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My reading list for 2013

Another year, another list of the long form books I have read. 2013 is the first year that I have my own personal Kindle (dedicated digital book reader for anybody reading this after about 2015) and it will be interesting to see if I get more read and also “where” I read. I also have a stack of print books that could see me through the next couple of years.

  1. Chimero, Frank. The Shape of Design. 2012  [kindle] – finished 5th January
  2. Bjarnason, Baldur. Knights & Necromancers 2: Loot, kill, obey. 2012 [kindle]  – finished 9th January
  3. Stephenson, Neal. Reamde. 2012 [kindle] – finished 29th  January on London underground
  4. J-Zone. Root for the villain. Rap, bullshit, and a celebration of failure. Cambria Heights, NY, Old Maid Entertainment, 2011. [kindle] – finished 4th February at home
  5. Kawasaki and Welch. APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book, 2013 [kindle] – finished 15th March
  6. The Standardistas. The Craft of Words. Five Simple Steps Publishing Ltd, 2013 [Kindle] – finished 15th March
  7. Wurz, Julia. SuperEgo. 2013 [kindle] – finished  12th April
  8. Guillebeau, Chris. The $100 Startup. 2012 – finished 1st June
  9. Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup. 2011  [paperback] – finished 11th August
  10. deWitt, Patrick. The Sisters Brothers. 2011 [paperback] – finished 15th August
  11. Hammersley, Ben. Now for then – how to face the digital future without fear. 2013 [kindle] – finished 17th September in Bordeaux France.
  12. Allen, David. Getting Things Done. 2002 [Kindle] – finished 30th October

 

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Force Kindle to display frontmatter first

When you first load a kindle file it may start on any number of pages as set by the book designer. I am not sure if an ebook should start on the cover as this is visible in the library.

Anyway, a problem I had today was that my book kept starting on the first chapter and bypassing the frontmatter, foreword and introduction.

After various wimperings on the #eprdctn hashtag I stumbled across the solution and am documenting it before I forget.

To control/force the kindle to start on your page of choice you need to do the following it seems:

  1. open content.opf
  2. scroll to the GUIDE section
  3. You only need three items in here – i originally had all chapters but reading around seems to say this is pointless: cover, toc, and your chosen first page as references.
  4. Change/add a reference for your chosen page to <reference type=”text” href=”frontmatter.html”/></reference>
  5. Done

Setting the reference to type fixed the problem. I had read that you need to use “start” but that seemed to be where I failed.

It is interesting to think about what page should be first, would a reader care about frontmatter or just the author and publisher?…. a post for the future me thinks.

Thanks to Tom for leading me to the correct path.