Back in the day, when I was working for a Local Authority, I was very keen on NewcastleGateshead winning the bid to be City of Culture 2008. In some respects, I can already imagine the jaws dropping at the idea Newcastle and Gateshead are paragons of culture, but let’s face it, I remember Glasgow being [...]

Richard Dawkins annoys me at times. I find his anti-religion rhetoric haranguing, no more pleasant than that of a gentleman wandering round the centre of town yelling that all sinners will “burn in a lake of hellfire”. To me, it doesn’t really matter which of them are right; it’s not polite, it’s not nice to [...]

Okay, okay, I have to come clean about the post title. There is no “Mutiny on the Bounty on Ice”, at least as yet, although it surely can’t be long before the BBC attempt to make it into some sort of talent show, no doubt with Andrew Lloyd bleedin’ Webber gurning all over the place. [...]

There comes a time in any holiday when pick up the obligatory holiday book and rifle through a few pages while you sit by the pool. Well, you do that if you’re not me, anyway. I tend not to read by the pool for one simple reason: you won’t find me by the pool. I’ll [...]

I was recently tagged by one of my friends on Facebook with a kind of a memey sort of a thing where I have to name fifteen books that I have read that will always stick with me, and also do the same thing for films that I’ve seen. In each case, we don’t have [...]

I’m quite a fan of the writer Ian Rankin and the Inspector Rebus stories, so when I saw that his new book Doors Open had hit the paperback shelves, I had to pick it up, as much as anything else because I wanted to see what he would do in what I presume is intended [...]

Errornomics by Joseph T Hallinan is another non-fiction book, which obviously means it comes with a bonus free subtitle: “Why We Make Mistakes and What We Can Do to Avoid Them”. Talking of mistakes, Amazon said that the book was released in paperback on the 6th of August, but as I’d bought it, read it, [...]

I’m quite into crime/thrillers at the moment, and considering my general geekiness, I can’t deny that part of the thing which attracted me to this book was the use of the word ‘website’ in this blurb: A year later, frustrated with the police enquiry, Ed vows to find Sophie’s killer. His quest leads to a [...]

I was glancing at my TBR pile and discovered that it has crept up on me somewhat: instead of having one or two books ‘in reserve’, I’ve currently got quite a collection of ‘em. So I thought, apropos of not much at all, I’d share with you the books on my list… I plan to [...]

So I went to an ‘author event’ at Newcastle City Library the other day. It was the first time I had been to the library since it had been considerably redeveloped, and I must say — particularly in contrast to the Hancock — how impressed I was with the whole thing. Admittedly, the key element [...]