74 New goodies just out

It’s always difficult to keep pace with all the new titles appearing, so I’m trying to pick out a few that jump out and say “read me”. The first this week is the new Sandi Toksvig book called Chain of Curiosity [ Sphere £9.99 978-1847443458 ] which is a selection of her writings from her Sunday Telegraph column. I have to admit that I don’t often read the Sunday papers, so this would be new to me. I’ve always been a fan of Sandi Toksvig, especially when she chairs the “News Quiz” on BBC Radio 4. According to reports this new collection is bound to amuse: from the joys of World Pencil Day to the oddest way to meet a sticky end via school report vocabulary and applause etiquette. Sounds like a good one. Click here for a brief biography of Sandi on the BBC website

When Alan Titchmarsh was fifteen years old, all he wanted to do was work in a garden. It was a way of getting away from school where he didn’t seem to fit in. This is the point in his life where the new volume of his autobiography starts, called Knave of Spades [Hodder £20 978-0340953044]. But Alan decided he wasn’t just going to work in the local garden centre and be content with that – no, he wanted a challenge and this led eventually to the first steps in radio and TV via college and Kew Gardens. If you want to read about Alan’s earliest memories, then you will need Nobbut a Lad , which is still available [Hodder Paperbacks £7.99 978-0340831182]. Meanwhile Trowel and Error (awful title!)[Hodder and Stoughton £9.99 978-0340765432], seems to be a selection of memorable moments and episodes from his life so far.

Now to fiction and the WHSmith book of the week last week was the brand new thriller from Simon Kernick; Target [Corgi £6.99 978-0552156615]. If you enjoy a book set in a world of drugs barons, prostitutes, hit men and bent coppers, then this is for you. Kernick’s books are centred around the ganglands of North London where wrongs are “put right” by the barrel of the gun or a severe beating. Whilst you will find a sense of humour in the books, the main features are the dramatic elements – shoot outs, torture and the like – these characterise Kernick’s books. In this, his eighth book, Rob Fallon joins  his best-friend’s girlfriend, Jenny, in her apartment in London’s West End after a drinking spree. Then two men break into the apartment, try to kill Rob and carry Jenny off. The police don’t seem to want to know and Jenny’s father claims she has gone abroad. Meaty stuff.

If your stomach isn’t strong enough for that, then perhaps the latest from Marian Keyes might be more suitable: The Brightest Star in the Sky [ Michael Joseph £18.99 9780718149864]. The book opens with someone or something (the narrator) flying over the streets of Dublin and entering a block of flats, describing the domestic situations he/she/it finds. There’s an awkward family gathering in one flat and an argument between flatmates over the cleaning (or lack of it) in another. What this someone or something is you’ll have to read the book to find out – reviews have been a bit mixed, but mostly favourable.

Finally the Diagram Group’s 2009 prize for the oddest title of the year goes to The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais . It beat off several slightly racier titles for top place with a 32% share of the total vote. It is a nevertheless controversial title as the book was produced not by a living person, but by Professor Philip M Parker’s automated authoring invention, which produces a title on the basis of complex internet and database searches. Would that be cheating?

Next time – some new and recent local books

73 More for kids and grown-ups

It’s funny, isn’t it – it was only last week that I was writing about  a new Winnie the Pooh book and now, blow me if another old childhood favourite (though not one of mine), hasn’t been resurrected. There’s a new Noddy story just out: Noddy and  the Farmyard Muddle[HarperCollins Children’s Books, £7.99 978-0007318018 ] There are some new characters, including Stumpy the Elephant and The Bull, but those golliwogs are notable by their absence due to the term being now widely regarded as racist.

The author of the new story is Sophie Smallwood, the grand- daughter of Enid Blyton. It’s the first new Noddy book since 1963. Noddy has been around for 60 years, the first book having been published in 1949. I expect the publishers are hoping to attract as many adults reminiscing about their childhood as they are new young Noddy fans. I’m beginning to wonder if there are any other anniversaries I may have missed.

Back to adult stuff now and I expect like me you have come across a lot of novels that claim to be funny – laugh out loud funny – and prove to be very disappointing. Well, I’ve just read a book that says it’s funny and I really did laugh out loud – at times – and often enough to make me continue reading to the end, though I didn’t read it just for the laughs. Ring Road by Ian Sansom [HarperPerennial £7.99 978-0007156542] is quite a long novel about life in a small to medium sized town, the name of which we never get to know. There are several characters to whom we are gradually introduced throughout the book: first, there’s Davey Quinn, the seventh son of a seventh son, who has just returned to the town after an absence of 20 years to find it much changed, but populated with a lot of the people he used to know. There’s Francie McGinn, the minister of a church called “The People’s Fellowship”, whose pure thoughts sometimes give way to impure ones and eventually lead to his divorce from Cheryth and marriage to singer Bobbie Dylan. There’s Frank Gilbey, the entrepreneur, who got himself elected to the council so that he could influence planning decisions and turn them to his advantage. There’s Colin Rimmer, editor of the local paper called “The Impartial Recorder” who started out wanting to drag the paper into the modern age, but ended up with one that was substantially the same at is was 50 years ago. He’s undeterred: he has his sights on bringing down Frank Gilbey and moving on to greater things. The central “character” though is a building: “The Quality Hotel”, once a thriving venue in the centre of town, now a dilapidated shell and it’s what happens to the building that is the central theme of the book.

I enjoyed this book for several reasons; Ian Sansom has the ability to describe the lives of ordinary people and make them interesting, fascinating even. I dare bet that you will find a character in there which reminds you of someone you know (of) in your town. It’s a cleverly crafted story, but if you like action in your novels, then this is not for you. We get fascinating descriptions of the lives, the likes and dislikes, the aspirations of many different characters from all walks of small(ish) town life and at the end of each chapter, you realise that things have changed and the story has moved on. It was only at the end that I was a little disappointed, but I won’t give away what actually happens to the Quality Hotel.

Apart from this book, Iam Sansom is also responsible for the “Mobile Library” detective series, described as “cripplingly funny” by one critic.

By the way, at the back of the book, you’ll find an index (!!), but also a small section entitled “If you loved this, you’ll like…” a sort of list of suggestions for reading in a similar vein.

68 How to move (a) house

It’s said that probably the most stressful thing that many people do is to move house. Imagine how much more stressful it might be though, if you had to move not just the contents of the house, but the house itself – bit by bit. This is exactly what May Savidge did with her  half timbered medieval hall-house when the planners wanted to knock it down to make way for a road. This was back in the 1950s when progress was everything and preserving the past took a back seat in the face of development. After trying to fight the planning decision she eventually came to the conclusion that the only course of action would be to dismantle the house and rebuild it elsewhere (and by this time she was already 60 years old). Her house was in Ware, Hertfordshire and she decided she wanted to move to Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk .  Once the house was there May had to sort out all the components of the house and slowly put it back together again, with very little help from builders and others, whilst living in a cold, draughty caravan. As her nephew’s wife, Christine Adams, explains in the book, with the help of many extracts from May’s correspondence and detailed diaries, Miss Savidge took the next 23 years to put the house back together, but sadly she was unable to finish the task : old age and infirmity eventually took its toll.

Today the house is now finished and comfortable ;it has been featured on the BBC’s “Antiques Roadshow” and Christine Adams has written up the story of May and her ancient house in a remarkable book A Lifetime in the Building [Aurum £16.99 9781845133962]. The introduction by Paul Atterbury of the BBC Antiques Roadshow got me hooked: once started, I just couldn’t put the book down and continued reading whenever I had a spare moment.  It will be one of my recommended reads for 2009.

Are you old enough to remember the 1970s?

Well, if you are, then a new book published this month by Private Eye columnist and BBC Radio 4 News Quiz  panellist Francis Wheen may strike a chord. Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia [Fourth Estate £18.99 9780007244270] harks back to the decade when Harold Wilson believed that Soviet trawlers were spying on him when he took his holidays on the Scilly isles whilst the British secret service and the Conservative establishment thought he was a Soviet agent. It was also the decade of Richard Nixon’s strange behaviour in the White House and the trial of Rupert Bear.  Francis Wheen homes in on these and other examples of paranoia from the ‘70s in what promises to be a fascinating book.

Are you a fan?

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I’m a fan of that dynamic duo Ant and Dec who feature heavily in ITV’s Saturday night schedules. However, there’s no denying how phenomenally successful the pair have become and  I feel duty bound to let those of you who are fans know that Ant and Dec’s new book Ooh What a Lovely Pair [Michael Joseph £20 978-0718154462] is now available. The book has already reached the top three of the hardback non-fiction bestsellers according to The Bookseller magazine. As you might expect, Ant McPartlin and Declan Donelly, to give them their full names, are attending signing sessions in a few locations around the country  – ASDA at Derby Road , Spondon  (01332 661751) is the nearest they will get to our neck of the woods.  The signing session is due to begin at 12.30 on Thursday October 8^th – for conditions, please refer to the Penguin Books website.

67 Back in harness

Top crime seller

Ian Rankin may have “retired” Rebus, the hard drinking Edinburgh detective and though Rebus is still on the telly, Rankin fans may be suffering from withdrawal symptoms. From all accounts though, Rankin’s new creation is just as good. Inspector Malcolm Fox seems quite a different kettle of fish from Rebus: he’s teetotal for one thing. He’s a pretty successful detective and he works in the Complaints and Conduct section of the police force. His private life is a little more complicated and in this new book – The Complaints [Orion £18.99 978-0752889511], out this month, his private life gets mixed up with his job.  For an in depth review, see P D James in the Guardian.

How does it work?

When I was at school, I used to swap comics with my friends. One comic I particularly liked was The Eagle. I wasn’t specially bothered about Dan Dare; the section in the middle was my favourite – those cutaway drawings showing the workings of some boat, aircraft or piece of machinery, something  weird and wonderful like The “Scopitone” colour film juke box or more mundane machinery like a milk processing plant. I can’t claim that it encouraged me to take up a career in engineering or that I could really understand exactly how something worked after studying the diagram. I just think that the  coloured cutaway drawings were fascinating to look at and almost works of art.  Published last year, The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways [ Orion £14.99 9781409100140] complete with a “distressed” cover and pages made to appear browning with age at the edges, has hundreds of cutaway drawings faithfully reproduced from the pages of The Eagle. The editor, Daniel Tatarsky, has another book – The Eagle Annual: the best of the 1960s comic [Orion £14.99 978-0752888958] due out at the beginning of next month

What I did on my holidays

I promised last time to explain the four week gap in the appearance of my postings – the reason is I was in the USA, specifically in Utah, northern Arizona, Yellowstone National Park and Idaho. It was the holiday of a lifetime and we did a fair bit of travelling about as you can imagine. There wasn’t much time to do any reading, never mind visit a bookshop, sorry, bookstore as they call them over there. We were busy visiting as many of the big tourist attractions as possible and at most of them the tourist information centres stocked a very good selection of books about the area.  The Yellowstone Association information centre at Gardiner, Montana, on the northern edge of the park was no exception. In fact if you log on to the Association’s website, you’ll find a large selection of titles on just about every aspect of the Park, including of course, the wildlife. I brought back a souvenir of Yellowstone – a photographic book called The Abundance of Summer by Tom Murphy [Crystal Creek Press, $40 978-0966861983] It’s what you might call a coffee table book I suppose, but  it contains some excellent photography and it’s part of a series called “The Seasons of Yellowstone”. The other titles are The Light of Spring and The Comfort of Autumn, both $35 each.

As for visiting real book stores I did get to look around Barnes and Noble in Salt Lake City, which reminded me of our Waterstone’s shops in the UK. It was a large shop, all on one floor, with a Starbuck’s coffee bar. The general “feel” of the store was a little austere compared to Waterstone’s, but none the worse for that. I bought two books, one of which is Yellowstone Trivia by Janet Spencer (who calls herself “The Trivia Queen”) [Riverbend Publishing $9.95 9781931832700]. As its name implies it’s full of useful/useless facts such as a grizzly bear can run 100 metres from a standing start in six seconds or with every eruption of the geyser “Old Faithful”, 65lbs of dissolved silica is spewed out.  I’ll tell you about the other one in a few weeks time.

66 Endangered species and Houdini’s helper.

It’s been a little while since my last blog, so apologies for the delay. Normal service will now be resumed. As you might guess, I’ve been on my holidays and I’ll say more about that in the next posting. First I want to mention a new BBC TV series on Sunday nights  – “Last Chance to See” – in which Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine travel the world in search of endangered species. This is twenty years after Douglas Adams (author of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and Mark Carwardine set out to find some of the species that may not be around in a few years time if we’re not more careful. The new edition of the original book by Adams and Carwardine is out soon: Last Chance to See [Arrow £7.99 9780099536796]. A new book with the same title has been written by Mark Carwardine with a forward by Stephen Fry [Collins £20 978-0007290727]. Carwardine and Fry make a good entertaining partnership in the TV programme, so I’ll be interested to find out if this comes over in the book. There’s also another relevant website : Another Chance to See

I was very pleased to receive a blog comment from Ann Beedham, the author of the series of books Peeks at the Peak Vols 1&2 and Peeks at the Past In Sheffield. Ann has just produced another book and this is a little different. It’s about Randini, the man who helped Houdini. Ann can tell you more eloquently than me, so here’s what she has to say: “The stunt that helped to make Houdini a legend- escaping from a strait jacket whilst suspended hundreds of feet in the air wasn’t invented by the Master Mystifier. That honour belonged to a  long forgotten Sheffield  schoolboy…
Randini-The Man Who Helped Houdini is the remarkable story of a fan who helped reinvent his hero. Modelling himself on the escape artist, collecting every picture and news item,  the young Randolph Douglas   lived in world almost as magical  as the music halls glowing like coral reefs in the grey industrial wasteland. His pocket money bought not toys but locks, handcuffs and even straightjackets as he dreamed of future glory.
But it wasn’t just a daydream. Somewhere along the way fantasy and reality emerged as Houdini, the man who dined with princes, the man who was more famous than anyone, came to tea and began a friendship that lasted to the end of his life. But it wasn’t just a star pandering to a wide eyed fan. What Houdini found over tea and buns was to “change the history of Magic”. Ann devotes about 6 pages in the Peeks at the Peak Vol 2 [Pickard Communication £12.99 9781905278244] to Randini – real name Randolph Douglas – but there’s obviously a lot more to tell. I’ll be looking out for it the next time I call in a local bookshop. Ann tells me that her book is only available in some Sheffield bookshops at the moment, but can be bought online at www.youbooks.co.uk. (By the way, Randini we’re talking about is not to be confused with the magician David Randini)

I’ll tell you where I’ve been in a few days’ time

65 Suggestions for a good read

I complained last time that I had run out of something to get my teeth into, so now a blog reader and a quick browse in Waterstone’s  have provided me with some ideas…

First of all, I’m grateful to Ronni Goddard who posted a comment telling me about three novels by John Macken which are crime novels on a forensic theme. They are Dirty Little Lies, Trial by Blood and the latest one: Breaking Point [Bantam Press £11.99 978-0593061442] which is about a killer loose on the London Underground.  Ronni says “They are a touch brutal in parts, but very difficult to put down”. I haven’t been able to find out much about this author, except a few brief words on Lovereading.co.uk: John Macken works as a research scientist in the areas of genetic and forensic science. He lives in the midlands with his family. Thanks for that Ronni: I’ll try them out myself. By the way, John Macken has a new novel out in January 2010 called Control [Bantam £12.99 978-0593061459]

Browsing in the Chesterfield Waterstone’s the other day, I came across a thick novel in the “Local Interest” section.  It was Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher [HarperPerennial £8.99 978-0007174805] which is about the lives of two suburban dwelling families in Sheffield during the 1970s and ‘80s with accurate observations about life at the time – “pin sharp” according to one newspaper review. There have been many plaudits for this novel, but there have also been some comments about it being a bit long – over 700 pages (see the Guardian review),  but still worth trawling through. So that’s another one for my list.

More ways to find a good read

Last time I wrote about several ways of finding suggestions about what to read next using the internet. There’s a website that uses a quite different approach to finding your next good read. Supported by the Big Lottery Fund, Whichbook.net allows you to specify the kind of book you are looking for, rather than a genre or a type of author. You start off with a list of variables such as happy/sad, optimistic/bleak, gentle/violent: you are allowed to choose four of these and are invited move a slider along a bar to indicate for example whether you want a book that is conventional rather than unusual or easy rather than demanding or vice versa. You then click “go” and it will hopefully find a book for you.

Independently from this way of choosing, you can specify the character of the novel  - a male or female main character, the age group, sexuality and race. You can also specify the type of plot and the area of the world in which it takes place.

Having made your choices, the website will then search the database for a list of suggestions and usually it will come up with one plus a couple of “parallels”, ie. titles in a similar vein. The next stage is for Whichbook  to check if your local library service stocks the suggested title  and here it failed, at least for me.  I tried choosing both Nottinghamshire and then Derbyshire library services , but it failed to connect.  Is it my computer, or could it even be the time of day?  I’m not sure if this works after library hours as it were, but I don’t see why not.

Just a brief mention of a couple of American sites which might be of interest: Reading Woman is a site compiled by a group of women who have been members of a book group for several years and used to publish a journal full of what they call grassroots recommendations. Now they are in the process of putting all those suggestions on to their website and already they have a number of booklists you can access.

I might have mentioned Librarything.com before, but, as well as suggesting your next read,  I’ve just noticed that the site has a section in which you can enter the title of the book you’ve just read and it will come up with a list of titles you won’t like. It’s called the “Unsuggester”: I’m not sure how useful that would be.

… and finally.

Idly looking at my bookshelves today I noticed that two books with similar titles had been shelved side by side: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T E Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) and The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom which is the Von Igelfeld trilogy by Alexander McCall Smith. I read the former some years ago (just when I noticed that it might be a good idea to get my eyes tested, the print being rather small), but I haven’t read the latter – another reading suggestion I think.

64 What to read next

I seem to have reached a point where I’m not sure what to read next.  I’ve been browsing in the bookshops and looking back at some of the titles I’ve read in the past, but I’ve not hit on a really good novel  to get my teeth into. I surfed the net for a few ideas and found a few sites that try to help.  Of course the solution that springs to mind first of all is the Amazon site. In the web page for the title of the book you have just read , you will also be able to find which other title is frequently bought with that one, what customers who bought the title also bought and what customers ultimately buy after buying the title in question. If that isn’t enough there is a “Don’t Know what to read next” page where you will be offered a list of titles compiled by another customer. You can also sign in to get personalised recommendations (over 100 titles usually). If you’re a seasoned book reader or buyer you should already know about this, but you may not have come across some other sites which may help.

“What Should I Read next?” or “This one next” are from the same “stable” as it were. All you have to do is enter a title and author on the home page and it should offer you some titles which you might also like to consider.  I tried entering titles I had read recently, but I got error messages each time. Then I tried a classic – Emma, by Jane Austen and it came up with a list of 10 suggestions ranging from Mansfield Park by Jane Austin [sic] to Rivals by Jilly Cooper and included two titles by L M Montgomery.  At the end of the list it suggests that if you register, you would get more accurate suggestions.  In “This one next” I tried entering the same title by Jane Austen and it came up with the same list. On this site, the difference is that you can enter a CD or DVD title instead of a book.

The “Reading for Life” website was spawned by the National Year of Reading 2008 and has a number of ideas you might try, but does not suggest specific titles. The ideas you can try include joining your local library (obvious!), trying  a “Quick Read” with a link to the NIACE website, and taking the “Six Book Challenge”( a scheme which is being run by many local libraries).

Manchester Public Libraries have a special section on their website containing many fiction category lists from “Adventure and Intrigue” to “Multicultural Chick Lit.” and “Purrfect Crimestoppers” (about sleuths who have feline friends). There’s also a small number of reading lists on non-fiction and special topics. I know it’s sort of trendy to be able to enter a title and then click on a button to get a list of similar titles, but a straightforward old fashioned reading list can often be just as good or even better.

There’s one more site which I thought worth a try – I’ll do some more investigation on that site and report back next time.

For Doctor Who fans

There’s no Doctor Who on the telly at the moment, but to fill in the time before the next series, why not try one of these titles : Doctor Who: the Time Traveller’s Almanac [BBC £14.99 978-1846075728] will keep you happy for hours as it deals with all the different worlds and time periods visited by the two most recent Doctors. The book is arranged chronologically from the beginning of time to the end of the universe and is lavishly illustrated and I don’t use the word “lavishly” unless I mean it.

With a similar standard of illustration the David Tennant Casebook [ Orion £7.99 9781409104698]by Molly Mitchell claims to be the book that his fans have been waiting for with “facts, photos , quotes and interviews”. Having quickly browsed through it, I have to say it is very “gushing” and strictly for fans I would think. It’s been criticised for factual errors and spelling and grammar mistakes, but you can judge for yourself  if you download a pdf “preview” from the Orion website.

62 Sandi Toksvig and the Natural History Museum

Sandi Toksvig and the British Museum this time, but first: I promised to let you know about Mike Pannet’s book signing at WHSmith Mansfield. The author of You’re coming with me Lad: Tales of a Yorkshire Bobby [Hodder and Stoughton £12.99] will be in WHSmith to sign copies on July 24^th from 12 noon to 2pm.

A Comedy (?) of Errors.

I’m not sure what to make of Sandi Toksvig as a novelist ; I’ve just read one of her recent (2006) books – Melted into Air [Time Warner £6.99 9780751535433] which is set in a small town in Tuscany. I was hoping to find it quite funny.

Frances Angel – born with the surname Angelli – isn’t doing particularly well in her job as a theatrical impresario in England so her cousin Gina persuades her to take a break in the Italian village of Montecastello where she spent her earliest years. She tries to confront her past and find out what had happened to her two childhood friends after she was sent away by her parents to live with relatives in England. The only place to stay in the town is an art school which turns out to have a weird assortment of guests and proprietors who could do a good Italian version of Sybil and Basil Faulty. There is a darker side to the story: as very young girls, Frances and her two friends decided to announce that they had seen a vision when in actual fact there was no vision. This was immediately seized upon by the local priest as a good way to bring fame to the town and to further his career. One of her friends has been living under his “protection” ever since and it is suspected that he had something to do with the death of Frances’ other friend.

I have to admit that I nearly didn’t read this novel to the end. At times it didn’t seem to be getting anywhere and it wasn’t until at least three quarters of the way through that things really seemed to gel  as Frances and the other guests at the art school decide to put on a play for the whole town which will finally bring matters to a head. Perhaps my final comments on the book are that it is comical, but not especially funny and that it was like the curate’s egg – good in parts.  Watch a Google video here.

Life at the Museum

Whenever I think of the Natural History Museum in London, I think of the giant skeleton of the dinosaur , diplodocus carnegii which greets visitors as they enter the building. Apparently this is not a real skeleton, but a cast of an original in Pittsburgh and has been there since 1905. It’s this and thousands of other fascinating insights into the running of the Natural History Museum which Richard Fortey writes so eloquently about in his Dry Store Room No 1: the secret life of the Natural History Museum[ HarperPerennial  £8.99 978-0007209897]. (NB the illustration is of the hardback edition). It’s an absorbing exploration of the building housing the museum with particular emphasis on the areas not normally seen by the public. Take the wet collections for example “pickled, preserved and potted zoology”: round glass jars containing all manner of fishes, lizards, crustaceans, snakes and many other types of creatures in alcohol or formaldehyde.

In another part of the book Mr Fortey talks about the variety of characters who have worked at the museum spending years discovering new species and deciding where they sit in the evolutionary heirarchy. Some have published great tomes on very specialised subjects. David Reid, for example is devoted to winkles or littorina and has spent the best part of his professional life so far studying them. As Mr Fortey says, “they are ideal subjects to winkle out the truth about evolution”.

I’m going to repeat myself and say once again that this book really is fascinating. It’s not a book to read quickly, but rather one to savour as the author takes you on a tour of the museum or delves into a bit of gossip about some of the characters working  there. It might get a little technical at times and there is a smattering of latin names, but stick with it. This book is well worth the effort.

For Chick Lit fans….

… and that doesn’t include me, but if you like a spot of that type of reading from time to time, have you tried Paige Toon’s new book Chasing Daisy [Simon and Schuster £6.99 9781847393906] which is just out? It has a globe- trotting motor racing theme. You can find out more about Ms Toon on Simon  & Schuster’s website.

Another Odd Title.

A short while ago I mentioned the Diagram prize which is awarded every year for the oddest book title . In the shortlists of the past year or two I don’t remember seeing this one: Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification[Harry N. Abrams £9.95 978-0810955202] I’ve just discovered that this handy volume is on special offer in the latest Bibliophile catalogue for only £3.50. A snip!

59 Your bodily organs and who arrives first when they don’t work..

……but before all that: it’s the tenth Annual Lowdham Book Festival this year and it’s taking place in various locations around the village of Lowdham (just north east of Nottingham on the A612)  plus one or two other locations and lasts until June 27^th. Amongst the well known names that will be making an appearance this year are Jenni Murray (of Radio 4), Stephen Booth, Gillian Slovo and the railway writer Geoffrey Kingscott who will be talking about Lost Railways and Lost Stations. The box office number for all the events is 0115 966 3219. For more details about all the events go to the website.

Keeping Healthy

Last time I mentioned Dr Alice Roberts’ new book about the origins of our species: homo sapiens (see the previous edition of this blog). Dr. Roberts’ first book accompanied her first TV series in 2007 : Don’t Die Young [Bloomsbury £20 9780747590255]. In it she describes the principle organs of the human body and what we can do to help them all stay healthy and function properly. By understanding how your organs work and how to look after them, you stand a better chance of a healthier life. The book is lavishly illustrated (I really mean that) with many colour photographs, some of minute bacteria, cells etc, magnified 1000s of times as well as lots of colourful diagrams of our insides. There’s even an electron microscope photo of split ends – hair damaged by bleach.  In the introduction, Dr Phil Hammond says “Most people haven’t experienced the joy and wonder of dissecting a fellow human, but this [book] is the next best thing”.

If you’re not too keen on photos of your internal organs, just have a look at the special sections at the end of each chapter, where ways to keep your brain/liver/kidneys etc in good order are listed. I think I’ll just stick to that and try and follow Dr Roberts’ advice, one of the main points being to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day.

…and if something suddenly goes wrong…

…you might need an ambulance. This is where Tom Reynolds comes in. Tom works for the London Ambulance Service and for the past 6 years or so he has been publishing a blog about his daily experiences as an ambulance driver: Blood Sweat and Tea [The Friday Project £7.99 9781905548231] and More Blood, More Sweat and another Cup of Tea [The Friday Project £12.99 9781906321406] are both collections of excerpts from Tom’s blog about the many and varied experiences he has in his job.

Written in bight-sized chunks, you can dip into the book at almost any point to get a picture of what it really means to be an ambulance driver – answering emergency calls which might be a little old lady who has had a fall or a victim of a stabbing or just someone who has had a cough for a couple of weeks and just can’t seem to get rid of it. The situations he has to deal with range from the tragic to the ridiculous – they are all in a day’s work – as are the dangers all ambulance drivers have to face, whether it’s driving at high speed through heavy traffic or coming into contact with life threatening infections. Then there are all the abbreviations they use such as FRU (Fast Response Unit) and FBUA – you’ll have to read the book to discover what that stands for!.

I picked up Blood Sweat and Tea from the library. At first I thought I wouldn’t like the format of the book, but I started reading and found it hard to put down. Try it.

58 Espionage with Flair, Evolution and the Yorkshire Bobby

“He’s tall, he’s dark and, like the shark, he looks for trouble” – that’s a description of Lucifer Box, the central character in a series of quirky espionage novels by Mark Gatiss. I’ve just read Devil in Amber [Pocket Books £7.99 9780743483803] and thoroughly enjoyed it, though the plot became so incredibly complicated as it went on that there’s only space here to give you a rough idea of what it was all about. It takes place sometime in the 1920s or’30s (it’s left intentionally vague) when Box is asked by his employers (known as the “Royal Academy” – a sort of MI5) to eliminate a chap with the unlikely name of Olympus Mons. Mons is determined to take over the world with the help of the Devil himself and Lucifer Box’s sister Pandora (Lucifer and his sis don’t get on). The book begins in New York and finishes in North east England via Norfolk. Lucifer encounters, and is helped by, a most unlikely collection of characters. It’s action packed right from the start.

Mark Gatiss is of course one of the League of  Gentlemen (the award winning TV series), so it’s not surprising that his novels might be very offbeat. He says that most of his inspiration comes from the Flashman novels, but I would describe it as a sort of James Bond with a touch of Bertie Wooster.  To see a short video of Mark talking about the third – and probably the last – Lucifer Box novel (Black Butterfly Simon and Schuster £15 9780743257114) go to the publisher’s website.

Incredible..but true?

There’s just one more episode to go for the fascinating series presented by Dr Alice Roberts: “The Incredible Human Journey” on BBC2 on Sunday night. Dr Roberts takes us all over the world to some of the most unlikely places in search of clues to the reasons why homo sapiens was the only species of human being to survive. Of course there’s a book to go with the series, out now: The Incredible Human Journey [Bloomsbury £20 9780747598398]. I’m hoping that Nottinghamshire Libraries will stock it, but from past experience TV tie-ins are not always purchased.

Echoes of “Heartbeat” ?

This next title reminds me of an uncle of mine who was a country bobby in Northamptonshire, who used to regale us with tales of his exploits. In those days anyone caught doing wrong (usually a poacher or petty thief) was more likely to get a good hiding than be arrested. Somehow I don’t think Mike Pannet will have similar tales to tell about his life as a country policeman in rural Yorkshire. His new book You’re Coming with me Lad [Hodder and Stoughton £12.99 9780340918760] is more likely to remind people of the books by Nicholas Rhea (Constable on the Prowl, Constable around the Village etc) except that Mr Rhea’s books are now regarded as novels rather than non-fiction. (Nottinghamshire Libraries moved its stocks of “Constable” titles from the biography shelves to the fiction quite a while ago). In the publicity for Mike Pannet’s books (his first one was Now Then Lad [Constable £7.99 9781845298111]) he is being compared to Gervase Phinn and even James Herriott, so he’s one to watch out for.

You’re Coming with Me Lad will be published on 25th June and not long afterwards  Mike Pannet will be at W H Smith in Mansfield for a signing session – I’ll give the date later. My thanks to Margaret of W H Smith Mansfield for the information

New from Peter James

Former film producer and horror novelist Peter James is now firmly established as a good whodunit writer. His latest police procedural novel is out this week: Dead Tomorrow [Macmillan £16.99 978-0230706866] has been hailed as one of his best yet.