More plague, you say? Better fire the telly up then…

Tricky to know how to describe this book… and I daresay it doesn’t really matter. It’s like a transcription of a really long Nat’s What I Reckon video, in which he tells his life story and philosophy on life. I really like the guy. I’m delighted that he’s found success with those cooking videos. Publishing recipes in comic-book format is a bit of an odd step, and I can’t imagine many people would keep this as a cooking reference – but you couldn’t leave it out, and it’s quite well-executed.

Absolute belter of a first novel from one of the “QI Elves” – a dystopian future novel that stands up to John Birmingham levels of excellent, set in a world where the Earth has stopped rotating. Very difficult to put down; I found I finished this in the space of a week. Loved it.

Sorry John… I found this book, whilst small, incredibly annoying. I get that it was meant to be a simple little positive idea – and arguably one that’s very helpful to a lot of people. But how does that make a whole book? The book’s notable for being short and cheerful, which is something its author notably isn’t generally either of. Nothing WRONG with it – just felt like a grandiose pamphlet rather than a book.

You’d think that a history of a 200 year old company could be a yawn-inducing affair, echoing the tedium of digging through endless ledgers that the author inevitably had to do to look for clues in reconstructing the stories… however in the right hands it is the stories that come to life, and this exploration of the tale of Johnnie Walker is expertly pieced together by Dr Nicholas Morgan – someone with not only the historian’s skillset, but the lived experience of working alongside the archival materials for half a lifetime, and a living passion for the subject matter: Scotch Whisky. Any fan of the topic will tell you that it’s the people that bring it to life, and this book’s no exception. I found it a gripping read, even in spite of it being a history book. I had no idea that in the 1930s Johnnie Walker deployed cricket scoreboards to cities all over the Empire, where board operators would sit inside listening to the radio and not only keep the scores updated, but also “act out” each shot on a puppet-like surface using a series of rods and controls.

Lovingly assembled collection of bits & pieces from dear-departed comic & human being Jeremy Hardy. He was truly one-of-a-kind and several nuggets in this book really shone out for me. Interspersed throughout were tributes/contributions from other friends & comics, making for a book which was more of a fond & fitting reminiscence, rather than a page-turning anthology of comedy gold. A delightful read.

A collection of transcripts from John Cleese’s addresses to Cornell University during his tenure (now indefinite) as professor-at-large at Cornell University: a post which, as he describes it, consists of “turning up periodically to stir things up”. It’s probably fair to say that about a third of this book is the transcript of his conversation with screenwriter/legend William Goldman, which is great news because that’s the most fascinating one. I’d peg this as the most interesting thing I’ve read from Cleese lately, albeit not as good as his autobiography. Definitely not a waste of time though. Good lord, there’s faint praise. Ceteris paribus, he still knows how to put together a phrase.

I actually wrote a “proper” blog post on this one… it seemed the thing to do at the time.

What an absolute prick. So, this book was the sequel to what was, predictably, an account of the first 3 years of the Trump Presidency. I don’t know where to start. The authors used their credibility to gain access to talk to key players in the saga, to obtain minutes, recordings and transcripts, and collate as close to an objective account of what happened – including from speaking to Trump himself. The resultant book paints a far worse picture than any imagined scene or hearsay. Excellent book. What a total, utter prick.

Superb interview transcripts discussing the conception & production of the first 4 seasons of Black Mirror – detailing not only storyline & production, but also the goings-on-at-the-time in terms of budgetary constraint and the move to Netflix, the actors they were able to get, production design… everything! And all pinned together by the easy conversational manner of Charlie and Annabel. I think this sort of behind-the-curtain narrative only serves to elevate the whole production, and seems to swerve turning into a huge self-congratulating circlejerk. Well worth a read.

Standup Mathematician Matt Parker – who I know of via the old Festival Of The Spoken Nerd shows when I lived in London, and latterly his appearances on the wonderful Numberphile YouTube channel and A Problem Squared podcast – has collected an anthology of maths-related disasters to show how important it is, and what sort of seemingly minor details can have catastrophic consequences. Luckily, most of them happened so long ago that “we can laugh about it now”… Special nerdy mentions to the fact that the book numbers backwards from page 314 to 0 (so you know exactly how much you’ve got to go!), and the most precise Index I’ve ever seen (giving decimal points to indicate where on the page a word is found).