I bought this last week from the fabulous Book Depository , which not only posts books to Australia from Britain free of charge, but sends them airmail too. I got my books in a week. How can this be sustainable? Anyway, long may it – and the mighty Aussie dollar – last.

However, I was really disappointed in this book. I really enjoyed the first book in the series, Secrets at St Jude's: New Girl, which I read when I was in England earlier this year. That had a good mix of traditional school story elements/formula in a contemporary setting. ( Cut for spoilers )

Good news for the Australian publishing industry today. The proposed changes to territorial copyright, which would have resulted in overseas versions of local books being sold cheaply in our market, have been knocked back by the Rudd government.

I hate the way this story has been written, as if the Australian book-buying public are being cheated so they can't buy dirt-cheap books. Because what would have happened, had the changes gone ahead, would have been the death of the local Australian publishing industry.

And the end of Australian culture as depicted in Australian literature. The cheap overseas versions would have come from America, and there have been plenty of horror stories about how American versions are changed to suit the US market - especially in children's books. I want my child to grow up seeing the world he knows being reflected in books. Of course I'm happy for him to read British and American books. What I'm not happy for him to read is Americanised versions of Australian books, where references to football are accompanied by an illo showing kids playing gridiron or references to cricket are replaced by basketball, and doonas become whatever Americans call them. I want him to be able to read about Aussie kids living in places he's familiar with and doing the things he does, so that his world is reflected.

So it's a happy day for anyone involved in the Australian book industry - apart from the big "sell-everything" chains that would have been happy to sell our children Americanised versions of Australian books, with American quotas that have no bearing on our Australian society at all.

It's worth a glass of wine in our house tonight, for sure!

ETA Here's a better angle on the story than the link above.

I didn't really need to visit the Val McDermid forum to know that the Tony and Carol shippers wouldn't like her latest Tony Hill novel, Fever of the Bone. There are, after all, great chunks of the novel where Tony and Carol aren't even working together, let alone making out, the way so many fans want them to. But I loved this book - it's my favourite Tony Hill book since Wire in the Blood. Not least because, for the first time since the TV series, also called Wire in the Blood, started, Tony Hill in the novel sounded like Tony Hill in the early books, rather than like Robson Green playing Tony Hill.

I like all Val McDermid's books, but I always feel a bit ambivalent about the Tony Hills, however good they are. I find Tony's impotence boring and Carol's drinking and the whole will-they-won't-they thing between them grates. I like Carol's team, though, especially Paula - and it was good to see more of Paula in this latest novel. I think the only other series I like despite not caring at all about the main protagonists is Elizabeth George's Linley mysteries, where in particular I can't stand St James and Deborah (and Helen!) - LInley is bearable, but Barbara's the one I read the books for.

Fever of the Bone has Tony and Carol on the trail of a serial killer who is murdering teenagers previously groomed on the social networking site, RigMarole. Although I guessed what the killings were all about before Tony and Carol did, I still haven't worked out whether RigMarole existed before the novel or appeared alongside it, given ads for the book are all over the home page. It was good to have some of the action set in Worcester, too - it's not so long since I was there for the Australia v. England Lions cricket ... Anyway, I found it hard to put this book down, and now have a long wait before a new book by Val or my other favourite crime writer, Peter Robinson. I've heard Stuart MacBride is good, so might give him a go.   

Four years ago I won a copy of Peter Robinson's Aftermath in a raffle at a Sisters in Crime event. A couple of weeks later, I took it on holiday to Noosa and devoured it in a couple of sittings. The following day I found what was then his latest book, Playing with Fire, in the newsagent, bought it and loved it as well. Over the next 12 glorious months I bought and read his backlist* (yes, an expensive raffle win, this!), following DCI Alan Banks's investigations in any old order, then found myself in the same position as I am with my other favourite crime writer, Val McDermid - having to wait 12 months between new books!

The Price of Love is his latest book - a collection of ten short stories, plus a novella featuring Alan Banks, in which he reflects on his last case before leaving the Met, 20 years ago. This was, of course, the read of the book: we get to find out how Alan got his scar and what state his marriage to Sandra was in when they lived in London (rather worse than I'd imagined from the first few books in the series). There was one thing in it that really niggled me - Banks's discussing intimate (and undisclosed to the media) details of the murders with a copper who wasn't on the case. I found that really out of character for him. But it was still an enjoyable read - and a little sad too, with Alan's reflections on how both his life then and now were/are in a mess.

The short stories vary in quality, and overall I thought this collection wasn't as good as the one he published a few years ago (Not Safe After Dark). It includes a short story featuring Frank Bascombe, the World War II 'special constable' who solved a couple of crimes in Not Safe After Dark, but this story was too obvious and therefore nowhere near as good. There are also a couple of Banks short stories, including the atmospheric and murderless 'Blue Christmas'. Probably my favourite short story was 'The Price of Love', about a young boy solving a crime. I enjoyed this for the 1960s holiday in Blackpool as much as for the plot - it brought back memories of my own childhood holidays in Blackpool boarding houses, where I was always looking out for Blyton-style crimes to solve, hopefully involving smugglers ...

Now I have 12 months to wait to find out what's going on in Banks's life, but in the interim, Val McDermid's latest, Fever of the Bone, awaits ...

*All except for one book - No Cure For Love, set in and only published in North America. I wish it would come out here!

Apart from watching Twilight a few months ago, I knew nothing at all about the vampire genre when I bought this anthology. I've never seen/read Dracula, even. But a while ago I had an idea for a vampire story. I knew a lot about the 'world' that will form the backdrop to the story, but nothing about vampires. So, I decided, if I really was going to include a vampire element in this story, I needed to know something about the conventions of the vampire genre.

So I bought this YA anthology - which includes stories by Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Holly Black and Sarah Rees Brennan - last Saturday, alongside the latest offerings by my two favourite writers, Peter Robinson and Val McDermid. I started reading Peter Robinson's book - also a collection of short stories - first, then picked up The Eternal Kiss and read Libba Bray's story, 'The Thirteenth Step'. This was a brilliant story about vampires feeding on drug-addicts on a 12-step program in an undesirable part of New York. I was hooked and read the stories in order, leaving Peter Robinson ignored on the bedside table. As in any anthology, not all the stories were good, but some, especially Cassandra Clare's (hers was definitely, for me, the best in the book, with a great twist, and I'm really inspired to read more of her work) and Libba Bray's, were excellent. And because they're YA, many of them felt like those old stories I read in Jackie in the 1970s - only with vampires and rather more gritty - so, oddly, there was something of a nostalgia element as well.

Anyway, the best thing about the book for me was discovering a new genre that I like. I read mainly crime or girls' own-style books, and in recent years I've found myself getting tired of and turned off by the increasing brutality in crime novels. And if the crime novel's not brutal, then it's wise-cracking chick lit, which I probably dislike even more. So I'm down to only two or three crime writers that I still follow. As for the girls' own, I've pretty much completed my collection now, and don't have anything much left that's going to be new to me. So it's good I've discovered a whole new genre out there to read. Oh yes, and now I know a bit more about vampires, I might get that urban fantasy written at last.

On a more negative note, one of the things I noticed in the anthology was something that dorianegray had commented on in terms of an urban fantasy in her LJ recently. There was little to no sense of place in these stories. Even Libba Bray's New York setting could have been a grungy part of Melbourne, London, Moscow ... anywhere. I wonder if this is deliberate in terms of urban fantasy and the ability to sell it anywhere? That it's somewhere or nowhere but could be anywhere? That way, everyone can relate, so everyone will buy, regardless of where they live, as happens with more traditional, other-world fantasies. Perhaps the fantasy experts on my flist can enlighten me?

I find it hard to believe that I made it to the grand old age of 47 without ever having read The Secret Garden. I'm not quite sure why this book escaped me when I was a book-devouring child, but somehow it did, along with Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess. Though I have at least seen the 1980s BBC adaptation of A Little Princess, whereas I missed out on the 1990s movie of The Secret Garden, and any BBC adaptation there might have been.

Anyway, I've now read The Secret Garden, and it's an enjoyable read, though there are some really cringeworthy early-20th-century moments, such as the treatment of Indian natives and ten-year-old Colin's perspective on battered wives. The book is basically about how two disagreeable children become quite normal and nice (well, almost normal and reasonably nice in Mary's case and still a bit tiresome bratty in Colin's) thanks to not having to spend all their time cooped up in an enormous house on their own, plenty of fresh air, meeting Dickon, a country boy who has a way with wildlife, and re-establishing a long-neglected 'secret' garden. I struggled a bit with the Yorkshire dialect, though liked the way Mary was so keen to learn it! The ending seemed very rushed, with an unconvincing road to Damascus moment for the guardian. But the thing this book made me want to do, more than anything else, was go out and do some gardening and plant things!

Now I might read the other abovementioned titles. Perhaps A Little Princess will make me want to clear out the attic?!

Death on Tiptoe was my first Greyladies purchase, and I have to say that I do like the cover. Greyladies was criticised in a recent Folly review for their covers, but I don't find the front cover of Death on Tiptoe dull at all - I think it looks very stylish.

But you should never judge a book by its cover, and unfortunately I found the content of this book on the dull side. It's a whodunnit, written in the 1930s by RC Ashby, who later wrote the 'Jill' series of pony books under her married name, Ruby Ferguson. It starts out well enough: a houseparty gathers together in a hideous old castle; there's plenty of tension 'twixt guests and hostess; and a game of hide and seek in the dark leads to murder ... I enjoyed the book up till that point. 

But then came the investigation, which really plodded along. I had a problem believing that the amateur detective Lionel West - a judge, but also a suspect - would really be allowed to help the police with their investigation, even back in the 1930s. West was a bit of a bore, and also a bit too keen to protect his friends when he suspected their involvement in murder. And somehow the denouement just wasn't convincing. If this is an example of Ruby Ferguson's whodunnits, I can see why they haven't remained in print while the Jill books have. Maybe she should have written an equestrian whodunnit? I suspect she'd have shown rather more prowess at that ...

They haven't made their way out here, so I'd been waiting a while to buy and read three contemporary school stories published in the UK over the past  12 months: Secrets at St Jude's: New Girl by Carmen Read, Class by Jane Beaton, and Jinxed by Sara Lawrence.  Were they worth the wait? Read on ...

( Secrets at St Jude's )
( Class ) 
( Jinxed )

The new Malory Towers books by Pamela Cox are out - well, half of them are. Three were published on 4 May with the other three to follow in September. These books follow Felicity Rivers's school career after Darrell left, because, of course, everybody who read Last Term at Malory Towers thought: "Gosh! I wish I knew what happened to Felicity after Darrell left school." No, me neither. I won't be buying these, but have a couple of thoughts about their publication:
* The six books are being published almost simultaneously, as happened with Ann Bryant's new series of boarding-school stories, Silver Spires. All six Silver Spires books were published in August last year. Is the instant series going to become the new norm with children's books, I wonder? It's interesting, because when I was a kid the books in the bookshops had been around for years - Enid Blyton, the Chalet School, the Lone Piners, the Jills. Waiting from year to year for books to be published didn't happen. Well, I suppose you had to wait for years and years for Armada to publish the Chalets, but the hardbacks were there and in libraries and schools. But in general, if you liked a series it was possible to read the lot. Whereas maybe if the target market for Silver Spires, for example, had to be content with one or two books appearing every year, then their interest might well be gone before the third book came out. Much better from a marketing perspective to have the whole series ready to buy.
* The new Malory Towers books aren't the only Blyton follow-ons due to be published over the next or so. The syndication of Enid Blyton is now well underway, and in the years to come the name Enid Blyton on the books won't mean any more than the author name Carolyn Keene on the Nancy Drews. I really don't like this. For all I know the new books might be brilliant (and I have heard many people say that Trevor Bolton, who's writing The Secret Valley, a new book in the 'Secret' series, is an excellent writer). But once you add in these new books, plus the new Famous Five ones, and the Naughtiest Girls, and the Just Georges, you're going to hit the point where there are more non-Blytons with the name Enid Blyton on the cover than Blytons with the name Enid Blyton on the cover. I do feel the same about the Chalet School series fill-ins and continuations, but at least that has stemmed from fandom, not from a big company trying to turn a well-loved author into a "brand". Only time will tell whether these new books prove as enduring as Enid's originals have been. 

Gacked from callmemadam .

1) What author do you own the most books by?
It has to be Elinor M. Brent-Dyer because I have all the Chalet School series bar two, and a few of her other titles.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
The Bible! There are about five Bibles in the house, I think (too lazy to walk down the other end of the house to check).
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
No.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Alan Banks, but it's not a secret.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children)?
The Go-Between by LP Hartley
6) What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?
Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School
7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Jilly Cooper's Wicked. I stopped reading halfway through. Dire!
8 ) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Actually, it was a book I edited just before Christmas. It was called Eating with Emperors by Jake Smith and it told some of the stories behind the menus at state banquets in Victorian England, the Kaiser's Germany and Imperial Russia as well as in more recent times. Beautifully illustrated with the original menus and photographs, too.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
I won't be tagging, and I wouldn't force anyone to do anything. People should read what they want to read!
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
No idea!
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Don't know, but the Alan Banks mysteries would be good on the telly.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Any of those Jasper Forde novels (though they probably are already movies). I just don't get the fuss about Thursday Next.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I have dreamt about my own Louise and Juliet, which was rather weird.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
I read a Harold Robbins when I was backpacking. Someone had left it behind at the backpackers hostel and I had nothing else to read at the time. It was better than I expected, actually.
15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
A toss-up between Lord of the Rings and Ulysses, both a hard slog and the latter somewhat incomprehensible to me when I read it age 19.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
I havent seen any obscure Shakespeare.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Russians!
18 ) Roth or Updike?
I haven't read either. *blushes*
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Never heard of them!!!!!!
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Chaucer
21) Austen or Eliot?
Eliot, as I can't stand Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I own all of Dickens's works (inherited from my grandparents) but have only read about five of them.
23) What is your favorite novel?
The Go-Between
24) Play?
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
25) Poem?
The Waste Land by TS Eliot
26) Essay?
I don't read enough essays to have a favourite, but I really enjoyed Robin Bowles's 'Police Line: Do Not Cross' in Outside the Law 2.
27) Short story?
Toss-up between 'Salmonella' by Tim Kennemore and 'Blind Faith' by Roland Vernon
28) Work of nonfiction?
The Complete Book of the Olympics by David Wallechinsky. A very entertaining history of the Games, updated every Olympiad.
29) Who is your favourite writer?
Peter Robinson
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Marian Keyes
31) What is your desert island book?
The Go-Between
32) And… what are you reading right now?
I'm about to read Wearing the Poppy by AJ Toledo, which arrived in the post today ...

Gacked from bookwormsarah .

1) The worst reading experience that you have ever had?
I made myself read the much lauded Lord of the Rings during the summer vac when I was 20. I was bored out of my brain and  very glad when the time came to finally put it down. Now I shake my head in disbelief that I made myself do that. Today, I'd have discarded it after a couple of chapters. Life's too short and that book's too long! (I gave up on the movie once Strider came into it.)

2) The best reading experience you have ever had?
Nothing has ever bettered reading and loving Five Go To Smuggler's Top, aged about 7, I think, at primary school. It began a lifelong love of crime fiction and George was an early feminist icon!

3) Which book has affected or influenced you the most so far?
Well, my favourite school stories (the Chalet School, Malory Towers and St Clare's and, later, Kingscote) must have had the most impact because I still collect girls' own books, wrote a murder-mystery novel set in the school-story world, and am now writing my own school stories.  But Germaine Greer's writing (1970s, not her more recent stuff) influenced my teenage feminism.

4) Have you ever read a book that you got really scared of?
Yes, when I was 16 I read a book called Devil Daddy by John Blackburn. I can't remember anything about it now other than that there was a character called Tania Levin in it. But it scared me so much the night I read it that I couldn't turn the light off.

5) What do you use as a bookmark?
Proper bookmarks.

6) When do you usually read? At home, work, while cooking, in the morning, noon, afternoon, before you go to bed...?
School holidays and weekends are when I do most of my reading. During term time, I'm busy book editing in the day and then ferrying my son to after-school sports, then getting dinner, getting him to bed, then I usually flop down with a glass of wine and a dvd. But weekends and school holidays are more relaxing (I usually don't work then) so I have time to read. 

7) Do you remember the first book that you read?.
Excluding good old Peter and Jane, the first 'proper' book I read was They Found a Cave by Nan Chauncy. I was at primary school in England and this was the first 'real' book I was allowed to borrow from the classroom library when I'd finished with Peter and Jane. The book was by a Tasmanian writer and set in Tasmania. Tasmania meant nothing to me then, but twenty years or so on I met my now husband in Tasmania, while I was backpacking and he (an Aussie) was on holiday.

8) Which do you prefer - paperback or hardcover?
Paperback. Except for old books, where I prefer hardback.

9) What are you currently reading? What page are you on?
Home Run by John Nichol and Tony Rennell. I'm on p. 366 (of 469).

10) Do you ever leave "a mark" (deliberate and/or not deliberate) in your books? For example, write in them, underline quotes, coffeemarks or food crumbs and etc.
No. As a student I underlined things, but now I don't.

11) Does the title, amount of pages and the cover affect you when you are considering a specific book?
The title is the thing that catches my eye, and then I read the back cover blurb and the first page or so. If the first few paras suck me in, I'm hooked. The amount of pages is irrelevant, as is the cover.

12) Do you ever browse through [to the last pages in order find out the ending?]
I usually have a quick peek up to four pages ahead of where I'm up to. Then get angry with myself because I find a spoiler!

13) Has knowing the ending of a book (example, through spoilers or a movie) ever made you decide whether you will read the book or not?
No. A book's not about the ending, it's about the journey. I'd even read a murder mystery where I knew the ending.

14) Is there a book that you have read more than five times?
The Go-Between by LP Hartley would be the only one, I think - it was an A-level text, and I like to re-read it during a very hot summer. Which is most summers here. I love that book.

15) Have you ever been in an accident where the book was the cause? (for example, almost getting hit by a car when reading while walking, or having stacks of books falling on you from a bookshelf...)
Not that I recall.

16) Do you sell/give away your books or do you keep them, even though you don't like one of them?
I generally keep my books, including the ones I don't like. Which is stupid, really, because they take up valuable shelf space.

17) Do you have some kind of book system, where you write down what you are reading, have bought, will read, will buy and etc?
I have a notebook where I list the books I read. I'm doing it on LJ too now.