I had done a post called Death by China which is about chinese companies at http://oldscratbag.net You’re welcome to have a look.

The book I read to research this post was Sugar Gliders and Me by Jeanette R Gibson which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Sugar Gliders are found in the wild in Papua New Guinea & much of Australia. They are marsupials meaning most females have a pouch for keeping their young. Many Sugar Gliders are taken from the wild illegally and sold on as pets. They aren’t an endangered species but you definitely shouldn’t buy them online and if they seem to be at a cheap price you should avoid them. Before you buy one you should make sure the potential pet and talk to the owner face to face. There are problems with having a Sugar Glider as a pet in that they’re noisy at night because they are nocturnal and they will often mark their territory. Also you must spend plenty of time interacting with it especially if it’s a single pet otherwise it’s liable to get depressed. They also like to explore so will want freedom at certain times to explore the room. They are liable to chew cables and cause a bit of mischief so you must make sure the room is safe and they can’t get injured. In the wild they can glide for upto 45 metres and will climb trees. In their cage you should have something for them to climb and what they sleep on is often made of cloth so it can be washed. They are clean animals and won’t smell any worse than a puppy and will groom themselves. Excessive grooming can indicate an infection. They are cheaper to feed than a dog or cat. Incidentely they get their name because they glide and they like sweet fruit. If you live in the midlands UK as I do there is a shop in Newport in Shropshire that specializes in supplements for sugar gliders.

The novel I am reviewing is the horror novel Ash by James Herbert which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. The plot concerns some parapsychologists from Oxford University who are asked to explore a haunting in a secure psychiatric hospital. This is no ordinary secure facility as it is surrounded by a 100,000 volt electric fence. As well as that it houses what you might call threats to the state and politically embarrassing figures. James has cleverly interwoven fact and fiction with regard to the inmates. I think the factual element is quite interesting as being british I remember the newspaper coverage of some of the events. There is a happy ending but I want to look at some of the factual elements. Among the inmates is Michael Fagin who you may remember broke into Buckingham Palace and had a chat with the Queen. Now according to this book he only got charged with stealing a half bottle of wine when there were potentially more serious charges that could have been brought. One theory is that he could have been the lover of a Buckingham Palace employee and that be how he got in. The Royal Family obviously didn’t want a scandal and obviously he was detained in a psychiatric hospital but not the one in the story. Another detainee is Paul Burrell, Princess Diana’s butler who was accused of stealing her possessions but just before it went to court the Queen phoned up the court and had the charges dropped. Allegedley he was going to dish the dirt and it’s a bit strange how the Queen suddenly remembered that Princess Di had given him the stuff. Finally another item that is in this book is that it’s rumoured that Lord Louis Mountbatten and the armed forces were going to stage a coup in Britain because they thought Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister was too left wing. He resigned in suspicious circumstances. Also Lord Mountbatten was murdered by terrorists. Now this is where he takes artistic license, what if Mr Fagin, Mr Burrell & Lord Mountbatten are all in this psychiatric facility. Along with a load of other people. It’s certainly an interesting concept.

The book I am reviewing in this post is Bite Club by Rachel Caine which is a very good novel which I downloaded from kindle. This book is part of the Morganville Vampires series which is aimed at teenagers but I think is suitable for most people. Claire is the heroine in the book and she lives in Morganville with a goth and 2 vampires. She is going out with Shane one of the vampires. In this book a vampire called Doug tries to kill Claire and drink her blood but she kills him. He is transporting some blood which subsequently goes missing so she has to visit Amerie, the head vampire, to sort it out. Also Amerie’s father, Bishop, who apparently is more ugly than Nosferatu, which is an old silent film, has come to visit. Shane has gone missing and Claire needs Kims help to find him. One problem is that Kim who hates Claire is being held captive by Amerie. Shane tried to start his own self defence classes where he would teach mere mortals how to deal with vampires. Only problem is he has been kidnapped and forced to do cage fighting. Also Kims friends are bullying someone called Miranda at the school Claire goes to and when Claire intervenes one of them pulls a knife on her and there is a bit of a tussle. Shane does get rescued and there’s a happy ending though.

As you probably know I have a pet leopard gecko. I have been reading an old issue of Practical Reptile Keeping magazine and thought I’d do a blog on it. First of all there’s green tree pythons which make quite good pets although they aren’t all that friendly. They grow to 4 feet long and live in the indonesia / papua new guinea area. There are many subspecies defined by their colouring where groups have become isolated from others and developed certain characteristics of colour. In captivity there is more of a range of colours as the breeding is more wide open. Now I’m going to look at uromastyx which live throughout africa and asia although there is quite a few different species of this family. They have spines on their tail, a small head which is also somewhat flattened. They are relatively popular in america but you don’t see much of them in europe as pets. Alot of the problem is there isn’t many breeding pairs in europe so they are overlooked. Finally I’m going to look at day geckoes which are diurnal as the name suggests. They eat crickets and grass hoppers but also like fruit flies and meal worms and love mashed up mango with a little water. The latter has to be changed every day as it can go off. Before I finish I’ll just mention some reptile enthusiasts use white substrate to simulate snow and it looks quite decorative.

The book I am reviewing in this post is The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo which is an excellent thriller which I bought from a carboot sale. This of course is part of the Harry Hole series. In this book a 14 year old girl is raped and made pregnant. There are 2 brothers Jon who raped her and Robert who gets the blame and is shipped off to Zagreb in disgrace. Both brothers look alike. Robert sneaks back to Oslo and both brothers are members of the Salvation Army. Robert tries to get a contract killer to kill Jon and when they swap shifts Rob is killed mistakenly for Jon. Jon then has to stop at Harry Holes flat for his own protection. Special Forces shoot the contract killer but there is still another killer after Jon who is connected to the young girl. There is a reasonably good outcome. This book came out in Norway in norwegian years ago and it is only fairly recently that it has been translated into english. Finally let me say the scandinavians are going through a fertile patch with thrillers and their translations seem to be quite popular.

The book I read to research this post was 101 Writing Tips by The Digital Writer which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. The Digital Writer or Rachael McKnaught releases an ebook every Tuesday actually one free that previously was for sale and one that is for sale. This book is about 70 pages so is a bit short but covers quite a few genres of writing with separate sections and tailored advice. If you are writing stories you should write it in short form first. The lead character should consider every possible solution and pick the best one. It would be dreadful if the reader comes up with a solution you haven’t thought of which is better. Another thing is your characters should have human aspects. An example given is people don’t love superman because he is invincible but because he is lonely and has trouble fitting in. Also you should have interesting minor characters not just major ones. If necessary you should sit down and write down their characteristics. If you are writing nonfiction you should consider every viewpoint and solution and explain why it would or wouldn’t work. If you are going on social networks the big 4 are facebook, linkedin, google+ and twitter. If you want maximum impact concentrate on those 4. On twitter you should probably have a look on the internet for something interesting and tweet about it. If you do something like a blog you should do no more than 1 tweet promoting it. You definitely shouldn’t tweet things like I cleaned my teeth. 

The book I am reviewing in this post is Nemesis by Jo Nesbo which is an excellent thriller which I bought from a carboot sale. In Britain The Bat which is the first in the Harry Hole series of books has been translated from Norwegian and published. I will be buying that in due course. In the meantime I’ve still got to review The Redeemer & Phantom from the same series. Many people are calling Jo the next Stieg Larsson who of course wrote the excellent The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo trilogy. One of the Harry Hole novels has been made into a film in Norway recently. Anyway Harry is a hard drinking detective with a knack for solving murders. I think if it wasn’t for that ability he’d have been sacked long ago for the drinking. Anyway in this story he wakes up next to a dead woman and can’t account for the last 12 hours. Initially the police think it’s a suicide but later they realise she has been murdered. Harry then starts getting threatening emails accusing him of murder. At the same time someone is doing bank robberies and it turns out he owes a lot of money to organized criminals. There is some nice snippets of information scattered throughout the story. Did you know women are more likely to commit suicide than men in America and for every suicide there are 10 pseudo suicides. There is a happy ending and it turns out the murderer is unhappy with Beate who is a policewomen. Harry tries to defuse the situation by telling the murderer that she has forgiven him for wronging her. That’s all I’m saying because I don’t want to give away too much of the story.

The book I read to research this site was The Athlete Within You by Mike Margolies which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is about Sports Psychology which of course has many applications in life not just in sport. When Roger Bannister ran the 4 minute mile which many thought was impossible because they thought you would surely die. Bannister knew it was a load of nonsense because he was a trainee doctor. His preparation consisted of running 4 quarter miles each under a minute and having a break between each. Once he did it lots of other runners ran sub 4 minute miles and his record only lasted 46 days. Another story is once there was a bear which was kept in a tiny cage and all he could do was pace up and down a few steps. Then some sympathetic people raised some money to get him a nice big cage with landscaping and rocks for him to climb. To their dismay his mind couldn’t adjust to the fact that he had a bigger cage and all he did was still pace up and down a few steps. If you do a sport an important component is watching it on television as you learn alot especially with the common trend in commentating of providing tactical analysis. You also need to read books that in particular are about improving at that sport and read autobiographies and biographies of prominent members in that sport. Alot of coaches want players who are primarily passionate about their sport and have desire to win. There has been controversy over people and teams beating their opponents by big scores but you can’t let them into the game if possible because they might come back and win. Also things like championships are decided on things like goal difference. 

The book I read to research this post was Hot Spots – Kenya – Indian Ocean Resorts which is a very good book which I bought from a book shop in Hereford. The total amount of coastline is 250 miles and almost all of this is sandy beach with a vast coral reef just offshore. Mombassa, Kenya’s second city is in this area & Turtle Beach often features in Top 10′s of the world’s best diving spots. A couple of other major attractions are dining aboard a dhow and fishing for blue marlin. They normally tag the marlin and let them go so as not deplete the fish stocks also the author Hemingway wrote about this sport in The Old Man and the Sea and was a massive fan of this sport. Something else is visiting the Masai Mara where the BBC series Big Cat Diary is filmed and which features the mass migrations of 10′s of 1,000′s of wildebeast. There’s also a place where the tv programme Elephant Diary is filmed which features an elephant hospital. You should always check the foreign office web site or your countries equivalent before visiting in case there’s any problems. In 2007 there were problems after the election but it was mostly localized to the slums of Nairobi and a few other places and there weren’t any casualties among tourists. Another problem is AIDS which is rife and obviously you shouldn’t go with any prostitutes. In most areas the police don’t have vehicles and aren’t as efficient as their european counterparts. There is an emergency but it isn’t much use. They don’t have an ambulance but there is an emergency airvac service which can be subscribed to for $15 for 2 weeks for tourists.