The original Deus Ex was one of my favourite games on the PC. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was released today and I picked my copy up at lunchtime. Can’t wait to see if it’s as good as the original!

Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles by Edward A. Grainger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was my introduction to the characters of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles, and I wasn’t disappointed. A selection of short stories, that show the violence of the old west and the principles that the lawmen of that time held dear is well portrayed.

A highly recommended read.

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Each year, over the last few years I have set myself a different reading “challenge”. I’ve had challenges around the number of books I would read in a year, this year I started at 30 books in the year, and have now extended that to 60, having reached and past 30 a while ago.

Previously I have made promises to my bookshelves on the near state of collapse that I would only buy a new book if I had read one first. In that year I read some 38 books (and probably bought 38 too).

And so the challenges go.

Recently I’ve been thinking about some of the classic crime novels there are, and rereading some Arthur Conan Doyle, and more recently my mind has turned to Agatha Christie.

Now I have read some of her novels in the past, but I thought it would be interesting to try and read them all. Could I do this in a year? All in 2012 perhaps? Then I realised just how many books there are: http://agathachristie.com/attachments/assets/Reading_order_with_dates.pdf

So maybe not?

I do still intend to read them all, but it might take me a while!

Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m afraid this third outing for the serial killer that only kills bad people was a little off the mark compared to the previous two outings.

Too much time was taken up with plot that didn’t really seem to be going anywhere and at times seemed largely irrelevant.

Overall a disappointing read.

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It’s been raining pretty much all day today, good for my garden and allotment but not quite so good if this happens to be your school summer holidays or you’re the parent of a child on holiday.

I was thinking back to my school summer holidays, the best six weeks of the year. No school!

We used to spend our time outside. Either playing at each others houses or off in the woods making dens and pretending to be Robin Hood or King Arthur.

When it rained though, we had to resort to playing indoors, and that other staple, watching children’s daytime tv. This was in the days before home computers, and in particular the ZX Spectrum at which point my summer holidays would take a different path.

Hard as it may seem now, there were only three channels and daytime tv for kids was reserved for the school holidays only, the rest of the year it was educational programmes and perhaps some Mr Ben at lunchtime.

In the school holidays though the daytime tv was awesome. There was everything from Larry “Buster” Crabbe in the black and White serials of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers.

There was also the original (and in my opinion, the best) Superman, played by George Reeves

My favourite though had to be Space:1999

This was the series that was made for me, it had everything, great stories, action, was set in space, and had the. Best. Spaceship. Ever! The Eagle

This is what summer holiday tv was all about.