Oh, and it is his best book ever. I am glad he got to write it.

Sassy was a teen magazine mainly for girls which existed from 1987 - 1994, when I was 14 - 21. It was different from the other US teen magazines and would discuss controversial subjects like sex, gays, suicide. Also it would talk to it's readers in their own language and meet them where they were, and introduce different values from just getting married, doing home decoration and being a good girl.

Being an outsider, I would have been pretty much the target group - except I didn't know it existed. I lived in a small Danish village and I have no idea if I could have come across a copy by chance in the neighborhood, probably not. Instead I listened to Bruce Springsteen and found a sort of inclusion in the surviving-day-to-day-while-the-real-world-crushes-any-illusions-you-ever-had attitude.

I heard about Sassy for the first time on Tavi's blog

http://www.thestylerookie.com/2010/04/are-you-tired-of-sassy-yet-answer-is-no.html

and I recently got around to buying the last copy of "How Sassy Changed my Life" on the UK Amazon. This is the story of a teenage girl magazine that hit the exact right spot at the right time for a lot of girls, in a way so they really feel it changed their lives, made them feel included instead of left out, gave them courage to go and do cool things and a self confidence that shaped their future. However it is also a story of these same teenage girl values clashing hard with the evil grown-up world called reality when the magazine had to shut down, after having a lot of trouble with advertisers and the general "family value" attitude in the US.

The book tells the story of Sassy with a lot of honesty about the magazine's good and bad sides and the people behind it, written by two now grown-up readers who loved Sassy and have later tried to understand what happened back then.

When reading this book I cannot help wondering if Sassy would have changed my life if I had come across it? I am not sure it would. I get this wonderful feeling of "girl power" and inspiration and that I would have enjoyed reading it and loved it far too much. The again, Sassy defined a new type of cool, but in the end it was still exclusive and spiteful to those who were not in the group. I wouldn't have been cool or interesting or punk enough. Also, in Denmark, we did not have the same level of taboo about some of the subjects which some US grown-ups found so controversial in Sassy - so our need was probably not so great.

So why do I feel that I missed out on something important?

Most people have probably read this book or heard about it. I guess most people have actually not read it, but only heard about it, and been forced by their teacher to read a chapter or so...

But it is written shortly after the second world war and describes life in 1984 as the author imagines the world might be.

Did he guess completely wrong or did he hit spot on? Well first of all 1984 is a long time ago and I shall compare the book scenario to now, not to 1984. In 1984 I was in school and the world was a much simpler place, even if definitely not better...

He has not foreseen the Internet. OK nobody had. He has not foreseen the level of welfare / living standard in the West. He imagines having to force people to have the TV on always while in real life, they do it happily of their own accord. He imagines a lot of monitoring of peoples lives, like in the old east Germany, with people from the Party actually having the time to look at all the information.

He does not predict total information overload.

However, he does predict one thing very sadly and very accurately: Newspeak, doublespeak. Having to pretend all through your work day and even your school day that what ever management bull they come up with is true and you never thought otherwise, and no other truth exists. TV news showing only what we are supposed to see, critical journalism dead. Reality TV to serve as pacifiers. Semi-religious entertainers as well as "old" religions trying desperately to convince young people that their fantasies are much truer than science, and succeeding to an alarming extend. We don't need a ministry of Truth. Are we pretty brain washed to put up with this? Yes, we are. Somebody ought to write a book about it...

As I understand this dog has lived and a big part of the external facts are correct, but she didn't know it that closely and a lot of it is made up.

However it is written as a biography, from the dog's point of view. Being a sucker for animals and especially cats and dogs, I probably miss some of the supposed irony and actually finds it very sad when something bad happens to the poor thing. Still it is a well written book that describes some things about the period she lived in, the people in upper class London, and how much have changed in the way we keep pets. Frontline, for one thing. My cat and I think it the best invention in our time (well in my time, it was before his).

Anyway it is probably her most lighthearted book and it is not difficult to read.

Last weekend my mother came by and left some old books behind for me to have, and this one I happened to catch my attention.

I started in last night on the train home and finished it today. It is not a detective story as such, but it is about a bank robbery, so I'll call it a crime story.

The plot is a woman robbing her husband's bank, and getting away with it by wrapping a lot of men around her little finger in a rather unrealistic way. But it is a funny charming little book. The main person is quite something. Definitely worth the 2 or 3 hours I spend reading it.

It describes his whole life, including his youth, his writing as well as his military and political career. Boring as it was, and as little as I can remember of the beginning of the book, it has left me with an impression of the man which I could not have had from a description of the war years only.

It is interesting to get some historic perspective on the single events of the 2nd world war, events I in my youth have mostly heard of as isolated events. Like Dunkirk, D-day, El Alamain, the meetings with Stalin. Aligning the English history to the American history is also easier when one is aware of the talks Churchill had with the different presidents, and the background for the cold war (which I grew up with) is clearer.

When I went to Egypt in 2006 to see the Solar Eclipse, flew from Cairo and landed in El Alamain, I knew next to nothing about it. Then I recently read "Farewell to Alexandria" and got a personal description of the events from the Alexandrian viewpoint, and now I read about it seen from the English war Cabinet. It gives more understanding of the world (though perhaps less hope for it's survival).

If I had known Churchill privately (been born, been present etc.), I don't think I would have liked him much. However, I think I could have worked for him during the war, provided that I believed that he was the leader we must follow to win that war. At that time, and only at that time, this unique man was needed.

Perhaps he is best described by the ending of his last speech in the house of Commons: "Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair". Characteristics that made him the most annoying, but also most the suitable for winning that war.

It is about the working methods of Agatha Christie, based on a large number of notebooks found in her house, which she is known to have used for noting ideas, outlining plots etc.

It discusses her methods, and some time line questions about when certain stories were written. But after a short while it becomes rather repetitive in the sense that her working method didn't really change, and the book is 483 pages.

It is probably only fun to read if you remember all the referred stories, which I do only to a certain extend. But it is interesting to a dedicated fan as it gives away a few more pieces about her life - which house and which village inspired certain books, etc. Also some inconsistencies in the plots and some reuses of plots are discussed. Some of these I had noticed and I like to see them discussed. Others I had not noticed and now they will bother me when I reread the novels Others again, exists which I have noticed but which are not discussed in the book (like how many children does Mrs. Summerhayes have?), so it is in no way a thorough analysis of her works.

It also contains two non published short stories: The original version of the 12th labour of Hercules (Cerberus), and "The Incident of the Dog's Ball". It is not surprising that the former was never printed - it is not very good and it is very political, but it does show some of her world view and is interesting in that sense.

The basic ideas of "The Incident Of The Dog's Ball" has been used in a novel, "Dumb Witness" I think. It has also been used in a short story I have already read long ago - though with a different killer from the novel - but I am not sure it it the same until I have checked. This short story is basis for the novel, according to the book. So probably it is the other short story which diverges.

I also learned something interesting. I learned that when I see an Agatha Christie movie on TV which I know from the book, and they've changed the killer - she probably did it herself. She helped reworking some of her novels for screen plays and also she wrote plays for the stage which sometimes used part of the plot from a novel. So it is the real thing - she just wrote another version for the screen, it isn't evil TV people who have ruined the novel

It takes place in the real world, except the real world in this case has magic in it. However, it is not unfair like "The Buried Pyramid", where she suddenly two thirds through the book made the ancient Egyptian gods come alive. In this one, we are introduced to the magic and given an idea of the rules from the beginning. So it is more like the firekeeper world, just in our world with modern technology in it.

The key point the magic and the plot resolves about is Mahjong and old Chinese mystique and traditions. It has a bit too much tedious explanation at some points, to make sure she has explained every stupid detail some reader might point out afterward.

I still finds her writing style very catching. I enjoyed reading the book and I am certainly going the read the sequels.