Joy and disappointment

We'll go for joy first. I met Rosie for a drink after she finished work (mid-afternoon - it felt very decadent to be slightly tanked at 6pm...) Managed to hand over her long-delayed birthday present and catch up, and it was really nice. Rosie changed my life when we bumped into each other at the Mill Pond in Cambridge in April 2004, and I found there were Other People Like Me who knitted in the local area; since then I've met so many lovely people via the KTog, started this blog and met more lovely people, started teaching knitting occasionally... and generally built up some courage I didn't have before...

I thought I had photos of Rosie's main birthday present (rather belated); but actually I only have a pic of it in somewhat embryonic form in a café in Vienna - but that's appropriate as it's the Farbenfroh sock in the Hundertwasser Silver Spiral yarn...

And now on to the disappointment. I went into the newly re-opened Central Library in Cambridge this afternoon for the second time, but to actually use their services for the first time. I didn't have a huge amount of time to spare; I suspect most people don't...

Step 1: Queue for staff attention for a couple of minutes - one of the sets of CDs I borrowed (via Waterbeach LAP) has a production problem - it's in two sets of 5 disks and although disk 6 (the first of the second set) is labelled correctly, it has the same content as disk 1 (the first of the first set). The staff member is interested in this and says he'll note the error and see what they can do. Ask if I can return my other stuff there as I've queued - but am asked to use the self-return machines instead. OK; this a new thing and I've watched the online videos saying how efficient they are.

Step 2: Attempt to use self-return machines. The first item just sits on the conveyor belt, as does the next one I try. I decide this machine is not working, and move round the corner to use another one. This is also not working; but the woman next to me is returning things, so I decide to wait for her machine to become free. She leaves, and I put my items on the conveyor belt one by one as requested. Neither moves. I keep trying, digging down to the bottom of the bag for actual books rather than the CDs and cassettes I'm trying to return. The hardbacks work fine, as do the cassettes (and it's very cool, actually - you get the title up on the screen and so on), but the CDs and paperback fail repeatedly.

Step 3: Queue again for staff attention. Someone comes to find me after a couple of minutes, and is (somewhat patronisingly) surprised I seem to be incomprehensibly unable to use self-return. She takes me over to the self-return station and (unsurprisingly to me) it doesn't work for her either. So she takes me to another terminal and finds that the items I can't return don't have the appropriate electronic tag. Apparently the problem is that they come from another library - one of the things I've always loved about Cambridgeshire libraries is that this has never ever mattered. While I have a member of staff, I ask where the audiobooks are; except I ask for "talking books" and am briskly corrected; but am pointed in the right direction.

Step 4: Pick my audiobooks. Nice selection, although I'd rather have an A-Z by author for the whole sequence than the division into CDs and Cassettes. I know a lot of people don't have cassette players any more, but most of the people I know who use audiobooks actually do - so having to look in two places is slightly annoying. But they've got a lot of new ones since I last looked and I very quickly find 3 I want.

Step 5: Head cheerily for the self-checkout stations. I've used these for books in the past but I heard in the paper that I can now also pay for other media checkout (I will owe £6.60 for the three audiobooks). When I get to the terminals, I find there's some sort of collection slot, church-style, next to them; I follow the terminals round the pillar to see if there's one which takes cards, and find there's a change machine. There's no sign saying "out of order" so I try inserting a note into the machine. Nope.

Step 6: Queue for attention again. Apparently the pay-at-checkout facility isn't working yet (some sort of indication of this would have been useful). I ask how I can pay for my loans. I'm told that I should go back to self-checkout and then queue for attention again. I decline to, and there's a lot of exasperated sighing; apparently my books can be checked out there and I can pay for them, but they'll then have to hand-write when the books are due, which seems to be a problem.

Step 7: Pay, and leave, gratefully.

As a qualified librarian, I found this whole experience incredibly disappointing. I was attempting to return 7 items and borrow 3, and it took me 27 minutes, only 6 of which were spent actually looking at the stock.

And yes, of course I'm composing an e-mail to the head of user services, or whatever title is currently fashionable.

Recipe

A couple of people asked me for the recipe for the gingerbread from Tuesday's event; and I made the same for the library meeting a month or so ago and a couple of people asked me for the recipe then. I don't have an accompanying photo, or not one I can find at the moment... This is all in ounces because the original recipe was... my electronic scale switches modes between grammes, which I usually use, and ounces.

Heat up an oven to 150C, gas 3 (you'll have to convert if you use fahrenheit); line an 8" square tin with baking parchment.

Ingredients
4 oz butter
2 teaspoons golden syrup

8 oz plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
3 oz sugar
2 heaped tsps ginger (powdered)
1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs, separated

4 oz (you can get away with a 100g tub) mixed peel - you can substitute glace cherries in an emergency, and it's OK, but not as good...

Extra sugar

Method (we talked about cookery lessons this evening and old habits die hard)...

Heat the butter and syrup together gently until they're nicely melted. Meanwhile, measure the flour, sugar, ginger, salt and baking powder into a mixing bowl.

Take the butter/syrup mix off the heat. After a minute or two, put the egg yolks in with them, stirring all the time. Once amalgamated, tip into the flour mix and stir.

Put half of the mix into the tin, distribute and press down slightly. Spread the mixed peel/dried fruit over; then spread the other half of the mix over and level it.

Pour the egg whites over the mixture, tip the tin to level it and pour off any excess. Sprinkle sugar over to give a crusty coating.

Bake for 15 minutes; then give the tin a quarter turn and bake it for another 15 minutes.

Enjoy. It generally doesn't last that long...

Remembrance

Two pictures from Sunday. I hadn't been out of the main entrance at Liverpool Street in several years, so this monument was new to me:


The plaque says

Children of the Kindertransport

In gratitude to the people of Britain for saving the lives of 10,000 unaccompanied mostly Jewish children who fled from Nazi persecution in 1938 and 1939.

"Whosoever rescues a single soul is credited as though they had saved the whole world" - Talmud

Dedicated by

Association of Jewish Refugees

Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief

2006

And there was this, on the wall of the V&A next to the staff entrance:

I work very near the Cenotaph, and the wreaths there are impressive and moving; and some of us went out and did our 2 minutes' silence out there this morning; and I didn't and wish I had.

But the everyday monuments to ordinary people being called to do extraordinary things, and responding to the call, also resonate.

Franklin at I Knit redux

A very good evening. There were a number of us, but not so many that insanity resulted (probably due to the Tuesday night...); the guest of honour apparently got slightly lost on his way out of Waterloo station, several times, but still arrived on time... and we had an exclusive reading from a book-in-preparation.

Dolores was there in spirit and in narration, but not in person; Franklin did say something about her having headed for Earl's Court on arrival, so I suspect she might have been listening to The Archers and hoped to hook up with an Australian barman...

Yvonne/Stash had brought some wonderful antique knitting books with her;

Snailhannah had brought her Lambies and a row was duly knitted...

... and of course Gerard watched over the proceedings...

Thanks, guys, for an excellent evening.

2009 books, #64

Nine dragons, by Michael Connelly. London: Orion, 2009.

The tagline on the cover of this says Harry Bosch is back. And this time it's personal. At which point the seasoned Connelly reader will think 'well, when isn't it?' - Bosch is not known for his laid-back equanimity - but the publicity people have a point. Very well-paced and stylish, with some interesting stuff on triads; but there's a sort of emotional hole in the middle. I'm trusting this is something which will come back and bite Harry in a future sequel, but it's not very satisfactory for the current book...

Also currently listening to one of Tony Britton's wonderful readings of Dick Francis novels - Bolt, in this case.

Lovely day

I had a great day today - went down to the V&A to meet Franklin and Tom. There was a brief, horrible period between about 2pm yesterday afternoon when sparkleduck let me know that there were no trains on the usual route today (thanks! I'd have been completely lost otherwise), and getting onto a rail-replacement bus first thing this morning, when I did wonder whether it would happen...

This was the view while I was walking through the village early this morning...

... and this was the replacement bus. The fact the company was called SABLE was rather reassuring...I thought my photos were actually better than they are... But here's a slightly strange one - three of us with cameras on a staircase.

No, Tom's head didn't really ignite; here he is later, examining some slightly dubious lions... There were quite a few very odd animals in the collections today - a dog crushing a snake on top of a cushion was definitely one which made us all giggle...


It was a lovely day; they're excellent company and we had fun. More photos of things in the collection soon.

Meanwhile just a reminder of Franklin's talk at I Knit London on Tuesday night (November 10), 6pm onwards...

'Tis (the start of) the season

(Actually, I have made nearly 6 Christmas presents already, but they're for people who read this...)

Festively coloured Cascade 220 (two skeins courtesy Pavi Yarns this morning; I had the white from another project).

It's going to be a Christmas stocking for my nephew... I sort of like this one, but it's knitted in chunky/bulky so I'd have to change the stitch count, and therefore some of the patterns, and I'd like three colours rather than two; and I have the Alice Starmore Fair Isle book which is still untouched; and I love the heels and toes on the Mamluke socks (I really need to knit another pair of those...) I know I want Latvian braids in there somewhere, and the nephew's name knitted in near the top...

So I need to swatch - probably a good thing to do at the KTog this afternoon - and then chart...

Needless to say, this is not what I'm meant to be thinking about this morning; I'm in Full Procrastination Mode over something I have to write and am feeling very ambiguous about... can't tell you what, yet... What I'm meant to be doing is writing on that pad at the back of the photo... but then I had to go and collect the yarn, didn't I, or the post office would have closed and it would have been another week... (I'm ignoring the fact that if I'd collected it a couple of hours later it would have made no difference....)

But the Stocking Project will be a nice ongoing thing I can show you while I stealth-knit in the background...

Anthropologie...

I've lost count of the number of pretty, pretty links to items on the international Anthropologie site I've seen over the years on other people's sites. So when I realised they'd opened a shop in London, I thought I'd take a trip over there at lunchtime.

First thing: normally, I hate music in shops. The music here though is French indie/pop and therefore adorable. Second thing: the prices are completely weird and slightly disconnected to what you're actually buying - anything with a handmade element costs what it really should and some of the homewares are more like IKEA pricing. Third thing: they had French breakfast bowls, in colours which go with the kitchen.


I had one of these, once, before it broke; and every French household has some for drinking tea/coffee/chocolate, or beating eggs, or whatever...

First visit; won't be the last...

Battered

Regardless of the current state of the postal dispute; I got this sad, damp little item through the door today;

It had sort-of-dried into that shape - makes you realise how wet it must have been coming through the letterbox, and how wet the person delivering it must have been while writing out the illegible information... At the other end, I'll probably know the person at the post office who'll be looking for whatever-it-is on Saturday morning and will trust that they know my name and I have this curled-up card; lots of people aren't in that situation...

New in the neighbourhood...

There's a new baby next-door-but-one; I knew his gender and estimated birth date, but only bumped into one of his parents a fortnight after the event. So I whipped out a Baby Surprise Jacket and took it along...

The yarn is King Cole Mirage in colour Helsinki, bought at the stall in Durham covered market - it's lovely stuff to knit with (if you don't mind a 50% acrylic content)... and I got a lovely thankyou card from the family at the weekend...

Enabled

The usual buzz about Lidl's annual yarn bonanza hit Ravelry a couple of weeks ago. I was going to resist. In fact I did resist until last Friday, when my colleague mentioned that she had a Lidl at the end of her road, and she knew I knitted, and it didn't look bad - there was a lot of wool in it - and would I like her to go back on Saturday when she was going to be shopping there anyway?

3 packs of Treviso sock yarn in a neutral colour (75% wool/25% nylon, 200g per pack, 840m per pack, £2.99 per pack; totally dyeable, rumours of felting on Ravelry).

This colleague is one of my union reps; I can't work out whether she's assisting my general well-being, or endangering it further; but I'm in her debt (although not financially just at the moment...).

2009 books, #63

This one deserves a post on its own.

Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett. London: Transworld/Doubleday, 2009.

Brilliant. Pratchett takes on the Beautiful Game and wins. We get everything from Real Football, or whatever it was called in the days of bearbaiting, cockfighting and other lethal sports, to the start of the modern game; in conjunction with Ridcully, Rincewind, the Bursar, Ponder Stibbons and a host of new and wonderfully drawn characters. There's academic and sporting rivalry, dwarfmail modelling and serious pie-making.

There's the usual combination of extreme funniness and heartbreaking serious truth; there's a lovely non-typical romance and some Beautiful People; there's that sense you get in the best of the Pratchett books that This Is the Way the World Turns, and occasionally the Way It Should Turn; and there's a bit on the Offside Rule and the Nature of Celebrity.

Wonderful and another Pratchett tour de force.

Couple of bits...

Couple of FOs - they won't look like this in wear (at least I'm hoping not!) -but two little cowls for two not-so-little girls... Both to the Clémence pattern by Katya Frankel, the top one in Aran weight (bought at The Skep in Pudsey the first year SkipNorth went there and languishing forgotten, and uninventoried, in the stash), and the bottom one in DK (Schoeller and Stahl "Limbo", one of my favourites...)

A nice quick knit once I'd figured out the pattern. It's one which is quietly more difficult than it looks; which is relatively rare in knitting... But once you get the hang of it you can't stop... There may be more of these made for Christmas...

Not a great picture - but we're into the several months where I don't see daylight... part of doing NaBloPoMo is to convince myself I'm still alive...

All Hallows

We don't do Hallowe'en much on the Green; no trick-or-treaters, not much pumpkinnery; it's not really a UK thing and this is a pretty traditional village. Sadly, we haven't had penny-for-the-guy either...

However, this is one of the funnier things I've seen in a while...



Those cats are so even-tempered. I know I'd be cut to ribbons if I tried this with the Bug, but I know a lot of US indoor cats are de-clawed so maybe that's it... the big one in the tutu looks so much like Tilda. She used to just sit down if she felt foolish, too...

Byzantine again

Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment on the last entry; it was really useful, and did help me decide what to do.

Despite knowing that Westminster Cathedral a) was just down the road from work and b) was a neo-Byzantine Victorian edifice and c) I'm a Catholic, I still hadn't made it in there until the I Knit Weekender, when I was staying at a Westminster University hall of residence just down the road (highly recommended, by the way, if you're a single in London over the summer and want cheap, clean, self-catering digs right in the middle of it all, and thanks to Yvonne for recommending it!)

I digress. Westminster Cathedral was wonderful, and I'll post more soon. But one of the things I loved was these little leaves/trees which were made of perfect tiny elements, and next to each other, and went so well together... And Susan's pattern did exactly that (and thanks so much for making a suggestion here; I do hope I managed to say in the original post that I realise it's not your pattern, which is gorgeous, but my modification of it which is the problem!)...

I did like the suggestion of a fabric lining, which several people suggested; and I pondered that one long and hard. I went to both Liberty (who carry the Kaffe Fassett range) and the Silk Society, and each had something which might well have done, and I thought I'd go back next week and make a choice. But then I came home last night and went through my scarves and shawls, and looked at the Ones I Wore and the Ones I Didn't. And it turns out the Ones I Really Don't are those with a fabric lining; and I suspect the recipient might have similar tastes. So, last night I put those into the charity box for the next carrier bags that come round, and this morning on my volunteer library shift (before the very lovely and extremely boisterous four-brother group arrived to take over the computers and ask masses of questions about... well, everything in the world), I went with the first two suggestions from Suzi and my evil twin and reduced the scarf so far to

I think the clincher was remembering that the intended recipient was wearing her Nice New Winter Coat last time I saw her, and the colours in this scarf really wouldn't have worked out with it anyway; so I felt better about keeping the yarn and making an adapted version of this pattern as a cushion early next year when the Christmas knitting is done... Which I will keep for myself, and fawn over like Smaug.

Post warning; I've joined NaBloPoMo again; I did manage it last November, and I have a few nice things coming up this November (and also some Christmas knitting for people who don't read this); I also have a load of things from Vienna I never blogged...

Suggestions, anyone?

Less than one day into GMT (welcome, dark dank evenings) and the Knitting Strikes Back.

I have a current bit of knitting which can best be expressed thus:

I have a couple of really nice FOs to show you, probably in a later post, but this particular project has come to a bit of a standstill and I could really do with some suggestions.

I'm knitting Byzantine, by Susan Pandorf. Except I'm really not - I'm just following the chart. Anything following reflects no discredit to the designer, who produces the most beautiful patterns. This is just to show that sometimes you can just go a modification too far.

I'm making it in 4-ply, as a scarf, instead of the intended Silk Garden Lite as a stole. I'm making it in wool (basically, there's 10% nylon in one component) rather than in a drapier blend. And in the usual wonderful sense of complete self-delusion, I've got nearly halfway through before I decided to steam-block it and work out that actually, no, it's never going to stop curling at the edges and it's always going to turn into a little tiny cylinder rather than the very beautiful scarf it ought to be.

Normally, I'd rip out without a thought. But it is a beautiful, beautiful thing. I mean, look at it.

I'm using Mini Mochi in colour 114 and JoJoLand Harmony in colour 18, and they're made for each other. Everything about the colours is wonderful...

So - the poser is:

I have a strip of extremely beautiful fabric 30cm x 60cm (12" x 24"). I also have another ball of each colour and probably about 5" of knitted length on the existing balls. It's mosaic knitting, so not as catastrophically bad to rip out as Fair Isle or stranded.

Things I have considered and rejected:

1) I could pick up the edge stitches and do some corrugated rib along the long edges - I don't have enough yarn to do this without making the scarf less than 50" long, and the recipient likes longer scarves, and even then I'm not convinced it won't just curl.

2) I could turn the piece of fabric into a bag - I have enough bags, and then I'd just have half the yarn left to make another small thing...

3) I could pick up edge stitches and make something modular - I'm receptive to ideas on this...

4) I could just rip it out and make a big cushion or something using the same chart, and forget the 20 or so hours spent so far... this is what I'm leaning towards so far

5) ? any suggestions?

Thanks, and prize!

Thanks to the 12 people who commented (including Daisyx2 which was presumably finger trouble!) I'm glad you haven't been too turned off by all the garden stuff. I have a free weekend - I need to do blurb for next year's knitting classes and a bit of work-work, but otherwise I'm hoping to do a lot of cleaning and tidying, and some blogging, this weekend...

OK: the prize is a small collection of notion-type things. The main attraction is an accessories bag from the new, wonderful and local woolly mamas - so new their online shop isn't open yet but you can e-mail in enquiries. Their bigger knitting bags are also absolutely gorgeous and designed for both beauty and practicality... And I'm plugging them because I really like them, their stuff and their ethics; I paid the going rate for the prize bag.

There's also a set of little sweatery needle-keepers-together and a handmade-by-me scissor fob.

And the winner is.... Mel/Yogicknitter, comment no. 10. I'll PM you on Ravelry, and see if you're likely to be at I Knit sometime soon or whether I should give it up as an offering to the Postal Gods... Congrats! and thanks again to everyone for entering.

'Versary - and prizegiving

I realised last night that today is the 4th anniversary of starting this blog; and dug out a photo from this month which seems to express the essence of it...

Knitting, chaos and cat. That works.

And over the last year: the garden. Photo taken at 3:15ish today....

Thanks for bearing with me; particularly over the last couple of months where IE8 and Blogger have been At War -this seems to have improved, it seems that manipulation of photos doesn't mean three versions of a browser just to switch two photos round... Now that's sorted, am hoping to do a post a day in November as last year...

Thanks for the lovely encouraging comments on the garden over the last few months, even if you didn't want to see a garden on a knitting blog; and thanks for the chivvying along when I've not been making enough progress for you. Honestly, the comments on the garden have sometimes made the difference between going out the following weekend, or not...

Four years ago I was working in a job I hated, and I was at Ally Pally as part of a stitched textiles group I felt somewhat out of my depth with, although all the people I worked with there were wonderful. These days I really like my job, although I work slightly mad hours, and am a Knitter...

As is customary, a prize will be given for a blogiversary. But no contest, or anything... Just please, leave a comment before Sandi O'Clock (which means 6:30pm British Summer Time, when The News Quiz comes on on Radio 4, on Friday 23rd October); a prize will be awarded on random comment numbers...

2009 books, #55-#62

Roadside crosses, by Jeffery Deaver. London: Hodder, 2009.

Deaver just seems to get better. This one's a Kathryn Dance novel; and he neatly avoids all the patterns he's adopted in the past. There's a character you feel certain is earmarked to be the twist in the tail but isn't; and one you feel is probably benign, and also isn't... just as you think you've worked out how he's going to trick you, he turns through 90 degrees and does something completely different...

Our fathers' lies, by Andrew Taylor. London: Hodder, 2007.

William Dougal isn't my favourite of Andrew Taylor's recurring characters, but this one is very good, and a nice quick read; a suspected suicide turns into something much more complicated involving old family history and the intelligence network; gripping from start to finish.

Serpent's tooth, by Faye Kellerman. London: Headline, 1998.

Another of the Peter Dekker books - lots of twists and turns; occasionally the plot gets almost too convoluted for its own good, but some of the characters are very interesting and it does start with the most dramatic scene... and it's interesting to see the sons turning into young men rather than still being children.

The devil in amber, by Mark Gatiss. London: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

This turned up in the 'to catalogue' pile at the library; so I catalogued it and brought it home. I have a soft spot for strange, slightly fascistic, 1930s action/spy novels of the type written by Dornford Yates, and this is a wonderful (and affectionate) parody of these written by League of Gentlemen writer/performer Mark Gatiss who was also responsible for the wonderful Nebulous on the radio. Wonderfully written, with the eye for the violently grotesque you'd expect from Gatiss, and some fantastically punny names. I need to get hold of the first book in the series, The Vesuvius Club, and see if there have been any others since...

The blue religion: new stories about cops, criminals and the chase, edited by Michael Connolly for Mystery Writers of America. London: Quercus, 2008.

This is an extremely good anthology of short stories. The main trail on the cover is for an original Harry Bosch story, but there are better ones in here; John Harvey's bleak story stands out against the more glamorous American offerings; John O. Born is a name I need to follow up; Laurie R. King shines as usual; Paul Guyot's story is extremely moving and Peter Robinson's is beautifully crafted. One small whinge though - all the stories are in US English spelling regardless of provenance; reading "gray" and "center" in Harvey's and Robinson's Northern English dialogue is annoying and clumsy - and increasingly frequent, recently...

The storm: the world economic crisis and what it means, by Vince Cable. London: Atlantic, 2009.

Absolutely does what it says on the tin. A sane, clear explanation of what's been going on over the last couple of years, which explains economic concepts in ordinary language. Obviously there's a political bias here, but it's relatively slight and, where it becomes party-political, it's signalled; Cable assumes you're an intelligent person with an interest in, but no great expertise in, economic theory and history - it's never patronising or over-theoretical. At 150 pages, it's a very good guide to what happened (it was published in January or so), and gives predictions (many of them since fulfilled) for the future. I'm not surprised the queue for this at the library was extremely long.

Even money, by Dick Francis and Felix Francis. London: Michael Joseph, 2009.

Superb; Dick Francis at his best. I don't care who was behind this one; its's the standard blend of information (in this case, how on-course betting works), family (wow) and plot (pretty good...)

Definitely well up to the old standards of the early novels on the plot stakes, and well above it on the emotional ones...

206 bones, by Kathy Reichs. London: Heinemann, 2009.

I enjoyed this one - I always read the Kathy Reichs books when they come out, but the earlier ones set in Montréal are definitely my favourite, and the more Andrew Ryan content, the better. This one is almost entirely Montréal-based, and having visited the city last year I had slightly more idea of where things were and how the geography fits together (I'll have to go back and re-read the first couple...). I always fear that Tempe will go the way of Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta into self-absorption but there's no evidence of it in this particular book ... My only real criticism of it is that the framing device (and if you've seen the posters, you'll have read some of it) with attendant flashbacks isn't done strongly enough - you get a couple of pages of "present day" followed by 100 pages of "recent past" and it's not enough to be intruiguing, merely enough to be a bit irritating. As a study of how things can go very wrong in a workplace alarmingly quickly, it's excellent.

2009 books, #44-54

Long time, no blog. Hoping to catch up a bit this evening, so here's a book review post which has been hanging around forever...

A lot of Michael Connolly in this bunch: I think I've read more or less everything he's written now though...

Thank you for the days : a boy's own adventures in radio and beyond, by Mark Radcliffe. London: Simon and Schuster, 2009.

I loved this book. I'm a fan of Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie on their Radio 2 show, but I don't think you'd need to be to enjoy this (or any of Maconie's wonderful books). You'd just need to have been at all interested in popular culture, and particularly popular music, over the last 30-40 years or so - and I suspect being British is probably an essential, too... It's a cross between an autobiography and a series of short stories, all called "The Day I..." and ranging from the rather beautiful ("The Day I Heard That John Peel Had Died") to the slightly surreal ("The Day I Went to Kate Bush's House for Cheese Flan") to the ridiculously funny ("The Day I Took Bros into a Goods Yard"). And "The Day I Saved Neil Hannon's Bacon" probably has the best (4-page) description of the atmosphere at the Cambridge Folk Festival I've ever read. As the review from David Bowie on the front page says, "Steal this book!" Although obviously I didn't as I got it from the library and that would be Very Wrong. I did go out and buy a copy for a friend's birthday as soon as I finished it though...


The brass verdict, by Michael Connelly. London: Orion, 2008.

Another good one from Michael Connelly; this time a legal thriller with Lincoln lawyer character Micky Haller. But we get cameos from Harry Bosch and Jack McEvoy, too - I do like it when an suggesting Connelly is Balzac or anything, but it's fun. Greg Iles does something similar. This one author creates a whole universe and we get to see people from different angles. Not that I'm keeps you going all the way to the end, with a couple of very late twists and turns. If Connelly ever decided to concentrate on courtroom drama, he'd beat Grisham into submission in no time...

Fearless fourteen, by Janet Evanovich. London: Headline Review, 2009. Plum lucky, by Janet Evanovich. London: Penguin, 2009.

I love these books; they're funny, the plot races through, the cast of (mostly) insane characters are wonderful (Grandma Mazur is a particular favourite); they're sexy, rude, surreal, and a fabulous quick read. If anything can go wrong when Stephanie's involved, it will go wrong; this one involves home-made potato rocket-launchers (operated by Homegrown Security), a kid who spraypaints anything available, including dogs and a 61-year-old country-rock star called Brenda (who should never, ever, ever be brought into contact with Franklin's Dolores - actually, you could say the same for Grandma; and Lula, come to think of it; there's enough destruction and mayhem already). You couldn't make these novels into films with actual actors; but they'd make absolutely wonderful stylised animations...


The scarecrow, by Michael Connelly. London: Orion, 2009.

Another classic from Michael Connelly; another one with Jack McEvoy. Tightly plotted, very scary, and even though it's one where you know who the killer is from fairly early on but the detectives and journalists don't, it's still gripping. Again, we get characters from other strands of Connelly's writing, in this case Rachel Walling and Keisha Russell... Weirdly, I went over to Connelly's website to check Keisha's surname, and there's a short quiz on the book; given the speed I read it at (someone else is waiting for it so I couldn't renew it), I was gratified to get 10 out of 12...


Justice, by Faye Kellerman. London: Headline, 1995. Prayers for the dead, by Faye Kellerman. London: Headline, 1996.

More Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus books - I've raved about these elsewhere. The plot in Justice is pretty shaky, to be honest, and doesn't really fit with what we know about Decker's integrity, but because you're involved with the characters it's still very readable... Prayers for the dead works much better and is very moving in the end.



Far cry, by John Harvey. London: Heinemann, 2009.

I still haven't forgiven John Harvey for what he did in the recent Resnick book Cold in hand; but this one is really very good - read it more or less in one session. Lots of twists and turns and some genuinely interesting characters...

The overlook, by Michael Connelly. London: Orion, 2007.

A curiously short Harry Bosch book but none the worse for that - a highly entertaining couple of hours' reading and well up to Connelly's usual high standards. Bosch doing what he's best at - solving crime while remaining completely irritated by The Powers That Be...

Crime beat : true stories of cops and killers, by Michael Connelly. London: Orion, 2006.

Something slightly different; a compilation of Connelly's journalism from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s (for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the LA Times). Rather than being a ragbag of different pieces, or just a chronological compilation, Connelly has divided it into different sections - The Cops, The Killers and The Cases. It's easy to see why Connelly won awards for some of these pieces, and fascinating to read them.

Iron council, by China Miéville. London: Pan, 2005.

This has taken much longer than anything else I've read this year, because it's both rich and strange - rich in terms of the amazing language and descriptions, and strange in its ideas - Remade people made up of pieces of other creature, or mechanical items; a train which is also a city, steaming into forbidden territory with its citizens pulling up the rails after it in order to lay them down before it; unlikely love stories; a maker of golems. After reading The city and the city in July, I wanted to try again with some of Miéville's trademark weird fiction (and a friend suggested this one was accessible) - it was a fantastic read and fully deserved its Arthur C. Clarke award. I'll have a bit of a pause while I try and read some of the many other books which have built up in the meantime, and then try again with Perdido Street Station, the first book set in this universe.