For the past couple of weeks my catchphrase around Barker Towers has been “There’s this bit in David Mitchell.” Black Swan Green is going back to the library tomorrow and I’m still doing it. I loved this book and right now I can’t think of any book I like better (well maybe Ragged Trousered Philanthropists). [...]

I finished reading this months ago so forgive me any inaccuracies. Cocaine Nights is about well off expat Brits living in Spain, succumbing to the charms of their tennis coach and descending into a life of vice and arson. My favourite bit — the plot doesn’t resolve until the very last sentence. Ballard’s views on [...]

Jan found this in Burns’ yard and we both really enjoyed it. Alice’s adult life inventing toy products is very Douglas Coupland, which is nice, but the bits I thought really worked were her attempts to fit in as an 10 year old, and starting at secondary school and sixth form college. Such pressure on [...]

Parenting isn’t always easy and I should know. I don’t usually review self help books, but this book has just enjoyed a second reading from me.

I enjoyed every story in the latest issue of Granta. Some were gentle, like the Mercies about a womans friendship with the nuns who taught her at school or Edenvale about the gay scene in Apartheid South Africa, and some were quite brutal like James about losing identity to cope with life in a Cambodian [...]

In general I’m not a great fan of the green movement. Don’t they know that poverty is the enemy and increased production is how to get people out of poverty. Even if that means standard have to fall. And organic produce is just a label to get us to buy dirty carrots. And farmers’ markets [...]

Just enjoyed Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish Novelists, the first installment of my new Granta subscription (thanks Jan). Most (or all) of the stories are set in Central or South America and most (or all) feature poverty and people taking their clothes off. I particularly liked the guy playing chess with the hit [...]

Today is the 100th anniversary of the death of Robert Tressell. If you haven’t read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists then you must. Things may have moved on a little in the last 100 years (National Health Service, state pension, social security, health and safety laws, all under threat from the current government), but if you [...]

This year is re-read year, a chance to revisit some of the books that I’ve read down the years and feel sort of special and important to me, first up, The Dork of Cork. I first read this book, on my first Open University Summer School. I remember buying it from Durham Waterstones at the [...]

I like philosophy and I like politics, so I when I saw this book about political philosophy in the University Bookshop I thought that’s for me. The book explores utilitarianism, libertarianism, Immanuel Kant and John Rawls, but in the end chooses his own take on communitarianism. In the 80s and 90s it was enough for [...]