Robert Rush
Despite being just over a hundred pages this was thick with near inpenetrable purple prose bulking out a very thin story. It was a failure, but an admirable one.
This was a book that wasn't as clever as it thought it was. I had the exact same complaints as with ‘Seveneves' - long, ponderous and dull with one dimensional characters. I kept wondering how many more pages left I had to power through. Stephenson is very popular and regarded as a sci-fi legend, so clearly I'm wrong. It just isn't for me.
The Jack Reacher thrillers are very similar to an episode of a TV show such as CSI, Law and Order or NCIS. Easy, very entertaining, extremely addictive, but in the end rather forgettable. The very definition of a good holiday read - I'll be back for more.
A novel fictionalising the all too real foul rag-and-bone shop that is videogame reviewing. This was written well before the recent ‘Gamergate' mess which did nobody any favours, but it all rings true.
It was fine. Short, predictable, but still very enjoyable to read in an afternoon on holiday accompanied by a cold drink served in a tall glass. Which I did.
Having read ‘Saturn's Children', I was looking forward to this book as it was set in the same universe.
I was expecting a fun, sci-fi yarn but instead received an intricate and in-depth manifesto on banking and finance working across the vast distances of space and planets, with a story added on almost as an afterthought.
The very basic plot was rather dull and the characters were wafer-thin and instantly forgettable. The book was very hard going and I had to push myself at times to keep reading, hoping and praying that a seam of gold would soon appear and all of the groundwork and Basil Exposition would have been worthwhile.
Sadly, it never really happened and the book felt like reading the small print on the bottom of a loan or insurance application. In space.
I'm a fan of YouTube and all-round internet celeb Ashens and it was impossible not to read this in his sardonic tones.
It avoided the usual terrible videogame punch bags such as ‘ET' and ‘Superman 64' which was refreshing. Instead concentrating on obscure British computer games which may have only cost a couple of pounds, but still stabbed the hapless buyer with a jagged 8-bit knife of disappointment. As the dreaded realisation hit that you'd spent your meagre pocket money on an unplayable pup of a cassette. yes, I've been there, done that...
What was in the book was very enjoyable, with the poor targets providing many laughs and a few guest writers chipping in too. The problem was that it was a slim volume and was all over very quickly. I was having great fun and then it was finished. Leave the crowd wanting more I guess.
I hope Mr. Ashen writes another volume, or ten, I'll certainly be onboard, but a little more content per load would be lovely.
The Atari VCS ‘woodie' was my first step into a hobby which I still enjoy to this day some thirty (God, I'm old) years later, so I was very much looking forward to reading this. Sadly, it was a massive disappointment.
I was expecting great insight into the iconic Atari products and how they were conceived in a time where the company was pretty much a pioneer, trailblazing a whole new form of entertainment with no rivals or equals. Instead it skimped on details, filled reams of text full of confusing techno-babble and whole chapters covering dull managerial conflicts and corporate reshuffles that nobody could possibly care any less about – ‘Business is Fun' indeed.
There were two authors credited with writing the book and it did show as the timeline skipped around with situations and subjects repeated. In places, it felt like a collection of badly written articles cobbled together in a book.
The worst part was that neither of the authors seemed to have read or spell checked their own work at all, or employed a proofreader for that matter. I had a legitimately bought download of the book and yet it was littered with typos, grammatical errors and spelling mistakes – I swear there was at least one misspelling of the word ‘Atari'. It really took me out of the story and made me want to get my teacher's red pen out and correct it. See me after class.
On the plus side, I did like the selection of photographs that accompanied the conclusion of each chapter. They really captured that era when everything was avocado green, wood veneered and dressed in nylon. Though these could also have been presented a lot better – they looked like they were in a child's scrapbook.
This was optimistically labeled ‘Volume 1' and despite its sloppiness, I would be still interested in reading the further history of the company, though this time with a editor firmly cracking the whip.
This was written during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown and it did feel more like ‘something to do' rather an slab of epic literature. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, after all, Bill Bailey is never boring and always witty.
It was a light, breezy read that was fun and perfect for my own temporary escape from “these difficult times”.
A pretty good crime procedural thiller. It gains extra points for being set in my old home town of Sheffield and one of my favourite places within it, The Botanical Gardens.
A friend is a massive fan of this series and has been trying to persuade me to read them for years. Apparently you can either attack them in publishing, or chronological order. I went for the former and and for the sake of a little peace and quiet, I burned some Bezos Bucks and bought the first one.
I wasn't really expecting it to be my cup of tea, but I actually really enjoyed it. I liked the main character as despite being a captain and no sufferer of fools, he was full of anxiety and imposter syndrome, yet got the job done. Something I can identify with. Certainly very refreshing in a world of ‘perfect' protagonists.
The eBook seemed to be the best way to read it as there was plenty of naval terminology that the Kindle's built in dictionary made short work of. I now know my mizzens, bulwarks and bowsprits from my carronades. It certainly added a lot of atmosphere.
Some of the language used was certainly a little problematic, but was probably perfectly acceptable in 1937 when the book was written and definitely ‘of its time' in 1808 when the story was set. It didn't ruin it and sometimes you just have to put things in context and power through.
Good stuff though, I will be dipping into the series more in the future.
Well, that was... different - Coupland: The edgelord years. Sort of what if Chuck Palahniuk made a Ricky Gervais style cringe comedy. I get it, it was a satire, a none-more-black comedy, an over-the-top farce highlighting a completely reprehensible excuse for a human being. I guess the clue was in the extremely literal title of the book.
There were certainly more than a few guilty laughs in it, but I found spending time in the world of the irredeemable Raymond Gunt (yes, really), rather miserable and exhausting. Which I guess was the point.
Much like the author's ‘Ready Player One', this felt like a truck had dumped a huge load of 80s/90s pop culture straight into my mind. Barely a page passed without at least one geeky quip mentioned in dialogue or description.
It took several chapters for me to acclimatise to it and was all ready to rant – to pass it off as merely like a lazy 'Family Guy' episode, where flat characters, holes in the story and attempts at humour had been replaced by increasingly tiresome references. A glue to fill the gap where obvious influences ‘Ender's Game' and ‘The Last Starfighter' had been cut and shut together.
However, as the story continued along, I got into the groove and found myself enjoying it and quickly forgave its flaws. It's undoubtedly disposable but a perfect fun holiday read and there's nothing wrong with that. It will interesting to see where Cline goes from here and whether he will evolve his writing style to pastures new. I'll certainly be onboard to find out.
I read Ready Player One, and Armada, whilst on holiday. They were both good fun at first, however they turned from ‘I get that reference!' to ‘Ok, enough now' very quickly. Now there is a sequel, and here I am.
Read during the pandemic, at home without a constant supply of cold drinks, a swimming pool and sunshine, would the sequel work? Had Cline matured as an author? Of course not.
Without distraction and relaxation, the curtain quickly fell and let the daylight in. The poor writing, lack of tension and plot inconsistencies became jarringly apparent and so, so tiring - did this book actually have an editor? The infamous constant bombardment of 80s references are even more irritating and the characters, especially ‘the hero' are universally unlikable and I could not have cared any less about any of them. Without wishing to spoil, there is a ‘boss' fight that takes place later in the book which is without doubt the dumbest and most insulting thing I have ever seen in a published book - and I've read several Dan Brown novels.
When I'd finished Ready Player One, I gave it to my wife. After a few chapters she asked ‘Is it like this all the way through?' After I sadly nodded ‘yes' she closed it, carefully put it down and never went back to it. I will not be passing this one on to her.
I'm happy to partake in a bit of Black Flag in small doses, and Henry Rollins has always come across as an interesting chap - intense, yet self-aware, so I thought I'd give this a go.
I fully knew before signing up, that a book on Black Flag and the early '80s U.S. punk scene was never going to be sweetness and light, but ye gods, it was hard work. Rollins came across as a petulant teenager that hated absolutely everything, everywhere and everybody with this literally his diary.
It was relentless darkness, dirt, misery and cruelty. None more black. I almost gave up on it several times, but I hate bailing out on books early - even if I hadn't paid for them (good old libraries!), so I powered through.
If this sounds like your kind of thing, then you'll embrace the horror. However, it wasn't for me.
I'm a fan of the Watchfinder YouTube channel so when I found out its very likable host also wrote books, I thought I'd give one a crack.
Well, ten out of ten for effort, but its self-published nature showed through, with a typo or two and an inconsistent tone of voice - these are American characters who drive trucks and ‘do the math' but then they cross the Atlantic and ‘hoover up', drive lorries and spell ‘defense' with a very English ‘c'. It's picky, but it did muddle me up a bit.
Aiming for a Solaris or 2001 style vibe, the story itself was bit ponderous. All the space jargon I could live with - it actually added a fair bit of authenticity, but it was oddly paced and the characters were certainly anonymous. Some actions taken by the cast made no sense and were a waste of everyone's time. Towards the end I saw I had 10% of the book to go and I wondered how it was going resolve itself so quickly. Well, it didn't really.
The ideas were there but never really got a chance to shine. An editor could have whipped this into a nice, entertaining shape.
I've wanted to read some Neal Stephenson for a while and was recommended this book by a friend.
I'm afraid I found the 880 page Seveneves very hard work, with huge swaths of information dumping, pages of pointless description and dull characters. Towards the middle, I must admit I was ready to bail out.
I hate to abandon books, so I knuckled down and soldiered on and it did improve a lot towards the finish line.
A lot of people have raved about this novel and I know it's me that's wrong. There's an excellent book (or even a trilogy) in there somewhere, it just really needed an editor to whip it into shape.
I'd not read this since getting it out of the school library a thousand years ago and recently found it in a charity shop so had to pick it up and re-read.
As you would expect from a thirty year old speculative science fiction book, a lot of it is a little bit dated. References to laserdiscs, cassettes and computer storage measured in megabytes cause a few smug chuckles and in the 80s America expected that Japan would take over the world and that is very much reflected in this book (I imagine it would be China if written today). However the predictions about the world wide web, virtual reality and gadget obsession by the masses are very much spot on.
It's a dense, tough read in places – this is no airport shop fluff, but it is still a very enjoyable classic. It still earns its place on the cyberpunk classic shelf along with Bladerunner, Snatcher and Akira.
So, a tough woman fights killer alien monsters in a spaceship, accompanied by an android... Nope, never heard of anything like that before! To be honest, the similarity to that other big sci-fi franchise is what drew me to this in the first place. Even if it was the supermarket own-brand version.
I know a novella is never going to be a deep, packed read but this felt very thin. Maybe it was a ‘proof of concept' of a more involved sequel/re-write.
Not particularly scary or memorable, but it passed the time.
A story set in a utopian future is certainly a nice change from the usual dystopian tales, but there is something to be said that things get a lot more interesting when the world's gone tits up.
I found this rather dull and a bit of a chore to get through. Nothing really happened, and all the characters were so boring. The protagonist didn't seem particularly bothered that everything he'd known and loved was gone forever, prefering to lust after pretty much the first female he met on arriving in this brave new world.
The story mostly consisted of a series of situations where a new invention or process arose, and then it was explained in depth for several pages.
This is the first in series of books, and the others sound a lot more promising. By the looks of things, this one was essentially purely building the world. I've already got the next one, so I'll give it a go.
I don't know if I enjoyed this or not.
It was the favourite book of an old friend, who repeatedly inserted it in the bibliography of the engineering books he'd written. Though I always thought its inclusion was more showing off rather than providing genuine influence. It's been on my shelf for years, so I figured it was time to crack the spine.
Well, it was a dense old tome. Whilst it wasn't a true doorstop by any means, it certainly packed in the big Scrabble words and had an unconventional story that kept you on your toes. Gloss over a page or two and you could very easily become lost.
Half of it was well thought out philosophy that really made you think. Should I ever get invited to any parties, I could certainly bust out a few choice nuggets of wisdom to impress. The other chunk of it was vast walls of tedious, near impenetrable stoner ramblings that at said shindig, would quickly force you to make your excuses to avoid hearing any more.
Worth reading purely to say that you have done so. It might change your life, it might leave you feeling confused and tired. Or somewhere inbetween like me.
Yes, that Simon Mayo. A perfectly entertaining, breezy read that was actually a lot more grim and gritty than I was expecting. It was the sort of book you'd pick up to take on holiday and enjoy, but maybe not bring back.
This was left on a table in a cafe, with a Post-it note saying, ‘Take me home and read me. Then pass me on'. Not one to argue with semi-adhesive stationery, I did as it said.
I wasn't expecting much from it, to be honest, but it was a fine, enjoyable read. It's not going to set the world on fire but entertaining none the less.
I've released it back into the wild to carry on spreading the words of the tall bloke off the telly.
I like Felicia, and her enthusiasm was definitely infectious. Her dedication to the overuse of the exclamation mark and sentences set all in capitals was certainly admirable. However, this ‘self-help' book felt more like a tiresome team-building exercise or a job interview at a book shop I once attended and wished I hadn't. I enjoyed reading her text but gave the activities a miss.
I quite enjoyed Clive Cussler as a youngster - a Tom Clancy, James Patterson or Lee Child of his day. I've bought what feels like a metric ton of his vast catalogue of books very cheaply in local charity shops over the last year or so and think my bookshelf is about to collapse under the weight. So I'm going in...
This book, whose title sounds like a placeholder, was written in 1976 and ye gods does it constantly show it. Plenty of mentions of typewriters, big old computers and of course everyone smokes. Plus much of the book's dialogue was... ‘of its time'.
All of the men were chiefly sex pests with our hero Major Dirk Pitt (yes, really), the most toxic. He was pretty much a supermarket own-brand James Bond and essentially Pepé Le Pew in human form. The few women characters were written terribly and treated appallingly. They were little more than weak damsels in distress to be rescued and purely there to be ogled, insulted, harassed and abused.
There were a couple of sequences where Pitt pretended to be an artist for reasons I can't even care enough to remember and it was very difficult to read. Think of every stereotypically gay character from 1970s sitcoms and you are getting close.
The twist ending felt like it was quickly written on the bus on the way to the publishers. It made no sense and added nothing to the story, but was actually treated with more subtlety than anything else in this wretched potboiler.
I have just shy of a dozen of these to read and I intend to grit my teeth and carry on in chronological order. I'm actually fascinated to see if there is any progression and improvement over the decades - there has to be, surely? I make no promises though, many more like this and I will certainly end throwing in the towel very early.