What We're Reading

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Neil

You Probably Think This Song Is About You, by Kate Camp (THWUP, 2022)

This brutally honest, disarming and wise collection of autobiographical essays reveals Kate Camp to be a remarkable survivor of her own worst instincts, and an intelligent and poetic writer of profound and moving true stories. The stories range from nostalgic memories of childhood in the 70s and 80s, through gritty alcohol and pot ridden years of youth in the 90s, to the more reflective years of mid life and facing the dark reality of living at a time when Trump can become president.

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Neil

The Perfect Golden Circle, by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury Circus 2022)

Almost plotless, this novel tracks the summer of 1989 in rural England, and two very different men, who create crop circles at night. Calvert is a traumatised veteran of the Falklands War, and Redbone is a creative, chaotic and mysterious character. It's loosely based on the two men who admitted to being responsible for many of the more elaborate crop circles that appeared in the last 1980s and early 1990s. Each chapter is about the creation of a different, ever more elaborate design, the dialogue is arch and ironic, the descriptions of the landscape and wildlife beautiful and poetic.

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Neil

Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St .John Mandel (Picador 2022)

With a similar structure to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, this novel moves from 1912, through 2020, to 2203 and 2401; and then explores time travel anomalies when working back to when it began. It's fascinating, plausible, moving and there are some surprises in store for the reader. It's quite mind-boggling along the way, but the writing is elegant and clear, the characters linked in a way that is constantly surprising. While perhaps not as powerful as Station Eleven, this book is quietly potent.

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Neil

The Unfolding, by A M Homes (Granta 2022)

A M Homes has always been an astute and sharp commentator on American life. She has an ability to take a seemingly minor or peripheral aspect of life, but draw in the world at large with a merciless eye. In this new novel, she writes about the sector of wealthy America who were so offended by the election of Barack Obama in 2008 that they set out to attempt to make such a thing impossible again. They are pompous, entitled and self important, but in the end small and insignificant.

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Neil

The Passenger: Rome, by Europa Editions 2022.

I love this series! A fascinating collection of provocative and timely essays on the character, politics, music and current state of the destination, supplemented by interesting maps, statistics and photography. This is Rome beyond what the tourist sees, the gritty reality of living here, the malaise of the suburbs, corrupt politicians and developers, the inequality.

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Neil

Facts and Other Lies, by Ed Coper (Allen and Unwin 2022)

This is a brilliant and timely book, a history and examination of disinformation and misinformation, which attempts to explain how the modern world is suddenly plagued by this prevalent and dangerous trend. While it's probably preaching to the converted, and won't be read by many of the victims or perpetrators of fake news, it's a helpful guide to how to manage and understand it. I tremendously valuable book, which should be widely read.