Reading does, in general, expand your mind, help you to think in new directions, and even relax you after a stressful day.
Cracked has listed five books that maybe should not have ever made it past their draft version, and will most probably not push your brain to a higher plane of consciousness…
In case you need [...]

Not much to add, I know little about the man’s private life, but enjoyed many of his books. Thanks for all your work.

One of my favourite author, Terry Pratchett has said “”Personally, I’d eat the arse out of a dead mole…” Not a strange attempt at grabbing publicity for his books, but rather a (humorous) reference to the lengths he’d go to, to try and find a cure for Alzheimer’s. Although relatively young (for such a neurone-wasting [...]

A fellow forum member over at XDA Developers has been busy writing a program to automatically recognise bar codes from the built in cameras available in some PDAs. The potential uses are only limited by your own imagination, I’m considering seeing how difficult it would be to export the ISBN numbers from my books back [...]

Quick explanation for those of you who thought I had given up on posting here, or had no internet access - I am currently still deep in the process of setting up my other 18 sites. They were originally created as static (well almost, too long a story to recount here) pages, and whenever I [...]

A recent idea I had for a science fiction book…
Inhabitants on a planet, completely unlike our own. Not being carbon or even silicon based, they view energy in a much closer manner to the way we ourselves conventionally see matter, with their local geography mainly consisting of huge electric lakes and plasma mountains.
OK, so perhaps [...]

Although I have never personally been a huge fan of Romance Novels myself, there is obviously a need for romantic moments in most relationships, to keep the fire burning bright. Mills and Boon have requested that bloggers talk about the most romantic experience in their lives, so here is mine. Although there have been many [...]

I have finally finished the collection of e-books stored on my PDA. However, I know that the book reviews here stalled a long time ago now. I hope to return to the book reviews a little later, as well finding some new books to read. The Terry Goodkind ‘Sword of Truth’ series is one I [...]

Things had happened a little differently in Russia, around 1917? Many historians have debated as to the exact order of events around the time of the revolution, and for a long time some people claimed they were the sole survivors of the Tsar’s family.
We now know that no one survived the assassinations, however when I [...]

It took a while, but all 1100 (or near enough) posts on this blog have now had new (mostly additional) categories assigned to them, where appropriate. If you check the category list on the left hand side, you will see the new additions. Although I could have added more, I wanted to try and keep [...]

I know, I know, it has been weeks and weeks since I did a book review, and sadly this is not actually going to be a proper one.
The reason for the delay is that the next few books in line are in a series. Unfortunately I can not actually remember which book is which in [...]

Last week I meant to post a picture of Ira’s new hair colour. She went to the Salon after work finished, had a cut and then the colouring process finished.
Ten past eleven, she got home! Yep, almost four hours it took to apply the colour and a styling. I just hoped they offer tea and [...]

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) - George R. R. Martin
I went back to the fantasy genre at this point, and really got into this series. This planet is loosely similar to ‘our’ medieval times, where different gods are worshipped in different areas. Magic plays a part in the [...]

The American department of Homeland Security recently called on the skills of respected SciFi writers to assist them in brain storming on new ways to defeat contraband smugglers, illegal aliens (of the human variety, at least publicly ) and, of course, terrorists.
A spokesman at the Homeland Security’s Science and Technology sector stated that “we [...]

The Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft
Here we have a book split into three sections, with the links between them presented via someone who is searching for the truth behind the mystery of the death of his great uncle (or it may have been great great uncle - I intend to go back and skim [...]

The Call of the Wild - Jack London
Set amongst the heady times of the American gold rushes, the main character in this book is a dog. We see the dog well looked after, and enjoying his position as alpha male dog in his vicinity, and all seems well. Very quickly things take a turn for [...]

Martin Eden - Jack London
This is definitely a book for budding writers to read and try and take some heart from. The main character is actually a sailor, who sees a particularly one-sided unfair brawl starting. He steps and saves the honour, and possibly life, of a well to do young gentleman. As way of [...]

The Mist - Stephen King
Unlike the last review, I actually enjoyed this book a lot. Ever one for a helpfully descriptive title, a mysterious mist does indeed largely feature in the story. Again, the main character is a professional artist (hmm, think I may have forgotten to mention that in the Cell review, sorry).
Following a [...]

Cell - Stephen King
OK, I may just be in a bad mood as I write this review, but I did find this book formulaic, especially compared to The Mist (see the next book review). That said I still would have read it if I’d known the style used, just with lesser expectations perhaps.
I found myself [...]

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
If you enjoyed the first Forest Gump book, you are quite likely to enjoy this book. The main character in Flowers for Algernon has severe learning difficulties, and encounters the possibility of greatly increasing his intellect. This leads to him becoming a lot more self-aware.
However, the increase in his intellectual [...]