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The Castle by Jon Ronson

August 19, 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...

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...

Dead Writers In Rehab by Paul Bassett Davies

But how do dead people kill themselves? Dead people like me. I'm dead. Another laudatory post about Unbound should surely follow had I the heart to go on and on about them again. I do but I won't in this instance, as they've just somehow bilked from me £60 for an as yet unwritten historical novel inspired by a TV script by Anthony Burgess, the dastards. I do it to myself and that's etc. One definite pleasure of the crowdfunding model, for us end users, is the delayed gratification, something with which I, and it would seem the main character in this novel, have no small difficulty. I had sort-of forgotten this book was in the offing, only for it to land suddenly in my wheelie bin one sunny morning (it wouldn't fit through the letterbox). I was delighted to be reminded. It also came at a fortuitous time. I've been unwell and looking for distractions to keep me from internet mischief in my restlessness (being ill is mostly boring). After finishing th...

S.N.U.F.F. by Victor Pelevin

Nourishing Manitou with blood is a cosmic necessity. Quite how I swung away from the banks of Sorrowland and into the rushing, tumescent waters of Russian dystopian satire is, sadly, lost to the fog of history, but swing away I did, and it gives me the chance to shamelessly court clicks from those pugnacious Homo-Sovieticus -ians, thusly: И снова здравствуйте, мои русские друзья! І привіт усім моїм українським читачам - ти чудово виглядаєш, це взуття нове? One must marvel at Google’s translation function, and all technological advancements of this age (even if Microsoft Word just tried to change the word Google to the contextually appropriate Gogol , naughty Satya Nadella) and worship before the altar of progress like good little consumers, and like the sorry inhabitants of the lower world in this classic dystopian satire: the Orks. For context, the Earth is ruined, we’re led to believe, America and China are no more, and with the remaining inhabitants of the landmass formerly ...

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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The Castle by Jon Ronson

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