Karsa Orlong

I don't like giving up on books, but I've put Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat back on the shelf after getting about halfway through it. It's very well written and researched but I found I asn't enjoying it, and I was reading it without taking it in. Never a good sign!

I've watched the first two episodes so far, and have the next two recorded. I think it's brilliant

British writers like James Barclay and Alan Campbell spring to mind. What about Canadians? Steven Erikson lives in England ...

And Smith did the same the other day, when he'd quite clearly dropped the ball But yeah, Prior's an idiot. Not a word about it in the paper I saw this morning They'd've mentioned it if we'd still been in the ODI series, I expect, although cricket has been relegated from the back pages to large degree over here since The Ashes was won. Whoever wrote that was obviously suffering from sour grapes. The fact is, if you don't have to provide evidence you could say it about any team. We could have said it about Australia for years - they must've been cheating to have beaten us so many times (<-- yes, I'm joking, but you get my point ). There have been trangressions by both England and Australia on this tour: Hughes and now Smith with their 'catches', and Ponting's five minute argument with both umpires over a decision that had been proven correct by the technology. A couple of those got me pretty riled up, too. There's no doubt that Prior tried to cheat. He didn't get away with it, thankfully. If I had my way, he'd be dropped for the World Cup but hey, that's just me. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the modern day sportsman seems to be encouraged to do 'whatever it takes' to win, and I don't think that's unique to England. You only have to look at the amount of cheating that goes on in football - but that's a whole other conversation

Worth Dying For by Lee Child Far be it from me to copy from my previous review but ... Jack Reacher. He's a force of nature. He knows everything. He can predict everything. It's like he can see the future. He is omniscient. But he's not indestructible anymore. Now he's a little bit destructible - just a little bit The set-up for a Reacher novel is fairly standard. Reacher breezes into town, trouble ensues, Reacher gets involved (even though he really doesn't want to) and events escalate until it's Reacher against the bad guys. Here he somehow ends up in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. There's a motel and a few farmhouses but not a whole lot else. Reacher decides to have a drink at the motel bar. There's one other person there, a guy who's already pretty drunk. The phone rings, the barman answers, a woman's asking for the doctor. Her nose is bleeding and it won't stop. The doctor, of course, is the other guy at the bar, and he refuses to go and see her. Reacher, rightly or wrongly, assumes the woman has been beaten by her husband, and decides to drive the doctor over to her place. He should really learn not to stick his nose in. As it turns out, the woman's husband is part of a family that is holding the small local community in the grip of fear. So business as usual. I said in a previous post that it would be nice if, just for once, Reacher would lose a fight, take some damage, fall on his backside, and hoped that it might happen next time. Well, suffice to say, it does, which is refreshing. Unfortunately, the flip-side of that is that Child has brought Reacher's omniscience back full-force. I don't think he gets anything wrong in this book. All of his deductions are correct, he predicts every move and is always one step ahead of everyone else. It isn't annoying, as such, but it does make things a little predictable. Again, there's no beautiful woman to fall into Reacher's arms, but neither is there what I'd call a satisfying pay-off at the end. It's obviously a formula that Child is going to stick to, come what may. It's a shame, because I get the feeling he could do so much more with this character, but the continuing success of the series, and the money that keeps rolling in, is making him a bit lazy. I thought 61 Hours was a step in the right direction for the series and, whilst this one is by no means bad, it didn't seem to have as much in terms of urgency or character. Perhaps that's because I read it straight after 61 Hours, and it lessened the enjoyment. Worth Dying For? No. It's worth a look but, if you're looking to try a Lee Child novel, you'd be better off picking up The Enemy or Die Trying. 7/10

I am 82% of the way through Worth Dying For, apparently

Yeah, it's cringe-inducing isn't it? I don't want to be him. I can say that with absolute certainty. Or, if I was, I'd at least have to carry around a laptop with an internet connection. And my iPod. And my Kindle. And I'd be so worried about breaking any of those that I'd never get in any fights

You are indeed! Thanks for that. I thought I remembered he got a pay-off from the military - I suppose a pension kind of fits the bill ...

I've been catching up with The Killing on BBC4, via iPlayer. It really is excellent.

Yeah, I think that's pretty normal I completely agree with you and your friend that it should have ended at season 5, and with what you say regarding the ending. I think I'm right in saying that it was always planned as a five season show, so ending it at the point you mention would have been perfect. The ending they used, and everything since, feels tacked on and a pale shadow of its former self, imo. I hope it picks up again, though, I really do.

How about James Ellroy? Try these: L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz or Underworld USA trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's A Rover

Oh gawd please, no The most likely guy at the moment, I suppose, would be Sam Worthington - he seems to be flavour of the month after Terminator 4, Avatar and Clash of the Titans, although he's not large enough and a little too young to play Reacher, maybe?

But apart from that ... I do get the impression that Child aims for each book to stand on its own. It would be nice to have a bit more continuity between the books, I agree. I keep wondering where Reacher gets all his money from, too. It may have been explained in an earlier novel but, if it was, I've forgotten the answer. Any ideas?

So did you find that reading it out of sequence made any difference? LOL at Tie Dying

Thanks Pickle - hope you're over your hangover! Re Gone Tomorrow, I thought it started really well, but Reacher's annoying ability to predict everything the bad guys are going to do was wearing a little thin for me by the end of it. I think it's at its worst in that novel - some of the leaps in logic defied belief, I thought, which was why 61 Hours felt a fair bit fresher. I'm on to Worth Dying For now. It's good, but the omniscience does seem to be back again ...

Congrats to Australia for winning the ODI series Another pathetic performance from our one-day batsmen. Have to say, I honestly don't think the Aussies have been particularly brilliant in any of the games, so that means we were even worse. I'd like to think we were just lulling the other teams into a false sense of security before the World Cup, but I don't think it's actually true ...

Finished Lee Child's 61 Hours and am now half way through the follow-up, Worth Dying For

61 Hours by Lee Child Jack Reacher. You gotta love him. He's a force of nature. He knows everything. He can predict everything. It's like he can see the future. He is omniscient. Except he isn't. Not anymore, at least. Finally, finally, there is a hint of a chink in his armour. The set-up for a Reacher novel is fairly standard. Reacher breezes into town, trouble ensues, Reacher gets involved (even though he really doesn't want to) and events escalate until it's Reacher against the bad guys. Here it's a small town in South Dakota, that has been hit by the leading edge of a storm. It's blizzard conditions, the snow's piling up, and the bus on which Reacher has hitched a ride crashes and leaves him stranded, right in the middle of an ongoing situation where the town's police force is trying to protect a vital witness from a gang of bikers who have set up shop outside the town. The police are waiting for an assassin to come in and kill the witness before the trial, and naturally they suspect Reacher of being this killer. So business as usual, except - in some ways - it isn't. Finally Reacher gets things wrong. It's so refreshing after the most recent entries I've read in the series (Gone Tomorrow, I'm looking at you ), where Reacher has seemingly had some sort of contact with a higher being, allowing him to stay one step ahead of the game and become practically indestructible. Here, things happen that Reacher can't do anything to prevent. He gets mad about it, too. But I won't go into why, cos that would be spoilery He's still indestructible, though. It would be nice if, just for once, he'd lose a fight, take some damage, fall on his backside. Maybe next time, eh? Oh, and for once there isn't a beautiful woman to fall into Reacher's arms and then watch him walk away at the end. Which is also refreshing (although he does have a sort of relationship with a beautiful woman on the other end of a phone line ... ). Child's writing style is as solid and easy to read as ever. Some of the dialogue, particularly the phone conversations, fizzes, it's so snappy and thought through well enough to both direct the story and incorporate some character development. The story moves at a decent pace (even though, for much of it, not a lot actually happens) and there is a nice sense of suspense that builds during the novel, mainly thanks to a regular countdown of the 61 hours in the title. The final twist is predictable (mainly due to a small cast of characters which reduces the potential suspects) but the final 100 pages move at a cracking, exciting pace, and the ending is ... Well, that would be telling I think this is a bit of a return to form. It's not Reacher's best outing, for sure, but it's much more engaging and genuinely thrilling than others in the series that I've read recently. 8/10

Yeah, but it'll be worse when the shelves crash down in the middle of the night because of the weight of all those books on them I'm about halfway through 61 Hours. It's a bit of a return to form, I think.

Agreed! Although, personally, I have a preference for Kate

I watched Supernatural 6x09 last night. I'll be interested to hear what you guys think of season 6

Not my fault

I don't think it matters what order you read them in - but you'd know that better than me as you've read more of them I think One Shot was the one they were going to turn into a movie, but it seems to be stuck in 'Development Hell', hence the continuing debate about who would play Reacher. It's also one that I haven't read. I'll get through them eventually, but I won't be getting any more of the paperbacks, I don't think, I'll get the Kindle editions instead to save some shelf space

Good grief, it's like Parker from Thunderbirds has turned up Just read the first 100 pages of Lee Child's 61 Hours

Having Neelix and that blimmin' Kes in it at all were it's biggest failures for me. Apart from it being made at all, that is Careful, you'll break his wings My favourite tv series of all time Season 4 is the best I've seen on any show - it is perfect