Matthew Hurst

Read: An Honest Man by Michael Koryta 📚 Straight ahead innocent man vs corruption, gripping and unpretentious. Fast, easy read. #Bookstodon #booksky #iamreading

Read: Heartwood by Amity Gaige 📚

Great American wilderness novel on the Appalachian Trail. Three women intersect after one of them gets lost. It’s character more than breakneck action (in a good way) and human warmth rather than darkness.

Read: This Is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen 📚

Self consciously smart arse and genre-aware. People say things like ‘but how could the maid be leaving the kitchen at 9pm? Letitia said the dog hair wasn’t on the vicar’s collar till 10pm!’. Not my thing. #BookSky #amreading #bookstodon

I used to be a local journalist in East Anglia, UK, and I thought the whole Byline network was a really good idea - a model for funding grassroots, often investigative reporting, holding local councils to account, etc.

According to their website:

“We are a not-for-profit citizen journalism publication. Our aim is to publish well-written, fact-based articles and opinion pieces on subjects that are of interest to people in East Anglia and beyond.

East Anglia Bylines is a trading brand of Bylines Networks Limited which is separate to, but allied with, Byline Times.”

However, this was on their East Anglia Bylines BlueSky account this morning. (pic also attached).

And their website is full of similar slop: https://eastangliabylines.co.uk

It’s Reach PLC style indiscriminate ‘bung it out everywhere for social media clicks’. Much as I hate the orange manchild, this has nothing in particular to do with East Anglia, or what Byline was set up to do.

Have they been taken over? Are there VCs starting to tighten their financial leash? What’s going on? Have they been hacked?

The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel📚

Safe to skim everything before Chapter 24 (which covers Diesel inventing his engine and getting rich in a boringly methodical way) because all the interesting stuff about his disappearance is in the last third.

… and it’s weirdly underdeveloped, as though the author is far more interested in the licensing agreements Diesel had with foreign engine makers than - [SPOILERS] - the British secret service making him disappear and secretly setting him up in a new life with his wife in Canada to stop the Germans forcing him to make submarines for them to win WW1.

There are literally two sentences about his wife’s disappearance and perfunctory research.

And there’s strangely little about the fuel we call diesel now, as opposed to petrol or gasoline. Diesel engines can run on anything that will ignite under pressure and Diesel the man specifically wanted them not to use oil-based fuel. However, Rockefeller somehow managed to ensure his oil company got in on the act, hence the oil based fuel we now call diesel. However, this is skimmed over in the book, in favour of copious infodumps of Diesel’s tours of America and development agreements with other companies.

No idea how this got to be an NYT bestseller.

On the lake

Got some CDs

As a recidivist 80s nerd who spent high school in what we were pleased to call ‘the computer room’, I’m loving Halt And Catch Fire on ITV. It’s a fictionalised version of microcomputers in the 80s where people invent the internet on Commodre 64s.

Breaking news: the new head of MI6 (C) got started with spying when she was given the Usborne KnowHow Book Of Spycraft. I too have this book and memorised it as a kid. When is it my turn to be C?

Read: Never Flinch by Stephen King 📚

King is always compulsive, without me being able to figure out why. He’s sneaking some suspense in there without me realising how. #Booksky #amreading #bookstodon

Trump’s been outplayed by Putin, Netanyahu and every other world leader because he’s all ego and bluster and not very bright. All he has left is lying to his base

Read: Mood Machine by Liz Pelly 📚 Audiobook recorded by the author, Liz Pelly, in an intensely irritating? slackjawwwd valleh girrl drawl? that almost made me? stop listening? Not helped by? Adolescent horror that? the music business? is a business? #BookSky #amreading #bookstodon

Read: Who Could Ever Love You by Mary L. Trump, PhD 📚

As fellow family-of-a-narc, I found a few moments in this resonated, but if you’ve come across The Donald ever before, there’s not a lot new here. #BookSky #amreading #bookstodon

I bought a stack of very cheap CDs yesterday at a stall at a Thing. They sound marginally better than Tidal High Quality but mostly, I can’t curate what’s on them. I can’t think about which playlist to add tracks to. I just have to listen to them. #MusicSky #Music

Read: Come Closer by Sara Gran 📚

New York architect is either possessed or has a psychotic breakdown in a tightly written novella. Psychological thriller or horror? You choose.

So that’s the plotting done. Now it’s just… typing. Which is great and also daunting.

#writingcommunity #iamwriting

The world’s richest man and most powerful man bitching about each other like mean girls. Meanwhile the climate is in meltdown, there are at least 3 international confrontations that could lead to world wars, and dictators are seizing power everywhere. I’m off to watch Midsomer Murders.

Read: The House of My Mother by Shari Franke 📚

What life was actually like for the kids of picture perfect but abusive 8 Passengers vlogger Ruby Franke. Gets the nuances and complications over better than the Netflix doc, including the spineless and acquiescent father.

#booksky

Read: Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow 📚

Courtroom thriller that actually uses the legal procedures and tactics for its twists, and plays with the reader’s knowledge of Presumed Innocent. Class.

#booksky

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.

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.

Read: Black Money by Ross Macdonald 📚

A classic noir thriller apparently, but felt more like it appealed to the 1960s desire for genre fiction to be profound.

Read: The Rule of Stephens by Timothy L. Taylor 📚

Elizabeth Holmes-alike has some kind of existential crisis over her biotech startup after miraculously surviving when the plane she’s on crashes. At least that’s the set up, but it’s never really paid off. Unsatisfying.

#BookSky #books #novel

Read: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 📚

One of those high concept books that falls in love with its premise and gets tedious after a while.