This is a very good piece of kit. It has great looks and is really easy to set up: it paired with an iPod touch without any problem at all. In fact, it's so easily paired, that we accidentally connected it to an iPhone and found it can be used as a hands free device. It also has a surprisingly good range: certainly several metres.

As you'd expect, given its size, the sound quality is similar to a portable radio: so, a bit tinny and lacking in bass presence. We use it for music in the kitchen and it is absolutely fine for that.

My children are mostly in their teens now - although I do have a five year old - and I read this book more out of interest than necessity. I've also been very lucky with my children, in that I've never had any major issues with their development.

That said, a lot of my first hand experience bore out what Dr Briers says and there were a couple of items that helped me understand some experiences with my own children, as well as some that make me think "if only I'd read this twelve years ago".

The book is well written and easy to follow, and I think its key strength is in helping parents to understand children's motivations and, rather than just talking about correcting behaviour, gives practical and workable advice on how to equip children with strong life skills. For example, many parents with older children will have seen how good self-esteem can ease the rocky path through adolescence.

I must admit that I found this a bit fiddly to use, just by the virtue of how small it is, but I gave it to one of my daughters, who has been using it for a few weeks.

It's a very nice looking piece of kit and we had no problem setting up the bluetooth connection. Putting the music on was easy using Windows - just drag and drop - and my daughter finds it easy to use both as a player and for the 'phone.

I have listened to it myself and the sound quality, both for radio and MP3, is absolutely fine.

In conclusion, this is a product that definitely does what it says it does as well as looking very stylish and being straightforward to set up and use. My only reservation is about the size: best for small hands!

First of all, apologies to Alexander McCall Smith if I appear to be knocking his enjoyable and popular series based around The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency but this is a different proposition. Although there are superficial similarities in terms of setting and the central character (not to mention the book jacket), where the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency provides a light, entertaining read, this book has a much more serious backdrop, which casts a dark shadow over the proceedings.

Which is not to say that the book doesn't trip along at an enjoyable clip - the prose is both colourful and lively - but the characters' lives have been blighted by the genocide in Rwanda, and this is the horror that permeates the characters' lives.

Quite apart from being a good story and a great read, this book has two strengths: firstly, it humanises an event of such a scale that is difficult to comprehend at face value. By bringing it down to the experiences of a few people, Gaile Parkin makes the mass murder that is safely at a distance on the news, immediate and very real.

Secondly, through strong, believable characterisation, she also demonstrates the human quality of persisting through adversity, delivering a genuine and believable upbeat story.

This is my book of the year (so far).

Unlike the other reviewer, the thirty-five seconds of silence constituting the first track - "Put Your Headphones On" - made me smile. Like a better contextualised John Cage ([]).

Ms Marcell is ploughing a field that, since the emergence of Kate Bush 30 years ago, has become very well, almost too populated. Whilst some figures, notably Kate Bush herself and Bjork, have stood out from the crowd, there seems to be a certain 'clustering' phenomenon. An obvious example of this would be Tori Amos' emulation of Kate Bush but also the host of singer songwriters, from Tinita Tikaram through to KT Tunstall.

Disappointingly then, it is very easy to find another artist to demonstrate the area in which Julia Marcell works and that artist is Kate Nash. This is due to the arrangments and nature of the songs but also to the fact that, unfortunately for Julia, their voices are incredibly similar (to my ears, at least).

All that said, there is a good quality to the songwriting here and it's a very pleasant album but if you're looking for a woman having a good time with a piano, who sounds a bit different, then I would try Nellie McKay Get Away from Me: Parental Advisory.

I ordered this for my daughter who is 13. I listened to it with her but found it quite boring and formulaic, although she liked some of the songs, one or two of which she knew already.

However, her interest was short-lived and the album doesn't get played, nor do any of the songs turn up on her iPod.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this. Whilst I enjoyed the Bauhaus tracks that I heard on my teens (the eighties), I don't think I ever sat down and listened to a whole Bauhaus album. The parameters of my listening experience were - like, I suspect, many of my peers - the darkly camp 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' and the respectful cover of Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust'.

'Go Away White' came as some surprise then, although I wouldn't say it is unrecognisable as the same band: Pete Murphy's vocals alone stamp their identity on this release. Starting with the surprisingly funky 'Too Much 21st Century', the album then veers back onto more expected territory, although constructively references later period Bowie (Heathen-era on 'Saved') as well as new wave stalwarts Wire (on 'Mirror Remains').

I'm not sure there's a huge incentive to buy this if you aren't (weren't) a Bauhaus fan but I was delighted to find an enjoyable album with a strong sense of identity and Pete Murphy takes himself satisfyingly seriously.

There's no denying that this is a well written and pacy book: I whizzed through it in a couple of days and enjoyed it. My eleven year old thought it was good and, ironically, it led to her picking up Harry Potter.

I say ironically because this book is about a troubled boy with special powers, who is relieved of an unhappy childhood when he finds out he is part of a special magical society, which has a school for children like him. The school has a charismatic, powerful head and there Charlie meets two special friends, one of whom is a super-bright girl.

Consequently, there is no escaping the debt to JK Rowling and this book highlights just how good an author she is, since the original ideas in here - and the consistency of the imaginary world - are not a patch on what she created for Harry Potter.

All that said, it was a decent read and is perhaps a good appetiser for Harry Potter for the younger reader.

Alan Moore describes Ramsey Campbell as "Britain's greatest living horror writer", a plaudit that sits amongst forty-six other items of equally high praise coming from the most repectable sources. So, whilst horror is not a genre I particularly like - I've only read one Stephen King - I thought this would be of a high quality and good place to dip into this style of writing.

But I was really disappointed. For a start, before we even get to the story, the quality of the writing is just dreadful. It seemed like every other page I had to re-read a paragraph and there were sections I just gave up on. Maybe RC is so successful that no one edits his work but I found it literally unintelligible in places.

As to the story, well, I gave up on it after 218 pages (which is very unusual for me; I'm usually quite dogged). From there I tried reading every other chapter and then one in three but the story limped along, always more of the same, virtually no development at all, until the final five pages, which attempted to bring the story to some sort of meaningful resolution which included - I think - a kind of garbled chin-stroking reflection on the internet's power to distribute ideas. This in a book where the protagonist is using a dial-up modem.

Ultimately, this book starts off creating a sense of unease which doesn't go anywhere, is peppered with two dimensional characters, has ridiculous dialogue and - like "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" - never adequately resolves any of the mysteries that it presents. There is nothing clever here, that I can see: it's as though the author started with an idea and plays it over and over, leaving the reader treading water in his turgid prose. There is no dramatic tension, no dynamic, no sense of heading towards a resolution: the ending appears almost as if there's been enough writing to warrant one.

I'll be interested to see what Ramsey Campbell's fans make of this. If this is the greatest living horror writer in Britain, I don't think I'll trouble the genre again.

There used to be a time when the music that occasionally crossed the channel from Europe seemed to fall into two camps: either the obscure - e.g. the very good German electronic/avant garde bands - or attempted clones of British and American bands and fads.

Nemesea remind me of those bands in the latter category. This is well played, has good production and sounds the way I think it's intended to: like a mainstream ('lite') copy of Nine Inch Nails with a girl singer. As a formula it sounds like a success and, at first listen, the music fits the requirement.

However, very, very quickly, this becomes terribly tedious. There is, to my ears, no actually substance here. Not one good song or hook.

I suppose a couple of the songs might find homes on car adverts - a la Berlin - but the CD won't be troubling my player again.