Solution – first, install Calibre, because it comes with a handy command-line tool called ebook-meta that spits out all the metadata from a file. Then, from the directory where the files are, run this:

#!/usr/bin/python
import os, shutil, subprocess
 
files = os.listdir('.')
for filename in files:
    if filename.endswith('.epub'):
 
        print "Processing " + filename
 
        # Use Calibre's ebook-meta to extract the metadata...
        p = subprocess.Popen(['ebook-meta', filename],
                stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
        output = p.communicate()[0]
        meta = {}
        for line in output.splitlines():
            index = line.find(' : ')
            if index != -1:
                i2 = line.find(' ')
                meta[line[:i2]] = line[index + 3:]
 
        if not meta.has_key('Author(s)') or not meta.has_key('Title'):
            print "...missing some data in " + filename + " - skipping"
            continue
 
        # We just want the author name, not the sortable stuff at the end...
        author = meta['Author(s)']
        index = author.find(' [')
        if index != -1:
            author = author[:index]
        title = meta['Title']
 
        if not os.path.exists(author):
            os.mkdir(author)
        destfile = os.path.join(author, author + ' - ' + title + '.epub')
        shutil.move(filename, destfile)
        print "...moved to " + destfile

So, for example, 973.epub gets moved to Peter Watts/Peter Watts – Behemoth.epub. Files that can’t be parsed should hopefully be left alone. This should also be able to deal with lots of other ebook formats, if you change the two instances of ‘epub’ in the script to something else.

Disclaimer: If you find this useful, that’s great – if accidentally deletes all the files on your system, don’t come crying to me.

Calumet ‘K’ – Samuel Merwin: Brilliant.

An Anarchist – Joseph Conrad: Still on a mission to read all his books. This one was great…

Nostromo – Joseph Conrad: …this was even better – probably the best so far…

The Duel – Joseph Conrad: …also great…

Typhoon – Joseph Conrad: …and this too. Another plotless wonder, like The Secret Sharer (see previous list).

The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka: I enjoyed this, but couldn’t really see how it’s worthy of so much acclaim. Also I wished all the way through that I could read German well enough to read it in its original language.

The Trial – Franz Kafka: As above, but more Kafkaesque.

Eastern Standard Tribe – Cory Doctorow: Liked it.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – Cory Doctorow: Loved it.

When Sysadmins Ruled the World – Cory Doctorow: Silly.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Francis Scott Fitzgerald: Very poor indeed. Do not waste your time reading this under any circumstances. If you’re stranded on a desert island and this is the only book you have, get your scissors (you remembered those, surely?), cut out all the words, and rearrange them to form something worth reading.

Burn – James Patrick Kelly: Very good.

At the Mountains of Madness – Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Great.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward – Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Good.

Anthem – Ayn Rand: Wonderful, apart from the last chapter which should have just been left out. We got the message. Spelling it out in great big letters spoils it.

Postsingular – Rudy Rucker: Enjoyed it.

Captain Blood – Rafael Sabatini: Fantastic. Rafael Sabatini will be my new Joseph Conrad – must read everything. Although I haven’t finished with Conrad yet.

Star Maker – William Olaf Stapledon: Hmm.

Five Weeks in a Balloon – Jules Verne: A brilliant novel.

In the Year 2889 – Jules Verne: Crafty. Published under his name, but actually written by his son, who did not, at least judging by this, inherit any writing talent. Dreadful. Maybe I will get my children to write my blog posts in future. It might work the other way round in my case.

2 B R O 2 B – Kurt Vonnegut: A short story, but nowhere near short enough. Approximately zero words would have been about right for this.

Starfish – Peter Watts: Superb. Read it. No excuses, it’s Creative Commons. Just download it and read it…

Maelstrom – Peter Watts: …then read this…

Behemoth – Peter Watts: …then read this…

Blindsight – Peter Watts: …and then read this.

Bella Mafia – Lynda LaPlante: I’ve been rude about her writing more than once before, so I won’t do it again. But in any case, I couldn’t put the bloody thing down.

Divided in Death – J.D. Robb: Very good.

By the way, you may have noticed that most of the above are either Creative Commons licensed, or just plain out of copyright. There is a good reason for that.

It all started when I finished reading one book and got a few pages into another I didn’t really want to read. It occurred to me that it must be about time for another Ian M. Banks book to be out (it’s been this long since I read the last), and perhaps even one of his Culture novels. Sure enough, it turned out that that Surface Detail came out last year.

One snag – after years of stubborn nay-saying, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that ebooks are good thing, for various reasons which I’ll save for another day. This shouldn’t have been a snag, of course, it should have made it easy – instead of an hour’s round trip to the bookshop, complete with the costs of petrol and parking and the need to mingle with shoppers, I could have had it there and then. Or, relatively painlessly if I was prepared to wait for the postman.

So the theory sounded good – pay for ebook, download ebook, read ebook. First stop, Iain Banks’ web site. Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. Admittedly, deeply buried within I did find a link to the publisher’s site, where I could order the book for nearly three times the price Amazon are selling it for. But as for e-books – forget it. Oh, but wait, there was a whole “Ebook News” section. Unfortunately, all that it contained was some blurb about an ‘app’ for some nasty locked-down fruit-based device. You buy the book, then you scan the QR code with your fruitphone, and you get some extra goodies. Or something. It ended like this:

So unlocking the ‘story beyond the story’ with one of the world’s leading publishers is an extraordinary project and a UK first that will quite simply transform the reading experience for ever.

After I’d cleaned the vomit off my screen, I went looking elsewhere.

Options, not many: Amazon would sell me a copy, but only if I bought one of their Digital Restrictions Management-riddled devices, or alternatively, tainted my nice device with their malware. Alternatively, WH Smith seemed happy to sell me it, but the very small print hidden at the bottom of the page before (I suppose I should be thankful for that) you buy indicates that you have to install some Adobe-crap to be able to actually read your not-at-all-cheap purchase. Waterstones were slightly better, in that they revealed the presence of the deal-breaking DRM clearly.

So, about this DRM shite. Even if I was prepared to install any of this maladjusted proprietary software, it’s not even compatible with any of the computers or handheld devices I have now, let alone any I may decide to buy in the future. Even if it was, I’d have to be prepared to jump through all the ridiculous “register your thing here”, “authorise your computer there” and “link your device to your whatjamacallit” hoops. And if I ever found it suddenly wouldn’t let me read my book, well no problem, I could just phone them up (Monday-Friday: 9am-6pm).

How does all this rigmarole benefit me exactly? Well, it means I won’t accidentally read my book on more than the maximum number of devices they’ve decided I’m allowed to ever have. Or commit the crime of reading it on a device they haven’t thought of yet. Or worse, still be able to read it after they’ve gone out of business, which will hopefully be soon. Or, and this is the worst thing of all, I might let *you* read it. In short, this is all to prevent me from ‘stealing’ the thing I bought.

I can’t help but liken this to a trip to a supermarket where they make you dress up at the door in a white pocketless suit and gloves and follow you round with a megaphone shouting at you to keep your hands on your head at all times unless retrieving (with prior permission) an item from the shelf. They need your passport, two copies of your driving license, and a letter from your long lost Aunt Sally before you can get in. Oh, and then they insist on coming home with you to make sure you don’t eat your tomatoes in an unauthorised part of the house, They leave an armed robot behind to make sure you don’t do it when they’ve gone. And they reserve the right to burgle you in the middle of the night and take the milk back if they discover you’ve put it in an unapproved brand of fridge. They never need to do this though, the milk is booby trapped – it will automatically explode if you try that.

Of course, few people shop at this supermarket. They’d like to shop somewhere else, but unfortunately the place has a monopoly on tomatoes and milk. But there’s a secret. If you go round the back, you can just pick up as much stuff as you like from the goods yard. It’s the exact same stuff, but without the armed robots and booby traps. The only catch is that you like the cows that make the milk and feel they ought to get paid, but the only way that can happen is to allow yourself to be treated like a fool and a criminal.

Ok, enough of the stupid analogy. It was quite hard to find places to buy the ebook, because search results everywhere were swamped with places I could download it for nothing. Piracy, they like to call it, although I’ve always failed to see how you can compare making an unauthorised copy of some digital data with robbery and murder on the high seas. Or let’s call it theft – I steal something from you, and you’ve still got it. That can’t be right either. Anyway, let’s stick with the pirate word, it’s funniest. After an hour of trying to hand over my money, and being treated like an idiot and a crook for my troubles, I decided to try the other way. Within twenty seconds, I had the goods. No strings attached. No slurs on my character, irritating registrations and authorisations, no technical problems, and no fear of the book suddenly becoming useless in the future.

This is a very poor state of affairs, is it not? Try and pay, and you get shat on from a great height. Or take the pirate’s way, and everything is plain sailing. Of course, we’ve been through all that with the music industry already – I went from someone who would happily go out several times a week and return with a bag full of records and CDs, to someone who wouldn’t give a penny of my money to that industry if my life depended on it. Luckily we’ve finally reached the point where musicians can do without the parasites and take money direct from me.

As for the book, don’t be expecting it to appear in my next list of what I’ve been reading. After a quick skim to confirm it was the genuine article, I deleted it. I’m sure it’s every bit as good as its predecessors, all of which I’ve avidly read, but I suddenly have no appetite for it. Until such a time as Iain Banks is prepared to accept a simple exchange of some money in return for the excellent words he’s written (and preferably without all the obsolete middlemen involved) there’s plenty else for me to be reading.

Part of me wishes I’d never started doing this. It should be easy to write a couple of sentences about every book you read, but for some reason it seems to be really hard and I end up leaving it for months before I actually finish it, by which time there’s another list waiting to be written.

On the other hand, another part of me wishes I’d started doing it when I started reading. If nothing else, it’s really nice to be able to look back for a reminder when you forget what a particular book was, so I’m going to keep doing it. Here’s the latest batch (or at least, it was the latest in August):

Under Western Eyes – Joseph Conrad: Continuing my mission to read everything by Conrad, whether good or bad, came this – similar to The Secret Agent in that it’s set in a world of plotting and scheming revolutionaries, but very different in geographical setting and style. This goes in the “brilliant books by Conrad pile”. (The only other pile I have so far, and it’s smaller, is “brilliant but a bit tedious”.)

The Secret Sharer – Joseph Conrad: A short story, back in the more familiar Conrad territory of sailing ships. Somehow I got a hunch right at the start that this was a story in which nothing whatsoever would happen. Sure enough, nothing did happen, but it didn’t need to. If you can write like that, you don’t need a plot.

The Falls – Ian Rankin: Yet another tale of Inspector Rebus. Still reliably readable.

The Steep Approach to Garbadale – Iain Banks: It’s been a while since I read Iain Banks without the M. (For the uninitiated, he writes his science fiction stuff with the middle initial and the other stuff without.) I wasn’t disappointed by this.

Consider Phlebas – Iain M. Banks: Talking of Ian with the M, here he is. You can’t go wrong with these. Or at least, I can’t. You might hate them. But I doubt it.

Arms of Nemesis – Steven Saylor: The second in the series, following on from Roman Blood that I enjoyed last time around. Not quite as good, but that would be pretty difficult. More than good enough that I hope the third will be on my next list. In the meantime, I read somewhere that Steven Saylor’s alter-ego writes gay erotic fiction, whatever that is. Even if I hadn’t have known, I’d still have suspected something at a couple of points in this book. It all adds to the Roman atmosphere though I suppose, while making you look at the name of the hero of the series in a new light – Gordianus.

A Gladiator Only Dies Once – Steven Saylor: Not part of the main series of novels, but a collection of short stories that slot somewhere in between. Saylor is a fantastic writer and story teller, and at the same time a knowledgeable historian and diligent researcher. It’s hard to be sure if you’re being entertained or educated. As with all reading, the answer is both, but particularly so with these books.

The Legacy – Lynda LaPlante: I’ve said it before, so I’ll just quote myself here: “I thought the writing was completely uninspired and tedious, but the storytelling side of things was good. Reluctantly, I enjoyed it.” I hate to write bad things about people’s writing in case they read it and get offended, but I’m very confident that Lynda LaPlante couldn’t care less what I think. I hope that’s true, because I told my Mother-in-law that I’d enjoyed reading the first one I read, since when she has been steadily filling our house up with what seems to be LaPlante’s entire back catalogue. Consequently, I might have to repeat that quote a lot more times in the future.

The Diamond Hunters – Wilbur Smith: This was good, if a little preposterous in places.

Nineteen Eighty-four – George Orwell: One of those books that needs to be re-read periodically, I think. You can look more closely at the copy in the picture (click it for the full gory details) to confirm this has been happening.

In which I present, for no apparent reason, a list of books I’ve read since the last list.

The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad: This is the fourth of his books that I’ve read (the previous three are here, and it’s now level pegging, with two of them (this included) being very enjoyable, and two not so much.

Dead Souls – Ian Rankin: First of a set of “three for five quid” picked up in a bargain bookshop that’s conveniently near where I was waiting for the old Merc to pass it’s MOT test. This one was picked because I’ve read quite a lot of Rankin’s stuff. A fairly standard “Rebus” novel, but with an unexpected twist – I spent quite a lot of the time having a strange sense of deja vu, like I’d read some passages of the book before, and some bits of the story were familiar too. It turned out that it was adapted from a short story I’d already read, which was published in Beggar’s Banquet.

The Front – Patricia Cornwell: The second of the bargain-bookshop-three. This was ok, but it deserved to be in the bargain bookshop.

Roman Blood – Steven Saylor: The wildcard entry from the bargain bookshop. I’d never heard of it (or him), or any of the other books on offer, so I picked it up almost at random to make up the set of three. It turned out to be the best of the lot by a long way. Very good indeed. Luckily it’s also the first of a long series, of which I’ve already purchased the next book.

The Turn of the Screw – Henry James: This was ‘recommended’ by my wife. Recommended as in she read it, then passed it on to me, but failed to inform me beforehand that she didn’t really like it. There are two stories in the book. I got about halfway through the first page before I asked if she’d read them both, and she said no. I wondered why not, but with hindsight it was a valiant effort even reading the first in its entirety. I lasted about three chapters then gave up.

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley: An astounding vision of the future, for its time, although it doesn’t seem so far away now. Also, in my opinion, an astoundingly bad piece of writing.

Set In Darkness – Ian Rankin: More of the Rebus stuff. Readable enough, as always.

The Falcon Flies – Wilbur Smith: Without any reasonable grounds for doing so, I always had Wilbur Smith down as some kind of author of junk fiction. I only read this because I found it lying around. I thought it was great, and I’ll be reading more of his books.

This is the third list of books I’ve been reading. (One and two). I’m not sure what made me start doing this. Even writing a couple of sometimes sarcastic comments about each book can be hard work. It’s worth doing though, I reckon. To be accurate, the first two of these should have really been included in the last batch, but I forgot about them so they’re here instead. Anyway, without any further ado, here is the list:

Victory – Joseph Conrad: I really enjoyed this, particularly all the very interesting and utterly dislikeable characters. I’ll definitely be reading more of Joseph Conrad’s books.

Time and Tide – Edna O’Brian: I remember the quality of this being a refreshing change after whichever crap I’d read before it, but for some reason by about half way through I’d lost track of who was who and what was supposed to be going on, so I cast it aside. Probably my fault, not the book’s.

Angels and Insects – A. S. Byatt: Two novellas in one book. The first, Morpho Eugenia, is superb. The second, The Conjugal Agent, has it’s moments, but is ultimately pretty tedious.

Doors Open – Ian Rankin: I bought this at the supermarket because the supply of books of unknown origin lying around the house had run out. I tend to like Ian Rankin’s stuff, and also everything else Morrison’s had to offer looked absolutely awful. Literary masterpiece, it was not. Good read and entertaining, it was.

Consider Phlebas – Iain M Banks: I bought this one off eBay. I love anything by Iain M Banks, or at least what I’ve read so far, so obviously I loved this.

Matter – Iain M Banks: I actually bought this one from a real bookshop. It lived up to expectations, which is to say it was just as great as all his other work, except for Look To Windward which is so good it would be nearly impossible to match.

Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad: After enjoying Victory so much, I expected great things of Lord Jim, but I was a bit disappointed with it. Apart from being heavy going, writing an entire lengthy novel in speech marks is a very strange thing to do. I remember several “someone said that someone said” kind of situations where it ended up nested three levels deep in the pesky things. As I programmer, I ought to be able to cope with that kind of thing better than most, but I just found it annoying.

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad: Another speech marks extravaganza. This time there was an occasional oasis of non-in-speech-marks narrative which, although it usually lasted only a sentence or two, was a blessed relief. That aside, I found the whole thing rather vague and tedious, despite Conrad’s excellent writing.

Tom Hodgkinson – How To Be Idle: There’s a lot I could have said about this, but I decided to stay in bed an for extra couple of hours and ponder the patterns on the ceiling instead.

Sleepers of Mars – John Wyndham: Five stories by John Wyndham. Some better than others. A recurring theme in his work is that some new technology can be invented, but then the inventor destroy their work (or someone else can) and it’s gone. This is preposterous. Pretty much all new technology is but an incremental improvement on the previous thing. If I ‘invent’ something new, then destroy all my work, it makes no difference because umpteen other people will have invented the same thing at the same time, or soon will. This is one of several reasons I dislike the whole idea of patents. Software patents, in particular, are completely ridiculous. This has nothing to do with the book whatsoever though.

Permutation City – Greg Egan: Very refreshing, in fact unprecedented I think, for me to read a book about technology and software where the author actually has a clue what he’s talking about. An excellent book. (Andy, thanks for the loan – I’ve added this to the pile of borrowed books I’m supposed to be giving back to you!)

Equinox – Michael White: This was a great book, and it was also a pleasant surprise to find that Isaac Newton was a major character in it. A surprise because I didn’t read the back of the book. I never read the back of books – I think it spoils the story to have it summarised before you’ve even started. You shouldn’t have read this really.

With that in mind the obvious course of action would be to select each and every precious book wisely. But no, because as before these are mostly books I found lying around the house rather than ones I chose. On the other hand, I did decide to write the list more frequently from now on, not least because I might drop dead at any moment and leave the world wondering what garbage I’d been filling my head with in my final days. So, without any further ado, on to the list:

Three Men In A Boat – Jerome K. Jerome: You’ve heard of this, because it’s one of those classic books everybody should have read. I found it in the cupboard, and have no idea how it got there. I’m glad I did, as it was one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. A strange combination of comedy and travel guide, I thought. (I found out later that it was in fact originally intended to be a travel guide.) On the other hand, I recommended it to my wife who read one chapter, declared it totally unfunny, and refused to read any more. Read it here!

The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd: I’ve tried to read this before and failed. I didn’t get much further this time. Although it’s well written and seemed to be going somewhere interesting it kept turning into an A-Z of London. And I mean index of the street names, not the more interesting bit with actual maps. “I walked up Cocksparrow Street, down Jellied Eel Lane and then on into Kneesup Square.” Pages and pages of this at a time. Or so it seemed. I just couldn’t be arsed, quite frankly.

The Flood – Ian Rankin: I actually bought this one. It was cheap as chips in one of those bargain bookshops. Rankin’s first book, written as a young whippersnapper, and surprisingly insightful under the circumstances I thought. A worthwhile read.

The Hungry Tide – Valerie Wood: A historical romanctic melodrama kind of affair. Much as I feel I ought to, I can’t claim not to have enjoyed it. The main downside was the terrible attempt to write all the dialogue in some kind of strange historical Yorkshire accent/dialect form. You might think, what with that being somewhat close to my native tongue, that it wouldn’t have caused me any problems. In fact, I seem to recall having to read every line of dialogue several times, sometimes cursing out loud in annoyance. “Chuffin’ ‘eck, thou wouldst ‘ave ‘eard me sayin’, ‘appen as like”. Stein (yes, him out of Stein On Writing) is pretty clear about this kind of dialogue – don’t do it, he says, if my memory serves correctly. Now, I hate rules, and I remember when I read Stein On Writing thinking, after each and every “don’t do this”, that rules are made to be broken and there is a place for everything in the world. But she definitely should have listened to him on this one. Still, as I say, I have to admit to having enjoyed the book.

Gerald’s Game – Stephen King: Stephen King is the kind of author that has passionate fans, I believe, and if they’re obsessed with all this gore and horror stuff they must be quite scary types so I’ll try not to offend them, but really, I wonder why people enjoy reading this kind of miserable stuff so much, let alone writing it. Kind of like when I told my wife not to watch Hotel Rwanda, advice she promptly ignored and then afterwards was in tears, and depressed about it for the rest of the week. Why inflict that on yourself? But it was a good film, and likewise this was (of course) a good book, what with Mr King being the excellent writer that he is. I just prefer not to make a habit of reading this kind of thing. You are what you eat.

Fluke – James Herbert: 95% tired old “the world from a dog’s point of view” stuff, 1% insightful or amusing commentary on the same, and 4% tired old spiritual claptrap. You might get the impression I didn’t much like it, which is not entirely fair, it was okay enough. But I’ve read much better from James Herbert, so it’s probably the disappointment making me judge it with unfair harshness.

Beau Geste – P. C. Wren: Fantastic. I couldn’t write that in big enough letters. It would definitely feature in my list of the top ten books ever, if I were to write such a list, which is very unlikely.

The Cave – Kate Mosse: In the previous installment of my pointless list of books, I heaped praise on two of Kate Mosse’s books. I’m not heaping any praise on this. It was like the plot of the previous two simplified and melded together, then rewritten in a style appropriate for a semi-literate monkey to read. I think that was on purpose though – some kind of scheme to get bozos who don’t read to start reading, but frankly if they were coaxed into reading this they’d go straight back to trying to figure out which button to press to vote for their favourite Pop Idol, and I wouldn’t blame them.

Lottery (the fortunes and misfortunes of Perry L. Crandall) – Patricia Wood: I didn’t expect to like this because of the unimaginitive and tedious-sounding plot, i.e. someone unlikely wins the lottery and the obvious ensues. I had to eat my words though, because it was very good indeed.

Of Human Bondage – W Somerset Maugham: This seemed long – I remember turning a page and seeing the heading CXIX and briefly wondering what it meant. It had taken 119 chapters before I’d even noticed they were numbered. I guess, this being something of a classic, that I’m missing something and making myself look stupid, but I thought it basically meandered through the protagonist’s life with little or no point or purpose, and ended when the author ran out of paper, or lost the will to carry on. I did enjoy it, but if I had my time again I wouldn’t go out of my way to read it.

From Potter’s Field – Patricia Cornwell: Another bloody post-mortem conducting heroine – possibly the original one, since I’ve read several tales of this particular scalpel-wielding superwoman before. All books in this vein are the same to me – I picture them getting squeezed out of some murder-autoposy-thriller sausage machine, rather than being written. Perfectly readable though. No doubt I’ll read another one sooner or later.

Cold Shoulder – Lynda La Plante: A very popular author, so I’m led to believe. I thought the writing was completely uninspired and tedious, but the storytelling side of things was good. Reluctantly, I enjoyed it.

Lunar Park – Bret Easton Ellis: An actual new-ish book, from this century, not one of the previous two. Whatever next? Anyway, very good, I liked it. I guess they still do make books like they used to after all.

A Dark And Distant Shore – Reay Tannahill: I had my reservations about this, not least because the cover says “…a marvellous blend of Gone with the Wind and The Thorn Birds”, and even worse that quote, presumably the best they could get, was from the Daily Mirror. It was a good book though, despite suffering from the same spelling-out-of-accents problem as The Hungry Tide, which I complained about above. Scottish this time, which apparently is acheived by doubling up every ‘s’ and replacing ‘j’ with ‘ch’!? News to me. Also the castle around which the story revolves is called Kinveil and for some reason I misread this EVERY time and thought of Evil Knievel. That spoiled the atmosphere a lot, but I daresay it’s my fault somehow, and not the book’s. Definitely worth reading, and more so if you’ve never heard of Evil Knievel.

A House Divided – Catherine Cookson: No. Just no. I threw this aside after three mind-numbing chapters, which was more of a chance than it deserved. Sadly this and some other Catherine Cooksons (No!) were the last books I could find in the house that I haven’t read, so it’s a good place to end this installment. Next time, perhaps, some books I actually read on purpose.

Typee – Herman Melville: A game of two halves – fascinating and gripping reading for the first, but ultimately tedious and disappointing. I would definitely recommend reading it, but when you find yourself trudging on hoping it will get better again, or at least come to a worthwhile conclusion, you should stop and set fire to the book, because it won’t.

Labyrinth – Kate Mosse: Possibly the worst opening of any book I’ve ever read. I wanted to discard it after the first page, but luckily my wife convinced me to keep reading, because it turned out to be brilliant.

Sepulchre – Kate Mosse: It’s a testament to how badly this one starts that I read the tedious first chapter and then threw the book away in disgust on four separate occasions before I managed to get past it. And bear in mind that I’d already read and enjoyed Labyrinth and was looking forward to more of the same. Again though, it turned out to brilliant, but not quite as brilliant as Labyrinth.

Beggars Banquet – Ian Rankin: A fine collection of short stories.

Midnight Champagne – A. Manette Ansay: This was great – fantastic writing and characterisation.

Excession – Iain M. Banks: I’d read this at least four times before. I wouldn’t be surprised if I read it again.

Forgiveness – Sarah Brown: Excellent. Thought-provoking and well written – highly recommended.

A Fancy To Kill For – Hilary Bonner: This was a dreadful book in all possible ways, including the writing, the plot and the characters. Oddly, I enjoyed reading it all the same.

Goodbye Sally – Rhona Martin: Very good, but the ending seemed to be an afterthought.

The Seeds Of Time – John Wyndham: Ten short stories, which was nine too many for my liking due to the fact that only one of them wasn’t total rubbish. I think this is the only book in the list that I wish I hadn’t picked up, which is particularly disappointing because I usually like John Wyndham’s writing. But…

The Outward Urge – John Wyndham & Lucas Parkes: I didn’t like this much either, despite the subject matter.

Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Foundation’s Edge – Isaac Asimov: I’d never read any of Asimov’s work before. It seemed best to start with these four books from the Foundation ‘trilogy’. On the negative side, I found the whole psychohistory premise of the Foundation series completely ludicrous, and the quality of writing seemed to vary from excellent to substandard in places. Despite that, I still found all these books to be very enjoyable.

The Caves of Steel – Isaac Asimov: Much better than the Foundation stuff. I loved it.

The Gods Themselves – Isaac Asimov: Having just read most of the Foundation series, the first part of this seemed to be very much in the same vein, one which was becoming slightly tiring. However, part two was amazingly good – possibly the most imaginative writing I’ve ever come across. The moon-based part three didn’t disappoint either.

Indelible – Karin Slaughter: On the face of it, standard crime thriller stuff, even down to the cliche of the post-mortem conducting heroine. Luckily, the strength of the characters and plot made it a worthwhile read.