• Terry Pratchett: Snuff: Discworld Novel 39
• Andy McNab: Zero Hour (Nick Stone 13)
• Andy McNab: Dead Centre
• Tess Gerritsen: The Silent Girl
• Mo Hayder: Gone (Jack Caffery Thriller)
• Eoin Colfer: And Another Thing …: Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Part Six of Three (Hitchhikers Guide 6)
• Tom Holt: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages
• Tom Holt: May Contain Traces of Magic
• Tom Holt: Blonde Bombshell

And thanks to various recommendations (particularly Kirstie Haxby and Martyn Drake), I’m also going to be ordering:

Robert Rankin: The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions
• Peter V. Brett: The Painted Man (Demon Trilogy 1)
• Tom Sharpe: The Wilt Inheritance
• Colin Dexter: Morse’s Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (reissue) (Inspector Morse)
• Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim (Penguin Modern Classics)
• Graham Greene: Our Man In Havana: An Introduction by Christopher Hitchens (Vintage Classics)
• William Goldman: The Princess Bride
• John le Carré: The Tailor of Panama
• DVD: 2001: A Space Odyssey (2 Disc Special Edition) [DVD]
• DVD: Evolution [DVD] [2001]
• DVD: The Princess Bride – Special Edition [DVD]
• Camera: Kodak EasyShare Sport C123 Digital Still Camera – Red (12MP, Waterproof) 2.4 inch LCD

Any other recommendations? (Thanks Tim – but I’ve already got all the Ben Elton books, along with all the Robert Llewellyn ones)

However, the switch has come with a price: it’s quite a complex bit of kit! So, since Waterstones had an offer on and I needed to buy some other books I purchased php|architect’s Guide To E-Commerce Programming with Magento from them (Waterstones’ price is £19.99 and Amazon’s is £18.99: both with free shipping. It’s also available as a PDF for $29.99 from the publisher’s site). Why did I buy this book? Well, it was the only Magento book Waterstones (or Amazon) had!

It’s reasonably written – however, it is NOT a user guide book or “shop owners” book (which is actually what I wanted)! It is, as it’s title suggests, a guide to programming and developing with it and only just covers the usage of the Magento ecommerce software (chapter 3: “Exploring Magento” is about the only overview section it has).

However, although it has 184 pages, it was written prior to May 2008 and parts of it are out of date: and whilst it gives two example modules “Chapter 8: Made to order module” and “Chapter 9: Points and Rewards Module” that it guides you through writing, it doesn’t seem to give that good an overview of how Magento works (although “Chapter 5: Database Design” does give some details of the database design).

The examples given in the book are largely incomplete (just sort of overview level), there’s no example CD/DVD and there’s no code on the publisher’s website (so if you are, like me, a “learn by example” and like to start off with a working example and deconstruct it referencing the book to find out why it was written that way, then you’re out of luck!).

I’ll say the book is around a 7.5 out of 10 score: not brilliant, but a good starting point – and considering there’s no other books out there covering the subject, it’s not got much competition.

Alexa has another review of it

Best-selling author Michael Crichton has died in Los Angeles aged 66 after a “courageous and private battle against cancer”, his family has said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7711763.stm

Boo! Michael Crichton got me hooked on his books with “The Andromeda Strain” and since then I’ve worked through “The Terminal Man”, “The Great Train Robbery”, “Congo”, “Sphere”, “Jurassic Park” (before and after the movies), “Eaters of the Dead” , “Rising Sun”, “Disclosure”, “The Lost World”, “Airframe” (which I re-read on a plane ), “Timeline” (very disappointed in the movie – the book had so much potential), “Prey”, “State of Fear” and most recently “Next” and I’ll probably read his next novel which is due out in May (posthumously).

I loved quite a few of his movies, but just couldn’t get myself into ER.

Goodbye to another great author!

Whilst there, I notice they had Red Dwarf DVDs for sale (note: I already have every single Red Dwarf episode on “recorded from TV” tape and all but the last series on commercial VHS) and The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy TV Series for sale (again, I already have this on 3 commercial VHS tapes). I ended up spending over £120 there!

However, I’m having to switch back to Amazon for my purchase for Red Dwarf series 6 and Amazon also have a number of books I wanted for Christmas (Ben Elton’s Past Mortem and Tom Sharpe’s Wilt in Nowhere ) and need to get the purchase price up to cover shipping…

I did intend to buy the books from my local Borders book shop, but they were expecting me to pay full retail price AND only had them in Hardback…

But when I calmly manoeuvred my extra big trolley into Macro (a “trade only, usually in bulk” style supermarket) to buy a dishwasher, I noticed they had Order Of The Phoenix available for just £8.99! Normally, Macro adds VAT (17.5% of the purchase price) onto goods as they are intended for business use (and businesses can then claim the VAT back afterwards), but books are VAT-free!

So, Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix cost me just £8.99 from Macro! Can any body get any cheaper, and if so, where did you get your copy from?

“The Order Of The Phoenix” is available in two editions: the childrens edition and the Adults version. The childrens one is currently on “pre-order sale” at Amazon.co.uk for just £8.49 (saving 50% off the normal retail price) and is a hardcover book with 768 pages due to be released on the 21st of June this year – the cover shows a golden phoenix bird emerging from the flames and is the first childrens edition book cover not to feature Harry Pottery himself on the book design.

The Adults edition (which has a much darker and blacker cover with a silver Phoenix) is also available at the same price in the same format with the same number of pages – the only difference between the two is different cover artwork (so don’t expect any nude Harry Potter pictures from the Naked Quidditch Match)

The US variant, however, is available in two different formats. The “Standard Edition” amazoncom:043935806X currently at $17.99 (equal to £11.46) is a hard cover version and has 896 pages – somehow you are getting an extra 128 pages for the extra £2.97). I’ve got no idea if it’s just larger type, smaller page sizes or quite how they’ve managed to squeeze and extra 128 pages out of the same Harry Potter story – but it’ll be slightly interesting to find out. Oh the cover is also different from the UK version – it shows 15year old Harry holding his wand in-front of a number of doors and is drawn in midnight blue, indigo and flame blue (making it look a lot more “dark” than the brightly coloured UK version).

There is also a “Collector’s Edition” available for $42.00 (£26.75) amazoncom:0439567629 which is a “cloth-covered deluxe edition featuring full-colour printed endpapers, a foil-stamped title on the spine and a full colour slipcase with an exclusive book jacket design”. Worth an extra $24? I’m not sure, but if you are an avid fan with money to spare why not order it for June 21st?

The book (which has 255,000 words and is rumoured to be in 38 chapters) has already sold half a million advanced copies and will be released in USA, Canada, UK, Australia and in many other English languages on the 21^st of June (which is the longest day of the year) right after midnight British Summer Time (GMT/Zulu +1) – and would be approximately two and a half years since the previous Harry Potter book “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” was released (which helped bring the total number of “Potter” books sold to over 192million copies).

Ok, that’s enough of the release date – but what about the contents? Well, thanks to a leak from the American publishers and other “leaks“, the following is known:

1. The first two sentences of the book are:
   “The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive.

   The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four. ”

   I would guess the “teenage boy” is Harry himself.

2. Harry confronts “the unreliability of government and the impotence of the authorities at Hogwarts”
3. Whilst on the subject of Hogwarts, another little leak gives us the snippets:
   “Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses.

   ‘It is time,’ he said, ‘for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry.”

4. Ron Weasley (Harry Potter’s friend) becomes keeper of the Gryffindor Quidditch team
5. The new defence of the dark arts teacher (a woman) has a personality “like poisoned honey”
6. Professor Lupin will be back with “a lot of old friends”
7. They’ll also be a venomous, disgruntled house-elf and the end-of-term Ordinary Wizarding Level (OWLs) exams
8. Harry has nightmares about a single door in a silent corridor which is “more terrifying than every other nightmare combined”.
9. There will be a new Sorting Hat song
10. They’ll be a bit more of characters such as Mundungus Fletcher

There’s no doubt the book will be a huge success, but will the latest Harry Potter book live up to the hype or has its readership grown up in the intervening years since the Goblet of Fire…. Only time will tell….

As you may have heard by now, it has been announced the book 5 of the Harry Potter series – “Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix” will be publicly available from the 21^st of June (in the UK, Canada and the USA).

You can pre-order a copy now though – Amazon has the children’s edition AND the Adults edition available at half price – just £8.50 each. Obviously you’ve got to wait until June to actually get your copy, but over 60,000 copies already have been ordered it could be a case of demand outstripping supply: so order now!

What can I tell you about the book without falling foul of anything that I may or may not have signed? Well, on the first page of the 768 tome it starts : “The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four.”.

A later quote which has been widely circulated in the media goes: “Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses. ‘It is time,’ he said, ‘for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.’” but all I’m going to say is that readers will find out the reason Lord Voldemort killed Harry’s parents and something interesting about Harry’s mother Lily and the Dursleys.

There’s a new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher (much to Snape’s disgust) and she’s a woman, but there’s also the return of Professor “Mad-Eye Moody” (the previous teacher) and Lupin. Oh, and there’s that little matter about the death of a major character – and I think I’d be spoiling the surprise it I stated who it was (but it’s not one of the 3 main characters NOR is it [deleted something that I wasn't supposed to say])… Finally there’s a new song for the Sorting Hat and a bit more about the Mundungus.

What else can I say at the point? Not much, but maybe in the coming weeks…

I think the back cover of the book sums it up extremely well: “Paul Britton has assisted the police in over a hundred cases and has an almost mythic status in the field of crime deduction. His achievements read as though from the pages of Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie. What he searches for at the scene of the crime are not fingerprints, fibres or bloodstains – he looks for the ‘mind trace’ left behind by those responsible: the psychological characteristics that can help the police the identify and understand the nature of the perpetrator.”

It’s quite a fascinating read (I’ve already got to page 404 of 650: and I’ve been reading it for around the last 6 hours solid): not just from the “local angle” (I actually lived quite close to the scene of the Pitchfork murders and went to the schools mentioned), but also from the whole psychology and criminal investigation angle.

It’s going to take me another day or so to finish it, but I really need to now consider getting out of bed and making breakfast (yep, I’ve just been lying in bed reading this book since I woke up and I’ve got lots to do…)

Just for the record, the Robin Cook books I have got are as follows: “Acceptable Risk“, “Blindsight“, “Brain“, “Chromosome 6“, “Coma“, “Contagion“, “Fatal Cure“, “Godplayer“, “Harmful Intent“, “Invasion“, “Mind Bend“, “Mortal Fear“, “Mutation” and “Vital Signs” and I’ve also got “Sphinx” and “Vector” on order – so if anybody was thinking of getting me any of those for Christmas, DON’T – get me another book or something (hint hint)

Sir Giles Lynchwood, MP, married Maud Handyman of Handyman Hall, Cleene Gorge, Worfordshire, for her money and property. But, due to a pre-martial agreement, the only way he can get some money for Handyman Hall is by arranging to have a new motorway (M101) put through Cleene Gorge and Handyman Hall subject to a compulsory purchase order. But Giles could not take into account the actions and problems caused by the numerical-obsessed Ministry Of Environment troubleshooter Dundridge or Lady Maud’s adoring gardener Blott…

Originally written in 1975 by Tom Sharpe (the author of Ancestral Vices, The Great Pursuit, Porterhouse Blue, Wilt and many other books) “Blott On The Landscape” was described by The Times newspaper as “Skulduggery at stately homes, dirty work at the planning enquiry, and the villains falling satisfactorily up to their ears in the minestrone… the heroine breakfasts on broken bottles, wears barbed wire next to the skin and stops at nothing to protect her ancestral seat from a motorway construction“.

The copy I have (1977 edition published by Pan Books Ltd) is 238 pages long (consisting of 28 chapters) and makes a good read from “the funniest new writer to have merged for years” (The Observer Newspaper). Although it doesn’t state exactly when the story line is set, you do get the feeling it is around the 1970′s time period – but even that doesn’t “age” the story of ancestral history and arrogance overthrowing corruption, blackmail and greed. The developing love story which runs through the book, whilst at first not predictable, does help to “round” the storyline off nicely at the end. A mixture of mainly comedy, horror, murder and a bit of romance and sexual relations – this makes for an enjoyable read for 18 year olds up-wards.

Storyline:
Sir Giles Lynchwood, Member of Parliament for South Worfordshire had married Maud Handyman (whom had been described as ‘Rodinesque’ and who Sir Giles would describe as “monumentally unattractive”) and had made his fortune by recognising potential advantage in unprepossessing proprieties.

However Maud was a Handyman and Handyman Hall (built in 1899 on the edge of Cleene Gorge, Worfordshire) had always been her family home – but Giles knew exactly how much it was worth. However, due to a pre-martial agreement: if he divorced her, he lost everything – likewise if she divorced him (as she doesn’t want to be left a childless widow and Sir Giles is less than willing to do “his duty” in that respect), she’ll lose the Hall: something she is not willing to let happen.

Giles hatches a cunning plan to have the new Mid-Wales motorway – the M101 – set so it runs straight through Cleene Gorge: forcing Handyman Hall to be subject to a compulsory purchase order, and hence, freeing up the money for him to move down to London and live with his mistress Mrs.Felicia Forthby (who is willing to satisfy his bondage fetish). However, due to Lady Maud’s interference at the biased enquiry and her “poisoning” of the head of the enquiry (Lord Leakham) forces the Ministry Of Environment to send a troubleshooter to Worfordshire to try and smooth the matter over. They decide that Dundrige – a man whose idea to utilise solid-state traffic lights in Clapham forced the suburb to be isolated from London for almost a week – can’t do much damage and he does have a flair for public relations (his schemes for one-way traffic in London sounded good, but were impossible to implement: unless, of course, you were willing to drive from Hyde Park Corner to Piccadilly via Tower Bridge and Fleet Street).

Dundridge soon meets up with Sir Giles’ “cohort” Bob Hoskins (who just happens to be the Planning Officer in charge of the motorway) and realises that the only other route is via Ottertown: which would lengthen the motorway, cost more and cause a load of brand new council houses to be demolished. Dundridge’s plan for a tunnel underneath the Cleene Forest is quickly run down by Sir Giles and Hoskins.

In the meantime, Lady Maud is making precautions to try and prevent her ancestral home from being demolished and Blott, her gardener (an abandoned Jewish looking baby in war-torn Germany who ended up a Prisoner of War at Handyman Hall after his Italian co-pilots crash landed) is continually eavesdropping on Sir Giles’ telephone conversations and slowly falling in love with Lady Maud. However, he doesn’t find out about Sir Giles arranging with “Sally Boles” to place Dundridge in a position where he can be blackmailed…

Sir Giles suddenly realises that if the motorway is routed through Cleene Gorge, Lady Maud may get a bit suspicious why he, as the local Member of Parliament, didn’t do much to stop it. However, the MP for Ottertown – Francis Puckerington MP – is in ill health and it’s a marginal seat… The Prime Minister overrules Dundrige and forces the motorway through Cleene Gorge.

Lady Maud has to stop this and loyal Blott makes plans to serve behind the bar at the “Royal George” pub and serve the 20% proof “Very Special” brew from the Handyman Brewery to all the motorway construction crew – with disastrous consequences. Disastrous, that is, to Mr.Bullet-Finch of Finch Grove (a neighbour of Lady Maud’s and also a member of her “Save The Gorge” campaign) and most of the High Street. Meanwhile, Lady Maud’s plan to open a wildlife park within the grounds of Handyman Hall (complete with Giraffes, Lions and Rhinoceroses) helps scupper the plans of Sir Giles to burn down Handyman Hall.

Blott’s plan to seal himself into his home (the “archway” leading to the Hall) and the resulting publicity helps the future of the Gorge: and, of course, there’s that new vacancy at the Hall and Parliament to deal with. Dundridge on the other hand, has plenty of time to work out his “Dundridge Digit” library filing system…