Jen Campbell - Weird Things Customers Say In Bookshops

 

Rating: 3/5

 

Review:

Quite amusing in short sections 

 

I read this after a recommendation in Shaun Bythell’s excellent The Diary Of A Bookseller. I quite enjoyed it but I was left just a little disappointed.

The book is a collection of odd, silly or offensive things people have said in bookshops. That’s it; there is none of the scene-setting or development of Bythell’s Diary, which leaves it a bit like a sort of bibliographical version of those Humorous Things Schoolchildren Have Written collections. It’s fine to dip into, but reading more than a few in a row can get a bit wearing, I found. I also wondered about the exact verisimilitude of some of the exchanges and whether some had been touched up a bit in retrospect to make them funnier.

This is fine as a short, dip-into collection, but for me it wasn’t that special.

Bill Fitzhugh - Cross Dressing

 

 Rating: 5/5

Review:

Very enjoyable satire

 

I have read and enjoyed several of Bill Fitzhugh’s books; I think this is the best so far. It is readable and amusing, but also carries some truly scathing satire.

The plot is based heavily in farce, of course. Dan Steele is a cynical, materialistic, uncaring advertising executive with little compassion or moral sense. By an...er...unusual sequence of events he ends up pretending to be a Catholic priest and working in a badly underfunded Care Centre run by an unconventional and very attractive nun. This being Bill Fitzhugh, he also has a number of people who are trying to track him down and kill him.

The story of an inhumane man discovering his humanity may sound hackneyed, but it’s very well done, very amusing and has a plot which becomes quite gripping. It is also brilliantly excoriating about the contrast between the many magnificently good people who do the Church’s work on the ground and the self-serving behaviour of some of its hierarchy. Fitzhugh’s approach is probably best summed up in a quote he uses from Lenny Bruce: “Every day people are drifting away from the church and going back to God.” He also takes some very well aimed potshots at the advertising industry, US materialism and so on.

Most of all, though, this is a really good read; I was hooked and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I’ve rounded 4.5 stars up to 5 for that reason. Warmly recommended.

(My thanks to Farrago for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Alan Bradley - I Am Half-Sick Of Shadows

 

Rating: 4/5

Review:

Amusing and engaging 

 

This is another very enjoyable instalment of the Flavia de Luce series. The setting and characters remain interesting and entertaining, Flavia’s narrative voice is as delightful as ever and there’s quite a decent mystery here, too.

The latest scheme to ward off financial ruin is to allow a film to be made at Buckshaw in the days before Christmas, with the immensely famous Phyllis Wyvern as its star. Needless to say, Flavia is in the thick of things (while also planning some very interesting chemical antics on Christmas Eve) and befriends Miss Wyvern; when everyone is snowed in and there is a suspicious death, she conducts her own investigations under the nose of the redoubtable Inspector Hewitt.

It’s immense fun. It’s not very plausible and certainly not realistic, but who cares? Equally, it must be said that Alan Bradley does occasionally show that he’s not English and not from that period as the odd Americanism or anachronism shows up. For example, on Romeo And Juliet she opines “...I had formed the opinion that while Shakespeare was good with words, he knew beans about poisons.” Flavia, in rural England in 1950 would never have said “knew beans”, but again it’s so amusing and engaging that I happily forgave it – and any others.

This series has been reliably amusing and involving and this is one of my favourites so far. Recommended – as is the whole series.

Royal Observatory Greenwich - 2022 Guide To The Night Sky

 

Rating: 5/5

Review:

An excellent guide

 

 

This is a cracking little guide to the night sky in 2022. It is authoritaive and has very clear illustrations and guides to events, where the planets will be and so on. Seasoned watchers of the skies may possibly need something a little more, but for beginners or people like me who know a little, can recognise the planets and so on it’s ideal. It is compact and very reasonably priced and really I don’t think you could do better. Warmly recommended.

Shaun Bythell - The Diary Of A Bookseller

 

Rating: 5/5

Review:

An excellent read

 

Just to add my voice to the hundreds of favourable reviews of this book:

I found Diary Of A Bookseller very entertaining, surprisingly involving and also quite informative about the business of bookselling. It is the diary over a year of Shaun Bythell who owns a very large bookshop in Wigtown, a “book town” in south-west Scotland. He recounts the pleasures and frustrations of dealing in books and of being a central part of a large book festival, which he does with insight and acerbic wit, making it a very enjoyable read. It is peopled with very well drawn characters, like his eccentric (to say the least) assistant Nicky, the loyal and rather enigmatic regular customer Mr Deacon and, of course, the array of customers who come to the shop or order on-line. The behaviour of some customers is embarrassing and/or annoying – and very recognisable to anyone who has spent a lot of time observing people like that while browsing and buying in second-hand bookshops – and it is extremely well captured by Bythell.

He makes clear the devastating effect of Amazon on independent booksellers and has made me feel slightly guilty about the amount I now read on my Kindle. (In my defence, there will be a very nasty case of husband-murder if I bring more physical books into the place.) He has also already inspired me to take down and read again an elderly copy of Orwell’s essays, to try William Boyd once more when I had decided that enough was enough, and so on. Any book which can do that deserves praise in itself, and this also gave me great pleasure just in the reading. Very warmly recommended – and I shall be reading his two other books soon.

Robin Ince - The Importance Of Being Interested

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

Thoughtful and extremely enjoyable 

 

I think The Importance Of Being Interested is excellent. It is witty, insightful and extremely interesting.

Robin Ince, as most readers will know, is a comedian who began with little knowledge of science but developed an interest and has now presented over 100 episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage with Prof. Brian Cox on Radio 4. In The Importance Of Being Interested, he reflects on his and others’ responses to discoveries in science, using the very considerable knowledge he has gained combined with the humility of a non-expert, to try to understand what some of these ideas mean to people. These people include a wide range of scientists, astronauts and the like who have deep knowledge of the subjects, and also ordinary non-scientists. It’s a fascinating, thoughtful and entertaining read.

Ince addresses subjects like the relationship between science and religion, what space travel means for humanity, evolution and why some people refuse so violently to accept it and so on. He is plainly knowledgeable but wisely leaves most scientific exposition to experts whom he has talked to or read, while concentrating on the human aspects of what the science means. I found it fascinating and very well balanced; for example, as an atheist himself he has immense respect for a lot of rational religious people, strives to understand how it it possible to believe in both scientific rationalism and a God and concludes (correctly in my view) that it certainly is, even if it isn’t a set of beliefs he shares. Ince he has no truck with anti-scientific ideas which clearly go against the evidence, but is genuinely interested in finding out why some people hold them and seem to be immune to reason. He also recognises the importance of trying to re-establish rationality in areas where irrationality and conspiracy theory abound, and the importance of making genuine human contact and explaining scientific ideas with respect and humility. No one has ever been insulted into changing their mind.

One other aspect which I liked very much is that Ince stresses how much scientific knowledge has enhanced his – and humanity’s – awe, respect and wonder at the universe and the natural world. I have always thought that it was a naive and insulting view of the universe to insist that analysing and investigating a poem, for example, leads us to a greater appreciation of its beauty, but doing the same for the natural world somehow destroys all beauty and wonder in it. My own study of science has had quite the opposite effect and it is very pleasing to see this view shared and advocated so well.

In short, this is a fascinating, humane and very enjoyable read. I can recommend it very warmly.

(My thanks to Atlantic Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Tim Dorsey - Tiger Shrimp Tango

 

Rating: 5/5

Review:

Another great Serge episode

 

This is another cracking Serge Storms book. The format is familiar: Serge (bouncing on caffeine and adrenaline) and Coleman (hilariously out of his head on weed, booze and heaven knows what else) target Florida’s scumbags with imaginative executions. This time there’s also a hitman on Serge’s tail and Serge is working in tandem with Mahoney, a very funny PI who talks in barely comprehensible hard-boiled jargon, often in the third person. Predictably, mayhem ensues.

It is, as always, very funny, rather exciting and packed with arcane gems about Florida and with gratuitous, rather pantomimic violence visited on the deserving. I have never been disappointed in a Tim Dorsey book, and Tiger Shrimp Tango is among those I’ve enjoyed the most. Perhaps not for the faint-hearted, but otherwise very warmly recommended.

Robert Peston - The Whistleblower

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

A slow start but a decent thriller 

 

The Whistleblower is, in the end, quite a good political thriller. Journalists don’t always make good novelists, but Robert Peston has made a decent fist of this, his first work of fiction.

Set just before the 1997 General Election, the book is narrated by Gilbert Peck, political editor for a major national broadsheet. The death of someone close to him leads to suggestions of some major skulduggery at the top of government which Peck begins to investigate. The book is peopled with some very thinly disguised characters of the time; a charismatic leader of “Modern Labour” with a high-profile spin doctor and a southern-hemisphere newspaper magnate who is trying to move into TV...and so on. This works quite well, although I found the large number of dodgy PR people, MPs, journalists, political advisors and so on rather hard to keep track of some of the time.

I have to say that I found the first 100 pages or so pretty hard going in places. It is a long time before any plot really begins to emerge, with lots and lots of background but not much development. Peston is obviously very familiar with the relationship between politicians and journalists and with the official systems and much less official contacts which exist. It is interesting, but it does read a little like a beginner’s guide to the political lobby system at times (with some fairly extensive instruction on Jewish funerals thrown in for good measure). Add to this an immoral, untrustworthy, self-centred, drug-and-alcohol-fuelled protagonist whom people frequently and justifiably liken to the exit from the human digestive tract and it was a bit of a struggle at times.

However, the book does pick up when things actually begin to happen and I became quite involved in the plot. The well painted background did actually become background rather than a seminar on How Things Work, and was all the better for it. There were some rather unlikely events but I could forgive them, and the way in which the powerful protect themselves, each other and their institutions was very well and rather horrifyingly illustrated.

Overall, I found this an interesting and ultimately exciting political thriller. It’s not a classic, but it’s a good start and I will certainly give Robert Peston’s next book a try.

(My thanks to Bonnier for an ARC via NetGalley.)