Dog On It, Spencer Quinn: book review

Meet Chet, the canine partner of the crime-smashing duo of Spencer Quinn's series Chet and Bernie. Dog On It (forgive the terrible pun) is the first of the series and is narrated entirely from the point of view of Chet, whose keen intelligence and olfactory sense is easily matched by his affinity for scarfing down old scraps and sniffing bottoms.

Bernie Little, the principle of the Little Detective Agency, is the human owner of crime-sniffing canine Chet and comes across as a most affable fellow thanks to Chet's interpretation. Like most other detectives you've ever heard of, he's 'hard bitten' and 'steely', but from Chet's point of view we get to also see his vulnerable side. As a character he's not as fleshed out as Chet, but we like him enormously anyway.

The plot of Dog On It revolves around a missing teenage girl and the dirt Chet and Bernie discover when they're hired to find her. Her disappearance somehow seems to involve a Russian crime gang and a lot of money.

During the course of their investigations, Chet manages to get into a number of scrapes coming this close to being put down at a dog pound. It's heart-thrilling stuff. And it's heartwarming too, as we get to see the foibles of human relations through his eyes and his utterly endearing loyalty to Bernie.

Dog On It is a wonderfully funny book which I was so glad to discover is a series, because it's something I'd love to come back to again and again.

How to Catch a Star (Oliver Jeffers) at Kiddie Book Club

The major benefit of working as a freelance copywriter is having a flexible schedule that allows me to attend events as illustrious as the Kiddie Book Club, where today I had the honour of being a Guest Reader.

Kiddie Book Club is run by my good friend Haej Wolfson, who also happens to have the biggest heart and largest capacity of just about anyone I know. By 'capacity' I mean the sheer number of events, people, jobs and children she can juggle without breaking a sweat.

So with four little members aged from almost-two to four eager to hear a story (the book club is only in its infancy), I opened and read How to Catch a Star, written by one of my favourite artists and children's book author/illustrators Oliver Jeffers.

How to Catch a Star is a beautiful story about a young boy who dreams of having a star as a friend, and schemes ways of catching one from the sky. While reading it today, I learnt a major lesson about reading to children: keep their focus on the story.

Children can be truly enigmatic in their ability to swing from ADD-like shoutiness to autismic focus in a millisecond. I made the mistake very early on of asking, 'how many stars can you count on this page?', which of course caused them to shout out loud the number of stars on every page I turned, completely ignoring the unfolding storyline.

I'd like to think they got something out of it though, as they switched from fighting over a headband to fighting over a little confetti star afterwards.

Thanks for the honour Kiddie Book Club! Call on me anytime.

The Adjustment Bureau: 2 minute movie review

How could I fail to love a movie with two of my favourite stars: Matt Damon and Emily Blunt? PLUS it's been advertised as a cross between Bourne and Inception, two fantastic movies (well, one is a series). I wouldn't say it quite hits all those highs: it's not as action-driven as Bourne or as clever and complicated as Inception, but it's still damn good.

If you've seen any of the ads you'll know it's a conceptual film about a bureau that 'adjusts' the fate of humans in keeping with an overall Plan with a capital P. Damon and Blunt play two lovers who are proverbially star-crossed, trying to stay together despite the best attempts of the bureau to separate them. It's quite classically Philip K Dick (in that you're pretty sure the idea was drug-induced). On the whole, the film is really quite good, although there are a few clunky obvious bits, but just suspend your cynicism and go for the ride. It's a good one.

My Favourite Wife, Bill Parsons (book review)

Apparently Tony Parsons (my 'P' author for the Great Library Challenge) has sold a ton of books so I decided to give this one a go. The short verdict: failed to grab me.

The protagonist is Bill Holden, a 'good' man and ambitious lawyer who, in his drive to make partner, moves to Shanghai with his beautiful and intelligent wife Becca and their adorable four year old daughter Holly. If they sound typical, it's because they are. The family is a walking, talking, one-dimensional modern cliche of the Western world.

Becca, who initiated the move, finds the craziness of Shanghai overwhelming (a major factor being the discarded baby she finds in the trash of their luxury highrise apartment, populated largely by the 'second wives' (a.k.a. mistresses) of rich men) and takes Holly back to London for a while. During her absence, Bill takes up with JinJin, a local leggy second wife who is lonely during the long absences of her married partner.

Parsons paints Bill as a man caught between two worlds: troubled by the corruption he finds in the dizzying economic growth of Shanghai and trapped between two loves. Although most of the ingredients are there (Bill is genuinely interested in the plight of second wives and feels more keenly for the Chinese locals than his Western counterparts), his character never quite reaches the complexity required to engage our empathy. Parsons' attempt to keep Bill high-minded backfires quite badly too, as it smacks of Western elitism and hypocrisy, because when you strip away the facade, the basic fact is that he is cheating on his wife with a local, just like many other men before him. The layers of supposed complexity are simply that: contrived to make his affair with JinJin appear more a matter of the heart than the other major male organ.

Normally I quite like hearing the male perspective in modern fiction (Nick Hornby and Jonathan Tropper for example), but I just couldn't find the connection point with this novel, so it totally failed to engage me. Sorry Mr Parsons.

David Nicholl's One Day becomes a movie

Hey remember the book One Day by David Nicholls? It's been turned into a movie with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. This is the lovely poster for it:

I love the implied motion in the image, like he's going in one direction and she's going in another, but they clash in the kiss. The sepia colouring is gorgeous too.

Jim Sturgess looks much as I'd imagined Dexter while reading the book (cocky, a bit rumpled but charming - a little something like Dylan Moran), but I'm not so sure about Anne Hathaway as Emma. For some reason I imagined Emma as a blonde (I can't remember how the book describes her) or a bit smaller or whatever. But I like Anna Hathaway. She can do the gorgeous-loser insecurity thing well (like a girl who doesn't know how pretty she is) but I hope her British accent's up to scratch.

If you haven't read it yet, get yourself over to the library/bookstore/Book Depository and get onto it. It's hefty but a good one.

How Do You Know: 2 minute movie review

This movie has copped a fair bit of flack by reviewers, quite possibly because it's not your typical romantic comedy. Directing producing legend James L Brooks (Broadcast News, Jerry Maguire, As Good As It Gets, etc) has created a more grown-up type of rom-com, where we meet two of the main characters at their lowest points.

While most rom-coms have the metaphorical neon 'they get together' arrows pointing to the love interests throughout the movie, this one's not so sure-footed with the characters, which makes for an interesting film even if it isn't bursting your sides with laughter.

Jack Nicholson overplays his part a bit, but Reese Witherspoon is quite charming in a totally non-Legally Blonde way. Most of the comedy comes through Owen Wilson, and Paul Rudd is... well Paul Rudd. A little bit of a bumbling nice-guy who you root for.

I have two free tickets to the movie at any cinema if anyone wants them. Up for grabs. Anyone? Leave a comment or email me by Friday 18th Feb and they're yours.

2010 Reading List

• A Tiny Bit Marvellous, Dawn French
• Air Kisses, Zoe Foster
• Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
• Light Boxes, Shane Jones
• Shopaholic Ties the Knot, Sophic Kinsella
• Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, Sophie Kinsella
• The Family Man, Elinor Lipman
• Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
• Asterix and the Black Gold, Goscinny and Uderzo
• The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
• Confessions of a Shopaholic, Sophie Kinsella
• Squirrel Meets Chipmunk, David Sedaris
• Sleep No More, Greg Iles
• The Radleys, Matt Haig
• The Third Twin, Ken Follett
• Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
• GTO volume 23, Tohru Fujisawa
• The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
• The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
• Ramona's World, Beverly Cleary
• The Sandman (Endless Nights), Neil Gaiman
• Becoming Strangers, Louise Dean
• The News Where You Are, Catherine Flynn
• Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote
• Beat the Reaper, Josh Bazell
• Turkish Gambit, Boris Akunin
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck
• The Bride Stripped Bare, Nikki Gemmell
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, MA Shaffer & A Burrows
• Daddy Long Legs, Jean Webster
• The Diary of Anne Frank
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
• Spellmans Strike Again, Lisa Lutz
• Chart Throb, Ben Elton
• A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Paul Torday
• You Don't Have to be Evil to Work Here But it Helps, Tom Holt
• Eric, Shaun Tan
• Two Caravans, Marina Lewycka
• The Truth About Melody Browne, Lisa Jewell
• Thanks for the Memories, Cecelia Ahern
• Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, Alexander McCall Smith
• The Monday Night Cooking Club, Erica Bauermeister
• A Friend of the Family, Lisa Jewell
• 31 Dream Street, Lisa Jewell
• Just Courage, Gary Haugen
• The Lives of Christopher Chant, Diana Wynne-Jones,
• Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones
• Isabel's Bed, Elinor Lipman
• Les Miserables (volume 1), Victor Hugo
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
• My Latest Grievance, Elinor Lipman
• The Girl who Stirred the Hornet's Nest
• Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett
• The Girl Who Played with Fire
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy
• Revenge of the Spellmans, Lisa Lutz
• Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
• This is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper
• The Case of the Imaginery Detective, Karen Joy Fowler
• Fly Me to the Moon, Alyson Noel
• The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas
• The Glorious Nosebleed, Edward Gorey
• Finger Lickin' Fifteen, Janet Evanovich
• The Book of a Thousand Days, Shannon Hale
• People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
• Stardust, Neil Gaiman (re-read)

Standouts: Light Boxes (Shane Jones), The Millennium Series (Stieg Larsson), The Sandman (Endless Nights, graphic novel), Neil Gaiman, Confederacy of Dunces re-read (John Kennedy Toole), Family Man (Elinor Lipman), Les Miserable (Victor Hugo), Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)

Bombs: Fly Me to the Moon (Alison Noel), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (MA Shaffer & A Burrows), The Case of the Imaginery Detective (Karen Joy Fowler), Air Kisses (Zoe Foster)

... which begs the question: why do I keep going back to chicklit?

Special Mentions: The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Muriel Barbery), Beat the Reaper (Josh Bazell), anything by Alexander McCall Smith.

Hmm, there's very little in the way of non-fiction, or even self-improvement type books or the ones that expand your mind. Shame on me.

Total: 69