Hello.

Golly been a while since my last post. I’ve since taken a year long sabbatical to study for a MSc in Statistics so my life is very very different now. This isn’t a programming post so feel free to ignore it, I promise I do have plans to write more interesting programming/stats posts.

This is a review of all the books I read this year. The books are listed in the order that I read them.

A rough guide on my ★ ratings:

• ★★★★★: I will rave about this book oh my god it is one of the best books I have ever read and will likely repeatedly reread it in the future.
• ★★★★☆: This book was great and I will most likely recommended it to you if it comes up in conversation.
• ★★★☆☆: This book was good, I don’t regret reading it but I will probably not recommend it.
• ★★☆☆☆: This book was not good, I most likely regret reading it and it was a struggle and a slog.
• ★☆☆☆☆: This book was dire, I probably didn’t want to finish it but I was compelled by some masochistic urge.

Furthermore; each rating is given in context to what the book is about. If I give a self help book and a sci-fi epic the same rating it is not because they were ‘equally good’. It is that the first is a 4★ self help book and the second is a 4★ sci-fi.

Dune⌗

Frank Herbert’s Dune is the Sci-fi equivalent to The Lord of the Rings for me - in the sense that I hadn’t read either because they’re so bloody long. I set a goal that this year I was going to rectify that, at least partially, by reading Dune. This book took me three months to read and whilst I’m glad I read it, and I would recommend it to a sci fi fan, I found it to be far from perfect. I simultaneously love and hate how the first half of the book is routinely spoiled to you throughout. Information on the betrayal is quite literally thrown at you at the start of every chapter. However, this does kind of make sense with the rest of the book, Paul can see the future and struggles immensely to go on knowing that the eventual jihad will happen. In many ways I felt like this for the first half of the book, willing myself to read on in spite of being routinely told all the details of the story before they’ve happened. The second half of this book (post betrayal) was a lot better in my opinion and captivated me a lot more, I’m glad to have read it and I think I might even continue with the series (at some point).

Rating: ★★★★☆

The Man in the High Castle⌗

One of my favourite books I read in 2022 was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. I found the discussion on self, morality and religion to be very interesting, I went into The Man in the High Castle hoping for the same sort of reflection on spirituality and self. This book covered some of the same, I enjoyed that all of the characters relied on the I ching - in spite of their affiliation to the pacific states. I also enjoyed how the I ching seemed to bind all the characters together in quite a satisfying way. Unfortunately, the story in general was a lot looser. It was built around following characters struggling in a Nazi world. It failed to captivate me, and I struggled to keep up reading it - although I think this could be due to my post Dune exhaustion.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Ariadne⌗

This was the perfect antidote to my reading slump, I demolished this book. The writing was wonderful, I absolutely ate it up and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The book is marketed as a feminist retelling of the myth of the Minotaur. It follows Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos as she is manipulated my Theseus to help him kill and escape Crete, before being abandoned on Naxos and saved by Dionysus. I enjoyed that the retelling was told from the perspective of Ariadne, and her sister Phaedra. With that being said, I think it was hard to put a proper feminist spin on this tale - due to the fact that the women in these stories are often tokens saved, slept with or killed for the plot. As such, most of the spin is simply “what if we didn’t treat women like this”, which I found to be a little simplistic. With that being said, it was an easy read that I enjoyed and set me to rights.

Rating: ★★★★☆

The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics⌗

And now for something completely different. To help myself fall asleep I started reading non-fiction stories, starting as a result of an unfortunate night where I didn’t eventually get to bed til past 3. My first venture was The Mixer by Michael Cox. Michael Cox is a writer for The Athletic, a sports news website which routinely offers ludicrously low prices for year long subscriptions (seriously this company hires over 100 journalists but I think I paid at most £20 for the year!?). The book itself was mostly good, detailing the journey through the premier league’s various tactical phases and how they came about. Sections of notable interest were mainly those around the mid 2000, I particularly enjoyed the sections on Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea and Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool and how their influenced changed the English game. With that being said, I found a lot of the analysis a bit bare bones - Which was mainly the part I wanted to read about most.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Breasts and Eggs⌗

Meiko Kawakami (and her translators) can do no wrong. In fact, if this book had been split into two separate short stories - each dedicated to part 1 and part 2 of the book respectively. I think I would probably have given this book a higher rating. Unfortunately - this collective book didn’t gel completely with me. The separate parts feel disconnected - and as a result I found myself thoroughly confused when a story about growing up working class in Japan pivoted massively into a story about an asexual woman wanting a child. I eventually enjoyed each part in isolation but together just left me feeling a bit disappointed. It took me a long time to get back into the story in the second part and as such I fell out with this book a bit. With all that being said - read it and make up your own mind. I have probably recommended this book to nearly every person I’ve met.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This Naked Mind⌗

This Naked Mind is a book about alcohol. It is written by a former alcoholic called Annie Grace. Intellectually, this book is probably bad. I found some of the sources and references to be a bit loose and tabloidly. I found that a lot of the strategy seems to be derived from a similar book written 7/8 years prior. I found the book a bit preachy too. This is because Annie Grace is not an author, she’s a marketer. A google search for this naked mind takes to to it’s website. Where you can see that it’s essentially pivoted into a self help course site where even if you respond “I have a healthy relationship” to every question you’ll still get recommend a $200 course.

Furthermore I got the impression - even as I read it for the first time having not read any other self help alcohol - that this book felt derivative of other works. Fellow anti-addiction writer/course seller Alan Carr’s The Easy Way to Stop Smoking seem to be a major influence to this book.

Yet, this book also fundamentally changed my view on alcohol, to the extent that I no longer drink it now. It makes captivating arguments that resonated in my brain and I feel like since quitting have been reinforced with my new experiences.

Rating: ★★★★☆

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress⌗

Confession: I only picked up this book because it’s mentioned in season 5 of black mirror - and I assumed Charlie Brooker was including it as some kind of Easter egg. I don’t really see the connection between the book and the episode it’s mentioned in, but the book on it’s own is brilliant. Robert A. Heinlein is one of the big three sci-fi authors, and this was my first foray into his work. This book is essentially a really interesting, and optimistic, thought experiment - even in 2023. It’s quite poignant that one of the main characters in the book is a ‘self aware’ AI which proceeds to overthrow its creators; not for some insane bizarre extremist moral view, but simply because it made a friend and the friend thought it was a good idea. I found it a rather optimistic view compared to the typical terminator/HAL 5000 comparisons that AI usually brings up. Furthermore, the social structure of the Moon is clearly quite thought out - even if I do think Heinlein got the attitudes of women in this book wrong. I also think Heinlein presents an interesting (read: wrong) economic view in this book - but I don’t have the energy to bother trying to dispel it. This book posed lots of questions at me, and delved deeply into trying to answer them, whilst still maintaining a compelling narrative with likeable characters.

Rating: ★★★★★

Fermat’s Last Theorem⌗

According to my undergraduate mathematics degree, I read this book back in 2016. In reality: I bought the book, got ~five pages in, learnt there was a BBC horizons documentary made by the author, and watched that instead. This book sat dusty on my shelf/in my parent’s loft for years. I read this as part of my ‘non fiction to fall asleep’ selection, as mentioned in the review of The Mixer. This book was wonderful, oh my word it reignited my passion in mathematics and mathematical stories. My undergraduate degree was not fun. I struggled with some serious mental health issues for the first two years of the degree, which I began to view as the problem and began to resent. When I finally sought some help at the end of my second/start of my third year and began to study - I became overwhelmed with the wealth of knowledge which I had allowed to pass me by. Deep understanding of the topics were a luxury which I could not have, keeping afloat with coursework and lectures was enough for me. This book took me back to being 17, viewing mathematics as a romantic discipline for the well rounded intellectual. A combination of art, history and philosophy which drew me to the subject in the first place.

I was reading this book at the same time as I was preparing for my postgraduate study, and it definitely had a marked influence in reigniting my self study beforehand.

Rating: ★★★★★

Men Without Women⌗

This entry is kinda cheaty of me - I finished this book this year but I think I actually started it in 2020? It’s a pretty OK selection of short stories from memory. It’s also Murakami at his worse - for a writer criticised for how the women he writes are one dimension objects of desire he kinda leaned into that with this book. The highlight was Drive my Car - which somehow got turned into a 3 hour film?

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Normal People⌗

Oh my god this book is incredible.

I devoured this book, I think I read the whole thing less than 48 hours which is very unexpected for me. I’m not even that big of a Sally Rooney fan, I have read Conversations with Friends which was… OK? And I didn’t finish Beautiful World, Where are you? because I found it a bit too twitter liberal for my taste.

However, Normal People was incredible oh my god. This book made me a complete train wreck in some points. I related to both characters so strongly, the school scenes felt genuine - or at least felt like my memories of school. The feelings of Connell at University obviously resonated with me quite a lot. I just loved the characters so much and so desperately wanted them to succeed.

Rating: ★★★★★

Guards! Guards!⌗

I desperately want to unequivocally like Terry Pratchett, but I just can’t do it. This isn’t to say that I disliked this book, or that I dislike his other work. I absolutely loved Wyrd Sisters, but my attempts previously to read his other work just hasn’t landed as much as that book. I think this book disappointed me because I was expecting a different level of parody, maybe for the jokes to lean on it more I’m not entirely sure.

Again, this isn’t a bad book and I enjoyed reading it - it’s more that I’m desperately seeking the feeling that Wyrd Sisters gave me.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Books of Blood: Volume One⌗

Clive Barkers’s Books of Blood is a series of short horror stories. This first initial volume was a bit of a mixed bag, which (to be fair) is kind of what you expect with a set of short stories. The first, second and final stories are really good. Especially the last story; which is centred around a horrible grotesque ritual in which two cities battle it out by SPOILER: creating two giant titanic figures by strapping all their bodies together. The imagery in it was so vivid and I can still visualise that last story in my head it’s borderline trauma inducing (but it a cathartic horror-y way).

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Neuromancer⌗

Christ I hated this book. I can appreciate that this book is the precursor or archetype for the cyberpunk genre, but equally that is the only reason I gave it two stars instead of one. Everything good in this book has been derived to the nth degree already. Watch The Matrix and Blade Runner, play Cyberpunk 2077 but don’t bother with the book. The pace is frantic; and the descriptions flaky. The characters are barely likeable and really cliche. The only bit I enjoyed reading was the end when he actually finds the neuromancer - but the journey was not worth the payoff.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

I Love the Bones of You⌗

I actually listened to this on audio book so consider this a review of that in particular. This is Christopher Eccleston’s Autobiography/Memoirs, and the audio book copy was narrated by him as well. I might eat these words, but I feel like you can tell that this book was actually written by Chris himself through the narration. The book covers some incredible personal moments for Chris, with particular focus given to his relationship with his father, and his Dad’s subsequent dementia. When you hear Chris narrate these moments, there’s an energy in his voice. It’s very clear writing this book was some sort of catharsis, you can feel it in the timbre when he speaks about these moments, and in other moments too. Areas of particular enjoyment for me was when he spoke about his father, his early acting career and his anorexia brought about by theatre school, and his depression and attempts at treatment. These moments are delivered with enthusiasm and obvious effort is made on intonation, and I also found them charmingly honest.

However, one of the things Chris teaches you about himself is that he’s honest to a fault, such as when he doesn’t like what he’s doing. This is unfortunately also clear in the narration. There’s a few places where he’s recounting random acting jobs he’d done, and you can actually tell that his hand is on his face (presumably out of boredom) as he does these lines. Furthermore, you know these lines must’ve been shit because there’s a few random bits of dialogue recorded in a totally different setting that just appear mid sentence (not that these are necessarily any better). These moments really threw me. I’d rather he’d just not even put them in the book because he delivers them with such little enthusiasm.

Rating: ★★★★☆

The Perks of Being a Wallflower⌗

This book was amazing. I honestly can’t stress how good it was, I think it’s probably one of my favourite book of all time at this point.

I enjoyed this book so much, that my 2024 reading goal is to read all the books Charlie gets recommended by his English teacher.

Charlie feels honest and childlike and confused and his letters hurt to read. The book is also strangely aspirational? Charlie’s family, friends and teachers are all incredibly supportive and kind and it’s very heartwarming to see.

Rating: ★★★★★

Lessons in Chemistry⌗

This book is intended to be feminist and I liked that - first and foremost. However this book is also quite annoying:

• The whole thing felt like it was written as a TV show. As in - I felt like things were being described as if I were watching them, or reading a screenplay. Some may enjoy this but I found it a bit jarring personally.
• Elizabeth Zott is somewhere between undiagnosed Neurodivergent and annoying pretentious ass and I’m not sure it was truly ever clear to me. The Sheldon Cooper esque traits (SPOILER: passed on down to her daughter as well ) of calling water ‘Hydrogen Dioxide’ and did not land for me and I found myself rolling my eyes a bit at them. However the book is also quite witty, and I did find myself enjoying the dialogue generally. I think some of the wit and humour in the book (genius dog, the show being a literal TV show) are also partially why I felt like it was written for TV.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Talking at Night⌗

OK. I hate this book, but it’s also really beautiful. I was driven to this book after reading Normal People and wanting more books like that. Talking at Night was suggested by a friend (who had also looked for similar stories post Normal People) and I have to say that it didn’t quite hit that same nerve. One of the reasons I liked Normal People was because the struggles of the characters is realistic. However this book is not like that. One of the main characters struggles with SPOILER: abandonment by his Mother, alcoholism, arrested for a mugging (that he didn't commit he just witnessed), death of a friend (on his birthday), death of his Nan, and he finds a man hanging from a noose whilst volunteering at the mountain rescue. I just don’t understand how we’re supposed to relate to this character, it’s almost comical when you turn the page and it’s like “whoops more trauma!”. This was my main gripe with the book, I think you just lose the point when you add unnecessary trauma to your characters. Furthermore the character resolves all these issues by like - becoming slightly monk-like basically? I don’t think they ever go to therapy and instead get all of their struggles resolved by the in between person they date, and THAT IS A HORRIBLE THING to put in a romance book. However, the book is written really beautifully and I kept wanting to stop and highlight passages of text. There are some really really lovely moments of companionship written and I enjoyed that.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop⌗

This book is a love letter to books, particularly second hand books. The main character has a shitty event happen to them which sends them into a depressive state. They are redeemed slowly by their eccentric Uncle and his love for books (as he runs the titular Morisaki Bookshop), and in this aspect - despite the cliche depression solved by XXX - the book feels at it’s strongest at this point. Whilst I didn’t not enjoy reading this, the most notable highlight for me was the translators at the end recommending good translations of the classic Japanese novels referenced throughout the novel - which I think is somewhat indicative of this book as a whole.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Never Let Me Go⌗

Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day remains to this day one of my favourite novels I have read, and was probably my first or second favourite book I read in 2022. I went into Never Let Me Go with high expectations that were met, and exceeded. This book is everything I loved about The Remains of the Day amp-ed up. The story is told primarily through flashback - which personally, I love - and gives the story the sense of a jigsaw falling into place as you read on. You fill in holes in the story yourself and become driven to want to find out whether your guess was correct. Equally, I enjoy the retrospective aspect of flashback. The characters feel incredibly human when they reflect on their life; echoing regret, joy or apathy as they bounce through their memories.

Furthermore, I enjoyed the slightly darker themes explored in this novel than in The Remains of the Day, which was explicitly focused on trying to capture the energy of the post-war era (in my opinion). Never Let Me Go explores a parallel universe with a vastly different moral compass than our own. I found the accepted morality in the book a challenge to the reader to explore our commonly held views on society around us, and to explore our own more explicitly. Every character in this book felt amazing to read about, even the ones I hated.

Rating: ★★★★★