This is an intelligent book – from the language, to the character observations and even the clever sub-title (it really is short stories sandwiched between two novellas!). Few people are able to form characters like Shriver, she catches their nuances, their foibles and their strengths, and this makes their behaviour and motivations all the more…

James Wallman’s Time and How to Spend It is a mixed bag. I found the first half a struggle – trying to overlay a book structure onto your holiday arrangements seems great in theory, but in reality no-one does, or would do, that. Plus, the anecdotes seem shoe-horned into places where they didn’t belong, with…

Summer Crossing is one of those books that aspiring writers bang out, then, when they re-read it, realise it’s tosh and cast it aside. All great writers have these novels – Stephen King has a few, even J. K. Rowling progressed two novels before abandoning them. Unfortunately for Truman Capote, several years after his death…

Because We Say So is a collection of Noam Chomsky’s essays and speeches from the period roughly from 2011 to 2014. Individually, they’re interesting, considered criticisms of America’s foreign policy in the Middle East. The problem is that collectively, they’re very repetitious – all discussing the same themes of how USA and Israel are the…

I haven’t read science fiction for a while. I used to love Clarke and Asimov as a teenager, chuckled at Douglas Adams then had a lull until I was gifted Dune a few years ago. Having just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Walking to Aldebaran, I can see myself looking for more sci-fi novels, and certainly more…

Guy Kawasaki has had an interesting life, from the early days of Apple, having his shoes polished by Richard Branson, through to turning down the role of Yahoo! CEO (in the days when Yahoo! was still relevant), so there are a few rich seams of stories to tell. Wise Guy is effectively an autobiography with…

“Reasons to be Cheerful” is the first book by Nina Stibbe that I’ve read, It doesn’t start anywhere, or go anywhere even, but it was a fun, light, holiday kind of book. The book follows the dramas of Lizzie – it’s very much fiction, and by the end I wanted her to exist, with her…

Hanna Jameson’s The Last is an interesting one. The plot follows a group of strangers isolated in a remote Swiss hotel when nuclear bombs destroy the world. Few of the guests have little chance of ever going home -airports were destroyed and society rapidly disintegrates – so they make the most of a bad situation…

I really enjoyed Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer. The characters were well formed – believable and even meriting sympathy. One sister likes to kill, the other helps her not get caught – blood thicker than water and all that. The narrator, the non-killing sister, shares interesting observations about men, society, and what it…

Out of the Maze is a tricky book to review. I haven’t read the prequel Who Moved My Cheese, apparently the biggest selling book on Amazon a couple of years after its publication, but I don’t believe that’s necessary – the first book covers embracing change, this book deals with how inflexible belief systems can…