Reading Matters

'Are you Somebody?' by Nuala O'Faolain

Non-fiction - paperback; New Island Books (2nd edition); 264 pages; 2008.

I've read some extraordinary memoirs in recent years, all by professional writers -- Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life, Hilary Mantel's Giving Up the Ghost, Amélie Nothomb's The Life of Hunger -- and this one, by Irish author, journalist and TV producer Nuala O'Faolain, is right up there with the best of them.

O'Faolain, who died last year aged 68 from cancer, was a household name in Ireland. Indeed, in the introduction to this edition, she writes that she was "fairly well known" but is quick to point out that she was "no star":

People have to look at me twice or three times to put a name on me. Sometimes when I'm drinking in a lounge bar, a group of women, say, across the room begin to look at me, and send one of their number over to me, or when I'm in the supermarket someone who has just passed me by turns back, and comes right up to me and scrutinises my face. 'Are you somebody?' they ask.

By contrast, I know very little about O'Faolain outside of her wonderful novel My Dream of You, which I read earlier in the year and had been told was a thinly veiled biography. Having enjoyed it so much I figured I should try the "real" thing, which is how I came to read this memoir.

There's no doubt that O'Faolain knows how to write. There's also no doubt that she knows how to do so in a very candid way. There's no hedging her bets, or taking a softly-softly approach. It's all here, warts and all.

She was born one of nine children in 1940 "when nine was not even thought of as a big family among the teeming, penniless, anonymous Irish of the day". She viewed herself as a nobody, just an ordinary girl, in a country constricted by Catholicism, who would eventually be married and kept by a man. And yet, for most of Nuala's life, she rages against this stereotypical expectation and breaks as many social norms as she can.

Without going into too much detail, she moves in with a man she has not married (a huge no-no in Holy Catholic Ireland at the time) and later flees to England, where she forges a hugely successful academic and journalistic career. But along the way, despite her successful working life, there is something missing: a troubled past and estranged relationship with her family seems to keep her back (her father, a well-known Irish journalist, does not come off very well in this memoir, nor her mother, who turned to drink to numb the pain of a bad marriage). And then there's her promiscuity and search for "passion" which ultimately leaves her feeling rather lost and empty.

Surprisingly, for a woman so candid about her sexual desires, she gives scant regard to her partner of 15 years, the journalist Nell McCafferty and barely mentions her in this book, apart from describing the odd cosy holiday together. (Perhaps Nuala's second volume, entitled Almost There, may fill in some of these gaps.)

Are You Somebody? is about one woman's search for meaning, dealing with a past that you cannot leave behind and coming to terms with growing old. There's a sadness at the heart of this memoir, and a slow-burning rage, too, and perhaps just a smidgen of self-pity. But, ultimately, it's a powerhouse of a read, and you come away from it feeling as if you really got to know the lonely, flawed and hugely intelligent and brave woman who wrote it.

'Books v. cigarettes' by George Orwell

Non-fiction - paperback; Penguin; 144 pages; 2008.

Books v. cigarettes is a small collection of essays by George Orwell brought together as part of Penguin's Great Ideas Series 3. The title of the book comes from an essay of the same name in which Orwell considers how much money he spends on his two vices, reading and smoking. This particular essay, first published in the Tribune on 8 February, 1946, will resonate with book lovers the world over, because how many of us have foregone some other pleasure (or necessity) in favour of a good book?

To prove that reading is not an expensive hobby out of the reach of ordinary citizens, Orwell counts all the books he owns (this sounds remarkably like what I have done in recent weeks, tackling my TBR piles) and adds up their total price to work out how much money he has spent on reading over a 15-year period. He discovers he has some 900 books and that it has cost him a little over £11 per year. 

He also includes his newspaper and periodicals intake, which is quite impressive: £8 per year on "two daily papers, one evening paper, two Sunday papers, one weekly review and one or two monthly magazines".  (I suspect if Orwell was around today he'd be a complete internet junkie, reading all the news sites, book blogs, Twitter feeds and so on.) He also spends roughly £6 per year on library subscriptions and cheap paperbacks, chiefly Penguins, "which one buys and then loses or throws away". 

All up, he estimates reading costs him £25 per year, which, according to this calculator, is the equivalent of £648 in today's money. By comparison, he spends £20 a year on cigarettes and beer.

In the grand scheme of things, he thinks this is quite reasonable although he points out that it is difficult to establish "any relationship between the price of books and the value one gets out of them".

His second essay, Bookshop Memories, recalls his time spent working in a second-hand bookshop. His observations are both slightly snobby ("I doubt whether 10 per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one") and acutely funny:

Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who 'wants a book for an invalid' (a very common demand, that), and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover.

This quote made me laugh out loud, because I spent six years working in bookshops and used to get vague requests like this all the time!

Books v. cigarettes also includes a wonderful essay about reviewing books and another on the state of literature, which will appeal to bibliophiles. The rest of this slim volume tackles other non-bookish subjects: patriotism, the relationship between doctors and patients, and Orwell's childhood memoirs spent at an exclusive boarding school for which he obtained a scholarship.

All up, this is a perfect, effortless read, highly personable and quite bookish, if you like that sort of thing.

'A Drinking Life' by Pete Hamill

Non-fiction - paperback; 1st Back Bay Ed; 280 pages; 1995.

I am a sucker for memoirs, especially if they're written by "proper writers", whether authors or journalists. It's not so much that these particular people lead more interesting lives than others, but they can write about them so much better than anyone else. Essentially, they use the skills of novelists and reporters to turn their life stories into highly readable and entertaining narratives.

I was particularly keen to read journalist and novelist Pete Hamill's memoir A Drinking Life because I knew so little about the man. I suspect Americans have a better handle on him given he's been the editor-in-chief of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News, but I only discovered him when I read his 2002 novel Forever last year. I thought that book was excellent and on an excursion to New York last November I went on a mission to track down his memoir, expecting that I'd probably have to order it online at some point. But, alas, the first store I went into -- Barnes & Noble in the Time Warner Centre -- had it in stock. I felt like I'd found gold at the end of the rainbow!

Needless to say, it took me almost a year to dig it out of the ever-growing To Be Read pile, but the wait was worth it.

Given the title I had expected A Drinking Life to be a story about Hamill's battle with booze, but that's not really what this memoir is about. While he discusses his relationship with alcohol very frankly throughout the book, from his first taste of beer as a child to his teenage discovery that drink could let him "get rid of something", this is not solely an alcoholic's confessional. It's actually a memoir of a lifetime New Yorker, and, more crucially, reveals how a poor working-class kid from Brooklyn managed to carve out a successful writing career despite several setbacks, poor decisions and a fondness for women and drink.

At times it reminded me very much of Betty Smith's much-loved American classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, particularly Hamill's account of growing up in Brooklyn the oldest of seven children (his parents were Catholic immigrants from Belfast, Northern Ireland), but it's also a firsthand account of what it was like to experience everything from the Great Depression (Hamill was born in 1935) to the Korean War, McCarthyism to the assassination of President Kennedy.

What makes this particular memoir so vivid and interesting to read, however, is Hamill's brutal frankness and the candid nature of his writing. He never shies away from being totally honest, even if it portrays him in a bad light. His relationship with his father is often painful to read, because he makes it clear that he loved his father, a one-legged drunk, but did not feel that his father loved him in return -- he was constantly seeking approval that never came. It was only when he left school at 16, moved out of the family home and took a job as sheet metal worker in the Brooklyn Navy Yard that he gained some measure of paternal respect. This was helped, in part, by working alongside men that knew his father and who told him tales about Billy Hamill's strength, determination and brains.

Pity allowed me to see him as man, instead of a father who could not play the role that my childish imagination and need had assigned him. I could see him in Belfast as a boy, running streets and fields with his twin brother, trying to eat in a kitchen with a dozen other kids, listening to commands from his own father. [...] In a new way Billy Hamill came alive to me, a person cobbled together from sparse facts and my imagination, and in that summer of my own defeat, I pitied him, with the glibness of a child, and felt the permanent grieving hurt in all his black silences.

But despite Hamill's vow that "I didn't want to be like my father. I didn't want to be a drunk", he discovers that drinking gives him "strength, confidence, ease, laughter; it made me believe that dreams really could come true". It is the drink that sustains him through a myriad number of changes in life direction: he studies art, has an affair with a much older nude model while dating a "nice girl" his own age, flees to Mexico City with a male friend to study painting and writing, and later returns to New York, as a fugitive, to work as a graphic designer. In 1960 he makes the dramatic switch from pictures to words, and becomes a reporter for the New York Post.

He later marries, has two children, and travels the world in pursuit of stories and good times. When his marriage breaks down, mainly because of his drinking, he decides to quit the bottle for good. It was a move that produced another dramatic turn in his life, because he met and later moved in with actress Shirley MacLaine, and developed a career writing fiction, including novels and TV scripts.

According to Hamill's own website, A Drinking Life was on the New York Times list for 13 weeks when it was published in 1995. I'm not surprised. It's a terrific account of a life well-lived, even if much of that life was marred by drink. You certainly don't need to have read any of his novels to appreciate the wonderful story recounted here, but it will no doubt encourage you to seek out his other work. It's emotional, forthright, funny and informative: what more could you ask for in a memoir?

'Scoop-Wallah' by Justine Hardy

Non fiction - paperback; Summersdale; 320 pages; 2009.

Justine Hardy's Scoop-Wallah has just been republished after a 10-year break. I discovered it via a journalists' electronic newsletter I receive a couple of times a week, one of those "alerts" that tells you about moves and job opportunities within the British and Irish news media, which I normally bin after a quick skim. But lately the alerts have begun promoting books about the media (well, with no journalism jobs about at present, I guess the newsletter has to be filled with something) and Hardy's book caught my eye. In fact, it sounded so intriguing I ordered it immediately.

The book recounts Hardy's year-long experience as a journalist on The Indian Express, an English-language newspaper based in New Delhi. She had gone there after a chance conversation with her local greengrocer, an expat from the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir which straddles the India-Pakistan border. Hardy wanted to buy half a cabbage; he wanted her to go to India because he felt she'd do a better job of reporting on the state of his former home than the world's press.

Hardy, up for a challenge, went for it. She leaves London and winds up living in one of the more fashionable areas of New Delhi. Through family connections -- her cousin married an Indian and one of their great friends had become her best friend in India -- she finds a room in an apartment block overseen by a former Rajput prince. While her accommodation is far from luxurious -- "two beds, a suffering sofa, a view over a dusty garden, the roar of an old air cooler" -- she settles in well, travels to work courtesy of her own rickshaw driver and gets assigned quite a lot of "fluffy" articles. Her life seems very far removed from the slums and the grim poverty one might expect.

But she's desperate to cover the serious stories, instead of the society weddings and polo matches, and through sheer tenacity and badgering of her editor, does, eventually get to see some of the more seedier and dangerous aspects of India. Her journey to Assam, in the country's north-east, is particularly telling. The main tea-growing state has an endemic terrorism problem caused by separatists who seek to rid the area of "foreigners". Here she learns that every garden pays protection money, that the separatists get large sums under the guise of a land tax on every kilo of tea produced, and that if the company does not pay, people go missing. She also sees the terrible working conditions of the largely female employees, while the estate manager lives a very comfortable existence in a lovely house, thank-you-very-much. 

Later she gets to cover other "important" stories, such as the former high-flying journalist who's swapped reporting for teaching children in the slums, and the middle-class belief that "education and a good salary buy immunity from AIDS". She even goes on a side-trip to meet the Dalia Lama.

At all times, Hardy generates an infectious enthusiasm and passion, not only for the immediate topic at hand, but for India as a whole. Her book is a refreshing take on what it is like to live and work in a country that is constantly striving to reconcile its wish to modernise without losing its rich traditions so deeply rooted in the past. She peoples it with a cast of entertaining and quirky characters -- her gay, alcoholic, spoilt rich-man prince is a hoot, and her jolly editor, who's had his own hard-hitting journalistic career thwarted but never lets on, livens up the page whenever he's mentioned. Indeed, the dialogue throughout is often hilarious.

I found Scoop-Wallah a quick, enjoyable read, one that provided an inside glimpse of the "real" India that you'd never gain from the normal run-of-the-mill travelogue. But, for personal reasons, I particularly enjoyed reading about the newspaper industry and the ways in which it differs from the British press.

Please note that the book also features some of Hardy's wonderful black and white photographs. These are scattered throughout the text rather than being sandwiched in the middle, lending the book a more personal quality.

'The Journalist and the Murderer' by Janet Malcolm

Non-fiction - paperback; Granta Books; 163 pages; 2004.

Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer famously caused an outcry within the media when it was first published as a two-part article in The New Yorker in 1989. Its oft-quoted opening sentence -- "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible" -- seemed to lay down the gauntlet, calling the ethics of journalism into question.

But Malcolm is a journalist herself and so the book must not be condemned on the basis of this first line, nor should it be viewed as summing up the author's views. Indeed, it becomes clear upon reading The Journalist and the Murderer that Malcolm has mixed views about her profession, which I'm sure is true of most journalists today, myself included.

What this book really examines is the relationship between journalists and sources in the context of non-fiction books and the difficulties which face both parties. While the journalist must remain impartial in order to render the truth, he must do whatever he can to convince his subject to be frank and open with him. Meanwhile, the source must come to trust the journalist enough to share his or her most intimate secrets. Such unspoken rules are fraught with difficulty, because what happens if the journalist writes something that upsets the source but which he knows is correct and truthful? Most journalists would say that they are only doing their job - and that's the view I take, too.

But what if the situation was slightly more complicated, and the journalist agreed to write a book about the source and was given unparalleled access to him and his closest family, friends and colleagues? The dynamic might change, a close friendship might result, but surely the journalist still has a job to do and is honour-bound to remain objective and to write events as he sees them? After all he's not in the business of writing flattering, gratifying portraits (unless, of course, that's the "truth"), because he's not a publicist but a journalist.

Tricky, isn't it? And even more so if the source doesn't quite understand the rules of the game and mistakes the journalist's so-called friendship for a genuine intimacy, when it's essentially a means to an end: the journalist has wooed the source in order to extract information. Interestingly, Malcolm calls sources "victims" but she also points out that far too many "victims" are willing ones.

Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One would think that extreme wariness and caution would be the order of the day, but in fact childish trust and impetuosity are far more common. The journalistic encounter seems to have the same negative effect on a subject as the psychoanalytic encounter. The subject becomes a kind of child of the writer, regarding him as a permissive, all-accepting, all-forgiving mother, and expecting that the book will be written by her. Of course the book is written by the strict, all-noticing, unforgiving father.

Malcolm really gets to the heart of this very thorny issue by examining the famous lawsuit between a convicted murderer, Jeffrey MacDonald, and a journalist, Joe McGinness, who wrote about the crime. 

MacDonald, a United States Army doctor, was accused of murdering his pregnant wife and their two infant daughters in 1970. Before the case had come to trial, McGinness, a hugely successful non-fiction writer, had secured MacDonald's co-operation in turning his story into a book on the condition that he would have complete editorial freedom. He also made arrangements to sit in on the trial, was given full access to McDonald's legal team and even lived with defense counsel and the accused during proceedings.

The book was published under the title Fatal Vision in 1983 (admittedly I read it when I was in my late teens) and turned into a TV mini-series starring Karl Malden in 1984 (I think I probably watched that too, but I couldn't be sure). MacDonald's misguided belief that the book would exonerate him in the eyes of the public did not come to pass. Instead, Fatal Vision states that MacDonald's guilty verdict is the correct outcome, describing him as a "womaniser" and "pathological narcissist". It even goes so far as to purport a motive for the crime: MacDonald killed his family in a fit of psychotic rage caused by amphetamine use.

A writ claiming McGinness had breached his contract was duly served, and it is this case, later settled out of court following a mistrial, which Malcolm dissects using actual court transcripts and her own behind-the-scenes interviews in The Journalist and The Murderer. It is absolutely fascinating reading, if only to see the duplicit lengths that a journalist will go to to get his story. And it would seem that the "morally indefensible" act to which she refers in her opening sentence is not about journalism per se but to McGinness's betrayal of his source: pretending that he believed MacDonald was innocent long after he became convinced of his guilt.

'The Second Plane' by Martin Amis

Non-fiction - paperback; Vintage; 224 pages; 2009.

Martin Amis is best known as an English novelist with some 10 titles to his name. But Amis is also a short story writer, literary critic and essayist, and this book comprises a collection of 14 pieces -- two short stories, eight essays and four reviews -- around the theme of September 11, 2001. These pieces were written between 2001 and 2007, and have been produced in the order in which they were written. Amis says he has added to them, but cut nothing, although he was briefly tempted "to cover my tracks".

Now, this is where I put up my hand and confess that I'm not well versed in Amis's work. I read Times Arrow many moons ago and it did not convince me to try any of his other stuff. My sister, who doesn't read as much as me, enjoyed London Fields, but I'm still not convinced.

Reading this collection I'm still no closer to understanding Amis or what makes him tick other than I now know he's an atheist turned "weak-agnostic" and he doesn't think much of Islamists, George Bush or Tony Blair. Join the club.

There's something about these pieces that seems too dry and too highbrow for one to truly engage with them. At times it felt like I was reading a novelist pretending to be a journalist -- and on that basis, he fails, because there's too much style and too many literary flourishes getting in the way of the facts.

A case in point. Or four cases in point, actually. He reviews three books and one movie -- United 93 directed by Paul Greengass; The Looming Tower: Al Quaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright; State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III by Bob Woodward; America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It by Mark Steyn; and The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Husain -- in this collection and with the exception of the book by Steyn, whom he describes as an "oddity" who "writes like a maniac", I'm not really clear where he stands on them: did he like them or not? In many ways, he simply summarises the contents, adds his two-bits worth on the subject and refuses to tell us what he really thinks of the works in question.

So, putting aside the reviews, how do the other pieces fare? By far the best piece here is his opening essay entitled The Second Plane which was first published in The Guardian just seven days after the attacks on the World Trade Center. There is raw emotion here and a desperate attempt at comprehending the incomprehensible. (In his author's note at the start of the book Amis describes the piece as "hallucinatory" because it was "fevered by shock and by rumour".) But it's the opening sentences that really sets the scene, for this short chapter as well as the book as a whole:

It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment. Until then, America thought she was witnessing nothing more serious than the worst aviation disaster in history; now she had a sense of the fantastic vehemence ranged against her.

In The Voice of the Lonely Crowd, first published in The Guardian in 2002, he makes a salient claim, later championed by many others, that the event had brought literature to its knees. He argues that "many novelists chose to write some journalism about September 11" because "they were playing for time". I think, in this instance, he may be right.

I think he's also right about a lot of the stuff in the rest of this essay, not the least his theory that religion is a sham.

... religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. It is straightforward -- and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.

Similarly, The Wrong War -- written in March 2003, before the invasion of Iraq -- is a strong piece about how America is "behaving like someone still in shock" and that the "axis of evil" is a theological construct invented by Bush because it "makes him feel easier about being intellectually null". 

As you can see, Amis doesn't pull his punches. But what he says makes sense.

I especially like his claim that the Coalition planned to go to war because there was a lack of weapons of mass destruction, not the other way around:

The surest way by far of finding out what Iraq has is to attack it. Then at last we will have Saddam's full cooperation in our weapons inspection, because everything we know about him suggests that he will use them all. The Pentagon must be more or less convinced that Saddam's WMDs are under a certain critical number. Otherwise it couldn't attack him.

On the whole this is an interesting collection, although it probably won't tell you anything you don't already know or haven't come to figure out on your own. But what it does do is provide an insight into a dreadful time in our recent history and shows how the public realm has been shaped and altered by terrorism and war.

'The Aran Islands' by J. M. Synge

 

Non fiction - paperback; Penguin Classics; 208 pages; 1992.

At the turn of the 19th century, Irish poet and playwright John Millington Synge made numerous visits to the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland. He had been encouraged to make his first visit in 1897 by his friend, William Butler Yeats, who told him: "Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression."

I wanted to read this book, because I had imagined it to be one of those oh-so authentic travelogues that would tell me what it was like to live in a remote place at a time when tourism was not commonplace. And that, my friends, is pretty much exactly what I got, along with a healthy dose of fairy stories and some wonderful descriptions of breath-taking scenery.

As Tim Robinson points out in the introduction, the book is completely self-sufficient in the sense that Synge never explains why he went to the Aran Islands nor what impact it was to have on the rest of his life. But we know now that he spent his first summer there shortly after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease (then completely untreatable) and that after his final visit, some five years later, he achieved extraordinary success with his play The Playboy of the Western World first published in 1907, the same year as The Aran Islands was published. He died just two years later.

The Aran Islands records the day-to-day lives of Irish peasants living in small fishing communities on one of the most rugged and windswept islands in the world. Here's Synge's first impression of the island as he wanders along its "one good roadway":

I have seen nothing so desolate. Grey floods of water were sweeping everywhere upon the limestone, making at times a wild torrent of the road, which twined continually over low hills and cavities in the rock or passed between a few small fields of potatoes or grass hidden away in corners that had shelter. Whenever the cloud lifted I could see the edge of the sea below me on the right, and the naked ridge of the island above me on the other side. Occasionally I passed a lonely chapel or schoolhouse, or a line of stone pillars with crosses above them and inscriptions asking a prayer for the soul of the person they commemorated.

But while a great deal of this book is about the landscape and the terrain and the ever-present roaring sea, it is also about the people whom he befriends along the way. And here, huddled around turf fires, he not only perfects his Irish but collects stories and folklore from local residents. On his first visit he meets a blind man who believes in the "superiority of his stories over all other stories in the world".

Afterward he told me how one of his children had been taken by the fairies.
One day a neighbour was a passing, and she said, when she saw it on the road, 'That's a fine child.'
Its mother tried to say, 'God bless it,' but something choked the words in her throat.
A while later they found a wound on its neck, and for three nights the house was filled with noises.
'I never wear a shirt at night,' he said, 'but I got up out of my bed, all naked as I was, when I heard the noises in the house, and lighted a light, but there was nothing in it.'
Then a dummy came and made signs of hammering nails in a coffin.
The next day the seed potatoes were full of blood, and the child told his mother that he was going to America.
'That night it died, and believe me,' said the old man, 'the fairies were in it.'

Synge also records the harsh conditions in which the island's tiny population lives and the difficulties that confront them in terms of feeding and clothing themselves adequately. His description of poverty-stricken villagers is, at times, heartbreaking. But he also enjoys experiencing the primitiveness of the culture, such as sailing on the ocean in a curagh -- "a rude canvas canoe of a model that has served primitive races since men first went on the sea" -- and using handmade articles from natural materials -- cradles, churns, baskets and the like -- which "seem to exist as a natural link between the people and the world that is about them". I particularly loved his descriptions of the island's fashions:

The simplicity and unity of the dress increases in another way the local air of beauty. The women wear red petticoats and jackets of the island wool stained with madder, to which they usually add a plaid shawl twisted around their chests and tied at the back. When it rains they throw another petticoat over their heads with the waistband around their faces, or, if they are young, they use a heavy shawl like those worn in Galway. Occasionally other wraps are worn, and during the thunderstorm I arrived in, I saw several girls with men's waistcoats buttoned around their bodies. Their skirts do not come much below the knee, and show their powerful legs in the heavy indigo stockings with which they are all provided.

Because Synge makes several visits over a five-year period he is able to notice small changes to the culture with each visit he makes. Take this example, written during his fifth and final visit, in which he realises that progress has made its mark, and not necessarily in a good way:

I am in the north island again, looking out with a singular sensation to the cliffs across the sound. It is hard to believe that those hovels I can just see in the south are filled with people whose lives have the strange quality that is found in the oldest poetry and legend. Compared with them the falling off that has come with the increased prosperity of this island is full of discouragement. The charm which the people over there share with the birds and flowers has been replaced here by the anxiety of men who are eager for gain. The eyes and expression are different, though the faces are the same, and even the children here seem to have an indefinable modern quality that is absent from the men of Inishman.

The Aran Islands is a fascinating account of another culture in another time confronted by development, or, as the blurb on the back of my Penguin edition so eloquently puts it, "the passionate exploration of an island community still embedded in its ancestral ways but solicited by modernism". Not necessarily an easy read, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.

If you're interested in reading the book for yourself, a free version is available online at Google Books.

'The Monster of Florence' by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi

Non-fiction - hardcover; Virgin Books; 336 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Last year I read an amazing true-crime book called The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer's Double Life by John Leake about a journalist who reported on the brutal murders he himself had committed. It was one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" books -- and I loved it.

The Monster of Florence is another true-crime book hugely reminiscent of The Vienna Woods Killer. A collaboration between an American crime thriller writer and an Italian investigative journalist, the book traces a series of brutal double-murders in and around the hills of Florence between 1968 and 1985 and then, in a bizarre twist of fate, reveals how the authors themselves became suspects. The fiction writer, Douglas Preston, is interrogated, accused of being an accessory to murder and of planting false evidence, and told to leave the country; the journalist, Mario Spezi, is thrown into jail and accused of being the Monster of Florence himself.

The book opens with Preston explaining how he moved to a stone farmhouse in Florence with his wife and two children in August 2000. He planned to write a murder mystery set in Italy, but when he met Mario Spezi, a local crime reporter (in order to learn more about Italian police procedures) he discovered something that made him change his mind. Apparently a serial killer, dubbed the Monster of Florence, had murdered two young lovers in the olive grove outside Preston's front door. His interest was piqued: perhaps it might be more interesting to write a true-crime book.

The first half of The Monster of Florence tells the story of the seven couples -- fourteen people in total -- murdered while making love in the hills surrounding Florence by a serial killer who has never been found. As a crime reporter, Spezi made a career out of investigating the murders and their subsequent police investigations, and had garnered unparalleled knowledge and expertise on the crimes. But he also became a thorn in the side of the police, often showing up weaknesses in their investigative procedures and calling their credibility into question.

The second half takes on a new twist, explaining how the authors, working in tandem, had discovered new evidence which they believed pinpointed the killer.  The police, already annoyed that Spezi was continually stealing their thunder, turned the investigation onto their detractors, with devastating consequences.

This is a rip-roaring read, more exciting than any crime thriller Preston could make up himself, and it barrels along at lightning quick pace. I overshot two lunch hours because I was so caught up in this too-weird-to-be-true story.

But, more importantly, this is a book that highlights the dark underbelly of Italian society and the shadowy, often corrupt world of the Carabinieri, which polices both the military and civilian populations, the Italian police and the judiciary. It's also an important book about freedom of speech and how one journalist put his life on the line because he believed so strongly that the truth must come out.

The Monster of Florence, which hit the New York bestseller list upon publication in the USA earlier this year, will be published in the UK on January 29, 2009.

'Leadbelly' by Andrew Rule and John Silvester

  Non-fiction - paperback; Blake Publishing; 288 pages; 2005.

Between 1995 and 2004 there were 34 underworld killings in Melbourne, Australia. Yes, 34. I don't think there were that many deaths in six-and-a-half series of The Sopranos and that has to be one of the most violent TV shows ever broadcast.

According to the authors "the size of the death toll varies from source to source because opinions vary about when the 'war' began and who are casualties and who are not". Even the concept of 'war' is disputed, because not all the murders are related, some are simply one-off hits to settle old scores. But police did establish that the bulk of the killings were part of a deadly feud between two rival gangs: the New Boys and the Carlton Crew.

Having followed this string of brutal and bloody murders from afar (I left Australia in mid-1998) via Melbourne's The Age website, I was anxious to read this book to piece all the crimes together in my head as one long narrative. Unfortunately, the book's structure doesn't work like that. Instead, what you get is 29 self-contained chapters that look at each crime in isolation. I imagine they were written like this for newspaper publication, but even so, I found it annoyingly repetitive in places -- explaining who characters are and how they are linked to each other and what terrible crimes they have committed -- which wears very thin very quickly.

And the prose style is terribly tabloid, surprising given that it's written by two journalists for whom I have the utmost respect (Andrew Rule's Strict Rules, a non-fiction account of his time touring the outback and staying with aboriginal communities, is extraordinarily good and worth tracking down if you get a chance, while Silvester's day-to-day reporting for The Age on the crimes covered in Leadbelly has been thorough, tenacious and imminently readable over the course of this ongoing gangland feud). Still, I wonder how much of this "dumbed down" style is simply a reflection of the market to which this book is aimed. It's not so much sloppily written, but it's riddled with unwarranted editorialising that I found patronising.

But if the objective of Leadbelly is to take the "glamour" out of the underworld and to expose these criminals for the violent sociopaths that they are, then perhaps the authors have achieved their aim. Here's what they say about the underworld,

 ...that loose collection of individuals who live outside the law and associate with fellow criminals both in and out of prison. Myths have been built up about this antisocial sub-class, mainly because there is a perceived glamour about being on the wrong side of the law. Some people think gangsters are masterminds with the brains and the nerve to beat the system, 'anti-heroes' and 'rebels' who snub conformity to 'live their own lives'.

The truth is most are too stupid, too lazy and too immoral to make a mark in the mainstream community. They don't decide to opt out of orthodox, law-abiding society so much as drift into crime because it seems easy and smart compared with working for a living. Others, of course, are born into ciminal families, condemned by breeding and circumstances to a lifetime cycle of crime and punishment.

Many criminals are 'stupid' by conventional standards -- in reading, writing and comprehension, for instance -- but some survive and prosper, at least until the law or even more predatory criminals catch up with them. Some develop a rat cunning, which trumps 'normal' intelligence in their bleak and brutal world. They can't read, yet can spy a police surveillance car a kilometre away. Others can barely count, yet can organise a bank robbery with split-second, military precision.

Rule and Silvester don't pull their punches -- they make it exceedingly clear throughout the 288 pages that make up this book that they do not have any sympathy whatsoever for the criminals. But by the same token they don't necessarily hold the Victoria Police in great esteem either, a much-maligned force that has been accused, at one time or another, of being reactionary, trigger-happy* and corrupt.

When two young police constables were ambushed and fatally shot one early morning in 1988 -- ten years before the 'war' began, mind you -- as payback for the police shooting of a well-known armed robber 13 hours earlier, Rule and Silvester claim that some police "were so desperate to 'get a result' they wanted to use illegal tactics to get evidence before a court". They add:

A huge investigation began within hours. Emotions ran high. Some police virtually declared war on the underworld. They wanted to mount raid after raid on known criminals and their relatives and associates. Many in the force saw this reaction as justified. Others saw it as blind rage, which would do nothing to gain evidence admitted in court.

This, essentially, is just the tip of the iceberg. The police's handling of certain investigations, their surveillance methods and their sting operations come in for some serious questioning -- and not just by the authors, there have been several public inquiries into specific incidents over the years which has resulted in changes to police working practices.

If you can forgive the slightly patronising Cops Vs Robbers tone of the book, what emerges is a fascinating account of Melbourne's dark underbelly and the ongoing rivalry that exists between a police force under siege and the street savvy crims who think they can do what they like, when they like.

I am reliably informed that the 13-part drama series Underbelly, which is based on these true-life crimes and comes out on DVD in the UK next February, is better value than the book. I will keep you posted once I have watched it!

* In the ten years after 1986, police killed 30 people in Victoria, whilst NSW police killed 10 in the same period. I remember it well, because it seemed like every time you turned on the TV news there'd be another report of a citizen gunned down. But this book explains the roots of that trigger-happy situation. Apparently, in 1985, two police pulled over a panel van on the Hume Highway just north of Melbourne. They knew it was being driven by a known criminal who was likely to be armed and dangerous -- in fact, they were tailing him at the time -- but what they didn't expect when they approached the car was the speed with which 'Mad Max' pulled out his pistol and fired off several shots. Rule and Silvester believe this random attack wormed its way into the collective psyche of the force, describing it as "the first milestone on a grim journey into hostile territory where almost every police officer felt threatened by unknown assailants who could be lurking in any car, any doorway, any hotel".

'Petite Anglaise' by Catherine Sanderson

Non-fiction - hardcover; Penguin; 340 pages; 2008.

Petite Anglaise is one of those books that first started life as a blog -- the refreshingly well written and entertaining Petite Anglaise -- except this is not a collection of posts strung together to form a disjointed narrative. Instead it's a proper memoir that charts Catherine Sanderson's life in Paris as an expat Brit.

Despite its (not particularly attractive) chick-lit cover, the story deals with some fairly weighty subject matter, not the least Catherine's decision to leave her long-term partner (dubbed Mr Frog) and the father of her child (dubbed Tadpole), because she'd embarked on an affair with someone who left comments on her blog! Saucy, no?

But the book also charts a love affair with Paris, a city that Catherine became obsessed about when she was an 11-year-old school girl in Yorkshire.

France. Here was a destination to bend my running steps towards; a hook to hang my daydreams on; so alluring, so exotic, so tantalizingly close. No matter that school French lessons consisted of little more than endlessly rehearsed role plays and verb conjugations. No matter that my first extended stay on French soil would not take place for another six agonizing years. As I sat in a numbered booth in the school language lab, cumbersome headphones blocking out the English sounds of the world around me, I closed my eyes and pretended I was actually there. I yearned to taste the 200 grams of pâté I was instructed to buy in the grocer's shop; to visit the church or the town hall after quizzing a passer-by -- invariably an elderly man wearing a beret -- for directions. 'Ecoutez, puis répétz!' said the voice on the crackling tape at the start of every exercise. 'Listen, then dream' would have been more apt. I'd fallen hopelessly, irrationally, in love with the French language and, by extension, with France. And I'm at a loss to explain why, even now.

After a stint as an exchange student and later as an English assistante at a lycee in Normandy -- where she acquires her first French boyfriend -- it seems Catherine's path is set. A teaching job at the Sorbonne Nouvelle follows and before long Catherine is living in the City of Light, where she meets Mr Frog and settles down with him. But seven years later, with a one-year-old child, the dream is fading: Mr Frog works long hours and Catherine, a secretary for an English company, is bored at work and stressed at home.

She starts a blog -- "a harmless hobby...my virtual playground" -- to capture some "arch observations about life in Paris". But when her posts become more personal -- confessing that her partner does not want to marry her, for instance -- her online popularity grows substantially and she gains a worldwide audience.

Little did I know I had just unleashed a force which, within less than a year, would turn my life, and the lives of those dearest to me, inside out.

As much as I enjoyed this book -- I raced through it in the space of a cold, wet weekend, unable to tear my eyes away from it -- I have to admit that I'm in two minds about the author. I'm not sure if she's so shallow that she'll resort to almost anything for publicity (anonymous or not), or if she is someone to admire because she was focused and determined enough to chase a dream. But what I do know is  this: she is a superb writer. Her effortless prose style is by turns witty and heartbreakingly sad. She's painfully honest throughout, baring herself open in such a way that you feel voyeuristic reading her thoughts. The narrative trots along at a fair old pace and there's enough "hooks" to keep you reading on to see what might happen next.

Interestingly enough, after Catherine finished this book and before it was published, she was fired by the accountancy firm where she worked for blogging about life in the office. She went on to win her case, and has now embarked on a writing career. Her first novel is due for publication next year.

'Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North' by Stuart Maconie

  Non-fiction - paperback; Ebury Press; 368 pages; 2008. 

The North-South divide in Great Britain is the subject of this rather tongue-in-cheek travelogue by Northern journalist and broadcaster Stuart Maconie.

For non-Brits, the divide is not an exact line, but one which refers to the economic and cultural differences between southern England and the rest of the country, including Scotland. It involves many stereotypes, including the belief that Northerners are thick and Southerners are posh. Or, as Maconie, a Northerner transplanted to the South, puts it:

Good or bad, 'the north' means something to all English people wherever they hail from. To people from London -- cheery costermonger, cravated fop or Shoreditch-based web designer on stupid scooter alike -- it means desolation, arctic temperatures, mushy peas, a cultural wasteland with limited shopping opportunities and populated by aggressive trolls. To northerners it means home, truth, beauty, valour, romance, warm and characterful people, real beer and decent chip shops. And in this we are undoubtedly biased, of course.

The enchantingly entitled Pies and Prejudice takes us on a wonderful tour of the North, with the erudite and charming Maconie as our host. Having watched Maconie on a many a TV show, I couldn't help but hear his Wigan accent as I read this book, which made the experience all the more enjoyable. (Indeed, I hope that at some point he turns it into a documentary series, as it would make fascinating viewing.)

As one would expect from a journalist who champions pop music, the book is littered with musical references, such as this:

The Smiths' songs drip, like an evening drizzle off the Moors, with references to Manchester and its environs. Rusholme, Strangeways, Southern Cemetery, Whalley Range, the Holy Name Church. Morrissey has a video called Hulmerist, a wry reference to his childhood home. In an early interview, he said of his artistic self, 'I am forever chained to a disused railway line in Wigan'. While Thatcher, witchlike, cast the north into outer darkness, The Smiths' songs illuminated it anew with northern light and fireworks. We loved them for it.

But it's also clear that Maconie enjoys history and architecture and food, because these subjects are constantly referenced throughout as he makes his way across the country. Each chapter is littered with fascinating facts and figures and snippets of trivia, all delivered in the writer's trademark witty prose style, which is rather reminiscent of Bill Bryson.

His greatest skill, however, is bringing rather drab places to life. He has a certain knack of saying so much in just a few sentences, lovely thumbnail portraits, if you will.

Where Bury Market excels, though, is food. In the new Fish Market you can gaze, slightly unnerved, at the dead, sightless eyes of row upon row of sea bass and snapper, mackerel and trout lying in state on funeral dais of crushed ice and parsley. The stalls are staffed by either blonde girls in full make-up who you just know are dying to get out that white coat and into their skimpy glad rags this weekend or cheery rubicund men holding up what look like conger eels and joshing in ribald style with housewives. All of them adhere to Maconie's first law of market trade: cheeriness is proportional to the gruesome nature of the wares being handled. The grislier the fare, the gayer the banter.

By the time I got to the last page I felt bereft: it was that same kind of sad feeling one experiences when a much-enjoyed holiday draws to a close. Having learnt so much about the northern regions of England in Maconie's company, I was itching to go out there and visit these places myself. Highly recommended, whether you are from North, South or somewhere else entirely!

'Thirteen Tonne Theory: Life Inside Hunters and Collectors' by Mark Seymour

Non-fiction - paperback; Viking; 391 pages; 2008.

If you are an Australian of a certain age and are a fan of pub rock, then chances are you have seen Hunters and Collectors perform live. And if you have seen them perform live then you no doubt know that this band is one of the most visceral live acts -- second only to Midnight Oil -- to ever come out of the Southern Hemisphere.

This book, written by lead singer Mark Seymour (who also happens to be the older brother of Crowded House's bass player Nick Seymour), provides an inside look at what it was like fronting this powerhouse of a band for 18 years.

Of course, if you haven't already guessed by now, I am a longtime Hunters and Collectors fan. But funnily enough, I always preferred seeing them live than listening to their records, which never seemed to convey the sheer velocity and passion of the music when performed in concert. In fact, this view of the band is not a unique one: they were critically acclaimed but never quite achieved the commercial success that comes so easily to other bands that do far less hard graft.

The book, which is currently only available in Australia (my sister gave me this copy when she visited me in London a couple of months ago), does help explain why the band was big in Australia but failed to crack the UK or American markets. Set up as an artistic collective, in which every member of the eight-piece band shared songwriting copyright and royalties, the decision-making process did not allow anyone to take the lead, nor did it allow the goal of commercial superstardom to become the over-riding aim. Seymour makes no bones about how frustrating this became, especially when, as lead singer, he was seen as the "face" of the band and its key lyricist.

At times the story reads a bit like a kid who has thrown the toys out of the pram. Seymour clearly thinks the band and, more importantly, himself deserved better. But he is also incredibly candid and so hard on himself that you kind of feel sorry for him.

I particularly liked his account of the band's early days in London, where they were on the cusp of international success, only to blow it all when one member who'd had too much to drink insulted the record company. This incident -- in a curry house in Shepherd's Bush -- would be laugh-out-loud funny if it weren't for the painful financial repercussions that followed. You get the sense that Hunters and Collectors never quite recovered from this monumental error.

All in all, Thirteen Tonne Theory (the name comes from the weight of equipment the band took on the road when they toured up and down the country) is an intriguing read. Written by a singer that crafted so many Australian anthems -- Talking to a Stranger, Say Goodbye, Throw Your Arms Around Me and The Holy Grail -- it's a wonderful, if slightly worthy, warts-and-all account that fans will find fascinating.

'Digging Up the Dead: Uncovering the Life and Times of an Extraordinary Surgeon' by Druin Burch

Non-fiction - paperback; Vintage; 276 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I have read some interesting and unusual books in my time, but Druin Burch's Digging Up the Dead must be the most interesting and unusual book I have ever read. Indeed, when I was offered it for review, I had initially been drawn to the dark, Gothic nature of the subject, but hadn't quite clocked the fact it was a non-fiction title. So when it popped through my door I was slightly taken aback to discover that it was actually a biography. But what a biography it turned out to be!

Digging Up the Dead looks at the life and times of arguably the world's first famous surgeon, Astley Cooper (1768-1841), whom Burch -- himself a medical doctor -- describes as vain, egotistical, nepotistic and "rather wonderful".

Astley was born into a highly educated family -- his father was an Oxford-educated vicar, his uncle was senior surgeon at Guy's Hospital in London -- but he showed little interest in books or study but specialised in pranks and adventures. When the family moved to Yarmouth he began training under a local apothecary, who also doubled as a surgeon, in the hope that he might learn enough to follow his older brothers into university and perhaps a physicianship, or his uncle to a hospital and career as a surgeon. He did well and moved on to become an apprentice to a surgeon at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.

When he was fourteen-and-a-half he witnessed a problematic, but successful, operation to remove a stone from a man's bladder. This was to have a profound influence on him, because it was not long after that he decided to embark on surgical training in London, much to the delight of his family.

In London, his early career got off to a shaky start. He boarded with one of his uncle's colleagues, Henry Cline, in a "a grand detached residence with stables and outbuildings" at 12 St Mary Axe in the heart of the City of London, and spent much of his newfound freedom running wild instead of knuckling down to his studies. His superiors regarded him as lazy.

Cline, sick to the back teeth of his charge's reckless nature, came home one evening with a human arm and challenged Astley to dissect it then and there.

The skill and industry with which Astley dissected the arm astonished both the apprentice and the teacher. Astley was transformed. The fraudulent military uniform was gone, and in its place was the dress of a surgeon. For the first time in his life he found himself taking an interest in work.

From then on Astley became rather enamoured with dissection, working long hours in St Thomas's hospital, hunching over stinking corpses, learning everything he could about human anatomy. Because the study of anatomy was in its infancy at the time, there was no other way for surgeons to learn their trade and so this is where Druin's book delves into the gruesome nature of body-snatching, that peculiar illegal practice of stealing freshly buried bodies or -- worse still -- murdering people to satisfy the medical profession's need for corpses to study.

Indeed, Astley is often so desperate for fresh corpses he steals neighbourhood pets and dissects them at home while they are still alive, something that turns the stomach today but which, at the time, taught him much that was not known by the surgeons of the day. (Readers with weak stomachs will find much to disgust them in this book, not least the descriptions of vivisection but also the many and varied operations that are performed without anesthesia. But it would not be fair to say they have been included merely for their shock factor; they are necessary for the reader to put Astley's life into context.)

Eventually, of course, Astley becomes a hugely successful surgeon and lecturer, has studies published in The Lancet, wins the Royal Society's highest prize and tends to the Prince Regent and Queen Victoria. All the while, he manages to travel abroad (he gets caught up in the French Revolution), marry, have children and teach surgeon-soon-to-be-turned-poet John Keats (yes, that John Keats).

The picture of Astley that emerges from this rather in-depth but beautifully written biography is an enormously complicated man, arrogant but caring by turns, who loved to take risks but made sure to cover his tracks when it counted most. Living at at time of great political, social and scientific change, he seems to be one of the leading lights in almost every field, not just medicine, and was loathed and loved in equal measure.

Digging Up the Dead is a truly fascinating account of a fascinating man who lived in fascinating times.  Druin Birch has done much to bring him to life by not only capturing the man so vividly but by illuminating the narrative with his own experiences as a medical doctor working more than two centuries after Astley first trod the London cobblestones. It's a slow-burn of a read, one that requires concentration and diligence, but it's well worth the effort, especially if you are fascinated by science, medicine or history.

'Eden' by Tim Smit

Non-fiction - paperback; Corgi; 286 pages; 2002.

The Eden Project is a series of man-made biomes built in a disused clay pit in Cornwall, England. One of the British Government's much-lauded Millennium Projects, it opened to critical acclaim in 2001 and has been on my list of places to visit for many years.

Designed to educate the public about plants and our dependence on them, it features the world's biggest conservatories, the first of which emulates a tropical environment, the second a warm temperate Mediterranean environment. Both biomes are made out of "bubbles" -- sturdy plastic, air-filled hexagons -- which interlock to form a series of gigantic greenhouses that are home to thousands of plants from across the world.

I visited the complex last month and was so in awe of its scale and beauty that I purchased this book, by the project's founder, in the souvenir shop because I was keen to learn more about the project's inception and difficult birth.

Reading Tim Smit's account it's hard not to feel inspired by the positivity that pours off every page. This was a project so ambitious in size, scale and concept that few people thought it would get off the  ground. Indeed, at every turn, there was opposition from every front, whether it be finding a suitable site, getting the money to build it, convincing local communities that it was going to be good for the area or finding architects that could design something workable.

If nothing else Smit's book -- and the Eden Project itself -- reveals that a diverse group of people working together with a common vision can pretty much achieve anything if they put their minds to it. Smit also argues that finding reasons to do things rather than finding reasons why they can't be done was the secret behind the project's success.

This is a wholly readable account of a complex project coming to fruition, although the endless cast of characters that Smit name checks -- and then praises -- does get a little confusing after awhile. (You almost wish he'd start dishing the dirt on those who didn't co-operate or played hardball, if only to make the story an even more intriguing one.)

I found it a thoroughly absorbing read and one that enhanced my understanding of the project in ways that weren't apparent when I was actually wondering around the biomes on foot. In short Eden is an uplifting human success story, one that drips with inspiration without being too preachy or too earnest.

You can find out more about the Eden Project at the official website or by taking a peek at my photographs of the site.

'Things the Grandchildren Should Know' by Mark Oliver Everett

Non-fiction - hardcover; Little Brown; 256 pages; 2008.

To survive the tragic deaths of your entire family is one thing, to become a critically acclaimed musician is another, and yet  44-year-old Mark Oliver Everett has done both. Now, with the release of this memoir, he can also added talented author to the list.

Everett, better known as 'E' from the Eels, an alternative rock band which is essentially Everett and an ever-changing cast of musicians, seems to be the current flavour of the month here in the UK. He recently starred in a BBC 4 documentary called Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives about his father, the late quantum physicist Hugh Everett III, who was the originator of the many-worlds theory. Then his book was published and just last week he played a special gig at St James's Church in Piccadilly to promote it.

The beauty of Things the Grandchildren Should Know is its easy-to-read narrative style and Everett's tongue-in-cheek self-deprecating humour. This is surprising given the largely sad story contained within its pages. Not only does Everett lose a succession of family members under various tragic circumstances -- his father of a heart attack aged just 51, his mother of lung cancer, his drug-addicted older sister of suicide and his air stewardess cousin in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 -- but many of his friends and colleagues in the music business have also died before their time.

Understandably Everett wrestles with many demons, including depression, but he never loses sight of his goal, which is to make the best music he can make without sacrificing his integrity. Getting the first record deal was tough. Keeping the record company happy was even tougher.

What you gather from reading this book is that Everett has a wonderful ability to roll with the punches. Ever pragmatic, he states that it is only by experiencing terrible lows that he can appreciate the highs, such as his critically acclaimed success. "I can get overwhelmed with situations sometimes," he writes towards the end of the book. "But it's not as bad or as often as it used to be, and I think living through so much crazy shit really has made me stronger. Just like they say it should."

Things the Grandchildren Should Know is the kind of thought-provoking memoir that makes you thankful for the good things in life -- and you don't necessarily have to know anything about Mark Oliver Everett or be a fan of the Eels to appreciate its universal message.

'The Amazing Adventures of Diet Girl' by Shauna Reid

Non-fiction - paperback; Corgi; 400 pages; 2008.

"I've got the biggest knickers in Australia."

So begins Shauna Reid's refreshingly candid, often humorous and hugely inspirational The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl, which charts her seven-year battle with the bulge.

Shauna's story, which first appeared in blog form, is an entertaining read reminiscent of Bridget Jones Diary. It is not a typical diet book. There are no recipes, no quick-and-easy solutions to fighting the flab. Instead it's an enthralling novel-like narrative that follows Shauna's ups and downs as she struggles to lose 12-and-a-half stone.

She battles depression, curbs her secret food binges and learns to love the gym. Along the way she finds the courage to backpack to the other side of the world and nabs herself a Scottish husband in the process.

I loved this book and kept turning the pages well into the early hours of the morning. It's enormously moving in places, but any sense of self-pity is tempered by a self-deprecating sense of humour which had me laughing out loud more than once.

The beauty of this book is that it shows how it is possible to achieve anything if you set your mind to it.  Shauna's steely determination to succeed and years of hard work paid off handsomely in the end. For that reason alone The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl should be required reading for anyone wanting to change any aspect of their life who lacks the courage to do so. It's already made me want to cut my caffeine intake and ride my bicycle more often!

'Long Way Down' by Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman

Non-fiction - hardcover; Sphere; 352 pages; 2007.

Three years ago fellow actors and biking buddies Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman set off on a voyage from London to New York the long way round. The resultant 10-part TV series following their 20,000 mile road trip across Europe and Asia proved a huge hit, as did the book that accompanied it. I came to the whole Long Way Round phenomenon quite late, having stumbled upon a repeat screening of the series on Sky TV about 18 months after it had been made. But I was immediately enraptured and thought it was one of the most entertaining travel documentaries I'd ever seen. I promptly went out and bought the DVD and the book.

Fast forward a year and the double-act were back on board their motorbikes, this time traversing the globe from top to bottom -- from John O'Groats at the northernmost tip of Scotland to Cape Agulhas on the southernmost tip of South Africa -- in a new 15,000-mile adventure being billed as the Long Way Down. The popularity of the first series had obviously paid off for them: this time the trip was being documented on a live website and the resultant TV series was being screened on BBC 2 during prime time Sunday night viewing.

I watched the series, although I didn't think it was as good as the first. It didn't seem quite as magical or as fresh as the original. In fact, in places, it just seemed too knowing, too calculated -- and there were far too many participants involved. It wasn't so much as two men and their motorbikes, but two men, their motorbikes, one wife, a dozen various "fixers" and a five-member support crew. Hmmm.

The book doesn't really add to much to the TV series, other than you get a chance to find out a bit more about some of the UNICEF projects they visited and you get a better sense of the African people they met along the way. Like the original book, it fills in some useful gaps that weren't explained or were simply skimmed through on TV.

At times it does read a bit like a stuck record, with both of them complaining over and over about the too-fast schedule and their inability to spend time in all the places they wanted. Coupled with Charley missing his wife and children all the time, and Ewan banging on about how privileged he is to do the trip, it began to wear thin in places.

Nonetheless it's a light, entertaining read, funny in places, moving in others -- a bit like the TV series. But it's lack of intellectual insight or deep thinking about African history means this is really only a book for the fans. If you loved Long Way Down, chances are you'll enjoy this one too, but if you'd rather just watch the TV series you're not going to miss out on anything if you don't bother with the book. And you could perhaps save yourself a lot of time by simply reading the tongue-in-cheek condensed version on The Guardian's Digested Read, which isn't so much a piss take but a crystallised version of the truth.

'The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer's Double Life' by John Leake

Non-fiction - hardcover; Granta Books; 347 pages; 2007.

Truth is stranger than fiction, and no more so than in the case of Jack Unterweger, a convicted murderer hailed as Austria's greatest example of criminal rehabilitation. While serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of 18-year-old Margaret Schäfer in 1976, Jack developed a flair for writing poetry, fiction and non-fiction. His work was so well received he became the darling of the literary elite who campaigned, successfully, for his early release in 1990.

But despite his apparent reform, everything was not quite as it seemed. When four prostitutes disappeared from Vienna's red light district in the first year of Jack's release he was one of the first to write about the crimes. He ingratiated himself with the local police chief and interviewed many of the city's street workers for articles that were published in the press.

Capitalising on new found celebrity, Jack then went to California to research a magazine article about crime in LA. He accompanied  police on their patrols of the city's red light districts. During the time of his visit three prostitutes were brutally murdered. Their deaths, in which they had been beaten, tied up and strangled, bore striking resemblances to the deaths of the Viennese prostitutes.

This book by American journalist John Leake traces Jack's life and the painstaking lengths that police on two continents undertook to charge him with the murder of 11 women. It is an absolutely fascinating story about one man's ability to hoodwink society into thinking he had put his criminal past behind him while living a secret life as a serial killer. What emerges is a portrait of a sociopath who was so careful and clever at carrying out these despicable crimes that it took police many years of hard work to catch him.

The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer's Double Life is creepy and spine-chilling in places, with so many twists and turns in the narrative that it seems almost too unreal, too fantastical to be true, but Leake never resorts to sensationalism or cheap literary tricks. The tone of this thoroughly researched book (Leake had privileged access to Jack's diaries and interviewed all the major players) is restrained but never dull. It's a well plotted, cleverly crafted investigative piece of non-fiction that had me enthralled from the first page to the satisfying -- and wholly unexpected -- conclusion on the last.

'Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life)' by Cathie Black

Non-fiction - hardcover; Crown Business; 304 pages; 2007. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Books about management are not normally my cup of tea. But when this one by Cathie Black, president of New York-based Hearst Magazines, was offered to me for review I couldn't resist. In my day job I'm a magazine editor, so I thought it would be interesting to find out about the business from another perspective and to see whether I could learn anything from Black's rise to the top.

Billed as "a memoir masquerading as a guide to career and life", Basic Black isn't a chronological account of Cathie's career. Although she provides plenty of anecdotes about the various roles she's had in the past -- from ad sales on Holiday to president of a fledgling USA Today -- this book is more about dispelling words of wisdom on how to successfully live a "360 Life", one that that balances work and play, rather than an autobiography.

Packed with great practical advice and written in a friendly, accessible and chatty style, Basic Black is an entertaining, effortless read.  But I'm not sure it was pitched at someone of my age and experience, as I found most of the tips too obvious. Doesn't everyone know that being passionate about what you do, going the extra mile and being prepared for all outcomes will serve you well in your career?

That said, I'm sure this book would be perfect for that 20-something female just starting out in the workforce, maybe even an undergraduate preparing for their first job interview. It certainly would have been of interest when I was first starting out, even if it was simply to reinforce my own ideas about how to get ahead in business.

But even if you don't work in the media or couldn't care less about moving up the career ladder, there's plenty of enjoyable anecdotes within the pages of this well-laid out book to keep you reading on. I found a lot of Cathie's stories completely fascinating, but then I'm always interested in the things that people do and say in this game called magazine publishing that I love so much...

'The Litvinenko File: The True Story of a Death Foretold' by Martin Sixsmith

Non-fiction - hardcover; MacMillan; 320 pages; 2007.

Anyone who was living in London in November 2006 will know that the hot topic of conversation -- in the pubs, at work, on the news and in the papers -- was the poisoning of Alexander "Sasha" Litvinenko.

Mr Litvinenko, a former member of the KGB and its successor the FSB, was granted political asylum (with his wife and child) in the UK in 2000. An outspoken critic of the Russian Government, he fell ill on November 1, 2006 and died three weeks later. Doctors could not say what caused his death, but it later emerged he had been poisoned by radioactive material known as polonium-210.

This book by the BBC's former Moscow correspondent, Martin Sixsmith, explores Litvinenko's murder and looks at who might gain the most from his death. During the course of his research Sixsmith discovered that Litvinenko had made many enemies. "What I found out about Litvinenko's past," he writes, "both astounded me and threw up so many potential reasons for his murder that I ended my research more surprised he survived as long as he did than that he eventually fell victim to the assassins who sought him out in London."

He structures the book into six parts, beginning with Litvinenko's funeral (he was buried in Highgate Cemetery) and how the poisoning might have occurred (was it at the Millennium Hotel or the Itsu sushi bar?), before exploring Litvinenko's former life in Russia and his subsequent falling out with the man who was to become president, Vladimir Putin. It then comes full circle, and looks at the Scotland Yard investigation, tracing the polonium trail and unearthing the many suspects who might be to blame for his death.

What emerges is a fascinating portrait of a flawed man living in a dark world of shady characters. While many in his situation might have chosen to lay low, Litvinenko did the opposite, seeing it as his duty to speak out against those he saw as corrupt or dangerous. Ultimately, this was his undoing.

But Litvinenko's death was no ordinary death. Sixsmith describes it as the "world's first act of international nuclear terrorism". It caused a major public health scare with a trail of radioactive contamination spreading across London (and two British Airways planes) and sparked a major diplomatic crisis between the UK and Russia. (Relations are still strained, especially now that Scotland Yard will never be able to charge the chief suspect Andrei Lugovoi who became a deputy in Russia's new parliament earlier this week, earning him immunity from prosecution.)

As much as I was fascinated by the poisoning of a Russian exile in such a dramatic and public way, I had half expected The Litvinenko File to be a relatively dull book, weighed down by too many facts and complicated Russian history I'd struggle to understand. But Sixsmith knows how to write a narrative in an exciting way, ending each chapter with a cliff hanger so that you feel you really must keep reading to find out what happens next.

And his theory about who is responsible for the death -- and why they carried it out -- is a totally believable one. But if you want to find out whodunnit, then stop reading this review and get your hands on a copy of the book instead...