The encyclopaedia of cult children's tv

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Emma: The Twice-Crowned Queen by Isabella Strachan

This is a profoundly frustrating book! The author's to be commended for having done a great amount of research to pull together an array of fascinating characters, violent times and courtly intrigues. Sadly, though, although all the characters and events of epic drama are present and correct the drama itself doesn't come to the party. The author just doesn't have any sense of narrative flow.

Take, for example, the incident of the St. Brice's Day massacre. It's heavily touted within the book as the single most catastrophic incident in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (and, arguably, Saxon England history) but when the moment comes in the narrative you would hardly notice it. A couple of pages afterwards it suddenly dawned on me that the author's references to the event had changed from "would be" to "was."

There are other instances, and plenty more where the narrative flow begins to build and then is lurched out of the way to make room for a short, distracting side issue. It reads and feels very much like reading a chronicler's efforts: "here's the latest installment of the story and while I remember here's a couple more facts."

Sadly, this is a book written by an encyclopedist, not a historian.

-- Steven

Landscape Photographer of the Year Collection

What a beautiful book! There are a lot of really gorgeous photography books around at the moment and this is a splendid example.

The pictures are lovely. Some of them are really surprising: they are straightforward shots of landscapes or features within landscapes but the angle of the camera or the light or the way the colours interact make them impossible to identify at first sight. All those "ordinary" things I'd just walk past and ignore if I were there, suddenly made wonderful. Others are just wonderful landscapes taken well. The colours are marvellous and some of the skies!

— Susan

We have one copy of this book, at the Wheatsheaf Library.

Shrek Cookbook

Isn't this great? Lots of nice, easy-to-follow recipes — without hundreds and hundreds of different ingredients for each one — nicely laid out with Shrek and Princess Fiona and the others. There's some wonderful stuff in here.

I like the way the book opens flat so that you're not having to keep on finding your place while you're following the recipes.

And there are some good ideas for uses for ear wax!

— Sue

We've copies of Shrek Cookbook in the Children's Non-Fiction collections in all our libraries.

Island Race by John McCarthy and Sandy Toksvig

John and Sandy set off sailing round the coast of Britain They stopped at various places on route including Rick Stein's restaurant in Padstow very mouth watering.There are some lovely pictures in the book which makes it more interesting. I borrowed this from Spotland Library.

Margaret Taylor

Don't Drop the Coffin by Barry Albin-Dyer

I borrowed this from Darnhill Library. It's not quite what you think it's going to be. Don't be put off by the title, a really good dry read!

k

The Good Women of China

Xinran was a presenter of a radio program in China in which she invited women to call in and write about themselves. This collection of their stories is deeply moving, an unforgettable insight into the lives of Chinese women. I borrowed this from Wardle Library.

Janice

Galapagos Diary by Hermann Heinzel

"An astonishingly nice book to look at and read. It's sort of two books in one: there's a nice travelogue with lots of splendid photographs that make the islands and their wildlife look interesting, intriguing and attractive. Then there's the author's sketches: quick, unfussy lines capturing the wildlife - especially the birds! - as lively, active creatures and not static or stuffed specimens.

"Wonderful."

Jim

Sports reading

I can take or leave most sports, save cricket, but there are times when you're channel-hopping in the wee small hours when you just can't sleep and don't have the concentration to read a book and, faced with the bleak, hard choice of whatever's on the cheap sports channel or some expensive tat teleshopping you've just got to go with the former. Giles Smith's "Midnight in the Garden of Evel Knievel" is just the book to reflect this level of engagement. This is a collection of articles about sport written for the Daily Telegraph and the Times from the point of view of the bloke watching it on the telly. Knowledgeable, irreverent and very readable!

Steven


p.s. While I'm at it, I'd also like to put in a plug for "Extreme Ironing." Derring-do, breathtaking scenery and knife-sharp creases. What more could you hope for?