Post-Holiday Catch-up Link Love

Gratuitous picture of a Scottish castle

For the last two weeks I've been swanning around Western Scotland, staying well away from anything to do with the Internet, email and (more or less) telephones. It's been lovely. But now I'm back and my inbox is full. Here are a few of the choicest cuts:

First up, friend of The Reader Caroline Smailes says that her novella Disraeli Avenue is now available for pre-order. This novella will be published as a limited edition of 500 hardback books and all 500 books will be signed and numbered. The pre-order will be available direct from Bluechrome at only £10 and this book will arrive before Christmas, being dispatched on December 01 2008 (the ideal Christmas present!). All books remaining after the pre-order will have an official release on January 15 2009 (the actual RRP will be £12.99). Most importantly, all profit from the sale of Disraeli Avenue will go to One in Four the organisation run for and by people who have experienced sexual abuse. Pre-order it here.

We previously mentioned the download version of Disraeli Avenue, which is still available for free. If you download it please make a donation to One in Four if you can.

Over at Readerville proprietor Karen Templer announced that the Note:Books micro-blogging application is now fully available. If you like making notes about your reading and enjoy talking about books in a lively and friendly community, then this could be for you.

If you have romance in mind Penguin has teamed up with match.com to run a dating website aimed at book lovers. According to Marketing Week part of the idea is to bring the written word back into the art of courtship. Ah, bless. Members will be able to describe themselves by listing the books they read, but it would be a lot more fun to use Penguin's own book classifications. I consider myself a Modern Classic of course, but I can think of at least one former girlfriend who could be described as Poetry, Drama, and Criticism. Here's the link to Penguin Dating.

And in case you missed it, the Orwell Diaries blog launched on August 9th. Lovely stuff.

Posted by Chris Routledge