Author: latepaul

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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 34: Moon Over Soho – Ben Aaronovitch

I wasn’t kidding when I said I loved Rivers of London. Not only did I buy this and book 3 in the series straight away but I started reading this as soon as I could.

Moon Over Soho picks up a few weeks (possibly months) after Rivers of London. The consequences of that story are still with us and make for a touching and sensitive opening chapter. However Peter Grant is still a police officer and trainee wizard, so when jazz musicians in London start to die of apparently “natural causes” he has to investigate. Oh, I didn’t mention in my last review that Grant’s father was a musician did I? His speciality? Jazz.

So I loved Rivers of London and the follow up didn’t disappoint. It had the same wise-cracking main character narration and a similarly complex plot that weaves through both the everyday and other-worldly versions of London, leavened with some real London history/geography/trivia thrown in. A couple of differences: first there was more left open at the end of this book. It was a complete case and the investigation comes to a definite conclusion but there are elements that will no doubt be picked up in book 3 (and beyond?). I suspect with have met Grant’s nemesis, his Moriarty if you will. I think this is probably because with the success of book 1 Aaronovitch probably has the freedom to plan a few books ahead and so is able to have an on-going component as well as the story of the book itself.

A second difference is the amount of sex in this book. Now the previous book certainly has some sexy characters and a fair amount of unresolved tension between the same but in this book there’s some definite ‘resolving’ going on. This was neither too explicit nor too coy and without giving anything away it did add to the plot. Plus, like the humour, it adds to the fun of the story.

9/10 – book 2 as much fun as book 1.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED 33: The Last Hero – Terry Pratchett

The Last Hero is the next in my on-going quest to catch up on the Discworld books.

Just like in the legend on our world, fire on the Disc was stolen from the Gods. Cohen the Barbarian, the eponymous hero of the title, has decided it’s time to take it back. Unfortunately this leads to the very real possibility that the Disc will be doomed and so a team from Ankh-Morpork attempt to stop this from happening by launching a spacecraft to loop around the Disc and land on Cori Celesti the home of the Gods.

So essentially what you get is a series of jokes about heroes and getting old (which we’ve seen before but ok) and a pretty decent Apollo 13 parody.

The Last Hero is subtitled “A Discworld Fable“. I’m not quite sure what makes it a fable. Perhaps the publishers were just looking for something to describe it with due to its different format. Which is that it’s a large 176-page book with lots of illustrations and full page pictures. However it’s not a graphic novel and the text is complete in itself. The pictures, as nice as they are and they are very well done, are illustrations only. You could read just the text and not miss out on anything. Also it’s a Discworld story in exactly the same way that any of the others are. It just happens to be shorter. So a novella yes, fable well maybe.

I mention this only because I struggled with the form-factor a little. I’d’ve preferred an ebook or a regular sized paper-back. So the irritation of handling a ‘big book’ for what was an ok-ish but short Discworld story detracted from the overall experience.

I am hoping that the Discworld books, or my enjoyment of them, picks up again. Reading Rivers of London reminds of what it used to be like to read a light, fantasy-themed book with lots of humour and good characters. However for the umpteenth time I must note that I don’t know that it’s Pratchett’s writing that has changed or just that I’m too familiar with it. That said I did enjoy this, just not as much as I’d hoped.

6/10 – a shorter story that could have happily lived in a smaller book imho.



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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 32: Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch

So, having read London Falling I marked it read on Goodreads and checked out some of the reviews. That lead me to comparisons with this book. Now I’d been aware of this book as it had had quite a lot of promotion. When I checked on Amazon I discovered that there were now three books in the same series and that Rivers of London was available for the princely sum of £1.99.

Rivers of London begins with Peter Grant still a probationary officer in the Met, seeing a ghost and shortly after witnessing a murder. As he becomes involved in the case he meets the mysterious Inspector Nightingale and soon joins his very special unit within the force, both as a fully-fledged Detective Constable as well as a trainee wizard.

I loved this book. It was light and fun and the main character has a snappy line in comic narration that makes it easy to read. The plot soon becomes quite involved and we’re introduced to a whole host of characters some of whom are not-quite human. There’s a lot in here about London, the history and geography of London and even though it’s clearly very well researched it doesn’t come over as dry or lecturing but is interspersed into the story quite naturally. I think the novel will work well even if you don’t know London but I’ll admit trying to figure out if I’d had a meal with Melissa in a particular restaurant that makes a brief appearance in a chase scene (and so on) was fun.

Obviously I came to this from Paul Cornell’s London Falling so a word about the comparison. Clearly there’s no issue between the writers themselves – they’re both Dr Who writers and Aaronovitch has endorsed Cornell’s book with a quote on the cover. They are also very different in tone and style. Despite some striking similarities in a high-level concept way – they both feature London heavily and concern cops that are investigating supernatural crimes – they are clearly very different and no-one would mistake either for the other after having read even a couple of pages. And I could write you a similarly high-level description of a serial killer book that would match several dozen books and no-one thinks that an issue.

What I will say is that I’m glad that I read Cornell’s first because whilst I like them both very much I think I might have been impatient with his more intense style if I’d read the light, breezy PC Grant book first. That said I’m eagerly awaiting the follow-up to London Falling which I believe is finished and winding its way through the cogs of the publishing process. It also has to be said that after reading a few chapters of Rivers of London I picked up the two sequels and will soon be in the position of eagerly awaiting book 4.

9/10 – it really is like a grown-up Harry Potter, but if anything more fun.




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RED Book 31: London Falling – Paul Cornell

It’s that time of year again when I try to catch up on the outstanding book reviews so I can wrap up and launch the current year’s Book Blog Project. Sadly I am a few behind.

London Falling is by Paul Cornell. I heard it about it from his blog which I follow. Cornell is  a writer who has had success in several fields including comic books and novels but it’s as a TV writer that I first came across him. Specifically he’s the writer of my favourite Dr Who two-parter Human Nature/Family of Blood – adapted from his own Dr Who novel.

I’d always meant to read one of his novels and when I heard him say that this was coming out and that he felt it captured his voice better than his previous ones I thought why not? Also I found the premise intriguing – more on that in a second.

London Falling begins as a big drug bust is about to take place. It’s an operation that’s been years in the planning and involves two undercover officers. The bust is happening more because they’re running out of money than because the timing’s just right, nevertheless they manage to arrest a local gang boss and several of his “soldiers”. Unfortunately this coup is short-lived as he’s killed whilst in police custody. In fact whilst he’s being interviewed and in full view of CCTV. Nevertheless it’s not clear who, what or how the murder took place.

Shortly after this a small unit is formed to investigate this. It turns out to have been a supernatural killing and after visiting a related crime scene the team acquire ‘The Sight’ which is the ability to see… well what exactly it is they can see is explored in the rest of the novel, but for now I’ll just say that it adds an extra dimension to things.

I loved this book. However I do have to say that it took me a while to get into it. The first two or three chapters have almost no supernatural element at all and I suppose since that’s why I had picked up the book I was waiting for that to appear. Once it did however we were off to the races. In the past I’ve scored books highly because they had a page-turning quality but they haven’t always stayed with me once I’ve finished them. London Falling was not like that. It was page-turning because I really wanted to know what happened but when I found out what happened I was usually more intrigued and more concerned about the characters.

Cornell has said that one of the things he wanted to do was show how real Police officers would handle the supernatural, and what it would be like if they applied the same set of techniques to these other-worldly experiences as they do to every day investigations. I think that’s where the book sets itself apart. It’s also why I think the first section of the book is what it is – we need to establish what ‘ordinary’ policing is like to some extent.

This book reminded me of a couple of other authors when I was reading it. First Michael Marshall Smith – specifically Only Forward – it has a similar sense of a dream/spirit world that lies alongside the everyday world. Secondly it reminded me of the better Ankh-Morpork set Discworld books. It has that same sense of a city being an intricate working mechanism and of the author being fascinated with how it all fits together. So yes, in the words of the old cliche, London really is a character in this book.

Having said that, this book reminded me of those others but is totally unlike them in style or tone. It is its own book and that’s to its credit. It is a fairly intense book and the crimes committed are pretty gruesome stuff. But then it’s definitely no worse than some of your serial killer thrillers. There is a thread of wry dark humour but it’s not a light read, it is a rewarding one though.

9/10 – A police procedural with added supernatural menace.

(p.s. I’ve avoided the phrase ‘urban fantasy’ because despite the fact that that’s what it is on a plain meaning level, and despite the fact that Cornell is happy with that classification, I think it summons up ideas of romances with Vampires or Werewolves, neither of which are in evidence here.)




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The Accidental Diet – Weeks 6 & 7

So it’s been two weeks since I updated you but I have still been weighing myself and for one of those weeks at least I was also trying to keep up the diet.

Week 6

Due to leaving to travel to my parents for Christmas I weighed myself on the Sunday not the Monday. To be honest I was surprised and pleased because some of my non-fast days had been very calorific – it being the run up to Christmas and all. However it was a genuine reading so here it is:

Lost: 1.8lbs
Lost so far: 11.4lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.9lbs
Weight: 271.8lbs (19st 6lb)

Week 7

Which was Christmas week. I travelled home on the Sunday night and didn’t really attempt any fast days. I did find however that I ate probably only one main meal a day and then snacked a lot, but less than I otherwise would perhaps. I have had opportunity to do my fast days since I got back but haven’t apart from today so I’m very pleased with the figures below (though I’m hoping for something a bit better in the coming week)

Lost: 1lbs
Lost so far: 12.4lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.77lbs
Weight: 270.8lbs (19st 5lb)

Created by MyFitnessPal – Nutrition Facts For Foods

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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 30: The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells

Martians, Heat Ray, End of the World etcA while back (maybe a year or two?) I bought an anthology of H.G. Wells books for a couple of quid. 38 novels, polemical works and short story collections all in one handy kindle ebook.

Except not so handy. What they’d done was put all the books together in a single file without a proper Table of Contents (TOC) and no individual chapter breaks. So recently I’ve been fixing that. I split the books into separate files, tidied up the formatting, added covers, a TOC and chapter breaks. It was tedious, repetative but ultimately satisfying work. After all that I figured I should read at least one of those books. So I picked War of the Worlds – which I had in paperback – so I read that copy!

There’s obviously not a lot new I can say about this book. So I don’t intend to post a regular review of it, just a few impressions of this time reading it. If you really want a synopsis click on the image for a link to the Goodreads page.

First thing to say is that it’s hard to read this, well the first chapter specifically without hearing the deep warm tones of Richard Burton, and it’s true that through most of it I was humming Forever Autumn. And I think this is relevant because I think my memory of the story – and I have read the book before – owes more to the concept album than the book itself.

The second thing I noticed was how primitive the human technology was. I know that they were supposed to be out-classed but the fact that this book was written before there were even airplanes, when the main mode of transport was horse-drawn really brings out that difference in weapons tech. It also meant it felt a lot less like a “SciFi” novel because most of the action was at the human level, from the human point of view.

The next thing was how parochial it was. The devastation wreaked by the Martians is swift, extreme and pretty near total – but it covers an area of a few miles between where they landed and London. Even in the book this is acknowledged to some extent. There’s talk of escaping to France and of cities like Manchester and Edinburgh sending help when London needs rebuilding at the end of the book. I presume that this too was deliberate and that if they hadn’t been defeated (spoiler!) then the Martians would have sent further cylinders to build on their beach-head in the UK and spread outwards.

I think the thing that comes out really strongly, and was still a theme in the 2005 Spielberg adaptation, is the effect that the invasion has on an ordinary man and what he is forced to witness, and do, to survive. This stuff is still powerful.

Things I hadn’t remembered were the physical descriptions of the Martians, the way they fed – I knew that they consumed human blood but I hadn’t realised it was directly infused into their veins.

So anyway, a few impressions after re-reading this classic. I definitely enjoyed it but it left a slightly different taste to the one I’d expected.

7/10 – “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one”




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The Accidental Diet – Week 5

It’s with a great sense of relief that I write this because this week I have lost weight, and not only the weight I “put on” last week (I was down the next day) but I’m down overall. True my average is less than half a pound a week for the last fortnight but that’s ok. I was prepared for IF to be slower than previous diets. Anyway, I’ve not much more to say – here’s the numbers:

Lost: 1.8lbs
Lost so far: 9.6lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.92lbs
Weight: 273.6lbs (19st 7.6lb)

Created by MyFitnessPal – Nutrition Facts For Foods

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The Accidental Diet – Week 4

I’m not impressed.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. It certainly wasn’t supposed to happen so soon. Most of this week unofficial weighings have led me to worry that the rate of loss had slowed dramatically. I was already feeling grumpy about that. But to put on a pound? Pah!

I think the problem is that a) having done this before I’m used to the initial losing-weight-easily phase lasting longer and b) I believed the hype about IF – specifically that I could “eat what I liked” on non-fast days. Having said that though, I have set my MFP goals for a pound a week and I try to use that as a guide as to whether I’m over-indulging. I don’t feel bound by it but I do track the calories (because as I said I want to see how the +5 prediction holds up). So I know that most days I was under my calories (including exercise) but one day I went over quite a lot. Still, I didn’t think it would make this much of an impact.

Having, as I say, anticipated a slow-down I told Melissa that if I didn’t lose anything or went up I’d probably add another fast day. But at the moment the only way to do that would be to make it Saturday – which I find a little tough. I guess I’ve believed that this (IF) would be “sustainable” and by “sustainable” I secretly meant “easy”. Fasting is not that easy but it’s soon forgotten when it’s only a day at a time.

There are other factors – I did less exercise over the last few days (which was intentional) and I haven’t had a bowel movement in a couple of days (sorry TMI I know) – so I’m tempted to wait another week before making rash adjustments. I may yet come down again. We’ll see…

Oh well.

Lost: -1lbs
Lost so far: 7.8lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.95lbs
Weight: 275.4lbs (19st 9lb)

Created by MyFitnessPal – Nutrition Facts For Foods

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The Accidental Diet – Week 3

It’s definitely working. Once again I’m aware that you always lose a lot early on but I am finding it relatively easy. The only thing that perhaps I find irritating is that I’m logging calories on non-fast days (i.e. “eat what you like” days). This tends to undermine that sense that you don’t have to think about eating and what everything “costs” all the time. But the only reason I’m doing that is because I like to get MFP’s “in five weeks time” predictions for my spreadsheet. And actually it has an upside because I tend to keep within MFP’s calorie budget for the day, including exercise calories.

Lost: 2lbs
Lost so far: 8.8lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.93lbs
Weight: 274.4lbs (19st 8lb)

Created by MyFitnessPal – Nutrition Facts For Foods

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The Accidental Diet – Week 2

So this is my first full week of IF/5:2. When I last wrote I’d done one day of fasting. I have now done three (including today) and the rest were “normal” days. Which sometimes meant eating normally but at least once meant eating quite a lot. I’m tracking my calories every day at MFP but I’m happy to go over and I am “eating my [exercise] calories” on non-fasting days.

However I’m aware that almost anything works for the first few weeks so I’m hoping to rein in the excess a little and MFP’s idea of what I need to be doing to lose a lb a week seems to me generous enough for a normal day.

Lost: 3.4lbs
Lost so far: 6.8lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 3.4lbs
Weight: 276.4lbs (19st 10lb)

Created by MyFitnessPal – Nutrition Facts For Foods