It is always nice to meet someone in a pub who says "I've written my first book!" - so, naturally, I picked up Katie's novel as my next read. I'm glad that I did as it's a cracking crime story. It starts slowly, with a brilliantly observed satire of office life. The gossip, banal slogans, venal senior managers, and work-shy grifters are all there and jump off the page. You'll have met all of them if you've ever spent a moment in a modern open-plan office. It swiftly picks up the pace with a…
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404 Ink's "Inklings" series are short books with high ideals. This is a whirlwind tour through the ramifications of the rapid digitalisation of our lives. It provides a review of recent literature and draws some interesting conclusions. It is a modern and feminist take on Seeing Like A State - and acknowledges that book as a major influence. What are the dangers of static standards which force people into uncomfortable boxes? How can data be misused and turns against us? Rather wonderfully…
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What if, with your dying breath, you sent your lover back in time in order to change the fate of a ruined Earth? What if he sent a message back to his younger self to help seduce you? What if the Government intercepted a mysterious orb full of treasures from another dimension? What if…? This is a curious mish-mash of a book. Part sci-fi and part romance. I don't read enough romance to tell if that side of it is any good - it's all longing looks, furtive glances, and "what if"s. It was charming …
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Malcolm Croft (under the pseudonym Catherine Nappington) has produced a compendium of cat illustrations from ancient manuscripts. It's then peppered with a variety of regurgitated facts and captions of a sub-Facebook levels of humour. There are a few hundred pages of illustrations for you to flick through - but they're all devoid of context. As sumptuous as the images are, they're surround by commentary which wouldn't be out of place on a disused Tumblr blog. There's also a lot of discussion…
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My friend Manuel has sent me his latest book to review - and it is a corker. The best thing about this book is that it doesn't waste any time trying to convince you that Accessibility Is Good™. You're a professional web developer; you know that. Instead, it gets straight down to brass-tacks and gives you immediate and useful examples of what to do. You could read the book linearly - but it is much more suited to dipping into. Want to know exactly how to do something? There's almost certainly a…
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A friend mentioned that they were going to a Proust book club where they'd be discussing Swann's Way, the first volume of the masterpiece. "Well," I thought, "That sounds like a fun challenge!" It was not. I picked up the Standard eBooks version translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and started my journey. It starts with a young man having a wet dream and then, in excruciating detail, describing the process of waking up. The writing starts as dreamy but quickly becomes obtuse. The story (such…
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The purpose of table manners is to stop us killing each other. That's the rather provocative assertion in Margaret Visser's excellent deconstruction of why we have such elaborate and infuriating rituals around eating. It starts, naturally enough, with a chapter on human sacrifice. It is grim, violent, and soaked in blood. A delightful amuse-bouche this isn't! But it makes the case that this is (part) of the origin of our modern table manners. We no longer need to appease the gods and secure a …
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I rather enjoyed HMRC (Her Majesty's Royal Coven) and The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson. This is a sort-of prequel to the series. What if Anne Boleyn was a witch?!?! It's a fun enough book, but doesn't really go anywhere. Part of the problem is that the stories chapters flip back and forth in time. It is a tired literary trick and robs us of the gradual build-up of the characters. There's no real dramatic tension and no chance to guess which witch is wickedest. It also suffers from a lack of… …
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This is not a ‘resistance’ book. It is not a guide to activism. It is not a reflection on ‘how democracies die’ or how authoritarianism is on the horizon. It is an exploration of how, without questioning the very context in which resistance takes place, it is futile. This book is more about its subtitle than its title. It doesn't really provide new stories or new ways of thinking about the world - instead, it is probably best thought of as a toolkit for identifying the way right-wing grifte…
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About ⅔rds of the way through reading Janice Hallett's debut novel, The Appeal, I purchased her next book - The Twyford Code. The schtick is similar to the first. We, the reader, are taken through an epistolary series of audio files - voice notes from a recently released convict. There's intrigue, murder, regret, and redemption. The story isn't as tangled as The Twyford Code - here's it is one main protagonist. While his memories wander back and forth through time, the story is relatively l…
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Romeo and Juliet is obviously about a young Pakistani girl whose overbearing father wants to marry her off to a cousin, despite her age and wishes. How could it be anything but? ‘Oh dear, please don’t ruin Romeo and Juliet by talking about race!’ said a member of the public when the Globe hosted an anti-racist webinar on the play. You may be thinking this too. But worry not, because the play can’t be ruined. It can be opened up, however, and questioned, unpacked, challenged even I've reviewe…
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This is a fun bit of sci-fi. A bit tropey in places, but an excellent sense of world-building and a vicious cast of double-crossers. The protagonist is best described by one of the character's off-hand remarks about her being “The very best space fascist girl scout of them all.” Can you feel sympathy for someone who has been manipulated into being evil? What about if given every chance to change, they turn back to their abusers? Is it OK to use sexism to your own advantage? If you had the cha…
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