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.

Apocalypse Cow by Michael Logan

If you like Mars Attacks you'll love this. A hilarious and completely sick thriller in which a deadly virus is unleashed on Britain, via a lab in Milgavie. An infected cow turns up at a nearby slaughterhouse and chaos ensues. The virus gives the cows a taste for blood, for raping anything they catch and enhanced strength and resiliance, they are harder to kill than a normal animal. And the virus can be passed on to any land based animal except humans. Cue killer squirrels, bunnies and sheep, out for revenge on the people who have exploited and hunted them for thousands of years. 

The only hope for mankind are a rash infested horny teenager, his vegan ecowarrior parents and their new money neighbours, an escapee worker from the abbatoir and an inept journalist. As Europe closes its borders the small band travel from London to the Channel Tunnel in an attempt to escape the virus before it mutates and infects humans.

Living in Scotland did help, I understand the ironies of a peace loving hippie living in Cumbernauld and of yobs getting their comeuppance in Easterhouses when their muscle dogs get their revenge. This is one of those books that is so unfunny it's hilarious, the satire is biting and spot on, the ironies pile on top of each other.

Shane Spall has in effect written  three books in one. On the simplest level this is a tie in to the BBC 4 TV series, a narrative of Shane and Timothy Spall's attempt to sail from London to Wales in their sea barge The Princess Matilda. They are hilariously hapless, on their first journey they don't make it beyond the Thames Barrier and Timothy takes a thorough crash course in navigation before they set out to sea. They encounter beautiful moorings and full on prejudice and snobbery in equal measure.

This narrative itself would have made for a good book, Shane Spall's mercurial nature in contrast to Timothy's laid back nature and penchant for pink crocs is hilarious but Spall intersperses this story with the heartbreaking one of Timothy's battle with leukaemia and her diaries from nights sat by his bed when he hovered between life and death. Shane had already lost her father and best friend to cancer and her words are honest and searing.

Thirdly there are snippets of Shane's own life, again written with unflinching honesty. Of her previous life as a flower child, of her drug addiction, of the Welsh husband she lost and her experience of giving birth to their daughter Pascale. 

These elements turn a very good book into a firm favourite, and one that I read into the night. I knew Timothy Spall from tv and film, a respected and beloved actor, and this book deepened that respect.

Auslander by Paul Dowswell

Young Piotr Bruck shivers as he waits naked in a draughty corridor to be examined by two men in white coats with curious instruments. The year is 1941, the place Warsaw and Piotr is an orphan and outcast, not Polack but Volksdeutscher: a Pole of German ancestry. The queue of boys is split into two and Piotr prays not to be sent to the right, to the covered army truck visible through the open doorway. He does not know the meaning of the truck but senses it cannot be good. Instead his blond hair and Nordic looks mean that the Race and Settlement programme choose him to be returned to the heart of Nazi Germany and placed with a good Nazi family in Berlin. Kaltenbach is a doctor conducting experiments for the Reich, with a wife and three children. Piotr is renamed Peter and tries to adapt, but is still treated as an Auslander: a foreigner. 

Peter finds a friend in neighbour Anna Reiter and her family, German but not Nazi. The evidence of his eyes and his friendship with the Reiters opens Peter's eyes to the true nature of the Third Reich and the Nazis. As the net of a brutal regime that brooks no resistance closes in around him Dowswell's book quickly becomes a thriller and Peter and Anna are in a race against time.

Excellently written, compelling and as enlightening about the Nazi regime as Anne Frank. A fantastic book for older children about a period of history that must not be forgotten.