Blurbs often describe history books as magisterial. This one does, and it is. It tells of the 500 years of Venetian history from 1000 to 1500, during which time the Venetian Empire developed and expanded their influence to become the richest and most powerful place on earth. They fought off rigorous challenges from The Turks, the Genoese and others to completely dominate trade in the Mediterranean. Then they fell apart.

In 1957, Madeleine Bunting's father John, a sculptor, signed a 50 year lease on an acre of land in the Hambleton Hills on the North York moors, and built a war memorial chapel. Madeleine traces the history of this particular plot of land, and through this tells the history of Britain, and of her family, and her relationship with her complex father. It's an extraordinary, unclassifiable book, a kind of memoir, but taking in history, natural history, environmentalism, politics, religion etc.

Juliet Darling's partner, well-known art curator Nick Waterlow, was murdered by his mentally ill son in 2009. He also killed his sister Chloe at the same time. This book is Juliet's account of this event, and its aftermath in her life; her anger and grief, and her love for Nick. It can be read a little like Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, I guess, how one person deals with tragedy. An account of such an event can't be other than moving, but something about this book made me very uncomfortable.

I haven't read an issue of Granta cover to cover in quite a while, but a few days at the beach recently gave me the opportunity. I guess the theme of betrayal should have given me a clue, but this is a might dark issue! There is tremendous writing here, both fiction and non-fiction, by writers familiar and unfamiliar; and a hellish photo essay documenting urban poverty in San Francisco.

Having reinvented the dystopian Young Adult fiction with his Chaos Walking series, Patrick Ness follows up with a novel for adults, and what a novel! The first chapter introduces sad, broken, middle-aged George, woken one cold night by an unearthly sound. He finds a wounded crane in his garden, shot through the wing by an arrow. Not knowing what to do, he removes the arrow, the crane flies away, and George's life changes forever. This is a most unexpected and surprising novel, it is not quite what it appears, and it to say much more would be to give too much away.

This book arrived in my samples last week and very quickly overtook it's rivals in the "To be read pile". It is a very compelling summary of what sports science has to say now about exercise and health. As an exercise obsessive I found it great that it confirmed that I am improving my general health, lifting mood and putting off the big terminal nasties like Heart disease, Dementia and Cancer. Most eye opening of all was the fact of how little exercise a day will make a big difference. Just the 20 minutes a day mentioned in the title is where the biggest health gains lie.