CornflowerBlue

I don't have time! There are too many other books, and other things to do. I very rarely re-read at all, but I also rarely re-watch films. I enjoy not knowing what's coming. There are also a lot of questions about re-reading: if you know the ending, does it change the characters? The foreshadowing, the characters' motivations. For me a lot of the thrill of reading is the unexpected turns in the plot.

Oh I'm so glad people are talking about how good it is! I adored this book: it was my pick for the Lancashire Children's Book Award. I would never have picked it up if it hadn't been on the shortlist, but I just loved it. I think Perera is a really skilled author. She balances a really horrifying tale with age-appropriate writing, so that although it's terrifying, it's never unmanageable. I think it deserves a better cover and a LOT of fans

Me first!! I've made it very clear if she ever needs a reader, I'm free! As it is, she occasionally sends me proof copies (she works with my housemate), and I get recommendations a lot. She runs the Book Talk Groups company too, so she knows everything there is to know about children's books. She really does have an amazing job; Patrick Ness sent her a signed copy of the third book to thank her for all her hard work. I've done a lot of sessions with Lancashire Children's Librarians recently, I wonder if they knew I was getting a bit Gollum-y about their jobs?

I have to agree with you, it's a boundary that can't be crossed.

A friend of mine is a children's book buyer. She's read the third book and said it's superb. Where will I find the time!?

This book came up in a discussion with some of my uni friends the other day. It didn't go into much depth, but I think the summary was 'no matter how amazing the book, my overriding feminism made me put it down when I realised that had happened'.

Any Dan Brown books. I was a Borders bookseller at the height of Da Vinci Code mania, and having to de-sticker and re-sticker 554 books a week, every week, made me detest them. Along with "Do you have the Leonardo Code?" "Tesco's have this cheaper" "Do you have a book by Tom/Dick/Harry Brown? It's about an artist." "Have you read it? It's the best book ever written." "You haven't read it? I'm surprised they let you work here" I will never read anything by Boy in the Striped Pyjamas author John Boyne, because I think it's a travesty of a book on so many levels, and I will never read a Jeffrey Archer book because my Grandad would come back from the grave to tut at me!

I love her first album, but found the rest quite samey. My sister has a special love for her, because they went to see her live, and apparently she's absolutely tiny, like a fairy!

I've had to make myself a special playlist for reading. It's mellow but not vapid, Elbow, Sigur Ros, Jonsi, Martha Tilston, Rufus Wainwright, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and so on. Right now it's Kate Vogele's cover of Hallelujah

I hope nobody minds me resurrecting this thread! I read The Master in my first gap year, and was smitten. I loved Blackwater Lightship. I bought myself Brooklyn when it was on offer at Waterstone's, but I don't have time to read it. It's on my pile of books to read once I finish my MA. Just to make it even harder for me, the author Adele Geras was speaking at a Lancs Book Awards thing recently and raved about how good Brooklyn was. She couldn't stop talking about Toibin's gorgeous prose. Eeeep, I want to read it now!

I'm a fantasy fan who never has time to read it! I would definitely recommend Stardust, the film is gorgeous too. I really enjoyed Trudi Canavan's Magicians trilogy, they're big tomes but very readable.

This one was what came to mind for me. It's by Robert Swindells. Can I just voice my objections to Boy in the Striped Pyjamas? I know it's been very popular, but I and a lot of other scholars have major problems with it: in that it excuses not knowing anything about your place or politics, and that I had already read, and hated, the book, when we had a guest speaker in at the start of my MA. Her PhD was on Holocaust literature and she said there's huge international pressure to get the book removed from school booklists. At a conference she'd been to, a Holocaust survivor talked about the importance of literature on the subject, and tore Boy in the Striped Pyjamas to shreds. I was interested in the world wars as a kid, and would recommend almost anything by Michelle Magorian, especially Goodnight, Mr Tom and Back Home. Robert Westall's books have been mentioned, Machine Gunners is particularly good. I enjoyed I am David as a child, too, although I can't remember what about it stood out. I think my standout recommendation has already been mentioned: Michael Morpurgo's Private Peaceful.

Have you read Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves? It's a book so scary I bought it when I was seventeen, and can only read a couple of chapters a year. I left it on the desk in our music room at sixth form, and my friend Helen picked it up. Helen is SO down-to-earth and grounded, but by the time I got back from class she'd had to switch off the CD player and close the window, because every sound made her jump. She shrieked when we opened the door It's a very different kind of horror, it's a young man, a bit of a dropout, discovering the notebook of an elderly blind man. He leaves his life and goes on the run to escape what the notebook tells him is out there, but the whole thing is peppered with extracts, footnotes, and appendixes, and it makes for a jolting, disorienting read. I don't react much to books (laugh, cry, get scared etc) but this one genuinely terrifies me. I know big strong men who have left the book on trains/in caf

Cookbooks: I read Nigel Slater's 'Real Cooking' as a teenager, and when I moved out, bought my own copy. I love cook books a scary amount, but Nigel is still my favourite. The recipes are honest, tasty, brilliant food, and there's rarely an ingredient you can't buy locally. I don't feel like most of them need special preparation or extra shopping. His pumpkin soup recipe is my staple throughout winter, and the best cake I have ever tasted is his chocolate beetroot cake from 'Tender'. The photography is always lovely, unfussy but beautiful. I have books by Jamie, Nigella and HFW, along with Two Fat Ladies and so on, but I always go back to Nigel. For a totally different style of cooking, 'Indian Food Made Easy' is fantastic, easy and exciting and very tasty. If you like quirky books, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World is brilliant, and useful if you have an obsessive love for cake (I do, yes I do), as they're made with oils rather than eggs and butter, so less saturated fat. The Hummingbird Bakery cook book is so beautiful it's indecent, and the recipes I've tried have all worked out absolutely perfectly. The carrot cake is to die for. One of my go-to cookbooks is Mama Cherri's Soul in a Bowl cookbook. It's 'soul food', lots of deep south USA recipes like succotash, peach cobbler and pecan pie. The recipe for American pancakes is well-loved here, but the recipes generally are fantastic, easy to source, and very satisfying. Books on travel: I love a bit of Bryson, especially 'A Walk in the Woods' which is about walking the Appalachian trail. I read a wonderful book a few years back called 'Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow', which was a guy hitching across the USA. It was funny and enjoyable but there were also some really poignant moments; what sticks in my head is him flipping through a map in the cab of a truck and finding some gay pornographic playing cards, and never finding the right words to ask the trucker who'd picked him up what it was like to be a gay trucker. A totally, completely different kind of travel writing is the utterly wonderful 'River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze' by Peter Hessler. Hessler is the Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker and contributes to National Geographic, but this book is about his time as a young graduate, teaching English in an isolated Chinese city on the Yangtze. Hessler writes gorgeously, with a mixture of awe and affection, but he is also clearly a very informed and intelligent man, and the book gives you an incredible view of a China just entering the common market. I'm not a huge reader of travel writing (though I ran the section at two different Borders stores), but this book really blew me away. I have his next one, 'Oracle Bones', to read in the gap between my MA and PhD, and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it.

Velvet Goldmine, Whip It!, Cruel Intentions. I think Buffy had one of the best soundtracks of a TV series, too.

Another one who will buy the DVD, the less money I hand to Murdoch the better! I loved Hogfather, although I agree, it is slow, it took me two attempts to watch it.

Imagine getting that call. "Really? I get to play him!? In Doctor WHO!? I can die happy now" I am still not won over. I quite like Matt Smith, but the episodes don't grip me at all, they just feel so quick and shallow. I have a bit of lust for Amy, but I don't think she's working out as well as promised, really. I might have to camp outside BBC Salford with a sign saying 'More Torchwood now!'

'I think I've got something!' 'Number for the special clinic's on the board' The Ironic Crimes thing really made me giggle.

I'm a Leeds girl, TRAPPED in Preston I moved here for uni, expecting to just do an undergrad. I've just agreed to a part-time PhD, so it doesn't look like I'm leaving any time soon.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was vile. I've never wanted to burn a book before. I felt it took advantage of the subject matter, while deliberately avoiding actually dealing with the big questions. The idea that a, what, 11? year-old boy, would think that concentration camp prisoners were people playing in a field made me seethe. Bang, Bang, You're Dead. This just won the Lancashire Children's Book Award and I was gutted. The children didn't really rate it as best, but they couldn't choose between this and two others, and somehow it won. Not only is it badly-written and nothing to do with the title or cover, but it implies that anyone with bipolar disorder is a crazy and a terrible parent, and anyone with a parent with mental illness will also turn out mentally ill, and dangerous. The plot was naff and a lot of the questions never tied up, I felt it was quite insulting and would never have been published in that state for adults.

The Waterstones one is okay, this one http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/subscribe is supposed to be for industry pros, but everyone on my course subscribes, it also tells you which books are going to be in the news that week, and any major discounts.

Mine go on book crossing and then get put on the shelves at my sister's cafe. I like the idea someone else will love them.

I'm heartbroken that it's over. My lust for Gene Hunt apparently knows no limits, and I can't believe there will be no more!

My favourite soup is parsnip and apple, roast two-three parsnips in a tiny bit of olive oil. Fry a small onion in as little oil as possible, add a couple of cloves of garlic, sliced. Add one Bramley apple, cubed. Chuck the lot in a blender with enough water to make a thick soupy consistency. Once blended, season to taste, heat through, and eat. It's an amazing soup, the flavours are far more complex and subtle than you'd expect. I usually season it with a bit of bouillon powder rather than salt.

I'm another one who loves to cook. I was put on antidepressants just before Christmas, had all my uni deadlines put on hold, and just let myself be a hermit for a bit. I baked and cooked until I was ready to reappear, and realised I'd forgotten how much I love it. I'm not always great at following recipes, I like throwing things together, but I can when I need to. I've just made a batch of cinnamon rolls to take over to my sister's tomorrow; I'll knock up some cream cheese icing for them just before I head over. I've learned that good cooking keeps friends: I know if I need some company, I only have to let my friends know I've made a batch of banana brownies, sticky chicken wings or my famous BBQ sauce and they're here in a flash!