Be Excellent To Each Other

1. The Sentinel - Lee Child

25th Reacher book. Usual type of Plot, Reacher arrives in a town, helps people, hits people and leaves.

1. A Deadly Education - Naomi Novik.

A story of a school for wizards, one which is safer for kids than the outside world but not by much, and in which everything is trying to kill the pupils. No teachers, because it's not safe enough, so instead the school itself looks after education, but capriciously. Great. I had two criticisms; occasionally the language gets in a tangle and I had to read sections a few times to follow what was going on (like when you get lost in double negatives). And once or twice I thought it showed its "oh god, please grab me for Netflix!" cards a bit too much - overly descriptive to no good effect, and I almost expected a stage direction. But outside of that, there are compelling characters, it's funny in places and vaguely unsettling in others, and the protagonist is full of hate for everyone but you learn why and watch her change through the book. I'll read the second, for sure.

2. Proud - Gareth Thomas.

His autobiography covering his rugby career and his first Ironman. About him living a lie for most of his life, and the problems it caused him, and him finally coming out.

I have always liked Alfie, he was an awesome rugby player and a great ambassador for the sport. Also one of the few openly gay sportsman, and it was a hard read learning how complex and hard emotionally his life was.

2. Sad Little Men - Richard Beard. The author is about the same age as Johnson, and went to a similar school, Radley. He now lives nearby, and uses pandemic walks to ponder the significance of a private education and how it shapes people. It mirrors, though more eloquently, my own pandemic experience, which made it particularly compelling, and I was already sold on the thesis - that traumatising kids with boarding schools is deeply unhealthy. I liked especially a sequence at the end, where he outlines the case for how such a school might produce a dangerous Johnson - and then says ah, but I was trained to argue either side of it, and then pick whichever side was most personally advantageous. Which I think is a much better criticism/satire than just making the argument.
There's a podcast from The Bunker with the author if you're interested.

What the actual fuck?

Haha oh my

How tall is the writer? I am guessing 5'

Is that hair that stretches down to her ass, or hair that is as long as the hair growing in the protagonist's natal cleft?

I think it's hair that's the same length as her black ass.

I think it's hair that's the same size as a certain colouration of donkey

That's what I said.

First book of the year!

1.) Seveneves - Neal Stephenson.

The moon explodes! Complicated stuff happens, resulting in the sole seven surviving female members of the human race being on the ISS! Five thousand years later, more complicated stuff happens! I really like Neal Stephenson, and have read most of his stuff. I can imagine this book irritating someone who is not a fan immensely though.

Hang on a minute, everyone is talking about her hair and not her TITS WITH EYES

2.) Neuromancer - William Gibson.

Man, this book takes me back. I first read it when I was about 15 and fucking loved it, and still do. What's not to love? Scheming AIs, Rastafarian astronauts with sawn-off shotguns, beautiful women with mirrored eyes and razorblade fingers, a grand heist, insane clones and genetically engineered ninjas.

How the hell is this not a Netflix / Amazon Prime series? Come on Bezos, pull your finger out and turn this genre defining novel into something awesome. But make it better than Johnny Mnemonic.

1) Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay

In true Jazzy fashion 100% of the books I've read so far this year have been by Linwood Barclay. This one was good! Apart from the "my tits are looking at you" extract above, obv. Who did it? Why they do it? What they do next? Find out in Trust Your Eyes!

Here's what Jazzy said about it: https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1073654#p1073654 . Clearly she has a higher tolerance for THE ALL SEEING TITTY than I do.

Yes, yes, alright, Jazzy! I already bought one on special, and I'm looking forward to popping up with it read very soon but now, um, crikey.

Ha! I still have about seven to read, but I haven't bought them yet. I need to make some space by reading what I already have.

I know I really enjoy them, but I think that's because they are easy reading when I am tired and I like books where the same characters run through them. Also, he does keep me guessing in some places.

Nothing deep and meaningful, but that's not what I'm after 30 mins before I go to sleep either.

Up your game, Joans.

3. The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu. First book of a science fiction trilogy that reveals its plot and intrigues slowly and cleverly. The author's aiming for 'pure' sci-fi, not a commentary on current life, and succeeds, I think. It also, perhaps because it's from China, doesn't hit the sci-fi tropes I might have looked for. I enjoyed it, and I'll get onto the second eventually.

3.) Sharpe's Tiger - Bernard Cornwell

My Dad has all of these, so I'm going to try gradually going through them in chronological order. A young Sean Bean takes part in the Siege of Seringapatam, against the forces of Tipu Sultan. There's a secret mission! Tigers! All the Wonders of the Mysterious Orient! An evil sergeant and some drunken incompetent officers! Cornwell seems to be pretty solid at this sort of stuff and can probably write these in his sleep now. I like them, they're pretty easy reads and contain all the old-timey fighting adventures i could desire.

4. Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World - Otto English. Does a reasonable job of not allowing this to just be a gotcha-style debunking of 10 things, with a look at why such myths come about. I think there are one or two errors, or at least debatable points expressed as fact, but it's readable and interesting without being essential.

5. The Blade Itself: Book One (The First Law 1) - Joe Abercrombie. No idea why I picked this up, and it has sat on my Kindle for a long time, intimidating in length because I got the whole trilogy. But I'm glad I did, as it's tremendous Fantasy stuff. Classic style, I suppose, with chapters alternating between different characters who are on various collision courses. I found the whole thing gripping, but despite there being little respite in stuff happening, it still built to an even greater climax. I'll be onto book 2 imminently.

1. The Holocaust by Laurence Rees

As recommended by Squirt last year. I don't have much more to say that he hasn't already mentioned, but whilst it's heavy-going and very traumatising, Rees gets the balance between personal testimony, accounts of what was going on, and the wider context about right for a book of this size and on this topic.

2. Cathedrals of Steam by Christian Wolmar

Histories of the mainline railway terminii in London. Enjoyable enough, particularly if you've read Wolmar's railway books before, but I felt it did whizz through the post-war period a bit too fast.

Faster trains, innit.

Trying to read some of the books I have that are by people I know for something other than writing, so here are the first two:

6. Born a Crime - Trevor Noah. I'm not a huge fan of his, and am sure I'm missing something. This book fills in his upbringing, and boy that was a time. At its best, this is a great introduction to apartheid South Africa. And some of Noah's comic style comes through, in what might be transcripts in between chapters. Good, but not great.

7. Duty of Care - Dominic Pimento. If you follow him on Twitter, you might remember him as one of the doctors giving us warning about NHS pandemic unpreparedness, and his book will take you back to that time and through it, via his experiences. Illuminating, though as it's about recent history it is amazing just how quickly it has dated. Pimento resigned when Cummings refused to, and talks about that in an afterword - lockdown rule breaking, public lies and concocted stories. That bit is bang up to date.

I'm a fan of his - I think I've read pretty much all of his at some point. His newest one will be on my list soon!

4.) Chess 101 - David Schloss.
I'm trying to get my brain working again with some chess. This is a bit of an odd one - hardly anything about actually playing, but a decent bit "around" playing. How tournaments work, chess etiquette, approaches to play etc. Only about 100 pages so not bad to flick through.

I think I really enjoyed his stuff, but these days all newer fantasy writers seem to meld into one. I can never place characters and plots into each series until I get halfway through the first book again...

Given I spent some time on Joe Haldemann's author page, looking through the books to find the title and wondering why I couldn't find this book, I can't quite claim to be a fan yet. But as soon as the very distinctive name sticks, I'll read some others!

1) I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

A collection of short stories about robots written in the 1940s and set in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries ( i.e. about nowish!). He gets something's really right, but he is off on other things (at one point they have to wait to get a photograph developed) and all the robots and computers are massive because they use vacuum tubes and so on. On the whole I still loved it (first read them in the 90s) and my plan is to read all the robot books, then Galactic empire and then Foundation. But I'm not always great at sticking to plans

Finished this on Monday, so maybe I'm going for finish 12 this year.

1) Stephen Kind - Mr Mercedes

I think it was Trooper that recommend this set of three books to me and I must say that the first one does not disappoint. I'm not a big lover of King's more fantasy stuff* - I wish I was, but it just doesn't grab me. This to me is like a return to his old writing and more classic 'horror'. I really enjoyed it and it doesn't pull any punches. Looking forward to the next two now!

*Thinking about it - it's the ones in fantasy words I don't get on with, because I still enjoyed IT, Firestarter, Carrie etc.

Don't worry, I still have more Barclay to get through, I just don't own them yet and I really need to make some space so I'm reading through what I have first.

It might have been me that recommended them to you. I loved them.

There's a kinda fourth book in that trilogy as well, The Outsider

Ah, then thank you.

Ooh, I'll have a look.

8. Find you First - Linwood Barclay. I've finally joined in. A rollicking read that kept me up late - switched the light off at 1 then couldn't sleep and read for another hour. The plot's tight, tight enough that it becomes clear where it's going perhaps a bit too early - but no sneaky "ha, here's someone you haven't met so can't have thought of" surprises, which I respected. Some slightly more implausible events towards the end, but it had more than enough credit for me to go with them by then.

Ha! He's got you now!

Flesh and Bone and Water - Luiza Sauma. A story about growing up, and loss, in Brazil. Lovely. And sad.

2) The Medium-Sized Book of Boring Car Trivia Volume 2 by Sniff Petrol

I liked the first one, and this one is the second one. Of it. I liked it.

Have a random piece of trivia: The TV advert for the launch of the 1990 Rover Metro was directed by Ridley Scott.

2) The Rest of the Robots - Isaac Asimov

Another collection of short stories involving Robots, mostly made by US Robotics and Mechanical Men and involving Dr Susan Calvin in some way or other.

I don't think this collection is quite as good as the first, but there are still some gems in there, I spotted where a lot of the twists in the stories where going, but I don't know if that's because I could dimly remember them from 25-30 years ago or not.

I enjoyed it, but I am glad to be moving away from the short stories on to the novels.

The Caves of Steel next.

Normal People - Sally Rooney. From near the end, this sums it up perfectly "the chemistry between two people who, over the course of several years, apparently could not leave one another alone." I didn't see it on TV, but it was so big that I did see a parody of it, and it took some time not to hear the Dead Ringers sketches while reading. They never quite left - don't get me wrong, I don't think they were actually funny, so the world hasn't gone mad, but they were very well observed, I now realise. It's really well written, an easy read despite being insightful. Also probably much more meaningful, even heart-wrenching, if you're actually questioning your place in the world and growing up, as the characters are - I could only relate to it that way with an effort of will. Liked it, didn't love it.

5.) Count Zero - William Gibson.
Sequel to Neuromancer up above. Spooky voodoo happenings in the Internet, mixed with wars between mega-corporations and the odd insane space-prophet. Not quite as good as Neuromancer I think, but I still really liked it, and the voodoo-ness makes it a bit more than a standard techno-thriller. I think I'm going to revisit all of Gibson's work in some sort of order this year.

3) The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov

In the 35th Century Elijah Baley (a New York Plainclothes detective) and R. Daneel Olivaw (a Spacer Humanoid Robot) have to solve the murder of a prominent Spacer in SpaceTown. There are conspiracies, contrivances, semi dystopic descriptions of Earth struggling with a population of 8 Billion people! (how could the planet cope with such numbers! - Come on Asimov, you needed to have dreamed bigger than that!) and lots of exclamations of Jehoshaphat!

It's not as good as I remember it, and Baley is a bit of dick. He uses the "House MD" method of detectiving, but it's still really well written, and aside from some of the references to 50s technology still feels futuristic.

11. I'm a Joke and so are you - Robin Ince. Interesting journey through how the mind works, from his POV.

12. All the Lonely People - Mike Gayle. I loved his first book, My Legendary Girlfriend, but really couldn't remember why through most of this, which is twee and cliched. But he knows how to get an emotional response, at least from me, so it was satisfying, just about. The plot is fairly obvious, though there's one twist I didn't see at all. It still comes across less "wow" and more "had to go there to introduce something surprising", but fair enough.

3. The Geneva Trap - Stella Remington

Book 7 in the Liz Carlyle series. I do love these books. It follows the cases of Liz an MI5 agent. A lot more subtle than Bond and no gadgets

I love espionage thrillers. I photographed Stella Creasy not long after her first book came out and she’d retired from the SIS. We had a fascinating conversation

Cool. I bet she was interesting.

3. United Ireland: Why Unification is Inevitable and How It will Come About by Kevin Meagher
Another from the "UK is so over, bro" genre that's been blooming in recent years. This one goes into quite some detail about various models Irish unification could take. As his focus is on the present and likely future, Meagher's coverage of the history and how we got here this part skims over a lot, and sometimes makes points that attracted my curiosity but doesn't develop them as to do so would interrupt the narrative and argument but gave me lots to think about however. His main argument is that it would probably be an economical benefit to the Six Counties regardless of the final settlement and as Brexit moves trade from east-west to north-south these deepening connections will lead to increased political co-operation no matter much the Unionists might want it to be otherwise.

4. The Brilliant Abyss by Helen Scales
Eye-opening book at about the deep sea. The first half is about the variety of life found in the depths (Hadal Zone is my new favourite term), and Scales's descriptions are so evocative you don't really mind the lack of illustrations other than a few colour plates. The second half covers human exploitation of the abyss, climate change, and how damaging moves to open up this space to deep sea mining will be. After the sheer sense of adventure and wonder in the first half, I was left feeling pretty depressed by the end. But it's a part of our planet that sadly doesn't get much attention and I'm glad I had my eyes opened to this strange world.

5. You Don't Want to Know by James Felton
A collection of grotesque stories from history and biology, with a high level of scatology , premature deaths, and sexual misadventures. Most of the tales I've heard before as it's ground that things like QI and golden era Cracked.com have trod many times, but Felton's retelling of them is enjoyable and each story doesn't outstay its welcome. It's clearly designed for dipping into when you're otherwise engaged.