Category: Books
-
Fear by Bob Woodward and The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis
Like many political watchers, I’ve been equally appalled and yet addicted to watching what is going on currently in US politics. Right now there’s the dismal spectacle of Brett Kavanaugh being elected onto the US Supreme Court despite a number of serious accusations being made against him, few of which are truly being taken seriously.…
-
Love is Blind by William Boyd
A new William Boyd novel is always to be welcomed, and as with the superb Sweet Caress from 2015, Boyd has returned to a familiar “whole life” novel. (A recent Guardian piece by Boyd explores that challenges of this form, and notes how relatively few novels of this type there are). Love is Blind tells…
-
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
As I got stuck into this astonishing story about a Silicon Valley company that was going to change medicine forever, but didn’t, I was instantly thinking, “Someone really needs to make a film about this!” Well, it turns out they are, with Jennifer Lawrence slated to play Elizabeth Holmes, the CEO of Theranos, the company…
-
The Lost City of Z
I first heard about Percy Fawcett back in the late eighties when a friend told me about him. We’d both read Redmond O’Hanlon’s Into the Heart of Borneo detailing his trip with James Fenton, and I think that In Trouble Again, in which O’Hanlon heads into Amazonia, had just come out. Indeed extracts may have…
-
March Books
Oh dear. I’m really slacking now. Just three books this month which is very poor. In my defence Amazon went and released series 2 of the very fine, but not enormously talked about, Bosch. And Netflix went and released a new series of House of Cards, before which I had to watch last season’s. Then…
-
February Books
My reading volume dropped a little in February, as will be noted below. The Good Liar by Nicholas Searle is a lovely tale about a con-man and his latest – perhaps final – mark. The book alternates perspectives, but mostly this is about Roy – who when we meet him is on a date with…
-
January Books
Every year in January, I note something in this blog about including more books, and then I don’t really write about them. Well I’m making the same promise again, but more broadly I want to round up what I’ve been reading at the end of each month. We’ll see how I get on. Links to…
-
What Goes Around and Cyclogeography
I’ve spent the better part of my working life in the West End of London. That means lots of tourists, black cabs (you can’t really identify an Uber), buses and a general melange of people going about their very different businesses. As a cyclist, you can’t help also noting the cycle couriers. When I was…
-
Bookazines
I’m slightly obsessed by bookazines. But first, let me apologise for using that word (also known, equally unattractively, as magbooks). It’s clearly made up by the publishing industry, and so perhaps I need to explain it first. It’s obviously a contraction of two words. Books need no real explanation. They get published; they sit on…
-
What I Watched, Listened To and Read Over Christmas
You may or may not have enjoyed my Radio Times suggestions. I didn’t always follow them myself. But in the spirit of honesty, this is what I did watch over Christmas: The final two episodes of Cabin Pressure were recorded back in February, but only reached the airwaves over Christmas with the story being essentially…
-
Uploading Large eBooks to Amazon’s Cloud
A bit of a ramble, but in short – does anyone know how to get large files (over 25MB) into the Amazon Kindle Library aside from via email? Read on for the detail… If there’s one thing that’s for certain, it’s that buying eBooks on Amazon is very easy. It could be easier – they’ve…
-
Branson: Behind the Mask
Tom Bower is that rare thing – a writer who takes no prisoners. He goes where others fear to tread – or at least UK libel laws force others to fear to tread. His previous subjects have included Robert Maxwell, Bernie Ecclestone, Mohammed Al-Fayed and a previous book on Richard Branson. I’ve not read the…