True Crime is usually all I ever read (interspersed with the odd Val Wood who writes fiction stories about Victorian Hull, the odd biography and a true account style story).

I'm reading Bitter Blood by Jerry Bledsoe atm, a true family affair where a member of the family who is deranged and deluded is having an affair with his first cousin and then goes on a murder spree of other family members. Mr HWS always says if he dies in mysterious circumstances the police will arrest me on account of whats on my bookshelves alone

During the summer I came out of my comfort zone and read a spy true story about Operation Mincemeat, a very good read for anyone interested in spying operations during WW2.

Sequels are a blight on literature. The fantasy and SF genres in particular have suffered a calamitous drop in overall quality because of sequels.

Nowadays if you want to read something intelligent (or just well-written) you must either root out a specialist bookseller with a lot of floorspace (at best most genres receive no more than three floor standing bookshelves) or ride your luck with Amazon.

Whereas the small independents could be relied upon to split three small shelves half-and-half between serialised/movie-TV tie-ins and critically acclaimed/classics twenty years ago - now it's the former occupying 98% of space.

To make matters worse, genre artwork (especially SF) - which was often the foremost reason for purchase by younger readers - has now been dumped by most publishers as they consider it stigmatises the "product". Which is why practically every SF book these days is neutral black, white or god-awful chrome. The exceptions to the rule being cinema/TV tie ins - as if we haven't already seen enough pictures of Darth Vader or Doctor Who ...

I'm up to Gone Tomorrow and Without Fail is probably my favourite so far.

Best casting for Reacher would have been Dolph Lundgren about 20 years ago. That comparison shows you just how far wrong Tom Cruise was.

Not for me - the books are very formularic if that's a word and it depends on the how character driven the books are I suppose. I liked tripwire the best so far

Yes, they are pretty formulaic I agree. Tripwire was a good one, but there have been several of the series where I have guessed the 'twist' and that was one of them. Takes a bit of the shine off, sometimes.

Seeing as it's that time of the year, I reckon the Ghost of Christmas Past needs to come to visit you tonight and take you to watch Dolph Lungren's Jack Reacher. Tom Cruise might not have the physical presence of the Jack Reacher of the novels, but he's more Jack Reacher in every other respect than Lundgren could ever be.

I like Jack Reacher and think the books are good. But FFS they are Murder She Wrote for blokes. I can't understand why people just can't let go of him being this imposing giant.

Its probably the bit in most of the books that describe him as being 6 foot 5 inches with a 50 inch chest and weighing between 220 and 250lbs.

You may as well ask if Harry Potter really needed to be a young boy in the films.

Not only is he so big, but that size is purely natural as Jack Reacher hates the gym!

The Jack Reacher of the books is a ridiculous cartoon character. A bad ass Military Policeman who takes down the baddest of the bad special forces warriors??? You accept that utter drivel but aren't prepared to let go of Reacher being so big?

Of course the Jack Reacher of the films would be better with an imposing actor. But there's practically none of them around these days. Jason Statham and Channing Tatum are too of the biggest action stars right now. They're closer to being Tom Cruise than they are of being Reacher. If the film producers waited for a 6ft 5 giant who can portray Reacher, it would never get done.

You either accept the concept of a storyline or you don't, its how fiction works - see Star Wars.