The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes

"The girl who wouldn’t die – hunting a killer who shouldn’t exist.

In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras, leaving anachronistic clues on their bodies, until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and turns the hunt around."

A bizarre little beauty of a book, this time travel serial killer murder mystery who-dunnit, is, as that description suggests, a mish-mash of all sorts of genres that shouldn't really work but do.

The story itself is lithely written, racing along at a solid pace. Both the heroine, Kirby, and the villain, Harper, are terrifically written, with neither given the treatment of flawlessness; Harper is a monster, but also a victim of circumstance, petty, vindictive, cruel and murderous, but also weighed down upon by the House, and his own half-created destiny. Kirby is broken, but rarely sympathetic, she's shattered into cold edges, and like Gone Girl this a story of flawed human beings who often exert little in the way of humanity.

Trotting between eras, the real skill of The Shining Girls is in picking out victims that do pull at the herat strings; Harper's task, to kill off women with something exceptional about them is horrifyingly, cruelly misogynistic and utterly readable. In choosing such an obviously 'good' group to target Beukes removes the need to make them 'good' people; their lives are testament to that, and so Kirby's own flaws mean very little compared to what she could have been. Her survival is in a world that she is out of place in, her achievements after are through a prism of her broken nature.

Really enjoyable book. Perfect thriller.

Also Try:
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Travelers Wife
Robert Harris, Silence of the Lambs
Dean Koontz, From The Corner of His Eye

Double Down: Game Change 2012, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann

"Double Down picks up the story in the Oval Office, where the president is beset by crises both inherited and unforeseen—facing defiance from his political foes, disenchantment from the voters, disdain from the nation’s powerful money machers, and dysfunction within the West Wing. As 2012 looms, leaders of the Republican Party, salivating over Obama’s political fragility, see a chance to wrest back control of the White House—and the country. So how did the Republicans screw it up? How did Obama survive the onslaught of super PACs and defy the predictions of a one-term presidency? Double Down follows the gaudy carnival of GOP contenders—ambitious and flawed, famous and infamous, charismatic and cartoonish—as Mitt Romney, the straitlaced, can-do, gaffe-prone multimillionaire from Massachusetts, scraped and scratched his way to the nomination."




This is, for me, probably the best book on political action, American politics and campaigns ever written. It's utterly fantastic, and hyperbole-busting stuff, the kind of writing which clutches at you and drags you with it to the finish from the very first page.

With surgical incisiveness Halperin and Heilemann dissect the hows and whys of the 2012 Presidential Campaign, examining in detail the merits and failures of the Republican and Democrat bids for the White House. From the excoriation of the performances on the Right, to the shellacking of Obama's record and position, the book shows how either side could have truimphed, but how the Republicans intransigence and mistakes sank their run and handed Obama the victory.

But rather than just looking at the two candidates and their rivals, the book also examines in depth the teams and outside agents who ran the race, from those in charge of Super PACs, to prominent critics and champions, to the donors, backers and stirrers of modern politics in Washington. Insightful, withering and witty, the book is paced like a thriller and written with a verve and style that belies the seemingly dry subject matter.

So worth reading, I've ordered the first book, chronicling the 2008 campaign, to keep going.

Also Try:
Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope
Molly Ivins, Bushwhacked
Al Franken, Why Not Me?

God's Politics, Jim Wallis

"Jim Wallis' book is a scathing indictment of the way that conservative evangelicals in the US have self-righteously attempted to co-opt any discussion of religion and politics. And, while the Right argues that God's way is their way, the Left pursues an unrealistic separation of religious values from morally grounded political leadership. God's Politics offers a clarion call to make America's religious communities and its government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition - pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, pro-consistent ethic of life and pro-family. These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community at the core of what many people believe, whether Christian or not."




The image on the front cover is misleading, because this isn't a book about George Bush, or religion and faith in politics in the sense of the 'family values' or 'religious right' crusaders. Instead, it's a thoughtful and essential examination of some of the biggest issues in contemporary culture, from war and violence, to political action, to the enviroment, and how Christians should respond.

I must confess to being slightly enraptured by it, because it is overtly Christian and resolutely progressive. Whilst some of the conclusions it reaches are the antithesis of the 'liberal' platform, they are all neatly and comprehensively wrapped in a single core fact; God loves us, and the world, and we should represent that through love and service towards others.

This for me then is the summation of what Christian life is, and the debates and wisdom contained within are challenging and enlightening to me both as a liberal christian and a Christian Liberal. Some of it I disagree with, most of it I find humbling, but none of it can be easily disregarded. For any Christian who wishes to adequately grapple with the demands of faith and politics in the 21st Century this is essential reading.


Also Try:
Shane Claiborne, The Irresistable Revolution
Sojourners, http://sojo.net/

The Male Brain, Louann Brizendine M.D

"Dr. Louann Brizendine, the founder of the first clinic in the country to study gender differences in brain, behavior, and hormones, turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the "male reality" is fundamentally different from the female one. Exploring the latest breakthroughs in male psychology and neurology with her trademark accessibility and candor, she reveals that the male brain:

*is a lean, mean, problem-solving machine. Faced with a personal problem, a man will use his analytical brain structures, not his emotional ones, to find a solution.
*thrives under competition, instinctively plays rough and is obsessed with rank and hierarchy.
*has an area for sexual pursuit that is 2.5 times larger than the female brain, consuming him with sexual fantasies about female body parts.
*experiences such a massive increase in testosterone at puberty that he perceive others' faces to be more aggressive.

The Male Brain finally overturns the stereotypes. Impeccably researched and at the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, this is a book that every man, and especially every woman bedeviled by a man, will need to own."

Loaned to my by Jim, my Father in law, who is a counsellor and Psychologist, this is a compulsively readable breakdown of what's going on inside Men's heads through their lives, from childhood to old age, and how the competing biological drives and hormones their bodies release.

It's endlessly fascinating, both as an insight into typical human development, and for the knowledge it contains. Facts about every aspect of the brain are astonishing anyway, and to see them explain and predict the conscious and unconscious desires and demands of a person is incredibly interesting.

The mix of science and anecdotal experience is jarring, however, and the constant use of Male friends or clients of the author and their actions that provide examples and evidence to back up her claims is unnecessary. I trust that the author knows what she's discussing, and her use of case studies I can't study doesn't make it more readable or reliable.

But this is probably brilliant if you have a male child; I would certainly say it's provided insight into my own thoughts and actions, and stuff I can always use to prove JJ wrong. So that's good, anyway.

Also Try:
Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain

Know Why You Believe, Paul. E. Little

"Have you ever asked

Do science and Scripture conflict?

Are miracles possible?

Is Christian experience real?

Why does God allow suffering and evil?

These questions need solid answers. That's what a million people have already found in this clear and reasonable response to the toughest intellectual challenges posed to Christian belief. This edition, revised and updated by Marie Little in consultation with experts in science and archaeology, provides twenty-first-century information and offers solid ground for those who are willing to search for truth. Including a study guide for individuals or groups, the classic answerbook on Christian faith has never been better!"

Know Why You Believe is a wide casting look at the 'most common' questions that non-Christians ask; things like whether Science and History are consistent with the Biblical narrative, whether God is good, and all of the other questions you would expect. This is part of the problem; these hoary old questions have been rehashed so much that they barely provide anything new on either side. Like two grandmasters playing chess, both sides know the best moves to make and the opening gambits are simply about manouvering. It's only by going deeper that anything actually interesting or challenging can be reached.

This, however, is very much a surface level introduction, and if you're keen to just read one book and be convinced, you probably will be. It's well argued, impeccably sourced and clearly articulated, but it really is only skimming the surface. The chapter on science is no comprehensive rebuttal of The Selfish Gene or God Delusion, the two most prominent critiques of religion from Dawkins, which would be the kind of thing any Christian faced with this question in real life would need to answer.

In fact, much of its muscle comes from a reliance on Biblical exegesis and authority, a difficult position to maintain if the reader doubts the inerrancy of that text. This leaves it in a halfway house of trying to prove the Bible, whilst asserting the relevance of the Bible as the ur-text and proof. Neither legally rigorous or logically consistent, this is best read as an introduction, for a few snappy soundbites and quotes, and then moved on from, swiftly.

Also Try:
Lee Strobel, Case for Christ
Richard Dawkins, God Delusion
Karen Armstrong, The Bible: A Biography
Tom Wright, Creation, Power and Truth

Down And Out In Paris And London, George Orwell

"This unusual fictional account, in good part autobiographical, narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among the down-and-out of two great cities. In the tales of both cities we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and society."

Britain's most eminent author, or, if you're Will Self, mediocrity, Orwell's fiction often gets most of the praise, but it's his insightful social commentary which is the best place to start anyone interested in him as a writer. Whilst 'Animal Farm' and '1984' are better known and more highly regarded, it's in the books of social commentary and biography that his humanity is based.

Down and Out is the chronicle of Orwell's time destitute in the capitals of France and England, a time spent doing mind-numbing jobs or back breaking labour for very little pay, or living on the streets as a tramp.

Whilst much of it is interesting, especially during his time in Paris working in the kitchens and back rooms of the hotels and restaurants, it's once he gets to London and hits the real bottom of the socio-economic ladder that this becomes more than just a dry recourse of events. His heartfelt telling of the plight of those ignored by scoiety, cheated by the system and left to rely on demeaning charity handouts is as timely now, in an age where the social safety net is fraying and homelessness on the rise, as it was then. His insight, and the humanising of callously overlooked human beings, is a vital part of recognizing that there's an issue. Most tellingly, he debunks many of the myths that still cling to poverty; of abuse of the system, and of personal responsibility for their own misfortune, myths that paint victims as perpetrators and seek to maintain an abusive status quo.

Really good reading.

Also Try:
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

On Basilisk Station, David Weber

"HONOR HARRINGTON

Having made him look a fool, she's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her.

Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station.

The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens.

Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling; the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is Up To Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system.

But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They've made her mad."

I've long wanted to read David Weber's 'Honor Series'; it's ubiquity in some form or another in charity shops points to a wide fanbase, but until recently I never found a copy of the first in the series, 'On Basilik Station'. It was well worth the wait, and I'm very keen to read the next book.

The Baen business model is fascinating, and their commitment to freeshare books is one that's exceptional in its fairness and earned scruples. The first half dozen books in the series are currently available online to read for free, or to download to Kindle for a pittance. It allows new readers to get into the series easily, and the accessibility encourages hooked readers to continue reading by picking up a full price book.

This is an excellent idea, and for a series that is currently pushing 15 books, an easy way to entice readers into commiting to a series without breaking their bank account. It also allows for Bain to see the interest levels in their stories.

It helps that the books are fantastic, a roaring alternative to Sharpe or Hornblower set in the far future, but with a tactical and military side that does a far better job of recognizing the range and scale of space conflict than almost any other book I've read, aside from maybe Iain M Banks' Culture novels.

Honor herself is a wonderful character, a strong female protagonist with a novel back story and charisma, charm and chutzpah in spades. The villains are unsubtley written, as is the case for almost all books of this style, but that's part of the fun - and fun it is, to an almost ridiculous degree.

Also Try:
David Weber, On Basilisk Station - http://www.baenebooks.com/p-304-on-basilisk-station.aspx
Iain M. Banks, Player of Games
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

America Alone; The End Of The World As We Know It, Mark Steyn

"It's the end of the world as we know it...Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are. And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"--while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy. If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn shows to devastating effect. The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope."

Mark Steyn's America Alone is the kind of book that I pick up every now and then and read in the same way Southern schools approach creationism and evolution; it's reading the controversy, Frankly, if the above quote doesn't represent it enough, American Alone is a brilliantly though out, well argued and utterly incorrect assertion that Islam is on an unstoppable path to taking over Europe and the world.

There's so much wrong about this that even the stuff that's genuinely interesting and important can be ignored; the work on demographics, and attempt to get beyond the stale arguments between conservative and liberals about Islam to talk about what Islam itself believes is good, but too often if becomes bogged down in reactionary dogma and xenophobic spite.

If you've seen Affleck vs Maher recently, you'll know the thrust of the argument; Islam is a threat not just to conervative ideology but liberal too, there's more of them every year and less of us, and sooner of later their ideas win democratically because they can muster the only voices. It all relies on an us-them attitude, and ignores pretty much anything on progressive or liberal voices within Islam, but it's an argument that seems to be growing in popularity and prominence.

It's worth reading then, if only to be able to refute it, and to quote it in disbelief to incredulous friends.

Also Try:
This American Life: A Not So Simple Majority; http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a-not-so-simple-majority

Blankets, Craig Thompson

"At 592 pages, Blankets may well be the single largest graphic novel ever published without being serialized first. Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two coming-of-age lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith. A profound and utterly beautiful work from Craig Thompson."







Blankets is the exact kind of book that libraries were made for; a sweepingly original, beautiful and heartfelt novel of teenage love, loss and identity that I would never ever pick up but which is utterly wonderful.

Blankets is tonally atypical of almost anything else out there, working as much as a late teen reimagining of Calvin and Hobbes or a less magical-realism Scott Pilgrim. Both of these featured protagonists stuck in their own heads, and Thompson's autobiographical tale is sweetly familiar for this. The constantly present snow covers up as much as he reveals with Blankets, but it's not just art school drawing and introspection, as there's a throughline of humour that he mines to great effect, with one passage in particular, of Thompson and his brother pretending to pee on one another leaving me in stitches.

It's maybe more funny in context.

This is a medium-pushing work, a book with heft and weight beyond just its size. This is a far more important, refreshing and thoughtful work about being a teenager than Catcher in the Rye could ever hope to be,

Also Try;
Daniel Clowes, Ghostworld
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim

How Not To Be American: Misadventures in the Land of the Free, Tood McEwen

"'This new American uniform - the baseball cap, t-shirt, shorts and trainers (why not a scooter?) is not about looking good. It's about disappearing into a new, unofficial, global army of cultural babies. It says: I eat hamburgers and watch TV and chew gum all day, I want everyone to play my game, You have to be nice to me and if you're not I'm gonna shoot you, I can't understand a word you say… and what is that but American foreign policy?' Todd McEwen left the United States in 1980, but it's still driving him crazy. He worries about cheeseburgers, Cary Grant, Henry David Thoreau, democracy, the Elks Club and Daffy Duck. Join him on his acid-reflux examination of what America has come to be."




I approached this anticipating an American version of the anthropology, or at least quasi-anthropology, of something like Kate Fox or Bill Bryson. It's really, really not, Instead, it's McEwen's own take on an autobiography, closer to a series of essays and thoughts on subjects from Cary Grant's suit to california politics.

At one point there's a surrealist dream sequence piece.

It's hella weird, and the schtick gets old well before it ends, with the roughly 60% that's really good being heavily outweighed by the stuff that really isn't.

And it definitively doesn't explain how not be American.

Also Try:
Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
Kate Fox, Watching the English
Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope

The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

"Anyone who has read J. D. Salinger's New Yorker stories - particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme - With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children. The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep."


The so called 'teen bible', Catcher in the Rye is often branded as the most important and true-to-youth book ever written, which makes coming to it as an adult potentially the wrong way to do it. It's easy to see why teens love it, it is utterly a teen novel, in the sense that it's meandering, boring and more impressed with itself than it should be.

It is a relentlessly teen read; a book that so thoroughly nails the self-important conceit of being young and certain that you're better than everyone else. Everything from his distaste of the phony's that surround him, to the disinterest in his education and future make Holden's voice uniquely and authentically spot-on.

Unfortunately, you would be better off skipping it, as that same authenticity makes it virtually impossible to like him. He's an unrepentent little dick; the kind of kid whose self-satisfied selfishness is the attitude you hope people will leave behind when they become adults but which, judging by his popularity with killers, some people sadly don't. Like The Great Gatsby, it's a wonderfully constructed portrait of someone you probably want to spend as little time as possible actually in the company of.

To put it into contest; Lord of the Flies is a great book, but would you want to hang out with or emulate the kids from that?

Also Try:
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Charlie Higson, The Enemy
William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Prime Minister Portillo and other things that never happened, various

"What if Lenin's train had crashed on the way to the Finland Station? Lee Harvey Oswald had missed? Lord Halifax had become Prime Minister in 1940 instead of Churchill? In this diverting and thought-provoking book of counter-factuals a collection of distinguished commentators consider how things might have been."









I find these non-fiction 'What if?' books slightly sad, as they work as neither a truly good history book, or as a work of historical fiction. This is compounded by a mixed bag of authors, who range from those catalogueing slight alterations to full blown changes in the timeline, in a variety of styles, with varying degrees of success.

One of the big issues is that very few of these imagine a world changed all that much by the alterations they describe; most are obscure, or at least historically distant, enough that it's hard to see how a revitalised party or individual could have impacted more. Even greater changes, like JFK surviving or Churchill being passed over for Halifax engender only slight fluctuations - legislation passes slower, or the pace of the war moves differently, with the same fixed outcome.

It's a very Fukuyama-esque book, where the outcome we currently have is seemingly all that's possible. Compare and contrast to real works of speculative history, such as Harry Turtledove, and the difference is huge.

Often dry, sometimes interesting, but only fitfully worth dipping into, this is a book more for the writers than the readers, and is best passed over in favour of better offerings.

Also Try;

Robert Harris, Fatherland

Eric Flint; 1631

Harry Turtledove, Guns of the South

Code Monkey Save World, Greg Pak and Jonathan Coulton

"A put-upon coding monkey teams up with a seething, lovelorn super-villain to fight robots, office worker zombies, and maybe even each other as they struggle to impress the amazing women for whom they fruitlessly long. Based on the songs of internet superstar musician Jonathan Coulton."

I picked this up from Kickstarter on the strength of being a fan of both Jonathan Coulton, on whose songs the book is based, and Greg Pak, the writer of the story. Growing out of a Twitter conversation between the two about how cool it would be to use the former's songs to create a interconnected Universe, the four issue comic series was hugely succesful and includes a number of extra's, including illustrated song lyrics, mini-comics and throwaway joke panels, as well as sample art from Takeshi Miyazawa.

The story is perfunctory, and serves more as a way of introducing the concepts and themes of Coulton's songs. This can take it in some weird directions, but it doesn't have the scope to do anything more than reference and move along, leaving it a little lost when it tries for epic scale (which, considering it features space war, robot invasions, zombie uprisings and multiple supervillains, is a frequent occurrence).

It's not bad, but it isn't the home run I had hoped for. The art though is lovely, and Code Monkey in particular is wonderfully drawn, with Miyazawa pencilling an expressiveness to every character that's a real treat.

Also Try:
Greg Pak, Incredible Hercules
Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim