Knitting Smitten by Jessica Biscoe

This is a funky cute introduction to the gently addictive art of knitting, for the most part ideal as a book for a complete novice.

The book is divided into four section.  The first is an introduction to knitting basics looking at the stuff you will need, how to choose yarns, how to read knitting patterns and charts, measuring tension, tips, and the basic techniques of casting on, purling stitches, knitting stitches, increasing and decreasing stitches.  I like that instructions are written and illustrated with good photographs, and that two sets of instructions are given: one for the British / American knitting style and one for the European.

Then come the projects which each introduce the knitter to a new technique and a newbie could do worse than just work through the book, they would come away with a funky wardrobe and be a proficient knitter.  Projects include hats, slippers, mittens, leg warmers, a cape and snood, bracelets, necklaces, headbands, brooches, cushions, throws, cloths, a paperweight, a bow tie and the cutest egg cosies.

Each project starts with a good illustration and a supplies page covering what size the project will be, what yarn you will need, needles, tension, any new techniques you will be learning and any haberdashery needed.  This is one of my small niggles: although there is a good page in the back showing you what weight each yarn is this isn't given on the supplies page.  My second is that when the crochet chain cast on is introduced there are no instructions on how to crochet.  However, the instructions that are given with each project are well written and well illustrated with photographs.

But the missing things are technqiues that that the unsure can find videoes of online and in general I do love the layout - learning step by step through the projects - and the size of the projects, nothing is too big or daunting but each introduces the techniques in a fun a friendly way.

This is kind of halfway inbetween a coffee table book and a travel book.  It's a hardback book of a less than A4 size filled with some of our world's greatest wonders split into two sections: natural and man made.  The man made are roughly in chronological order and go from caves painted by ice age people to the Burj Khalifa.  Each wonder begins with a tantalising introduction what it is like to encounter the wonder, a full page photograph, and 'how to get there' and what to do 'while you're there' sections.  Then follows a section on the construction and history of the wonder with 'did you know' boxes and great little diagrams.  It's informative and good to look at.

So why only three stars, well, because this book is neither one thing nor another.  The 'what to do while you're there' sections suggest a travel book, but this is really too heavy to be carried unless you are travelling by car.  The construction sections are good but so brief, too brief for me, it is not really big or detailed enough to be the kind of book you could devour at your leisure at home either.

Whispers by Dean Kootz

A 4.8 scale tremor gently rocks Los Angeles.  A nameless man sleeps in his van, plagued by nightmares, comforted by waking alongside his knives and dreaming of killing the woman he is searching for.  Hilary Thomas, up and coming screen writer, struggles with feelings of inferiority and self doubt as she waits to see if her newest creation has been accepted.  Drinking in her success she begins to relax, to begin to believe that the world is not the bleak brutal one she had to learn to be tough to survive.  Then she returns home and the man is waiting for her and he wants her dead.

Koontz always has had fascinating ideas, examining up close the worst that humans are capable of and asking the question what if, what if a child is raised in a certain way, what does brutality do to the psyche of a child and the adult they become.  Whispers is fascinating for these ideas, but this is one of Kootz's early works and in places his writing doesn't quite work, in particular in the sex scenes which can be a little cringeworthy.  However, the power of the ideas  and the imagination that would go on to make Koontz such a prolific and successful writer are very much in evidence.

The Face of Fear by Dean Koontz

The women of New York City are being hunted by a murder called the Butcher, a modern day Jack the Ripper.

Graham Harris is a clairvoyant, an unwitting witness to murder who has been plagued by visions since a climbing accident five years earlier shattered his confidence and his body and bequeathed to him an unwelcome psychic talent. Harris receives visions of killers when he touches things at murder scenes and has used this ability to help the authorities catch the perpetrator.

Connie Davis is Harris' partner, trying to nurse his traumatised spirit back to strength.

Anthony Prine is a late night talk show host with an unhealthy connection to the Butcher. He is interviewing Harris when Harris receives a vision of the Butcher's vicious slaughter of a pretty green eyed girl called Edna. But now the Butcher is aware of Harris.

Harris has a deadline for his climbing magazine so Davis joins him on the fortieth floor of the forty two storey Bowerton Building on Lexington Avenue for what looks to be an all-nighter. This is where the Butcher traps them, and the book is a nerve shaking game of cat and mouse as Davis and Harris try to evade the killer.

This is one of Koontz's earlier works and it is good, better than most other writers, but not yet completely up to his brilliant best. Most other writers would receive a higher rating for this kind of work but Koontz does a lot better, in places the book is not as well written as his later works.

Who Framed Klaris Cliff? by Nikki Sheehan

An intriguing book perfect for 8-12 year olds.  Joseph lives in a world where there has been a terrible incident and imaginary friends are considered a potential lethal threat rather than a harmless childhood phase.   He lives with his dad, his mum disappeared two years earlier after sending a postcard from Spain saying she would be back in the summer.

Joseph's neighbours are the sprawling Cliff family, best friend Rocky, older sister Pooh, the odd and vaguely wicked twins Egg and Willis and Flea.  Flea has an imaginary friend Klaris but she has begun speaking to Joseph and Flea's parents call the authorities convinced that Klaris is potentially dangerous.  Flea's dad has drawn up a list of the things he believes Klaris has done, including getting the family labradors drunk, killing the pet rabbit, writing on door and turning lights on.  The way that imaginary friends are dispatched is by isolating and destroying the imagination centres of the brain, and Joseph is quick to realise that this will mean he will lose all his memories of his mother.  It is now a race against time to prove that Klaris is not guilty of Flea's father's list of misdemeanors.

This was a good sweet story and I loved the ending.

Gingerbread by Robert Dinsdale

A boy is brought to the house of his grandfather, a bleak tenament flat in a Belarussian town.  His mother is dying of cancer and has brought her son to live with her father.  Slowly, reluctantly, Grandfather, or Papa, begins to tell the boy and mother the stories he told to her as a child.  Of Baba Yaga, the deep forests, and of the mighty Winter King and the King in the West who fought a terrible war over Belarus when it was Poland.

The mother's dying wish is for her ashes to be scattered with those of her mother in the great ancient forest beyond the town.  Grandfather, or Papa, is deeply reluctant but on a day when the roads are deep in ice he relents and takes the boy and his mother's remains out to a near ruined house.  It becomes clear that Papa is not afraid of the forest, he is afraid of not wanting to leave it.  Daily Papa remains in the house only venturing to collect the boy from school, then one day he does not come and the boy goes in search of him.

It is the beginning of a stunning magical cartwheeling story where boy and grandfather leave the urban for the wild and enter a world of stories, of partisan fighters who retreated to safety among the trees, of women and children massacred and the trees that drank too deeply of their blood and have become wicked, of survival, and love.

Dinsdale weaves the two parts of his story - narrative and folklore, together in such a skillful way that both drive each other.  Crises come, injury, new people in the forest, decisions to be made over loyalty, faithfulness and friendship, but always the ancient forest full of wildlife is a world beyond narrative where the past and present are bound together.

Iron Council by China Mieville

Mieville's conclusion to the Perdido Street Station trilogy is dense, magical, bewildering and brilliant.  Out in the wastes beyond New Crobuzon a rag tag band  searches for the legendary Iron Council, a train taken by rebels into the wilderness when the City refused to pay their wages.  In New Crobuzon unrest is rife and the people are in covert revolt against their authoritarian rulers, themselves at war against the mysterious Tesh, and the two strands come into painful contact

Mieville introduces us to an incredible cast:  Remade, people punished by the authorities by being surgically altered to be part machine; their rebel counterparts the fReemade; magicians; golems; all manner of creatures part bird, bat and insect; stomach churning spells, the visceral urban grit of New Crobuzon and the bewildering landscape outside where smoke turns to stone petrifying its victims and nothing is fixed.  And all this in an opaque bewitching language that often had me reaching for the dictionary.  Worth the work though.