It’s been a-a-a-a-a-a-ages, but I’ve finally got round to logging back in and clearing the backlog of spam comments. I’ve been meaning to write something (anything) for a while, but there just never seemed like the right thing worth bothering to say or the right time to do it.

Must get back in the habit…

Whether it will live up to expectations remains to be seen, but qualifying went pretty well today with the grid a little more unusual than people had probably expected.

Lewis outqualifying Jenson and Vettel being ahead of Webber aren’t big shocks but Alonso being behind Massa and the returning Schuey being behind Rosberg will have raised a few eyebrows I’m sure.

Whether we should be shocked about Schumacher or not is debatable as it is his first qualifying session for quite some time, we’ll wait until after the race before we mark his scorecard.

Which brings us to the race and what the outcome could be - given the testing performance, it looks like the Ferrari will be handy on longer runs so Vettel is going to have his work cut out for him. Whether Massa can stay ahead of Alonso is also something to watch out for - the shorter pitstops will make it harder to use them as a tool to pass you would think.

There’s no denying Alonso is a smart guy so he should be on the ball with tyre management - I would be surprised to see him driving like a loony too early on and ruining his tyres.

Rubens Barrichello is also someone to watch as he will be on the more favoured harder tyre right from the start which may help him in the stint before those ahead get the chance to switch over to that compound.

So, how will it end?

I predict the top 6 to end thus : Alonso, Massa, Alonso, Webber, Hamilton, Button.

As it’s the first race of the season though, anything could happen so I won’t be putting any money on it!

Unfortunately, it meant I left the year on a bit of a downer.

I’m not sure exactly what it was that meant I didn’t enjoy this as much as the others, there as just something that didn’t quite catch my attention.  It’s not particularly bad, it’s just not particularly good either!  In my opinion obviously…

Reading other reviews from people on Amazon, it would seem that I’m in the minority on this as several claim that this book has single-handedly reinvented the genre, the Batman story in particular. Maybe I should try reading it again!

No doubt I’ll give another couple of graphic novels a try on 2010!

I love the Young Bond series and so jumped at the chance to read a new story in the series.  As far as that’s concerned, I really liked this book but unfortunately that only covers the first fifty pages or so.

The rest is taken up by covering stuff anyone who has read the previous books already knows.  It’s a bit like a Young Bond encyclopedia if you like.

Personally, it felt a bit like a money-making exercise.  Higson has decided that he won’t be doing any more of these books for a while, so either he or the publishers have decided that one more payday would be nice.

While the new story is a decent enough read, it doesn’t really justify the pricetag - at least until the paperback is available at a decent discount…

For one reason or another, when ordering some other stuff on Amazon, Long Lost managed to slip into my basket and I must say that I’m glad it did.  It’s obviously the latest in a line of books featuring the lead character, the intriguingly named Myron Bolitar, but not having read any of the previous ones wasn’t a huge handicap I didn’t feel.

I was quite surprised, and also impressed, by the pace that the story cracks along at together with how it could swing from very descriptive narrative to pretty brutal violence at times.  The pace means that you can rattle through the book fairly rapidly with the action leaving you as breathless as the characters you are reading about - if you buy this then prepare for some late nights as you will definitely suffer from that terrible readers disease of “just one more chapter before I turn the light out.”

As for the story, well it starts off pretty plausible but it has to be said that there are times when that is stretched a little - as long as you bear in mind that it is a novel and not presented as factual then you’ll get on okay!

As I’ve said before, I really like trying out new authors and Adam Creed was not someone I had heard of before, but he’s definitely someone that I’d look out for in future despite this book not exactly sticking in the memory.

There were parts which were quite cliched - the main police character has a bit of a drink problem and runs about in an old car much like a Morse or something, but for a first attempt I wouldn’t mark him down too badly.

Anyhow, this is not surprisingly the autobiography of current Radio 2 Breakfast Show host, and sometime bad-boy, Chris Evans - up to a point anyway, this is just Part One with Part Two due later in the year I think.

Like most people, I became aware of Mr Evans when The Big Breakfast hit our screens as the antidote to the dullness of BBC News and TV-AM or whatever was on ITV back then.  For some strange reason, I can still remember getting up a little bit earlier to watch that first show - no idea why!

The book is good in that it doesn’t focus too much on anything in particular - Chris Evans is lucky in that respect, he has crammed a lot into his first thirty or so years!  The othet thing I like is that he appears to be 100% honest and open about most things.  For example, in some books when something juicy is about to be discussed, the author will say that he can’t mention names or if it involves money then he will say that he can’t disclose the sums - even though that’s often the bits a reader would be mostly interested in!

With this book though, that very rarely happens - he seems pretty comfortable talking about how much he was earning, and spending, at every point in his career.  Sure there is the odd point where he gets a bit coy, but it’s usually to spare someone else’s blushes rather than to cover up anything from his side.

Whether you will enjoy this book or not will largely depend on what you think of the author.  I’m not his biggest fan, although any time I caught him lately on his Radio 2 show or the acoompanying podcast, I’ve found him funny and engaging - a different person to how he used to be perhaps.  With age appears to have come a maturity and willingness to appreciate that he had to change for everyone’s sake, not least his own.

Unless you really detest the man, I’d recommend giving his book a go - I think most will come away liking him at least a little bit more…

My biggest gripe is that, compared to a “normal” book, they aren’t as good value for money from a longevity point of view. Of course the time that has gone into not only developing the story but also bringing it to life in the illustrations can’t be questioned and as a bit of a change from the norm, they also provide welcome relief.

The more recent Batman films have made me a bit of a fan and as it all started in the realm of the graphic novel (or comic as they used to be called!) I was interested to see just how much I enjoyed this - needless to say, I enjoyed it a lot!

Everyone knows roughly the story of how Bruce Wayne came to take on the persona of the Batman, but Year One attempts to provide a fuller explanation in order to give the franchise a bit more depth. Obviously this means it is set further in the past than the relatively modern or even futuristic cityscapes shown in the recent series of movies.

The story and action is none the worse for this though, and it’s perhaps a good sign that when the book is over I was disappointed that I had reached the end - this wasn’t a slur on the book itself, rather it was a compliment that I wanted it to continue for a while yet!

This is definitely one I would recommend, even if you aren’t normally one for books like this, and it definitely won’t be my last graphic novel.

Given the sales figures I somehow doubt it!!

Some people are no doubt disappointed by it, others will love it - I’m somewhere in between. It’s typical Dan Brown stuff, and I don’t mean that as a criticism.

Yes, he seems to choose ideas, themes and plots which end up causing a bit of tension with one mysterious group or other but then that brings a certain amount of publicity which I’m sure does him and his publishers no harm in the long run. Much of the hype and palaver which followed on from The Da Vinci Code wasn’t exactly based on truth or anything actually in the book itself.

It was a case of Daily Mail syndrome if you like - people getting all hot and bothered about a book they had never read, and in 99% of cases getting into that state not because they themselves were affected or overly bothered but because it may make someone else feel that way so they are coming out in symapthy. There is nothing worse than someone being upset and angry on someone else’s behalf - especially when the person who should (or could) be upset or angry isn’t!

Anyway, this time it the Freemasons who are apparently not chuffed at the contents of a Dan Brown book - and that may or may not be the case.

Personally I know nothing at all about the Freemasons and while I accept that, as is always the case, Dan Brown has done a lot of research before sitting down to write this yarn, I’m not going to take everything he says in it as gospel. They may well all carry on as they do in this book or there may be a bit of artistic licence involved to spice things up a bit - or perhaps a mixture of both.

Who cares!

The story certainly races along at a cracking pace, although unlike the Da Vinci Code which I felt never let up and I could have happily sat there and read the whole book at once, The Lost Symbol did bog down a bit in one or two places which made it a bit harder going. This was a rare occurence though and didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the book.

If it’s viewed simply as a novel and not as a work of non-fiction (which it isn’t obviously!) then this book is a decent way of passing a good few hours. The trouble with the Da Vinci Code is that it mentioned things which the church didn’t like at all and that caused a bit of an uproar and while Brown happily admitted that his book was a work of fiction for some reason that passed a lot of people by. Had it not been for that, he would probably be a pretty average author but that controversy has meant that this book and all the others which follow are under increased scrutiny.

Of course this is offset by the good it will be doing to his bank balance…

If someone presented this tale to you and told you they had just made it up, it was a figment of their imagination then you would read it and enjoy it but at the back of your mind you would probably think that at times it had gone a bit too far, it was a bit too far-fetched from reality. Some of the stuff which happens would never happen in real-life would it?

If you then were told that in actual fact this was all a true story based entirely on events which happened in the recent past then you would never take that on board as being the truth.

Knowing that it’s true from the outset means that you spend a fairly substantial part of the book shaking yout head in disbelief that what is happening is for real.

I’m being deliberately vague in all this as I don’t want to spoil the story if you do decide to read it. In a nutshell though, the main thrust of the book follows the events which “featured” a killer who became known as The Monster of Florence. No prizes for guessing this story is based in Italy then, where Mario Spezi was a crime correspondent for a newspaper who covered the killings as they began relatively quietly before becoming a national and then international phenomenon as the number of bodies grew and grew. You can think of him as the modern and Italian version of Jack the Ripper.

The other author of the book, Douglas Preston, a writer of fiction in his day job, actually joins Mario in being someone caught up in the story which they are now telling. The how and why is covered in the book and there’s no point in me explaining it here, suffice to say that it’s when these two become part of the story they are trying to tell that things take a real turn towards the very unbelievable!

But believable or not, it’s the truth and is all the more remarkable for it.

I’m not sure why, but this whole story passed me by despite it all unfolding during my lifetime - some of it very recently indeed. Even the book only came to my attention when Richard Bacon posted a message on Twitter urging people to read it as it was the most amazing of tales - and so right he was.

As a work of fiction this story behind this book would be right up there with the best, but as a work of pure and simple fact it takes some beating.