Read: Everything We Do Is Music How 20th-Century Classical Music Shaped Pop by @elizabethalker.bsky.social 📚Wonderfully nerdy cross referencing of pop music with ‘serious’ avant garde, which took my listening down many weird and, it transpired, joyously unlistenable rabbitholes. #booksky

Read: Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie 📚Fergie/Andrew bio- readable etc. but most of it’s been in the media already. Brings together the astonishing extent of their ligging and fosters a sense of righteous outrage. #booksky

Read: Villager by Tom Cox 📚Portrait of a village, seen partly through the eyes of the village, circling through time, space and points of view. Rich and enrichening and humane. #booksky #books

Read: The New Spy by Michael Dylan 📚The opposite of the Slow Horses (Galloping Thoroughbreds?) fight a bunch of terrorist threats in London. Fast read, and more action than atmosphere. Feels like a lost novelisation of BBC’s Spooks. #booksky #thrillers

Read: Reykjavik - A Crime Story by Ragnar Jónasson Katrín Jakobsdóttir 📚By the numbers, emotionally flat Icelandic noir heavy with the usual deserted islands, crusading journalist and middle aged professionals hiding a sin from their youth. #booksky #thrillers

Read: Vienna At Nightfall by Richard Wake 📚Richly atmospheric Alan Furst-ish world of pre-WW2 Austria, as completely believable ‘ordinary bloke’ is pulled into spying, with all the agonies and internal conflicts it brings, and a credibly snarky authorial voice. #booksky #thrillers

Read: The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry 📚Leans more towards agonised burnt out spook cases of Greeneland and Deighton than gripping suspense. Feels real enough that I now need to research what actually happened in Bahrain in 2012. #booksky #thrillers

Read: Harry’s Game by Gerald Seymour 📚 Long overdue to read this (mostly associate it with the 1970s TV series and Clannad). Pulls together action, politics, ‘world’, psychology, morality, emotions, suspense, allthethings, brilliantly. Total, total classic. #booksky #readingcommunity #thriller

Read: Yellowface by R F Kuang 📚Readable and smart while disappearing up its own postmodern identity-politicking arse. I can see why publishers hyped it: industries love to see themselves reflected back as edgy and absorbing, especially when they’re cliquey and privileged. #booksky #reading #books

Read: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James 📚 Pacey and compulsive psych thriller just keeping to an acceptable amount of supernatural flummery. Will be reading more of her stuff. #booksky #horror #thriller

Read: The Call of the Wild by Jack London 📚 Fight Club but with dogs in the late 19th century Yukon. #booksky #books #readingcommunity

Read: In Ascension by Martin MacInnes 📚 Top drawer grown up SF with much geekiness, philosophical ponderings, and characters who exist in a world rather than being case studies or Star Wars/Tolkien knock offs. If you liked Contact, The Martian, Arrival, it’s the same kind of deal. #booksky #books

Read: The Missing Millionaire by Katie Daubs 📚A digestable way to learn about early 20th century Toronto rather than turning up any new info on the disappearance of theatre impresario Ambrose Small in 1919. Entertaining enough though. #BookSky

Read: The Friends of Meager Fortune by David Adams Richards 📚 Who’d have thought a family saga in in post WW2 New Brunswick logging industry would be this enthralling? The characters are recognisable people, even if the backdrop is unknown. #booksky

Read: Desert Star (A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel) by Michael Connelly 📚 Bosch and Ballard content. Solid procedural plus some Ageing Bosch character development. Reliably delivers what you want and then some, and this is why the big name writers get to be the big names. #booksky

Read: The Widowmaker by Hannah Morrissey 📚Love the seedy, grimey Black Harbor world and this has the usual tapestry of decay, lies and small town secrets. Not quite up there with Hello Transcriber, and there’s gratuitous Oirishness at the end. But better than most. #booksky

Read: Putin’s People by Catherine Belton 📚TLDR: Putin helped the KGB steal all Russia’s money, oligarchs stole it from the KGB and set up Putin as leader, Putin stole the money from the oligarchs. Putin wins. Authoritative, heavily researched and so so so so detailed. #booksky #bookstodon

Read: You Killed Me First by John Marrs 📚More gloriously fucked up suburban homicide from John Marrs. At one point I feared it might veer into supernatural tropes, but thankfully it was just psychosis. #booksky #bookstodon

Read: The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak 📚Modern day CIA spy-daughter investigates what her CIA spy-father got up to in the cold war. Top flight blend of character, suspense and world. Audiobook marred by a narrator with only a passing acquaintance with many common English words. #bookstodon

Read: Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner 📚Good, but not quite up to the hype. Lit types called it a thriller, but it lacks suspense and there are longeurs about human evolution which aren’t really part of the genre. It’s a thriller if you don’t normally read them, I suppose. #booksky #bookstodon

Abandoned: The Spite House by Johnny Compton 📚mysteriously on-the-run father with two daughters gets a ‘stay in this weird house for money’ job. Believable characters, strong idea, and some thematic meat underneath it all. And yet, somehow I couldn’t get into it. #booksky #bookstodon

Read: Bleaker Waters by Gary Kruse - A mix of Jane Harper-like ‘locals hiding a secret’ and Commissioner Ricciardi ‘I see dead victims’ psychological thriller, and set in my native Norfolk, so I know the locations well. Twisty, engaging read. #booksky #bookstodon

Read: Blue Machine by Helen Czerski 📚 This is how you write popular science: engaging, clear, authoritative. Stories, weirdness and passion. It’s about how the sea works - the depths and shallows, the currents, the chemistry, the thermodynamics. An all time favourite. #booksky #bookstodon

Read: Vintage Ondaatje by Michael Ondaatje 📚Grab bag of his writings. I’d gleaned he was ponderous and dull from the English Patient but turns out he can be quick and funny too.

Currently reading: Remembrance Day by Henry Porter 📚 Techno thrillers age - the writing and construction is skilled but the breathless references to SIM cards, ZIP drives and faxing really date this one. #bookstodon #booksky