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Model Home by Rivers Solomon

June 25, 2026

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Maxwell's Demon by Steven Hall

Almost sixteen weeks after I'd woken up on the bedroom floor, the lightbulb box arrived. I am so far behind. So far indeed that, considering I'm so damned lazy, I've taken the unprecedented but topical step to ask ChatGPT to consider my blog as a whole and to write what it considered to be a typical review. Considering. Therefore I present to you a totally unvarnished but transparent (and slightly depressing) review, written by ChatGPT pretending to be me (interestingly, it is convinced I am writer and journalist Paul M M Cooper for some entirely abstruse reason - I mean, I wish!). Feel free to let me know how appalled you all are. Dear reader, I recently had the pleasure of delving into the curious world of "Maxwell's Demon" by Steven Hall, and let me tell you, it was quite the ride. Firstly, let's address the elephant in the room - the title. For those of you who are not well-versed in physics, Maxwell's Demon refers to a hypothetical creature tha...

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...

Dress Her In Indigo by John D MacDonald

Knight errant or misogynist pig? Or both - who says you have to choose? One phrase struck me during the reading of this book, another in the 20-odd series featuring everybody's favourite sexual healer Travis McGee, that reminded me of the fantastic lashing John D MacD got at the hands of another reviewer, and if which I made copious use in a previous review . Another of Trav's mysteriously well-connected contacts puts him on to one Enelio Fuentes, whose comportment around women is degraded at best, and whose own sensibilities lead him to pimp out two typists to Trav and hirsute pal Meyer during their stay in Oaxaca, something to which neither of them object. Still there? He repeatedly describes women as either crumpets or chicklets, and Meyer later relates that when he presses Fuentes for the distinction, it's beguilingly vague and horribly sexist at the same time - I'll leave that for you to find and enjoy. So why do I persist in reading w...

A Bright Moon For Fools by Jasper Gibson

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 One from the Other by Philip Kerr

True decadence involves taking nothing seriously. Philip Kerr is an author I have been reluctant to attempt to review for some time. His Berlin Noir trilogy cost me some hours of sleeplessness and in the end I decided to skip a review and just be happy to have read it and therefore move it from the pile of unread novels, my tsundoku tower, via the edge of my desk where the “to review” pile occasionally falls over on to the typewriter and spills my pen pot across the floor and thus causes significant risks when stumbling blindly about the room at night too drunk to remember where my bed is or having just been jolted awake by the boy shrieking from the next room and running asleep into walls and doors, to the back half of my giant Ikea bookcase where novels that have been read and have caused my self-esteem to shatter on the diamond-hard edges of someone else’s talent currently reside, gathering dust and moisture until hitting the mildew tipping point and becoming physically dangerous i...

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Model Home by Rivers Solomon

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