From the moment he's born, Barnaby Brocket, hero of John Boyne's latest book, refuses to obey the laws of gravity: he floats. It's a bit of an inconvenience for his über-normal parents who abhor difference of any kind, and their aversion to anything unusual leads them to do the eponymous "terrible thing" that sets the story (and Brocket) in motion. The "appalling consequences" of this deed turn out to be a series of far flung adventures with a series of characters who have also found themselves outside the norms of society.

There's hot-air ballooning duo and coffee farm owners, Ethel and Marjorie, who are the "very closest of friends"; Joshua Pruitt, a window-cleaner who is more interested in making sculptures than inheriting his father's cotton-bud business; Charles Etheridge, a man whose face is disfigured by horrific burns. Not only is each of these characters "different", but this difference has been a source of friction and disappointment to their parents with varying results. Crucially though, the people that Brocket meets have all remained true to themselves, rather than seeing their differences as cause for ridicule or embarrassment (though this is not always shown to be an easy course).

Two main themes emerge, the most dominant of which questions what exactly being normal means, whose version of normal should be the yardstick by which we measure such things, and how important is it anyway. In being excessively normal, Brocket's parents come across as absurd, for example. The other, and more interesting theme from my point of view, is that of parental expectations and to what extent children are subject to living them out. Boyne deliberately takes the time to explain how Brocket's parents were "bullied" into certain roles by their parents before them, and how this has influenced their own behaviour towards their son.

As another reviewer points out, the book is episodic: the iteration of Brocket's own story in every new set of characters becomes a bit tiresome, and the narrative ponders on just a bit too long. Annoying too are the constant references to "normal" and that it's OK not to be it; surely younger readers don't need to be hit over the head with an idea any more than older ones do? On the plus side, Boyne is a good writer and the book is fun to read, packed with flights of fancy, whimsy and funny bits. I'm sure the illustrations by Oliver Jeffers - sadly not present in this proof copy, but hinted at from the cover - will be a highlight. And yes, there is something of Dahl here, but it's of a safer and altogether less wicked variety.

First of all, this is not one of the books that accompanies the BBC Great British Bake Off series that ran in 2012; it is a slim glossy booklet created to raise money for Comic Relief and contains "13 easy recipes perfect for a Bake Sale". There's a tiny introduction, a quick list of tips for how to host a sale, a page about Comic Relief, 13 recipes and that's it.

The recipes, as described above, are all simple and easy to follow and include: cupcakes, brownies, cookies, muffins, biscuits and cakes. I've already tried out the Carrot Cake Muffins (recipe makes 12) and they're scrumptious. Each recipe is laid out with step-by-step instructions on how to make it, and there's a good-sized photo of what the results should look like.

You don't have to be running a Bake Sale to bake any of these goodies; they're equally good recipes (and quantities) to bake for friends and family or even for yourself. I would imagine kids would have good fun making (and eating) these bakes too! Even if you've already got a hundred cook books on your shelves, this volume is so slim that it won't take up any room and by buying it you're automatically donating £2 to Comic Relief ... so, it's all good.

My Energizer recharger and batteries recently gave up the ghost so I needed to replace the whole caboodle. I've never had any problems with using this brand and this charger is no exception. I find these batteries last really well with my Canon SX IS camera, which takes 4 AAs, and I can usually get hundreds of pictures from one charge.

I chose this Maxi charger after checking out Energizer's website. I travel a lot and wanted a light and compact charger. It is certainly light; this does give it a bit of a flimsy feel, but it's been off on various journeys in my bags and rucksack and is none the worse for the experiences.

This charger is not one of the fast-charge variety. I don't need my batteries to be charged in 1 or 2 hours and so don't feel it's worth paying extra for this facility. This takes about 8 or 9 hours to fully charge up my 2000 mAh batteries ... overnight in other words ... fine for my needs. The charger automatically stops charging once the batteries are fully charged, so no danger of overcharging.

It charges up to 4 x AA or 4 x AAA and has a couple of green LED indicators that light up when charging. Recommended for people looking for a basic charger of a compact nature with no frills. Charges NiMH batteries only.

This book was a gift and probably not one I would have bought myself, despite being a lifelong follower of tennis and a fan of both Nadal's game and demeanour. That said, I've quite enjoyed the novelty of reading this auto/biography, although I do generally think a bit more life should be lived before one embarks on such an undertaking for best effect. I feel this book's main flaw is in its padding out with repetition a dearth of material.

The need for padding is perhaps not just because of Nadal's (relative) youth, but also because he is a focussed and private individual by nature. Something that to those of us who "know" of Nadal on the tour, through his press-conferences and interviews, will come as no surprise, and something that makes him one of the sport's most endearing personalities. It doesn't really make him the most thrilling subject for a book, nor does it make this book a place of any great revelations, either about the world of tennis, or its players, or indeed Nadal's own team and family.

Divided into 9 chapters, each chapter opens with Nadal dissecting a final he played in each of the four Grand Slams starting with (arguably) the greatest ever played: Wimbledon, 2008. These sections do tend to wander at times, but unlike others I felt Nadal's "voice" to be quite consistent with what I imagine, give or take the inevitable vagaries of translation. He offers insight into the physical and mental pressures of the game through the kind of detailed analysis of points that forms part of his match preparation--and at his most revelatory he recounts the affects of injury and his parents' separation on his life. John Carlin's companion pieces offer thoughts from Nadal's team, the most interesting of which is the complex coach/player relationship. It's a fascinating dynamic that seemed to be in its state of greatest flux--and therefore most appealing--just as the book ended!

Rafa: My Story is solidly written, easy to read but could never be called exciting, relying too much on a few central themes that are regurgitated often without offering further analysis. There's no gossip or egotism; instead the auto/biography is a testament to the peculiarly Mallorcan influences of family, humility and reserve. Nothing is given away, and what is revealed is done so phlegmatically by all concerned. I finished this book equally admiring of Nadal's qualities and of the determination and mental strength required to be a champion in an individual sport, but feeling slightly disappointed that I'd learned little of Nadal that I didn't already know.

When it comes to writing about the work of Neruda no language seems grand enough. My words "slide by like slippery grapes/or explode when exposed to light" and I fail. I am an unalloyed fan and return to no other poet with such excitement. He has created a poetic landscape all of his own and returning to it again is the definition of perfect pleasure. Neruda, in Odes to Common Things, is very accessible and even first-timers should be able to read this and amaze at his ability to transform the ordinary into the sublime.

There are 25 odes here, praising all manner of everyday objects from soap and scissors to tomatoes and tea. Each is a celebration of the ordinary and an elevation of it to the extraordinary; once an ode is read no "thing" will ever be regarded in quite the same way again. Neruda has taken the humble and offers us a view of the world through it; more though, he makes commonplace articles live again through their connections to our existence. He writes that things "were so alive with me/that they lived half my life/and will die half my death" and by the time you have finished this book these items will live and die with you too.

Tables, those "titanic quadrupeds", are places where "we know the truth/as soon as we are called:/whether we're called to war or to dinner". A chair is summoned "in the midst of/thunder,/a chair for me/and for everyone ... for squandered strength/and for meditation" and is ultimately "the first sign/of/peace." In California, a violin is "someone else's loneliness loose upon the sand". The cat, that "little/emperor without a realm", that "arrogant/vestige of night" requires "nothing more than to be a cat" whilst the dog's "eyes/are two moist question marks, two wet/inquiring flames". Even a pair of socks are "knit/ from threads/of sunset" and rendered "so beautiful/I found my feet/unlovable/for the very first time".

He has unveiled the divinity of things: he has taken apart their universes and exposed their souls; he has observed their histories and plotted their futures; he has heightened their significance so that they become as essential as the air we breathe. He has done this with a heart that is democratic and with a language that is so fierce and reverent that in the end these are not just odes, but prayers.

[The hardback book is a beautiful thing with the English translations side by side with the Spanish originals. It is illustrated with pencil drawings by Ferris Cook who also selected the poems. Ken Krabbenhoft is the translator. Unlike a previous reviewer, I have no knowledge of Spanish and have only ever been able to access Neruda in translation; I do worry about that, but I have lost my heart to his poetry all the same.]

I knew little of Ruth Fainlight before buying this collection of poems. It was the title, Moon Wheels, that seduced me; I have a thing about the moon especially its incarnation in writing. Disappointingly, the moon only plays a passing role in this poetry, appearing occasionally as on a cloudy night. In "War Moon" it is "the hard stone sphere/of a livid moon/orbiting/our unhappy,/angry world" and in the title poem: "the moon's disk/far away and small and silver-bright" is a "disturbing muse." When the moon does show its face those poems seem brilliant for it, but I am definitely biased.

I wonder if some of the poems in this collection are too intellectual for me as I couldn't make connections with them. Those that I did enjoy are the more straightforward, like "The Anxiety of Airports" where travellers "dazed by exhaustion" are left to contemplate "adhesive shreds of clingfoil like sloughed snakeskins". There are also a few fine new poems here that directly address poetry, and writing poems: in "Mosaic" for instance, the "shifting/words from there to here" is likened to a game of chess or a riddle, until at last we see "the pattern fixed -/the poem exact." The limitations of language are tackled too in the wonderful poem "A Bowl of Apples" where the writer wants to "understand and feel/through my own flesh the roundness/and bulk of apple pressed against/apple in the bowl's shadowy cradle" but finds words "too specific".

Even though I feel perplexed and out of my comfort zone here, I can still appreciate the elegance and craft this writer possesses. I am never in doubt that what I'm reading is "the poem exact" even if I don't know exactly what it is saying. Neil Curry (The North) compares Fainlight with Wallace Stevens writing that Fainlight "has the advantage of being totally intelligible" but I don't find that consistent with my reading experience. I love Stevens' abtract wildness and can always find something within his work that speaks on a deeper level than literal meaning alone; in the case of Moon Wheels I loved some of the poems and completely floundered with others. Perhaps it is the particular selection that doesn't work well? Either way, this book is not recommended for casual readers or those new to poetry. Fainlight fans will probably love it and might be able to help me out....

[The collection contains 33 new poems, many of the more accessible poems (and my favourites) come from this section. There are several translations of poems by Cesar Vallejo (Peru), Sophia de Mello Breyner (Portugal), Maria Negroni (Argentina), Elsa Cross (Mexico) and Victor Manuel Mendiola (Mexico). These are followed by a selection of poems from her out of print 1993 collection This Time of Year, and finally eight poems from her 1991 sequence Twelve Sibyls.]

I read Skellig for the first time a few weeks ago; it's a strange and wonderful tale. Mina, arguably its most energetic character, is the voice of this equally accomplished prequel which is written as a first person journal. It's not necessary to have read Skellig to enjoy this novel, but the two books make a remarkable pair and there are many tiny crossovers which make it great fun to know them both.

This is such a vibrant book and Mina is such a vibrant creation. Of words she tells us: "They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing." And her words do, in the abandon with which they are committed to paper visually - this book really has fun with fonts and presentation - and with the unrestraint of childhood which does not guard or censor as an adult would.

Mina loves birds and words and William Blake and there is more than passing reference to angels, life and death. Her journal questions mightily; notions of God and education (she's being homeschooled and often conventional schooling is equated with a cage); madness and logic (Mina's teacher is exasperated by the fact that her English essay doesn't match the plan). Mina just doesn't fit in. She is precocious and vulnerable and bursting with life that is imaginative and corporeal.

Almond does a superb job in channelling Mina onto the page; there was only one small point in the novel when I felt I was listening to the author rather than his creation and it happens near the beginning when Mina muses that "this might be the only Heaven there can possibly be, this world we live in now, but we haven't quite realised it yet." This precedes a Romantic outpouring of the beauty of the natural world consistent with Mina and yet a little too sophisticated. I am possibly being unfair, Mina's life experiences are considerable and she is informed enough to have come to these conclusions ... but I wasn't quite convinced.

This is the meanest niggle in a novel which thrilled me. After I read it, I felt rejuvenated. It is the kind of book I might wish to have read as a child in want of a kindred spirit, and as an adult it appeals very much to the child in me. I love this book because it offers up the world again as a thing of magic and mystery; it celebrates the vastness of life, the beauty of difference, the creativity of a child's imagination. My Name is Mina has the same enigmatic atmosphere as Skellig, and where they both sparkle is in making our ordinary world capable of hosting the extraordinary, so that anything seems possible.

[Please note this review is for the BBC Radio 4 production from 1968. In this release there are 5 CDs. 4 of these contain just over 50 minutes each of the play and the fifth CD is devoted to 4 pieces of music from the score lasting about 9 minutes.]

I am a recent convert to Radio 4 programming and have often been spellbound by some of its radio plays and was interested in listening to their production of the Tolkien classic, The Hobbit (of which I'm also a fan). Originally broadcast weekly in 8 episodes between the 29th September and 17th November 1968, the play lasts for just over 3.5 hours and does as reasonable justice to the original book (in terms of the story) as is possible within the time. There is the addition of Anthony Jackson as the Tale Bearer (narrator).

From the start the production shows its age, the music cannot help but do so being a quirky blend of sounds that seems to be trying very hard to be modern and now appears, and I can think of no better way to describe it, a bit naff. Bilbo's theme appears most often as each of the original eight episodes is opened and closed with it; this means you'll hear its plodding piping melody 4 times per CD. The fifth "music" CD makes for disappointing listening, and is dwarfed into insignificance by Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings: Complete Trilogy; this is surely an unfair comparison but one I can't avoid making.

When the play gets it right, it is pretty engaging and great fun. I enjoyed Bilbo's entry into the valley of Rivendell, where the elves' sing-song voices, greet the company ...

"Well, well, just look. Bilbo the hobbit on a pony. Isn't it delicious."

... and feel very elven: simple, unadorned, otherworldly. I also liked the "Song of the Dwarves" taken directly from Tolkien's song in the novel which rings with sonorous voices and takes on the rhythms and sounds of feet and rock and mine and bell ... echoing with caverns deep underground and all things dwarven to my ear. Bilbo's riddling meeting with Gollum and the finding of the ring was another stand-out section in the drama; I think Gollum is one of the better realised of the characters.

Voice and tone are everything and I feel that nearly all the characters are a bit too well spoken; the dwarves for example are all very similar and not nearly gritty enough, and Gandalf is too young and condescending. The special effects applied to the goblins, wargs, eagles and assorted creatures means that they all shriek nastily with the same synthesized speech. At times, in battle scenes and other parts where the action requires sound effects, it can become a bit confusing and it's not always easy to hear what's going on. And my last moan regards the pronunciation of names; the (random) placement of stress on the second syllable of Gandalf; and Gollum sounding like Golloom is quite bizarre.

Glorious at times, and goofy, there's no doubt that Radio 4's production will charm those who can look fondly upon its idiosyncrasies and frustrate those who can't.

The first thing that struck me about this book of poems is the atmospheric cover art. Its deep dark snowy woods bring Robert Frost to mind, as does the collection's title, the poem 'The Road Taken', and Anthony's preference for formal structure within his poetry. And it is fair to say that this comfort with formal elements is Anthony's strength.

This collection is a cornucopia of different forms with a leaning towards the sonnet whose 14 lines the poet navigates with ease. 'Stuffing it in' is a playful take on the craft of sonnet writing; an "in-joke" by a confident formalist:

Just one word rhymes with sonnet, but no doubt
a slant can be insinuated--Done it!
So far so good. Enjambment helps: let's run it
between the lines. I'm half-inclined to flout
the rule insisting on a turn about
line nine....

This confidence is evident whether the poet is working with the limerick 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer': "I'd never read Chapman before/and felt like that sky-watcher (Moore)" or the far more stylistically difficult villanelle 'Plague': "Not only cattle perish in the fire,/and horror groans without an end in sight./The guns are loud across the land tonight."

So Anthony certainly knows how to craft a poem, it's true; but the manipulation of rhyme and meter can only count for so much, and poems should also engage the reader in their worlds. Some of the poems do this, 'Father of the Man' is one such because it speaks to a universal experience of Youth and Age:

While wandering the wastelands of my mind,
uncertain where the hazy pathways led
and frightened by the darkness up ahead,
I saw my Youth approaching from behind
and paused and waited, thinking what to say.

But too often the reader's right to interpret meaning is closed off and rather than a dynamic process, the reader sits in passive receipt of the speaker's sermon. In 'Flower Seller' for example we are told that the seller's motives are purely commercial (and by extension meaningless): "But wayside seller, looking at your face,/I see your flowers are only goods to sell/with no innate significance."

Poetry is arguably the most subjective of all the written genres, and there are just too many aspects of this collection that aren't to my personal taste: the language is plain, there is little in the way of imagery, and I wasn't interested in some of the subject matter tackled (news tragedies, a bulkhead light, for example). So whilst there is much to admire in the formal craft of this collection, there is little else for me.

This is a tricky one.

Farooki's novel ticks all the right boxes, or appears to do so. There's no disputing the fact she's a great writer and this alone is usually reason enough to enjoy a novel (at least for me). Then there's her ability to create characters (giving them wonderful "voices") which is also considerable; she exposes the intimate corners of their psyches even those that might have been best left undiscovered. The eponymous Flying Man, he of many names and lives, is impeccably documented; he is flawed, nuanced and complex in whichever of his myriad incarnations we encounter. This is also a thoughtful novel, a bildungsroman of types, although our anti-hero (anti in the fullest sense of the word) never quite grows up even though he grows old.

Yet ... I really struggled to enjoy the eloquence and characterisation within the larger context of the novel, and had to force myself to finish this work. Affecting and evocative as it is in places, I didn't find much to smile about in the Flying Man's life; nor was I charmed by him in any way, at any point ... and I feel that I should have been. And if it's possible to moan about a novel being so focussed on character that his story comes second to his very creation, then this might also be said. I longed for details of the shady business deals, the gambling, the spells in different countries, but found little revealed beyond the minutiae of this man's existence. Does Farooki tell us a bit too much about this man, rather than letting us work him out for ourselves? I think so.

I've read bad novels, and this is definitely not a bad novel; it's more that I was never invested enough in the main character to continue reading. Odd, considering the care and attention the writer has obviously put into him. As for the final 3 star rating, that comes from 4 stars for the quality of its writing, and 2 stars for the fact that I didn't enjoy it.