I decided to read something I normally hate: a cosy mystery. You know one of those mysteries where everything is tidily wrapped up at the end and everyone lives happily ever after? An Agatha Christie kind of mystery. They are so not my thing. But then someone was raving about Barbara Neely's Blanche White books and they sounded interesting.

Iloved Ashley Hope Perez's heartbreaking Out of Darkness set in late the 1930s in a small town Texas. It should win all the YA awards.

I enjoyed Ready For This, which was created by the people behind Dance Academy and Redfern Now, and really it's what you'd get if you crossed Redfern Now with Dance Academy

One of my fave TV shows is Into the Badlands because martial arts staged well and magically and saturated colours and eye candy and coherent plot and world building. It has a strong diverse cast.

I can critique the bad; I can take the good, and I can add whatever I want.

I give people If You Came Softly when they demand proof that novels for teens can be as good as the best novels for adults.

I was wowed by Margo Jefferson's memoir, Negroland, which is about growing up black and privileged in Chicago in the fifties and sixties. It was a window into an alien world. Obviously, I'm not black, but what was really alien to me was her family's focus on respectability. I was never taught when to wear white gloves, what length skirt is appropriate.