I will own up right at the start.  I have been a fan of the Rolling Stones since the early 60’s.  I have been to a Stones live concert.  “Jumping Jack Flash” has been one of my favorite numbers since the mid-60’s.  As regards a book written by Stones guitarist Keith Richards, you could expect that I would be biased.  Let me assure you, I did not need to be kind in this review.  Life is one of the best books outlining the era of rock music (ISBN 987-0-316-03441-8, Back Bay Books, 2010).

One of the most eye catching covers, Deadly Animals by Gordon Grice (ISBN 978-0-241-95129-3, Penguin, 2012) just had to be taken home to read all about “savage encounters between man and beast”.

Many years ago I had a Maiden Aunt who had been a member of the WAF (Women’s Air Force), who gave me a wonderful book on aviation, and she inscribed it with the words, “Hoping you enjoy planes as much as I have done.”

We have been going through a nostalgic wave of Titanic proportions with the 100 year anniversary this month of the sinking of the “unsinkable” ship.  That being the case, I felt the Book Review column may as well follow on, and Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember (ISBN 978-0-141-39969-0, 1956 but reprinted 2012, Penguin Books) the classic best selling account of the sinking of the Titanic beckoned from the local Bookazine shelves.

The latest Jack Shepherd crime novel is entitled A World of Trouble (ISBN 978-981-4361-51-4, Marshall Cavendish, 2012), written by well-known author Jake Needham and is the third in the series after Laundry Man and Killing Plato.

It had been at least a decade since I read Do’s and Don’ts in Thailand, and it did not surprise me that the current edition on the Bookazine shelves was now the 4th.  In an ever-changing country, such as Thailand, a book like this would have to change as well.  Undoubtedly, Thailand has become more westernized in the 10 years since my first reading, not all to the good I will add, but those changes in the Thai perception of good and bad, right and wrong do mean new perspectives for an advisory book such as this.

The latest from British tele-personality Jeremy Clarkson is called Round the Bend (ISBN 978-0-718-15841-5, Penguin books 2011), and is a collection of Clarkson’s motoring columns in the Sunday Times.

Master Key to Thailand (ISBN 978-616-91113-0-6, Scand-media corporation, 2012) has been written by Kenno Simonsen and covers culture, communication and management, and was the subject of his thesis on cross-cultural psychology.

With the recent death of the despotic ruler of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, and his son Kim Jong Un taking over, the parallel to Kim Jong Il’s ascendancy from his father Kim Il Sung is apparent.

Another book on life (and death) in Thailand’s prisons.  This one, A prayer before dawn and subtitled A nightmare in Thailand (ISBN 978-616-7111-20-9, Bamboo Sinfonia, 2012) was written by Billy Moore, an English likely lad.