Books 13 & 14 of 2016: Recapture Your Bounce by Infinite Ideas & The Wench Is Dead by Colin Dexter

I think I've mentioned before the fact that I have a habit of downloading all the free books available in a particular genre every so often. Clearly at some point in 2012/2013 I went through a phase of downloading all the self-help type books I could get my hands on, where they then languished on my Kindle/on the cloud, until last year when I decided to start reading them. I'm putting this down to the fact that I'd been Bullet Journalling and so was thinking of other little changes I could make in my life.

When I picked up Recapture Your Bounce to read on my Kindle I wasn't aware that it was by the same publisher as Goddess Be The Woman You Want To Be (which  I reviewed a couple of weeks ago). It's basically a collection of ideas for ways you can help yourself to have more energy.

I get the impression that this is a collection of ideas which are already published in their other little books. It's very short and it feels a little like a taster for some of the other books which Infinite Ideas have produced.

I'm fairly certain that a couple of the ideas which were given in this book also feature in the Goddess book, or perhaps the Goddess book took ideas from this one. Whichever it is, this one's focus is solely on ways to improve your energy levels.

Some of the ideas aren't really practical which I think is always a problem with books like this. Sometimes they seem to assume that money isn't an issue and anyone can just drop an aspect of your life and get on with something else, which realistically isn't an option for about 95% of the population. Thankfully this book acknowledges this and does suggest alternatives when the main solution isn't really achievable for many people.

All the same, not all of them work for me. The one which stands out for me is the way it suggests things to do during your lunch hour. For starters, I don't have a lunch hour, and if I did, I don't think I'd spend it in the gym or whatever. But if you're open to adapting, then it's not bad; sure I might not be able to head to the gym in my lunch break, but I've got enough time to go for a walk and expose myself to fresh air (sunlight might be a little too optimistic).

There weren't as many quizzes in this book as in the Goddess book but the ones I did do showed that my energy levels aren't too bad. I think this is partly because Mr Click and I have been consciously making little changes over the last year or so and they're obviously paying off. I think if I was do it again now, I'd probably score even higher.

It's a neat little book to highlight areas where you might need to make changes and help you think about you might feel a particular way. Definitely worth a read if you're into these sorts of books.

I followed Recapture Your Bounce with The Wench Is Dead which is Colin Dexter's eighth Inspector Morse book. At the time it was published it won the CWA Gold Dagger award so I had high hopes for this one.

This one breaks the usual format of the Inspector Morse in that he spends much of the book in hospital unwell. He learns of a historic murder case and sets about killing time in hospital by trying to solve the mystery. It's a much better use of his time than mine when I was in hospital. All I did while I was there was read Watership Down and The Pumpkin Coach and I didn't solve any murders at all!

I wasn't really sure what to think of this one at first because I've spent seven books getting used to the standard Morse format (someone is murdered, Morse gets on the case, several more people die or go missing, Morse makes several massive leaps of speculation, maybe someone else dies or goes missing, one of the massive leaps of speculation pays off, they catch the murderer).

Once I got into it I found I really enjoyed it. I loved the idea of Morse solving a crime from his hospital bed and I got so into the story that in the end I read it in just three days!

In typical Morse fashion, it did rely on rather a number of coincidences. He just happened to meet the people who had access to the things that he needed. He was able to visit Joanna's childhood home (which I think was scheduled for demolition or renovation or something) and find notes beneath the wallpaper. It was kind of a series of contrived coincidences, but at the end of the day, they slotted into the story and to be honest, I didn't really mind.

I do wish that the story had ended with Morse actually doing something with his findings. He did it all for his own amusement as some sort of intellectual exercise. Even though the case was very old I'm sure it would have been nice to give some sort of closure to any surviving family members to know that great-uncle whoever didn't actually kill that woman.

Niggles aside, I think this might be one of my favourite Morse books yet!