ian

I remain completely in awe at both the number and breadth of genres that you manage to read!

I must admit, I don't read a lot of biographies - not through choice, but more out of a sort of case that they sit in a blind-spot for me, so I tend to overlook them in favour of other genres. I have to say though that your reviews of both the Sid James & Robert Vaughn books have really intrigued me, so I shall pick them up. Great reviews!

The Clown Service by Guy Adams Toby Greene has been reassigned. The Department: Section 37 Station Office, Wood Green. The Boss: August Shining, an ex-Cambridge, Cold War-era spy. The Mission: Charged with protecting Great Britain and its interests from paranormal terrorism. The Threat: An old enemy has returned, and with him Operation Black Earth, a Soviet plan to create the ultimate insurgents by re-animating the dead My Thoughts This book arrested my attention on my last visit to the library. My initial thought before I'd read any was "harry potter with spys" , but I would say having finished it it reminded me quite a lot of Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch - but think spys instead of the police. That's not to say that this book is a rip-off ar anything. While this isn't the most well written book I've read, it does zip along with the story for the most part, as Toby is thrown in at the deep end of spying against enemies using the supernatural. My negatives would be there is too much exposition (the story stops for whole chapters), but to be fair, some of the more arcane supernatural plotlines do need explaination. I also thought the ending was a little rushed. Still, I liked it enough to want to read the others in the series. 3/5

The Bat by Jo Nesbo Before Harry took on the neo-Nazi gangs of Oslo, before he met Rakel, before The Snowman tried to take everything he held dear, he went to Australia. Harry Hole is sent to Sydney to investigate the murder of Inger Holter, a young Norwegian girl, who was working in a bar. Initially sidelined as an outsider, Harry becomes central to the Australian police investigation when they start to notice a number of unsolved rape and murder cases around the country. The victims were usually young blondes. Inger had a number of admirers, each with his own share of secrets, but there is no obvious suspect, and the pattern of the other crimes seems impossible to crack. Then a circus performer is brutally murdered followed by yet another young woman. Harry is in a race against time to stop highly intelligent killer, who is bent on total destruction (from Goodreads) My Thoughts The first of the Harry Hole thrillers, but, thanks to the vagaries of translation, this book wasn't initially available in English for a a few years. As you can probably expect, as his first book, it isn't going to be the best in the series, but there is plenty to be pleased with. At last we see what happened to Harry in Australia - something that is mentioned in passing in nearly all the subsequent books. The ending is a little disappointing, and sometimes the crime itself seems to play second fiddle to observations about Australia. I still enjoyed it though, and I was glad I'd finally got to read it 3/5. This makes the 38th book I've read this year - equaling the number I read in 2015.

Just catching up with some of these threads - Great reviews of Pillars of the earth & word without end.

Dark Blood by Stuart McBride Detective Sergeant Logan McRae isn't happy to be part of the team helping convicted rapist Martin Knox settle into his new home. He's even less thrilled to be stuck with DSI Danby from Northumbria Police - the man who put Knox behind bars - who is here to 'keep an eye on things'. Only things are about to go very, very wrong. (taken from Goodreads) My Thoughts ​I only got about 100 pages into this. I'm afraid I just took a dislike to most of the characters. The protagonist seems to be a hard-drinking, anti-social Scottish policeman who unorthodox methods get the job done, but rub his superiors up the wrong way. Sound familiar? Yes, it did to me too, and frankly, Ian Rankin does it far, far better than this. Add in a superior who speaks only in foul-mouthed cliches, and is probably the worst imagined female character I've read in some time. After about 100 pages, I decided I just didn't care enough to find out any more, so I gave up and I've been up the library instead 1/5

I can understand that - before reading this, I would have said he wouldn't have been a comedian I would go and see. However, I did find myself warming to him more as I read the book - perhaps because what you do find out about him, and the only real personal thing about him that he doesn't make a (rude) joke about is...he looks reading, and is particularly a fan of fantasy fiction. He recommends a number of authors (I really need to make a list of them before I pass the book on)

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman Fat Charlie Nancy's normal life ended the moment his father dropped dead on a Florida karaoke stage. Charlie didn't know his dad was a god. And he never knew he had a brother. Now brother Spider's on his doorstep -- about to make Fat Charlie's life more interesting... and a lot more dangerous My thoughts I picked this up in a charity shop, and brought it basically as it was written by Gaiman, and knew literally nothing else about it. I didn't even realise it was a sequel to American Gods till I logged it into Goodreads as my current read. To be honest, I was struggling with this for about the first quarter. I put that down to myself. A lot of other stuff going on in my life at the mo, so I wasn't really feeling it. Then something just clicked, and I raced through the rest of the book. Again, unusually for me, this book had me snorting with laughter. I wouldn't say that reading American Gods is essential before reading this, although it helped in terms of understanding the role of various Gods in this universe. American Gods, although funny, is Gaiman funny. This book is Gaiman channeling Douglas Adams - and it's something he does very well! Yes, you could argue that you can see largely where the book is going to go and approximately how it's going to end almost from the start, but that wasn't the point, at least for me - it was the journey, not the destination. 5/5 Note: My copy had a Q&A section at the back that Neil had put in. It was interesting to note that about a third of the way in, he realised that he had to change a particular character's plotline, which changed the nature of the book and the ending. I wondered after reading that, if that was why I found the first part of the book a bit of a struggle compared with the rest.

My book jar - which I use to randomly pick the next book I read - also agrees, as it threw out "Anansi Boys" by him as my next book

The ocean at the end of the lane - by Neil Gaiman Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy. My Thoughts At the beginning of the year, I found myself in Kidderminster, a small town not far for us. My wife knows a hairdresser there, so I drove her over and found myself with nothing to do for about 4 hours. Kidderminster is a town in decline - empty shops and charity shops mostly and a new shopping area attempting to delay the inevitiable. But, there is a really good library. And after I had drunk enough coffee, I waited there and read the first couple of chapters of this(which almost had me in tears - a birthday party for a 7 year old to which no-one turns up will do that to me). Like all good books, it stayed with me, so I had to buy it. At the end of the book are some questions & answers from Neil. In it he says "My favourite response to it (this book) is...My childhood was nothing like it - and it was if I was reading about me". That's how I felt. Somehow, he has taken the very essence of being seven years old and distilled it into what I can only describe as a fairy story for adults. As always when I read his books, I'm left at the end, slightly disappointed because I want more. That's also true here, as the book is pretty short, but it is a great read. 4/5

My Sh*t life so far by Frankie Boyle Frankie's outrageous, laugh-out loud, cynical rant on life as he knows it is presented here in all its outrageous glory. From growing up in Pollockshaws, Glasgow – "it was an aching cement void, a slap in the face to childhood, and for the family it was a step up" – to his rampant teenage sex drive – "in those days if you glimpsed a nipple on T.V. it was like porn Christmas" – and first job working in a mental hospital, nothing is out of bounds. Outspoken, cynical, and always outrageous, Frankie Boyle, the dark heart of Mock the Week, says the unsayable as only he can. From the TV programs he would like to see made (“Celebrities On Acid On Ice – "just like Celebrities Dancing On Ice, but with an opening sequence where Graham Norton hoses the celebrities down with liquid LSD"), to his native Scotland and the Mayor of London, nothing and no one is safe from Frankie's fearless, sharp-tongued assault. Sharply observed and full of taboo-busting, we-really-shouldn't-be-laughing-at-this humor, My Sh*t Life So Far shows why Frankie Boyle really is the blackest man in show business. (taken from Goodreads) My thoughts I picked this up in an idle moment from the coffee room at work. Not the kind of book I would normally read, but the random paragraph I read that day both offended me and made me laugh out loud - quite a combination. And that pretty much sums the book up; some parts I read and thought "this is really offensive", but then the subject would move on and I found myself laughing out loud. I'm told that I was a picture reading this at work - laughing and shaking my head at the same time. This isn't for the faint-hearted or the easily offended - he saves his most biting comments for the Scottish and Scotland, you have been warned - but I did find it very funny. 4/5.

On Chesil Beach by Ian Mcewan It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come...(from Goodreads) My Thoughts For a short book, this took some reading. On the one hand, the writing is absolutely beautiful. The type of writing that makes this reader despair of ever being able to pen something myself. On the other hand, I found at times it very heavy going. The subject matter doesn't help of course; you can tell early on that this wedding night isn't going to have a happy ending. If I have written this review as soon as I finished it, very late last night, it would have got 3 stars. But, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wanted to give both these newly weds a good slap around the head and tell them to sort themselves out. In the end, I don't think I'm going to able to shake this story out of my head for a long time, if ever. And that is the mark of a very good book, in my opinion. 4/5 (I still have to drop one star for being so heavy going).

I sure we've all done it. You have a book that you really love, but there is always that minor character that pops up from time to time that just ruins every scene they're in. Not necessarily an antagonist - we're meant to hate those - but those bit players, perhaps a bit of comedy relief, that just irritate you. I have two, both from the same book. Merry & Pippin from Lord of the Rings. Even their names irritate me! I realise that they are supposed to represent the voice of the happy innocent, but their happy mumblings jar against the rest of the book for me. Perhaps I'm just being a misery! Please tell me I'm not alone!

There is a brief paragraph involving a horse stuck in the mud at the front - can't think of any other instances though. I do know what you mean though - there is something very disturbing about cruelty or violence towards animals that is somehow more shocking than with people.

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves It is a cold January morning and Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunters eye is drawn to a vivid splash of colour on the white ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbour Catherine Ross. As Fran opens her mouth to scream, the ravens continue their deadly dance. The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man: loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. But when police insist on opening the investigation a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community. For the first time in years, Catherine's neighbours nervously lock their doors, whilst a killer lives on in their midst. Raven Black is a haunting, beautifully crafted crime story, and establishes Ann Cleeves as a rising talent in psychological crime writing. My Thoughts I was familiar with this series only through the TV series "Shetland" on which these are based. I actually remembered this one as an episode, but fortunately I couldn't remember who the murderer was. I really enjoyed this. It's quite slow moving, and although there are a couple of murders, no real violence. It would almost come under the category of "cosy crime" if it wasn't for the brooding presence of the Shetland isles themselves. They seem to permeate ever paragraph of the book and lend a sinister air and other worldliness to the book. It had me hooked. My only negative point would be that some of the minor characters seems very underdeveloped - particularly the detective that comes from Aberdeen. Still, I want to read the others now 4/5

I certainly feel it some days!

This was the first Morpurgo I've read, so I've got a lot of catching up to do! I also feel I should point out something on my review - I said that the descriptions of growing up in the countryside took me back to days in the country as a boy. While I'm not really bothered how old I am - I must point out that I didn't grow in prior to WW1! I just meant that the language he used took me back to my own childhood (in the 1970's!) I'm sure you all realised that, (as it would make me over 100) but I really wanted to point that out! Sorry! Powerful stuff if a description of 1910's Devon/Dorset resonated with this city boy from 60 years later.

Perhaps The 39 steps by John Buchan? I've only read that one, and enjoyed it - I believe there was a whole series of adventures. Also Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stephenson.

It all comes down to good writing, doesn't it? If an author is good enough, they will be able to allude to their particular viewpoint, without it being overt. I going to deliberately ignore allegorical books like CS Lewis Narnia books - I assume most people would know about those beforehand. It gets intolerable, for me at least, when the author's own views start poking through the narrative of the story and interferes with the enjoyment of reading it. Two books immediately come to mind - Breathless by Dean Koontz, which got far too preachy about evolution vs creationism and to my mind, stopped being a work of fiction, and Tom Clancy's books, which for me, just got really tiresome, pushing the same, tired political agenda.

Private Peaceful by Michael Murpurgo. From the Children's Laureate of England, a stunning novel of the First World War, a boy who is on its front lines, and a childhood remembered. "They've gone now, and I'm alone at last. I have the whole night ahead of me, and I won't waste a single moment of it . . . I want tonight to be long, as long as my life . . ." For young Private Peaceful, looking back over his childhood while he is on night watch in the battlefields of the First World War, his memories are full of family life deep in the countryside: his mother, Charlie, Big Joe, and Molly -- the love of his life. Too young to be enlisted, Thomas has followed his brother to war and now, every moment he spends thinking about his life, means another moment closer to danger. My thoughts I read this purely by chance. When I picked my next book from the book jar, it was one I had on my Kindle, but as I hadn't used that for a while, it needed charging. Saturday morning and allowed a lie-in for once, I didn't want to waste it, so I picked this up - a book my daughter had picked up from a charity shop. Don't be fooled, as I was, that because this is a children's book, that this is a light, easy, insubstantial read. The writing took me instantly back to days spent in the countryside as a boy. Rarely have I read a book that so simply and effectively lays out the utter horror and madness that world war 1 was. Be warned, the ending is heart-breaking, and had me in tears. 5/5

The Life of Lee - by Lee Evans Lee Evans is one of the best-loved comedians in the country; a Hollywood star able to sell out arenas in the blink of eye. But he was not always such a roaring success. 'The Life of Lee' is an utterly hilarious and very moving autobiography charting his ups and downs on the way to the top. My thoughts Not my usual read, but I found this in the coffee room at work. What is about comedians and their miserable upbringings? The book tells of Lee's early life in Bristol growing up, getting into trouble and travelling around with his family. It leads right up to his first gig, and ends there rather abruptly - I was definitely left wanting more. 3/5

So, it's autumn, which for me is always an exciting time for reading. In my mind, longer, colder nights means sat inside listening to the wind and rain outside while feet up with a good book. It also feels like a good time to start reading heavier, denser books. I usually get an urge to start reading Victorian, Gothic fiction. Of course, chance would be a fine thing - I probably read more in the summer, when I have a chance to sit in the garden and get some peace and quiet. In the house with the TV permanently blaring, phones, laptops and tablets squawking away, two teenagers (well one teenager and another in training) and three cats? No chance! Still, looking back at the year so far, I pleased with what I've read. I see at the start of the year I said that I would let books lead me to other books - words to that effect anyway. What I should have done was make a list as I went along. I seemed to have read a lot that either directly referenced other books; the protagonist was reading it, or was mentioned by the author in the sleeve notes. Still, I remember a series and another book, so I'll list those now. Writing them here will stop me forgetting later. So, I read Insomnia by Stephen King earlier this year. This book reminded me that I call myself a King fan, but... I've never read any of the The Dark Tower books. I need to put this right. The other book is Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood". I forget which, but two books I've read this year referenced this, so I will try to get to this also in what's left of the year.

If Afghanistan isn't too far west, then I can recommend any of Khaled Hosseini's books, "The Kite Runner" , "A thousand, splendid suns" & "and the mountains echoed" .

I would definitely recommend the whole series, and this one in particular. As you say, not the most inspiring title, and its relevance to the plot is tenuous at best, but it is worth the effort. At some point I will get the first book, which has finally been translated into English.