The Talented Mr Ripley is the uplifting tale of what can happen if you combine ambition, envy, and a truly flexible sense of identity.

It moves from the United State to Italy, and Italy, naturally, is dazzling. There is sun. There is wine. There are linen shirts fluttering meaningfully in coastal breezes. Dickie Greenleaf lives in a picturesque seaside town, painting mediocre art and doing absolutely nothing productive, which Tom finds both appalling and intoxicating.

What makes the novel deliciously unsettling is that Tom is not a snarling villain. He is polite. He appreciates good tailoring. He worries about being discovered the way most people worry about being late to dinner. You almost find yourself rooting for him, which says more about human psychology than is entirely comfortable.

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Our 4-minute unserious book review about Charlotte Bronte's classic, Jane Eyre. The story of a woman who absolutely refuses to calm down about injustice, no matter how inconvenient itmakes things for everyone involved. A principle we could do with remembering today.

It’s a tale of a fierce governess, a reformed brooder, one extremely flammable attic, and the enduring moral that if you simply refuse to compromise your principles for four hundred pages, things may eventually work out.

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A 4-minute unserious review of Richard Osman's cozy mystery, The Thursday Mystery Club. Subtitle: Why knit scarves when you can unravel homicides?

Find out if we think you should view with joy that the author’s retirees face the end of life with wit, friendship, and a total disregard for rules. Or whether the writing could be seen as being stereotypical condascending crock-lit which doesn’t do justice to Osman’s clear brilliance.

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“A road trip that makes Race Around the World look like a stroll through Costco”

Never laugh at dragons - but you can laugh at our 4-minute unserious book review of JRR Tolkien's epic story, The Hobbit. A mini adventure but with all your favourite characters - and you won't be interrupted by Precious.

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“With puzzles that would make a Sudoku champion roll their eyes”

Welcome to our 4-minute unserious book review of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s bestselling guide to running frantically through European tourist attractions while learning questionable art history.

Enter Robert Langdon, Harvard “symbologist,” a job that doesn’t really exist; Sophie Neveu, a French cryptographer whose main role is to explain things in an accent; and Opus Dei, a Catholic group portrayed here as shadowy monk assassins, with Silas, the world’s palest hitman.

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"If you thought your last family holiday was full of drama, you clearly haven’t met the residents of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is less a love story and more a multi-generational soap opera set in the English moors, featuring a cast of people who all desperately need therapy and maybe a long weekend at a spa."

A four-minute humorous book review of Wuthering Heights. A light-hearted literary commentary of the adventures of Cathy, Heathcliff et al, for book lovers and readers - it does contain spoilers of a sort (sorry), but they have been around for over 175 years...

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A four-minute humorous book review of Suzanne Collins' first book in The Hunger Games series - but shorter and a lot funnier than the novel. Oh, and if you haven't read it, it does contain spoilers of a sort - sorry.