The call of the Weird - Louis Theroux

For ten years Louis Theroux has been making programmes about off-beat characters on the fringes of US society. Now he revisits America and the people who have most fascinated him to try to discover what motivates them, why they believe the things they believe, and to find out what has happened to them since he last saw them. Along the way Louis thinks about what drives him to spend so much time among weird people, and considers whether he's learned anything about himself in the course of ten years working with them. Has he manipulated the people he's interviewed, or have they manipulated him? From his Las Vegas base, Louis revisits the assorted dreamers and outlaws who have been his TV feeding ground. Attempting to understand a little about himself and the workings of his own mind, Louis considers questions such as: What is the difference between pathology and 'normal' weirdness? Is there something particularly weird about Americans? What does it mean to be weird, or 'to be yourself'? And do we choose our beliefs or do our beliefs choose us?

The Checkout Girl - Tazeen Ahmed

How much do you know about what really goes on at your local supermarket? We see them every week and they are privy to some of our most intimate secrets - those we wouldn't even share with our closest friends. To us they are the anonymous helpers for whom nothing is too much trouble. But for them, every customer has a part in a gripping soap-opera of lovers' tiffs, family feuds and extraordinary innuendos - turning the daily life of a checkout girl into a hilariously entertaining farce. As we began to contend with the recession, Tazeen Ahmad realised that the supermarket checkout was the perfect place to gauge how the nation was coping with increasing job cuts, sky-high food prices and a billion pound hole in our economy. The answer, it turns out, was with white bread, ice cream and lots and lots of potatoes. Sworn at, flirted with and at the receiving end of endless customer rants.

Whatever you do don't run - Peter Allison

In Africa "only food runs...and there's nothing you can outrun!" Peter Allison works as a top safari guide in the Okavango Delta. In this oasis of wetland in the middle of the Kalahari desert, rich with wildlife, he caters to the whims of his wealthy clients, he often has to overcome the impulse to run as far away from them as he can, as these tourists are sometimes more dangerous than a pride of lions! Full of outrageous-but-true tales of the people and animals he has encountered - the half-naked missing member of the British royal family; the squirrel that overdosed on malaria pills; the monkeys with an underwear fetish; and last, but by no means least, "Spielberg" the video-obsessed Japanese tourist

Allison's hilarious stories reveal his good-natured scorn for himself, as well as others. Allison's humour is exceeded only by his love and respect for the animals, and his goal is to limit any negative exposure by planning trips that are minimally invasive - unfortunately it doesn't always work out that way, as he and his clients discover to their cost when they find themselves up to their necks in a hippo-infested watering hole! Full of essential wisdom like "Don't run,whatever you do" and "never stand behind a frightened zebra" (they are prone to explosive flatulence when scared!), this is a wonderful and vivid portrait of what the life of a safari guide is really like.

Cruising Attitude - Heather Poole

Heather Poole gives the inside scoop on how to be the most hated passenger on the plane, whether passionate affairs with pilots are really as frequent as you'd think, what it's like flying in a post-9/11 world, and everything else passengers never knew. Readers will learn what it's like to live in a flight attendant crashpad in Crew Gardens, Queens, where the bedrooms are crammed with bunkbeds and the neighbors get the wrong idea about why attractive women are coming and going at all hours. They'll find out why it's a bad idea to fall for pilots, and - in Heather's case, at least-why it can be a good idea to fall for business class passengers. They'll watch passengers and coworkers alike get escorted off the planes by police, and learn insider secrets on starting salaries, FA schedules, celebrity misbehavior, and much more. Packed with sometimes unbelievable and always hilarious stories, "Cruising Attitude" intermingles the best of galley gossip with Heather's own experiences of life in the sky.

Different Seasons - Stephen King

Each of the four stories, markedly different in tone and subject, present a journey: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (Hope Springs Eternal) is a tale of an innocent man who devises an exciting escape from prison; The Apt Pupil (Summer of Corruption) is the story of a golden schoolboy and an old man with a hideous past who join in a dreadful union; in The Body (Fall from Innocence), four young boys venture into the woods and find life, death and the end of innocence and The Breathing Method (A Winter's Tale) is a macabre story told in a strange club of a woman determined to give birth...no matter what.

Classic Case Studies In Psychology - Geoff Rolls

Have you heard about the man who lived with a hole in his head? Or the boy raised by his parents as a girl? From the woman with multiple personalities, to the man with no brain, this collection of case studies provides a compelling insight into the human mind. This is a fascinating collection of human stories.

Its your time your wasting

Frank Chalk, talks frankly about being a Teacher in a Modern comprehensive school which has a reputation for not being the best school in the area.  He tells us true stories of troublesome teenagers, and the perils and pitfalls of modern day education. Also all the red tape and the rules and regulations teachers now have to follow.

Short Reads

The Following two books were both short reads (took me an hour to read each of them) but as i'm writing a blog about all books i have read i thought its only fair to include these.

 My dads a policemen is one of Cathy Glass's fiction. You presume with her history of children in foster care she has some understanding of issues surrounding different child cases. This is the story of a young boy taken into care because his mum can no longer look after him, he doesn't know his dad so he tells people that his dads occupation is as a policemen. He doesn't want to leave his family or his little brother and tries to understand why he has been taken into care.

Coraline and Other Stories - Neil Gaiman

Coraline steps through a door in her house, into another mirrored world, a more sinister world, where she is trapped and needs to find her parents and her way home.  In his other stories we meet a sinister Jack in the Box, a stray cat who does a nightly battle with the Devil, and a group of men who go out to capture the Sunbird.