Well, today we joined the 21st century and downloaded the American Idol Final and Finale to watch rather than watching the heavily edited, ad-filled version on ITV2. Am so glad I did because now I have the spectacular finale to keep – haven’t enjoyed an evening’s telly so much in ages.

Anyway here are some random thoughts on proceedings.

• Katharine wasn’t just a one-trick pony, she was a one-song pony
• Paris finally found her niche – the duet with Al Jarreau was the best of the night
• The best voice in the competition undoubtedly belonged to Mandisa
• Toni Braxton made Paula look sober
• I like Paula – I love how she puts her whole heart and soul into it
• The segment of Simon caressing his moobs was one of the funniest things I’ve seen this year
• Mary J was supremely ungenerous to Elliott (though she sounded bloody good)
• I wish Elliott had been in the final, a funky white boy final would have been aces
• I hope Elliott gets a career out of this, particularly if he learns to calm down on the vibrato
• Is it an excess of testosterone that made the male rockers hair fall out?
• Is that why Chris looks so grumpy all the time?
• The thought of ‘male bonding’ between Ace and Chris is, however, not unappealing
• It was a shame we didn’t see more of Melissa
• Poor Meatloaf
• Burt Bacharach is a god
• Farmbot from last year has turned into a more professional farmbot
• I would die of pride if my seventeen-year old daughter got to introduce Dionne Warwick
• Prince is still the coolest man on the planet, even if he was wearing Taylor’s jacket
• Taylor does not have the best voice in the competition, but I loved how he was so self-effacing in the group numbers and let the others shine, and the fact that he really is rather good at the harmonica, and that he thanked his fans and the band and everyone at the end, and that he made a bloody good job of In the Ghetto even though Toni Braxton was sexually harassing him. But most of all I love how he can take that cheesy load of old bollocks that is his new single and somehow turn it into a song which made tears roll down my cheeks.
• And David Hasselhoff agrees with me.

SOUL PATROL!

I hope you won’t find it terribly self-indulgent if I review the books I read on this blog. I’ve often thought about keeping a book diary and this seems as good a place to do it as any – a sort of chronicle of my life in books (bad as well as good), albeit started a bit late.

In fact, now I think about it, how marvellous it would be to be able to look back through a list kept since childhood. Maybe I should force the Minx to start one now? ‘Dear Diary, Today I read Miss Polly Had a Dolly 853 times, interspersed with the odd perusal of Knock Knock, Mr Croc (which is totally fab by the way) and the occasional run through of Baby Touch Rhyme Book complete with actions’.

But I digress. I was pleasantly surprised by Other People’s Marriages. It was one of the books that you pick up in haste in order to qualify for Waterstone’s 3-for-2 offer after you’ve been browsing for far too long and your baby is protesting grumpily in her buggy.

I don’t think I read chick-lit, but I suspect this book comes very close (the front cover certainly seems to think so). In fact I’d liken it most to the literary equivalent of Cold Feet – exceptionally easy-to-read, amusing and often unnervingly observant about the state of modern marriage.

The premise is a simple one. Anna is writing what could be her breakthrough non-fiction bestseller about marriage and is using her group of somewhat clichéd thirtysomething (now that was a fab TV programme) friends as case studies. (A propos, am I the only person in the world who doesn’t hang out in a group of three or four married couples who’ve all known each other for ever and don’t have any other friends?) Cue lots of introspection and dissatisfaction about the various marriages being dissected, and speculation about perfect Anna’s own relationship. As you would expect, each marriage unravels and then re-ravels in different ways, insights are gained, and perfect Anna’s relationship falls apart. Once I’d sorted out the various couples in my head, I ripped through the book, wincing occasionally when it got a little too close to the bone of my own marriage, and seeing all sorts of parallels between the marriages of the protagonists and those of my friends (and no, I’m not telling).

Unfortunately I didn’t like the ending much. Having successfully demonstrated that every marriage has its secrets and that marriage is by no means all its cracked up to be, Watson resolves all the various problems rather too tritely and finishes off with a wedding. But I suppose that’s the genre. Don’t buy this book expecting great literature, but if you’re looking for a surprisingly well-written, easy-to-read book to read by a swimming-pool this summer then this book should suit very well.

Oh how I wanted to enjoy this book.

In my third year at university I spent an incredible year ‘teaching’ (I use this term loosely) English in Perpignan in South West France. A very good friend of mine from uni was doing the same thing in Carcassonne, about 70 km or a shortish train journey to the north east, so I spent many weekends visiting her there or touring the area.

In the 1200s the region around Carcassonne was the battleground of the Albigensian Crusade, as the Northern French attacked the ‘heretic’ Cathars of the Languedoc in a landgrab disguised as a religious crusade. The history of that time is one of sieges, massacres, burnings alive and a land lost – the whole intermingled with stories of hidden treasure, Templar knights and, of course, the Holy Grail.

Everywhere you go in the region there are echoes of this past – in the funny old bookshops where books on Rosicrucianism and Occitan share shelf space with Tarot cards and crystals; in the sounds of the tourist industry cashing in on the romantic splendour and isolation of the Cathar castles; in the eccentric treasure-seekers who still flock to Carcassonne and Rennes-le-Chateau in the belief that the Holy Grail is somehow hidden around the next corner; and yes, in a certain wistful melancholy that still clings to some of these castles if you visit early in the day before the tourist hordes arrive.

And so, years before Dan Brown made the Holy Grail sexy, I became completely besotted with the Cathars and the history of the crusade.

Kate Mosse (sic)’s book is a timeslip novel set in present-day Carcassonne and its 13th century parallel. Its central characters are, unusually, female; it is tolerably well-written and the bits set in 13th century Carcassonne are evocative and apparently well-researched. Unfortunately the plot also features people being banged on the head every other chapter; two female heroines, without an ounce of common sense between them doing everything they can to put themselves in danger; two comic-book style female villainesses and the most incredibly fantastical and lazily-written denouement.

But, most unforgivably of all, the book is deadly dull. I didn’t care enough about the heroines, the tangled plot was far too knotty for me and I kept confusing the vast cast of characters and their similar-sounding French names (and I speak French). One day I’m going to analyse how Dan Brown can write shockingly bad novels which keep me turning pages faster than a windmill on acid, whereas I plodded through this one like a seaside donkey and can’t now, two weeks after finishing it, tell you much about the plot. And, oh, I so wanted to love it.

By the way, the press reviews quoted in the first few pages are EXTREMELY kind (and one of the reasons why I decided to buy the book), far kinder indeed than the customer reviews on Amazon. Could it be anything to do with the fact that the author is the co-founder of the Orange Prize for Fiction and a big literary cheese?