Most excellent thread!

I've just had five weeks of holiday and I think I read about nine books while I was away...

First off, I totally agree about Philip Pullman's work. I've only read the His Dark Materials trilogy, but I've always meant to read some of his other work. My favourite of the three is The Subtle Knife, which is the second one. By the by, why do they change the names of books in the US? The first one is actually called The Northern Lights. I suppose that name change doesn't irk me as much as changing the first Harry Potter from The Philosopher's Stone to The Sourcerer's Stone, but it still seems a silly thing to do... But I digress. (Who? Me? )

I am also a fan of Bill Bryson. My favourites are probably Walk in the Woods and Down Under. He combines a delightful sense of the absurd with a whole lot of very interesting factoids.

Another author I would recomend for a fun read is Ben Elton. Most of his books are pretty humourous and he has a knack for tying the plot in such preposterous knots that you wonder how he will ever extract himself - High Society is a prime example of this.

The most recent book I read was Kathy Reich's latest (I believe), Cross Bones. If any of you enjoy the whole crime genre (and I'm sure plenty do), chances are you might enjoy these. As with any series, it's best to spread out your reading of it as otherwise you have to suspend rather a lot of disbelief that all this stuff can happen to one character, but I do like Tempe Brennan; she is a forensic anthropologist working in North Carolina and Montreal, although most of the action takes place in Canada. I enjoy these books because the characters are well drawn, the action is well paced, the science is interesting and accessible and the human relationship stuff doesn't get in the way of the story.

Prior to that I read Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate. Essentially, I picked this book at random (although the blurb did sound interesting) because whenever I go to the library I try to get out at least one book that doesn't come from the crime/mystery/thriller shelves. It's a tactic that has mixed results, but I've had some great reads out of it and this was one of them - just one of those books where you can really picture the scenes in your mind, even though you've never experienced anything like it personally. It's about several generations of an extended family and set in Africa (largely modern-day), turn of the twentieth century New Orleans, London in the 70's and modern-day New York/Chicago/New Orleans. The various characters aren't aware of each other and the book follows the modern characters search to understand their pasts and pieces together all the characters relationships to one another across time.

I think I'll leave it there for now, else I'l be here all day!