Read: How to Lose a Country by Ece Temelkuran 📚
Turkish writer who’s fled Erdogan tries so hard to stay humane, humorous and hopeful despite the pandemic of populist demagogues. She almost succeeds.
Books
Watched/went to a webinar about making money from short stories. The good news is that there are many more outlets for my genre than I thought. The bad news is that ‘payment’ is not really a thing. Good for just getting stuff out there anyhow.
Finished reading: The Survivors by Jane Harper 📚
As ever, quality small town murder mystery, intelligent and grown up.
Finished reading: the company by Robert LIttell 📚
Long, suspense-free fictionalised history of the CIA in novel form. I’m sure the CIA approved it.
Finished reading: The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota 📚
Very English -Yorkshire countryside, botched communication, embarrassed romance, virulent racism.
Finished reading: Hello, Transcriber by Hannah Morrissey 📚
Midwest smalltown shithole noir, feels like no-budget indie film. Enjoyably scuzzy and down at heel.
Finished reading: Torch by lin anderson 📚 Meh.
Finished reading: Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad - Daniel Finkelstein
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Finished reading: Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein 📚 Everybody should read this. It manages to put both the Holocaust and the Stalinist famines in human terms and closer to comprehensible than anything else I’ve read.
Finished reading: Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd 📚 More of the reliably cracking mid-20th century Zeligishness, somewhere in the general ballpark of Greene, Deighton and Muriel Spark.
Finished reading: The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov 📚
Snarky and charming police procedural where the police are ambivalent and making up the procedure as they go along.
Abandoned: Death Under Little Sky by Stig Abell 📚
This is what happens when an arts journalist thinks he’ll knock out a cosey whodunit during lockdown and it turns out he’s never heard a human speak and can’t manufacture a moment’s suspense. Holy fuck it’s awful. Did not finish.
Finished reading: Sociopath by Patric Gagne 📚
I had far more sympathy for sociopaths after reading this than I did before. Which is exactly what a sociopath would want, when you think about it…
Finished reading: [The Seventh Floor: A Novel](https://micro.blog/books/9781324086697) by David McCloskey 📚
Thursday, March 27, 2025
As everyone says, McCloskey’s very good, and shifting more to character and personal betrayals just makes him even better.
Finished reading: [Careless People](https://micro.blog/books/9781250391247) by Sarah Wynn-Williams 📚
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Another one of those tech bro biogs where all the good bits have been in the news anyway.
Finished reading: Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper 📚
Well executed LA Confidential/Chinatown update. Quality pulp fiction.
Finished reading: Patriot by Alexei Navalny 📚
There’s a really good doc with him on BBC iPlayer, which would be time better spent.
Finished reading: Daughter Of Mine by Megan Miranda 📚
Murky past and the web of family tensions in small town America wrapped round a murder mystery. Smart and nuanced, if a bit complicated to keep tabs on if you listen rather than read it.
Finished reading: Don’t Point That Thing at Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli 📚
PG Wodehouse on a bad day pastiching Raymond Chandler. Still wittier than most allegedly ‘humorous’ thrillers though, and an appealingly nasty darkness.
Finished reading: Lucifer’s Banker by Bradley C. Birkenfeld 📚
Messianic blowhard international banker turns dickwaving/self pitying whistleblower after his employers clip his self aggrandising ego. Worth reading for the epic lack of self awareness.
Finished reading: Fire Weather by John Vaillant 📚
Scary and inclusive, with a nice linking of the fire’s voraciousness with the oil industry’s greed.
Finished reading: Harlan Coben - Win by Harlan Coben 📚
His books are so much smarter and snarkier than his TV series.
Finished reading: We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets 📚
Douglas Coupland lite, hyped because of the social media moral panic.
Finished reading: Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra 📚
I read it fast, which is a good sign. One of those ‘does what it says on the can really well’ books.
Roses are read Violets are blue The ASCII for ‘space’ Is Code 32
Snowy, innit.
Finished reading: Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks 📚
Really interesting stuff about early psychiatric/neurology research, but not enough plot and too much about building cable cars.
How the fuck does anyone ever break through Substack if they don’t bring followers with them?
Finished reading: Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore 📚
The chapters on his death and the subsequent manoeuvring, with some of the players and their relatives hanging on into the Gorbachev era are actually the best bits. Makes me want to rewatch Ianucci’s Death of Stalin.
Currently reading: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann 📚
Wish me luck. It’s a long climb.
Currently reading: Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore 📚
There’s a lot of juicy gossip in here, but you have to wade through a lot of tedium too.