Reading Copy Book Blog

One of my favourite, televised guilty pleasures is the BBC’s The Supersizers Go…, which was rebroadcast on The Food Network in Canada. The show combines my love of cooking, history, and humour into several episodes of gastronomical adventure and hilarity. In the spirit of Morgan Spurlock’s ‘Supersize Me’, the two hosts immerse themselves in the spirit [...]

The November 2011 issue of Which? Magazine has just been published in the UK and it carries an in-depth review of the UK’s online shopping sites. If you don’t know Which?, it’s the UK’s leading consumer protection organization and highly respected for its work in consumer affairs. Which? surveyed 14,671 of its members about their [...]

On his fourth time being shortlisted for the prize, Julian Barnes has been announced the winner of this year’s £50,000 Man Booker award. The Sense of an Ending, Barnes’ first novel in six years, is the story of a seemingly ordinary man who, when revisiting his past in later life, discovers that the memories he [...]

In a feel good story today, a guest book which had been kept at the burial site of Lord Byron following his death to collect signatures, tributes and lamentations from poets and guests has just been found at a church sale in Savannah, Georgia, USA. The woman, who bought the book for $35, has given [...]

Oxfam has released a list of authors whose books most often darken the doorway of their shops, a list of books most often given up for adoption. Once again Dan Brown is shown no love. Reads like a supermarket checkout counter eh? The most donated authors to Oxfam shops (with last year’s position in brackets): [...]

In a misguided attempt to celebrate Bloomsday an Irish software developer has put the power of computing to the task of solving the age old James Joyce riddle of can you cross Dublin without passing a pub? The Belfast Telegraph reports: Using online maps, the Dubliner worked out an algorithm – a computer equation – [...]

So says a survey from the Crime Writers Association. Some of the more inventive ways to bump someone off included slicing them to death in an olive machine, being stabbed through the heart with a spangly stiletto or putting bees in a wicket-keeper’s inner glove leading to anaphylactic shock.

Sir Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2008 and is now been reporting that he has started the formal process which could lead to his assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland. He has been sent the consent forms requesting a suicide by the clinic, and claims that he planned to sign them [...]

Here’s a list of what was hot this past month from AbeBooks.com, AbeBooks.co.uk and the world of signed books from the month of February 2011. Top 10 bestsellers on AbeBooks.com 1. Jamie’s 30-minute Meals by Jamie Oliver 2. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren 3. Night by Elie Wiesel 4. The Catcher in the [...]

South Riding by Winifred Holtby was first published, posthumously, in 1936. The story is about a young headmistress living in a fictional Yorkshire neighbourhood; and the book itself has lived a fairly innocuous life in the midlist for over half a century until last week when Andrew Davies three part mini-series began to air on [...]