This is an impressive book. It’s flawed – many chapters could be significantly reduced without damaging the message, the message is often lost amidst rambling anecdotes – but by golly, this is a man who knows how to research. Facts, quotes, conclusions – it’s all here. Kurt Andersen is a journalist by trade, and the […]

I’m a bit torn with this book. I read it to the end, and did enjoy it, but the second half was a struggle and I skimmed a fair bit towards the end. The problem is that this is a first person psychological thriller, so you’re close to the thoughts of the antagonist, and those […]

I wasn’t aware that “Olive, Again” was a sequel until I came to write this review – I thought the “, Again” was because Olive Kitteridge appears in each chapter of this connected collection of short-stories, sometimes the focus, other times just passing through. I didn’t feel I’d missed anything by not reading the first […]

This book doesn’t discuss day-to-day conversations, what I was expecting, but the Big Conversations (used by Sarah throughout the book) – those chats where the outcomes can save marriages, get that promotion, or start a new way of life. The book started slow, a few too many anecdotes from Sarah’s past, but once it kicked […]

This book has all the cliches of prison books and films – the framed innocent, the beatings and sexual abuse, corruption and murder – but the most alarming is that this is based on true events over a 100 -year span at Florida’s Dozier School for Boys. Various reforms outlawed certain abuses, but corrupt regimes […]

Naomi Wood is a very skilled writer – her prose flows like a river, beautiful sentences with wonderful word choices. Her words are lyrical, beats pulsing through the page, all playing in harmony to make the reading a joy. I suspect I’d get pleasure reading her to-do list. When I finished The Hiding Game, I […]

This is an excellent book, explaining the tricks of the medical industries, how they can work around the regulator bodies, and how the journalists aren’t censoring their wild claims. There have been a few recent scandals, the MMR and MRSA, which are pulled apart here – showing how the only ‘scandal’ was how people who […]

The oddly titled Byzantine World War mostly covers the rule of Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes and his betrayal and untimely death at the hands of the Doukas family, which led to the demise of the Eastern Roman Empire. The book continues with a brief continuation into the Crusades, with the Fourth Crusade actually sacking Constantinople, […]

Safi Bahcall was a recent guest on the Tim Ferriss podcast. He told interesting stories, like his first date with his wife-to-be, though she believed it to be a business meeting, and how he’d sit in a bar for hours studying a single page of a book to appreciate the use of language. He came […]

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 […]