Category: books

  • All for Nothing

  • Sally Rooney’s Normal People

    If this is the first review you’ve read, and you can stomach darkness, please stop now and just read Normal People. Most reviews, positive or negative, will probably not lead you to read the book, which I think is a serious and important work. There is much to dislike about this novel—its bleakness, its tawdriness, […]

  • Dopamine in Daniel Deronda

    The opening of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, besides being transcendently beautiful, is an examination of the effects of dopamine. Sound far-fetched? Dopamine wasn’t discovered until 1957, whereas Daniel Deronda debuted in 1876. So what am I on about?

  • An experiment in phonelessness

    The plot thus far In 2017, I lost a new smartphone. In the aftermath of its disappearance I decided not to replace it, a feat which I managed for about a month, with an additional few weeks on an old Nokia phone. During this time I found life more serene, serendipitous, and I was happier. […]

  • On writing at speed

    Exactly three weeks ago, on 14th January 2019, I began a draft of my first novel. I won’t discuss its contents here, but I thought I’d write about the experience of writing at speed. Driving that train First of all, how quickly have I written? As of today, my word count is 42,903 words, written […]

  • Top 10 Books I read in 2018

    I’ve just begun my fiftieth book of the year, The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. Like the last book I read, I discovered it via Derek Sivers, who reviewed it on his site. It’s been an interesting read so far, on overcoming one’s own resistance to ambitious endeavours. It’s inspirational, but so far does […]

  • Through a Glass Darkly

    What is it? A weekly chance to meet face-to-face and discuss a wide range of intellectual topics, in an analogue fashion; the idea is to disconnect from the internet and to connect in person. I’ve decided to set up a separate site for it which can be found here.

  • The Elephant in the Brain

    The Elephant in the Brain (2017) is at times an uncomfortable read, but well-worth it for anyone willing to undertake its introspective incursion.  Programmer Kevin Simler (of the fascinating Melting Asphalt blog) and economist Robin Hanson explore why we are prone to self-deception about our motives, and how this deception can shed light on otherwise inexplicable […]

  • The Reivers

    Faulkner’s final novel The Reivers, written in 1962, is something of an uncharacteristic masterpiece. The narrator, Lucius Priest, is an old man recounting adventures from when he was an eleven-year-old boy, in 1905, just as automobiles first arrived in Jefferson, Mississippi. His grandfather, Boss Priest, who owns one of the few cars then in existence, goes […]

  • Circe

    Madeline Miller’s Circe is not a bad book, but it is disappointing in a number of ways. It takes for its first-person hero the witch of Aiaiai, Circe, a daughter of the sun-god Helios, turner of men into pigs, and eventual lover of Odysseus. It is a sort of riposte to The Odyssey so it’s unsurprising that […]