November 24th - Skip the first 30 pages and come in at the start of chapter 2 or risk wondering why in god's name you had ever raved about Mil Millington. It was almost as if he had taken a leaf out of Jeffery Kellermans approach to writing and was working on being paid by the word. There were freaking hundreds of them and none of them was witty or entertaining. Started once and gave up in despair. Then because I just couldn't accept that I wasn't going to love a Mil Millington book I opened it randomly and had another go. Pretty light on lol moments to be fair and the plot requires the usual suspension of belief. Bloke in pub with mates and girlfriend, gets rat arsed, wakes up in bed with mystery woman. He thinks its the next day turns out it's 20 years later, mystery woman is his long suffering wife and he is missing 20 years. Gives rise to some chuckle inducing moments but not a patch on the bloody brilliant Love and other near death experiences reviewed with much hyperbole below!
November 16th - 
Am dipping in and out of this one. I read Panic and Fear and really enjoyed them and was hoping this would be another of the sort of books that hauls you in over the course of the first two pages and doesn't let you free til you finish. Sadly not quite as grabbing as the other two I haven't really engaged with it as much. Luke Dantry was raised by his stepfather after his own father was killed by an extremist and his mother died in a car accident with stepfather survived. Luke works for his step father monitoring the actions of extremists on the internet until he is kidnapped at gun point by one of them. The story follows Lukes journey to try and find his kidnapper, having escaped - clearly! - and to work out whether his step father is actually to be trusted or not. I expect I will finish this, it just wont be soon.
15th November - 19th November.
Completely love the Thorne series by Mark Billingham and this one didn't disappoint. Thorne is his usual irascible self,
still struggling to come to terms with his softer side. The story is based on the wife of a man who she was jailed for paying someone to kill receiving photos of him, alive and well and in Spain just after she gets out of prison for her part in his murder. Runs along at a nice pace with enough of a spark to keep you interested, maybe not the best Thorne novel but an enjoyable read nonetheless.
14th November - 14th November.
Hilarious! Justin moved back home to live with his dad aged 29 having been dumped. He started a website, which the book is named after, to record all the crazy and very funny things his dad said to him and it evolved into this book which I raced through in one evening, with much cackling! As an example of the sort of shit Justin's dad says:
"Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that."
I loved it and would recommend it for a stocking filler for the man in your life if he likes a laugh!
5th - ?? November
Spotted this in Tesco's in Helston back in August and it has been on my list to order from the library since then. It is a work and a half so am guessing this is going to take more than 2 nights! Well it took him 25 years to write apparently so it would be rather rude to knock it off in less than a week don't you think? Basically its about a town that is surrounded by an invisible force field that prevents anyone coming in or going out, as invisible force fields tend to do in my experience. The book deals mainly with how the citizens in the town react to this and it gets some very mixed reviews on Amazon, read the first couple of chapters whilst dinner was cooking and am pretty drawn in already but if it starts to read like a Kellerman "I get paid by the word, here try my latest 60000 page novel" it will be back in the library quicker than a quick thing. Hey this is almost a review - on the basis that at least having read this you might have some idea what the book is about!! Might have to go back and edit the last couple as some facts might be of interest too!
9th Nov - about a third of the way through and its going very nicely thank you! Big cast of characters and it took me a while to get them all in order. I am liking that initially you are thinking "ooh how scary a great big invisible force field" and then a bit later you think "gosh I wouldnt be able to get to the trafford centre, that would be a bitch" followed by "exactly how much food is there in Elland and how long would it last?" at about the same rate that the residents of Chester's Mill are also working out that after the initial panic there are some pretty important things that need thinking about, not least that they are likely to run out of food and where the rubbery has all the gas gone that is needed to fuel the generators? Oh and a tip, never look on Wikepdia for the name of a town in a book you are reading, have just read a couple of spoilers by accident!
12th Nov - So good, am loving it. Reading one page last night and thought that the character was sounding an awful lot like Jack Reacher (if you haven't read any Lee Child stop reading this blog and get to a library at once, right now, seriously, I mean it) 3 pages further on and Stephen King only name checks Reacher, right there in the middle of his own novel, another authors hero, kudos Mr King.
13th Nov - All done. Terrific read, one of those that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let you go til you turn the last page. No spoilers here, you'll have to read it yourself but the main concept of the book is the study of how people in a small town react when their backs are up against the wall, no surprises really, the bad get worse and on the whole the good stay strong so no great "message" but a salutary reminder nonetheless and as a weeks worth of escapism - perfect!
1st - 2nd November.
A word of advice - DO NOT READ THIS IN ON AN AEROPLANE. Really, I am quite sure the bloke next to me was moments away from effecting a citizens arrest on the way to Newquay on Tuesday. I was laughing so hard I had tears running down my cheeks and was trying to stifle hysterical guffaws so much so that I was shaking. I read Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About years ago and thought it was probably the funniest thing since Spike Milligan's My Part in Hitlers Downfall, which I read at 10 so maybe isn't actually all that funny if you are a grown up! Anyway, I also read A Certain Chemistry and vowed to keep an eye out for more books by Mil Millington and then promptly got swept along on a tide of crime and forgot all about him. Spotted this in the library and was actually a bit worried that he couldn't still be writing such howlingly funny stuff - oh but he is, and then some, bloody brilliant frankly and thats why I ripped through it in 2 days. If this doesn't make you laugh out loud and insist on reading out bits to whoever is near you I will eat every copy in print. Please please read this and tell me what you think!
Post edit - you might want to know what this is about, just in case my insistence that its the funniest book ever published isn't recommendation enough! Basically main character, sorry name has gone clean out of my head, has a meeting scheduled in a pub, he is running late because he is returning some crap towels to a shop (its a long story) and the pub blows up killing everyone in it, which begs the question which decision was it that led to him being late and therefore missing his appointment with the grim reaper; returning the towels or buying the towels in the first place? And if your entire continued existence hangs on such a delicate thread then surely all decisions are life and death ones and require a great deal more thought than they would usually be given. There that about covers the plot, the plot isn't the most important thing about this book, its just the thing the words hang off, its the comedy that counts. Enjoy.
16th October - ??? November
Dipping in and out of this in between other books when I run out and can't get to the library. Heard a programme on Radio 4 about how poverty has been written about over the years and this was given as a great example - one of those that I thought I should read because it is a classic in its own way. Actually it is really interesting, all the more so because a lot of the mining and mill towns he writes about are in Yorkshire and Lancashire and the description of the back to back slums and the working conditions the miners endure make your realise just how easy life is now, certainly for most of us and I would imagine even the very worst off are living in better conditions than the people in Wigan at the time he was writing. This has to go back to the library on the 12th so its unlikely I will finish it, not least because I have just started a weighty tome that is going to take some serious reading!
23rd - 25th October
Haven't read any Stephen Leather for about 2 years, got really into him round the time I first started reading Lee Child and loved his books, spotted this in the library and thought it would be worth a whirl. Quite a departure from his usual hard-hitting, gangster type stuff as this one requires you to suspend your disbelief in all things supernatural, but it is written so well that really doesn't require much of a leap. He writes terrific dialogue and the whole thing was yet another rattle through in 2 days hardly pausing for breath, bearing in mind I do work, eat, sleep and have other blogs - I don't spend my entire life reading, in spite of what Katie thinks! Yet another recommendation!
November 24th - 
