The Silence of Animals by John Gray

To be honest I picked this up because I thought it would be about how animals communicate, but instead it is about how we as human animals view ourselves as above other members of the animal kingdom and the pitfalls of viewing our human history as a progression from the past to the present.  Gray really made me think, about the basic assumption many of us hold that as time goes on and humans become more educated and exposed to 'civilization' that we naturally will become less savage and more altruistic, when all the evidence is against that thesis.  He writes of the silence of humans and its qualatitive difference from the non-language and silence of animals, and why we search silence out.  Challenging, difficult and rewarding.

Rags and Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt

On the one hand this is a really interesting collection, who wouldn't like to see some of their favourite authors rewriting the stories that have influenced them.  However, because most of these are not fairy stories I didn't know the inspirations, it would have been useful to have either a reprint of the stories included in the case of shorter ones or good summaries.  I did like the actual stories and found them moving, disturbing and haunting in turn, but I just felt this book was missing a trick.

Amazing Spaces by George Clarke

If you have ever longed for a secret hideaway, a bit of space in your life, if you built dens as a child and loved to play in tents, if you dream of escaping in a campervan this book will delight you. 

In George Clarke's Channel 4 series Amazing Spaces he met people building their own hideaways, either from scratch or reclaiming unwanted buses, caravans and shipping containers.  He created his own project too.  The series was very good and sometimes the book released to accompany a tv series can be a little lacking but that isn't the case with this one.  Clarke combines tasty pictures of the projects with plans and information on how every inch of these tiny spaces is put to multiple uses, a table is a bed, and a bath, and storage.

The book is divided into 3 sections

The first is an introduction on starting to think about your own project.  Why do you want this space, who is it for and how will it be used, where do you want it to be and will you build from scratch or use an existing space?

The second section is the projects featured in the series, broken down into movable spaces (caravans, buses, boats and trucks), multi-functional spaces (huts, tiny apartments, caravans and containers), new spaces (building from scratch) and recycled spaces (using existing resources)

The last section is on the practicalities of making your dream into reality, planning, using designers and/or architects, sketches, action plans, budgets, health and safety, the boring but vital stuff to make it all happen.

A nice size, illustrated in full colour throughout, delicious to look at and full of enough information to help a anyone take their dreams forward.

Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy

Rather like a romcom film, Nights of Rain and Stars is well written and uplifting.  On the terrace of a Greek taverna a 3 hour climb above the small village of Aghia Anna a group of foreingers watch as tragedy unfolds below and a local tourist boat bursts into flames.  The owner, Andreas, is local and has known all the villagers touched by the tragedy all their lives. With him are a diverse group all on the run from something.  Fiona is a young Irish nurse, with her boyfriend Sean fleeing the disapproval of her parents.  David is an English student trying to break free from the straitjacketing expectations of his father that he will follow him into his business.  Thomas is American professor on sabattical, his ex wife starting a new life back home that he fears will leave him without a place in his son's life.  And Elsa, a beautiful German television presenter running from the love of her life.  Bound together by a day and night watching the drama below unfold they find unlikely friendship with each other and with the help of Vonni, an Irishwoman who has lived in the village for decades, find their way each to their own resolution. 

Really sweet and wholesome, a book that makes you feel warm at heart and a nice distraction.

Tech Knits by Sue Culligan (also called Knits of Tomorrow)

This book seems to have been released in two formats at once, this and Knits of Tomorrow: Toys and Accessories for Your Retro-Future Needs appear to be the same book and I really like loads of the designs, I find them a witty and fun combination of retro and modern.

Culligan starts with a basics section, giving explanations on the materials and equipment you will need (yarns, needles, accessories), brief descriptions of techniques (casting on, off, stitches, fair isle, intarsia, beading, finishing, felting, short rows) and a listing of abbreviations.  The descriptions are short and this is better as a book for a knitter who knows the techniques or has access to a good knitting dictionary

The Projects are next.  Each begins with a good picture and a description of the importance of the piece of technology that inspired the project.  It's followed by a materials panel (yarn, needles, haberdashery, tension, finished size), notes and then the pattern itself and tips. 

The projects are:
Graphic Equilalizer Scarf - chunky and funky
Saturn Mobile - knitted stripy planet-like balls strung together
Atomic Laptop Cover - felted cover featuring Edward Rutherford's atomic model
Space Rocket Desk Tidy - two patterns for pen pots, one large, one small
Flying Saucer Paperweight
Space-Race Mobile - another mobile, this one space rockets in 4 patterns
Robo Dog Coat - witty K9 style robot dogs marching across a dog coat
Cassette Music Player Cover - Retro meets modern, a smartphone / mp3 case knitted to look like a cassette
Robot Pot Holders and Cushion - two designs and a cushion, could also be used for blanket squares
Circuit Board Beanie & Fingerless Mitts and Scarf - meandering lines and buttons mimic a circuit board
Men's Radio Mast Socks - plain socks with a motif like the old BBC broadcasting symbol of the Crystal Palace tower transmitting
Sputnik Lapotop Cover - button up cover featuring the first man made object in space
Robot Doorstop
Ray Gun Place Mat & Coaster - ray gun retro 50s in style, coaster with a comic book style flash
Headphones hat - earflap hat with over ear headphones in intarsia
Calculator Tablet Cover
Reel-to-Reel tote bag
Starship blanket - stars and rockets on squares

Cute and funky, there are several of these that appealed to me and I thought the book good value.

More Than This by Patrick Ness

A boy drowns in the cold ocean.  To begin with we know little about him beyond the brutality of his death, but details begin to emerge and we learn about teenage boy Seth's life in America.  His circle of friends and growing love for one of them, his brother Owen, damaged by a terrible incident in the boys' childhood, his emotionally distant mother and medicated father. His life before his death.

But Seth wakes somewhere else, a place beyond his death.  He is alone in the English town and house he lived in until he was 8 and the terrible thing happened to Owen.  The town is overrun with weeds and in places a burnt wasteland.  Is this his personal hell, purgatory, or something else?

Ness never lets the reader stand on firm ground, making us ask questions about what we know to be real and our relationship with reality and technology.

Ostrich by Matt Greene

Alex has a brain tumour, he has just come out of hospital after having a hole drilled in his head.  But he is also a teenage boy and has to sort out the strange behaviour of his hamster Jaws 2, the mysteries of his parent's marriage, school work and school social life.  He has so much to learn, how to narrate his life as French schoolboy Serge in his exams, and how sex works from the acres of pornography on the internet.

Being of a certain generation my closest experience to Ostrich has been Adrian Mole, but Greene's first person narrator Alex is far far funnier and far more poignant, I was left literally howling with laughter at some points and reading bits out to family, both things I don't usually do.  The ending is achingly sad, but Alex shines, the dazzling mind of a typical monosyllabic teenage boy opened up wide.

Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

I picked this book up in the library while browsing and was glad I did. Although it is set in the near future it gives real insight into day to day experiences that people with autism have, how they think and interact with the world in different ways from 'neurotypicals'.

Lou is our first person narrator, a single man with autism living an independent life. He has a capacity to find patterns in data, this facility with the world of numbers lies in opposition to his difficulties with the world of society and language, a world that is alien and often hostile to him, but it has enabled him to have a good job.

In this near future world autism is becoming a rarity as a cure has been found that can be implemented at birth and, indeed, although Lou was not born in time to be cured he received interventions that meant he could function within society and make use of his skills to solve complex problems. He works alongside a small group of people who all have autism. They work in a unit with autism-friendly facilities, a gym to allow for trampolining to dissipate anxiety, and individual cubicles. But there is a new boss and he offers these vulnerable adults a simple option. They can take part in a trial of a new procedure which may 'fix' their autism, or there will no longer be a job for them. As Lou negotiates this new challenge, everyday life and friendship and fencing with friends his world opens up to us and, for me, challenged many of my assumptions and understandings.

Speed of Dark asks very real questions about the nature of society's relationship with autism, what 'different' and 'normal' mean and the ethics of looking for a cure for autism, something which has long been recognised as a disability but is only now beginning to be explored in terms of its important place in our evolutionary and intellectual history. A good thriller but one I really learned from

Refusal by Felix Francis

Sid Halley is back, but he's given up the literally bruising world of investigation for investment banking and a settled life with his wife Marina and daughter Sassy. But then Sir Richard Stewart chairman of the British Horseracing Agency comes to see him pleading for him to look into race fixing. Halley refuses and the next day Stewart is found dead. Despite his best efforts Halley becomes drawn in as a lethal Ulsterman has Sassy kidnapped and Halley realises he has no option but to fight back.

Felix Francis is now writing at a really good level and this is a brave return to one of Dick Francis' most beloved characters. Felix Francis uses his father's best technique of combining thriller with a real heart, we see Halley deal with the idea of hand transplantation and the possibility of once again having two hands, and of course face losing his beloved family. Powerful and moving.

The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness

George Duncan is a good and kind man, the kind of man that is left by women because there is no challenge in him.  He is not brutal or unkind, just decent, growing old alone in quiet desperation and loneliness.  He has a grown up daughter Amanda who is deeply unhappy, somehow unable to connect with people around her and make friends.  George manages a printing shop and folds paper into the shapes of animals and flowers while his assistant Mehmet taunts the customers with terrible service.

It is an uneventful life until one night George hears a soulful cry from his garden.  Bumping and tripping his way through and out of his cavernous house he finds a crane with a terrible wound, an arrow right through one of its great wings.  He manages to break the arrow and although bleeding the great bird flies away.  The next day Kumiko appears in his shop and moves into his life.  She makes scenes which incorporate George's figures, paper sculptures that bring the art world to a frenzy and anyone who sees them to tears.  But Kumiko's most beautiful works are a set that she shows only to George, describing the Japanese myth of the Crane Wife, a sad and lonely tale of love, passion and loss.

Ness weaves the Crane Wife myth, Kumiko's mysterious appearance and George's lonely life together beautifully, we are never sure who or what Kumiko is and how the myth and what George experiences mesh together.  I don't usually like stories that do not have a resolution, but this was a stunning exception.

www.sublackwell.co.uk

Ethan's Voice by Rachel Carter

Ethan has stopped speaking.  Living on his parents narrowboat Deity he doesn't go to school either, home schooled after being bullied but his parents and Mary from the council want him to return.  Then a girl arrives moored on a shiny boat near his.  Polly doesn't seem to mind that he doesn't talk, tentatively he begins to show her his world, the riverbank, the den that his father built for him.  And Ethan begins to believe that maybe, just maybe, he could want to speak again and face the hidden fears that made him mute.

Carter's skill is that she writes so eloquently from Ethan's point of view and in his voice, despite his voicelessness we hear the sadness and isolation of a young boy who doesn't fit and share with him his journey in this little tale.  Loved it.

Naked by Kevin Brooks

This is the best book I have read in a long time.  The Troubles (the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century) may be living memory for any of us over 30 but for teenagers they are history and a new book is needed to replace the likes of Joan Lingard's excellent Across the Barricades.  Naked fills this space brilliantly with a narrative seen through the eyes of naive teenage girl experiencing sex, first love and painful loss of innocence during a blazing summer.

It is 1976, London and Lili is 17, practicing Debussy in the school music room when Curtis Ray, the boy everyone loved, hated, wanted to be or be with, comes in and asks her to join his band.  She says yes and finds punk and love, their band feeding into the burgeoning Kings Road punk scene in London around Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's controversial shop Sex.  Brooks never forces the issue by name dropping, Curtis' band Naked fits naturally against a backdrop of the Ramones and Sex Pistols.  And when they need a new rhythm guitarist brilliant Irish musician William Bonney appears as if from nowhere and is promptly nicknamed Billy the Kid after his namesake.  As Curtis spirals out of control through alcohol and drugs Lili learns more about William and his life growing up as a Catholic in violently polarised Belfast and loses her innocence.

What Brooks does brilliantly in this is two fold.  Firstly, he writes convincingly in the voice of a 17 year old girl who is affluent but emotionally bereft, charting her growing awareness of a larger world and her own sense of self.  And secondly by putting the point of view behind her eyes he shows the horror of the Troubles and the UK bombings in a completely fresh light, as she learns so do we and what we learn is heartbreaking, of shattered families, brutality and fear.  It makes for an achingly melancholic book, and the way I would like my 10 year old to learn about this vital aspect of British history that made a generation what it is.

Raising Girls by Steve Biddulph

If you are a parent to a girl of any age this is one of the best books I have ever read. My daughter is 9 nearly 10 and beginning to face the power of peer pressure to be whatever society means by being a girl which to my insinct has always been too much too young. Biddulph sees exactly the same trend and he renewed my hope in this book that I can raise a strong young woman who knows her own mind and does not believe what the media say she should be.

The book is divided into three parts

The first covers the five stages of girlhood: an overview, birth-2 years, 2-5 years, 5-10 years, 10-14 years and 14-18 years. In each chapter he covers the physcial, psychological and developmental changes a girl is undergoing at these ages and the challenges they face. And for girls it is social challenges that are of the most vital importance. It doesn't matter if, like me, you are coming in at some point along the spectrum, I found it useful to read the earlier chapters and understand what challenges my girl had already faced.

Part two is about risk areas and how to help girls navigate them: sexualisation at too early an age, bullying, body image and food, drugs including alcohol, and online risks. Biddulph lays out the risk in a clear concise way and empowers parents to address them.

Part three is about girls and their parents, taking a clear eyed look at the nature of a girl's relationship with her mother and father and what we can do as parents in these roles.

Just brilliant, one of the few library books that I will be buying and reading over and over again.

Raising Martians: From Crash Landing to Leaving Home: How to Help a Child With Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism

This is an extremely brave book written by a boy with Aspergers syndrome (AS) about his experiences before and after diagnosis at the age of 15. He takes us through his personal life story and using that and evidence from psychology and scientific study speaks about the challenges children with AS face. He speaks about the bullying and difficulties he faced at school and how he learned to compensate for the areas in which he struggles, and also speaks about mental health issues and as an AS dealing with life in the larger world: friendships, shopping, living independently. For those on the outside this is a useful insight into the world inside the head of a boy with AS. However, for me with a girl with AS it was of limited use as the challenges girls face are subtly but vitally different and the ways that AS manifests are different. Highly recommended if you have a boy with AS.

Ten Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew

For anyone short on time this is an excellent brief introduction to the challenges children with autism face in being misunderstood by neurotypicals, and I love that Notbohm begins with the first being that the child is first and foremost a child, a child with autism but not primarily autistic. My child has just been diagnosed with high functioning ASD, what would previously have been called Asperger's syndrome, and although some parts were not relevant the majority struck a real chord and spoke from her point of view.

I have tried three recipes from this and found them all excellent, I have been able to freeze them down and now have a stash of meals, of extra importance as I am gluten intolerant and can't eat many ready meals. Each recipe is well laid out with a beautiful photograph, and clear instructions are given for freezing and serving after freezing. There are also extensive sections on how to freeze various foods, from simple ideas such as cutting meat into strips so that it can go straight into a frying pan to tables showing how to prepare foods for the freezer, how to wrap and store them, how to use them and how long to keep them. Definately a book that will go in my small stash of recipe books I actually buy and return to time and time again

The Conquest of the Ocean: The Illustrated History of Seafaring by Brian Lavery

I know absolutely nothing about ships or sailing, and this book was entertaining, informative, well illustrated and nice to hold.  Lavery works chronologically through the history of sailing from the premodern times right up to the present day.

The book is divided into 5 sections:
The First Ocean Sailors to 1850 (Arabs, Vikings, Polynesians, Chinese, Pilgrims, Greeks and Romans);
The Age of Exploration 1450-1600 (European journeys to the Americas, first cirumnavigation of the Earth, Drake, Columbus, Amerigo and medieval ships);
The Age of Empire 1600-1815 (Colonialism, piracy, the slave trade, Cook, Trafalgar and whaling);
Steam and Emigration 1815-1915 (early steamships, American emigration, Chinese and Japanese trade, Clipper ships, submarines, liners and battleships);
The Wars on the Oceans 1914-1945 (World War I and World War II, Jutland, Midway, Atlantic, D-Day, U-boats)
The Global Ocean 1945-present (containers, Cuban Missile crisis, birth of oceanography, Falklands, ocean racing, oil spills, modern piracy)

Each section is illustrated with excellent maps showing the information such as main trade routes, winds, currents, shipwrecks, iceberg zones and battles although sometimes the colours are a hard to distinguish.  There are drawings of the ships spoken about in the text, and usefully page numbers given for cross references.  The maps are mostly accurate, although according to the Battle of the Atlantic one The Hood was sunk nearer Greenland than Scapa Flow!  However, in general the book is generously illustrated, ephermera, paintings, photographs, quotations and facts on almost every page that bring the subject alive.

Others read

Ben Aaronovitch - Broken Homes
Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - The Long War
Laura Farson - Knitting Scandinavian Slipper and Socks
Shelia McGregor - Traditional Scandinavian Knitting

Freaky Sleepover (Monstrous Maud) by AB Saddlewick

Maud Montague is settling in to life at Rotwood Towers, a school for monsters.  She is human but loves everything that is not pink and girly, and fits right in.

Her oh so perfect pink and girly twin Milly is having a sleepover with her friends from her school Primrose Towers while their parents open the first night of Dracula at the local theatre.  After being taunted by Milly about having no friends of her own Maud ends up inviting her friends half vampire Paprika, the invisible girl Isabel and not so friendly witch Poisonous Penelope.  And she's also looking after the school hamster Violet who turns out to be a bit more than the fluffy creature she appears to be.

Can Maud survive this night without getting in trouble with her sister, friends and baby sitter?! Great fun, a good quick read.

Big Fright (Monstrous Maud) by A B Saddlewick

Maud Montague is the polar opposite to her oh so perfect twin Milly.  Milly likes pink, ballet and girly stuff and puts everything away perfectly in her lilac chest of drawers.  Maud loves her scruffy pet rat Quentin, is messy and disorganised and prefers black and bats.  And she's always in trouble at school at Primrose Towers. 

When Quentin escapes during show and tell perfectly tidy headmistress Mrs Fennel has had enough and orders for Maud to be transferred to Rotwood School.  There Maud finds herself surrounded by monsters, literally.  Can she hide the fact that she is only human, not vampire, invisible or werewolf like her new friends?  Can she scare her new teacher, vampire Mr von Bat?  And who is the scary headmistress everyone is so scared of?

Great fun for any girl who wants more than pink and fluffy, Maud is a wonderful alternative heroine

Deeply Odd (Odd Thomas #6) by Dean Koontz

Koontz returns to writing about a character he clearly has deep affection for in his sixth Odd Thomas book.  You don't need to have read the previous five to enjoy Deeply Odd but it does work with them.

Odd wakes to the sound of a motionless bell ringing, a bell worn around his neck that summons him to fulfil whatever task awaits him.  He leaves his unconventional household, the mysterious Annamaria who has appeared heavily pregnant for many years, the deathless child Tim rescued in Odd's previous outing Odd Apocalypse, and two dogs, a golden retriever named Rapunzel and Boo, a ghost German shepherd.  Walking downtown to buy jeans and socks he is drawn to a large truck and a confrontation with its rhinestone clad owner.  Odd receives a terrible vision that this sinister man will shortly murder three young children by immolating them and knows he has to stop him.  Cue a pursuit across the deserts of America with Mrs Edie Fisher, a mysterious old lady in a limousine, the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock, monsters and 17 children in desperate peril.

Yet behind all this Odd senses a larger purpose looming, there are glimpses of an apocalyptic second reality lying alongside our own, a sense that the story arc of the Odd Thomas books is coming to a crisis, and there is, as ever in Koontz, horror and hope.

I enjoyed the humour, Odd is who he is because of his humility, his sense of humour and his faith in his beloved girlfriend Stormy, dead 18 months, and the world beyond our own that she has gone to ahead of him.

Powerful, not just for teenagers

Li Lan is a 17 year old girl living with her father in 1890s Malaya, her family was once prosperous but is now impoverished and they live quietly.  They are part of the stratified expatriate Chinese community living in Malacca, it is a society of gestures and manners, of honour and reputation. 

Li Lan's father tells her he has received an offer of marriage for her to Lim Tian Ching, son of the wealthy Lim family.  However, this is a ghost marriage, Lim

Tian Ching recently died and although unusual it is not unknown, the bride of such a union has a place in her bridegroom's household and that of the Lim's offers her a luxurious life and security that her father cannot.  Summoned by Lim Tian Ching's mother she is drawn to his cousin Tian Bai.  Trying to gain sleep and rest from dreams in which she is plagued by Lim Tian Ching's spirit she accidentally overdoses on powerful herbs and pitches herself into the hinterland between life and death.  Comotose in the living world her spirit embarks on a journey to the Chinese underworld where status is conferred by the funeral offerings familes make for their ancestors and she has to find a way to defeat the forces pitted against her. 

Li Lan's story is a mythic one and infused with a strongly communicated sense of what life would be like for a 17 year old girl in Malacca in the 1890s, intelligent, determined, loving, but bound by strict courtly rules.  The supernatural elements concerning the Chinese afterlife are convincing and seem well researched.  I really enjoyed it, a well written book.

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood is no ordinary teenage boy, with his mother he moves from town to town locating and dispatching the restless dead.  Usually ghosts cannot hurt people but these ghosts are an exception, more than touch they can kill.  Cas comes to Thunder Bay, Ontario to confront the most famous of these creatures, the spirit of a girl called Anna who has killed anyone who stepped into her home.  But as Cas begins yet another high school and encounters Anna after being trapped in her house by the local jocks she fails, for the first time, to kill.  Cas is drawn into the reasons why Anna is where and what she is, and the mystery of the creature that killed his own father and passed the role of ghost killer on to him.

A good fast read, about teenage concerns as well as supernatural ones, starting a new school, being an outsider. 

Crochet Step by Step by Sally Harding

I've been searching for a decent British crochet bible for a while as although there are excellent American ones the terminology is different, but I think I've finally found it.  I haven't used any of the patterns in this yet so I can't vouch for them but when I do I will add to this review.

The book opens with a section on tools and materials: yarns including unusual yarns such as wire, string, fabric and plastic bags.  A chart of yarn sizes and recommended hook sizes giving conversions between US and UK sizes and instructions on how to read a yarn ball band, perfect for the bewildered beginner faced with all those beautiful tempting yarn choices.  

Next the techniques section beginning with the basics: how to hold the hook, yarn and make your slip knot and foundation chain.  Then it moves on to working the crochet stitches and how to count stitches, rows and how to begin and end rows, how to make foundation (magic) rings, to fasten off and darn in ends.  A chart of basic stitch symbols, abbrevations and relative heights is given and the instructions for fabrics using each of the basic crochet stitches given in symbol format to get the reader used to reading crochet symbols.

Then the more complex stitches: working into the spaces between stitches; working into the front and back of stitches; shells; bobbles; clusters and popcorns.  There are labelled photographs here with useful help here on how to look at your work and identify the different parts of it to count stitches and rows.

Next comes a section on following stitch patterns, giving a sample stitch pattern with step by step instuctions on how to use it.  After this comes an invaluable chart of terminology, abbreviations and crochet stitch symbols. 

This is followed by a section of simple texture patterns using the stitches learned so far.  Then openwork (lace, picot net and filet crochet)followed by a selections of openwork patterns, and colourwork (stripes, jacquard and intarsia) with patterns following.

The next section is on following commercial patterns. A sample commerical pattern is pictured and labelled up including advice on how to buy the right yarn.  There are tips on choosing garment sizes and patterns and instructions on how to make a tension swatch.

Increases and decreases come next, and then finishing details: creating edgings, buttons, blocking, seams, embellishments, embroidery, and fastenings.

Then a section on circular crochet, tubes and flat circles, medallions (granny squares) and flowers. 

The final section is patterns which are pretty but as I say I haven't tried them yet. A book I will happily return to whenever I'm stuck, which will be often!

The Knitting Book by Vikki Haffenden and Frederica Patmore

First of all, I haven't used any of the patterns in this so I can't vouch for them.  However, this is the book I go to when I'm not sure of how to do something, and I have found it invaluable.  It follows a roughly chronological ordering from simple to complicated and from beginning to end of project.

The book opens with a section on tools and materials: yarns, what weights you use for what items, needles and other notions with handy conversion charts for US and UK sizings.  Great for anyone bewildered by the selection of terminology regarding yarns and notions you walk into in a wool shop.  Next comes a gallery of stitch patterns, pretty but perhaps a little intimidating for the beginner, though a good illustration of the range of uses knitting can be put to

Now comes the most helpful part of the book for me, the techniques.  The chapter moves gently beginning with how to make a slip knot and how to hold the yarn moving on to giving a range of cast ons and there is some, although not a lot, of indication of the uses of the different cast ons.  A much better book on cast ons and offs (bind offs in USA terminology) for particular projects is [[ASIN:1603427244 Cast On, Bind Off]] but this gives you a good grounding and shows most cast ons that patterns indicate.  The same is true of the following cast-offs.

Next the stitches, knit, purl, basic stitches combining knits and purls: garter, stocking, rib.  Then joining in yarns and darning in ends, repairing, unpicking and picking up dropped stitches, something I still do after decades of knitting.

The next section is on following commercial patterns.  There is a useful chart of abbreviations, terminology and commonly used symbols and a specimen knitting chart labelled up with explanations including how to choose and buy the right amount of yarn.  Instructions are given on choosing the size of garment, altering patterns and making and measuring a tension swatch.

Increases and decreases of all kinds come next, yarn overs, knitting / purling into front and back of a single stitch, make ones, multiple increases, knit / purl two (or more) together, and the slip stitch decreases.  A chart for paired increases / decreases is given noting the direction of the slant, abbreviations and visibility, followed by a section on shaping using increases / decreases on the edge and in the centre of a piece.

Cables and twists comes next although these are very basic, with instructions for making i-cords.  Then lace knitting, just simple eyelets, and a few pages on colourwork, both fair-isle and intarsia.  The instructions for these are not extensive because there are more extensive patterns in the section at the end of the book

Next is a section on texture, struture and colour effects, ways of using the basic stitches to create puckers, clusters, smocking, pleats, entrelac ruffles and short rows.

Then a section on circular kitting, including mobius, tubular, helix, spiral and medallion using sets of double pointed needles and circular knitting needles

And then finishing details: picking up cast on/off edges, selvedges, buttonholes and button loops, pockets, hems, blocking, seams, steeks, fastenings, zips, embellishments (including bead and sequin knitting), bobbles, popcorns, embroidery, pompoms, tassels and fringes.

The final section is patterns which are pretty but as I say I haven't tried them yet.  First come the projects, then a library of stitch patterns including knit and purl patterns, increases and decreases, cables and twists, lace, colourwork, edgings, medallions, beads and sequins

I do use other books as well as this one but this is the one I return to when I can't remember how to do something

Fractured by Teri Terry

The second book in the Slated trilogy opens with Kyla shivering in the aftermath of the trauma of having attacked a man.  She was only defending herself, however, she has beaten him nearly to death and as a Slated it should not be possible.  Slated's are under 16s that have had their minds and personalities wiped, and they wear a device called a Levo that monitors their mood and if they show signs of agression render them unconsious, even kills them.  It began as a utopian idea, in the aftermath of civil unrest Slating was an alternative to execution.  But Kyla's memories are beginning to return, another things that is not supposed to happen.  There is a man with pale blue eyes at her school, he is supposed to be a teacher but isn't.  Kyla grieves for Ben, the boy she lost in Slated when he cut his Levo off and was last seen being dragged off by the Lorders, the martial police of this new world. Kyla begins to remember and her memories are fractured, of a girl called Rain, of a girl called Lucy, and what exactly was done to her.  She finds herself torn between the new family she has been assigned, her past and her sense of right and wrong. 

An enjoyable read, just don't expect too much from it.  Many of the themes aren't new, a dystopian world with lots of twists and turns, but it is a good ride.

Fire Spell by Laura Amy Schlitz

We open the book to find an old witch Cassandra dreaming of being burned alive.  She wakes remembering a man called Grisini who had told her the opal that gives her her magic would burn her alive.  She tries to smash the stone, then...

We shift to London in the autumn of 1860.  Clara is a upper class young girl hoping that Grisini the puppeteer will be allowed to come to her birthday party.  She lives in material wealth but abject emotional poverty, the only survivor of the cholera that took her 4 siblings including her twin brother.  Her mother's grief makes her home a haunted melancholy place, Clara has to be silent and never to be a child.

Lizzie-Rose and Parsefall are orphans, employed and sometimes fed by Grisini.  Parsefall is learning to play the puppets, Lizzie-Rose does the fetching and carrying.  Dirt poor and unloved they marvel at Clara's house as they bring the puppet stage in.  Paresefall has his mind on petty theivery, but Grisini has something much worse in mind and the children find themselves unwittingly caught up in his spell casting and ancient feud with Cassandra.

A lovely well written book, you can really feel the texture of London both from the viewpoint of Parsefall and Lizzie-Rose struggling to stay alive and Clara who has the money to pay road sweepers to clear the roads of horse dung for her should she step down from her carriage.  Schiltz conjures the cold, the filth, and the suspense as the narrative hurtles onward.  A great read for I would say 9-13 year olds.

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

Harkaway presents us with a hell that is left when the weapon to end all wars instead ends the world as we know it. Humanity in this future is confined to the Livable zone: a thin strip alongside the Jorgmund Pipe which sprays out a substance known as FOX. Outside this safe area there are horrors, people don't stay people, there are mutants, all the dark things we were afraid of in the forests of our imaginations. Our narrator rides with lifelong friend Gonzo and the rest of the crew of roughnecks known as the Haulage and HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Comapny of Exmoor County, corporate HQ the Nameless Bar. They are the troubleshooters of this new world and when the Jorgmund Pipe catastrophically explodes they are the ones sent into fix the breach. But something terrible happens to Gonzo and everything that we readers thought we knew gets turned on its head with a sickening lurch. Narration moves between the past, to life growing up with Gonzo in cosy Cricklewood Cove, school and finding peace with martial arts, across a glittering cast of characters moving across the post apocalyptic landscape of this new world to a terrible truth coiled at the heart of the Jorgmund Corporation. Bewitching and often confusing, but confused is where you should be cos then you start thinking

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Probationary Police Officer Peter Grant is doing sentry duty in Covent Garden in the aftermath of a body being found missing its head when he spots a possible witness, but as the short pale faced man steps into the light identifying himself as Nicolas Wallpenny it becomes clear that he is, in fact, transparent. Well trained PC that Grant is he continues with the interview and it becomes clear that Wallpenny's information is credible. Grant only speaks of his experience to fellow probationer (and unfulfilled love interest) Lesley May, but goes looking for Wallpenny for more information and it's then that he is asked what he's doing by Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale who responds to Grant's honest reply that he's looking for a ghost with interest. Nightingale turns out to head up a division of the Met that deals with the supernatural, but the joy of this book is that Grant is never more than a good well trained police officer so there is a strong thread of self deprecating humour throughout. The ideas are fascinating, a murderous spirit and personfications of the buried rivers of London, turf wars on a supernatural scale. There are similarities to writers such as Mieville and JK Rowling, tv staples such as X Files, Torchwood and Doctor Who, to Hot Fuzz and the graphic novel character Constantine but Aaronvitch writes about it all in a completely fresh way creating a world that whilst fantastical is still completely consonant with present day London and all its horrors, grime, wonder and human character.

The Pocket Scavenger by Keri Smith

I now spend my time looking at the ground for stuff.  This is a book version of the scavenger hunts you used to go on as a kid, with a bit of a twist.  You are given items to find and attach into the book and then invited to randomly select an alteration such as adding text or triangles.  It's been good fun, I'm 38 and am happily looking for things with my 9 year old who is as delighted as I am when we find something.  My only concern is hygeine and making sure in using this you didn't cut yourself.  It is also a bit American orientated, I think British rubbish is a bit different in quality.  It does make you look at the world differently, I now see all those bits and pieces in the gutters I would have ignored before.

Journey to the End of the World by Henning Mankell

15 year old Joel Gustafson lives with his lumberjack father Samuel in the far north of Sweden, so far north that it snows on his graduation day in June.  Joel cooks for his father, his mother Mummy Jenny left when he was only a baby.   Samuel and Joel spend hours poring over world maps together dreaming of this time Joel will be old enough to leave school and sign on as a sailor, and they can sail away from the cold north together.  But then a letter for Samuel arrives telling him where Mummy Jenny is and the pair take an overnight train journey south to Stockholm to find her.  Joel's life begins to shift and change, Joel is coming of age, Samuel is ageing and the docks and the ships and sea are close at hand.

At first I found the writing in this story quite stilted and alien but by the end I was fully engaged.  Mankell's story of a boy stepping out into the world and the aching sadness of the narrative is slow burning but memorable.

The Long Shadow by Mark Mills

13 year old Ben Makepeace watches his friend Jacob Hogg sledge a dangerous corner and come careering off into a field of wickedly sharp saplings.  As he runs down the hill to the body lying still  he is briefly convinced Jacob is dead but as he opens his eyes and smiles Ben is both relieved and angry.

31 years on Ben is an unsuccessful screenwriter trying to be there for his 13 year old son Toby as his ex wife Madeleine moves on with her life with new partner Lionel, and keep his head above water.  His agent calls to say billionaire Victor Sheldon has expressed an interest in Ben's screenplay and wants to meet him at his country pile, Stoneham House near Oxford.  Victor turns out to be Jacob, the boy who took up the world of high finance and immense fortune that both Jacob and Ben were groomed for as schoolboys at Dean House boarding school.  Victor offers Ben space at Stoneham House to finish his screenplay.  Ben meets and begins to fall for sculptor Mo, he plays cricket with the local villagers, Toby comes to stay and meets Victor's son Marcio, and after helping Victor out with the purchase of a vintage speedboat Ben is rewarded with the offer of a lifetime.  But doubts begin to creep in as small events expose cracks in the rich beauty of the surface of Victor's life and Ben finds himself facing a past in which a single misunderstanding has blighted a life.

My only reason for not giving this 5 stars was the predictability, however, it is beautifully written, a sad story about what man a childhood can create if the child is not loved and cherished.

Symmetry: A Very Short Introduction by Ian Stewart

Although this is a Very Short Introduction book it is not a beginner's book, I found many of the concepts difficult to follow and understand as they require a fairly high level understanding of mathematical theory: algebra, quadratic equations, string theory, game theory.  However, although I was a little lost at times I was able to understand enough to get a flavour of how symmetry functions across a wide range of disciplines: chemistry, biology and geometry, from the structure of atoms in elements and planet in galaxies to Rubik's cubes, sand dune formation and the running gait of animals.  Written by an expert who sees clearly how the concepts formed in high mathematics have an application in every aspect of our lives.

The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth

Forsyth meanders delightfully through the English language in a completely idiosyncratic and entertaining way, a perfect book for anyone who goes to look up a word in a dictionary and, like me, gets completely sidetracked by the other interesting words on the way.  The English language with all its idioms and history is a byzantine thing and Forsyth is a delighted child in a candy shop of words.

The Tessellations File by Chris de Cordova

The majority of this book is a set of 40 black and white line drawings of tessalations increasing in complexity which are free to photocopy and useful for parents and teachers alike.

However, at the beginning there is an excellent 8 page introduction by de Cordova on tessellations, how they work and how to extend the basics to create tessellations of your own, along with a short bibliography.  Good if you're a bit mystified by the maths of the whole thing.

Pretty Girl Thirteen by Liz Coley

Angie Chapman is walking to the front door of her house.  Which is a little odd because the last thing she remembers is being in the woods at Guide Camp and the sight of a strangers eyes.  There is a plastic bag in her hand and she is wearing clothes she would never choose.  A strange ring on her finger, fingers that look odd, and scars on her wrists.  As she unlocks her front door to let herself in and calls out her mother hurtles hysterically down the stairs to meet her.  And Angie's nightmare begins.  She isn't 13 any more, she's 16 and the past 3 years have been simply lost to her.

Angie faces the trauma of medical examinations, police questioning and finally returning to high school and the friends who are 3 years older than she remembers them.  Psychiatrist Dr Grant is employed to help with Angie's amnesia and it emerges that she is suffering dissociative identity disorder: her self has fractured into separate personalities who developed to protect Angie from her ordeal but are not yet ready to communicate with her.

An absolutely gripping thriller that had me telling my family to go away so I could finish it and I was sad to finish it, really the highest praise I could give a book.

Highland Landforms by Robert Price

An authorititive short introduction to the underlying geology of the Scottish Highlands from the Grampians in the south north to Shetland and Orkney and east to St Kilda. 

Price begins with an chapter on the current shape of the land indicating the highest points and the differences between the water cycle (movement of water from the sea to the land and back to the sea) under glacial and non-glacial systems.  He then moves to the current geology of the area mapping the different rocks with an explanation of the formation of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.  Next there is an extensive chapter on the effects of glaciation on the area, before individual chapters on the Grampians, the north-central Highlands, the Ancient Foreland (far west coast and Outer Hebrides / Western Isles), the North-East Highlands (Caithness), Orkney and Shetland and lastly Arran, the Inner Hebrides and St Kilda.  A chapter on coastal landforms follows next, of great importance within the area as the rise and fall of land due to weight of ice has created extensive raised beaches, abandoned forms such as cliffs and stacks as well as the Machair.

Finally there is a brief discussion of the land as resource, the different uses it is placed to by people and how geology plays a part in their use of it.

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb's book can be distilled into the single idea he gives in the conclusion: 'Everything gains or loses from volatility.  Fragility is what loses from volatility and uncertainty'.  There are things that are fragile, such as a tea cup, fragile because it breaks if you drop it.  Then there are things that are robust, like a skyscraper that can resist earthquakes.  And Taleb proposes a third category, things that actually benefit and grow from shocks and uncertainty, such as the human skeleton which strengthens when the stress of manual labour is placed upon it.  

His book expands on this theme through medicine, society and, most of all, Taleb's field of expertise, economics and the stock market.  He proposes a new way of looking at pretty much everything that I found enlightening and inspiring, and also daunting as our current economic structure is a fragile one.  Taleb's writing although opaque at times is beautifully crafted and structured.


A book that was hard work as I am not a natural numbers person, but so worth the effort.

Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen

A book that restored my faith in reading in general and comics in particular

Clark Kent (not that one) is an ordinary midwest teenager living in small town Kansas in a world just like ours.  Superman exists as a comic character and cultural myth but humans are just that, there are no superpowers.  Clark's parents thought it would be cute to call him Clark, so for every birthday he gets Superman paraphanelia and every day is tormented at school.  His crush on girl next door Cassie is unrequited and high school is torturous. 

So to find peace of mind Clark takes himself off hiking in the hills at weekends.  Until the night he wakes up sleeping several feet off the ground and realises he can fly. The public wants to know who he is, the governement want to literally take him to pieces and people need him to save them, but he still just wants a quiet life. 

The pacing and artwork of this story is just beautiful, narration bubbles are in the style of scraps of manual typewriting, Clark needs to use something tangible and not hackable to record his story but it also speaks of an attachment to the visceral and traditional.  There are intermittent old style Superman comic panels with their high bright Warholesque colours and thick black lines which contrast with the subdued colour palatte and watercolour style renderings of Clark's story. 

It is just a beautifully put together story arc, an absolute pleasure, artistically and narratively satisfying, a rare thing.

The Dark Judges by John Wagner and Alan Grant (Judge Dredd)

The Dark Judges is a collection of the 2000AD magazine stories in which the four Dark Judges appear: Mortis, Death, Fear and Fire.  Their nemesis in the futuristic postapocalyptic metropolis of MegaCity One, psychic Judge Cassandra Anderson.  They have come from Deadworld, a dimension in which it was judged that since some humans are responsible for crime all humans have a criminal propensity and therefore must be executed. 

The joy of Wagner and Grant's writing is, as ever, their satirical contemporary references combined with Bolland, Ewins, Robinson and Smith's artwork.  Good fun

Slated by Teri Terry

Kyla is on her way out of New London Hospital to a new family.  Her memories and personality have been wiped clean.  She is a blank slate with no knowledge of the past that caused her to have her mind wiped, and whether it was voluntary or forced on her.  What she does know is that this is her last chance.  Attached to her wrist is her Levo, a device that measures her mood and renders her unconscious, even dead, if she becomes angry or agitated.

Kyla goes to school with her new sister Amy and tries desperately to adjust to life in a stratified society where Slateds are outcasts.  She makes a friend in Ben, also a Slated. But something is wrong, Kyla finds anger rising up inside her and her Levo unreactive.  Dreams and surfacing memories plague her, and even her new mum and dad are not what they seem.

Fast paced with a warm heart and thriller storyline.  The Slated idea is a natural extension of what most teens feel, that they do not fit in the world they inhabit.  A good read.

Elizabeth David on Vegetables by Jill Norman

I found this an interesting cookery book, definately a cookery book rather than a cookbook.  J

Jill Norman assembles here a number of David's writings about vegetables including history, personal experiences in Italy and inspiring recipes.  Here is a piece on the coming of potatoes to Europe and their one time status as aphrodisiac and expensive exotic, there how to cook a risotto properly.

The book is divided into sections on soups, small dishes, salads, pasta gnocchi and polenta, rice beans and lentil, main dishes, breads and desserts.  All the dishes are vegetarian although many can be accompaniments for meats.  There is also an introduction by Norman on David, her writings and influence on British food.

A book I will return to to improve my cooking skills, to make vegetables a tasty dish in and of themselves rather than just a side to meat.

Buddhism A Very Short Introduction by Damien Keown


This is an extrememly good book by an expert in the field of Buddhist studies.  It is the third in the extensive Very Short Introduction series of books by Oxford University Press which give well informed insight into complex fields of study.  Despite the compact size of the book it is packed with information and I came away feeling I had a grasp of what Buddhism is and that I was able to access to further information if I wanted it.

Keown opens the book with a set of useful maps showing where the Buddha lived and taught and where the different types of Buddhism are now found, followed by a note on pronounciation.

He follows this with 9 chapters, the first a valuable discussion on whether or not Buddhism can be classified as a religion.  Next come chapters on the life of the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, details of the essential Buddhist concepts such as karma, reincarnation and the written exhorations known as the Four Noble Truths.

In the latter chapters Keown follows the spread of Buddhism out of India and speaks about the place of mediation and ethics in Buddhism.  In the final chapter he discusses how Buddhism has had an impact in the West in the present day and its relationship to new findings in science.

Finally there is a timeline, further reading and index.  The further reading is particularly useful, Keown structures it by subject so, for instance, you know which book to read if you wanted to know more about Buddhism and neuroscience.

The only problem now is that I want to read all the 'Very Short Introduction' books and there are currently 344 of them!

Anatomies by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Aldersey-Williams takes us on a guided tour of a subject that is both earthily familiar and a great unknown to us: our own bodies.  He writes fluently about the history of how our bodies have become known through science and literature, and how that understanding has changed over the centuries.  He moves from introducing us to the men and women such as Galton and Hippocrates who have helped us understand the functions of the body to quoting Shakespeare who speaks a great deal about the body, as metaphor, similie and curse.  Aldersey-Williams also relates his encounters with a wide range of people who are in themselves experts in their field:  neurologists, blood donor nurses, a professional clown, artists (conventional and tattoo), atheletes, pathologists, psychologists and many more.  He relates his own experience of witnessing dissections, anatomy lessons and attempting life drawing.

The book is split into three sections which gives it a pleasing and coherant structure.  The first part takes 'the whole', narrating how we have historically understood and mapped the human body.

He then goes on to take the parts and how we have come to understand these parts as separate with a chapter on each: head, face, brain, heart, blood, ear, eye, stomach, hand, sex, foot and skin.

And finally he speaks about the future, about meeting a paralympian and how technical innovations can augment and enable our bodies to function.

A real education, a sweeping introduction to the history of how we have come to our current understanding of the human body.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozaki

Ozeki's book opens with an entry from a diary by Nao Yasutani, a 15 year old Japanese girl living in Tokyo.  She introduces herself as a time being and says that we are all time beings, that is, creatures living within and defined by time.  She draws our attention to the dual meaning of Ozeki's title, we are time beings but also the phrase 'For The Time Being' means 'just for now', again a play on Nao's name.

Next we are introduced to a second first person narrator, Ruth herself finding Nao's diary on the beach of her isolated island in British Columbia, across the Pacific from Japan.  Is this the Ruth writing the book or another, it's not clear?  How did the diary get to British Columbia?

Twin narratives unfold, of Ruth, a Japanese American living with her partner Oliver in the wilderness but pining for New York, and Nao, raised in California but forced to move to Japan when the dotcom bubble burst and her father lost everything. 

Nao struggles to adjust to life in a Japanese high school and is bullied viciously.  After her school perform a mock funeral for Nao in an act of ultimate ostracism her father Hiroki #2, who is suicidal for much of the novel, takes Nao to live for the summer with his grandmother Jiko.  Jiko is an ancient buddhist nun who with gentle kindness, exercise and meditation helps Nao find peace with herself.  And and through Jiko a connection is made to Hiroki #1, Juki's son and Nao's father's uncle, a kamikaze bomber but also deeply thoughful intellectual who died in the Second World War. 

Ruth struggles with her loneliness and with her neighbours, and remembers caring for her own mother through her descent into alzheimers, unravelling in time.  They have a visitor, a Japanese crow that perhaps came over on the tsunami wreckage, but is certainly not indigenous and somehow links to Nao's story.

Ozaki shows us things and events from both sides, 9/11 is witnessed by both sets of characters from opposite sides of the ocean.  The things that happen to Nao are both sad and to me unacceptable but Ozaki is deft at helping us realise that perhaps our constructions of what is and is not acceptable are at heart cultural.  As a Westerner I learned so much about the differences between Japanese and American culture, between collectivism and conformism versus rampant individualism. 

Towards the end of the novel things begin to break down and Ozeki playfully shows us the constructed nature of her tale, things begin to appear where they cannot be, the two stories begin to merge and unravel and a cat is rescued.

I simply can't wait to read more of this author, this is a beguiling haunting book which I really enjoyed.

Harvest by Jim Crace

Walter Thirsk is a farmer, although it has not always been so.  He was once the servant of his master Mr Kent before he settled, travelling with him from city to city.

With his neighbours Thirsk gathers in the barley harvest in his tiny village, more a gathering of houses serving the master.  It's a feudal world and a brutal one.  The masters dovecote is burning, and despite the knowledge of the village that two of the local boys have played a prank that has gotten out of hand, strangers camping in the nearby woods looking to settle are blamed.  For the death of the of the birds most masters would hang the accused but Mr Kent is seen as mild for placing the two men: one older, one younger, in the pillory and shaving their woman companion's head.  As the older slips and breaks his neck a fury is unleashed.

This is a timeless old world where little changes over many years.  It is a world in which women are brutalised physically and sexually as a matter of course and childhood is no protection, where a whispered word, a rumour, can begin a blaze of violence.  Thirsk has lived in the vilage since he married his wife, a villager, and although she has died and he has remained he is still an outsider.  He acts as conduit for the changes that are coming to the village, where subsistance farming is being replaced by enclosure, people by sheep.

Crace's deft use of first person narration communicates the suffocating dangerous nature of the world he lives in, a tenuous veneer of civility a thin skin over lawlessness and violence, but poised against a world of nature that although ungiving and indifferent to human suffering is beautiful.

Mio's Kingdom by Astrid Lindgren

Karl Anders Nilson, known as Andy, is a lonely boy.  An orphan, he lives in Stockholm with his foster parents, Aunt Hulda who wanted a boy and Uncle Olaf who thinks Andy makes too much noise.  His only friend is Ben, but they sometimes fight.  The only person who is kind to him is Mrs Lundy from the sweet shop.  But then one day Aunt Hulda, after telling Andy yet again that the day he came to their house was an unlucky one, is given a card to post by Mrs Lundy and an apple that turns to gold.  The card is to the King of Farawayland.  Sitting in Tegnerlunden Park watching Ben eat with his loving parents through their lighted window he cries, but on the ground is a bottle and in the bottle is a genie.  For release from the bottle he grants Andy one wish, and he wishes to go to Farawayland.

A magical adventure of lost princes, love, friendship, courage, a white horse named Miramis, a bridge called Morninglight and a terrible foe, Sir Kato, begins.  Andy learns the truth of his birth and finds both happiness and a strength he never new he had.

Simply one of the most beautiful enchanting stories I have ever read.  I read this aloud over several days and nights to my 9 year old and enjoyed every moment.  Written in mesmeric prose, in less skillful hands this would have been just a good story to tell a younger child, but Lindgren makes it magical, mythic and unsentimental.

The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman

It is 1878 and Sally Lockhart is now working as a financial consultant.  One of her clients comes to her after the ship she has invested in goes down and Sally feels responsible, so she investigates with the help of her friend Jim, now working for Garland's Detective Agency with Frederick Garland.  Sally's investigations turn up a hornet's nest involving powerful industrialist Axel Bellman, a world of disgraced cut off aristocratic children and forced marriage and a terrible lethal secret in the frozen north.

This was my favourite of the Sally Lockhart mysteries, Sally is a strong female lead who Pullman is not afraid to give flaws but shows real courage and the author returns to a subject about which he speaks so beautifully: the far north.

The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman

A good well written Victorian murder mystery in the venerable tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle and Willie Collins.

London, 1872 and 16 year old Sally Lockhart has just seen a man fall dead in front of her.  Her father, the Lockhart in Lockhart and Selby, Shipping Agents, has been lost at sea and she has come to their offices desperate to try and find out why.  But when she utters the phrase she has received on a mysterious note 'the seven blessings' to Mr Higgs, the Company Secretary, he suffers a heart attack and dies.  Suddenly she finds herself thrust into a lethal high adventure with only the office boy Jim Taylor as an ally.  Opium smuggling, fraud, piracy and a priceless Indian ruby make for a heady headlong story and Sally Lockhart has to dig deep emerging as a truly wonderful heroine.

The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman

It is 1881 in Victorian London and Sally Lockhart is faced with solving a mystery that could cost her the one thing most dear to her: her own child.  On her doorstep is a man with a piece of paper telling her that a man she has never met is petitioning her for divorce for her cruelty and immoral behaviour.  With her business partners Jim Taylor and Webster Garland away on a photography expedition she seems vulnerable and the net closes fast around her, a forged marriage certificate, accusations of improper behaviour lethal to a woman and her business in the 1880s.  And behind all is the shadowy puppet master figure of the Tzaddik.

Great melodrama, Sally despite all the odds managing to hold her own in a world in which men have all the power and influence.  Not as warm as The Shadow in the North, but still good

The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman

It is 1882 Sally Goldberg is away to America with her new husband leaving young Jim Taylor, consulting detective, to take the helm in the fourth Sally Lockhart mystery.

In pursuit of a lost girl Jim finds a princess: Adelaide was last seen escaping from the fire that killed Sally's love Frederick.  Now she's engaged to be married to Prince Rudolf, Crown Prince of the tiny kingdom of Razkavia and there are plenty of forces arraigned against her.  Jim finds himself assigned as her protector as they travel with Razkavian exile and interpreter Becky Winter to the country, bordered and threatened by Austria and Germany who both have their eyes on the prize of Razkavia's tin mines.  Murder, skulduggery, high politics and the transformation of a cockney prostitute to a Crown Princess makes for a hell of a ride of a story, entertaining and ultimately heart warming.

The Book of Dead Days by Marcus Sedgwick

Two children, Boy, nameless servant and Willow, assistant to singer Madame Beauchance. A magician and alchemist named Valerian using Boy and infernal powers to create illusions for his act at the Great Theatre.

It is the Dead Days, those oddly quiet days between Christmas and New Year. And a terrible drama plays out in the City, a great sprawling decaying metropolis gripped in winter, once magnificent and powerful, now rotting and impoverished.

Valerian was always unpredicatable, carrying out his mysterious experiments in the rambling ruin of the Yellow House. But now he is becoming increasingly volatile as New Year and his deadline for an infernal pact runs out. Boy and Willow are drawn into a breakneck adventure trying to find a mysterious book that will let the slippery Valerian once more cheat his fate but at a terrible price.

Sedgwick's writing is fast paced but also evocative and haunting, you feel the cold of the City seep into your bones as you're borne away on his adventure.

Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of our Forests and Fairytales by Sarah Maitland

This is a difficult book to review because it has many many good points but there are areas where I feel a little uncomfortable with what Maitland has written.

Maitland breaks her book down into 12 chapters, visiting 12 forests one a month from March through to February.  Some are familiar names, like the Forest of Dean, the New Forest and Keilder Forest, others like Airyolland Wood and The Purgatory Wood are more obscure.  In her writings on these forests Maitland writes beautifully and eloquently on the history of each woodland and her experience within them, also reflecting on the way that the histories of the woods and that of fairytales are intertwined.

Between each chapter she gives us a fairytale but written from a new and thought provoking perspective, for instance, we hear from Hansel as he and Gretel have grown to adulthood and his thoughts on their experiences in the forest, from the woodcutter of Red Riding Hood and his reasons for becoming a recluse.  Last of all Maitland gives us an appropriately bewitching poetic history of the woodlands of Britain in the dreams of Briar Rose.

There is so much of interest in what Maitland has to say but there are things missing and she does at times repeat herself.  For instance, the focus appears to be on the Grimm canon of fairy tales, when she speaks of the Seven Swans fairytale she does not mention Hans Christian Andersen's similar The Twelve Swans and how the two relate.  However, these are small complaints, this is a book from which I learned much and was charmed by, a book that sends me straight back out to the woods.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong (Almost Naked Animals) by Sarah Courtauld

If you have watched Citv's Almost Naked Animals you'll have some idea of what to expect - anarchy, destruction and hysterical antics.  Howie is the hotel manager of the Banana Cabana (a mad dog), Octo the blue octopus receptionist, Bunny the much put upon Hotel Activities Director, Sloth the bellhop and Narwhal the singer.  All are Almost Naked except for swimwear.  The story begins with Howie surfing down the hotel lobby stairs on a washing machine, and goes full throttle from there.

It's a slight but colourful 57 pages in full colour, with a page of funky stickers at the back.  Warning, may induce sniggering, don't expect morals or uplifting narrative, just animals in pants...

Doctor Who: The Devil in the Smoke by Justin Richards (audio)

Victorian London, its snowing and two boys are futilely sweeping snow from the workhouse yard.  They give up and build a snowman, but then it begins to bleed.  They flee and one runs into the arms of a strange troll like man who takes him to meet Madame Vastra, the fabled Lizard Woman of Paternoster Row. 

But these monsters are the good guys and in fact it is one of the great and good of Victorian society that is bringing death to the streets.  As in all great Dr Who adventures there is alien involvement and impending doom for mankind.

A really entertaining spin off from 'The Snowmen' Dr Who episode, featuring the Siluran Madame Vastra who first appeared in 'A Good Man Goes to War' and the Sontaran Strax who is simply hilarious.

Nikolai Dante: The Romanov Dynasty by Robbie Morrison and Simon Fraser

Nikolai Dante first appeared in 2000AD.  It's the future and the Russian Revolution never happened.  In 2666 AD Nikolai Dante, son of a pirate, swashbuckler, rogue, seducer, swordsman, thief, vagabond is in Imperial prison.  Pardoned in return for completion of a misson he finds his heritage fighting alongside Jena, daughter of the Tsar.  On board a downed Romanov (rival family to the Tsar) spaceship he comes across a strange weapons crest which merges with him, granting supernatural powers and revealing his mysterious origins.  Great fun, well scripted and drawn

Far Rockaway by Charlie Fletcher

Cat Manno is in trouble.  Whilst sulking during a pre Christmas visit to her grandfather in New York with her parents she has stepped off the pavement and been hit by a fire engine.  Saved by her grandfather but suffering terrible head injuries she fights for survival.  As her body wanders the edges of life in operation theatres and intensive care inside her skull she is fighting for survival in high adventures inside the classic stories her grandfather read to her: Last of the Mohicans, Kidnapped!, Treasure Island.  A wonderful book about the magic that exists within stories but also a gripping pacy adventure.