Just to say right at the start of this Christmas post, the billion reads on Kindle Unlimited does not refer to my book. I wish! No, it refers to a tweet I came across on Twitter X yesterday (I'm still going to call it a tweet regardless of what Elon says).
Here's the tweet.
%20_%20X.png)
That is over one billion reads, which is remarkable. Even at a fraction of a penny that Amazon pay per page, that has to be a decent return.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, every house in Britain had one (at least) of these.
The tin rubbish bin.
This was long before recycling and different coloured bins being collected on different dates. Everything went into this one bin, and it was small. It would be collected every week and occasionally would go missing. Sometimes there would be a heated argument between neighbours if they picked up your bin, which just happened to be newer or shinier.
Some would paint their number on the bin. But if you were number 7, and number 27 nicked your bin, all they would have to do is paint a 2 next to the 7.
Well, this will be ambitious. I came up with this idea, a blog variation on the twelve days of Christmas, ambitiously called the twelve posts of Christmas. Ambitious because so far the most number of posts that I have done in any month is five. I will have to see how it goes.
So, here's the first one.
Buying a copy of the Christmas Radio Times has become a tradition for many households. It is still bought even if no one reads it.
Here is a selection over the years.
1940.
With Hitler planning his invasion of Britain, which thankfully never happened, The BBC offered its Christmas Radio Times for two old pence. And in 1940, Radio Times actually meant radio, because hardly anyone had a television set.
And during the war, the BBC suspended its television service.
1957.
Seventeen years later, and the price had increased by a penny.
I finished reading Cheryl Strayed's book Wild a few weeks back and have been meaning to write about it, a review. As often happens, other things got in the way, so I thought it was about time that I did that review, because it is a good book.
Wild is a memoir that describes her adventure as she hikes the Pacific Crest Trail. The book is subtitled, From Lost to Found and starts off by giving us her background history. The author is very open about her own flaws, her failed marriage, drug use and relationship with her family, especially her parents. Her mother died young of cancer, a battle that did not last very long. Her mother's death had a big impact on her life.
Strayed embarked on what becomes a journey of self discovery.
It has been a long time since I read a book that started with a prologue. Wild has a very good one that achieves its objective, which is to encourage you to read on, to find out what happened.
Strayed tells the story of when she loses one of her boots over a cliff edge. Now, barefoot walking is a thing, but out in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere, miles from any help? With stones, sharp rocks, rugged terrain, you are left wondering, what is she going to do now?
No spoilers, you will have to read the book!
I was cycling through the local country park very early this morning to do some shopping, when I came across a bag of books. The park exit takes me across a walkway close to a river and through a small car park. There is a wall that runs alongside the river, the plastic shopping bag with the books inside had been left there. I decided that if they were still there on my return journey, I would have a look.
This was not the first time that I had seen books left in that spot. I assume that a local resident, having read the books, had perhaps put them there so somebody else could have the pleasure of them. A sort of book recycling. It's also possible that they were just a litterbug, someone who couldn't be bothered to take them to a charity shop. I'd prefer to think it was the former.
I did have a quick look and decided to take them with me. There were clouds gathering, the possibility of rain. If I left them there, they would get a soaking. I thought that if I had no interest in them, I could recycle them to the local charity shop. One way or another, someone would appreciate them.
When I got back, I took the books out of the bag. There were four books, all fiction. Now, I am more of a non-fiction reader, I probably should make an effort to read more fiction than I do, especially as right now I am trying my hand at writing fiction. The last time I did that was at school, years ago. I don't think I was very good.
Here are the four books that I found.
All the ratings are from the Goodreads website.
1) Listen To Me by Tess Gerritsen. 4.17 average review rating. 14787 ratings and 1339 GR reviews (as of writing).
NATIONAL BESTSELLER — Rizzoli & Isles are back! From New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen, this “shocking and fast-paced” (Karin Slaughter) thriller has Jane and Maura investigating a brutal murder with dire implications, and this time, with Jane's intrepid mother, Angela, looking into a mystery of her own.
2) ALEX by Pierre Lemaitre. 4.09 average review rating. 17009 ratings and 2349 GR reviews.
Kidnapped, beaten, suspended from the ceiling of an abandoned warehouse in a wooden cage, Alex Prévost is in no position to bargain. Her abductor's only desire is to watch her die.
3) The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly. 4.20 average review rating. 78370 ratings and 4321 GR reviews.
Bringing together Michael Connelly's two most popular characters, “The Brass Verdict” is a thriller which reaches for, and then surpasses, the highest level!
One of the mysteries of being on Twitter, or its new name X, is figuring out how the algorithm works and making sense of Twitter analytics. For the last three months I have been getting a message like this.
Now, I have Tweeted, not a lot, but more than zero. I've even posted this as a Tweet complete with the image above and according to Twitter X, people do like photos. Obviously not enough for X (formerly known as Twitter) analytics to pick up that I have posted consistantly.
It does say on the X (formerly known as Twitter) analytics page that they are working on improvements. They even offer a link to the new version of account analytics beta, but when you click on it, you get taken to Twitter.
X analytics remains a mystery.
There are many complaints about how Twitter X works right now, with some thinking that it favours the bigger, paid for accounts. Elon wants to charge us all a quid a year to have access. Right now, I don't think it offers enough to be worth that much.
I'm currently reading a book called Happy by Derren Brown (yes, it is spelt with two E's). I bought it a while back in one of my charity shop book hauls. So far I have found it to be an interesting read, yet I am not happy with it.
There is something about Happy, that I am not happy about.
It's the actual book itself, not the contents. It is a paperback that has 558 pages, but it is not easy to keep the pages open. It is one of those that when you hold it, you have to apply constant pressure to keep the pages that you are reading open. If you get too physical with it, the inevitable end result is that you will get a crease in the spine of the book.
I don't like that with paperbacks.
The local charity shops are full of second hand paperback books with damaged spines. I don't think anyone buys a book with the intention of damaging it so you can read it comfortably?
Hardback books are more durable, but paperbacks often get abused in this way. That poses the question, why has it been produced like that? Was there no testing beforehand? There are paperbacks where the pages open smoothly and there are no creases on the spine of the book.
With Happy, I have so far managed to resist the temptation to force it open and damage the spine. I'm on page 103, so 425 more to go (not including the index at the end).
Will I last the course? Brown seems to think that the stoics had some answers to being happy.
Perhaps I need to be more Stoic when reading this hefty tome?
Update (2026).
No, I didn't last the course. The further I got into the book, the tighter it became. Or maybe my hands were getting weaker by then? I got to page 180 and gave up.
I now think that the only way I will get through it is by damaging the spine. As Derren Brown is a magician, maybe he can come with some magic that will help?
Last Friday, I got another five for a pound haul of books from the charity shop that keeps on giving.
Let's see what I got this time.
All the ratings are from the Goodreads website.
1) QI Second Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson. 3.91 average review rating. This is one of those factual books that you can dive in and out of as and when it suits. Originally published in 2010 it has hundreds of individual bits of trivia like what did Cornish wreckers do, and what is a brass monkey? Like the BBC TV series, many of the answers are not so obvious.
2) First Man In by Ant Middleton. 4.02 average review rating and 705 GR reviews (as of writing). The memoir of a Special Boat Services sniper and a No.1 bestseller, which you might be forgiven for thinking that this is a man's book, yet quite a few of the reviews on Goodreads were from women. Maybe because it is about the secretive world of conflict and war, I assumed it would be a “man” thing. GQ describe it as “fist biting fun”, I suspect that at the time it wasn't always fun for the writer.
43 years ago today, the band Teardrop Explodes released their debut album Kilimanjaro. An unofficial Twitter fan account describes their music as bubblegum trance music, psychedelic soul music. Not sure what it is, but it is very pop and melodic, very 1980s post punk, new wave. It was music that I had long forgotten about until I listened again today.
Music is subjective, so just to say that having rediscovered this today, it is like finding something new. I will be reacquainting myself with their back catalogue of music for a few days now. It seems to have stood the test of time.
As they say. Until you realise, it's just a story.
Clearly not, but I was in a local charity shop earlier today and I noticed that the music playing in the background was a Christmas tune. At the front of the shop was a table set out with potential Christmas gifts, including a box of books, all of which had a Christmas theme. The saving grace was that there was that they had not yet put up a Christmas tree.
The music was coming from a CD player, the CD that was playing being a Christmas greatest hits compilation album. Track number one was Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody. In merry old England, you always know that Christmas is just around the corner when shops start playing the Christmas hits of the past.
For the shops, even charity shops, the time to sell for Christmas just seems to be getting earlier. I have to say I wasn't tempted to do any Christmas shopping just yet.
