Up is another gem from Pixar. A shy little boy Carl Fredrick­sen meets the exuberant Ellie, who also hero worships Charles Muntz, noted explorer of Paradise Falls. They grow old together and Ellie dies before they can achieve their lifelong dream of an adventure. With nothing left to lose, Carl attaches 10,000 helium balloons to his house and floats off to South America in search of Paradise Falls, in­ad­ver­tent­ly taking Russell, a Wilderness Explorer, with him.

The movie appealed just as much to the kids at our showing as the adults. The sto­ry­telling is first rate, combining humor, adventure, love, …continue.

Andy Boychuk has just become the leader of the opposition party in Saskatchewan when he is murdered. His advisor, Joanne Kilbourn, sees him drink the poison. Her own husband was sense­less­ly murdered a few years earlier, and Andy was not only her boss but an old friend, so it's difficult for her. When she decides to write a biography of Andy and learns unexpected things about him, her health mys­te­ri­ous­ly begins to fail.

Joanne is a middle-aged widow with children, who has spent her life working behind the scenes in …continue.

Paul Christo­pher, sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an and former superspy, was last seen in a remote Chinese province. His ashes are delivered to his cousin Horace, also a retired spy, who is not convinced that the ashes belong to Paul. Then he learns that Paul is on the trail of Ibn Awad, a mad sultan with nukes who covets a first-century manuscript (a Roman spy­mas­ter's report on Jesus) that is thought to be in the possession of Paul's 94-year-old mother, who hasn't seen since 1940, when she was abducted by the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. So …continue.

Sequel to Shad­ow­march. Southmarch is under siege by the fairy army and the teenaged regent, Briony, has been deposed by an ambitious noble. Briony is on the run, fleeing for her life. Her twin, Barrick, is lost, mentally and physically, behind the fairy lines. Far to the south, Qinnitan has suc­cess­ful­ly fled from the autarch, but now the autarch is besieging the city of Hierosol where she is hiding.

The second book in a trilogy often suffers from Middle Book Syndrome: the first book es­tab­lish­es the characters and the plot, the final book …continue.

Ob­jec­ti­fied is a doc­u­men­tary about industrial design and the man­u­fac­tured objects that litter our lives. In interviews with some leading designers, Hustwit brings forth such topics as our emotional attachment to those objects; the ephemer­al­i­ty and planned ob­soles­ence of most of this “stuff”; the approaches of different designers; designing the man­u­fac­tur­ing process as well as the object; how good design often almost dis­ap­pears; sus­tain­abil­i­ty, when most objects end up in landfill; in­ter­ac­tion and interface design; etc.

The danger with such a broad survey is that you can't do justice to anything. I was left wanting to know more about many of the topics. In the Q&A afterwards, …continue.

The Chief of State of the New Republic, Leia Solo, is kidnapped and taken to the remote, barren planet of Nam Chorios, whence the lethal Death Seed plague has been released across the sector. Luke made his own way there, seeking his lost girlfriend, Callista. Han and Chewie, Threepio and Artoo are separately trying to rescue Leia.

Your first reaction on seeing a Star Wars novel might be to sneer, as mine was. But I knew Barbara Hambly to be a competent writer of fantasies, science …continue.

Inspector Çetin İkmen is called to a remote village in Cappadocia when a 20-year-old mummified body is found. The case is tearing the village apart. Back in İstanbul, Inspector Mehmet Süleyman in­ves­ti­gates an in­creas­ing­ly violent series of male-on-male rapes.

Nadel clearly knows Turkey well, bringing to life characters from different social classes without pa­tron­iz­ing them, showing Turkey in its complexity. The story was well crafted, weaving the two strands together to highlight tension. Pace a pet peeve of mine, the two cases did not suddenly, magically become related by the end of …continue.

For his seventy-fifth birthday, John Perry visits his wife's grave and enlists in the Colonial Defense Forces. The CDF remake him and his peers into su­per­sol­diers with decades of experience in enhanced bodies. Their mission is to protect the human colonies and to take new worlds. It's an alien-eat-alien multiverse (sometimes literally) and the habitable planets are much contested.

Scalzi owes a debt to Robert A. Heinlein (ac­knowl­edged at the end of the book). The wise old man, the citizen soldier, enduring love, youth re­gained—­some of RAH's favorite topics. Too, it owes …continue.

An Irene Adler book; earlier than Spider Dance.

Suicidal sailors with ornate tattoos, an odd sealing wax, and lost treasure. All these lead Irene, her husband Godfrey Norton, and Nell Huxleigh to Monte Carlo. Irene, with a little help from Sarah Bernhardt and the Crown Prince's betrothed, takes Monaco by storm. Sherlock Holmes finds part of the trail, but completely misses the bigger case.

Fluff, but en­ter­tain­ing fluff.

A paedophile chained up an eight-year-old boy's parents, then took the boy and killed him. DI Jack Caffery finds the case par­tic­u­lar­ly stressful: his brother was abducted and never found when they were boys. His girlfriend is falling apart too.

Part thriller, part psy­cho­log­i­cal study, part police procedural. Hayder ratchets up the tension as the internal and external pressures on Caffery grow.

Rec­om­mend­ed.