also went to Hastings bookstore, which reminded me of Borders a bit.

My favorite online bookstores are Amazon and Better World Books. Amazon needs no introduction, it's not just a bookstore, it sells everything and more :) Their free Super Saver shipping is awesome and their prices are unbeatable most of the time. Whereas I have purchased a lot of fiction from B&N, I have bought most of my academic literature from Amazon. Amazon.com does ship internationally for a price, but for example Amazon.co.uk ships free to Finland, if you spend over £25. Better World Books has free shipping worldwide and purchases fund literacy projects, which makes it a great place to shop. Amazon still often has better prices when it comes to new books, but Better World Books has pretty good prices for used books. They also have a lot of academic books, which has helped this poor student save a lot of money :)

Where do you buy your books? Any good online bookstores (especially those that ship to Finland:) you've found and would like to share?

Me, myself and my books

I have long term love affair with books. It started before I even went to school. I never went to daycare and my Mom taught me to read before I went to kindergarten. I don't recall my very first years, but I bet I was reading board books back then :) I wasn't allowed to watch television before I went to school (we had a tv, but parents had principles), so I had plenty of time to read. I remember starting first grade and being super-bored when everyone was learning how to read. My teacher let me go sit in the back of the class and read my own books occasionally. 

I loved homework, since I got to read more and there were these fun assignments to do. When I was four I started asking for activities books for my birthday. I even made some myself and I made several for my grandpa to do too haha. My love for books made elementary school very easy for me and I often did all the assignments in the chapter in advance, that's how much I loved homework :) I think I was in second grade when one of my fellow students ratted me out to the teacher, telling her I had done all the assignments in our book. My teacher called my Mom, Mom smiled and bought me more activities books to fill. I never stopped loving school, that's probably why I'm still studying ;)

My Ex libris

I own hundreds of books. Some are at my parents' home, some are in Nebraska and some are here at our home. Nowadays I don't get to read as much as I'd like, since little man takes up my time. But if I have any extra time, I pick up a book. I'm usually reading several books at a time; a couple of novels and several academic books. For light reading I like murder mysteries, some romantic fiction, young adult fiction and whatever I get my hands on :) My favorite authors include Jane Austen, Lilian Jackson Braun, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, P.D James, Anne Perry, Elizabeth Peters, Kathy Reichs, Dorothy L. Sayers, Andrew Taylor and many many more. If I had to choose a favorite book, it would have to be Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, I never get tired of it!

Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Winsey is one my all time favorite literary characters :) I really like early to mid-1900s detective fiction. Hercule Poirot is just amazing and I also like the earlier investigators like Sherlock Holmes. I suppose I have a thing for "British gentleman detectives" :D

I also read young adult fiction and confessed somewhere earlier in this blog that I really liked the Twilight series :) I didn't like the movies as much, and the first two books were definitely more interesting than the two last. I wrote an academic paper on the books about how they portrayed the Native American characters.

Some more books from our bookshelf :) The Keith Richards-book is my husband's, he likes to read autobiographic books, especially those written by musicians. Comanche Empire is an academic book written by a Finn, Professor Pekka Hämäläinen, and Hippie is a book I read for a class. As for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I absolutely love the book :) I'm not a big fan of science fiction in the literary form, although I do like to watch some Sci-Fi movies and series. 

Some of the academic books related to my studies. My bachelor's thesis was about paleopathology, my new master's thesis is related to legal history. This is my second attempt at a master's thesis, the first one was supposed to be about archaeological law, but someone else published a similar research paper first, so I had to give up on mine.

What I'm currently reading, in addition to the several academic books of course :) I've never read a Mrs. Jeffries-book before, but I do like Victorian murder mysteries and this one seems okay so far. I just saw it on the discount pile at the bookstore and bought it. If it turns out to be a good one, I might read some more Mrs. Jeffries :) As for The Hunger Games, I went to see the movie and found myself liking it, so I thought I'd give the trilogy a try. So far I'm liking it, a lot.

What do you think of these books? Who are your favorite authors? Any reading suggestions/recommendations you'd like to share? I'm always open to new authors :)

Books

Yesterday I couldn't sleep because of the time difference again. I stayed up until 5am...sun was rising when I finally fell asleep.
Since I clearly couldn't fall asleep I read a book. Andrew Taylor's 'Where Roses Fade'.
I love the Lydmouth series. I especially like the character of Jill Francis, she seems so strong, while being vulnerable...human.
The night before I read Simon Brett's 'Murder in the Museum'. (I'm obviously a fan of murder mysteries :) Not a literary masterpiece in my opinion, but highly entertaining.