Books 52 & 53 of 2016: Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and the First Christmas by Harriet Beecher Stowe & A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Yes, I'm still reviewing Christmas books. Look at it this way, you can use this to give you an idea of books to look out for in the run up to December this year.

First of today's books is a collection of stories by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and the First Christmas.

This is a trio of stories, all with a Christmas theme and to be honest, they're kind of depressing. The first has babies dying at Christmas to give people a sense of pity for suffering. The second has a guy giving up on his dreams of an education. And the third was about the Pilgrims and had people dying as well!

These stories are obviously intended to be religious and moral stories for the season though one of the biggest things I was aware of as I was reading them was how much has changed since this book was written.

It's a very short book, only about one hundred pages. All the same, it took me quite a while to get through. It was a nice glimpse into the past, but it's one that I'm unlikely to read again.

I followed this up with A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens because it was the second week of December and it needed to be done. This time I read it in ebook format.

I've reviewed this one so many times that I'll keep this fairly short. And I'm pretty confident that you know the gist of A Christmas Carol. If you don't, head over to Project Gutenberg and read it, then come back and read this review.

As always, I enjoyed my reread of this book. It took me a little longer than usual to read, though I've noticed in later years I've been slower to read it than in the past. For a while I used to be able to sail through it on Christmas Eve, but now I try and read it earlier in the month so it's done before Christmas Day.

I picked out all of my favourite quotes as I read. Some of them are favourites purely because of the various adaptations that we've seen and own, but lots of them are because of the way that Dickens writes. And some are a combination of both the writing and the way they're played in the adaptations.

Speaking of the adaptations, I couldn't help but imagine them as I was reading. In my head I've got the kind of perfect version with Scrooge taken from this film, and Marley taken from that one, and Bob Cratchit from this one. In my head it's also a musical with a mix of songs from three of the musical versions as well. It's a little distracting when you're trying to read.

Books 50 & 51 of 2016: The Jewels That Was Ours by Colin Dexter & The Spirit of Christmas by Henry Van Dyke

I decided to take a short break from the Christmas books at the very end of November last year and Mr Click was working on his Colin Dexter books so I decided to give the next one a go; The Jewel That Was Ours.

A group of American tourists are visiting Oxford when one of them dies suddenly and the priceless antique that they were bringing to a special presentation is stolen. Of course, once Inspector Morse is on the case, it's not long before things get very complicated as the case is solved.

I got through the first half of this book quite quickly but then as the case dragged on I found that I slowed down my reading as well. I wanted it to be solved but it seemed to take a long time for it to get figured out and I just found my attention wandering.

I don't know if part of the reason for my slowing down was because I could vaguely remember the TV adaptation . It's been quite a while since I saw it, but I think that the ending was different. I guess that's a good thing since you can enjoy the book and the adaptation without one spoiling the other.

This book definitely doesn't give you what you needed to know to solve the case. I suspected that this is also part of the reason why it took me so long to get through as well. If I can't help figure out the case myself, I end up feeling frustrated and I guess that translates to a lack of motivation to go on, since nothing I read will help me solve the crime.

Mr Click has very nearly finished reading all of these books, I think he's just got the one left, so I suspect that we'll be watching the TV series in the next few months. I'm quite looking forward to seeing the adaptation of this one again.

By the time I finished up The Jewel That Was Ours I was ready for something a little more Christmassy, so I went with an ebook version of The Spirit of Christmas written by Henry Van Dyke in 1905. This is a collection of essays and stories about Christmas.

This is a really short little book. I was able to read it all on the 8th of December in a couple of sittings, but it's short enough that it could be read all in one go.

The story at the beginning kind of reminded me of Pilgrim's Progress. It was the angels learning about the birth of Christ so I guess that it was the setting which put me in mind of Pilgrim's Progress. On the whole though, I preferred the essays. The very last one made me think of A Christmas Carol since the message was about carrying a Christmas spirit all through the year.

It's an interesting little read and I think I picked exactly the right time of year to read it.

Film Review: Moana

I really wanted to see Moana but we just missed it when it was at our local cinema so when we were putting an order in to Amazon shortly before our frozen embryo transfer, I asked Mr Click to use it to make up the order so we could watch it during my long weekend chilling at home.

The day after our transfer, I dragged myself out of bed in the afternoon, settled in front of the TV and we popped in the film.

Moana is a teenager who must set out on a quest to help save her people as their island is slowly enveloped by a curse. She meets up with the demigod Maui who must help her to return the heart of Te Fiti to prevent the spread of the darkness which is taking over her island home. Of course, along the way, in true Disney style, Moana learns what her true destiny is.

I can remember when I was younger being told that you can always tell a Disney film by the way that they animated the water. Disney animators seemed to have cracked the way that water flows and ripples and reflects the light in a way which many other film studios just couldn't seem to get.

Nowadays I think that's probably not so much the case. When you look at films like Shrek or Ice Age the water flows and ripples and reflects the light in a very believable way. But Disney have outdone themselves with the animation in Moana.

I wasn't expecting the sea to be a character in its own right, but it selects Moana for her quest as a child, capturing her spirit and calling to her despite her parents attempts to keep her away from it.

Moana is a brilliant character as well. She can't help but be drawn to the sea from an early age, after the encounter seen above. But she's the chief's daughter and is expected to help lead her people. Her father is keen to keep her away from the sea following his own bad experience, but eventually Moana gets her chance to go and heads off on her mission to save the island.

She's a strong character, but she's also a teenager and she's not totally confident in herself. I think she's pretty gorgeous as well. I like that Disney are exploring characters of different races and even more impressively almost every character in this film is voiced by an actor of Polynesian descent. As a young white girl I was lucky in that many of the Disney Princesses had skin or hair or features just like me (more or less) and it's only in recent years that I've really become aware of the fact that for many children that's simply not the case. I think Disney still has a way to go in this department, but I think they're taking steps in the right direction.

Moana's got a lot to learn which I like in a character, it's always good to see that a character is out of their depth and doesn't really know what they're doing. Obviously if you're going to run off and take on a mission at sea, perhaps one important thing to master is the ability to sail. Something which Moana isn't too hot at, but luckily (or perhaps unluckily at first) she meets up with Maui.

Maui is a demigod who thinks rather highly of himself. Unfortunately, he needs his hook to use his shape-shifting powers so they have to hurry off on a side mission to retrieve this from Tamatoa, a giant crab creature before they can restore Te Fiti's heart. Maui isn't overly keen on Moana at first, but gradually he comes around.

One of my favourite things about Maui is his tattoos. He's covered in little miniature representations of himself and the great things he's achieved. These little mini-Maui's seem to be rather critical of him which is the source for lots of little funny moments. There's something about the tattoos which reminds me of the chorus in Hercules.

Maui also has probably the best song in the film, You're Welcome:

If you've not heard this before, be prepared to be singing it for the rest of the day!

The music in this film isn't quite as earwormy as the songs from Frozen, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm sure there are many preschooler parents who are thrilled not to have Let It Go the Second blaring at them every five minutes. I was a little disappointed that the songs didn't quite capture me the way that they did when I watched Frozen (and to some extent, Tangled) but now I feel like they're more of a slow burn collection of songs. I think with each rewatch I'm going to like them a little bit more.

And that's the same sort of feeling I have for the film as a whole. I think that there'll probably be a lot more that I could say about this film once I've watched it again. I'm actually already planning a rewatch a week on from seeing it, which is a clear sign that a film has actually grabbed my attention even if I didn't think it had.

If you've not seen it already, definitely make time to watch it. Enjoy the story, have fun listening to the songs, and celebrate the new characters Disney have introduced us to.

Books 48 & 49 of 2016: Christmas Entertainments by Alice Maude Kellogg & A Cowboy For Christmas by Kristen James

It's nearly June so what better time to review the books that I was reading last Christmas?

Both of these were ebooks from my extensive Christmas ebook collection, the first of which was Christmas Entertainments by Alice Maude Kellogg. This is a collection of poetry and prose for school plays written by in 1897.

Before I even get to reviewing the contents of the book, I have a bit of a bone to pick with the formatting of this ebook. The poems ended up with a scroll arrow right at the bottom of the page, which I've never seen before. It was in exactly the right place to mean when you hit it you frequently brought up the progress bar instead of scrolling down to the next stanza of the poem.

On a couple of occasions I wasn't paying attention, hit the scroll arrow, brought up the progress bar and then tapped again so jumped forward in the book and had to try and backtrack to where I'd been moments before.

I don't know if this was just my old Kindle being, well, old, or if this is something screwy in the way this ebook was set up. I've never seen it before and there didn't seem to be any way to turn it off. Perhaps at some point I'll try downloading it onto my new Kindle to see if this still has the scroll button, but I'm probably not that invested in this book to bother doing that.

This book was very dated which meant that it came across as kind of offensive. A lot of the little plays/rhymes for children to recite would need reworking to make them less racist or sexist. Plus a lot of them call for the songs to be sung to the tune of songs which aren't widely known any more.

It's a nice little snippet of history but I think it would be pretty redundant for what it was originally intended as.

Still in the mood for something festive, I followed this up with A Cowboy for Christmas by Kristen James.

When the brother she barely knew passes away, Missy inherits his share of the Stables he was running with Brent and decides that she won't let her lack of knowledge of horses put her off trying to make a go of it. Brent's not convinced she's got the staying power the business needs and, of course, sparks begin to fly.

This is a really short read, just 176 pages. I read it in a few sittings over the course of the day on the 27th of November. You pretty much know what to expect from a book like this and this book pretty much delivers.

It was fairly obvious that Missy and Brent were going to get together, you can kind of tell that from the title and the cover. It's kind of like when you watch a romantic comedy, it's not about the ending since you already know what will happen, it's about the route they take to get there.

I did like the writing style. It wasn't trying to be anything fancy but I enjoyed the descriptions of the scenery. There was also a sample of another book at the end which sounded pretty good as well.

A nice little read if you're looking for something vaguely festive and totally fluffy.

Books 46 & 47 of 2016: The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel & Dear Almost a poem by Matthew Thorburn

Yesterday I shared The Hogwarts Tag which included a picture of my Halloween costume for last year. I very carefully hand-lettered a book cover for a Muggle Studies textbook. That 'textbook' was actually the 46th book that I read last year, The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel, the fourth book in the Earth's Children series.

When it's not dressed up as a Hogwarts school book, it looks like this:

This book follows Ayla and Jondalar's journey back across all the land that Jondalar spent the last two books travelling through. Their journey is pretty time sensitive as the last bit of the journey requires them to cross a glacier and warmer weather is rapidly approaching. They meet up with a lot of other people and have a lot of hot prehistoric sex!

This is a massive book; it clocks in at 724 pages! This was the main reason I picked it to become a Hogwarts textbook because it looked suitably massive enough to be a magical book. Sadly I don't have Hermione's beaded bag so it took me nearly a month to read as it had to stay at home rather than come out in my bag; if I'd taken it with me there was very little room for anything else!

I think it would have been better as at least two, if not three books. Ayla and Jondalar spend time with several different tribes and since Auel goes into so much detail on everything that even more detail could've been given to the cultures and the book wouldn't have been so huge. There was SO MUCH of this book dedicated to the scenery and the flora and fauna that I couldn't help but skim read those bits.

And then there's the sex. There's so much sex. Ayla and Jondalar regularly stop to 'share Pleasures', which isn't bad in and of itself but the book could have been about two hundred pages shorter if they'd not stopped to bonk quite so often!

When I finished this on the 24th of November I was initially at a bit of loss for what to read next and just planned to select a Christmas read from my Kindle when I arrived home from work to find a package from Stacy @ Stacy's Books. It contained a copy of Dear Almost a poem by Matthew Thorburn.

This is a book length poem, written after the author and his wife experienced a miscarriage. It's addressed to the child who they never got to meet.

It arrived on exactly the right day, the one year anniversary of losing our twins and it was just what I needed to read. I'm not sure I can even formulate the words to explain just how beautiful this book is. I had a physical ache in my chest as I read it. I stopped up late and cried.

You can actually feel the love and grief in the words on the page, but in a way it was also nice to read. Pregnancy loss is one of those things which is so rarely spoken about, it was strangely validating to read a book written by someone who experienced it and had gone through all those emotions you had felt and were feeling.

I don't normally share quotes on my book review posts anymore, but this one had so many quotes I wanted to save in my book journal that I can't help but share the top five I selected to copy out in the the end, because this will explain my feelings for this book far better than any words I can use.

Pages 25 & 26
I want to show you
what life is like
here where you ought to be
with us, but aren't:
a not-uncommon story
though few people will tell you

it's their story too. They choose
not to relive it, relieved
not to revisit what happened
or didn't. What should have.
What went wrong
for no other reason, finally,
than that it didn't go right.
Ours is the story of how
is became was and was became
wasn't, became no,
became not. The story of
our almost girl, our might've been.

Page 41
This is the story of
what's missing, a space
one can see only
because we've filled in
everything around it:
keyhole I peer through
to what I can't hold,
little hole in my heart
where the air leaks out,
little no more, no luck or way
or how.

Page 44
I think of you still,
so still, and not there anymore
in that dark room,
though I ought to know
better, though I feel
the tiny light I cup
deep inside me gutter
and go out. "It's strange,"
Lily says when
I come home, "and unsatisfying, isn't it?
To hurt like this for someone

we never met?"

Pages 53 & 54
There's
a piece of me that's
missing. I almost didn't
know she was there
but she was there and now
she's gone.

Pages 71 & 72
It scares me
I can no longer
picture your face,
which was only ever
my imagining of
how your face
might look someday -
not enough
to hold onto.
I've had to learn to live
with this: we
didn't see you, didn't
meet you, only
knew you
were there a little while
and then you weren't.

There are lots of little repeated motifs through the book as the seasons change and the author seems to come to terms with the loss they experienced. The sense of loving someone you never got to meet and really knew nothing about, but who you loved completely unconditionally.

Even if you've never suffered that kind of loss yourself, read this book. It might just give you a glimpse into what other people have suffered and you might come close to getting a tiny sense of understanding.

Just read it.

Books 44 & 45 of 2016: Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs & Songs of the Road by Arthur Conan Doyle

I feel like all I seem to be doing at the moment is writing book reviews. Since I got my new Kindle I've rediscovered my love of the Goodreads site, so I've been working back through my book journals for the last couple of years and adding all the reviews to the site. I'm all up to date again now, but I've still got a few books to add from some of my older book journals.

But here and now, I'm looking at two of the books I was reading in October last year. The first of these is Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs.

Tempe Brennan is excavating some remains in an old convent when the call comes in that there's been a fire and she's needed to help identify the bodies. Soon the bodies start to mount up, including murdered twin boys, and it appears that there's a strange cult behind it. As if that's not enough, her sister Harry has come to town and is acting oddly too.

I've read this one several times but it's been a while since my last reread and I'd forgotten just how much was packed into this book. For some reason I thought that some of the dead bodies that crop up in this story were actually from a later book in the series.

That said, once I started reading it, I started to remember what happened at the end, so that made me read slower. I can't help it, if there's no urgency to get through the book to find out who did it, I can't help but slow down. I like trying to solve the crime which obviously, I don't need to do if I already know who the bad guys are.

I think I also found it difficult to get through this book because the deaths of the babies really bothered me. I found that hard to read and so that made it harder to pick up the book.

This book is notable for being the one where Tempe and Andrew Ryan kiss for the first time. In fact, they almost do a lot more than just kiss! Whenever I read that now I can't help but be taken back to the moment I read it, sitting on a train heading into Glasgow on my way to Uni. We were almost into Glasgow Central and I didn't want to stop reading to get off the train!

I followed this up with an ebook, picking one which had been on my Kindle for ages without having been read. It just happened to be an Arthur Conan Doyle book, Songs of the Road. This is a poetry collection.

I didn't actually realise that Arthur Conan Doyle had written poetry so it was a bit of a surprise when I opened it and discovered this was a poetry book! On the whole I did enjoy it.

The poems all seemed to follow a similar sort of rhythm. Without getting too OU-ish about it, I thought the metre of the poems was good. There's also lots of references to places in Scotland which were fun to look out for.

Some of the poems also used different accents in them which were a fun little touch. I felt like it followed on quite nicely from the Merry Men ebook which I'd read a few weeks before.

I think that there's another couple of Arthur Conan Doyle books that I've not yet read. I might have to bump them up my reading list.

Books 42 & 43 of 2016: The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace & Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson

When I visit my Nan in Wales, she always makes a point of making sure I'm well set for reading material and The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace was one that she passed on to me when I went down last year.

It is set during the Victorian era and features a woman named Anna who has been sent away by her husband to an institution. At first it seems as though she was sent there with just cause, but gradually Anna's story comes out which makes you wonder if perhaps her husband's motives might have been ever so slightly sinister. Alongside this is the story of a young doctor who is exploring the possibility of using photography to help diagnose the women he treats.

I felt like I had a bit of a slow start to this one. I guess part of that was because in the beginning I wasn't sure what to expect from it and even when I started I didn't know what sort of a story it was going to be. As I progressed through the book and I learned more about Anna and how she came to be where she was, I couldn't help but get hooked and really drawn in.

It was written in such a way that my opinion of Anna changed as I read. At the start of the book I believed that there was something wrong with Anna because she didn't seem to be doing much to prove her sanity, but gradually I came to realise that there was nothing wrong with her and that there were bigger factors at play in the story.

There's also the subplot featuring the family who run the institution she has been sent away to, and the realisation that they're all kind of in need of help themselves. I found their story almost as interesting as Anna's, particularly trying to figure out what Catherine was going through.

At the end of this book is a preview of the next book, however this one follows Louisa and Harriet; Anna's sister and niece. I love it when you get books which share characters, however this one is set many years after the events of Anna's story. I wonder if Anna will crop up in that one.

I followed this up with a collection of Robert Louis Stevenson stories on the Kindle, Merry Men.

I was already familiar with one of the stories in this collection, Olalla, which I have in the Penguin Little Black Classics edition. I think that I enjoyed it a little more for the second reading though.

This collection had a very 'Scottish' feel to it, particularly 'The Merry Men' and 'Thrawn Janet'. 'The Merry Men' was set on a Scottish island so I especially enjoyed the references to island life in that one. The latter was written in Scots dialect; sometimes I think in Scots dialect (even though when I speak there is no hiding my Englishness), so I didn't have any trouble understanding the story. It was pretty creepy.

'The Treasure of Franchard' seemed to go on for a really long time, but I did enjoy the ending. I think I appreciated it more when I finished it than I did when I was reading it because I liked the way that it ended up developing.

I do have to admit that I'm a bit of a Stevenson fan so I doubt that this will be the last book I read by him.

TV Series Review: 24

Towards the end of last year one of my colleagues at work summoned me to his desk as soon as I'd walked through the door. Intrigued I headed over and was definitely not expecting him to ask me whether I'd ever seen the TV series 24. I've been passed a fair few book recommendations from him over the years, but normally this kind of conversation is reserved for asking me to pick up some emails or do a little handlettering, I definitely play to my strengths at work.

Instead, he had the box set of 24 and wanted to know if I wanted to borrow it. I did and that afternoon it was duly deposited on my desk.

We didn't get around to it until the start of this year seeing as we were entrenched in our annual Christmas film session at the time he brought the series to me. We'd originally planned to go on with watching Criminal Minds at the start of the year, until I decided that I really couldn't face it at the time we were doing the IVF treatment. I needed something a little softer which didn't have people being brutally murdered and sadistic serial killers at every turn.

It turns out that 24 fit that bill quite well. This is kind of funny considering there are nuclear bombs and shoot outs and poisonous gases and all sorts of other terrible things going on in every episode but perhaps because the original series started way back over a decade ago before these things became so commonplace in out TV viewing, it didn't feel as intense somehow.

24 is basically a cross between Die Hard and Spooks. Each series is told in real-time, following Jack Bauer, a CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) Agent as well as his friends, family and coworkers. Every episode follows the events that take place within that hour and I have to admit, it's a nice gimmick.

When we first began watching the very first series I was a little worried. As with any series with an ensemble cast, it can be a little tricky to keep track of who everyone is and what they're doing. And it seemed like there was a lot happening right from the very first second of this series. Once I got into the swing of things though, I have to admit that I quite enjoyed it.

Mr Click and I had a bit of a bad habit of commenting on everything that was going on, mainly because of how there was never just one bad thing happening. All of the bad things, things that can go wrong, and inconvenient moments all happen at the worst possible moment. Sometimes you go kind of get the sense that they were dragging the storylines out just to make sure it stretched out to the full twenty-four episodes for the series. The tension of the last four of five episodes of each series really bugged Mr Click no end, it was kind of funny watching him almost reach breaking point with every series.

Obviously the hero of the series was Jack Bauer, though at times he doesn't really come across as the most likable of guys. So many of the issues he (and everyone else) encounters in the series could be avoided if occasionally he just told them what he was doing and why. Of course, he couldn't do that because there were enemies on every side who might sell him out or take him down.

My favourite character is probably Chloe O'Brian, mainly because she is the person I could relate to most of all. She doesn't get on with most people, she just wants to get on with her job and she finds it very frustrating when other people want to do things in an impractical or inefficient way. A lot of the comments that she makes about things are the sorts of things I would be thinking myself were I in her shoes, but just wouldn't actually say out loud, or at least while there were people around in earshot. She probably undergoes the most growth as a character over the course of the series so it seemed like she may have actually learned some things from her experiences at CTU and with Jack.

Mr Click's favourite series was the very last one, whereas I liked the third one. We also both quite enjoyed the prequel to series 7, Redemption, which was included in the box set.

On the whole, I quite enjoyed the series and I'm glad that I've seen it. There were lots of little things that bugged me while I watched it, the not least the fact that for all its security and protocols, it was easier to get into CTU than the call centre where I work. Each series had a mole who was feeding information to the bad guys; you think they'd improve their screening procedures.

Also, in the 24-verse, being the President is a lonely job since you're pretty much guaranteed to lose all your family members once you get the role, probably because they're needing to go to jail for murdering people!

It's a programme I could see myself getting on DVD some time and watching again, though Mr Click isn't too sure himself. Watching it a second time would probably lessen some of that tension, but I'm sure it would make those earlier episodes a little easier to follow as you'd already have a handle on who everyone was.

Books 40 & 41 of 2016: Farmer Giles of Ham and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien & Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling

With the end of the A to Z Challenge we can return to your normally scheduled blog posts, which means that for the first time in over a month, it's time for a book review post.

Way back in September last year I picked up a book which I'd actually been given some time previously and it had sat on my bookshelf waiting for me to get around to it.

Image from Tolkien Library

That was a single volume edition of Farmer Giles of Ham and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien. The latter is a collection of poetry which I've read before, the former is a short story about the titular Farmer Giles and his adventure which involves a dragon.

I've read The Adventures of Tom Bombadil many times before but Farmer Giles of Ham was entirely new to me. It's actually one which I'd been hoping to get my hands on for a while but I hadn't yet found a copy of it. Until a friend saw it in a charity shop and knowing me as well as she does, bought it without even asking whether I needed it.

I actually feel like I need to reread the first half of this book. I don't know if it was because I was just reading it in dribs and drabs every now and again so I didn't get a continuous run at it, or if it was just because the story was brand new to me, but I found it a little tricky to follow at times. I think I'd do better taking the time to sit and read it for a while, rather than the odd page here and there as I did.

I love Pauline Bayne's illustrations. Her illustrated poster of 'Bilbo's Last Song' hangs at the bottom of my staircase and I look at it each time I come down those stairs. I thought her illustrations for Farmer Giles were like the pictures you get on tapestries.

As always, my absolute favourite part of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is 'The Mewlips'. It's dark and creepy but conjures up such vivid imagery for me.

I still think the poems sound best when they're read aloud. You get a better sense of the rhythm of them than just read silently.

I followed this up with a Rudyard Kipling ebook which has been hanging around on my Kindle since virtually the time that I figure got one, Rewards and Fairies.

This is a collection of stories and poems. The stories follow a couple of children who meet a fairy called Puck who introduces them to a number of historical characters. These are interspersed with little poems.

I found this a tricky read. The children would meet 'people of the past days' who would then tell them stories, so you've got a story within a story going on. At times I found it a little confusing about who was speaking and whether they were telling a story of the present day or the past.

Although the stories were quite nice, I actually preferred the poetry in this book over the prose. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the stories. To begin with it reminded me of a sort of cross between Enid Blyton (specifically The Faraway Tree, since they were meeting new people each time they met Puck) and Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

I would have liked to know a little more about the historical people the children were meeting and the eras they were from. I got the impression that I should have known who a couple of them were but I just didn't have a clue. Perhaps I would have enjoyed their stories more if I'd understood their backstory.

It seemed to take me ages to get through what was otherwise a pretty short book. Insomnia helpfully got me to the end of it.

Film Review: Beauty and the Beast

In a slightly break from tradition, as I'm blogging my way from A to Z this month, I'm substituting my normal Silent Sunday for a decidedly chatty film review post.

After our trip to the cinema last week to see Lion, we made a return visit to see the live action version of Beauty and the Beast. My Mum (hi Mum!) had seen it the week before and assured me that I would love it, but I was a little anxious. The animated version is without a doubt my favourite Disney film so it had a lot to live up to!

Warning! Here be spoilers!

Don't say I didn't warn you!

I need to start this by saying that Belle is my princess.

I can vividly remember watching the animated film on video tape, setting up the four pouffes we had in our living room as my props (such as the edge of the fountain where Belle sings to the sheep as she looks at her book) and pretty much acting out the film as I watched it. Belle's library is the inspiration for my happy place. She was the weird girl who walked around with her nose stuck in a book; I was the weird girl who walked to and from school (and around it) with my nose stuck in a book. I can remember feeling terribly jealous of my friend who had brown hair and brown eyes and therefore looked far more like Belle than I ever would.

And then when I was starting school in a new country, with a new curriculum and (let's face it) almost a whole new language, I discovered Harry Potter and met Hermione Granger. The bookish girl from a slightly different background to her new world who loved to study and that was okay.

This film is kind of a melding of two of Young Click's heroes.

And I was worried about that. Was it going to feel like I was watching Hermione Granger running around being my all time favourite Disney princess?

It wasn't.

I like the fact that right from the very beginning it works to close up some plot holes from the original film. I'd heard that some of the characters were getting a little more backstory (I think most of the main characters come away with a little more backstory than the original) and I was concerned it was just going to be plot for plot's sake. It wasn't.

We get to see what the Prince is like before he's cursed, we learn why everyone in the castle was cursed, we learn just why Belle and her Father moved to the 'poor provincial town', we learn why no one in the village is aware of a big castle full of enchanted furniture just on the other side of the woods from them. These are all really important things!

And do you see the colours in the picture above?

The film is so vibrant that it feels like a nod back to the original film. Belle stands out against all their earth toned clothes, just as before, but it's also really bright, like watching a cartoon. I also have to admit that I spent a fair chunk of the film studying Belle's outfits and wondering how easy it would be to put together a costume like that for Halloween. Her clothes are just beautiful!

And it's really minor, but I love that they changed the bookseller. It's always bugged me that in the animated film everyone comments on how strange it is that Belle likes to read, and yet the bookseller is still in business. In this version she's borrowing books from the parish priest who has a modest collection of books, through which Belle escapes from the mundane life of the village. It was just a really minor thing at the start of the film, but I knew at that moment that this film was just made for me!

Gaston is just the guy you want to hate, even if he does look like Luke Evans. He comes across as scary twisted because he's capable of being almost kind to Belle when the villagers are picking on her, and yet he'll also happily leave someone to be eaten by wolves.

While Le Fou is more than just the bumbling sidekick. I love that he starts off fawning all over Gaston but gradually comes to question what his hero is doing. And his version of Gaston is just brilliant. I spend most of Saturday listening to the soundtrack and that was one I had to keep playing over.

Speaking of the soundtrack, all the old favourites are here, but there's some new ones as well (and some new lyrics in the old songs). Everyone does a brilliant job of the singing. Hermione Granger and Bard the Bowman can sing, guys!

And what about the Beast?

He's more of a character in this. I mean, he's obviously a character in the animated version, but he's not got a whole lot to do other than fall for Belle and gradually become more civilised. But we don't actually know much about why he was the way he was in the animated version, he was spoiled and turned an old lady away, but that's about it.

In this version we learn why he's the way he is. And it turns out that he and Belle have some things in common, and yet it (or rather their father's) caused them to go in different directions. They both have a love of books as well which gives them something to bond over.

It's lovely to see the Beast becoming more human, it's subtle too. He starts off wearing tattered clothes and then gradually starts dressing the way he does above. He and Belle take walks in the ground, she reads to him. You're watching two people become friends and discovering that despite their differences they can get along.

'Something There' is one of my favourite sequences in the original because it shows the coming together of Belle and the Beast. In this version we get the song, but instead of a montage of them hanging out and drinking porridge, we also get to watch all the sweet little moments bonding in the library and Belle learning exactly what happened to her mother.

And what about the castle staff/objects?

I wasn't too sure about them at first. Particularly Mrs Potts, she just looks so different from the Mrs Potts I'm used to. But I soon got used to them and they became the characters for me. And let's face it, they're meant to be people who have been turned into objects. that kind of explains the creepiness of the way they look.

And I love that Belle responds to them accordingly and instead of trying to figure out how they work she smashing Lumiere over the head with a stool and is prepared to attack Cogsworth with a jug!

Even though I knew how the film was going to end, I did have a moment of doubt as the last petal fell and the inhabitants all slowly became the objects they had been turning into. For a horrible moment I thought that Disney were going to completely crush me and ruin my favourite film.

But they didn't.

I wasn't sure that the original could be improved on. It turns out it could.

And I can't wait to see it again.

Kindling

Way back in 2012 I got a £100 bonus for completing a course and I decided to put the money towards one of those newfangled Kindle eReaders.

I'd been staunchly against the things because there was no way they could ever compare to the satisfying feeling of holding a real life book in your hands. But by 2012 we were living in our little cottage, there was an island-wide shortage of bookshelves, and most of my books were living in boxes in cupboards or the spare bedroom.

Digital copies of books seemed like a good way to save our space issues and allow me to keep on reading in the way I liked to.

So I got a Kindle Touch.

I loved that thing. I loved the sluggish way it 'turned' the pages, the way that the 'experimental' web browser was set up on it (experimental was apparently another word for rubbish), I loved the look and feel of the thing. I loved that it was the size of a paperback, weight just a little more, and that I could organise all my books on it just like I did on my bookshelves at home.

But it had its limitations. So around a year later Mr Click suggested that I upgrade. Mrs Click Senior (his mum) became the proud recipient of my hand-me-down Kindle Touch (it's still going, if not strong, then at least still going). And I got the Kindle Fire HD. I think it's the one which is now known as the 1st Gen Kindle Fire.

It was brilliant.

Suddenly everything was in colour. I could actually load webpages and go online with it. Books with pictures in them actually showed the full range of colours. I could watch films and YouTube and all sorts on it.

After a little while I even got a special case with a bluetooth keyboard for it and realised I could use it like a mini laptop when I was out and about. Since we didn't have internet access at home, I'd take it with me when I knew I'd have internet access and connect wherever we happened to be with free wifi. It went to England and Wales with me. When I went on a trip with work, I used it to write a report on the way home.

Unlike the Touch, it has an illuminated screen. Whereas before, if I wanted to read in bed I'd have to have the light turned on, or use a little bookmark torch, this was no longer an issue. I could turn the lamp off and read to my heart's content. In fact, sometimes (if I was feeling especially charitable) I'd even switch the background colour to black with white text to further reduce the amount of light it was throwing out into the room (not very often, admittedly, because this tended to send me to sleep!).

It's been wonderful and has served me well.

But in recent months, it's been doing some strange things.

It's been getting slower and the touch screen isn't as responsive as it used to be. Sometimes when I 'type' on it, it'll jump back and delete the word I was typing. This was frustrating but didn't render it unusable.

What did make it slightly unusable was the far that it seemed to have developed a touch of digital Alzheimer's. I wasn't actually aware of it at first but thinking back now I think it's been going on since before Christmas because there have been a few times I've got a weird sense of deja vu as I've been reading where I've wondered whether I'm rereading a book I've read before, even though I know I'm not.

I suspect that this little quirk may be part of the reason why it's taken me so long to get through some ebooks recently. I finally caught it one day when I made an effort to read to 75% of the Zen Culture ebook, only to fire it up the next day and find I was back to 70%. I knew I wasn't wrong. Just like I knew I was right when I read to 50% of the way through the next ebook, only to power it up and be back to 0%.

It was at that point that I realised that perhaps the time had come to retire the old thing. And Mr Click suggested I get a Kindle like his.

Which is how I became the proud owner of a 7" Magenta Kindle Fire (5th Gen) in a very pretty case (which I treated myself to because I wanted something pretty which would stand out as mine amongst all the other 7" Kindles in the house).

And would you believe, I'm yet to actually read anything on it yet. That's not because I've been downloading apps, surfing the web and listening to music. No, those are all things I did on my old Kindle and I've dabbled a little with some of them on the new one but mostly I've been organising my reading material on it.

You see the Kindle Fire HD didn't give me the option to sort my books into Collections. They were all just on there, jumbled up together. I could sort by title, author name or how recently I'd downloaded them. It's a little bit frustrating when you're feeling in the mood for, say, a thriller, but can't really track down a book which falls into that genre from all the other books on the device.

They did away with Collections on the Fire HD and then brought it back in an update for later models of the device. Mine was just a little too old for it. There are apps you can download, but they have their limitations. So I coped without it.

But now I've got it back. And I'm so happy.

I literally spent the whole of Monday evening sorting out the books I've bought (or got for free) over the last five years. I really enjoy sorting my book-books so as you can imagine, this was a thrilling evening for me. Every so often I'll come across a book which I've not got a genre for, so I'm making them up as I go along.

What's also impressive is that it also remembered the Collections I had on my old, old Kindle (the Touch). That saved me a lot of time with copying over nearly 300 books designated as 'Christmas'. There are some which are no longer needed, like 'OU Books', so I trashed those, others have been renamed and shuffled around. It's so useful.

So am I happy with my new Kindle?

You bet!

It's just different enough from my old one that I'm still finding my way round it, learning where everything is hidden and how to get it to do what I want.

And now I'm whizzing through The Way Through The Woods by Colin Dexter, so I can get on with reading an ebook on my new toy!

Books 37 - 39 of 2016: Short Stories from Hogwarts & Hogwarts: An Incomplete & Unreliable Guide

I forget when I first heard about these 'Pottermore Presents' ebooks. I know I got rather excited about them and then promptly forgot all about them until a fellow Harry Potter geek at work reminded me.

Thankfully by that point we had internet access at home so I was able to get them bought and downloaded that night (they were £1.99 each), though it then took me a little while to get them to open as they were in a format which seemed to default to a graphics programme on my Kindle. I had to download an alternative eReader app onto my Kindle before I could actually open and read them.

I'm reviewing these three books in  collective because they just go together. They're relatively short, 58 pages for the shortest (Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies) and 73 pages for the longest (Hogwarts: An Incomplete & Unreliable Guide); Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists clocks in at 60 pages, in case you were wondering. They contain a mix of unseen material from J.K. Rowling and curated pieces previously published on Pottermore.

The three books are all short enough that you can read them in one sitting. I began Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies on the 9th of September but had to stop part way through because I was falling asleep. I finished it and Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists the following day, then started the final book which was finished the day after that. If you were going on a long journey and or had nothing else to do but read, you could easily get through all three in one go.

Of the three, the second one I read was probably my favourite. This one had more that was brand new to me. I'm not sure if this was because I missed those articles on the Pottermore site originally, or if it did actually contain more brand new material.

The highlights of these three books were definitely the bits which were all new. In the first one that I read it was the information about how one becomes an Animagus (which I'm sure introduces whole new realms of possibility to writers of Marauders Era fan fiction). In the second I enjoyed the lengthy section on past Ministers for Magic, for one thing you could spot surnames which later crop up in the series as belonging to significant characters, for another, you can pretend you're reading an actual Hogwarts text book and channel your inner Hermione.

The last one of the three, Hogwarts: An Incomplete & Unreliable Guide, I just wish it had been longer. I almost wish that this could have been expanded out into a slightly longer book under the heading 'Hogwarts, A History' like the Fantastic Beasts and Quidditch Through the Ages books for Comic Relief. I especially liked the glimpse into the Hufflepuff common room, since that's somewhere we never go during the original book series, but I wanted to know more about the Room of Requirement and what happened to it after the Battle of Hogwarts.

Following the texts on each subject in the books are notes from J.K. Rowling herself. I love these. They're like little DVD extras where you get a nosy into the way she thinks and what some of the alternative ideas she was working on for certain characters in the stories. My favourites in these bits were always the parts where she explained the meanings behind character names and what influenced them. I just wish these, like the ebooks themselves, were longer.

Film Review: Lion

Several years ago I happened upon an article on BBC News about a guy called Saroo Brierley. It was an interesting story and obviously it lodged itself in the back of my brain because a few years later when I read the description of a film staring Dev Patel I thought 'that sounds familiar'.

That's because it's a film based on the book written by Saroo about the events briefly described in the BBC article I'd read so many years before.

Warning this review contains spoilers!

Don't say I didn't warn you!

At the age of five, Saroo was left at a train station to sleep by his older brother, Guddu, who had taken the child with him to find work. Waking alone Saroo boarded a train which took him on a two day journey, alone, over 1,000 km away to Kolkata. After surviving for a time on the streets he was picked up and taken to an orphanage but unable to tell anyone where he came from or even his mother's name there was little hope of him ever reuniting with his biological family. Eventually he was adopted, finding a home with Sue and John Brierley in Australia.

However, he never forgot where he came from and clinging on to some distance memories he managed to use Google Earth to retrace his journey on the train and find his way home.

This film was everything I hoped it would be and more. It's beautifully shot, both in India and Australia, so at times you feel like you're watching carefully framed photographs. There's also some very clever filming where the aerial views of Google Earth are replicated as flyover shots of the scenery in both countries. This is how the film opens.

As I sat in the cinema beside Mr Click, I couldn't help but feel a little unsure of whether he was going to enjoy the film, especially as almost the whole first hour of the film is subtitled. I'm glad that they did this, rather than just having everyone speak English.

Saroo, at age five, speaks Hindi so when he arrived in Kolkata he can't communicate with the people around him. It's a busy city with street children not being an uncommon sight, so a dirty five year old is ignored by most of the adults who come across him. It's heart breaking to watch and little Sunny Pawar who plays young Saroo does a brilliant job.

When he is eventually picked up there's little he can tell the police about where he came from. The place he lived 'Gineshtalay' is unknown to them; he can't even tell them where in India it is, and when he's asked his mother's name he simply replies 'mum'.

It's a film of two halves. There's young Saroo's life in India. The horrors he witnesses on the streets and in the orphanage, juxtaposed against the happy memories of home. Despite money and food being scarce with his biological family, you get a sense of how much his mother cares for her children and how much they care not only for her, but for each other too.

Then there's Saroo's time in Australia, as a young man, when a chance get together with some friends at university reminds him of his childhood and he opens up about his past. Someone suggests how he might go about working out where he came from.

It something that he starts off by just dipping into, but gradually it comes to consume him. Meanwhile we get glimpses into how this affects his adoptive family and his relationship with girlfriend, Lucy. There's also Saroo's adoptive brother, Mantosh, who was adopted from India also and bears the emotional and psychological scars of his life before his adoption. The two have a strained relationship and it's partially this that stops him from pursuing his search, not wanting to cause his mother any more heartache.

I love Dev Patel in pretty much anything I see him in, and I think he does a brilliant job here. He's playing a guy who is torn between the loyalty he feels to the people who have loved and raised him, and his memories of his birth family and the emotions they must feel never knowing what has happened to him. You get that sense right the way through the film.

If you've read any of the articles about Saroo Brierley (or the book he published, A Long Way Home) then you know how the film is going to end. Saroo manages to hit on the spot on Google Earth which is familiar to him, a water tower from the train station he was left at by his brother. A short scroll away is a place called 'Ganesh Talai', the place he knew he came from, he just couldn't say it well enough at the age of five for anyone to understand.

And it's from about here that you really need the tissues.

If little Saroo running up and down a train, by himself, with no way off, didn't move you, I'm sure the next bit will. After an emotional conversation with his mum, Sue, about what he's been doing, she gives him her blessing to go and find his birth mother.

And that's exactly what he does, heading off to India and retracing his steps. You can't help but feel the surge of joy as he is reunited with his mother, to the happy cheers of her friends and neighbours.

It's bittersweet though.

His mother, Kamla, breaks the news to him that his brother, Guddu, died on the night he went missing. She lost two of her sons in one day, but never having retrieved Saroo's body, she never gave up hope that he would come home.

And the title of the film?

I wondered about that the whole way through. It turns out that not only had Saroo struggled to say the name of his birthplace, he was mispronouncing his own name. Saroo was a nickname for Sheru, meaning 'lion'.

Having seen the film, I know it's one we're going to get on DVD and we're going to watch it again. It's a good film to see when you need a little reminder about the harsh realities for people growing up and living in other places around the world. There filmmakers have actually set up a charity, which you can learn more about here, to help those children living on the streets of India. But it's got that (mostly) happy ending which will make you cry but in a good way.

It's got me curious as well. I spend this morning Googling Saroo Brierley and reading Wikipedia. I'm definitely going to get my hands on a copy of A Long Way Home to hear more about his amazing story and the women who raised him.

Books 35 & 36 of 2016: His Other Lover by Lucy Dawson & A Child's History of England by Charles Dickens

After reading some relatively highbrow collections of essays I moved on to some lighter material (and almost instantly regretted it).

His Other Lover by Lucy Dawson came to me in a big bag of books given to me by a family member and I figured it looked like just the right sort of fluff to follow up the heavier stuff I'd been reading. Also it was next on my bookshelf to read, and I like to follow the order of the books on my shelf, so it was an easy choice.

Things seem to be pretty good for Mia and Pete. They live together with their dog Gloria and everything is good. Except Mia begins to suspect that her boyfriend is having an affair after seeing a text on his phone. Faced with this shocking news, she decides to track down the other woman and exact revenge.

The book is written in first person point of view, from Mia's perspective, and I didn't really like her. Honestly, I felt bad that her boyfriend was cheating on her but her response was so crazy that I couldn't help but root for Pete and Liz. She would have been so much better just to call Pete on the text and his behaviour and then just leave him, since as the book went on I just got the impression that she pretty much wanted Pete so that Liz (and anyone else) couldn't have him and didn't actually care about him all that much.

It took me a ridiculously long time to read this book (given the fact it's only 262 pages long). It was over a week. I think some of this was because I was just so annoyed by Mia! It took me a while to get a grip on the story as well because in the beginning it felt as though it jumped around a bit and then I kept on stopping and not feeling like going on because Mia just wound me up so much.

And don't get me started on the ending. It just made the whole thing feel sort of pointless. Nothing changes. I'd have liked to have seen Mia decide to leave and realise she can be happy without Pete, or Pete reveal that he's definitely not been seeing Liz and Mia was being totally paranoid. Neither of these things happened and it disappointed me.

After this I decided I needed something completely different so turned to my Kindle and pulled up the most different book I could find: A Child's History of England by Charles Dickens.

This is exactly what it says on the tin. A complete history of England, written for English schoolchildren, by Charles Dickens.

I found this to be really interesting, if somewhat slow at times. I started it towards the end of August and I finished it on my work awards trip when I read over 30% of the book. Because what better way to spent your time travelling across Scotland?

It was admittedly written in a way was blatantly biased towards some historical figures and very much in favour of others. Other writings that I've read have suggested different viewpoints for certain monarchs so it was interesting to see a different perspective.

I also felt like it went into loads of details for some eras or royals, but then less for others. Presumably this was to do with what information was available for Dickens himself but that didn't make it any less frustrating. The fact he was able to go into such detail in those areas made me expect that level of detail for everything.

I really liked the fact that it quite literally covered everything. It went right back to the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, then worked forwards to Queen Victoria. Even though that's where it stops, I still found it a really interesting history book and I'd recommend it to anyone, but especially those who might have a slightly shaky grasp on English history.

TV Series Review: The Muppet Show

Many years ago we picked up the first and second series of The Muppet Show and started watching it. At some point we stopped and never actually got any further through the series but a little while ago we decided to pick up the third series on DVD and start over.

Seventy-two episodes later and we've finally watched the last episode available on DVD (sadly series four and five have never materialised on DVD). And I'm really going miss our bedtime viewing.

If you've never had the pleasure of watching The Muppet Show, you don't know what you've missed. It's basically a variety show, hosted by Kermit the Frog and his crew of *ahem* interesting individuals. Oh, and they're all Muppets. Together they put on skits, shows, perform songs and generally entertain everyone (with the exception of Statler and Waldorf, the two theatre hecklers).

Each episode has a guest star paying them a visit and there are some real gems here. Everyone from Peter Ustinov to Julie Andrews, from Bruce Forsyth to Sylvester Stallone. There's really no guessing who will turn up next on the show. I actually got to the point where I wasn't letting myself look ahead on the DVD because I didn't want to spoil the surprise of what was coming next!

Honestly I couldn't pick just one episode as my favourite. There were so many bits in each episode which were funny and enjoyable which I could probably watch the complete series over again and would pick out totally different bits as my favourites. One of my favourite episodes was the one with Julie Andrews, primarily because what is better than Julie Andrews singing The Lonely Goatherd with a bunch of Muppets?

I will say that I thought the second two series were better than the first because they seemed to have found their feet and were more confident in the format of the show. I think there were more people I actually recognised or knew of in the two later series.

I do think that a special mention should go to Alice Cooper as well. I think he's probably top on my list of people you don't expect to see on The Muppet Show:

One of Mr Click's favourite episodes was the one with Sylvestor Stallone because he went all out with the singing, which neither of us were expecting:

What's kind of funny is the fact that you sort of forget that you're watching a bunch of puppets and get sucked into their world and all the goings on in The Muppet Theatre. Even when everyone starts turning into chickens, it's not really that weird.

I couldn't help but think about who I'd want to see on a modern version of The Muppet Show. I think it's a format that would still work today because there's jokes and things for the kids but there's also more adult one-liners for the adults too.

It's definitely worth watching. And our bedtime routine just isn't going to be the same now we're done with it.

Books 33 & 34 of 2016: Traffic by John Ruskin & Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson

Tuesday means it's time to revisit some of the books I read last year and sadly at the beginning of August 2016, my reading material was slightly disappointing.

First up is Traffic by John Ruskin. This is a book from the Penguin Little Black Classics collection and features two essays; the first, the titular 'Traffic', the second 'The Roots of Honour'.

I struggled to follow both of these essays at times. The first essay begins with Ruskin being invited to speak about the new Exchange being built in Yorkshire, and he opens his speech by telling the people assembled that he doesn't actually care about their Exchange and launches off into his own speech about... well, something, it was a little tricky to keep up with the gist of it.

'The Roots of Honour' felt like it had more that I could relate to. There was stuff in there about paying people a fair wage which was interesting given all the talk about the Living Wage at the time.

On the whole, this was a fairly short read (only 58 pages) but it took me two days to get through because it was a tough read. I didn't really enjoy it but it was an interesting read nonetheless. And I would've liked to have seen the audience's reaction to Ruskin when he announced that he wasn't in fact there to talk about the Exchange.

I followed Traffic with a Robert Louis Stevenson ebook, Memories and Portraits as I discovered I enjoyed Stevenson's writing style some time ago and felt this would be a good follow up.

This is another collection of essays, this time on a whole host of topics from everything from books, to dogs and his own contributions to College Magazine.

Despite being a far longer book than Traffic, I got through it very quickly. The topics in the book don't really follow on from one another so it feels a bit higgledy piggledy. You don't know what to expect between one ending and the next one beginning.

My favourite essays were the ones about reading and books. I felt like he said things that I could relate to. The essay about dogs was pretty good too. He also mentioned places in Edinburgh which I'm familiar with so that was interesting too.

Of the two, Memories and Portraits is probably the book I'm most likely to reread again in the future.

Books 30 & 32 of 2016: Serpent Tide by K.L. Fogg & Saucerers and Gondoliers by Dominic Green

The books I'm reviewing today were both ones which I grabbed from my Kindle. Both came to me as free Kindle downloads on Amazon (I regularly scout out the freebies and download them while I can but don't often get around to reading them very quickly). They'd been on my Kindle probably since I got my first one way back in 2012 so last year I decided that the time had come to give them a go.

In Serpent Tide by K.L. Fogg, a young rich boy named Wesley Vandergrift lives with his highly protective mother in a mansion. Everything is provided for him but he is deeply unhappy, especially as his mother won't allow him the pets he desires. It's his greatest wish to be like his TV hero Jack Mackey, a sort of Steve Urwin character.

When Wesley meets someone who knows Jack everything starts to unravel and Wesley learns that he might not be who he was raised to be.

I'll wholeheartedly admit that I picked this book up because of the cover. It was in the Children's & Young Adult's section of Amazon and the cover image reminded me of the illustrations from A Series of Unfortunate Events. I'm a big fan of those books, and Brett Helquist's illustrations in general, so I added this to my virtual bookshelf.

I was kind of expecting a fantasy book with a cover like this. It is not a fantasy book. It's set in a thoroughly non-fantasy setting, but I felt like it required an equal measure of belief suspension as a fantasy book because everything was just so convenient. Imogene's money got her EVERYTHING! There were a very high number of contrived coincidences. I suspect that it wouldn't bother a younger reader but it frustrated me no end.

I also don't feel like the religious stuff really added anything to the story. There was a character who I think had been raised Catholic but had converted to Mormonism and she occasionally made comments but I don't see why that needed to be there. She could have been Jewish or an Atheist for all the difference it made to the story. It felt like a convenient way to explain why her family didn't get on with her but it wasn't necessary.

I read afterwards that the character was added in to help get the story published (with a Mormon publisher, I suspect) and that this is the author's religion also. I think if that was the angle they wanted to go down then they should've committed to it fully and made it an actual key part of the story, or just left it out all together, rather than the way it was done where it came across as an afterthought.

I'm sure that younger kids will lap up this series, but I don't feel the need to read on to the next book.

I followed this up by Dominic Green's Saucerers and Gondoliers. A little while ago I read another book by Dominic Green called Smallworld which was an interesting look at the sci-fi genre, with a hint of Terry Pratchett to his style.

This is the first in the Ant and Cleo book series. The two main characters happen to stumble across a flying saucer in the middle of an English park. And so it transpires that there's actually been a top secret space colony out in, well, space, for many years. The kids end up there embroiled in an intergalactic war between America, Britain and the United States of the Zodiac.

I couldn't help but be reminded of Terry Pratchett's foray into sci-fi writing in The Dark Side of the Sun and Strata. I did enjoy the start of Saucerers and Gondoliers but (not unlike my attempts at reading Sir Pterry's sci-fi offerings) I struggled to keep my focus when I was reading as the book went on.

I don't think this was just me though. The book began very strong but it seemed to wander a bit in the middle and I couldn't help but struggle to follow what was going on after that. The general idea was a good one though and I enjoyed the premise.

I did also like that fact that the hidden British space colony was called Gondolin. I felt like that was a little nod to Tolkien fans.

It has a fairly open-ended resolution which I guess allows it to follow on into the next book in the series. I think there are at least four of them in the Ant and Cleo series. But it's unlikely that I'll be picking any of those up. I have to admit that I kept falling asleep reading this one which was probably a combination of trying to read too late at night and also struggling to follow the story.

That said, Dominic Green's books are fun for a bit of lighthearted sci-fi escapism, so are probably worth picking up if that's your kind of thing.