15) Dopesick by Beth Macy Somewhat gradually over the course of maybe the last year or so, the opioid epidemic in the US has come across my radar - I don't know why it's taken that long for it to come to my attention, perhaps ignorance or a lack of in-depth reading; I do remember… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 15: Dopesick
Author: nicktemple1
Year 4 / Book 14: Tell No Tales
14) Tell No Tales by Eva Dolan I read Eva Dolan's first Zigic & Ferreira novel, Long Way Home, a while back and really loved it. First off, she's an excellent writer, with a great command of plot, narrative arc and character creation. Second, she's focused in on immigration, particularly East European immigrants, as the… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 14: Tell No Tales
Year 4 / Book 13: Hello World
13) Hello World by Hannah Fry As the pace of technological change seems to become ever more speedy, it's easy to just shrug and gloss over the terminology and accept what is said at face value - or at least it is for me. So self-driving cars are a couple of years away, facial recognition… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 13: Hello World
Year 4 / Book 12: Love Like Blood
12) Love Like Blood by Mark Billingham Tom Thorne is one of the most celebrated and consistent detectives featuring in crime fiction today, and I've read (I think) all of the novels by Mark Billingham that feature him. This one had been on the Kindle for a while, and I felt like something light-ish after… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 12: Love Like Blood
Year 4 / Book 11: Educated
11) Educated by Tara Westover This memoir was a feature in best-of lists and non-fiction bestsellers last year, and it's been a pleasure to come to it, even if behind many others ('others' includes Barack Obama & Bill Gates, whose recommendations carry a decent amount of weight). The summary version is that Tara Westover grows… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 11: Educated
Year 4 / Book 10: My Sister, the Serial Killer
10) My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite Well this was quite a gear-change from anything else this year. I described it to my wife Katie as like a Netflix crime series spliced up for the millennial generation and repackaged into chapters. It is dark, darkly funny, funnily disturbing and disturbingly dark; not necessarily… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 10: My Sister, the Serial Killer
Year 4 / Book 9: The Pesthouse
9) The Pesthouse by Jim Crace I remember finding this book somewhere shortly after I'd been prompted to read it by Ronnie Hughes in an exchange under this blog post. That tells me that I"ve been hanging on to the book for more than a year, and it was worth the wait. Crace is a… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 9: The Pesthouse
Year 4 / Book 8: The Hunting Party
8) The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley I was excited about reading this; a bit of light, crime relief after some heavier reading. The premise was good too: a bunch of posh-ish friends going away for New Year's in a secluded country house somewhere in Scotland, and then a body is found as they find… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 8: The Hunting Party
Year 4 / Book 7: Ghost Wall
7) Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss This came from the Christmas pile of gifted books, and was added to the list after reading multiple positive reviews in the 'books of the year' round-ups. And bloody hell, does this book deserve it - it's an absolutely compelling novella, which gripped me from start to frenzied finish.… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 7: Ghost Wall
Year 4 / Book 6: Poverty Safari
6) Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey The subtitle to this book is 'understanding the anger of Britain's underclass', which gives you some sense of what its pages contain. It is a journey (a safari, perhaps) through lives in poor communities, and particularly McGarvey's own in Glasgow - in that sense it is part-memoir, part-polemic and… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 6: Poverty Safari
Dog-eared Man: a book a week 