Be Excellent To Each Other

No worries. I doubt the world will miss my two sentences about a Raymond Chandler novel!

Well good job, because I can't!

Nettle and Bone - T Kingston princess sets off on a quest to murder a prince. There's magic and all sorts in this joyful book.

The Looking Glass War - John le Carré. Continuing my discovery of his work. This is the fourth George Smiley novel, though he's only in it from time to time. He's definitely in charge, but only behind the scenes as another agency tries incompetently to prove its relevance to the post war world. Apparently Le Carre was bothered by the veneration of the Spy who came into the cold, as people loved it more than spotting it was saying that spying was often ineffective. So this one goes all out on the incompetence, and has an air of 50s failure all over it. I found it a bit depressing, which I guess is the idea, but it's not a classic for me. There was a radio adaptation with Simon Russell Beale which I might look out for, though - if anyone can carry this sort of story, it's him.

Harrier 809 by Rowland White

The story of the Falklands war, with a focus on the fleet air arm’s Sea Harriers and RAF Harriers.
It’s quite amazing how they managed to prepare for war in such a short space of time, and how close we could have come to losing.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

It's the first in the Murderbot series. A security android overrides it's rule set chip and tries to remain hidden etc. It's OK, very OK.

Poor Murderbot.

Into the Beanstalk by J Paul Roe

This is more like it. Exceeding entertaining,rip roaring, cyberpunk adventure. Hits the notes and belts them out.

Snap, am listening to that at the moment. I share your critique, but a friend got really into the series so perhaps it takes a while to get going

Kennedy 35 - Charles Cumming. Decent thriller. Bit weird on the tech, might just be the difficulty of describing it for everyone, but feels like someone trying to pass on what they've been told ("use this iphone, we've put some software on it that'll open the doors"). And it's obsessed with giving you brand names, as is the Tom Clancy-a-like I've moved onto. Maybe all these authors get together and discuss 'high end' (yuck, call it expensive, or something different, once in a while) shopping.

Luck of the Draw - Charles Murphy. The memoir on which Masters of the Air (Apple TV) is based. It's more factual and less holyeffingshitbulletbulletflak than the TV series, but interesting enough. Long appendices listing every plane and crew make it look longer than it is. Good testimony.

Merckx - Half Man Half bike by William Fotherington

Cyberpunk adventure in which an enhanced humanoid is a taxi cab for the upper classes. No only kidding. It's a well written and interesting biography of Eddie Merckx

I’m reading the latest. It isn’t very good. I literally feel like I’m just reading each word to get through the book

I’ve been pondering this. I’m really disliking the latest book. Too many 2D characters with very little plot. I’ve read all of them, and this is definitely the weakest and I can’t really remember anything about the others. So, let’s be polite, and call it marmite. I certainly wouldn’t recommend continuing if you don’t like the first book.

6.) Ramage - Dudley Pope
Mr Pope read the Hornblowers and thought "Hornblower thinks too much. And is too sad. And can't do cool things like kill Frenchmen with a throwing knife. I shall fix this." It's no classic of the genre and he's no CS Forester or Patrick O'Brian but they're a pretty decent read and I might keep an eye out for the next one.

Marc Cameron - Tom Clancy's Code of Honour (Jack Ryan). Pretty good, more adventure with Jack Ryan, Chavez and Clark making the hard decisions. Keeps up the oo-rah tone of Clancy's books, and thankfully modernised, with no-one now 'lighting up' a computer. There's a subplot that disappears for too long, but it holds together and I kept reading. Not quite as intense as the early Clancy ones, but the good-bad narrative is more complicated now.

Raynor Winn - Landlines. Salt Path author continues to walk with her husband whose degenerative condition has always improved with long walks before. But surely it can't this time? She's hard on herself, I'm certain she's thoughtful and lovely in person, but her self-reflection comes across as a bit more critical than anyone else would be. It's not at all annoying, mind. They meet people on the way and those interactions are often the beating heart of what I thought was originally an extended love letter to her husband. Lovely book, just like the others. And there's a running joke of people recommending her own book to her that made me laugh every time.

Mick Herron - Spook Street. Kindle bargain, no.4 in the series, and I couldn't resist getting ahead of the TV adaptation. I don't think I've read another series where the TV characters then inform reading the book - probably Morse and Frost have done similar, though. But I wonder if I'd have found Jackson Lamb in the book as funny without having 'seen' him through Gary Oldman. It is laugh out loud funny, often, as a result.

3. I, Partridge by Alan Partridge

2011 celeb memoir. Very hard not to read it in his voice.

4. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Easy and cosy crime thriller that could do with being 50% shorter and dropping all the needless details and references that will date quickly. Felt like a Nanowrimo attempt to get the word count up at times.

The audiobook, read in character by Steve Coogan, is masterful.

7) Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis. A sci-fi tale of alien visitors on earth in 2007 getting exposed. It's ok, but didn't grab me as much as I'd have expected

4: Interplanetary Thrive - Ginger Booth

I quite like this series, the books are about 5 hours long, so not a massive read, and I like the characters. It is about them trying to save a colony after they have left earth.

7.) The Ship That Died of Shame - Nicholas Monsarrat
Quite a neat little book of short stories from the The Cruel Sea guy. All are good but all but the title story are fairly inconsequential and I doubt I'll remember them in a year. He appears to written a heck of a lot more books than I though so I've got even more to add to my "To Read" list.

Rachel Joyce - The Music Shop. Whimsical story of a parade of shops, including a music shop that sells only vinyl records. She does whimsy very well, and it's a lovely book.

Kazuo Ishiguro - The Buried Giant. Story of the ancient Britons. Lore and weirdness in the air all around as people explore ancient britain and what on earth is going on post Arthur. Kind of about Britons and Saxons, kind of about life and death. I really enjoyed it.

Alexander Mccall Smith - From a Far and Lovely Country. I'm in Africa, only about 10 hours from the Botswana border, so it felt right to be reading this. Actually heard people in the street refer to people in passing 'Rra' (uncle/esteemed elder gent) and 'Mma', which was as much of a thrill as the first time I saw a yellow school bus for real in the US. You know what you're getting with these books, but he captures something and this is as much of a pleasure as the others.

The Looking Glass by J Paul Roe

Cyberpunk shenanigans continue in this page turning adventure. Some slight wobbles but it stays in the tracks and continues to be enjoyable

5.Femina by Janina Ramirez

Enthusiastic look at women in the middle ages. My only gripe is that while there are plenty of photographs, a few colour plates would have really shown the beauty of some of the manuscripts featured. Thankfully most were easy to find online.

8.) The Scandal of Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
A collection of cheery short stories where Father Brown solves murders by being wise and seeing things how they really are. I've read some of these before I think, though, but certainly not all of them.

6.Be Funny or Die: How Comedy Works and Why It Matters by Joel Morris

Enjoyable dissection of what makes a joke work. Reading it isn't going to get me an arena show, in the same way that music theory won't help me finish my symphony, but interesting to see how what techniques comedians use then try to spot them when watching an act. Highpoint is his takedown of so-called edgy comedians.

7.The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

A look at how people got caught up in Internet conspiracies, starting with Gamergate and online forum culture long before the first "Q drop". Interesting and alarming about how it tapped into people's vulnerabilities and how it's changed over the years, drawing on Richard Dawkins' original concept of the meme. The conclusion ties it back to classic sociology work on cults and a rather depressing view that no amount of civic education and fact checkers will shake people out of their delusions.