Be Excellent To Each Other

No worries. I doubt the world will miss my two sentences about a Raymond Chandler novel!

Well good job, because I can't!

Nettle and Bone - T Kingston princess sets off on a quest to murder a prince. There's magic and all sorts in this joyful book.

The Looking Glass War - John le Carré. Continuing my discovery of his work. This is the fourth George Smiley novel, though he's only in it from time to time. He's definitely in charge, but only behind the scenes as another agency tries incompetently to prove its relevance to the post war world. Apparently Le Carre was bothered by the veneration of the Spy who came into the cold, as people loved it more than spotting it was saying that spying was often ineffective. So this one goes all out on the incompetence, and has an air of 50s failure all over it. I found it a bit depressing, which I guess is the idea, but it's not a classic for me. There was a radio adaptation with Simon Russell Beale which I might look out for, though - if anyone can carry this sort of story, it's him.

Harrier 809 by Rowland White

The story of the Falklands war, with a focus on the fleet air arm’s Sea Harriers and RAF Harriers.
It’s quite amazing how they managed to prepare for war in such a short space of time, and how close we could have come to losing.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

It's the first in the Murderbot series. A security android overrides it's rule set chip and tries to remain hidden etc. It's OK, very OK.

Poor Murderbot.

Into the Beanstalk by J Paul Roe

This is more like it. Exceeding entertaining,rip roaring, cyberpunk adventure. Hits the notes and belts them out.

Snap, am listening to that at the moment. I share your critique, but a friend got really into the series so perhaps it takes a while to get going

Kennedy 35 - Charles Cumming. Decent thriller. Bit weird on the tech, might just be the difficulty of describing it for everyone, but feels like someone trying to pass on what they've been told ("use this iphone, we've put some software on it that'll open the doors"). And it's obsessed with giving you brand names, as is the Tom Clancy-a-like I've moved onto. Maybe all these authors get together and discuss 'high end' (yuck, call it expensive, or something different, once in a while) shopping.

Luck of the Draw - Charles Murphy. The memoir on which Masters of the Air (Apple TV) is based. It's more factual and less holyeffingshitbulletbulletflak than the TV series, but interesting enough. Long appendices listing every plane and crew make it look longer than it is. Good testimony.

Merckx - Half Man Half bike by William Fotherington

Cyberpunk adventure in which an enhanced humanoid is a taxi cab for the upper classes. No only kidding. It's a well written and interesting biography of Eddie Merckx

I’m reading the latest. It isn’t very good. I literally feel like I’m just reading each word to get through the book

I’ve been pondering this. I’m really disliking the latest book. Too many 2D characters with very little plot. I’ve read all of them, and this is definitely the weakest and I can’t really remember anything about the others. So, let’s be polite, and call it marmite. I certainly wouldn’t recommend continuing if you don’t like the first book.

6.) Ramage - Dudley Pope
Mr Pope read the Hornblowers and thought "Hornblower thinks too much. And is too sad. And can't do cool things like kill Frenchmen with a throwing knife. I shall fix this." It's no classic of the genre and he's no CS Forester or Patrick O'Brian but they're a pretty decent read and I might keep an eye out for the next one.

Marc Cameron - Tom Clancy's Code of Honour (Jack Ryan). Pretty good, more adventure with Jack Ryan, Chavez and Clark making the hard decisions. Keeps up the oo-rah tone of Clancy's books, and thankfully modernised, with no-one now 'lighting up' a computer. There's a subplot that disappears for too long, but it holds together and I kept reading. Not quite as intense as the early Clancy ones, but the good-bad narrative is more complicated now.

Raynor Winn - Landlines. Salt Path author continues to walk with her husband whose degenerative condition has always improved with long walks before. But surely it can't this time? She's hard on herself, I'm certain she's thoughtful and lovely in person, but her self-reflection comes across as a bit more critical than anyone else would be. It's not at all annoying, mind. They meet people on the way and those interactions are often the beating heart of what I thought was originally an extended love letter to her husband. Lovely book, just like the others. And there's a running joke of people recommending her own book to her that made me laugh every time.

Mick Herron - Spook Street. Kindle bargain, no.4 in the series, and I couldn't resist getting ahead of the TV adaptation. I don't think I've read another series where the TV characters then inform reading the book - probably Morse and Frost have done similar, though. But I wonder if I'd have found Jackson Lamb in the book as funny without having 'seen' him through Gary Oldman. It is laugh out loud funny, often, as a result.

3. I, Partridge by Alan Partridge

2011 celeb memoir. Very hard not to read it in his voice.

4. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Easy and cosy crime thriller that could do with being 50% shorter and dropping all the needless details and references that will date quickly. Felt like a Nanowrimo attempt to get the word count up at times.

The audiobook, read in character by Steve Coogan, is masterful.

7) Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis. A sci-fi tale of alien visitors on earth in 2007 getting exposed. It's ok, but didn't grab me as much as I'd have expected

4: Interplanetary Thrive - Ginger Booth

I quite like this series, the books are about 5 hours long, so not a massive read, and I like the characters. It is about them trying to save a colony after they have left earth.

7.) The Ship That Died of Shame - Nicholas Monsarrat
Quite a neat little book of short stories from the The Cruel Sea guy. All are good but all but the title story are fairly inconsequential and I doubt I'll remember them in a year. He appears to written a heck of a lot more books than I though so I've got even more to add to my "To Read" list.

Rachel Joyce - The Music Shop. Whimsical story of a parade of shops, including a music shop that sells only vinyl records. She does whimsy very well, and it's a lovely book.

Kazuo Ishiguro - The Buried Giant. Story of the ancient Britons. Lore and weirdness in the air all around as people explore ancient britain and what on earth is going on post Arthur. Kind of about Britons and Saxons, kind of about life and death. I really enjoyed it.

Alexander Mccall Smith - From a Far and Lovely Country. I'm in Africa, only about 10 hours from the Botswana border, so it felt right to be reading this. Actually heard people in the street refer to people in passing 'Rra' (uncle/esteemed elder gent) and 'Mma', which was as much of a thrill as the first time I saw a yellow school bus for real in the US. You know what you're getting with these books, but he captures something and this is as much of a pleasure as the others.

The Looking Glass by J Paul Roe

Cyberpunk shenanigans continue in this page turning adventure. Some slight wobbles but it stays in the tracks and continues to be enjoyable

5.Femina by Janina Ramirez

Enthusiastic look at women in the middle ages. My only gripe is that while there are plenty of photographs, a few colour plates would have really shown the beauty of some of the manuscripts featured. Thankfully most were easy to find online.

8.) The Scandal of Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
A collection of cheery short stories where Father Brown solves murders by being wise and seeing things how they really are. I've read some of these before I think, though, but certainly not all of them.

6.Be Funny or Die: How Comedy Works and Why It Matters by Joel Morris

Enjoyable dissection of what makes a joke work. Reading it isn't going to get me an arena show, in the same way that music theory won't help me finish my symphony, but interesting to see how what techniques comedians use then try to spot them when watching an act. Highpoint is his takedown of so-called edgy comedians.

7.The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

A look at how people got caught up in Internet conspiracies, starting with Gamergate and online forum culture long before the first "Q drop". Interesting and alarming about how it tapped into people's vulnerabilities and how it's changed over the years, drawing on Richard Dawkins' original concept of the meme. The conclusion ties it back to classic sociology work on cults and a rather depressing view that no amount of civic education and fact checkers will shake people out of their delusions.

8. Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer

A history of a country that no longer exists, from its wartime beginnings to its absorption into the Federal Republic. The book felt like it wanted to be a comprehensive social history of the DDR, but the majority of the text is a chronological history of East Germany's governing Socialist Unity Party. The narrative is interspersed with short stories of ordinary lives and the occasional digression into something about life and culture but never really enough to capture the atmosphere of the place. High point is a discussion of East Germans' fondness for demin and the lengths the regime went to procure or produce blue jeans.

8 ) Why the Germans Do it Better: Notes from a Grown-Up Country by John Kampfner. I always thought that Germany felt like a country I'd enjoy living in, and this confirms it for me. A really engaging look at how their society has developed, and why it's so much more civilised than here.

9) The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. A great bit of sci-fi story telling. Definite Firefly vibes with an interesting crew of alien races. There are three more books in the same universe, but only very loosely connected.

10) The Goodbye Cat, by Hiro Arikawa. A series of short stories about cats, humans and loss that had me feeling very emotional.

9. Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas

TLDR: The world isn't as predictable as we'd like to think, and that's ok.

I've enjoyed Klaas's previous work on politics and corruption (not to mention his interviews with Philomena Cunk), and enjoy reading his articles and blog Substack. This one, whilst an enjoyable read about why small things have big consequences, just wasn't as satisfying.

Klaas has a keen ear for a great anecdote, and the stories he tells to illustrate points are fun. I also really enjoyed his takedowns of the over-quantification of the contemporary social and political sciences. However, ultimately I didn't find the book's argument that compelling, and it quickly gets repetitive. The final chapter, about the on-going and millennia-spanning conflict between determinism and free will, felt very rushed and unsatisfactory (reminded me of my last-minute first year undergraduate essays).

10. Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen

A minute-by-minute (sometimes second-by-second) account of what could happen were North Korea to launch a surprise attack on the USA.
Drawn from a mix of declassified material, interviews, and bit of educated guess work, it follows both the official responses as the military and political machine kicks into action and what's happening on the ground as the bombs hit.

The descriptions of the infernos and destruction caused by the bombs aside, the most worrying part is the complete lack of time the president and his advisers have to assess the threat and respond, and how even the slightest miscalculation or technical failure can have devasting consequences.

A harrowing and necessary read, but also strangely compelling. I read most of it in one evening.

TL;DR nuclear war would probably spoil your day

11. What Board Games Mean To Me edited by Donna Gregory

Saw this on the shelf at the library recently so picked it up out of curiosity.

It's a rather cosy set of self-contained essays and reflections on gaming, mostly focusing on the social and collaborative side of things (very much how I would answer such a question). The interviews with Reiner Knizia, Ian Livingstone, and the US-based Steve Jackson are the most interesting contributions.

Probably worth borrowing if you want something easy to read on the train or bus, but otherwise nothing really memorable.

Ewww.

Gross things aside, you might well enjoy Cardboard Children.

11) A Closed And Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers. Second in the Wayfarers series, and still good, though I think I preferred the first.
12) You Like it Darker by Stephen King. More of his usual blend of short stories

James S.A. Corey - Leviathan Wakes. Had this for ages, finally got round to it. Magnificent, and took me back to the TV series. Also, if I'm honest, filled in the blanks for bits I didn't really follow, or that were indistinct. Surprised me how many bits really popped into my head from the TV series, and I had to rewatch a battle or two.

Naomi Novik - Black Powder War. Temeraire no.3, Napoleonic Wars with dragons. Never read a bad book by Novik, this is more greatness.

Sam McBride - Burned: Cash for Ashes. Recent history that reads as old hat because of everything that's passed. It's long, with a lot of he said-he said, and feels a bit unfinished because it's close to the events. It's also clear that far from everyone was just burning pellets to make money. But a crazy time, and an insight into NI's relationship with the rest of the UK.

12. Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
A struggling poet tries to opt-out of the capitalist system and all its elements, especially houseplants.
It's very gloomy and the lead is utterly unlikeable.



13. 1984 by George Orwell
A struggling functionary tries to opt-out of the socialist system and all its elements, especially rats.
It's very gloomy and the lead is utterly unlikeable.



Inspired by the recent couple of episodes on the excellent Origin Story, I decided to re-read 1984 for the first time in years and take a look at one of his earlier novels.
There was much in 1984 hat I'd forgotten about, especially all the mystical elements and how Goldstein's book stops the narrative in its flow, in a way almost as jarring as anything Ayn Rand did.
Reading Aspidistra straight before, a new one to me, I was struck by similarities in tone and setting despite a decade or so between them. In both, someone tries to opt out, has awkward relationships with a woman and worrying attitudes to women in general, and is supported by a more powerful member of the society.

I think I'll go back to his essays for a while before opening Coming up for air.

In a literary coincidence, I've just had to drive to Wigan. Turns out The Road to Wigan Pier is the A577.

9.) Fateful Choices - Ian Kershaw
I could have sworn I read something since but . Interesting book that looks at 10 specific decisions in 1940 and 41 and at the context and reasoning that led to them. Why did the UK decide to fight on, Mussolini invade Greece and Hitler launch Barborossa when he did? Lots of discussion about the political set-up of the countries in question and the various corners their leaders and backed themselves into.

10.) Find You First - Linwood Barclay
Tech millionaire Miles finds he has a bunch of kids and decides to track them down before his genetic disease does him in. But someone else is also tracking them down, with gruesome intent! I've read a bunch of this chap's books, as have others, and I did enjoy this although it got a touch silly, even by the author's standards. Luckily the protagonist in this book is not a total dumbass, unlike the last ones I read,

14. Bloody Panico! Or, Whatever Happened To The Tory Party by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
A short, angry take on the past 30 years or so, but especially the Johnson years.

I picked it up from the library yesterday afternoon, and as it was such a nice day sat in the garden of the Friday pub and read most of it before heading home and finishing it off that same evening. Very easy to speed through, very bitter, and at times very funny. No really new insights, but the ride is fun and ideal for election season.

11.) Verity - Colleen Hoover
I went looking through the old Book Threads ( In the style of "BookTok" as the kids are calling it, I'm going to call it "Boox" ) looking for a book I sort-of remembered someone talking about that sounded interesting at the time. I didn't find that, but I did find Grim talking about this and saying it was great, and so I took a punt on it. It really is great. Ploughed through it in a single sitting. Psychological thriller with maybe horror bits and you never quite know what's actually true.

Spoiler for Verity:

15. The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry

A man spends his life on the run after upsetting the wrong people in 1920s County Sligo.

I struggled initially with it as I didn't care much for the account of McNulty's childhood (one bit made me go a bit "eeewww") but once he came of age the pace picked up and I started to enjoy it. Found the ending a bit forced however.

The narration reads like some old guy in a western Irish pub is telling you the story, adding to its charm.

12.) Jamaica Inn - Daphne Du Maurier
For some reason I had always thought this was written in about 1820, rather than 1936. A very splendid story of smuggling and the moors and cruelty and fear. I liked it a lot, and shall be recommending it to friends and family.

As for Grim's question:

Mark Greaney - The Gray Man. Grim... said to read these, so I did. VG action, as the world's best hitman, gets a bit crazy and written for film towards the end (which worked - it's on Netflix). Greaney writes the modern 'Clancy' books, which are competent but don't quite keep the plates spinning as well as the old.

Mark Greaney - Ballistic. None of which stopped me immediately reading bk 3 (charity shop had three, so I've a random order of future ones). The series is definitely trying not to settle into any predictable run of scenarios, and avoids the 'how can we do bigger than saving the world?' problem some have. Still goes crazy at the end.

Kim Stanley Robinson - Aurora. A big colony ship finally arrives in Tau Ceti to explore a moon they might be able to settle on. Questions of how to survive, what life is for, AI. Ultimately life-affirming, serious sci-fi that was on a couple of best-of lists, I reckon deservedly. Sometimes maybe a little over-serious for my mood.

Did you visit the pier?

Disappointing doesn't really describe it.

But the Visitor Centre is quite good.

Empire of black and gold - Adrian Tchaikovski

Yeah it's very average. Avoid.

13.) The Pearl - John Steinbeck
A poor fisherman finds a remarkable pearl, enough to pull him and his family out of povery forever. Does everything proceed smoothly? No, no it does not. An engrossing novella, and probably many of the themes went over my head.

Oh, and book question - if I were to read some Jack Reacher books, does it matter which order I read them in? Can I just grab one and get going?

I reckon you can, particularly with the later ones. For the earlier - from memory, only something like the first three - I'd probably aim to read them in order. There's a bit of scene setting and background life stuff that really doesn't matter, but it's nice to read in order. That said, there's much less of that later on, so I suppose it's not essential. I reckon Child spotted that this could be an ongoing franchise, and any kind of over-reaching arc would stifle that, so he didn't clutter the books with it.

Ice Guard - Steve Lyons

A Warhammer 40k novel. Not very good.