"The God Desire" by David Baddiel - audiobook review

A short book about David Baddiel's atheism. Interesting, intellectual, and at times moving. Baddiel is good company.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future: Douglas Adams and the Digital World" by Douglas Adams - audiobook review

A collection of BBC radio programmes in which Douglas Adams indulges his love of technology (things that don't quite work yet). It's quaint to hear people talking about the internet in its early days. Many of Adams's predictions are remarkably accurate. I've heard bits of this elsewhere but as I'm a completist I'm glad I sought this out. The final programme is narrated by Mitch Benn, looking back at what Adams got right.

"1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare" by James Shapiro - book review

A really clever idea: to write a biography of William Shakespeare by focusing on one year in his life: 1599, in which he wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. I had never really appreciated how much of contemporary life and politics he put into his plays: the threat of Spanish invasion, the Earl of Essex being sent to Ireland to try to suppress Tyrone's uprising, and his own company's construction of the Globe theatre. This was another one of the books I put on my list of books to read after Finals. It was a beezer! I found it really easy to read: compelling and informative, and reflective of a change in how I view literature since the days when I was a student: when I wasn't that interested in the political and historical context because I was ignorant and afraid of doing more reading. Now I'm humbler and no longer afraid of not knowing something. It makes me want to read the follow-up: 1606.

"Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service" by Michael Lewis - audiobook review

A series of essays originally published in the Washington Post about people who work for the government and are extraordinarily good at their jobs, such as a guy who runs military cemeteries; a man who figured out how to reduce the number of roof collapses in mines; a woman who makes it easier for doctors to look up cures for rare diseases; and a woman who oversees volunteers who digitize the national archives. Only a couple of the essays are written and read by Michael Lewis. They provide a fascinating insight into the value of government.

"Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine - audiobook review

Douglas Adams travels around the world in search of endangered animal species with a conservationist / zoologist from WWF called Mark Carwardine. Originally a one-off magazine article, then a book to accompany a BBC Radio 4 series. The different landscapes, people, political situations, and travel anecdotes are sharp and amusing. I think this was the book that Adams was most proud about. I believe it had quite a big impact on the conservation movement but I can’t judge that. I grew up in the years immediately afterwards when Blue Peter and Newsround regularly covered these sorts of issues.

"Up in the Old Hotel" by Joseph Mitchell - book review

Fucking hell! What a masterpiece. This was one of the last books I put on my list of books to read after Finals, recommended by Robert Crumb in the Guardian Review: "a wonderful collection of profiles from the New Yorker from 1937-64 by the great columnist Joseph Mitchell, which chronicle New York from the 1920s; it really puts you there". I got it for my birthday in 2010 and only started reading it last July and I've been puttering away at it a few pages a night. I also read two other books in between. But recently I've gathered more speed and started reading it over breakfast and lunch now that my decks are clear. It's a bit like an American (New York) Ulysses but non-fiction. Also a bit reminiscent of Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor in the way it paints a city through its people. Towards the end of the book, everything comes together in "Joe Gould's Secret", which, because I started the book so long ago, felt vaguely familiar. This is because Joe Gould is the "Professor Sea Gull" of one of the first profiles. But it's also because Joseph Mitchell is such a character, too: in the warmth he feels for New York's people and ways of life; his storytelling panache; his amazing memory and ability to weave together strands of knowledge. Who knew about the Native American high steel bridge-builders; about the shad fishermen of the New Jersey side of the Hudson River; the bums, the drunks, the conmen, the gypsies, the policemen; the Fulton Fish Market and all its many suppliers; the wrecks at the bottom of the river, and the oysters and clams? Joseph Fucking Mitchell did and he put it all in this book, which you should read haste post haste.

"The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time" by Douglas Adams - audiobook review

A posthumous collection of writing recovered from Douglas Adams's various Apple computers, plus 11 chapters of an unfinished Dirk Gently novel. I preferred the earlier essays and fragments. But the Dirk Gently stuff is quite interesting because it's a sequel to The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. It has provided me with further oxygen and direction for my Douglas Adams deep-dive.

"Trelawny's Cornwall: A Journey through Western Lands" by Petroc Trelawny - audiobook review

A book about Cornwall's history by the BBC Radio 3 presenter. Part travelogue, part personal history, part social history. My favourite bits were about Falmouth as the post office of the British Empire (lots of packet ships used to sail from there); the undersea cables that landed near the Lizard; and Marconi's radio experiments nearby. I was also shocked how early mining was in decline in Cornwall. It wasn't always entirely thrilling but Trelawny's voice is soothing and some of his pronunciations are hilarious - particularly "puh-tree" for "poetry".

"The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" by Douglas Adams - audiobook review

Another weirdly plotted Dirk Gently novel. This one features gods such as Thor and Odin living in our world. More gods live listless lives like outcasts, the dispossessed, the homeless.