Torchwood: Fallout by David Llewellyn (AUDIO)

Not the best Torchwood adventure, the best are the radio plays with all the sound effects and the voices of the characters.  This is just an audio book and relatively short, only an hour long.  Only one of the Torchwood characters: Gwen Cooper, features, but then at this point in the chronology of Torchwood she is the only one left.  She, however, is only indirectly involved via telephone from America.  The major lead is minor character Sergeant Andy Davidson, the hapless Cardiff policeman who was Gwen's link to the police force.  When Andy realises that the shooting that he is dealing with in Cardiff has some very strange, distinctly alien, features, he calls Gwen who realises what the object at the heart of the matter is.  Cue race to save the world.  Though it is nice to see Andy come to the front, the whole was a bit flat.

Black Heart Blue by Louisa Reid

Hephzi stands in her sister Rebecca's dress at her grave, struggling with the loss of a beloved sister and the secrets dammed up inside of her. Hephiz and Rebecca were twins but different in so many ways, Rebecca beautiful and sunny, Rebecca's face twisted by a genetic disorder. Home schooled until Rebecca persuades her parents to let them go to college, the new freedoms of this world give Rebecca a taste of freedom and terrify Hephzi, exposed to the stares and taunts of the other student. However, both sisters hide the secret at the heart of their lives, and the truth of Rebecca's death is revealed step by step. Made me cry, and there's not many books do that.

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

A gentle set of five stories in which little happens but lives change, the lives of Ishiguro's characters intersect with those of others triggering series of reflections and reverberations through memory, past and future. The stories are beautifully constructed around major life changes narrated in the past tense, striking a minor key of regret and loss. Relationships are pivoting and coming to their closing acts, musicians are recognised by one character but unknown, forgotten by all the others, once shining, glorious and famous, now faded like old photographs. These are stories that haunt and echo, like a melody that awakes memories.

Psychogeography by Will Self illustrated by Ralf Steadman

Firstly the hardback edition here is a beautiful book, Ralf Steadman's illustrations are in full colour and intersperse Will Self's text.  He speaks of journeys taken by foot, largely over urban landscapes and the palimpsest of histories that land has.  His first and longest journey is from his home to Heathrow, a journey made for four wheels rather than two feet, and then from JFK to downtown Manhattan.  His use of extended metaphor is just exquisite, the scatalogical and elegaic brought together to show the world not in a new light as such, just better described.  I must admit I had to read it with a large dictionary at hand, Self's command of the English language is just incredible.  Not an easy book to read, but a real education and enlightenment.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his family are Syrian Americans living in New Orleans, he and his wife Kathy (a converted Southern Baptist American) run a painting and decorating business and let a number of properties across the city. There is some discrimination but Abdulrahman, known as Zeitoun because of people's inability to pronounce his first name, is well respected for his insistence on a high level of workmanship by all his crews, and he has a strong healthy business. The couple have four beloved children and life is good.

When Hurricane Katrina comes in from the Gulf Zeitoun doesn't think much of it, many hurricanes have formed over the years only to peter out on land. Kathy is worried though and takes the children to stay with her family, but Zeitoun stays to watch over their properties and those of their friends who have left. Katrina itself is not too bad, but then the levees break. Zeitoun moves the family's belongings upstairs and as the waters rise sets out in his canoe to offer help where he can. Kathy and Zeitoun's extended family are worried, but he is far from the looting of the city centre and the hellish conditions in the Superdome. He links up with friends who have also stayed behind, feeds the local stranded dogs and keeps in contact with his family by a phone that still works in one of the local apartments.

Zeitoun is just beginning to think about leaving, food is running out and there isn't much more he can do. He has just come off the phone to his brother and is about to call his wife when there is a loud knocking at the door and a story of survival through hurricane rapidly turns into a nightmare, a unforgivable one in which Zeitoun's ethnicity is the tenuous reasoning behind his horrendous treatment by a city under martial law, in a country which is supposed to honour and revere civil liberties. 

A brave and deeply moving book, well written and dedicated. It changed my view of Islam, showing that beyond every radical in every religion there are a raft of kind hearted people attempting to follow the benevolent teachings of their creed, and who face terrible and unthinking discrimination.

The Library Book by Ann Cleeves

This is a great little collection for all those who feel that tingle up the spine when they step into a library, who have had their emotional lives saved by what lies between the covers of a book. Authors and other defenders of libraries come together in this collection, some of them speaking of how their lives were touched as children when they first fell in love with libraries, others speaking of the current situation and why libraries continue to be of abiding importance even in a digital age of ebooks, internet and online shopping. Of the importance of a place where you can take a chance on a book you might never have normally picked up, but also a place that brings people together. Heartwarming.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

We are in Ancient Greece, a young boy Patroclus fails to live up to the hope of his father the king and finds himself exiled for being too weak to defend himself after accidentally killing another boy. His weight in gold pays for his place at the court of another king, and it is whilst trying to make himself invisible that Patroclus comes to the attention of golden child and prince Achilles. Deemed by prophecy to be unbeatable in battle, Achilles is the child of the king and a sea nymph. The story follows the boys as their friendship deepens, through their time studying medicine, astronomy and hunting with the centaur Chiron to the Trojan War and the events of The Iliad. 

I was captivated, the story was well told and the fantastical elements of gods walking with mortals, begetting children and influencing events never seemed like whimsical fantasy, they were as real as the other characters.