A couple of upcoming talk dates, plus a sneak peak of books in the production process: I've talks coming up on 17 February and 16 March, while my next book is out in July. Both talks are on Interstellar Tours : Saturday 17 February is at 10.45am at the Festival of Tomorrow in Swindon. It's part of the family day (free entrance) 10am to 5pm - my talk (£3) is on at 10.45 in the Egg Lecture theatre. You can book tickets here (click the 'Free' get tickets and then add on my talk), and find out more about the Festival here . Saturday 16 March is at the Royal Institution in London. You can find out more and book tickets (£7/£10/£16) here . I've two books in the pipeline. Due to be published in July 2024 is a book in Icon's compact Hot Science series. Called Weather Science it looks at all aspects of the weather and how meteorology has moved from folklore to leading edge computing and satellite technology. More details closer to the release date. The other I'll b...

This is one of the weirdest books I have ever come across. Strictly speaking it's a short story, but packaged as a thin Ladybird-like hardback. It's number 16 in a series that began with A Balls-up in Bohemia . The weird and wonderful idea behind it is that we see Watson's original text, before it was heavily edited for publication - in this case becoming the story The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk , which after publication in the Strand magazine was incorporated into The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes . If you are a Holmes fan, as I am, it's inevitable that you open it alongside the original. After some minor deviations in the opening paragraph (such as changing the previous owner of Watson's new medical practice from Mr Farquhar in the original to the strangely spelled Dr. Farquar in the new version) it starts to bring in Nicholas Sercombe's novel ideas of what might have been edited out at the Strand, from the fact that Watson's wife Mary was actua...

I quite often find myself reading food labelling, particularly if it's handy over the breakfast table. It's partly because I'm interested in what's in what I eat - but also because I had fun on a BBC TV show pointing out that it's perfectly possible, because of the mad way it's calculated, for food labelling to say that a product contains over 100% of a substance. (See the bottom of the post for my food labelling video.) The other day, I was perusing the back of a packet of little amaretti cakes (not the hard biscuits) we'd been given and noticed an ingredient that stirred some vague memory: these little Italian cakes were 34% apricot kernels. Somewhere in the depths of my mind I associated these with cyanide - something no one really wants to discover in their coffee-accompanying treat. I took a look online and discovered that while apricot kernels do not contain cyanide, they do contain 'the plant toxin amygdalin, which converts to cyanide after eatin...

Those of you who berate me when my reviews are mostly not science or science fiction books, the Christmas present reading pile is nearly done - expect more of a usual mix next week. I don't believe in making New Year's resolutions - they just set you up for failure. But I hope, like me, you are, on the whole, looking forward to 2024. The world is going through a difficult period - of that there's no doubt. And politically, we've got elections in over half the democratic segment of the world - so there could be interesting times. But I do think a negative outlook can be self-fulfilling, and optimism is the best way to make the most of life. I'm certainly looking forward to some excellent new popular science books in 2024. As it happens the first one I'll be reviewing next week is from 2022 (but the paperback, which I'm reviewing, is out in February). I know there are some excellent books on the way, including a far reaching title from last year's Royal So...

This was not the book I expected it to be - and I'm rather glad of it. It looks like a Christmas murder mystery, particularly in the red and gold cover I got. But it really isn't. A murder is involved. The book climaxes at Christmas. But this nothing like a cosy murder investigation: it is an intense dip into the intersecting lives of two women, each with deep-seated problems. Roach, obsessed with true crime is already a bookseller at the local Waterstones (sorry, Spines). Laura joins with a new management team. She's apparently the opposite of Roach - blonde, bubbly, tote-bag-carrying, chatty with the customers... but has something dark hidden in her past. Roach desperately wants to get closer to Laura, in part because of the nature of Laura's 'found poetry' - but instead finds herself pushed away (not entirely surprisingly). The bookshop setting is one I was naturally drawn to, but I would never normally read a book that's primarily about obsession and the...

Matt Chorley is one of the best political radio presenters and podcasters around. His coverage of UK politics is sharp and insightful - but always with a sense of humour. He is also a newspaper columnist, though I confess I find his writing style there sometimes too farcical - but that doesn't apply to this book, which takes in '50 places that changed British Politics'. Although there is humour here (quite strong, for instance, on the infamous venture to Barnard Castle), this is primarily a serious look beyond Westminster at a series of key events in often unexpected locations around the country. Some are small but significant, such as Gordon Brown getting locked in a toilet. Others involve an event that would change history more directly (or even personally, in the story of Spencer Perceval,  the only UK prime minister to be assassinated). Although many of the events were familiar to me as someone with an interest in politics, there was a lot that I never knew - and the wh...