This morning I’ve just started The Taggerung by Brian Jacques. This is the next to latest in the fantastic Redwall series. I’m a great fan of this series, even though it is aimed at (older) children. I’ve read all the earlier books, seen the cartoon series, and listened to the audio tapes. It’s more than a year since I read the previous tale, and I’m looking forward to it.

I started a new book the other day, An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimeee Bender. Its a first novel, though the sleeve notes indicate she has a collection of short stories. It’s a very interesting book. It’s dark but not really in the conventional sense. More slowly going mad than nasty or evil. I am enjoying it though. Her writing style; first person, disjointed, jumping from past to present, suits the story well. So far, I have to recommend it, but perhaps not if you are easily disturbed.

Update: Ive finished this now. The ending took some thought, but yes, recommended.

The BBC are carrying the story June debut for Potter latest. Giving some details of the next Harry Potter book from JK Rowling; “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, which the story says will be a third longer than the fourth book.
I’m looking forward to it. We may have to get more than one copy in our house or there will be fighting 🙂

I forgot to mention that I read Bill Bryson’s African Diary the other day. I’d got it as a Christmas gift from Jan. We are both fans of Bill Bryson. I quite enjoyed it, but it did only take me a couple of hours to read; it’s a short book in a small format. One of those ‘proceeds go to charity’ books.
The ‘diary’ only covers a week Bill spent in Kenya as a guest of CARE International. He manages to tell the story, impress on the reader the seriousness of their work, and sprinkle the text with his usual brand of humour, all in a mere 56 pages.
Good.

I finished The Tom Holt Omnibus 2 this morning. There are two full novels in this omnibus and the contrast between the two could not be more pronounced. The first story: “Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?” is excellent. Typical of Holt at his best. I like his Norse/Scandanavian mythology based comedies. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The second story: “My Hero” was a disappointment. It started with a reasonable premise for a comic fantasy: The characters of an author’s latest novel-in-the-making have independent lives of their own. But the story very quickly gets bogged down in it’s own novelty (pun intended), trying to introduce too many story threads, characters (literally) and sub-plots. These various elements then seem to take forever to come together, being only occasionally amusing along the way, before reaching a disappointing anti-climax.

I cannot recommend the omnibus, because half of it is a waste of time. Buy
Who’s Afraid of Beowulf? on its own instead.

I finished Crypto: Secrecy and Privacy in the New Code War by Steven Levy yesterday. It really was a very exciting book. I particularly liked the fact that about half way through the book, it got into the stuff that I remember happening at the time. The start of the cypherpunks mailing list, the birth of PGP, the clipper chip fiasco, etc. But of course with a lot more detail (and drama) than I knew of at the time. There were lots “Wow! I didn’t know that”, and “So that’s what happened!” moments.

Recommended!

I’ve finished reading The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the trilogy. It was a very good book. It didn’t just concentrate on the facts and figures, although there are plenty of them, but also tried to convey some of the personalities involved.
Recommended.

My next book is Crypto: Secrecy and Privacy in the New Code War by Steven Levy, which I’ve already started. This is already turning out to be an excellent book! Very exciting (to me at least!)

Just a quick catchup on the books I’ve read in the last couple of weeks that I may or may not have mentioned.

JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Jill Murphy – The Worst Witch
Narinder Dhami – Sleepover Girls Go Designer (The Sleepover Club)
Steve Perry – Men In Black

I was thinking of listing my favourite books of the year, but given that I’ve read well over a hundred books in the last twelve months, and I have no idea which were published this year (very few of them) I decided not to.

I’m currently reading The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the trilogy.