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Thirst: Twelve Drinks That Changed My Life by John Robins

May 09, 2026

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Harassment Architecture by Mike Ma

Not currently reading... It is a rare and notable event that I, a committed if idle completist, choose to not finish reading a novel, if one would elect to categorise this as such. I chose not to complete this pamphlet (see what I did there?), although to remove all trace of its existence on my shelves, the itch at the back of my woke, lefty-liberal, eco- non- fascist, Guardian-reading mind, would be to also remove the salience of a good cautionary tale. Let me start with context. Mike Ma was close to Sam Pink (another author of dubious moral merit, perhaps) and on the same screen as one of my literary heroes, Kurt Vonnegut, on the Global Network of Discovery (GNOD)'s literary map , where readers can see what other authors readers were reading, constellated around the author in context. In this case, the author may have been Delicious Tacos after I may or may not have suggested someone on the internet who said some words at me to have a read of his book Finally Some Good News . Kla...

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Dipsomaniacal - an apt description of most Christmas's round mine... Ah, what would be a review penned by yours truly without some sort of grovelling apology at the outset? A better review no doubt, but that aside I can't help but continue the tiresome tradition with an apology. Sorry to my regular robotic readers (hi bots!) but I have been very neglectful of the blog of late, having been tied up with my pursuit of a broader spectrum of dilettantism; I've been taking part in a number of MOOCs offered by various HEIs on the FutureLearn platform. Worth checking out if you ask me. (Subtle enough plug, you think?) Anyway, the break afforded by a foray into further education has proved something of a test for Jasper Gibson and his fiction. In truth, it took me a little while to remember what exactly the novel was about, who was in it, and how I felt about the whole thing. Instant alarm bells. Of course, having had a break, I'd had a good crack at filling my h...

The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance, by Jeff VanderMeer

A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle. As I sit and contemplate the inclement weather currently freezing my car to the driveway, I reflect that it's not often I can claim to be ahead of the curve, whether by accident or design. And I still can't. However, it seems I found Jeff VanderMeer at an opportune moment. A quick shout out here to indie bookshop Griffin Books of Penarth for getting all three volumes for me in record time. Good work team! I discovered the short trailer for Annihilation on Twitter (much better than the official one, with fewer 'monsters' and more suspense) and was instantly captivated by the visuals. Now, I don't and won't pay for Netflix, and am very annoyed with Paramount Studios for their rather mercenary short-sightedness over not releasing the film adaptation, written and directed by Alex Garland, into cinemas outside the US and China, but it did allow me to burn through the trilogy without fear of my own interpre...

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Horse Destroys The Universe by Cyriak Harris

I think our horse might be eating the internet. So, I hear you ask, what the utter fuck? To be honest, I pledged to the crowd-funding of this book purely on the premise that a horse could destroy the universe, which essentially, and spoiler-free (it’s in the chuffing title after all) it does. After that, this entire review is based on the research I did this morning between sitting at my desk and actually starting the work I’m paid to do (around 60-80 minutes all told). First off, Morgan Cyriak Harris is an animator who enjoys the surreal effects of the formal Western Art Tradition technique of mis en abyme , or in other words, the deliberate placing within an image of a copy of the same image and the subsequent implication of infinitely represented worlds – think two mirrors reflecting each other. In literary terms this could be the self-reflexive embedding of the story within the story, something of which I am inordinately fond. In Harris’s work this te...

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Thirst: Twelve Drinks That Changed My Life by John Robins

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