Mike Gerrard, known to most of our readers as the author of the PCN Adventures column, has produced The Adventurer's Notebook, the ideal tool for adventure addicts.

Throw away all those messy bits of paper. Here you have a scrapbook with pre-drawn map templates to keep all that vital information at your fingertips.

The "fill it in as you go along" section makes up more than half the book: 78 pages to be precise. It consists of blank tables with columns marked Location, Objects Found, Action Tried and Result, as well as the pages and pages of squares that make up the map templates.

The rest of the book is made up of an introduction to adventuring, some hints and general advice, a history of adventures and three appendices.

The hints section is aimed at both the beginner and the seasoned player. Sprinkled with a liberal helping of examples from a variety of games, the various pitfalls and tricks that can overcome them are described.

Adventures tell a story, in much the same way that storytellers of yore did - or so Mr. Gerrard would have us believe. He also sees the role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons as a major influence on computer adventures.

The appendices contain Mr. Gerrard's recommendations as to which adventures are worth playing, a list of useful addresses (of software houses) and a glossary of synonyms for when you get stuck for words. My main criticism of the book is the limited range of adventures mentioned in the recommended section. A table of adventures with some kind of rating would have been more useful, and why on earth aren't Apple games mentioned at all? Some of the first adventure implementations were on an Apple.

Apart from this minor gripe, The Adventurer's Notebook is an excellent book which will make any ardent adventurer's life a lot easier.

Leah Batham