Spud - the Madness Continues ... by John Van De Ruit

South African John "Spud" Milton is back with another year's diary about his friends and foibles as a scholarship student in a prestigious boarding school: still struggling to understand girls, still waiting for his hormones to kick in, and still struggling to understand his lessons.

While I really enjoyed the first book in this series, this one left me a bit cold. The diary format seemed to turn dull here, just a rote entry-by-entry list of events rather than a more fleshed-out story of the boys' hijinks. And this time there's no "cast of characters" in the beginning to help you remember who's who (everybody's got a nickname).

Spud by John Van De Ruit

Proving that boarding schools are the same the world over, this is young John "Spud" Milton's diary: his first ventures away from home, his making friends and forming life-long bonds, and the dream of finding a girl to kiss. Along the way we also meet his odd-ball parents, his senile granny they call Wombat, and a whole cast of characters that make Spud's life interesting.

This book is head-and-shoulders above most of the genre - it could easily have been a throw-away story and instead it's a hilarious book. The reader really becomes part of Spud's world (although I admit to a bit of trouble keeping the immense, nicknamed cast straight), and at the end I was delighted to find there is a second book, "The Madness Continues."