"Douglas Adams at the BBC: A Celebration of the Author's Life and Work" by Douglas Adams - audiobook review

I mildly enjoyed this audiobook. It's an A-Z compilation of Douglas Adams's appearances on BBC radio and TV and a biography of his professional life. It is narrated by Simon Jones (the voice of Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). The bits I found most interesting were the clips from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future, a radio series about the future of technology that was broadcast in 2000, the year before Adams died.

"101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think" by Brianna Wiest - audiobook review

I quite enjoyed this book. I think it has changed the way I think. Some of the same thoughts are sprinkled repeatedly throughout the essays, so it is a little repetitive. I also sometimes lost track of what essay I was listening to in this audiobook version narrated by Abby Craden (who stands in plausibly for the author's voice). Each chapter is numbered but then also some chapters are numbered lists of ideas. There were three chapters in particular that resonated with me: chapter 9: 20 Signs You're Doing Better Than You Think You Are; chapter 13: 101 Things More Worth Thinking About Than Whatever is Consuming You; and chapter 55: Why You're Struggling in Your Relationships Based on Your Attachment Style. They'd be good to return to in times of crisis or when you're feeling low. The philosophies in this book feel modern, positive, feminine, mindful, and of my generation.

"Mark Rothko, 1903-1970" (Tate Gallery) by Mark Rothko - book review

This is another book from my list of books to read after Finals. I became interested in Rothko after seeing the Seagram Murals at Tate Modern. It's the closest I've had to a spiritual experience while looking at art. He was also mentioned in a novel I read at the time (around 2002), Twelve by Nick McDonell, that also fetishized Nietzsche and North Face jackets, and was set in New York (thanks to Fran for helping me find it!). This is a collection of essays by academics about Rothko's life and work, his own statements about art (which he stopped making public by the early 1950s), and his materials. It also includes about 100 reproductions of his paintings, including early works that I wasn't familiar with. I had no idea that he went through classical mythical symbolist and surrealist phases before he found his recognizable abstract rectangular forms. I was expecting to understand more about what led him to take his own life in 1970 (apart from depression), but I'm not much wiser about that. I was aware that some of his paintings got increasingly dark towards the end of his life. I also didn't know that his later paintings were executed with the help of assistants. Presumably by this stage he was able to afford it, but I also think it was a result of some health problems. I was fascinated that some of his works, including the Harvard Murals, have deteriorated and changed how they look due to the synthetic materials he was using. He ran out of paint during the project and bought some cheap paint from Woolworth's! Some of his last paintings were also made on paper.

"Grief Is for People" by Sloane Crosley - audiobook review

I noticed this book while browsing at The Margate Bookshop. My eye was caught by the cover and the title because I read a few books about grief last year, shortly after my big brother Gregory died. I listened to this as an audiobook, read by the author, a few weeks later. I don't really know what I was expecting, but I was somewhat underwhelmed and it didn't really resonate with me.

The author used to work in book publicity for Vintage in New York. She was mentored by her boss and friend, Russell. He is the person who dies and for whom the author is grieving. He died about a month after the author's apartment was burgled and her jewellery was stolen. Her attempts to find and recover the jewellery become a proxy for how she deals with the death of her friend. The book also includes a section about what life in New York was like during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'm really struggling to express what I thought and felt about this book. I just felt a bit meh about it. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. I got to see how one person dealt with trauma and death. But it didn't feel particularly memorable and didn't give me any frisson of insight or wisdom.

The most interesting bits, for me, were descriptions of what it's like working in book publicity. It didn't deepen my understanding of my own grief.

"The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life" by Edith Eger - audiobook review

My friend and former colleague, Jenny, recommended this book to me. Edith Eger survived Auschwitz and escaped from Communist Europe. She qualified as a therapist later in life. This book is part memoir, part case book (detailing the traumas some of her patients have overcome). The most memorable line for me was: "the opposite of depression is expression" - meaning that you have to talk about your thoughts and feelings (or write them down) in order to grow past them. The book is structured by different mental problems and each chapter ends with keys to better mental health. She sounds like an amazing woman and the audiobook narrator, Tovah Feldshuh, plausibly captured her voice - like a cross between Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond and Ruth Gordon from Harold and Maud. I wanted to gift this book to encourage certain people to consider talking therapy.

"History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity" by Roman Krznaric - audiobook review

This is the third book in Roman Krznaric's loose trilogy about time: Carpe Diem Regained (2017) is about seizing the day, living in the present; The Good Ancestor (2020) is about how we choose to live now will affect the future of humanity: a forward-looking, 7th-generation empathy; this book, History for Tomorrow, looks back to the past for lessons about how we can tackle and rethink the challenges of today.

My reading of this audiobook edition, narrated by the author, was prolonged because I was stuck in the present, listening to the BBC's Newscast to keep up with the endless stream of news about the unending now and the new Labour government. I've now scratched that particular itch, having realized (again) that I'll never be able to keep up.

It engages in dialogue with and echoes other books I've read recently (I love it when that happens!): Howard Zinn's A People’s History of the United States and Peter Frankopan's The Earth Transformed - and both authors are cited. It's also preoccupied with the ongoing threats of climate change, water scarcity, the cancer stage of capitalism, social media, inequality, and AI. It's in the chapter on AI ("Keeping the Machines Under Control - Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of Capitalism") that I found myself agitating slightly: I felt at times that Krznaric's definition of AI was too broad, including recommendation algorithms and citing the overdone anecdote that Target knew a girl was pregnant before she did by sending her coupons for baby products. (I feel like I've read or heard a debunking of that story, but I can't remember where it was: Malcolm Gladwell? The Reply All or Search Engine podcasts?) It rubs me up the wrong way in the same way that people used to throw around the phrase "Big Data", which instead of clarifying the concept for me just makes it fuzzier. What's probably going on is that my ignorance is being exposed and my neurological pathways are being rerouted, which probably means it's finally time for me to read Michael Wooldridge's The Road to Conscious Machines: The Story of AI to straighten things out (or cause more cognitive unsettlings). Don't get me wrong: I think this is a good thing, and I welcome the feeling of unrest.

Having read most of the author's other books (and known him as a colleague, friend, and client for 20 years), the tone and structure of this book is very familiar - not least because I could hear his voice reading it to me! He loves a surprising juxtaposition, a satisfying anecdote, a principled role model, a sighting of empathy in the world at large. His books are successful, (I think) widely read and discussed, easily digested and marketed - grown out of blog posts and lectures, in the same way that short films are sometimes the germ for feature films. Like writers such as Malcolm Gladwell, Tim Harford, and Cal Flyn, Roman Krznaric has definitely found his voice. If I was his literary agent, I'd probably encourage him to do more of the same. But there's a part of me, a wicked sprite, that wants to challenge him to do something completely different with his next book: something riskier, more likely to fail, in a different voice. I don't know what that is (fiction? investigative journalism? travel writing? biography? a play or film script? some new genre that hasn't even been invented yet?); but maybe he does. Is there an abortive attempt lurking in the back of a drawer somewhere or an unfinished notebook? Not that you need it, Roman, but you have my permission to try something different.

"Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change" by Simon Sharpe - audiobook review

I really enjoyed this book. I wish more people like Simon Sharpe had the ear of policy-makers and decision-makers. It gave me hope that we can actually make the transition to a more sustainable economy. I preferred the sections on science and economics; the diplomacy of climate change is interesting but so frustrating!

A few things I learned include: carbon tax is better than cap and trade because cap and trade has balancing feedbacks that negate the benefits. Also, economists use the wrong kind of equilibrium economics models; agent-based models are better. This book echoes a theme in Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics that the way economics is taught in universities needs to be changed to break the hegemony of a narrow neoliberal capitalist  paradigm.

Things I found annoying about this audiobook version narrated by Michael Langan: 1) The way the narrator lowers his voice when reading footnotes. Just say: "Footnote" and read normally. 2) Reading out full URLs. These could be cited in the accompanying PDF instead.

Humble-brag disclosure: I built the author, Simon Sharpe's, website for this book and have also done some web development for his literary agent, Maggie Hanbury. This is, however, an independent review.

"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn - book review

This is another book on my list of Books to read after Finals recommended to me by Roman Krznaric 20-odd years ago. And boy was it a good one! It's a history of the United States of America told from the perspective of the small people: the Native Americans forced off their ancestral land by Christopher Columbus and the other invaders from Europe; the African slaves whom the colonizers brought over in huge numbers and treated terribly; the labourers in the mines and factories of the industrial era; the women who were denied the right to vote or live on an equal footing with men; the young men who didn't want to fight imperial wars in Europe and Vietnam; the poor, the non-white whose interests are frequently ignored by the government.

I don't read much history, but I've read enough to know that this is not how most history books are framed. It's mind-blowing, powerful, and inspiring. It taught me so much that I didn't know about American history - much of it shameful, regretful, and violent. It's an important revision of the myth of the Founding Fathers, who created a strong central government to protect their (rich, white) interests at the expense of the ordinary people.

The narrative is told chronologically and really gathers pace as it reaches the more familiar history of the 20th century. It's shocking how often the US government has resorted to violence to solve its problems: whether that's removing Native Americans and Mexicans from fertile land that it covets for its expanding population of white immigrants; suppressing the collective action of striking labourers asking for better pay and working conditions during the period of the robber barons (Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and others); opposing Vietnam War protestors; or exerting imperial control over Central and South America, and its other interests all over the world.

I'd love to read a similar history about the UK. Any recommendations?

This 2014 Kindle edition of the book (originally published in 1980 but updated multiple times between 1995 and 2003) was littered with typographical errors, which I duly reported via the Kindle interface. It doesn't seem to have been properly edited, or it was scanned by an OCR without being fully checked by a human.

"Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's 'Dazed and Confused'" by Melissa Maerz - audiobook review

I love this film (Dazed and Confused) and I really enjoyed this book. It made me want to rewatch the film (I just bought the DVD from eBay). My big brother, Gregory, introduced me to this film in the mid-90s. It's right in my wheelhouse as a coming-of-age film. It has that timeless quality: the film is set on the last day of high school in 1976 and goes all through the night to the next morning.

Anyway, enough about the film. Why did I like the book? I haven't read many oral histories before. It's kind of like reading the trivia section from IMDb in a really drawn-out and detailed way. It's a really interesting insight into the early career of Richard Linklater: his years in Austin, Texas, where he lived off his savings, paying cheap rent, watching movies every day, not really having to work. That led to Slacker; Dazed and Confused was his second major film, funded by Universal.

Most of the cast of the movie seemed to have a great time: partying, staying up all night, smoking weed, drinking, sleeping around. Linklater, on the other hand, had to fight really hard against the Hollywood machine to make the film he wanted to make. His memories of making the film are more painful.

His filmmaking style seems to be really laid back: he is definitely in control, but he lets his actors express themselves, write scenes, improvise; and sometimes he goes with it.

I hadn't realized that the film was the start of some pretty major acting careers for Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Milla Jovovich, Renée Zellweger, and others.

It's nostalgic for me to revisit this beloved film. I really wish Gregory was still around so that I could talk to him about it. He introduced us to so much culture like this when I was growing up.

The audiobook narration by Brittany Pressley is pretty good: clear and easy to follow. It includes some contributions by George Newbern, who I think reads some of the male voices. There's also an interview between the author, Melissa Maerz, and Richard Linklater at the end. It makes sense to read this as an audiobook, but I did find it hard to keep track of who everyone is. This would be easier in a book, where you could stop to check the cast list. The audiobook has a PDF, but I didn't read this until after I'd finished it. It doesn't really matter though: it evoked a mood, a good time, and I learned a lot about one of my favourite films and made me want to rewatch it.

Bicester and Woodstock general election constituency voting projection based on 2 May 2024 district council ward results

There is a general election on Thursday 4 July. I live in the new Bicester and Woodstock constituency. I've always been slightly suspicious and dissatisfied with the way the local parties' leaflets project the vote share, so I thought I'd do it myself using data from the recent district council elections on 2 May 2024. These are the results:

• Lib Dem 38%
• Conservative 29%
• Labour 15%
• Green 13%
• Other + rejected 6%

The turnout was low at 33%. Here's the underlying data: https://bit.ly/bwdc2024.

Don't forget to register to vote by Tuesday 18 June. And remember you'll need valid photo ID if you want to vote in person. The deadline to apply for a postal vote is Wednesday 19 June.

Please consider voting tactically to stop the Tories winning in your constituency.