I had heard really good things about this book for a while and seeing as it was 20p on Amazon and I had a holiday coming up I bought it for my Kindle (I know I feel dirty).

The book tells the story of Allan Karlson who decides to escape his life in an old people's home on his one hundredth birthday. He doesn't know where he is heading but he ends up hiding on a farm with a minor crook, a hot dog stand owner, a "beautiful" lady, her god, the hot dog stand owner's brother, a crime boss and an elephant all wanted for murder.

Alongside Allan's current adventures the book also tells of his life so far. And in a hundred years Allan got up to a lot. From humble beginnings in Sweden he travels the globe meeting famous world leaders left right and centre including Franco, Stalin, Mao and a host of American presidents.

Allan himself is a really entertaining character who doesn't give a hoot about politics or religion and has a general disregard for authority. I really respected his world view and his it-will-be-ok-in-the-end mindset. I also enjoy the liberties the author takes when he writes some of the famous world leaders, particularly Stalin's temper and Kim Jung Il's childhood temper tantrums. It's all good fun and very funny.

Admittedly sometimes the humour felt a little forced and you were very aware that while Allan wasn't interested in politics or religion he was being used to pass comment on them a lot.

But yeah if you want a fun Forest Gump style adventure and if you are prepared not to take any of it seriously or think too much about the practical possibility of the tale then this is a great story.

Decided I fancied a nice big classic to get my teeth into and at over 400 pages this fit the bill. This is the tale of a mysterious and apparently cursed diamond, the Moonstone, which is given to Rachel Verinder for her birthday. But the diamond disappears as quickly as it appears and the rest of the book is spent trying to discover what happened to it.

The book is compiled of different characters' points of view as they each pick up the story and add what they know. This means that you get a variety of voices while also getting to follow the story of the diamond as it travels around the country. It's a really clever technique and keeps the intrigue going as well as breaking up quite a long story.

With each voice comes a different view on the world from Betteredge, the butler who believes in the gospel of Robinson Crusoe, to Miss Clack, the busy body who hides behind the Bible, to Ezra Jennings, the disgraced doctor's assistant. Collins uses each of the characters not only to move the story on but also as a caricature of certain types of people. The use of Miss Clack as a satire of single-minded and occasionally hypocritical Christianity is funny while also being really clever. I really loved this element of the novel and at points was more interested in the satire than the diamond.

But eventually you do find out what happened to the diamond and the novel closes with a level of satisfaction and closure that I find many lack. I did manage to guess the culprit earlier on but it didn't hamper my enjoyment at all because I had all the little subplots and the satire to keep me busy. Good read if you have the time for it.

So to carry on the excitment of the last couple of books I decided to go for a good old murder mystery courtesy of Poirot.

This time Poirot and Hastings are on holiday when they discover a plot to kill a young lady is in progress. In this rather unusual set of circumstances Poirot finds himself trying to solve a murder before it has happened.

Again Christie beat me with this one, I can just never get it right. I fell for every red herring and false clue going and so was completely at a loss at the end. The murderer took me by surprise but as ever made perfect sense.

It's a nice little book with intrigue, murder and comedy thanks to eccentric Poirot and naive Hastings.

I thought I'd give myself a break after The Shining and read a nice simple kids' book.

Treasure Island tells the story of Jim Hawkins, a simple inn-keeper's son, whose meeting with "The Captain" leads him into a life of adventure and danger as he sails in search of treasure with a crew full of pirates.

It's really good fun this book. It is just a great adventure book for boys. I don't mean that in a sexist way just that this story has adventure, fighting, pirates and mystery and I can really picture kids reading it and then playing pirates for the next few months, each fighting to be Jim the hero. The characters are simple without being boring and 2D and the story keeps moving at a pace so you never get bored.

One thing that maybe wasn't so great was the amount of boaty jargon used. Obviously at the time these terms would be more commonplace but reading it now I was often confused by where people were and what they were talking about. But it didn't matter that much because the basic message of "there be scary pirates coming to get you" was never really lost.

This book is great if you just want to forget all responsibilities and feel like a kid again for a few hours, and seeing as I read it while stuck on the M40 for 5 hours that seems pretty good to me.

We all know The Shining in some form, unfortunately for me my first encounter with it was the Simpsons spoof The Shinning. I then went and watched the film and was thoroughly confused, and thinking about the Simpsons. So finally I decided to give Stephen King a go and actually read The Shining.

It is very different from the film and in some ways makes more sense but in other ways makes no sense at all.

The story is of Jack Torrance who gets a job as a winter caretaker at a big mountain hotel called the Overlook. He moves to the hotel with his wife Wendy and his psychic son Danny. Already weird. Once there the hotel starts to get into everyone's head and convinces Jack to kill his family. Their only hope of survival in the completely snowed in hotel is one of the hotel's cooks, Dick, who is also luckily psychic.

So yeah that's the basic story. Bit weird. But it's all the other things around the story that get even weirder. From aggressive hedge animals to bitchy ghosts this book has a whole host of bizarre features that are sort of explained in the book by "magic psychic hotel" but that sometimes isn't enough of an explanation.

All the crazy aside, this is a good book. I've always been sceptical of scary books, I mean it's a book how scary can it be. Very is the answer. I was so tense at points reading this and I can tell you it is not a good idea to read this before bed because you will just find yourself lying there tense and expecting scary dead people.

So yeah it's bizarre and at times hard to make sense of but if you just accept that it's a really good read. There's real tension as you read about the characters in danger and the odd features just add to the madness and confusion that keeps you guessing. Go out and read it, but not at bedtime.

Of Mice and Men is a little book that tells the story of George and his simple-minded friend Lenny as they start work at a new ranch.

For only a few pages it's a really moving book. George obviously regrets getting lumbered with Lenny who means well but with his limited intellect and extraordinary strength tends to get them run out of their jobs pretty quickly. But despite the trouble he causes, George sticks with Lenny and protects him against others who don't understand him. It's really sweet the mix of frustration and love that George expresses.

Unfortunately this isn't enough for a happy ending, which I already knew going into the book. Despite having been told the story in some detail by my mum I was still gripped by this book.

So this is a really good book and I thoroughly recommend it, although I would suggest getting a copy that doesn't have a schoolkid's notes, and in some cases little drawings, in it.

This is the most recent in the Jackson Brodie series and sees the private detective undertaking a new case that gets rapidly out of hand.

He starts of trying to find an adopted woman's birth parents but one thing leads to another (and he somehow acquires a canine companion) and he ends up being dragged into a conspiracy and uncovers secrets that had long been considered buried.

It's a good read. The range of characters that tell the story build on each others' perspectives so the story slowly reveals itself to the reader but you are never told too much too early. This keeps the intrigue going throughout, especially as it isn't immediately obvious how these characters are related. And the secret they reveal is an interesting one, but I won't give anything away.

There are a few odd things in the book though that I wasn't sure added anything. For starters there is another private detective on the scene called Brodie Jackson. He just sort of appears every now and again and causes confusion but that's about it. He's not that necessary. There was also hints of another mystery throughout concerning a young girl that one of the characters acquires which is never developed and I'll be honest at times it seems a lot more exciting than the actual story. And that I think is because the actual story seems to focus on the relationships and the people not the mystery. A lot of time is spent with Jackson just thinking about people he knew and making references to things that happened to him in the previous books (which is sometimes hard to keep up with unless you have just finished the other books).

So it's a crime thriller with a focus on the detective not the crime. Not necessarily a bad thing but if you want hard crime writing you might be disappointed. However I really like Kate Atkinson's writing so I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to her upcoming new book.