Raven

Yes, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Peter Jackson took an epic novel and distilled out of it the essence of a very good set of films. They look right, they feel right, and they totally respect the source material - what more could you ask for?! And two examples of films that are better than the books they are based on: Starter For Ten: The film definitely has a better ending than the book and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: It got rid of the flab from the book, and made a very good, well paced film.

Though in turn, they are not as awesome as the prospect of

I had to suffer the embarrassment of buying next week's Radio Times today with their special Britain

I find covers are terribly important, otherwise the pages get all fluffy! Seriously though, I've heard that Waterstones will quite often commission their own covers (one that springs to mind is the "adult" cover they exclusively carried for Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith).

Have you read A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley?

I found the camping section highly annoying as well. At the end of book 6 everything is set up for the big show-down, but then Rowling sticks rigidly to her "One book is a year in the life of Harry/a term at Hogwarts" policy and it basically causes the plot to stall for a good three hundred pages . . .

This is true, but you just can't beat the truck chase in T3 for sheer destructive fun!

PvP Reloaded, by Scott Kurtz More of the same from Scott Kutz, really. All good stuff!

Life & Soul of the Party, by Mike Gayle Over the course of a year, and a number of parties, a group of six friends come to terms with the hand life has dealt them, and with the choices they have made. Life & Soul of the Party is told in the first person by all of the main characters, but predominantly focuses on thirty-something Melissa, and her inability to move on from her ex-boyfriend Paul. In telling the story Gayle has cleverly put a central event right at the beginning of the book, and then told most of the story in flashback and, because of that, events that unfold take on an added resonance as you see the characters head towards their fate. In a lot of ways this is Gayle's bleakest book to date, but at the same time it is full of his trade-mark humour, and it does affirm that although life can be rough, there are also good times to counter the bad. I'm not sure I enjoyed this book as much as some of Gayle's previous offerings, partly because more than ever he seems to be skirting closer to Chick-Lit territory, but this is the first book I have finished in a day for a long time, so it can't be all bad!

Future Perfect, by Jeff Greenwald Author Jeff Greenwald travels the globe to interview a host of people, both famous and not, in an attempt to determine just what it is about Star Trek that has turned it into a global phenomenon. Witten in 1996, during the making of the film First Contact, Greenwald manages to get access to an impressive list of people to ask them why they think Trek is as popular as it is. From interviews with the cast (Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, Leonard Nimoy and Kate Mulgrew) and crew (Brannon Braga, Ron Moore, Rick Berman), Greenwald goes on to interview an impressive selection of people including technicians at the Jet Propulsion Labs in California; authors Arthur C. Clarke and Kurt Vonnegut and he even manages an audience with the Dalai Lama! Along the way he also meets the fans and ends up, amongst others, at a family meal in Italy, a hot spa in Japan, a Klingon wedding in a German woods and a NASA inspired bar in India. To a large extent Greenwald tries to tie Star Trek's popularity in the with the demise of the Apollo moon missions in the early seventies, suggesting that its popularity is - in part - due to the show becoming a surrogate for the lack of the on-going manned space program it looked like the world would have following the successes of the sixties, but I’m not entirely sure how well this approach actually works - as Michael Dorn says, perhaps it's just great television. Greenwald has a humorous, almost self-deprecating writing style though, and he isn't afraid to call things as he sees them, both in terms of the people he meets and himself, and I feel that it is this honesty that makes this book an interesting read rather than a piece of fan worship that it could easily have become. If you are interested in Star Trek, this is definitely worth a read.

I've got a few reviews to catch up with here! The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells It is the end of the 19th century; an astronomer observes a green flash on the surface of Mars; a falling star is seen over Southern England and an artificial cylinder is found on Horsell Common. The original Martians are coming! H.G. Wells' timeless masterpiece is a brilliant depiction of an alien invasion, conceived of and written long before anyone had ever heard the term science fiction. From the ominous build up, through the rout of London, to a life living under the Martian heel, Wells' conjures so vivid a picture it is all too easy to place yourself in the shoes of the narrator as he describes the events of those "strange and terrible days". Like its predecessor The Time Machine, which I read last year, The War of the Worlds is largely a social commentary, but where The Time Machine was a commentary wrapped in a thin veil of story, The War of the Worlds is a story first, and it works all the better for it. I must have read this book half a dozen times over the last decade, and it has never failed to entertain me. There is something lyrical about Wells' writing that I really like; the detail he puts into the work, especially when the Martians are moving on London, really gives the book a solid grounding in the everyday, which is then countered by the sinister, otherworldliness of the Martians themselves. If you have not read this book, and have an interest in science fiction or alien invasion movies, do so, because this is pretty much where it all started.

I had to do a rebuild on my PC the week before last and ended up with IE8 by default when all the Windows updates rolled in - it's not bad, not hugely different from IE7, really.

Sussex Stationers - or the British Bookshops as they are now - aren't too bad, but they have a very limited selection. I always go there first because if they have the book I'm after they will invariably be cheaper than anywhere else, but the last few times I've been after a particular title they've not had it. Next stop is WHSmiths, and although they have a wider range, it's generally only worth buying a book there if it is in the chart and part of one of their two for one offers. The best place to buy books in Chichester though is Waterstones, hands down. It is in a converted hotel and the old ballroom on the second floor, and the converted stable entrance on the ground floor, make it a bright and interesting bookshop. I have literally spent hours browsing in there over the years. There are also two good second hand shops in the city, that generally have quite a good range between them. I always make a point of going around them when I have the time. ETA: If I'm up in London, and have the time, I like to go around the second hand book shops in Charring Cross, just down the road from Foyle's. There are some very interesting specialist shops down there.

Though not in pocket, thus is the cross we have to bear . . . Never underestimate a vicious paper cut!

I've not read any of his books, but if it is the same Nicholas Crane as I think it is, I do have his Great British Journeys series on DVD, and he is very good in that (as he was in Coast as well).

I've got a signed copy of the hardback, that I really should get around to reading. Pete McCarthy was a genius, it's such a shame he's no longer with us.

I still find myself thinking about it now, and it's been a good two or three years since I read it. I really should read it again at some point.

I've always found Bryson to be a bit smug.

I've always liked Mark Wallington's books, Five Hundred Mile Walkies, Boogie up the River and Destination Lapland. They are all UK based, fairly easy going humorous books, and I can't recommend them enough.

They show them fairly regularly on ITV3 (quite often late at night though).

There is also the Cadfael series, by Ellis Peters (I've not read any of them myself, but I'm told they are pretty good) and The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (currently on my "to-read" pile!).

I've just started reading Starkey's Henry, very interesting, so far.

No, but I have heard good things about Prisoner of the Daleks, by Trevor Baxendale, I will be hunting that down at some point.

I think it was "Beak".

On the whole I'd have to say I'm not a fan of predictable books, I prefer books with twists and unexpected (but plausible) developments. Conversely though, I don't have a problem with books where I already know the story.