Doctorow is both an entertaining author and very much on the right (by which I mean left/anarchist) side of politics. His futuristic utopia is set in a world where people are kept artificially poor in the midst of post scarcity merely to keep the capit …

Bruce Sterling is that other cyberpunk author. He is back to writing counterfactual alternative histories examining what may have been had things just happened to turn out slightly differently (cf. steampunk bible and Victorian romp The Differen …

Here’s all the books that I read in 2015, by month. On the each month’s page there’s quick review or synopsis of each book that I read in that month. …

This is a pretty comprehensive 'brief' history of the Anglo-Saxons - from the decline of the Romano-British culture in (what we now call) England up until the arrival of the Normans and indeed beyond. Hindley investigates …

This novel was one of a trove I inherited from my parents, a gift for my mother on her 20th birthday. It tells the story of a weaver, formerly a religious nonconformist and now miser, who discovers a meaning in life other than gold when an orphan c …

Blood Meridian (or The Evening Redness in the West) is a sort of literary slasher set in a mythical version of the Old West. If you can get past the grisly ultraviolence and cast of socio/psychopathic characters, there is a powerful story and …

I can’t resist a bargain. Paying 60p for a book with a 1 pound sticker on the front does, I believe, constitute a bargain. The text, dating from 1990 is actually a pretty solid PL introduction and fairly compre …

I have wanted to read some of DFW’s stuff ever since sending one of my blog posts through I Write Like and discovering that our styles were statistically similar. Having read this collection of essays, I am rather chuffed at the …

Back in May, FLOSSUK published a couple of reviews that I had written in their newsletter. Reviewing books is a pleasant way to expand one’s technical horizons, especially for a confirmed bibliophile like me.The books I reviewed were You don’t know JS: ES 6 and Beyond, by Kyle Simpson …

An Oxfam treat, this. S?awomir Mro?ek’s 1957 collection of ultra-short stories are bizarre and compelling. From elephants made from rubber to save money, to a world of tiny people that live in a drawer, Mro?ek is satirical and surreal in e …