The Gold Urinal

Before Obama was elected President he went to see Bill and Hillary for some campaign advice, at their spacious home.

After drinking several glasses of iced tea, he asked Bill Clinton if he could use his personal bathroom.

When he entered Clinton's private toilet, he was astonished to see that Clinton had a solid gold urinal! Wow!

That afternoon, Obama told his wife, Michelle, about the urinal. "Just think,' he said, 'when I am President, I too could have a gold urinal. But I wouldn't have something so self-indulgent!"

Later, when Michelle had lunch with Hillary, she told Hillary how impressed Obama had been at his discovery of the fact that, in his private bathroom, Bill had a gold urinal.

That evening, when Bill and Hillary were getting ready for bed, Hillary smiled and said to Bill:

"I found out who pissed in your saxophone."

'Author Unknown'

Book Review: August Heat (Montalbano 10) by Andrea Camilleri

Click here to look inside UK
Click here to look inside US

I have previously written that I have bought it, so I'm damn well going to finish it, and I have, every book I have ever bought,whether I was really enjoying it or not, I finished it, until now.

Andrea Camilleri is a celebrated Italian author and screen writer and he has written a series of books based on Police Inspector Montalbano.  I have to confess I came to Montalbano through the Italian made TV show as shown on BBC TV in the UK and although it is sub titled I thoroughly enjoy them.  I then stumbled across the books on Amazon and the first one that popped up was this one, so enjoying it on TV I thought the books will be even better and maybe they are and it is me missing something...

Or, is it they have lost something in the translation from the original Italian to English. And has the editing and the page link set up been so badly put together for navigational purposes on e-reader that it makes it to difficult to read?

The basic translation is fine when dealing with the main characters but there is one particular soul in the books and TV who is a comic character who is a policeman.  Cateralla, he is best described as the village idiot transplanted by mistake into a policeman's uniform (but who it is discovered has a talent for computers) but is still the village idiot and a right country bumpkin.  His speech on TV and clearly it has been translated to the TV as well as, and it works in that medium to comic effect, but for me the pigeon bastardisation of the language does not translate well into print and it is just so off putting.  He is not a central character and only pops up every so often; on TV it is quite funny but in the book it is an appalling grind on the nerves.

The second gripe is the 'page links'.  My twitter friend JW Manus discusses these over on her blog along with many other topics on e-book formatting and many publishers and I don't mean just self publishers, could do themselves and us, the reader and purchaser of books a favour, by checking out her comments on formatting and navigation.

This book is full of page links and they all appear to be at the rear.  I have mentioned this before as a gripe in that if you are reading across a Kindle, a phone, a PC or a tablet, when you stop reading and go back to the book, when you sign on and you synch to the furthest page read, it takes you to the last page link opened and unless you have bookmarked the actual page you were reading; you're stuffed and you then have to start hunting for the last page or chapter you were on.

The other problem with the Kindle is that if you click on a page link, HOW THE HELL DO YOU GET BACK TO WHERE YOU WERE? I still haven't figured this out and again you are left hunting for the last actual page of the story you were reading.  I think the only answer is DON'T CLICK ON BLOODY PAGE LINKS, sheesh...

So, I got so fed up with Cateralla and continually losing my reading place that I have finally given up after 7 chapters, a waste of over £4.00 but a lesson learned.

Editing for Kindle /iPad: 2 out of 5
Reading Enjoyment: 1 out of 5
Page length on kindle /iPad: 288 estimated although the page numbers are not shown on Kindle
Plot: 0 out of 5
Overall Rating: 1 out of 5

Two Paddy's

(c) 123RF(r) 

Two Paddys were working for the city public works department. One would dig a hole and the other would follow behind him and fill the hole in.

They worked up one side of the street, then down the other, then moved on to the next street, working furiously all day without rest, one man digging a hole, the other  filling it in again.

An onlooker was amazed at their hard work, but couldn't understand what they were doing. So he asked the hole-digger, 'I'm impressed by the effort you two are putting in to your work, but I don't get it! Why do you dig a hole, only to have your partner follow behind and fill it up again?'

The hole-digger wiped his brow and sighed, 'Well, I suppose it probably looks odd because we're normally a three-person team. But today the lad who plants the trees called in sick.'

Steve Jobs

Got these in the mail and thought worth sharing, hope the unknown originator doesn't mind