Book reviews (part 12)

It's time for another batch of book related opinions, as I take a look at two books from two of my favourite authors - Alexander McCall Smith and John Grisham - and also a couple of humorous books from other authors...

Morality For Beautiful Girls
by Alexander McCall Smith

Morality For Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith - 4.5 / 5.0

In this the third book in the No.1 Ladies Detetive Agency series Precious Ramotswe deals with the issue of relocating the detective agency to the offices of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's garage. She also investigates the out of character behaviour from Rra Matekoni himself, as well as a couple of cases involving an unusual orphan and a potential poisoning.

This is another enjoyable account of Mma Ramotswe's eventful life, and any fans of the first two books will once again appreciate Morality For Beautiful Girls as the format is the same. The narrative also contains the occasional brief passage which summarises the most significant events of the first two books, so this third book could quite easily be read as a stand-alone book by any new readers.

10 real facts that sound made up

Or rather, nine real facts that sound made up (plus one which actually is made up)...

A tiger (not a real one).

Every now and then on twitter I've tweeted the occasional 'real fact that sounds made up' and so I thought I would compile a few of these facts on my blog. To make things a bit more challenging though, I've also inserted one 'fact' which actually is made up into the following list, so see if you can guess which one is the imposter among the following 'facts'...

1) American tigers

There are more tigers in the United States than in the rest of the world combined.

2) Exploding ant heads

Brunei ants have ants within the colony who can explode their own heads to defend the colony by leaving a sticky glue-like secretion to slow down intruders.

Is a KitKat a chocolate bar or a biscuit?

The Charles Fudgemuffin blog conducts a chocolatey investigation into a controversial but important question...

Android KitKat. Definitely an operating system.
But is it named after a biscuit or a chocolate bar?

At the office where I work we rarely get the chance to chat because we're always so busy working hard at our jobs all the time. However, during a rare quiet moment the other day we did have a brief chat, and one subject which cropped up was the question, 'Is a KitKat a chocolate bar or a biscuit?'

This produced a heated debate with some voices arguing passionately that a KitKat was categorically a chocolate bar, and other voices confidently declaring that a KitKat was most definitely a biscuit. In an attempt to resolve the matter, we consulted various sources, including Wikipedia, our manager, and even KitKat.com, but not even the official KitKat website provided a definitive answer.*

So in the end it was decided that the best thing to do was to put it to the vote. The office vote was too close to call, so I've therefore carried the debate over to the Charles Fudgemuffin blog. If your mind is already made up on the KitKat debate, then please register your vote at the poll below. Alternatively, if you'd like to hear a few pro-chocolate bar and pro-biscuit arguments before making your decision, then scroll down the page for a brief summary of some of the arguments put forward during our office discussion.

Poll: Is a KitKat a chocolate bar or a biscuit? - Vote in the poll

Modern Swedish words

Learning a new language is perhaps not as daunting as you might think.

This week I 'blogga' about Swedish words.

The thought of learning a new language can be intimidating, especially to English speakers, as we're traditionally not very good at learning new languages. However, if you want to learn a foreign language such as Swedish, then although it may seem daunting at first, you can take encouragement from the fact that a lot of modern words are shared between languages.

Technology in particular is one field where Swedish words are very similar to English, as you can see from the following list of Swedish words and their English equivalents...

1) googla ... to google
2) twittra ... to tweet
3) printa ut ... to print out
4) skypa ... to skype
5) facebooka ... to facebook
6) skanna ... to scan
7) blogga ... to blog
8) spotifiera ... to use spotify
9) websajt ... website 
10) logga in ... to log in

And if you want to test how your Swedish skills are progressing, see if you can work out this next one for yourself...