The Nolympics by Nicholas Lezard

Essentially this book is a big essay on the Olympics and Sport in general. There is some reference to the events of the London games, and the book is based around the days of the London Olympics, but the book is more comment than commentary, for example day 12 of the book contains no actual coverage of the games.

The introduction to the book starts with a synopsis of "Asterix at the Olympic Games", so I guess that could be put on your prerequisite reading list. After that the rest of the book is split into days from day 0 to day 16, with maybe 2,000 words a day.

So from day 0 the author has a moan about how the Olympic cash spent on training the GB athletes could have been more usefully spent on keeping libraries open, or on hospitals. This is followed up by a moan about the medals with the "disgusting logo", comparing them to the "austere beauty" of the 2008 China ones (not mentioning the fact that this was a logo designed by a child). I thought it was going to be one of those moany books, and that the Asterix opening was going to be the highlight. Luckily I was quickly put right.

The funny moments soon came. Like how the author set himself up as Mr. anti-Olympics but when Mitt Romney states that "Britain wasn't ready to host the Olympics" he still takes exception. And how the opening ceremony had the opening line of the Pistols "God save the Queen" in a montage, and the crowd and viewers at home immediately thought of the second line of the song even though it was unsung.

And if you think that this book uses the games "as an excuse for a jumped up commentator to get on his hind legs and see only what he wants to see" then you'd be wrong because the author says so.

Anyways, even though the author in failing to actually watch the Mo Farah race says that "I feel I've let my publisher down, I've let my agent down, I've let my friends and family and girlfriend down, I've let the cat down, but most of all I've let myself down," in a parody to an losing athlete's speech he really hasn't because I enjoyed the book. Sports books don't need to contain the details of the events taking place on the field, Fever Pitch is an example of that. 

I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.

The Lying Year by Andrei Gelasimov

The Lying Year is the tale of Mikhail over one year of his life which he spends basically lying. He loses a job, gets lucky in that he is employed by his former company boss to teach his son the ways of life, gets mixed up with his girlfriend leading to a show-down in the middle of the book, before the second half where he becomes a kidnapper. And thanks to his lying there are some really funny, but ultimately disastrous, moments where he keeps digging his own hole.

This is a Russian book that has been translated into English. At first I was struggling with the translation and thought it was quite poor, although maybe that is just me as the translator has awards. Anyway I got used to it. And to its credit the conversations worked alright.

The format of the book is funny because it starts as a straight narrative before breaking into a diary and letters to show other characters viewpoints in the centre as there is a dramatic crescendo in the story as the gun makes an appearance. Then it goes into narrative again with the diary element returning at the end for the next crescendo. This worked well.

Mikhail gets into all sorts of situations through his "lying" but also his cowardice, which makes the book very funny, and the book is very fast-paced but I did have the translation issues at the beginning so it has to be a 4 out of 5.

This book is available on Amazon UK HERE.

The Man Who Wanted to be Happy by Laurent Gounelle

The Man Who Wanted to be Happy is a self-help book built around a story. The story is that of Julian who is a school teacher on holiday in Bali. He hears of a healer and goes for a check-up. Whilst there the healer, Samtyang, diagnoses Julian's problem - he is unhappy.

From there Julian is taken on a journey with the healer/wiseman where many things are revealed to him. And Julian laps it up across several visits on several days of his holiday.

Samtyang reiterates ideas that are already widely known, e.g. you are what you believe, and to achieve your goals you need to set out in detail the steps needed to get there. But there is other stuff in there you might not know.

For me the two best bits were one part where Julian is tasked with getting five people to say no to his requests. He struggles to do it though because each person he approaches refuses to give an outright no and instead try to help with his request, no matter how absurd. The other best bit was where Julian talked about how he was bad at something because he had done it once and it had not gone well. Samtyang talked about a baby taking his first steps as he learned to walk, and how he would fail time and time again, but his parents encouraged him and the baby becomes an expert walker.

Lastly to get the most from this book you need to read it slowly to digest it, and do it at the same time, e.g. Julian has to write out some lists along the way, and that was something I couldn't do at the time on the train with all the other commuters giving me the beady eye (although Samtyang would probably have some words of wisdom about that ...).

The book reminded me a bit of The Richest Man in Babylon which was a book with some simple stories with messages to do with money management, except not as good in my eyes (and on a different topic) but it's short and easy to read along with.

This book is listed on Amazon HERE.

Jammy Dodger by Kevin Smith

A couple of shysters create a fake poet to write for the provincial poetry magazine they run because their cushy jobs are at risk – that is what this book is about, with the end being the unravelling of their great masterplan.

They are essentially jammy dodgers, dodging real work, and instead using their work time to discuss biscuits such as the jammy dodger, which is the conversation that the book opens on.

In the first part of the book there were a few quotes from various poems and I was thinking “ah, it’s going to be one of those books”, but that was just setting the scene stuff and the story soon took hold. And as you might expect from a book where poetry plays a big part, the writing in places is poetic. For example the way the geography of Belfast is explained at one point, and also a chance encounter with a kingfisher whilst out walking with a girlfriend (We both saw the flash of blue-green – stood stock still – caught his intense singularity of purpose; a microsecond drawn out. Rosie turned to me in wonder, and in her eyes... etc.).

The book is funny too with the humour never being forced. There are big funny moments in the book, like when milk is first introduced to the story, and a funny radio interview.

It is set in late-1980s Belfast with its troubles and all, but that is never really brought to the forefront of the story and is kept in the background. As it says in book the narrator was using poetry as an escape from the “bomb-lit domain of chaos and violence” on the evening news.

And if you want an escape from real life too you’d do worse than spend your time reading this book.

This book is listed on Amazon UK HERE.

Cinderella Book and CD by Disney

My daughter said this book and CD was great. I asked why and she said it was because at the end Cinderella doesn't live with her ugly sisters.

The story of Cinderella is so widely known that you'll know what to expect here. I let my 6-year-old daughter listen to the CD whilst reading the book. The CD runs for just 8-minutes though. This is one track that contains all the story and has chimes ringing for when the page in the book needs to be turned, as well as various sound effects in the background.

And the voices of the characters are actors that sound like the ones in the film. The only bit that didn't work well was the transition between voices, and the narrator being clearly aimed at the American market.

The book is very well laid out with nice full page pictures running throughout, and is the sort of high quality look that you'd expect from Disney.

The CD itself fits into the front cover of the book with a plastic covering holding it in, and the book is hardcover too. This means it isn't as flimsy as some other books that come with CDs where the CD holder gets ripped out by little hands. The CD has a picture of a clock on it too, which is of course relevant to the story, and is just another little detail that tells you this is a Disney product.

Most of all I think this book is ideal for girls who love Disney Princesses and are learning to read, so that they can give their parents some quiet time as they go off somewhere to listen to the CD and read the book.

We have the Snow White Book & CD and Little Mermaid Book & CD ones of these already and this one probably looks the best but doesn't quite sound as good on the CD and is shorter, plus if you are going to choose a Disney story you'd probably go for one of the others (my daughter's favourite is Snow White which comes with a song too) given that Cinderella is such a well known story even outside of the Disney telling of the story.

This book is available on Amazon UK HERE.

Tango Tangle (Strictly Come Dancing) by Chloe Melody

Essentially this book is about a 9-year-old girl called Bella going through a dance audition. But somehow this fits across roughly 100-pages with a proper story arc too.

The audition is for the Strictly Dance Academy and Bella is one of many hopeful girls wishing to be successful on the day. Along the way we have nerves, disappointment, dancing, self-doubt, excitement, triumph dressing up, make up, a dance partner boy with a"Justin Beiber-style cut", making of friends and an enemy too.

Bella Jones goes through a lot of emotions, but running through the book is a sense of awe and excitement at everything to do with the "Strictly Come Dancing" programme. She also just loves dancing and the smile on her face and her general happiness shows in the writing.

What also shows through the writing is that the author is familiar with dancing, yet the book is still accessible by non-dancers such as myself and my 6-year-old daughter.

It's true that the characters in the book don't correspond with the real life Strictly Come Dancing people (bar a brief Flavia profile at the beginning which is separate from the story), but this book would ideally be read whilst the TV show was running.

In terms of faults the chapter-numbering missed out number 5, and perhaps colour pictures (great pictures by the way, even in black and white) would have made the book even better, but young girls will love the book.

It is the first of a series of books. A little preview of the next one, Samba Sensation), is given at the end which my daughter implored I read to her. That just shows she couldn't get enough of this book.

(This book is listed at Amazon HERE.)

Young Knights of the Round Table by Julia Golding

This book says on the cover, “Under threat. Out of time. Pure magic.”

The “under threat” refers to the Earth as its very existence is under attack; the “out of time” refers to the parallel world from which attack is coming, a world where time runs differently, where 1 year passes compared with 100 Earth years, and “pure magic” because magic is involved all through the book.

The story starts in the parallel world where young humans Rick, Roxy and Santiago are being trained to hate humans because they themselves are orphans abandoned by the horrible humans before they were taken there by the Fey. But something is afoot. A magical power is threatening the rule of the world and something needs to be done so these three humans are sent into the human world to investigate, to Oxford to be precise.

There ensues a few funny moments as these three adjust to an alien environment with Rick in particular finding things strange as he infiltrates Earth. Their “foster parents” also stand out a bit, what with them being a Fey and a Pixie and basing their human lives on fictional books such as Sherlock Holmes stories.

As things progress the three children get deeper into finding out what is going on discovering that how the world they have been living has been a lie, and how the setting up of a new round table could be pivotal to linking the two worlds and overthrowing the evil King of the parallel world called Avalon, for it was the time of Arthur and Merlin at the round table before when Avalon was last threatened in the same way. 

There is a good crescendo at the end with a Darth Vader moment too, as decisions over which side to represent become harder.

There was the occasional slightly confusing moments as the magic interactions between the two worlds were explained but overall the book is well written, is set up at the end for the next in the series, and should provide a thrilling read for any young or old knights that choose to read it.

The book releases on 4 April 2013. It is listed on Amazon UK HERE.