So, a book I used to reread quite a lot, not because I was obsessive about it, but because it was one of a small group of books that so far as I could tell were better than anything else I could get my hands on, but which I haven't opened in, God, how long? Twenty years? I always figured that at the most I had one more good read of it in me, and that read would be at best an exercise in nostalgia, at worst an awful let down, and then I would never read it again. But you know what? It's a classic for a reason, and that reason is: it's just so damn good.
From the warm cosy opening to the arrival of thirteen dwarves and a wizard, to the long, often uncomfortable journey during which they are frequently captured, wet, hungry and sometimes all three, and during which they rarely if ever, display much in the way of competence or even heroism, Gandalf excepted, naturally. For all that, they're a lovable bunch, and Bilbo himself is a character of rare and sensible charm, profoundly lovable, in fact, and no better a person through which to experience all the joys and terrors of the unexpected journey.
So I think I shall be revisiting The Hobbit more frequently in the future, and cracking open the old volumes of The Lord Of The Rings, battered and torn and stained and sellotaped together in the next week or two. I'm already looking forward to it.

Anyway, I just reread it again, because we're going to the film tomorrow. The film will be the film, for better or worse, but the book will always be the book, and I'll be grateful to the film for prompting me to revisit the book and rediscovering it. I reckon I'm Bilbo-aged now, plump and middle-aged and settled. I can't deny the appeal of something that suggests there might still be adventures in store and a chance for me to prove my worth, and perhaps that's the appeal of this, one of the best of all children's books, for adults.

I thought I'd read this, but no. I've certainly read a few of Sutcliffe's books, and I know I picked this up often enough in bookshops and libraries to look at and I certainly saw bits of the BBC adaptation, so I was familiar with the basic plot. A young man sets out to recover the Eagle of his father's old legion, which marched north beyond Hadrian's Wall years before and was never seen or heard from again. It's one of the great adventure story plots that taps right in to a young imagination and excites the primal yearning for a meaningful quest, a loyal friend and companion, a mystery whose solution lies in wild misty lands and a family honour to restore. But I never read it!

I think I just didn't get on with the setting, and Sutcliffe's fidelity to the social mores and culture of the Romans and the tribes of Britain confused and alienated me, not being terribly familiar with the period or the setting. I loved her High Deeds Of Finn McCool, though, and her Roman Britain novels always exerted a fascination over me, so I'm delighted to finally read this one, and definitely not disappointed.

So, yes, it is one of the great classic adventures of children's fiction and deserves to be remembered as such. Young Centurion Marcus Flavius Aquila arrives in Britain at the head of a cohort of Gaulish auxiliaries and takes command of the fort of Isca Dumnoniorum. Raw and inexperienced, he has soldiering in his blood, but is haunted by the memory of his father, who vanished along with the rest of the Ninth Legion when they marched north and was never heard from again. Marcus' dreams of a military career are cruelly dashed when he is injured in battle and invalided out of the army. Recovering in his uncle's villa, he impulsively acquires a slave, a defeated gladiator in whom he recognises a kindred spirit. As Marcus heals, the bond between the two men grows until, unexpectedly, an opportunity arises to go and recover the lost eagle of the Ninth Legion and redeem his father's memory.

From the civilised south, where Roman rule is strong and the roads are straight to the wild reaches of the north where the tribes worship gods of their own and follow their own laws, Marcus and Esca's epic journey is vivid, haunting, moving and exciting. It's a boy's tale, with only one semi-major female character, and is full of the lads and their exploits and their friendship and the bond of respect between them that transcends their respective cultures and their master/slave status. That's not to say that it's a book to be read only by boys or, indeed, only by the young. It's a great book and I'm glad I finally got around to it.

I adore Richard Sala and love his work. This is another twisted tale of a young orphan sent to a strange school where her talent for burglary is put to good use. Wonderful.

You may think it's a long wait between George RR Martin books, but let me tell you, poor ol' Clive Barker took seven years to make this one, the third in the Abarat series. Now that's a long time between books and it's hardly surprising if the plot details of the previous volumes are lost to memory, but Barker's world is as immersive as it is distinctive and after only a few pages we're back again in the world if the twenty-five hours, the great archipeligo of islands, one for each hour of the day, and an extra one for timelessness. Candy Quackenbush, refugee from Chickentown, has defeated the dreadful Mater Motley and her grandson Christopher Carrion, flooding our world in the process. But Mater Motley is only getting started, Christopher isn't as dead as he seems and Candy has a Princess stuck in her head and she wants out.

While Candy looks for the magic necessary to free Princess Boa, a deeply unpleasant person, it turns out, Mater Motley sets her plans in motion. Dark days for poor old Abarat. Literally, as a dreadful scheme to block out the sky entirely unfolds, unleashing a host of hidden horrors on the world, and nasty horribles from behind the stars are involved, just to keep everything interesting.

Barker ups the apocalyptic scale here. The last book had the Reliquax, monstrosities hiding at the bottom of the sea, now we have god-like cosmic evils lending our villainess a massive death-ship with which to lay waste to Abarat. How can Candy and her motley crew of friends stand up to such horrible horrors?

Pure brilliant. I've read Barker since I was a horror fanboy in my teens, and this series is without a doubt his masterwork. He seems to thrive under the limitations set by working for a YA audience in terms of gore and grue, his formidable imagination producing a host of incredible sights and sounds and creatures and people and places. He doesn't stint on the darkness, though. Mater Motley's Empire of Night is an atrocious place full of evil and violence, and through it all, of course, Barker's incredible series of painted illustrations, bright and colourful and grotesque, making this book a beautiful, gorgeous object in its own right. It's probably obligatory to end this review with a line about hoping we don't have to wait as long for the next one, but heck, however long it takes, it'll be worth it.

This is a sad, haunting, achingly lovely novel. On a lonely, rocky, windswept isle that might be off the coast of either Ireland or England, a bitter and heartsore witch conjures beautiful, gentle sea-wives out of seals to enchant the men away from the native women. The story spans a generation as the witch's slow revenge works its way through its tragic course, sometimes surprising even her. Each character is fully formed and their stories are richly told in wonderful, muscular, earthy language. Utterly brilliant.

They're quite careful to reassure you that this is a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle on the cover and in the blurb, probably because you spend a good half to three quarters of the book wondering what the connection is. Then by the end, of course, you realise that it's been connected from the start, in the classic manner of fairy tales and Arabian Nights as executed by Diana Wynne Jones, and it all makes sense.

So Abdullah, who deals carpets, buys a flying carpet which transports him, when he sleeps, to a garden containing a beautiful young woman. They fall and love and vow to elope, but the young woman is carried off by a ferocious djinn and Abdullah gets the blame. With only the carpet and a very cranky and unhelpful genie, he must find her and rescue her, but only if he can work out what the heck is going on.

This is funny and clever and light and a pure joy from start to finish. I loved the ending, which included thirty angry princesses charging a djinn, and a series of unlikely and improbably revelations one after the other, each seemingly dafter and more contrived than the last, but such is Jones' skill and flair, they all make absolute sense and work perfectly within the logic of the story. This is the kind of fun, bravura storytelling Jones specialised in, and which we all miss. well done, o sublime and sceptred storyteller, may angels spread emeralds on your heavenly typewriter!

The new Globe Theatre in London was opened in 1997. (I've been there. We saw Vanessa Redgrave rehearsing the part of Prospero in The Tempest. I would have cheerfully offered up one of my vital organs for a chance to see the performance.) This book was published in 1999. I see that it is not available on the Globe's online shop, but if it isn't for sale in the gift shop itself then the Globe is doing a disservice to both itself and Miss Cooper. King of Shadows is a heartfelt love letter to The Globe, old and new, to William Shakespeare and his plays and to theatre itself in all its rambunctious life and magic.

Nate Field is a young American actor brought over to London as part of a company made up entirely of boys to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream in the new Globe Theatre - Nate is to play Puck. One night Nate goes to bed with a fever and wakes up in 1599 and finds himself taking the place of one Nathan Field, loaned by his theatre company to one William Shakespeare to play Puck in a command performance of A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Though the use of a time shift will be familiar to readers of Cooper's Dark Is Rising sequence, King of Shadows feels as if it was written by a different writer. A much, much better writer (and I loved the Dark Is Rising books.) Nate is an intelligent resourceful hero who comes to grips with his predicament quickly, but he is emotionally repressed after the death of his father, losing himself in his acting. The shock of the time shift and meeting Shakespeare knocks something loose, and despite some grim realities and harsh treatment by a fellow player, he falls in love with the world and a warm, father-son relationship develops with Shakespeare himself, who only recently lost his own son, Hamnet.

Cooper brings the world of theatre, past and present, to warm life, full of strain and excitement and long hours and friendship and turbulent emotions. Nate's pain and loss finds expression through the language of the play, making Shakespeare real and vital utterly beautiful. This is a fantastic book.

Third in the trilogy, the rest of which I read ages ago, so I don't know why it took me so long to get to this. Dark, funny, inventive with well drawn characters and ingenious plots. Brilliant ending, where heroism and redemption come at a heavy cost.

Well, the annoying thing about this book was the spoilers contained in the blurb, two on the back cover and another one on the page inside the front cover, giving away two major turning points in the book and effectively telling us something that doesn't happen until the last act, though it is the point the book has been building up to. It doesn't spoil the book by any means but it does nail down the direction of the book for you before you've even picked it up. The first spoiled turning point doesn't occur until about 100 pages in, for God's sake.

Anyway, The Silver branch, sequel to Eagle Of The Ninth, set a generation later, recounts the adventures of Justin and Flavius, young Roman officers posted to Britain where Carausias has proclaimed himself Emperor. Once a river-pilot, he rose to command the Roman fleet and absconded with it to Britain and overthrew the Governor. Now he's a valuable ally of the much-weakened Roman Empire against encroaching barbarians and sea-wolves and plans to strengthen Britain to the point where it can withstand the impending fall of Rome.

Justin and Flavius, good-hearted and good-natured youths, chance on a treacherous meeting while hunting on the coast. Reporting what they witnised, however, leads to an unexpected outcome. What follows is a tale of loyalty and betrayal, a stirring adventure that builds to a fiery climax under the battered and tarnished Eagle of the lost Ninth Legion.

Absolutely marvelous stuff. Sutcliff was the mistress of historical adventures, concealing a sophisticated understanding of the ancient world and its history under a deceptively simple and straightforward style of storytelling. The story twists and turns and runs its own course, and it helps if the sodding copywriter hasn't given any of the various twists and turns away.