Smarter Than Your Average

The Great Big Companion to Dibley

Who doesn’t love The Vicar of Dibley? The version I read didn’t have the bright cheerful dust jacket on, it was just a red hardback book. It looks intimidating, but once you open the cover, there is simply joy inside.

There are selected scripts, although after doing some research, I discovered that there are only some of the first series episodes missing, and of course anything since the book was released. The text was interspersed with biography style pictures, plus a few new additions in the form of notes, drawings and scribbles. It’s brilliant, and the sort of book I can pick up in a few years and enjoy it all over again.

It has made me want to watch the shows though, and with Only Fools and Horses turning up on iTunes, I am keeping my fingers crossed that more comedies of this nature appear.

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Prisoner of Birth

My father lent me this book, and I hadn’t even realised Jeffrey Archer was writing again. I previously read his Kane & Abel series which were really good, but that was quite a long time ago, and I struggle to remember things that far back!

Both my parents had read this, and both told me it was essentially unputdownable. My mother read it in both condensed and then full length format. I was expecting great things. I wasn’t disappointed.

It really is a page turner, and yet at the same time there is so much detail that does nothing other than get you right into the heart of the book. The descriptions of life in prison are incredible, and clearly taken from his real life experience. Apparently this book is a reworking of the classic Count of Monte Cristo, which I am only vaguely aware of. I will have to give that one a go.

I don’t want to spoil anything by giving too much plot away, but it is safe to say Danny is wrongly convicted of murder and goes to great lengths to try and prove his innocence. That’s as much as I can say because I recommend this book to one and all and don’t want to give anything away.

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The Book of the Archers

I spotted this book in a charity shop and made a beeline for it, ready to buy it despite not seeing a price tag on it. It didn’t matter to me how much it cost, I wanted this book. I seem to have developed a bit of an obsession with the Radio 4 rural soap and I don’t know why.

I have previously purchased the ‘Who’s Who in The Archers’ books, a similar but much more concise concept. The A-Z guides go through all the current characters and give you a brief history, particularly focusing on what is relevant for the year just gone and the year coming soon. They are good but having listened for over a year now, they don’t tell me much I don’t already know.

This book is much more of an encyclopedia, published in 1996, and containing even the smallest characters right back since the 50s, when the soap began. It’s written by some of the actors, and that means they know their stuff. I don’t know if it’s designed to be read as a book, or if it is more of a reference, but I devoured it from cover to cover. I can’t exactly recommend it, as I know no-one else on the planet would care to read a 13 year old book about characters that don’t exist anymore, but still, I give it a big thumbs up.

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