Category: Books

I can’t remember precisely how I first came across Richard Feynman, but I’m pretty sure it was reading Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman. Later, I’d see one of the best hours of Horizon ever made in Christopher Sykes’ The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. But aside from a couple of other documentaries, and famously his…

Michio Kaku is one busy guy. When he’s not presenting a weekly programme on US radio, he’s presenting a four part BBC series on Time. In the meantime we’ve got this book, who’s subtitle is The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos. What we get is a whistlestop tour through basic…

The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick: How a Spectacular Hoax Became History to give the book its full title, explains how one of the most famous tricks on earth has actually never existed yet has continued to develop a life of its own. Let me direct you to a great review from a last…

I’m a bit behind on keeping up to speed with the latest books I’ve read, so here’s a whistlestop tour. A Matter of Death and Life is the latest Andrey Kurkov novel. This time around our hero decides that life is meaningless and contracts a hit man to kill him. Things quickly get complicated and…

David Wolstencroft was very successful with his first book Good News, Bad News. It was pretty well reviewed, and then had the book chosen to be a Richard & Judy bookclub choice, which is never exactly bad for sales. As a co-creator of Spooks (you can’t miss this fact as it’s all over the cover,…

Purity of Blood is the second in the Captain Alatriste series of novels by Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte – and there are plenty more still to come. These are slight novels; not a great deal happens. The story is being told from the point of view by Alatriste’s protege, Inigo, at some indeterminate time in…

This is the breakthrough “business” book of the moment. Economist Steven Levitt and New York Times writer Stephen J. Dubner, take us through a very strange selection of essentially interesting facts and stories. At the outset of the book, they explain that there’s no real “theme” to this book. Instead they jump around the place.…

A few years ago Rob Long, sometime writer on Cheers and several [less succesful] US sitcoms, used to write a very entertaining column about the industry in The Observer. These either came from, or made up (I forget) a book called Conversations With My Agent which is now seemingly out of print. It was very…

This is the fist Annika Bengtzon book published in the UK, but might actually be the second or third in publishing order in Sweden. Whichever way around, it’s the first in chronological order. Anyway, junior reporter Annikia is introduced in this book working for a fictional Stockholm evening newspaper. She gets randomly assigned to a…

First of all, if you haven’t already heard it, dash over right now to the BBC Radio Player and listen to last Wednesday’s first episode of the second series of Ed Reardon’s Week. Ed Reardon is quite the funniest creation I’ve heard (or seen) in some time; a writer by trade, although he has trouble…

If you fancy yourself as the next Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson or Reginald Hill, there are a few things you really need to know when you start your detective crime series. First of all, you should think of it as a soap opera. You have to lay some clues well ahead of using. Not in…

Yet another Hard Case Crime novel, and, like the Stephen King novel, this one is also has a contemporary setting. Not only that, but the contemporary setting is Edinburgh (and Kirkwall in the Orkneys)! Joe is an enforcer for a dodgy Edinburgh loan shark. Are there any loan sharks who aren’t dodgy? Anyway, everything changes…