It’s a collection of some of the more interesting stories from his life, told in a very conversational and excitable way, which is entirely what we would expect from one of Yorkshire’s most larger than life characters. A friend asked “Does he roar in it?”. Yes, yes he does. In amongst spinning some good yarns, that is.

The choice of stories he included in the book give a good impression of what the author enjoys, tales of personal adventure be it spending 20 years finding somebody to pay for him making a film about Mount Everest, or him working with Judi Dench trying to learn to dance enough to cope with the West End musical “Cats”.

It’s a concise paperback that could be easily devoured in a lazy afternoon, but that by no means diminishes the entertainment you get from knowing that these tales really happened. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t put up with half of the discomfort he described from his mountain climbing escapades, so it really does go to show what one can do if one puts one’s mind to it.

I was introduced to Elizabeth Bear the other weekend whilst I was helping some friends break in their new allotment. Her debut novel is set in a Shadowrun style environment, 50 years in the future. The gulf stream has packed up, the USA isn’t so united any more, the sole remaining superpower is Canada and transnational corporations are all the rage.

The story, however, is what sets this apart from all the other shadowrun novels I’ve been ploughing through of late. The heroine is a 50year old, world weary combat veteren who, with her group of equally heroic friends, is uniquely qualified to save the day. True, there are one or two characters who meet the usual sterotype of a cybernetically boosted street samurai, but even they’re tempered with a degree of normality and a liberally applied sense of cool taken straight out of film noir. Richard Feymann gets one of the more gratiuitous characters, lending his name to a rakish AI who runs round the Matrix in an amusing and morally ambiguous way. If the book has a weakness, it’s that the antagonists are given the same treatment as the good guys and, well, they’re insufficiently evil.

It wasn’t the smoothest book I’ve ever read, but the story arc is compelling and leaves you wanting the next one. Luckily there’re another 2 in the series.

I found Sniper One to be a particularly gripping read, I picked it up one Sunday morning and then proceeded to devour it cover to cover that afternoon in the armchair by the fire (awww). It’s an account of an Sergeant from the British Infantry’s tour of duty in Iraq from 4 years ago and is presented in the first person.

I found the style very similar to Andy McNab’s earlier books, the sentences were kept short and snappy, the action fast and furious. The conversations and comments were very much towards my sense of humour, very deadpan and matter of fact, not at all politically correct and taken from a highly British point of view. All of the soldiers from his unit were strong, mostly likable characters, who had a clearly infectious enthusiasm for their chosen profession. All the usual military terms and codenames were explained as they went along and most of the scenes and bits of equipment wouldn’t have been out of place in any modern military story.

It’s definately not for children, some of the scenes would be horrific if your suspension of disbelief isn’t quite tuned in and the language. It’s refreshing to come across one small corner of the war that isn’t presented in the same “everything’s going to be alright, we’re all winning here” that the home media consistently reports. I clearly don’t know which is correct, but the contrast is pleasing.

The book is easy reading and I’m glad Sgt Dan Mills took the time to write it.

I frequently read swords and sorcery type fantasy escapism, but they’re normally set in Medieval times rather than an approximation of the modern world. Apparently the genre is called urban fantasy, think Buffy the Vampire Slayer but less teenage.

All the usual elements were present in this book, hero protagonist, swords, vampires, werewolves, police agencies and knightly orders and an amateur whodunnit plot, but what made this book noteworthy was that it was all brought together in a relatively uncontrived way with the liberal application of my favourite sort of humour, deadpan understatement.

The author only resorted to outright explanation of the world to introduce their unique ideas, such as the swings between ‘magic’ and ‘tech’ phases, and things like lights and clapped out car engines that ran on water and ambient magic. Everything else fell into place in my imagination with only the occasional pause to laugh out loud and get subsequently glared at for failing to share. Some scenes were a little more graphic than I normally find, but only when necessary to convey a certain character or plot device.

For an author’s first book, I found it to be a remarkably good read and I’ll be both buying the next in the series (not sure mail order will be fast enough) and exploring other authors in that genre (with the aid of Ilona Andrew’s Myspace site)

Every so often, they open up their general warehouse to the public to clear excess stock, normally for £1 a book. There is all sorts on offer, often quite a large selection of childrens books, but otherwise there’s everything from the Canterbury Tales to the X-men, travel books, maps, reference books, academic books and a few items that make you wonder who’s idea it was to actually print that. With it being a mixture of hard and softbacks, I limit myself to buying what I can physically carry, so today I got away fairly lightly with just the 17 books. They’ll show up on my librarything when I get a bored few minutes to scan them in.

Unlike my groaning shelves, I find these book sales to be quite relaxing and fun to explore. They’re well attended so there’s enough of a crowd to vanish into, you can just browse along the tables and have the freedom to dip into books that you normally wouldn’t consider reading the back of. Not that I would advocate buying anything terribly embarrasing of course, I did go with my family after all, but with each item you pick up costing a pound, you don’t have to worry about wasting too much money on something you’re unlikely to read.

Now I just need to finish getting the reading-a-lot-of-book-spines crick out of my neck..

“Nation”, the latest novel from the ever popular Terry Pratchett shows that he’s still able to write great stories, packed with the humour, intelligence we all love, stuck together with just enough reality to make it all work.

This book is a departure from the famous Discworld setting, but as Terry himself said, “I cannot write the next Discworld book while this one is in my head.”

It’s clearly pitched at the Young Adult audience, playing on many childhood mysteries and fears that get the reader to really buy into the protagonists whilst still allowing the author to use some adult themes that keep it interesting to the rest of us.

The deadpan witticisms are all present and correct, as is the master novelist’s craft of describing just enough to convey their world and then letting the reader do the rest of the work. An appreciation of stereotypical colonial Britain helps smile at some of the scenes.

The story is essentially two teenagers rapid induction into adult life in the face of adversity whilst building up the world around them and fighting off the villains in the process. There is plenty of fun adventure to be had (the Beer Song springs to mind) but interspersed with moments of grim humour. I was glad many of the situations occurred to the characters and not to me, but they were brushed off in the way that children might.

One of my favourite scenes involved one of the lead characters inviting the other one to Afternoon Tea in a shipwreck and despite not speaking each other’s language, they still fret over not being able to find the napkin rings. I’m not sure about the culinary delight of dead-lobster flavoured scones.

The story quickly builds up its pace into a proper page turner. It isn’t as intense as his best work but I wasn’t tempted to pick up another book until I’d finished it.

As ever, highly recommended reading.

I was recently introduced to a rather popular series of books by Gervase Phinn, and although I’m typically a few years later than the rest of the world, I’ve found reading them enjoyable enough to warrant a new category on the ol’ blog. So much so that it’s taken me 3 weeks to finish writing this post, it seems that reading the books is more fun than writing about them.

Of course one advantage of having waited so long, is that the author had a chance to write the first 5 books in theseries, and I do so like big series.

The Dales series of books is written as a collection of anonymised autobiographical anecedotes, with each book covering Phinn’s life as a Yorkshire county school inspector over an academic year. The written language is very accessible and quick to read (yes, even faster than I normally read), with the characters and their conversations really springing off the page with clever use of spelling and punctuation. The chapters are reasonably short, covering perhaps an incident or a scene or two, which really lends the books to casual reading, such as on a train or a lunch break. The punchlines are well delivered, totally deadpan and often unexpected, leading to all manner of involuntary outbursts, the grounding in reality just makes it funnier.

The fictional locations and characters major and minor recur throughout the books, and are memorable enough that you don’t spend too much time trying to match up the name to the character or place. It is clear that the author really took a shine to the landscape and the population of the Yorkshire Moors and Dales, he always takes care to describe scenes when he pauses to look out of the window at the view. Which is something that I can totally relate to, having spent most of my Sundays at university out walking in Yorkshire with the Outdoor Society. One downside is that I’ve found myself trolling the Ordnance Survey maps of the Dales and Moors trying to see if I can spot some of the locations alluded to in the books. After all, there can’t be many Yorkshire dales with roads going along both sides of the valley.

Some of the major plot elements that span the different books are often in the form of cliffhangers, which are easily spoilt by reading the back covers trying to work out which book is where in the series. To help avoid unnecessary disappointments, here are the books in order:

The Other Side of the Dale

Over Hill and Dale

Head Over Heels in the Dales

Up and Down in the Dales

The Heart of the Dales