OK so we’ve both read Harry Potter now. So we can emerge from the undergrowth safe in the knowlage that we know what happens and no one can spoil it for us. Although there is still at least one thing the book doesn’t tell you*

* it turns out theres a huge list of things people wanted it to tell them, you will have to read it to see which ones it doesn’t

[update] if you have finished the book - here are some loose ends tied up

Ruth seems to think I’ve read the book (which I have) and know the story, but really It doesn’t seem that familiar. With the film of two books previous coming out a week before the book - it’s all getting confusing. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phenoix

Really the Internet has got a long long way to go if it’s going to beat the experience of browsing in a bookshop.

Today I stole 30 minutes at lunch time to have a wonder around Waterstones on bold street, It’s recently been refurbished and is now bright and airy, not something you would normally associate with a good book browsing experience, and it does take some getting use to, but compared to the relative drought of bookshops in my life, it made very little difference to the experience overall.

I do have trouble picking books I would like; so many nowadays are just chick-lit or crime/thriller with a “bit of a twist”. They leave me cold; boy meets girl, has some form of family trauma embarrassing secret in the middle of the book, looses girl, finds girl, girl has second thoughts. girl discovers gambling…. it’s all the same sameyness and I just can’t get into it without throwing the book at the wall.

Amazon isn’t really much help here, because it’s virtually impossible to browse. Yes you can go down in to many different categories of books, but still you either are looking at the bestsellers or things rated by customers, and the problem with that is the mass public like chick-lit or crime/thriller, and besides how do I know if I fancy a technothriller, or a political dram? I just want a good book.

This is where walking the isles of waterstones always wins - yes there is still a sea of trash, but good books do surprisingly stand out. You can quickly ignore all the pink books (chick-lit) and all the black books (crime/thriller) and focus on books that look good, I’ve even taken to reading those little recommendation notes they hang off the shelves.

I know judging books by their cover is silly, but i tell you it works better than you would think. you may miss some stunning books but you find more good stuff than just random clicking ever will.

Anyway in thirty minutes of aimless floating, I found at least three books I would by if I in-fact had any money at the moment:

Seeing - Jose Saramago

A book about political disillusionment. Based around elections where almost no one turns out to vote, and those who do, don’t even fill out there ballot papers, the government then descends into panic. Sounds interesting, a story about something other than football and girls (or maybe it is?).

Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony - Eion Colfer

Personally I think Artemis Fowl books are better than Harry Potter. I know it’s a children’s book, and some people are very snobby, but that just shows you the lack of imagination in ‘adult’ fiction that the best selling books are aimed at kids and bought by adults.

?AA Gill is Away - AA Gill

I like travel writing, not in huge doses, sometimes the same old bits of witty insight into the way ‘other’ cultures do something can get a bit tiresome - but this book looks interesting, It’s essentially a collection of travel Attica’s written for the Sunday times, which will either be it’s saving grace with short not to dreary essays or its downfall with rather hashed together articles about somewhere he got dragged to. still I think it’s worth a go.

It took me 30 minutes in the shop to narrow it down to three books I would buy, it took me at least that long to find them again in amazon just to add them to my wish list* and download the pictures. I could quite easily spend all day in a bookshop, especially now they all have a Costa or Starbucks in them. but I would bankrupt us, and in all likelihood end up with a house full of books that I’d never read. maybe that will be what I do when I retire.

[oh and in-case your wondering still no sign of the baby]

*(boom as the hint hits the floor!)

Reading, its one of those things I never quite get around to doing, well it use to be. Ever since I’ve started my new job I’ve been reading crazy.

When I changed jobs I shifted my commute; arriving at 7:40 and going home at 3:40, is all very well when you’ve been in a job for a while but I figured it may look a bit funny if I started doing that in a new job, so I now arrive at around 8:30 and go home at 4:45 (train times, no point leaving at half past I’d just be sitting on the train).

Anyway, the fact that I’ve had a bit more time to wake up appears to mean that I am in a fit state to read something on the way to work. And so far in the last four months I have read 5 books during my twelve minute commute, JPod, The Eyre Affair, Lost in a good book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, and The Big Over Easy, now for someone who usually has five or six unfinished books on the go this is good. Currently I’m reading On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, to see if the books are better than the films.

I have a whole book momentum issue normally, so the regiment of reading on the train has helped get past the point where I would often put a book down and not pick it up again. Although there are still some books where it’s proven a bit to much like hard work and I’ve have put them down, so far, Time Stops for no Mouse has proven once again to be to be a book that takes to long to get anywhere, hence I don’t know were it goes I’ve stopped reading it. I’ve also tried yet again to read an Ian Rankin book (Knots and Crosses), but just couldn’t get past the first few chapters.

I went for a wonder into town for lunch today. I needed some fresh air, a little break from the hum of the computers.

On my walk I popped into Waterstones; for a while now I’ve been thinking I need something interesting to read, and I’ve been keeping an eye out for The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell, basically it’s a book about how little things push something from just doing ok to being huge. Apparently this book is a good example because it’s now a world wide best seller, and load of people are talking about it. I heard about it, because Malcom Gladwell now has a new book out called Blink which is about thinking without thinking, which some people say is good but not as good. Still you have to read the first one I suppose.

Anyway, that’s all a quite long winded given I didn’t find the book, but I did see several others that all followed a certain trend. A lot of the management/Selfhelp books have silly titles, while in the book shop I saw Purple Cow (Be Remarkable), Who Moved My Cheese (Embrace Change), Fish! (be energetic and enthusiastic), and How Full is your Bucket? (work life Balance).

I think Purple Cow sums it up, these books have silly names so they stand out, people read them, and management can look all trendy by saying they’ve read who moved my cheese, and are embracing the principles of FISH!

So I’m bringing my own corporate self help statement to the world, “Think Pencil”, it’s all about how a pencil is useful for so many things but you have to keep it sharp, and the rubber is great for changing things, but it always leaves a mark.

Kevin, is currently in a bit of a funny mood

So this is what I do when the clocks go back, and I am waiting for the rest of the house to get up, the Jump Library is back up.

woo hoo I hear you say, but just think about it. Once again you can look at the contents of our book shelves without having to go anywhere near our house, isn’t modern technology grand.

technologically, this time the library should be much more stable, the first time around I wrote it in JavaScript, which was mainly driven by where our website lived, and because I wanted to. It worked ok (if you where on a PC) but had a few problems, so when we moved the site to thejumps.co.uk I always intended to re-write it in php, which after a very quick self lead crash course in php I have now done.

there are still a few things missing, last time there was a form to fill in to ask if you could borrow a book, that’s going to come back, and we had the pompously titled ‘reading room’ which was a sort of discussion thing, that was only there because I liked the name, I might not bring that back.

still you should go browse the library, currently there are 223 books, which is around half our collection.

My novel lasted long, about 2 days. For me that’s quite a long lasting fad, I’m not saying I’m stopping the writing, just that I’m probably not going to finish that particular story. I was in a bit of a place when I wrote it, and at the time, I though it was quite good, but since then I’ve read it back and I don’t like it.

I think it tries to hard, and there is no way I could maintain that level of sarcasm all the way though a book without getting really irritated by it.

Anyway I think it’s pap, it hasn’t been checked by the grammar police, but I’m going to let you read it anyway. If you are so inclined you can download the first page of my never to be completed novel. Clive and the stuff.

please feel free to tell me it’s pap (and no that’s not a plea for people to tell me it’s good), what I would be interested in, is any idea’s as to where this story would go on page two.