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.

I was very keen to read this after enjoying Patrick's Chaos Walking series. This is definitley adult turf, but could be enjoyed by teens who liked his earlier books. For this story Patrick has taken a Japanese folk tale and infused it into the lives of a dysfunctional family living in contemporary London. All the action stems from an encounter the main character has on a freezing winter night in his backyard with a large crane, with a five foot arrow through it's wing. The next day a mysterious Japnese women artist arrives at his print shop and life starts looking up.

In this powerful book, Tom Lubbock, chief art critic at the UK Independent newspaper, describes the last two or three years of his life. Lubbock was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2008, a tumour positioned in the area of his brain associated with language. The book chronicles the decline of his articulacy and his struggle with it, and the awareness of his imminent death.

Brad Tolinski is the editor of Guitar World magazine, and has interviewed Jimmy Page a number of times over a period of years, and this book is gleaned from 50 hours of those interviews. This is a book about Jimmy Page the guitarist, rather than Jimmy Page the man, but is still fascinating for any fan of Led Zeppelin. It's quite technical in parts, but none the less interesting for that; how Led Zeppelin made the noise they made is always interesting.

A few years ago, I stumbled across Kathleen Jamie's earlier essay collection (I think Bill Manhire had reviewed it, or mentioned it somewhere) which I very much enjoyed, so I was naturally keen to read her new book with a similar theme to the last. Jamie is a poet, but as an essayist her concerns are landscape and wildlife, especially birds and whales, and our place in the world. She primarily writes about Scotland, especially the coast and islands, but her concerns are universal, and her writing beautiful.

I had really enjoyed A. M. Homes' memoir The Mistress's Daughter a few years back, but had never quite got on with her fiction; even the much-hyped This Book Will Save Your Life just didn't do it for me. This, however, I think is a tremendously good book, in that Jonathan Franzen State-of-the-Nation satirical genre. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and you do have to be in the mood for it, because this book, like Franzen's, is a bit of a steamroller.