27) The CEO Next Door by Elena Botelho and Kim Powell For those of you who actually read this blog regularly, you will have become accustomed to a mix of literary fiction, crime, thrillers and non-fiction books on a range of topics. The latter have tended recently to be fairly wide-ranging: from the opioid crisis… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 27: The CEO Next Door
Category: non-fiction
Year 4 / Book 26: Liar’s Poker
26) Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis Michael Lewis is now one of the foremost non-fiction chroniclers writing today, particularly as concerns business. I've read The Big Short, Flash Boys, Boomerang, The Blind Side and Moneyball. And if you haven't read the books, then you've probably seen at least one of the films. He has a… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 26: Liar’s Poker
Year 4 / Book 24: The Things I Would Tell You
24) The Things I Would Tell You ed. Sabrina Mahfouz The subtitle to this collection is 'British Muslim Women Write', and it's a varied collection of short stories, poetry, essays and play scripts all written by Muslim women in Britain. And an extremely interesting and powerful collection it is too - with a wide range… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 24: The Things I Would Tell You
Year 4 / Book 21: How Democracy Ends
21) How Democracy Ends by David Runciman I got given this book for my birthday (or possibly Xmas) by my wife's aunt, and she cheerily said as I opened it, "I look forward to finding out what the answer is". Well, I'm not sure there is one answer but I have at least read the… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 21: How Democracy Ends
Year 4 / Book 15: Dopesick
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
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 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 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
Year 4 / Book 1: October
1) October by China Miéville First book of year 4 of this blog, and we were in St Petersburg for the New Year, so it felt appropriate to read a book about the Russian Revolution. In this case, a rewriting of the momentous events of the year of 1917 by Miéville, a writer best known… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 1: October
Year 3 / Book 45: Priestdaddy
45) Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood This is a difficult book to categorise or introduce; I guess it's best described as a memoir, but it's also at points poetic, often a true picture of parts of America, and has much to say beyond the depiction of a family living in the shadow of a mercurial father… Continue reading Year 3 / Book 45: Priestdaddy
