Category: Books

  • American Prometheus

    American Prometheus

    At the weekend I saw the new Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer. It’s a powerful and superbly told biopic about J Robert Oppenheimer, who was in charge of the United State’s attempt to build an atomic bomb, before the Nazis got there first. This is a story that I’m very familiar with, having seen everything from…

  • Book Pricing

    Book Pricing

    I should state up front that I have no interest in reading Spare the new book from Prince Harry which has perturbed much of the UK press so much for the last few weeks, alongside the Netflix series he’s made with his wife. I hold no candle for the Royal Family. However, if Harry and…

  • Mostly, But Not Entirely, Icelandic Christmas Reading

    Mostly, But Not Entirely, Icelandic Christmas Reading

    Around this time of year I always have good intentions to write more about the books I read. I’ve got a note somewhere of a long list of titles that I read last year, but remain unblogged. I’ll try to get back to that list at some point. But over the Christmas/New Year period, I…

  • The Romantic by William Boyd

    The Romantic by William Boyd

    William Boyd is the contemporary master of the ‘whole life novel’ – books that use a character’s entire lifetime to tell a story. He wrote about how he fell into this in The Guardian back in 2018, first writing a novel in this fashion with The New Confessions. Subsequently, he has also written Any Human…

  • Authenticity by Alice Sherwood

    Authenticity by Alice Sherwood

    As with all non-fiction books, there is a subtitle – ‘How economics, evolution and technology drive us to deceive – and how we can fight back.’ I was completely engaged by this book which uses a wide array of examples to examine the wider subject of what authenticity and being authentic actually means today. Starting…

  • After Steve by Tripp Mickle

    After Steve by Tripp Mickle

    As I write, Apple is the second most valuable company in the world. A couple of weeks ago it was the most valuable, but many tech stocks have taken a tumble over that period. Nonetheless, Apple is currently worth $2.4 trillion. While Steve Jobs set Apple on the way, it has actually been Tim Cook…

  • Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy by Erich Schwartzel

    Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy by Erich Schwartzel

    In 1996, I was on a mountain biking holiday in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. It was an organised trip with a small travel company and we spent our days cycling between fairly remote towns and villages, camping out at night. One day, I noticed large numbers of people dressed up in costumes. There were…

  • Tour de Force by Mark Cavendish

    Tour de Force by Mark Cavendish

    I should probably preface this review by saying that I know one of the Cavendish’s ghostwriters, Daniel Friebe. So make of that what you will! When Mark Cavendish stormed to victory on Stage 4 of this year’s Tour de France, I was ecstatic. Cavendish is a cyclist who I’ve loved to follow for years. He…

  • The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly

    The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly

    The latest book from Michael Connelly feels as contemporary as anything he’s written recently. Connelly always says that his books are set at the time that he writes them – hence his characters like Harry Bosch age in real time. But he also heavily references what is happening in the real world, and this book…

  • The Second Cut by Louise Welsh

    The Second Cut by Louise Welsh

    In The Second Cut we revisit the world of Rilke, who readers first came across in Louise Welsh’s fantastic debut The Cutting Room. Rilke works for Bowery Auctions, and he’s given a tip by a friend, Jojo, that there’s a house clearance sale coming up that his firm might want to get involved with. Rilk…

  • Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

    Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

    I’ll start by saying that I absolutely loved this novel set in the world of independent computer games from the 90s onwards. It took me a chapter or so to get into the book but then I was swept up in the story of Sam, Sadie and Marx – who end up setting up a…

  • Arriving Today by Christopher Mims

    Arriving Today by Christopher Mims

    On Saturday, I went for a nice long bike ride, and along the way listened to some podcasts including that morning’s new episode of Slate Money. They had a guest with a new book on it, Christopher Mims, talking about logistics and supply chains and in particular, how companies like Amazon operate. It sounded fascinating.…