44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

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Little John
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44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

Post by Little John »

My first Kindle experience and my first Andrew McColl Smith and a resounding success for both.

I heard your man on the radio the other day and was rather put off by his very posh voice, but the man is a genius! Amazing insight into what makes us tick. Interesting knowledge of philosophy and psychology but no way didactic. Very entertaining with diverse fully formed characters.

Another thing that made me uncertain was the preface. The book and the subsequent series started as a Dickensian style serial novel written in daily instalments for The Scotsman newspaper. I thought it might be trite and bitty but it quite the opposite. Very much looking forward to all the books in the series.

As for the Kindle, it was much better than I expected. Light, easy to read even in bright sunshine (its not always "grey here") and once I got the balance between font size and page length right I cut down on the number of "swipes".

Although it does tell you what percentage of the book you have read, because the "page number" depends on the font size, it's hard to know and or judge how far you are and how much further you have to go. You can't flick through to see how long the chapter is to decide if its worth slipping your book mark in or reading on till the end.

I not a total convert but I'm not as anti as I was.
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marymary
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Re: 44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

Post by marymary »

I also liked both. I have stopped using the kindle though.
Lady P
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Re: 44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

Post by Lady P »

I have books 2 and 3 which I got from a charity shop. The only way to read book 1 was through the kindle. I have just read book 2 Expresso Tales.

The books are a great read, very funny especially the 6 year old boy Bertie who has to wear crushed strawberry colour dungarees and learn the saxophone but wants to be a boy and climb trees. It is mother idea of parenting.
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marymary
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Re: 44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

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I don’t remember that bit at all. 😬
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Re: 44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

Post by digger »

I use a kindle but it's not the e reader and is an earlier kindle fire hd , think it's an 8 . No problems at all with it , reckon it's about 4/5 years old now , just works well as a reader and also acts as a pretty good tablet .
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Little John
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Re: 44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

Post by Little John »

Is it a colour fire? My mum had one and it was a great little tablet but not so easy to read blocks of text. And I dont think it was as good as this black and white one in sunlight.
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Lady P
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Re: 44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

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So far we have 2 books on the kindle unlike some friends of ours who have hundreds of books. It will be convenient for holidays and buying some books for 99p although not sure how good some of these books are. However we do share the kindle which works out fine so far.
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Re: 44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

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Mine has no colour so it’s a bit dull.
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Re: 44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith (E)

Post by digger »

Mines has three background choices plus 5 text types plus three text sizes with variable brightness
no problems reading blocks that I've noticed .
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