book

Wants to read The Hunt for Red October

Finished reading 24 Hours in Charlottesville: An Oral History of the Stand Against White Supremacy

Wants to read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Wants to read The Plague

Finished reading Dungeon Crawler Carl

Rated Spike Milligan: Man of Letters 6/10

A book of letters…kinda made me want to write letters…<br/><br/>I picked this up based on "funny books" though I'm really not sure how I landed on this book. I know, sort of, Spike Milligan's work, but only from TV. I didn't know he was an author, particularly from funny war stories so I missing considerable context. Arguably I'm not sure why I read this book.<br/><br/>The back cover quotes appeared almost immediately at the start of the book and it was pretty clear that this read like a bottom-of-the-barrel book, just printing every letter that could be found. There was the odd occasion that the correspondence was funny, but unfortunately not laugh-out-loud-funny, just a bit of a snicker.<br/><br/>In the last part of the book (part 4: words of support), the letters are about mental health (dating back to the late-60s), which was interesting to read as it feels like in the real world we've only started to talk openly about mental health in the last decade or so. Milligan would write letters offering support to others, and would often talk about how the NHS support was missing the love and understanding and rather delivered pills (which he says helps, but only as a band-aid).<br/><br/>It was these last group of letters, mostly about sending out love and positivity to the world that brought this up from 2 stars to 3. It definitely made me want to actually _write_ words down to people rather than the usual email, and it was nice to see some silly humour throughout his decades.

Wants to read The Cardinal of the Kremlin

Wants to read Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It

Reading Carl's Doomsday Scenario

Rated Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story 6/10

"Our diverse literary heritage reveals that we do not _need_ a single national story"<br/><br/>I bought and read this book after seeing Caroline Lucas speaking with Zack Polanski during a live session of Bold Politics. It's a book that tries to reclaim "Englishness" from the weaponising that the Far Right have been using it for.<br/><br/>Overall, it's an interesting read, lots of history, both good and bad, lots of literature and how stories and poetry has been used over the centuries to act as a force for political change for good.<br/><br/>Solidarity and standing up for what's right is the theme the ran through for me.<br/><br/>From a technical perspective, I didn't enjoy that nearly every single page also came with a long paragraph of footnotes - which normally I skip (because it goes off to the end of the book and back, but these were inline on the same page), and completely broke the flow of what I was reading. I wish that these had simply been part of the written content rather than regular sidebars.<br/><br/>Then as I read, I felt like perhaps I wasn't quite the audience to fully appreciate the book. There's certainly a good chunk that is accessible, but it often felt like if I worked in politics this content would make more sense.<br/><br/>---<br/><br/>I did come away with 23 highlights and wanted to highlight more, partly to remember what I had read, partly as a "wow, I did not know".<br/><br/>I think if you enjoy your history and commentary _and_ literature, then you'll enjoy this book. I struggle to read non-fiction in any reasonable amount of time, so I often find by the time I get to the end of a book, I forget the important things from the start!<br/>

Wants to read The Memory Police

Rated Bear Head 8/10

Really enjoyed this follow up to Dogs of War.<br/><br/>I _accidentally_ read [Dogs of War](https://remysharp.com/books/2018/dogs-of-war) in 2018 - I never went looking for it and loved it. Equally, I can't remember when I found out about Bear Head but I knew I wanted to read it if it existed in the same universe. So finally I get around to it.<br/><br/>Overall well written, well drawn characters with distinctive voices in a universe that's really not that hard to conceive. I've read a few of Tchaikovsky's books now and as much as I enjoy them, for some reason it does take me quite a stretch to read the books (this one being just ~315 pages and took me a month) - not sure what's up with that.<br/><br/>The story is told from three protagonist's perspective: Honey, the bear from Dogs of War - once soldier, now an academic arguing for rights for others. Jimmy, the "grunt worker" placed on Mars to prepare it for the colonies that plan to settle and Carole (Springer…I want to say), the PA and "collared" assistant to the antagonist Warner S. Thompson.<br/><br/>Similarly with Dogs of War, Bear Head discusses self and identity (can a person be entirely digital?), freedom and slavery, and the untouchable super rich and their power.<br/><br/>There's some pretty horrible scenes around human slavery where people are compelled to perform, both involuntary physically but also compelled to _think_ in certain ways (i.e. being submissive by design).<br/><br/>With a lot of what I'm reading lately, I can't help but associate it with today's real life events (in 2025-2026), and thinking of the corruption throughout politics we're seeing today - though I can see how this book being published in 2021 aligns fairly well with Trump's first regime from '17-21. Perhaps it's that backdrop that makes me a slow reader!

Rated Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI 8/10

I'd recommend anyone who wants to understand the emergence of AI and OpenAI in particular to read this book.<br/><br/>I do struggle reading non-fiction, and this book was no different. It took me nearly 2 months to finish reading (in my evening snippets) - but it was definitely worthwhile. It was [this 90 minute interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8enXRDlWguU) by Novara Media with Karen Hao that made me immediately purchase the book.<br/><br/>I don't think I can fully review this book and do it justice, but I can share what I learnt from the book where my original assumptions were wrong about AI and AI companies.<br/><br/>The book is focused primarily around OpenAI and Sam Altman, and in [particular how his ousting in November 2023](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67458603) came to be, through hundreds of interviews and documents, and paints a very insightful picture of the messiah complex (though not in her words) that Altman has.<br/><br/>Here's a short summary of things I didn't know but learnt through reading this:<br/><br/>1. Altman and friends started conversations (and business, albeit initially as a non-profit, though that didn't last) in 2015 because they were *going* to build AGI and that it was inevitable.<br/>2. The company was formed with scientific researchers originally, again as an open company with the intent of sharing, though spoiler alert: this all changed<br/>3. I had always assumed it was cowboy bro developers working on the code, but it was, originally, academic based engineering<br/>4. AI safety was constantly there and initially significant - but as we all know now, eventually lost a battle to make an impact, left "hobbled" and thrown rather to the wayside.<br/>5. The training data was, after GPT-2, ingested wholesale and attempt to clean/sanitise would happen on the results coming from prompts - i.e. the inputs were not cleaned, which means applying dizzying array of filters to catch on the output and edge cases.<br/>6. Common Crawl was introduced at GPT-3 - which is also where the input filtering stopped happening<br/>7. AI, or Western AI companies including OpenAI (but also Google and Microsoft) put their data centres in the Global South, additionally sourcing their data annotators from the poorest countries allowing them to pay (via third parties) literal pennies per hour for the work (which could also come with terrible mental health side effects as the worker would read and view the generative content that AI could come up with based on the unfiltered dark corners of the web)<br/>8. Sam Altman lies. Little lies, but from a great deal of documentation, _a lot_ and often to tell people what they want to hear whilst (we guess?!) having some ulterior motive<br/>9. The path that OpenAI decided to take to head towards what they believe will be AGI, effectively requires unlimited compute power, when in reality, there are lots of different applications of AI that don't need that level of power, Stable Diffusion being one such example trained using 256 GPUs (still not a desktop computer, but not hundreds of thousand GPUs either)<br/>10. OpenAI's approach, to close off it's scientific findings, close it's source and refusing to share methods means that there's no way to verify any of their progress, but more importantly is stripping the academic scientific community of it's researchers (as someone who has visited CERN on two occassions, seeing science being shared is incredible and incredible for society)<br/><br/>My only complaint about the book (and it's likely to be my own fault) is I had trouble with the jumping backwards and forwards in time - I'd often be unsure where we were in the timeline.<br/><br/>If you work in tech, I'd absolutely recommend this book. If it's not possible, then definitely the interview I linked above.

Rated The Air Raid Book Club 6/10

Quick easy read. Little repetitive, but shines a nice light.<br/><br/>The story starts in 1938 and we follow Gertie as she plans to retire as a widow having run a bookshop and successful book clubs for many years.<br/><br/>That's put on hold when she agrees to take in a child from the Kindertransport - which I'd know about but hadn't read a great deal of detail. <br/><br/>As a parent myself, this is the first part that breaks my brain a little, and indeed this part is entirely based in history. An amazing effort and so terrible too. <br/><br/>The story then follows Gertie as she takes care of Hedy, a 15 year old German Jew who also longs to be reunited with her family.<br/><br/>The story takes us through The Blitz, the air raid shelters, rolling blackouts and rationing that took place over the years as Hitler and the Nazis spread through Europe.<br/><br/>I've not read any wartime books, so this was an experience. Obviously: harrowing. The story does also do a good job of making me believe the life that tries to march on.

Reviewed Fundamentally

Loved it. Intelligent and genuinely made me laugh.<br/><br/>This book was recommended in our work Slack, and _just_ pull quote for the book description, I found myself instantly buying it:<br/><br/>> By normal, you mean like you? A slag with a saviour complex?<br/><br/>The story follows Nadia, an academic who is pulled into a job with the UN to apply her proposal to rehabilitate ISIS brides so they can leave the camps and return home.<br/><br/>What I really enjoyed about this book was the exposure to completely different backgrounds to my own. So for an example, Nadia is Muslim. She has turned her back on her faith. She's gone into academia, and she's now offered a job in the UN to help these ISIS brides.<br/><br/>Most of the characters are completely different to the people in my real life, but the writing is steeped in reality (the author's note at the end explains that she, Younis, was a humanitarian worker known for her expertise on contemporary Iraq, and that though fictionalised, there's a lot of real experience in the story).<br/><br/>Nadia's character is witty, flawed, pissed off, broken and I found myself actually laughing out loud at some of the lines from the book. The book's blurb includes the following line, which I absolutely felt was accurate:<br/><br/>> A bitingly original, wildly funny and razor-sharp exploration of love, family, religion, radicalism[…]<br/><br/>I really enjoyed the book, and found it hard to put down - as seen in my 10 day read of what normally takes me a month.<br/><br/>For a first novel, from someone that on paper is very academic and doing _very_ serious work, this is A*. Love it.

Rated Platform Decay 6/10

Solid entry into the series. <br/><br/>I've read all the previous Murderbot books, but since the last, I also watched the TV series - which I equally enjoyed, but…or put a weird spin on reading this latest book.<br/><br/>I'd entirely forgotten the "diary" part, and because of the TV series, I had the external perspective and wondered why this book was both being told from Murderbot's internal monologue, but also why there was so much…noise, I guess the word would be. <br/><br/>Once I'd finally remembered that this was the actual format of the book I settled into it, reminding myself there wouldn't be huge character developments (because the diaries tend to last for one mission/episode).<br/><br/>Still, the Murderbot character is in fact growing and evolving and that's fun to read.<br/><br/>The story pulled me along pretty well. Not quite the rip roaring page turner, but a solid entry all the same.<br/><br/>I'm not 100% sure you could just pick this book up without having read at least a few previous books, which is why I hadn't rated it higher (the very first novellas are absolutely excellent).<br/><br/>Enjoyable, even if it took me a minute to remember the specific Murderbot format.

Wants to read The Origins of Totalitarianism

Rated When the Cranes Fly South 8/10

Took me a minute to get into, but then…I cried. The good kind.<br/><br/>It took me until around 20% of the book to get on with it properly. I was struggling to even want to pick up the book. It's well written, but the subject, _end of life_, was so unappealing that I found myself wanting to avoid reading the book.<br/><br/>At some point around 1/5 of the way in, this feeling settled and I was swept along by the narrative that the main character, Bo, gives us.<br/><br/>I think reading this there's going to be different aspects that hit different people hardest. I'm not a dog person, so the thread about Sixten, his dog, though sad (the dog doesn't die!) it didn't gut punch me.<br/><br/>I did however relate hard to the inner monologue not linking up to what's actually said. Something I suspect most people can relate to - which I suspect is the reason this book is well recommended.<br/><br/>The book is told almost exclusively from the thoughts of Bo, the elderly 89 year old man (which took me quite a few pages to actually work out). From his thoughts we travel back and forth in his memory which worked really well. I didn't feel lost at all, maybe because Bo's memories felt like they flowed naturally back and forth.<br/><br/>The story really does feel like it's being faithful to the human flaws many of us share.<br/><br/>It also, for me, did an excellent job of building up my relationship with Bo and gently brought me to tears right at the end in a way that made me message my kids to tell them I love them.

Rated Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 6/10

Really interesting ideas sandwiched in a bit of a weird trip.<br/><br/>I'm sure there's an English studies thesis for this book, but I'm utterly unqualified. This book was, kind of all over the shop.<br/><br/>I'm very familiar with Blade Runner (both director's cut and OG) and I'd known ahead of time that the book it was based on was _not_ the same. <br/><br/>There's actually a fairly coherent string of plot that's similar to the ideas of the movie: identity and self awareness.<br/><br/>The middle section of the book is actually pretty linear to follow.<br/><br/>It's mostly the sections that involve Mercer and the mind fusing that the characters go through. Specifically when there's no purposeful fusing - in that two characters, Deckard included, seem to just start tripping and interacting with Mercer, or... having "thought" stones thrown at them... I'm not sure. <br/><br/>The Mercer sections, I found myself reading for the ride, but not really knowing what was going on. <br/><br/>I'm glad I've finally got a Philip K. Dick book under my belt, though I was warned that this particular book probably isn't the best choice for a first. <br/><br/>What does stand out is for a book written in 1968, it reads like something that was written recently (perhaps with the exception of the flying cars _still_ using petrol!).

Wants to read The Last Wish

Rated Rivers of London 8/10

Vivid voice, fun and dark and original.<br/><br/>I wasn't sure what I was getting in to reading Rivers of London (recommended multiple times on socials), especially as I kept finding the teens/young adult book cover for it (reminding me of the multiple covers the Harry Potter books had) - but I decided to jump in.<br/><br/>I quickly got sucked into the book and the narrative style that Aaronovitch used. For some reason I had Millie Bobby Brown as the voice which caused me a little confusion when I learn that the protagonist and narrator is called Peter Grant (I really didn't read the blurb) - but decided that she could still run the inner monologue.<br/><br/>The Rivers of London is a very London and British book (which I always especially enjoy because I can vividly see the places, hear the accents and usually feel the weather) that's a mix of modern copper plod story with fantastical (and certainly for me: original) characters from gods to vampires to ghosts and wizards.<br/><br/>There's a good balance of funny and witting against the (some times) gruesome and frankly pretty terribly bad things that make for the primary investigation for the protagonist, Grant, to work through.<br/><br/>Really fun stuff - I can definitely see myself returning for more in this series.

Rated The Satsuma Complex 6/10

Light on the brain.<br/><br/>Just the kind of read I wanted after a few longer books. Not 100% even throughout the book - but I'll come to that.<br/><br/>The squirrel from the cover features a nice silly-ish part of the story where the main character will often run into a local squirrel and add his own voice in a back and forth between him and the squirrel. The sort of thing I'd expect from a Bob Mortimer book.<br/><br/>I'm not 100% sure where the book's tone is supposed to sit. Some parts are particularly dark - police corruption, police harassment and modern day slavery. Juxtaposed next to funny little things like socks, squeaky shoes, a cranky neighbour and dog who's constantly disappointed with our main character.<br/><br/>The pages did turn quickly though, and it was easy reading. Nothing particularly to shout about, but not bad either.

Rated In Bloom 8/10

No quite the same murderfest from Sweetpea 1, but still enjoyably angry at the world.<br/><br/>I think I expected the same kind of murder spree from the first book, and it's not that at all (although Rhiannon, the protagonist, desperately wants that). It's actually written on the tin, In Bloom is Rhiannon's experience of being pregnant - which, for a change, rolls up all the shitty experiences into one.<br/><br/>I enjoyed, and laughed at, the cutting turn of phrases - the kind of brutal honesty that you might reserve for the closest of friends knowing that it's for the "inside voice".<br/><br/>I can see myself reading the next instalment in the book (though perhaps not so soon) and I'm not entirely sure where the character can go given the way the book ends, so that's definitely intriguing.<br/><br/>But just for the the record (my record!), Rhiannon is a terrible person!

Rated The Man Who Died Twice 8/10

Wreaks of "cosy crime" - and that's good.<br/><br/>There's a reason that Richard Osman's series has been a runaway success for many people (or at least I can believe it) - the story is well written, the characters are extremely well drawn and the pages are a pleasure to digest.<br/><br/>I keep thinking I'm further along in the series than I actually am because the characters have quickly become a staple of crime fiction in my head.<br/><br/>Although I did find I was a little suprised at the some of the more grusome passages (realising that doesn't really fit the "cosy crime" sub-genre). Those parts did take me out of the story a little. Again, I feel like I've had more of these characters than I actually have (this is the second Thursday book I've read), so there's no reason why a few hard edges wouldn't be part of the story.<br/><br/>I did, however, have one complaint. I was quickly getting annoyed with the diary that Joyce would write in. For some reason I was having a hard time believing that Joyce was writing diary entries in such a conversational style as a pen and paper job, especially when the style of her writing/thoughts read as if she would be telling her husband… who's already shuffled off. I'm not 100% sure why I found it distracting, but I suspect that's not going to reduce any amount in the next Thursday books, so I'll probably need to find a way around it.<br/><br/>Otherwise, a lovely read. Definitely feels as if I'm visiting these characters, and it's always a pleasure sharing a bit of time with them all.

Rated A Very Merry Murder 6/10

Fine. Easy read. Guessed the murdered though 🤷<br/><br/>Grabbed it for the Christmas period (slightly annoyed I finished it on Jan 2nd). It's decently written, apparently part of a series (this being book 6) but stands fine on it's own. There's a few references to something that happened before, but doesn't affect the story.<br/><br/>It does read like a Columbo or Murder She Wrote, where there's people killing other people like it's just another Wednesday. All ends are fully tied up without anything left to the reader by the end.<br/><br/>I did figure out the killer around 1/3rd of the way in - or at least I keep asking the protagonist "What about X?!".<br/><br/>Not terribly Christmasy, but the very last chapter was very sweet.