Books

Joe Jonas is ready to settle down with Ashley Greene.

The 21-year-old singer – who has previously romanced Taylor Swift, Camilla Belle and Demi Lovato - has been dating the ‘Twilight Saga’ actress since last summer and pals believe this is his most serious relationship yet.

So ladies, you’re sitting there wondering how to crack a tough guy and make him your own?

No? Well, if you were, then wonder no more because David Good can give you the inside scoop.

And if you’re not, then this book certainly provides an entertaining read if nothing else.

But let’s start with who David is; he was this year’s ‘Bachelor Pad’ winner, and he also starred on season five of ‘The Bachelorette’.

I’ve just finished reading the e-book format of 'The Man Code' – you can see more about the book and formats available at Mancodebook.com – and though I can’t say that I’m now truly and fully versed with the mysteries that make up the “man’s man”, I don’t feel I’ve wasted a few hours of my life either.

Russell Brand has revealed he once had sex with nine women in one night.

The comedian admits at the height of his womanising he would often bed multiple girls in the same day and achieved the incredible number of conquests during a trip to Ireland.

Speaking about his prior sex addiction, he told Big Issue magazine: “I was having sex with different women three, four, five times a day. It was bacchanalian … in Ireland, nine in one evening.”

The ‘Arthur’ star’s former lovers include supermodel Kate Moss, Australian actress Teresa Palmer and allegedly Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriend Holly Madison.

I made a rookie mistake reading The Bourne Ultimatum: I assumed that my rudimentary knowledge of the Bourne films would carry me through this. That's not the case, of course, and having not read the preceding two novels in this trilogy, I was high and dry and very very confused.

There's so much that doesn't add up - Jason Bourne is David Webb is Delta and he's married with kids and also quite old. Retired, in fact, from the international spy/assassin game. Conklin - who I remember as one of the main villains from the films - is in fact a close confidant of Bourne's. 

Emma Donoghue's Room is a novel you almost can't escape in bookshops at the moment. However, having read the synopsis, I'd almost managed to convince myself that it was a kind of 1984 style novel in which everyone lived in isolated pods. Not so. In case you didn't guess, Room is a unique story of entrapment and escape told from a child's point of view.

I rarely review non-fiction books here on Shout, but I'll make an exception for this one. David Kessler's The End Of Overeating is a comprehensive look at the science behind rising obesity levels in the western world.

You don't read a book like this without a reason. For me, I'd decided a while back to tackle my own dependence on takeaways. But without a clear starting point, this habit of phoning for a Chinese when I couldn't be bothered cooking was becoming a problem. I hit 34 this year, so it's high time I took my nutrition and figure seriously. But how?

For me, All Together Dead is the novel where Charlaine Harris begins to pull out of a 2-3 novel slump. Wisely ditching the majority of werewolf characters, she drags Sookie Stackhouse into a vampire summit, simplifying the story immensely and delving deeper into the world of the undead than ever before.

In fact, even Sookie's fairy godmother Claudine warns her that by attending the vampire summit, she'll never be able to break her association with the vampire hierarchy.

Basically, Sookie is employed by Sophie Anne LeClerq as a telepath at the summit to make sure there are no surprises from the human guests. For the first time in ages, Sookie meets Barry The Bellboy, the only other telepath she knows. Barry is now employed by vampires in a similar capacity as Sookie.

From the outset, there's weirdness. There are deaths, and it's clear that someone's trying to sabotage the summit. Sophie-Anne's due to be tried for the death of her vampire husband, and Sookie's an important part of her defense. The Arkansas vampires (or what's left of them) are keen to see Sophie Anne punished, even though she wasn't responsible for the killing of Peter Threadgil.

I don't know about you, but everybody in our immediate circle is raving about Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. The abiding impression I'm being given is that a shining light in the genre of crime fiction wrote three amazing books, then died before he could see the impact of his work.

It's perhaps arguable that Larsson's trilogy shot to such heady heights because of his death and some smart marketing on the part of the publisher. Nevertheless, who are we to argue with the massive commercial success that the books have achieved recently?

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Some trivia: The novel was originally titled Men Who Hate Women.

The Plot: Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist and publisher recently convicted of libel. Blomlvist is part-owner of Millennium, a financial magazine that frequently exposes corporate malpractice. He withdraws from work to save the face of the publication, but receives a tempting offer from an industrialist called Henrik Vanger to write a history of his family. The real purpose of Vanger's request is to have Blomkvist investigate a murder in the family that happened over 30 years ago.

Sixth novel in the Sookie Stackhouse series, Definitelty Dead, sees Sookie head off on yet another trip. This time, it's Louisiana, and she's got the unpleasant task of winding up her cousin Hadley's estate.

It's here that Charlaine Harris makes her first major faux pas in the Southern Vampire Mysteries - she fails to tells us the backstory to Hadley becoming a vampire and being killed by a jealous lackey of the Queen of Louisiana. There's a reason for this, of course. It was already covered in a short story Harris wrote. No comfort to me though, because I only found that out later, after I'd read the short story compilation A Touch Of Dead.

Nevertheless, the reader is wrong-footed by this obscure storyline developing, and I'd say it's partially responsible for some of the negative reviews Definitely Dead has received.