19) You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld You Think It, I'll Say It is a book of short stories that are witty, sharp and at times extremely moving. I've never read anything by Sittenfeld before (though seen reviews of her novels that have praised her highly), and I'd heartily recommend this as… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 19: You Think It, I’ll Say It
Category: Year 4
Year 4 / Book 18: Perfidious Albion
18) Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers This is a book that puts the Z in zeitgeisty - every element of a timely contemporary satire is in place: a Farage-esque MP (with far-right affiliations), a social networking / tech giant infiltrating democracy and employment; a vacuous Jordan Peterson-type character; #metoo gender politics and online trolling (and… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 18: Perfidious Albion
Year 4 / Book 17: Dying Fall
17) Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths I've read quite a few books by Elly Griffiths over the last couple of years, and they are pretty uniformly entertaining. Whilst mildly undemanding on the whole, the main characters are what raises her books above the norm a little - Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist and single… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 17: Dying Fall
Year 4 / Book 16: Aberystwyth Mon Amour
16) Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce This was recommended to me sometime ago by my wife Katie's cousin's wife Rachel - thanks Rachel - and I bought it after stumbling across it in the local Oxfam bookshop. It's the first of a series of books by Malcolm Pryce, and is a wry, funny and… Continue reading Year 4 / Book 16: Aberystwyth Mon Amour
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 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
