(Incidentally, I didn’t lug all these books around with me; I read them on my iPhone using Stanza, which is a brilliant app. And, since I get asked this a lot, reading on the iPhone screen is generally fine – as long as you spend a bit of time working out your preferred font face, size and spacing before you commence the actual reading.)

Pretty Little Liars, Sara Shepard

Yes, this one is pure guff, but in my defence I only read it to occupy a flight from one side of America to the other, and I figured it couldn’t be any worse than the guiltily pleasurable Gossip Girl books. I figured wrong. Pretty Little Liars really is absolute rubbish, little more than a list of sensationalised adolescent melodrama (eating disorders? Yep. Affairs with teachers? Yep. Every single teen cliche ever invented? A thousand times yep) wrapped around references to expensive brand names. This wouldn’t be so bad if Liars had a plot, but it doesn’t. The first book does little more than introduce the premise of the series (“high-school clique is stalked by their long-missing friend”), which is a total Narrative Fail; books don’t have to stand on their own but they should at least have some semblance of beginning, middle and end. (I was not surprised to learn that the TV series was developed before the book series, since the first book  basically reads like the novel equivalent of a TV pilot.) Terrible.

4.50 From Paddington, Agatha Christie

Okay, this is better (though your definition of “better” may vary). I was on a train to Paddington when I started reading this one, so it seemed like a logical choice. There’s something terribly comforting about Agatha Christie novels (and trust me, I read a metric tonne of them while I was away – most of them Miss Marples, as this one is): yes, they’re formulaic in the extreme, half the book is occupied by characters summarising what we’ve learned in the other half of the book, and the plots are convoluted to the point of absurdity (like, why can’t English people just straight-out murder each other, like, jeez, why does it have to be so darn complicated), but they’re so charming and English. The climax of 4.50 From Paddington is ridiculous, but it’s satisfyingly ridiculous – this is one of my favourite Christie novels.

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown

Everyone is super-hard on Dan Brown. A lot of the flack is deserved (so very deserved): his “plots” are mostly clumsy infodumps, and the man flat-out cannot write dialogue that doesn’t sound like it was spoken by robots made of wood. But you know what? His books are what they are, and if you expect literary greatness or historical accuracy from what is basically an airport book, more fool you. If you accept Da Vinci for what it is – an easy popcorn thriller – it’s a pretty decent read. Plus I was in Paris when I started reading it, and how cool to read about places you’re actually in, right! Right? (PS, I’m still convinced that Robert Langdon is gay and doesn’t know it.)

A Murder is Announced, Agatha Christie

See above, where I noted that Agatha Christie’s plots are often needlessly complicated – in this one, (mild spoilers) the actual murderer invites a fake murderer to an old lady’s house in order to disguise a real murder. Yes, that’s really what happens. And then Miss Marple figures it out because of a fused lamp and a broken string of pearls, or something. Then again, the Rube Goldberg-esque complexity is all part of Christie’s appeal – along with the usual support cast of terrible English characters (the usual vicars and colonels make their appearances, naturally). There wouldn’t be much point in ol’ Jane setting her sights on a mystery that she could be done with by teatime, would there?

The Body in the Library, Agatha Christie

So yeah, I really did read a tonne of Agatha Christies – nearly all of them Miss Marples. I’m not sure why I was drawn to Jane over Christie’s more famous detective, Hercule Poirot; he’s certainly the more eccentric of the two. But in the same way that Christie’s formulas are comforting, so is Miss Marple herself: there’s something ridiculous in her method of comparing everyone she encounters to people she already knows from her home village (and British murder capital), St Mary Mead – I reckon Christie had a lot of fun inventing these amusingly mundane characters – and I kind of like that Miss Marple can be a bit of a sharp bitch when she wants to be, particularly in her climactic confrontation here with the wife of the suspected murderer. (But I really like when other characters refer to her as an “old pussy”. LOL.)

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

This is an extremely handy book: you can learn an awful lot of about science, its history, and its eccentrics, then wheel that information out at dinner parties in order to sound terribly intelligent about Stuff. (This is actually the second time I’ve read this book – my first reading was years ago and I’d forgotten much of the Stuff, and thus in danger of not sounding intelligent at dinner parties.) It also has the advantage of being a terrifically written, all-round-awesome read; definitely pick it up if you feel that your knowledge of the natural world is shamefully ignorant. If more school textbooks were written in the easy, informative style of Nearly Everything there’d be loads more people interested in the science, as Bryson points out in the opening chapters. (PS, does anyone else always picture Bill Bryson as looking like Bill Bailey? Just me?)

The Millennium Trilogy, Steig Larsson

I really really loved these books. I kind of expected to – they’re massively popular, and massive popularity usually (well, sometimes) happens for a reason – and I’d put off reading them for ages, knowing I’d get to them while I was away. And they are really really great. I don’t care if that makes me a populist hack. (Confession: when I visited Stockholm I took the Millennium Walking Tour. I am definitely a populist hack.)

Much has been said about how The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo introduces one of the most compelling new characters of the thriller genre. This is usually meant to mean the pierced, spiky, possibly-Aspergers-Syndrome-having Lisbeth Salander, who is indeed fascinating – likeable yet dangerous. But the other, overlooked character crucial to this series’ success is Sweden itself: the setting is unique and exotic in spite of its iciness.

Dragon Tattoo is a fantastic first entry (and there’s something unexpectedly dry and witty about the prose, which I’m not sure is due to Larsson or his translator), topped by the action of book two, The Girl Who Played With Fire – it brilliant raises the stakes while vastly expanding the scope of Larsson’s world, as well as playing up the glamour of journalism, policework and computer hacking (all of which I’m sure aren’t nearly as dashing in real life as they are here). It’s absorbing reading.

The third installment, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, is easily the weakest of the three, and not just because it has the least catchy title (though I love the literal translation of the Swedish title, The Air Castle That Blew Up). I realise Larsson had died before any of the books were published, but someone really needed to get in to Hornet and give it a good edit in his stead – nearly every chapter is too long and crammed with too much exposition. To a degree this is also true of the first two books in the series, but seems a lot more apparent in the third entry; on several occasions I found myself skim-reading lengthy infodumps about the Swedish political and justice system. All that said, it’s still a satisfying (though bloated) conclusion to the trilogy, and it drives me mad there won’t be any more – at least, no more written by Larsson. But at least it didn’t all end on some excruciating cliffhanger.

Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

I first read this book when I was 10, around the time the film (which, by the way, is possibly the best blockbuster ever made) came out, and… I have no idea how I understood it, or even if I did understand it. There’s some pretty dense philosophical and mathematical chapters. Probably I just skipped past them to the dinosaur bits. Anyway. Jurassic Park is one of those rare instances where the movie is actually better than the book: it streamlines the action, ditching a pointless subplot where Alan Grant and the kids have to get back to safety in time to warn everyone about the dinosaurs that are escaping to the mainland (like, an out-of-control dinosaur park wasn’t urgent enough?), streamlines most of the themes, and draws the characters more vividly. Though I’ve never quite figured out why they swapped Tim and Lex’s ages; in the book he’s older, but in the movie she’s older. Okay, then.

And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

Apparently this is Christie’s bestselling novel – which is a bit strange, as it stars not one of her famous detectives. In fact there aren’t any detectives at all: the characters are 10 strangers stranded on a mysterious island, who begin dying one by one. Dun! Then they realise one of their own number must be the murderer. Dun dun! Once you know the premise it’s easy to understand why this one is so successful – you kind of have to pick it up to get to the bottom of the mystery, and once you pick it up you have to keep reading till the end. (The ultimate explanation as to who’s behind the killings is a bit disappointing, as these things often are.) Unfortunate fact: the original title of this book was Ten Little Niggers. Awkward…

They Do It With Mirrors, Agatha Christie

Of all the Miss Marples I read on my travels, this one was definitely the weakest. The set-up is pretty contrived (Miss Marple goes to stay with a friend whose life, naturally, is in danger); the plot formulaic even by Christie’s normal standards, complete with the requisite red herrings and third-act murder of the person who, up till that point, was the primary suspect; and the conclusion obvious (honestly, I correctly guessed who the murderer is even before the murder was committed. If Miss Marple had had that ability the series might’ve gone in an entirely different direction). Maybe poor Agatha was just getting sick of the whole thing by this point in her career?

The Lost World, Michael Crichton

So Jurassic Park the movie is better than Jurassic Park the book, but the book is still worth reading. Not so for its sequel, The Lost World. The Lost World the movie was pretty shite (especially compared to its brillmazing predecessor), and The Lost World the book is also pretty shite. So shite, in fact, that I ditched this one about a third of the way into it – the plot is so contrived, which is saying something about a series set on dinosaur islands. (The storyline basically does everything in its power to see to it that Ian Malcolm, who is a fun character, winds up fighting dinosaurs again, with two cutesy kids in tow. Blech.)  While struggling through the half-hearted early chapters I got the impression that Crichton only wrote this one because he was bullied into it, what with the first book and movie being so monstrously (adjective choice intentional!) successful, so I wasn’t surprised to ultimately learn this was kind of the case.

Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond

I have a confession to make: I didn’t actually get all the way through this one. However. This isn’t the fault of the book itself. The subject matter – basically, it addresses why some societies have all these apparent advantages that allow them to overpower others – is genuinely compelling, and Diamond’s writing, while academic and loaded with statistics and figures, is accessible without feeling dumbed-down. No, the reason I had to stop is because I discovered the limits of reading books on an iPhone – while the teeny screen is fine for easy-and-breezy novels, it’s really not suited to texts that require actual concentration. The fact that the book is crammed with tables and data that don’t format on a phone didn’t help. Jared: I’ll get back to you on this one.

Moving Pictures, Terry Pratchett

I’ve read all the Discworld novels up to about Jingo a million times (I was nerdishly obsessed with them in my early teenage years. Ob. Sessed.). To be honest, I wish I’d chosen another book to re-read; while Moving Pictures is a good one, it’s far from the best in the series (for starters, when you think about it, the plot doesn’t really make sense – something about the “essence” of film leaking into the Discworld and dragging the Dungeon Dimensions with it? Maybe?), and it doesn’t feature any of the recurring characters in leading roles. But it does introduce of  Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, paving the way for some rippingly (I’ve always wanted to use that word!) funny scenes with the Unseen University wizards, and there’s also a lot of film references that went over my head in my more ignorant youth, which I enjoyed discovering this time around.

A Caribbean Mystery, Agatha Christie

Exactly what it sounds like: Miss Marple solves a mystery in the Caribbean Islands. I guess when people usually think of Miss Marple they think of prim murders neatly unlocked in cosy yet decidedly sexless English villages – Caribbean Mystery is a long way from this, and not only because of its exotic setting. The early chapters, full of the usual exposition that puts the potential murderers and murderees into place, are also rife with an undeniable atmosphere of sex. And not even the usual implied sex of stuffy England. Actual sex. (How does the spinster-y Jane even know what that is, anyway?) This one’s quite light, but enjoyable all the same – what might’ve otherwise been a mostly forgettable tale is enlivened by the sun-and-sand setting.

Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Freakonomics is so appealing because it examines the world from such unexpected angles. It probably never would’ve occurred to me to link free-falling crime rates in the ’90s with the legalisation of abortion 20 years earlier, or that Ku Klux Klan’s real-world power could literally be impacted by Superman comics, or that kids saddled with crappy names (the worst, and I hope not actually true, example given in the book is a name pronounced “Sha-teed”, spelled “Shithead”) don’t do poorly in life because of said crappy names. I understand the book has copped some criticisms over its accuracy, but even if all of “rogue economist” Levitt’s claims aren’t true he should still be congratulated for encouraging a fresh perspective among his readers.

Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie

Finally – a Poirot! (His head is shaped like an egg.) Another of Christie’s most famous works, and again, it’s an almost irresistible mystery: a disparate group of strangers are travelling across Europe together on a train; train breaks down; someone is murdered in apparently impossible circumstances; one of the other passengers is the murderer; twisted backstories and motives are revealed. (I travelled around Europe myself on the train with my trusty Eurail pass, and trust me, inexplicable deaths are a routine part of pretty much every journey.) The solution, when it comes, is a wee letdown – much as is the case with And Then There Were None – because the solution you hope for in your imagination is inevitably better (albeit far more ill-defined) than the actual solution.

One of Our Thursdays is Missing, Jasper Fforde

Just so we’re clear, Jasper Fforde is probably my favourite writer right now. (Trying to think of someone I like better… thinking, thinking… nope, he’s number one.) When I wrote up Shades of Grey I noted his “ridiculous” imagination, and sheez, I have no idea where Fforde pulls his amazing droplets of pure elemental creative genius from, but can he please give the rest of us access to it. He obviously takes particular joy in coming up with joyfully silly literary inventions and weaving them into his stories even though said inventions rarely have a pay-off in the greater narrative.

So One of Our Thursdays is Missing is a little different from the previous Thursday Next books (and it’s been so long since I read the last one that I had no memory of what happened in it, which doesn’t really matter since the plot is pretty self-contained): it’s not about the “real” Thursday Next, but the “fictional” counterpart who stars in the series of books based on the adventures of the “real” Thursday Next. (I swear it all makes sense when you actually read the thing.) So we get to explore BookWorld from an “inside” perspective and get a sense of what a bad-ass the real Thursday is.

If you’ve never read any of this series start from the first instalment, The Eyre Affair. They’re wonderful reads.

The Last Dragonslayer, Jasper Fforde

Fforde’s first young adult novel, and apparently the first in yet another trilogy (how many series can one man write at any given time? Quit being so prolific, Jasper!). Again, I adored the set-up for this one: basically, it’s set in a parallel-ish world where magic is real, and tells the story of Jennifer Strange – now that, folks, is how you name a character – a 15-year-old who manages what is essentially a magical detective agency/handyman service. So far, so brilliant, and the supporting details are just lovely, as are the touches Fforde daubs on standard dragon mythology. The real shame with Dragonslayer, though, is the ending: honestly, the climax rolls around and it kind of reads like Fforde was all, “Shit, it’s midnight and my deadline is 9am – better finish this in a trix, then send Jennifer off with a short concluding chapter that basically wraps up everything offscreen”. It’s… disappointing, especially because the preceding chapters are so vivid. Hopefully more entries in this series do materialise, to further flesh out Jennifer’s adventures.

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Yes, I read a lot of books in the nine-and-a-half weeks I was overseas. What else was I supposed to do? Enjoy the local culture or something?

If you look really hard, you can spot an Orc in this photo!

Here are some things I noticed during my recent stay in New Zealand:

1. It is fucking beautiful. Like, there is a reason that Lord of the Rings and several other fantasy movies have been shot there.

2. Kiwis are super-nice. (Either that, or Kiwis are just a regular level of nice, and everyone in Sydney is a super-jerk. This is a distinct possibility.) Everyone I encountered was unfailingly polite and friendly, even people who didn’t work in the tourism industry. The only rude minge I encountered (who wasn’t even Kiwi – I think she was German or something) was a waitress at a restaurant in Christchurch, who snapped that we couldn’t eat dinner there because she was expecting two large groups, which I guess was my fault or something.

3. The accent… um. I will say this: New Zealanders are very well-spoken. For example. Where an Australian will say something that sounds like “bedda siddy” for “better city”, a Kiwi will actually pronounce the Ts. Unfortunately the vowels will be rendered into something like “butter sitty”, which is hilarious. New Zealand, I hereby offer an apology for my constant stifled sniggers at your amusing ickcent.