Books

The Harry Potter author Joanne Rowling was crying into her huge pile of cash recently when she discovered that a fan was planning to release a Harry Potter Lexicon.

The bastard. Imagine someone going out and chronicling the Harry Potter legend for the benefit of the fans, and saving Rowling the bother.

Now, there's two ways of looking at this:

1. Joanne Rowling is a complete control freak and wants to write the encyclopedia herself. Fair enough. Or...
2. She's slightly more preoccupied about someone else making money out of her creation.

What you might not know is that the proposed Harry Potter Lexicon is based on a website which Rowling herself has praised. Let's face it, fan sites help spread the word and allow enthusiasts to gather together and gossip and explode the myth.

I picked this book up for the missus just before Christmas, and decided to give it a quick flick through before I wrapped it. Within half-an-hour I’d read it cover to cover,

The tagline to Never Hit A Jellyfish With A Spade is “How to Survive Life’s Smaller Challenges”, and that’s the essence of this book. A series of short articles lifted from Browning’s Guardian column, each focuses on a micro-topic from everyday life: How to…. eat biscuits, mow the lawn, read a Sunday paper.

If you don’t have the stamina for a book review right now, scroll down to the question at the bottom for an interesting ethical debate!

The last time I read a Dean Koontz novel, he was specifically a writer of horror stories. That was a fair few years ago to say the least, and in the meantime Koontz seems to have transcended the pure horror genre. These days, he seems to be writing in the more modern, more lucrative thriller style.

My cynicism (for Koontz’s motives) aside, the man has not lost his touch. Velocity is a fast-paced crime thriller, but manages to raise some interesting moral and ethical questions at the same time.

On the cover of On Second Thoughts… is a drawing of King Arthur and his knights sitting at a square table as one of the group asks if anyone else thinks the Feng Shui is all wrong.

Before I read Bedroom Secrets Of The Master Chefs, I was a complete Irvine Welsh virgin - had never read one of his books before, or even seen Trainspotting (hard to believe?).

Somewhere it must be written that with every new Harry Potter book release, the population must rush out and buy said tome (queuing up for bonus points, of course) and then attempt to read all six hundred and something pages in about twenty minutes.

Being the independently minded, well-balanced individual that I am, I bought my copy on the Saturday morning (in fairness, I didn't queue) and proceeded to read it. But because I'm a big boy with grown up responsibilities, I finished reading The Deathly Hallows on Monday evening.

Broken is the first novel by Kelley Armstrong that I've read. I picked this one up in the local library, not completely convinced that a heavily pregnant female werewolf chasing down Jack The Ripper in modern-day Toronto would be a... believable.... read.

The first thing that becomes apparent is that Broken is part of a series of books. Looking into it, it seems to be a supernatural series called Otherworld. In all honesty, until I discovered this, I figured Ms Armstrong was positioning herself as the Anne Rice of werewolves. I'm serious....

Dean Koontz is a veritable thriller factory. Looking at his catalogue of work, it seems he pumps out a novel every day just before breakfast. I came across a copy of The Taking lying around our house as books sometimes do. I opened it up, intending to sample a chapter or two, and ended up finishing the book in record time.