School Days 1951-62, by Gordon Smith. Published by Gordon Smith.

I can close my eyes, go back 50 years or so and bring it all – or a great deal of it – to life again: the swings, the football and rounders on the pitch, the Geo, the bandie pool. Dandy and Beano on Friday, news and weather forecasts only on the wireless.

Batalden: Shipwreck and Emi­gration, by Trond Strømgren. Strømgren Publishing.

Trond Strømgren is an unusual but confident Norwegian publisher. I say unusual because his imprint is “Strømgren Publishing: Batalden – New York – Tokyo”. You’d expect an international publisher to have office in the two cities right enough, but Batalden?

Fullsceilidh Spelemannslag are a complete pain in all sorts of ways.

Benny-benny Seawater: The First Day of the Summer Holidays by Lisa Johnson, illustrated by Katherine Laidlay. Published by The Shetland Times, £6.99.

Four Score Years and Ten, by James W. Irvine. Published by A. Irvine, £11.40.

United Through Sport, Orkney v Shetland – The story of the Junior Inter-County, by Jockie Wood. Published by The Orcadian Ltd at £23.99 and available from The Shetland Times Bookshop.

Stir It Up. CD produced by Anderson High School music group Tunester.

Serpentine, by Tom Morton. Mainstream Publishing, £9.99.

This interesting new thriller from Tom Morton is about The IRA, terrorists, golf, bomb plots, sabot­age, murders, corruption and violence in the extreme.

The book is set initially in Gaza, as the hero of the story, Mark Murricane, is kidnapped while trying to free an already kidnapped businessman.…

Lifeboat Heroes by Edward Wake-Walker. Haynes Publish­ing, £19.99.

Most of us can only try to imagine it. But there are a number of people in Shetland who know only too well what it is like to be woken from a warm, comfy bed in the early hours of a wild winter’s day by the alarm…

Kindly Folk and Bonny Boats, by Gloria Wilson. History Press, £12.99

When one is old enough to look back over quite a few decades, it’s somewhat disconcerting to realise that many things once universal and seemingly everlasting are now rare and historical. Such is the case with fishing boats; you’ll search far and wide today…