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 )

I''ve read and enjoyed The Morning Gift, A Song for Summer and The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson, following recommendations by witchy_rachel , but until this past weekend, I'd never read one of her books aimed at younger children.

But Which Witch? is great! It's very neatly plotted and very funny ... and I'm not really a big fantasy fan (I still remember feeling disappointed on discovering the four Pevensie children headed off into a magical world of talking lions and fawns instead of down a secret passage after smugglers! :) ).  I'm really not sure how much appeal it would have to boys, given the story revolves around a wizard who needs to take a wife (his assistant tries to organise a contest in the vein of Miss World, lol), but I guess I'll find out when Gabe reads it! But I'll definitely try her other books aimed at younger readers now, as well as her other YA titles when I come across them. In fact, I've already started reading The Secret of Platform 13.

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. 

Because I'm working on the second Cotterford book, I spent some time earlier this week reading a couple of second books in school story series. I chose two of the more recent series, Anne Digby's Second Term at Trebizon (1979) and Harriet Martyn's Jenny and the New Headmistress (1984).  I also started reading DFB's Captain at Springdale (1932), not because it's a second book, but because it's the only Springdale I have and I'd never read it. So I thought it would be useful to read in terms of going cold into a series I'd never read before.  Except I found I did know a few of the characters, courtesy of Dimsie (who also appears in this book).

Second Term at Trebizon contains lots of hockey, music and bickering. And lots of clues as to why Tish is behaving strangely and what Nicola Hodges is up to.  I wonder if Anne Digby ever wrote adult detective stories, like Ruby Ferguson did? She'd have been good at them! I like Digby's characters but the stories are way too short. I like Balcombe Hall more than Trebizon, because although it's a very posh school, the characters seem more real and much more like some of the kids I was at school with. Wanting to leave at 16, taking no crap from the teachers, saying the food was &*#@ ...

But oh, what a difference it would have made to the inhabitants of Trebizon and Balcombe Hall if they'd been born a little later and enjoyed the benefits of modern technology.  At Trebizon, a quick Google on 'Hodges Road Haulage' would have saved Rebecca from having to ask awkward questions of the prefects (and it might have revealed impending disaster for Sue's father and saved a lot of bickering too). At Balcombe Hall, a mobile phone would have prevented Ariel from being kidnapped, or at least got her saved more quickly. And poor Mrs Vaux, deprived not only of the still in-the-future mobile but seemingly of even a landline in her flat at Balcombe Hall – she and her guests, locked in by Sylvia and co., only get out because the Admiral signals for help from the window!

On the first page of Captain at Springdale, Peggy Willoughby arrives at school and needs to go to the post office so she can buy stamps to send a postcard to tell her mother she's arrived safely. It struck me that 50 years on, with no mobiles and most likely no landline access except in emergencies at school, Rebecca and Jenny probably communicated with their parents in exactly the same way. What an incredible difference just 20 years has made in all our lives. No wonder fantasy is the preferred genre for authors in terms of writing for children and young adults – because the real world changes so fast that technology you write about in 2009 could well be completely outmoded by 2011 ...

Yesterday was the first day I was able to relax in what seems like ages. For the past few weeks I've been manically editing an enormous encyclopedia of Australasian crime, which I'd fallen behind with during the bushfire situation. But I sent it back on time, phew.

And in what couldn't have been better timing, the Autumn and Winter copies of Folly arrived in yesterday's post. My subscription expired before last Autumn's edition, and I didn't renew then because of exchange rates. But I'm now re-subscribed and it was good to catch up with them. I particularly love the illustrations in Folly. And, also well timed, we now have a new free-to-air digital channel that's all sport. Something to watch at last!

I also made the most of beautiful autumn weather to go for a long walk.

So, what else? Well, Hawthorn lost their opening game last night, to Geelong (Gabe's team) who they beat in last year's Grand Final. I was expecting that (it's a fairly normal thing for reigning champions to lose their opening game, in most sports) and the winning margin was slim, so I remain optimistic about back-to-back Premierships. Hawthorn and Geelong will be the two teams to watch all year, I think.

And we are still watching Secret Army. We are near the end of Season 2 now. I cannot believe how good it is compared with today's TV. Each episode is an hour and the characterisation is superb. You see shades of grey in all the characters, and at times even feel some sympathy for the head of the Gestapo, Kessler. So much time and detail has gone into it, and the writing and acting is excellent. I shall really miss it when we've watched the final series, though apparently there's a spin-off, Kessler, which I'll try to get hold of. And maybe I'll get Wish Me Luck, about women agents in occupied France, which I never watched when it was on telly in the 1980s.

I haven't been reading much at all this year. I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird and am now wondering whether to read some of the unread books on my bookshelves or whether to go to the bookshop this weekend and find something new. After watching Secret Army, I've a hankering to read some non-fiction about the Second World War, so if anyone knows of any really good books, please recommend. I mean human-interest type books,  rather than military ones.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever be able to look at or think of this book without remembering Black Saturday. It was a birthday present in January and I'd read a fair chunk of it by 7 February. As we sat with our aircon on on that 46-degree day, I was reading the part of the book that included the script for the 2008 series finale. The part where the Doctor and co. look out at the sky and are horror-struck by what they see. It made for uncomfortable reading when the sky outside was pinky-grey, like a scene from Armageddon. It took me another two weeks before I could pick the book up again and finish reading it.

All that aside, this is a great book if you are a) a Doctor Who fan and b) if you've ever written any fiction. It consists of a series of emails between Russell T. Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook, written between February 2007 and March 2008. The emails include plenty of discussion of the 2007 Christmas special and the 2008 series (series 4) and also some of Russell's ideas for the 2008 Christmas special. Often he attaches a draft of the script he's working on (either writing from scratch or rewriting - he does a lot of rewriting of other script writers' work), and it's fascinating to follow his thought processes as he drafts, writes, rewrites and edits. And so many things impact upon his original ideas - like an actor having to drop out of the series because of ill health, or Catherine Tate signing up for a full series thus forcing Russell to abandon the new companion he'd spent weeks creating. And the budget. There's a lot about the budget - or lack of it. For anyone who's ever wondered why The Doctor doesn't get out of London one Christmas and perhaps spend the festive season here in Australia ... the answer is the budget. Or lack of it.

There are so many points he brings up that makes you think, "Yes, that's so right." Like how some writers have their characters make remarks that you never hear in real life, but that the writer has heard other characters say on television before, so think that must be how screen-people have to speak. I know I've found myself making that mistake in my own writing - having a character say something that I've never actually heard a real person say, but that I've 'heard' lots of characters in books saying. Another one was where he said that when people are having a conversation, often they're not really listening to each other, they're wrapped up in their own world and that the best scriptwriting reflects this. A series that managed this very well in the past was Tenko (that's my opinion, not his) - the 'two monologues' form of dialogue was used often there and to excellent effect.

What else? Ah yes. You hear a lot about the various guys Russell fancies. Russell Tovey is one, but there are quite a few others, including the guy who plays Maria's dad in The Sarah-Jane Adventures. I did wonder whether, had Russell been straight and gone on and on about a young female actor's bum the way he did about Russell Tovey's, the female actor might have claimed sexual harrassment. As to that, I wonder how Russell Tovey feels about it, that this middle-aged guy has the hots for him. Others whose reaction I wonder about are the various movers and shakers at the BBC that Russell blasts (quite fairly, in my opinion, as they do seem to have the competence of some of the CEOs we've all been reading about in recent times). It's quite amusing to have a BBC Books book that declares some of the decision-makers at the BBC to be fools. Oh yes - and how do some of those scriptwriters feel about Rusty's comments on them? Like Gareth Roberts, when Russell wonders in the email if he'll be able to manage the Agatha Christie story. I wonder if Steven Moffatt (whose scripts Russell thankfully never rewrote, because Moffatt is by far the better writer of the two) will be as much of a control freak on the show as Russell?

You can't help liking Rusty, though, as you read this book. He is so enthusiastic about the show. I somehow can't imagine him never coming back to it.

Kickstarted the year with the Bard's Much Ado About Nothing. I read it because the play was being put on locally (an outdoor production in a beautiful setting) and I thought about buying tickets for the three of us, and read it to see if it might appeal to a seven-year-old. Had it been A Midsummer Night's Dream, we'd have gone, but there are fewer amusing characters in Much Ado, so we didn't go. A shame, but another year perhaps.

After that, my reading became rather less erudite! I found a copy of Come Down The Mountain by Vian Smith in a secondhand bookshop at Fish Creek, and bought and read it. I had this book as a child, but we parted company (as I did with far too many other books) in my teens. I bought it when I was 11 and into pony books of the Jill's Gymkhana and Jackie Won a Pony variety. I thought this would be in the same vein, but it wasn't. Instead, it was a horse story rather more reflective of my own world, except Brenda was a working-class girl from a village, and I was a working-class girl from the built-up area between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. The story is about a horse who's been just left in a field by a powerful local family while an inheritance issue is sorted out - Brenda worries about the horse and, with the help of her father, rescues him. So while the world of riding lessons and pony ownership was never mine, I could certainly identify with neglected horses in fields - except my dad would never have helped or encouraged me to rescue one. My favourite scene in the book, however, was the fifth-form party, a disco, with Brenda eating sponge cakes and talking to the grammar school nerd while her best friend Eve dances the night away with the boy Brenda fancies. On re-reading, I still liked this book a lot. I was surprised to find the author was a bloke, as he gets into the mind of a teenage girl very well.

As a kid, I read every Enid Blyton adventure/mystery series there was ... apart from The Secret of Moon Castle, one of the Secret stories featuring Mike, Jack, Peggy and Nora. For some reason it was never in the bookshops or library. Anyway, I found and bought it this month and what a truly awful book it is. With its ghostly goings-on, it's a bit like Scooby-Doo without a dog. Plus the children have zero personality - there's nothing to make even one of them stand out from the others. In this book, the irritating Prince Paul has joined them, and at least he's distinguished by always being too scared or two tired to do things (a bit like an honorary girl in a way, since Peggy and Nora share his fears and tiredness). I never did like Prince Paul and imagine when the communists came to Baronia, not too many Baronians would have mourned the loss of this little prat.

I really struggle with vintage children's books that I never read as a child, and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle was no exception. I really couldn't connect with it at all (but then I'm not a big fan of fantasy). I didn't like the plot much, or the characters, and was quite startled by the in-your-face religious bits - especially as I vaguely remember Lion Publishing getting flak for publishing her books at some stage.

I've also been reading Dr Who: The Writer's Tale, but am only midway through, so will write about it at a later date! It's been too hot even to read of late - 45.1 degrees on Friday! Today's 30 seems pleasantly cool!