Breaking Dawn by Stepanie Meyer

The last of the Twilight quartet and certainly no disappointment, read over two days of unstoppable reading, good plotting and great twists.

Comic, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art by Roger Sabin

Definitive work of research by Sabin in large format chronicling the history of British comics from their conception up to about the turn of the century, interesting and through though a bit thin on comic art for girls and very little about manga, but there are other books for that

Godchild 1 and 2 by Kaori Yuki

Godchild is the story of a Victorian aristocrat named Cain, his 10 year old half sister Mary Weather, insane homicidal half brother Dr Jizabel Disraeli, their sadistic absent father and Cain's young butler Riff. Cain is a collector of poisons and detective and Godchild 1 and 2 cover a couple of his cases investigating murders, suicides and hauntings.

Yuki is the creator of Angel Sanctuary (which I've just started reading) and Cain and is female. Godchild is from the Shojo Beat house (shojo - young women) and is a far cry from the kind of shojo I don't like - high school romance and girlish crushes on older more powerful men. There is the usual mobile sexuality of manga that is both odd and entralling to my westernised mind, the androgny of Cain and Dr Disraeli, the overt exercising of Cain's power over society girls and the tensions in the relationships between Cain and Mary and Cain and Riff. After reading twice I may be hooked

It would have been really interesting to see these stories written and drawn in a westernised style along the lines of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, this is definately a fantasy of Victorian London although there are elements of what it would have been like

Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

A sad, moving book quite different from her usual gripping courtroom dramas. A bit like Shymalan's Unbreakable in that superheroes, the people who cannot be hurt, are not always like Superman, and that the past does not let go of the present. About ghosts, haunting, native american rights to land and the American eugenics movement that gave Hitler ideas about ethnic cleansing, and untimately about love and nature of suicide not as an escape but as a running to..

The Host by Stephanie Meyer

Read this while waiting for her last book of the vampire series Breaking Dawn. The story is post apocalyptic science fiction I guess, aliens have invaded and taken over human bodies, but these are not violent aliens, instead they displace the soul of the human host and replace it with a benevolent alien soul. Conflict, war, murder, deceit and lies all come to an end. Everyone works for the greater good and there is no longer any need for money as all contribute to society. Except for the few unconverted humans. This is the story of Wanderer, a soul place in the body of Melanie, one of the last 'wild' humans, and the unexpected conflict between them when Melanie refuses to leave

Really interesting, kind of linked into the stuff Rowlands talked about in The Philosopher and the Wolf, in that it is a meditation on what makes us as humans unique is our ability to lie, deceive and be violent and murderous, and that the right to be this way is something desperately precious to us. We cannot grow by fighting against and accepting our negative thoughts and feelings if we don't have those feelings in the first place.

Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Another book it took me a while to get round to, heavily recommended by far too many people to count. A beautiful gentle story of the death of a man who has spent his entire life working maintenance for a fairground, and the five people he meets in heaven after his death, people whose lives he has touched and affected. Joyful and affirming.

Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins

Very enjoyable, about the fallacy that science cannot be beautiful and an exploration of the beauty in science but I wish that Dawkins could have stopped attacking other scientists for two pages, entertaining as it often was

What Our Children Teach Us: Lessons in Joy, Love and Awareness by Piero Ferruci

Does what it says on the tin and wonderfully, affirmed my joy in sharing my life with my little girl and enabled me to relax in being able to see the wonder of her. Can't recommend enough.

AZ: 'A thoughtful, deeply honest look at the transforming experience of parenthood and how our children can lead us to a more profound understnading of ourselves. 'Live with children long enough and beauty, love, innocence, play, pain, and death, everything appears in a new light...' Children: they have the ability to turn our lives upside down, to disrupt our plans and our sleep, to try our patience, and to elicit our most ferocious love. But children also have the power to teach us the greatest lessons we'll ever learn. Now Piero Ferrucci, a noted psychologist, author, and the father of two young sons, reveals how the journey of parenthood can be a learning path, a succession of experiences that can enrich and transform us like no religious retreat or course of psychotherapy ever could. Not obsessed with the usual equation of what we must teach our children, Ferrucci rather looks into the mirror our children hold up to adult behaviour and tries to integrate the spontaneity, originality and ethical awareness that he finds in his sons into his own attitudes and conduct. WHAT OUR CHILDREN TEACH US is a charming book, full of delightful wit as well as seriousness of purpose. Through lively, moving and charmingly candid anecdotes that will strike a chord with every parent, Piero Ferrucci shows us the myriad ways in which our children can help us rediscover wonder, cultivate joy and patience, and open ourselves to a richer and more vital world.'

Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer

Another delicious escape, can't wait for Breaking Dawn!