In the short book The Snowden Operation, The Econonmist‘s Edward Lucas presented a short case against Edward Snowden’s leak of classified intelligence material. He also made a case for the leaks being heavily influenced by Russian intelligence services. As someone who has previously been fairly sympathetic to Snowden’s claimed motives, I found this alternative take revealing. Lucas made some great points about the disproportionate harm caused by Snowden’s actions, especially in contrast to the minimum actions he could have taken to achieve the same ends. This book also changed my mind a bit about the nature of the public debate around the intelligence services (though I don’t totally buy Lucas’s “regulate the use rather than the development of tools” approach).
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I really enjoyed Tim Harford’s latest book, Adapt. Harford gave lots of examples of successes resulting from review and adaptation, and made a good case for embracing, as opposed to rejecting, failure. He made the often overlooked and very important case for allowing variation in systems, and not expecting constant equality: something that health systems in particular are not great at understanding.
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I didn’t get on well with McEwan’s The Innocent. It seemed to be a combination of spy thriller, coming-of-age novel, absurdity-of-war satire, and a reflection on cultural politics. The prose was sublime, almost poetic, as McEwan’s writing always is – but it didn’t quite hang together for me. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood.
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A friend at work recommended Helen Russell’s The Year of Living Danishly after I recently visited Copenhagen. This book was the autobiographical tale of a well-off writer and her husband moving from London to rural Denmark, after the latter was offered a job at Lego headquarters. The stories of their experiences were mixed in with some light journalistic investigation as to why Danish people are so often reported to be among the happiest in the world. Russell’s writing was engaging but light, which made this book fun, but maybe less insightful than it could have been. Nonetheless, it was a pleasant, easy read.
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Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending has recently been turned into a film, which – guess what? – I haven’t seen. I found it to be a beautifully written book, which explored ageing and the flaws in memory. So many passages of this book were quotable that it read like poetry. I think that if the ‘revelations’ at the end of the book had been a little more mundane, then the wider observations about the reliability of memory and the incompleteness of the picture anyone holds in mind at any given time would have hit harder. But who am I to argue with a Booker winner?
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Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden was a deeply creepy book about four children hiding their mother’s corpse to avoid being taken into foster care, and then attempting to live independently. The plot was grotesque, but less so than the twisted, psychologically charged atmosphere McEwan built. I understand that this has also been turned into a film that I haven’t seen… Whatever. I found it brilliantly disturbing.
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Nick Clegg’s Politics was enjoyable mostly for his compelling account (and defence) of his time as Deputy Prime Minister. It provided real insight into what went on ‘behind the scenes’ in coalition government, and Clegg was refreshingly open about the tactical errors he made along the way. He also made a strong and coherent case for the role of liberalism in the world at large.
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The Big Short, Michael Lewis’s famed book (now a film that I haven’t seen) gave a surprisingly understandable account of the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis. Lewis gave the first explanation of ‘short selling’ that I’ve been able to understand and retain for longer than about five minutes. I was slightly disappointed that Lewis didn’t delve more into the underlying psychology of the problem: his repeatedly expressed view that the people involved acted immorally clouds the more interesting question of what drove the immorality. But I enjoyed this nonetheless.
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Yuval Noah Harari’s highly acclaimed Homo Deus didn’t do much for me. It had very well-written prose, with an occasionally astonishing clarity and precision of expression, but the central thesis seemed confused to me. One of Harari’s central theses is that humans (and all animals) are biological algorithms, responding in predictable ways to stimuli. He also spends a lot of the book talking about ethics and morality, particularly around treatment of animals. But how can something be judged ‘immoral’ if the actor is simply following an algorithm?
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Exploring broadly similar themes, I enjoyed Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen’s Human Universe far more than Harari’s book. Cox did a good job of giving enough of the detail of the physics to be interesting, without becoming overwhelming and uninterpretable. In fact, even in the most technical parts, it remained compelling and engaging. This celebratory book left me feeling inspired and full of wonder.
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Edit (on day of publication): I see that I’ve included The Big Short two months in a row… luckily saying much the same both times. I’m not going to correct it, because I’m not bothered enough to re-edit the header image…!

The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz was a series of case histories collected by a psychoanalyst, with an interwoven theme of coping with loss. While I’ve doubts about the psychoanalytical methods described (and some of the connections between thoughts and experiences were outlandishly fanciful), I was drawn in to reflecting on the conclusions and perspectives Grosz presented. I enjoyed this collection despite myself.
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The same can’t be said for The Road to Character, David Brooks’s best-selling work which argued that the modern world prizes “CV virtues” (essentially listable achievements) above “eulogy virtues” (those people are remembered for). The logical flaw was that Brooks illustrated the apparent importance of “eulogy virtues” by presenting mini-biographies of historical figures remembered for “CV virtues”, demonstrating that CV virtues have, contrary to his central assertion, long been prized. Coupled with a very confused position on religion and a tediously loquacious writing style, this was a slog to get through.
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The Big Short by Michael Lewis is now a major motion picture that I haven’t seen – I’ve mentioned before that I’m rubbish on films. I liked the insight this book gave into the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis, which was rendered understandable even to a fellow like me, with no knowledge of markets or financial instruments. However, I was disappointed that Lewis didn’t delve more into the underlying psychology of the problem. Lewis’s repeatedly expressed view that the people involved acted immorally clouded the more interesting question of what drove the immorality. But that’s a slightly unfair criticism, as I don’t think he ever intended to answer that question, and the book is great nonetheless.
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Sarah Hall’s The Beautiful Indifference was a collection of short stories featuring female protagonists, each of whom had an initially hidden ‘dark side’. I rarely enjoy short stories, and these were no exception. I don’t know why I keep buying short story collections. But the most irritating thing about this collection – and I write this in full acceptance of how pretentious it sounds – was Hall’s punctuation choices, and most particularly of all, the decision not to correctly punctuate direct speech. Combined with her sparing use of any punctuation beyond full stops and commas, the text became leaden and borderline uninterpretable. Rather than finding myself transported by the narrative, I found myself frustrated by having to figure out the literary puzzle of words scattered on a page.
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Booker Prize winner The Sellout, by Paul Beatty, opened with a black man brought before the Supreme Court accused of reinstating slavery. Flashbacks told of the narrator’s strange childhood as a subject of his father’s socio-racial experiments, and connected these to the narrator’s later work to reintroduce racial segregation. Despite the subject matter, this was a funny book. Beatty skewered racial stereotypes and political correctness, but did so in a way that made me reflect and realise how little I understand of the world, and how much my own prejudices affect my thinking. I found the experience of reading this a little exhausting: Beatty rarely paused for breath, and I found myself getting lost in some of the sub-sub-plots. But nevertheless, this was a memorable read.
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In Susan Hill’s celebrated The Woman in Black, a young solicitor travelled out to a small English town to set in order the affairs of a recently deceased elderly lady who lived in an old house on a causeway, regularly cut off by the tide. Some spooky stuff happens. I’m rarely gripped by horror novels, and this was no exception. The tale was entertaining enough, but this wasn’t really a page-turner. This seemed to me to be a ‘ghost story’ in the classical sense: designed to scare, without much more to say. Since I rarely find myself involved enough by tales of ghoulish things to become scared, there wasn’t really a lot for me in this book, save for the enjoyably tight, precise style of writing.
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Jane Gardham’s The Man in the Wooden Hat was the sequel to Old Filth, which I read last year. Old Filth was a fictional biography of Sir Edward Feathers. The Man in the Wooden Hat was the story of Feathers’s marriage, told largely from the point of view of his wife. It had much the same overarching theme, exploring the tensions and excitement that lie behind a “bland” exterior of socially acceptable relationship in the upper classes in the mid-1900s. I have to admit that I didn’t find this quite as engaging as the first volume, possibly because the story behind relationships is a much more commonly visited literary theme than the story behind a professional exterior. But this was still suffused with Gardham’s gentle humour and fantastic writing, so it was still an enjoyable read.
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Tim Shipman’s mammoth book about last year’s EU referendum, All Out War, was a completely extraordinary book: the best I’ve read on any modern political event. It was balanced, thoroughly researched, funny, thrilling, and gave deep insight into both sides of the referendum campaign, warts and all. I already knew that Shipman was a talented journalist before reading this book, but his ability to combine a lightness of touch with absolute accuracy of reporting, including pointing out where bits were single-sourced or where there were conflicting accounts, proved truly remarkable.
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The titular character of Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton spends the duration of the book in hospital recovering from an operation and subsequent complications. While she’s there, her somewhat estranged mother comes to visit. The two gossip and reminisce, and Lucy tries to unpick her complex relationships and feelings through her own memories of childhood. There were a number of outstanding, poignant passages, but the whole book didn’t quite hang right to me. The contrasts were a bit heavy handed at times (‘Cookie’, ‘Button’ and ‘Wizzle’ versus morally dubious shootings and AIDS). There was a lot of writing about writing, which I think was meant as some kind of allegory to psychology, but stuck me as unnecessarily self-indulgent in such a short novella. And while I think the reader is supposed to “fill in the gaps” in Lucy’s partially described life story, I found the lack of exposition meant that I didn’t really come to care about her.
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I was disappointed by Steven Pinker’s A Sense of Style. I was under the impression that it was a light and somewhat comedic on writing style. In fact, it was a rather heavy and detailed examination of grammar, diving far deeper than I was interested to venture into the philosophy of categorisation of parts of speech, sentence diagramming, and all sorts of things that go way beyond my level of interest. To my mind, the book would have benefited from more directly actionable advice, and less sniping at grammar sticklers before listing “rules” that the author themselves happens to be a stickler about.
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On the other hand, I was blown away by Julian Barnes’s novelised biography of Shostakovich, The Noise of Time. This tight, quiet and darkly humourous novel explored morality, art and power. It talked quite a lot about the use of irony to undermine power through art, which is something I’ve never really thought about before, and which I found fascinating. Basically, this thoughtful book was chock full of moral ambiguity, difficult personal choices, and imposed boundaries of professionalism. It was right up my street, and I loved it.
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As I write this, I’m struggling to think how best to describe Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice: I’m not sure it was really a novel, and it wasn’t really a collection of short stories. It was a very slim fictional book structured like a verbal reasoning multiple choice exam. It should have been utterly ridiculous and gimmicky, but was somehow completely brilliant. This book made me reflect on how much our own self-editing and the choices we make in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves alter our memories and feelings. It made me think about how opinions can be shifted, and stories can be transformed, by simple changes of single words. And I also gained insight into the recent history of Chile, from the population’s perspective. Goodness only knows how Megan McDowell pulled off a translation of a book with so few words, in which every single one is infused with so many layers of meaning.
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I read books aloud for the use of people with visual problems or other disabilities which prevent them from using printed books. I’ve been doing this for Calibre Audio Library for a few years. I don’t choose the books I record for Calibre; they are assigned to me, which makes the whole enterprise that little bit more fun. This month, I’ve just finished off my recording of Sally Gardner’s The Door That Led to Where, a novel aimed at the teenage or maybe young adult market. It takes quite a novel to stand up to the repeated reading and re-reading that narrating an audiobook requires, and this book certainly meets that standard. This was a fairly complex tale that juxtaposed authentic descriptions of deprived teenage life in 21st century London with those of young men in London in the 1830s. It was noticeable how dominated the book’s action was by male characters, but then most fiction aimed at this market tends to be quite heavily gendered. Nevertheless, this was definitely one of those books that reminded me what wonderful, well-written imaginative fiction there is around for young readers today.
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Conclave, by Robert Harris, was a political thriller set among the College of Cardinals as they elected a new Pope. A real page-turner with plenty of twists and turns, this novel also had lots of complex layers underlying the surface plot, and a good dose of moral ambiguity. I especially enjoyed the well-written dialogue, in particular the set piece speeches. I’ve no idea how true to life this description of events might be, but this felt like a real insight into the political machinations of the Catholic Church.
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Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan, was a charmingly woven tale of a 24-hour bookstore, the relationship between its owner and newest nighttime clerk, a mysterious secret society, typography, and – oddly enough – Google’s desire to digitise information. The ideas were so eclectic and the plot so fantastical that it really shouldn’t have worked; and yet its warmth and charm held it together perfectly. I’d have liked to see more of the ending played out rather than relegated to the brief unsatisfying epilogue, but testifies to how beguiling I found the characters and their contexts, many of which will live long in my memory.
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In Cockpit Confidential, commercial pilot Patrick Smith gave his personal take on modern commercial passenger aviation. The book was structured around common questions about flying and occasional longer essays on a variety of aviation topics, often with a historical bent. The questions are varied enough to keep the book interesting throughout (from logistics to customer service to the science of flight). I’m confident that those with a deep interest in the topic will find much to disagree with, but this was pitched perfectly for me as a general reader. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help but laugh at occasional appearances of a comical US bias (“Most people have never heard of Tenerife… “), but given that this was written for the American mass market, that was probably a little cruel.
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In The Memory Illusion, South Bank University’s Julia Shaw gave an accessible account of the neuroscience of memory, with a particular focus on false memories. The book had just the right pace to maintain interest, and just the right amount of detail. Unlike many other popsci writers, Shaw commendably pointed the limitations of her analogies and simplifications, shielding the casual reader from over-interpretation and false conclusions. Before reading this book, I thought I had a terrible memory. After reading it, I think everyone else does too!
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Marc Levinson’s acclaimed book The Box provided a fascinating insight into the history of the shipping container and how it transformed the world economy. I gained a new appreciation for the wider impact of logistics in general and transport logistics in particular, but felt that this book was a bit too long and detailed for my passing interest and, as a result, a little bit dull in parts. For example, I could have managed without the detailed expositions of the exact measurements of competing standard box sizes!
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In 1980, Frank Abignale published his reportedly autobiographical tome Catch Me If You Can… and 36 years later, I got round to reading it. Abignale’s exploits seemed utterly unbelievable: successfully impersonating a wide range of professionals (including a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer) for prolonged periods while cashing fake cheques. While his adventures happened a long time ago now, and it’s possibly unfair to judge with 21st-century eyes, the book seemed absent of anything that weighed in favour of its veracity. I felt like Abagnale was trying to con me. In addition, I felt there was far too little insight into Abagnale’s motivation: his oft-repeated line was that this was a fun challenge. But there are tangential references to people losing their jobs and livelihoods over his activities, which one might reasonably expect to at least give him pause. The degree to which this book is interesting and enjoyable seemed to hinge completely on its believability, and I didn’t buy a word of it.
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In Yoga for People who Can’t be Bothered to do it, Geoff Dyer staggered through an autobiography of adventures, all of which “really happened, but some of the things only happened in my head”. Essentially, Dyer describes incredible experiences around the world but laces descriptions of them with profound bathos, either by pointing out their intrinsic absurdity or by drawing unflattering comparisons to humdrum daily life. I very much enjoyed this, and found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion. The careful balance between earnestness and knowing humour was very well judged and really tickled me. And every now and then, there were sparklingly brilliant passages. I particularly enjoyed the exhortation: “It’s all about moderation. Everything in moderation. Even moderation itself. From this it follows that you must, from time to time, have excess. And this is going to be one of those occasions.” (Amazon | Goodreads)

Graham Norton, of chat show fame, recently published Holding, a witty and engaging novel describing the aftermath of a body being found in a sleepy Irish village. I wouldn’t have guessed this was by Graham Norton if his name wasn’t on the cover, and I wouldn’t have guessed it was a first novel. The characters were endearing, and the plot was relatively pacey while still allowing space for carefully observed description, in equal parts wry and touching. The resolution of the main plot was a bit disappointingly ‘crime novel by numbers’ and didn’t tonally fit with the rest of the book, but I enjoyed reading this nonetheless. (Amazon | Goodreads)

In Messy, Tim Harford gave a spirited defence of messiness, suggesting that it is undervalued. Each chapter discussed at a different aspect of ‘messiness’, from musical and oratorical improvisation, to workplace design, to email inboxes. I remained unconvinced that these were all facets of the same thing – some of the similarities seemed a bit tenuous – but it seems oddly forgivable for a book about messiness to be a bit messy when it comes to taxonomy. There’s even a section in the book about messy taxonomies. As someone who has previously enjoyed Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying-Up” (or “The Life-Changing Magic of Throwing Out All Your Stuff” as Harford re-christens it), I particularly enjoyed Harford’s skewering of it. I also appreciated that Harford acknowledged that there are places for order and tidiness in the world, including places where it is absolutely required. (Amazon | Goodreads)

On Liberty was Shami Chakrabarti’s autobiography of her professional life, concentrating mainly on her time at campaigning organisation Liberty. In it, she discusses many of the pressures that come with occupying legal posts in the Government and in the third sector, and offers genuine insight into how law is practised in these different settings. I really enjoyed these bits of the book. Overall, though, I was disappointed that the book turned out not to be quite the masterclass I had hoped for. I struggled to see the moral consistency between Chakrabarti’s positions on a number of issues, and felt that the arguments were sometimes overly dismissive of the democracy they claimed to defend. But still, the book made a passionate and detailed case, and was probably worth reading anyway. (Amazon | Goodreads)

Jon Ronson’s The Elephant in the Room was a very funny feature-length article sold as a short book, in which Ronson profiled the Trump presidential campaign. I read this just before the election. I think Ronson’s writing is best when he is discovering hidden absurdity in a world of essential normality, and this account of the Trump campaign doesn’t have any rational, normal characters in it to ground the madness; but maybe that comes with the territory. I’d quite like to see Ronson do something similar about the Trump White House, but it seems doubtful that he’d get access following this artcile! (Amazon | Goodreads)

Jeffrey Archer’s risible seven-book Clifton Chronicles limped to a conclusion with the publication of This Was A Man. Archer reached new heights of absurdity when his own characters rants about his unbelievable dialogue, suggesting “You’d never get away with it in a book”. For future reference, here’s a few other things Archer might want to consider whether he can really “get away with” in a book: small family gatherings routinely breaking into spontaneous applause; taxi drivers repeatedly declining payment because their political views align with those of their passengers; and using your own novel to complain about not being awarded the Booker Prize, which “will never be awarded to a storyteller”. Self-indulgence doesn’t begin to cover it. (Amazon | Goodreads)

A little while ago, someone recommended Glen Weldon’s The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, saying that interest in Batman was not prerequisite for enjoying it. I can now vouch for this recommendation: I loved the book despite having never read a Batman comic, having never seen a Batman film all the way through, and having only vague memories the “Bam! Pow! Zap!” Batman series on Saturday morning kids’ TV. Despite my lack of prior knowledge, I was won over by Weldon’s fascinating and funny sociocultural history of the development of Batman character over time. The book also gave one of the most coherent and insightful accounts I’ve read of the development of and influence of the internet on nerd culture. I would never have even considered picking up this book if it hadn’t been recommended to me – and yet I very much enjoyed it. (Amazon | Goodreads)

The same can’t be said for I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes, which was 800+ badly written pages of absurd and frankly boring “thriller” plot mired in xenophobia and sexism of type I thought (or maybe hoped) had died out decades ago. As much as the meandering plot centres on anything, it’s about a Saudi terrorist trying to infect the US with genetically modified smallpox through contamination of flu vaccines. Luckily, there’s an all-American retired brilliant super secret agent on the trail. (Amazon | Goodreads)

Old Filth by Jane Gardam was an expertly crafted novel in which Sir Edward Feathers, a retired judge, reflects on the story of his life. An orphan, he seems to feel he never quite fit in anywhere, and doesn’t seem to realise quite how remarkable the events of his life have been. All the while, his acquaintances tend to assume he’s led a rather dull, uneventful life. This was a moving fictional biography which gives an interesting perspective on assumptions people make of their own experiences, and assumptions we all make of others. (Amazon | Goodreads)

Stephen King’s The Green Mile often appears on people’s “must read” lists, so I picked it up. I’ve never seen the film, and beyond sort of broad cultural references, had no idea that it was about the residents of death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary in the 1930s awaiting execution by electric chair (with a few supernatural phenomena scattered through). I thought this book was drawing a comparison between imperfect criminal justice and imperfect natural justice: in law, as in life, people don’t always get what they deserve. Sometimes bad people thrive and good people suffer. I really enjoyed it on those terms, but reading through other reviews online, most people seem to have a polar opposite interpretation about “pure evil”, so maybe I missed the point. Either way, it was great. (Amazon | Goodreads)

Following Farage was fairly entertaining account by tabloid journalist Owen Bennett of his time following Nigel Farage during the 2015 General Election. While it was entertaining, it dragged a bit at times, and didn’t give any new insight into UKIP as a party. I was also a bit disappointed that Bennett didn’t really explain his motivation to follow Farage, despite even changing jobs to stay on his tail. (Amazon | Goodreads)

Reputations by Juan Gabriel Vásquez is a critically acclaimed novella about a political cartoonist reaching the end of his career. At an event celebrating his life, he meets a young female journalist who he had previously met as a child, when an event pivotal to the novel’s plot occurred. Revisiting ‘the event’ risks the reputations of many of the novel’s characters. The prose is spellbinding, but I thought it was let down by a plot that was hard to follow, very implausible (seven year olds drinking themselves unconscious?!), and unresolved by the ending. (Amazon | Goodreads)

Ian McEwan released his latest novel Nutshell this month. It’s a novel with a crazy premise: the story of a complex parental relationship narrated by a foetus. I found it utterly engaging and infused with humour. For an McEwan novel, there’s also a surprising amount of plot, much of which is fast-paced. McEwan’s masterstroke comes in making the foetus a well educated and utterly pretentious plotter, who sounded to me like a foetal version of Stewie from the Family Guy cartoon series. In what other voice can one read the line, “We wave from the quayside as their little ship of bad intent departs. Bon voyage!” (Amazon | Goodreads)

On the other hand, Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie did nothing for me. I didn’t feel involved with the characters (who all seemed flat and characterless), the humour didn’t tickle me, and the flexible approach to chronology was just a bit wearing. The idea that the school education system is constrained and unworldly is interesting, but the message seemed hammered home rather than developed. Others may consider this a great work of literature, but it just left me a bit cold and bored. (Amazon | Goodreads)

I’m absolutely not a member of the target audience for Mindy Kaling’s Why Not Me?. I have no idea who Laverne Cox is, nor whether “her legs are like whoa”. I have never engaged in a “juice cleanse”. And I would have guessed that a “Tria Clearing Blue Light” was a tool used by crime scene investigators. Despite all that, I found some of the anecdotes genuinely funny, and Kaling’s central message was refreshing: most highly successful people invest a huge, usually underestimated, amount of hard work and sacrifice to achieve that success. (Amazon | Goodreads)

Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life was exciting for being one of the first well-researched popular science books on the human microbiome. It contained lots of interesting stuff, much of which was new to me. Unfortunately, the book rambled a bit in places and became hard to follow, became a bit repetitive now and again, and didn’t make a strong distinction between established principles and emerging research. In other words, I enjoyed this book and learned some stuff from it, but think it would have benefited from a bit more editing. (Amazon | Goodreads)

In Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference, William MacAskill argues that when donating time or money to charity, one should maximise the quantifiable benefit to human health and wellbeing, using QALYs or ‘WALYs’ as a measurement. The book contains a lot of good pointers on assessing charity effectiveness, and lists some highly effective underfunded charities. However, MacAskill did very little to address the ‘edge’ questions that this proposition raises, which left his argument feeling underdeveloped and incomplete: How should we compare charities that benefit humans with charities that benefit animals? How should we quantify the benefit of interventions whose longterm outcomes are uncertain? If the aim is to maximise benefit, is there a moral obligation for people to refuse aid if others may benefit more? Is it fair to quantify benefit with measures that implicitly favour the young? Is relief of suffering the only noble aim of charity? Should we all really keep our early career options open rather than pursue eg medicine or law – and if so, what would be the societal impact? (Amazon | Goodreads)