Week 31 Book 53 : Round Ireland With a Fridge

 

It seems that te further into Ireland Tony goes, the more Irish Tony gets. A sentiment I totally agree with. Gentletainment of the highest order.

Week 31 Book 52 : Reality and Other Stories

 

A bunch of short stories, and a slim volume of them. Kind of a Tales Of The Unexpected for the Black Mirror generation. Some better than others, all variants on the ghost/in the machine/rework of the old story genre.

Worth a look

Week 30 Book 51 : The Order Of Time

 

If you couldn't get through the cold of A Brief History Of Time, but still want to know more, feel more, about the physics of the universe, and specifically the fleetingly endless thing we call time? This is your book.

Week 30 Book 50 : Heroes

 

Being honest? I read this fast so it would be over and done. I did not enjoy it, or at least not like I did Mythos. It felt smirky, English and mean. Not so much that you could take it's pulse, but enough to change it's aura to a sickly green.

Condescending. Which I guess in an ironic, heroic and tragically Greek twist I may be guilty of myself.

Week 30 Book 49 : Outliers

 

A bit like Freakonomics, and Noah Yuval Hariri, mixed with some Frederick Wiseman. That's Malcom Gladwell. This book looks at the "freakish" outliers to show you that far from extraordinary individuals they are more the extraordinary circumstances feeding them. 

I suspect that anyone's opinion on this topic, much like my own will be fueled by disagreement or confirmation bias.

Still a great read about how things work.

Week 30 book 48 : Kill The Father

 

Gripping and well paced considering it's length, and that it's translated from Italian. Liked the protagonists, liked the motivation of the villains and the avoidance of cliches and superhuman coincidences and skills that usually pepper serial killer books.

Might have to read the next two as well, I burned through this one quickly.

Week 29 Book 47 : The Duke And I

 

This started well and ended badly. The wit, charm and biting satire of the first half (at least I thought it was) gave way to melodrama and what felt like an underlying misogyny. While there are occasional attempts at empowerment, the author seems to revel in the fact that women were property, and men were there to protect them. I can seem various attempts to make the woman stand up for herself, and the men make sure the women in their charge are protected and revered. 

Yet I could not shake the feeling that this was just a veneer, and that the message here was harking back to a time that was somehow more polite, gentlemanly and ... better? Maybe I have misread this terribly, but I grew annoyed at the sarcasm, the bridling and the endless cultural referencing.