I am a self-facilitating media node (aka you are what you consume)

Gladwell doing his Gladwell thing – this time about how underdogs win, and the complexity of assumption which leads you to think that they won’t. Captivating stuff (albeit with some elements that have you thinking “reeeeeeeeallly?” afterwards) and worth a read. My challenge is that now having listened to his podcast a lot I can’t work out if I’m remembering something I’ve read, or that he’s said.

An old friend from Australia’s produced this smirkworthy tome – a collation of blogposts from his adventures crossing India in an autorickshaw (tuk tuk) as part of a rally race. It’s fun to see the cultural experience unfold in front of naive eyes, and made for a quite enjoyable read.

Fun little excursion, whereby Birmo’s written a story featuring 3 of his characters from his “The Disappearance” trilogy but set it in the world of SM Stirling’s “Emberverse”. Not that I’ve read that. But, you don’t really even need to know all that because as a standalone piece it’s quite a good fun post-apocalyptic treasure-hunting story – told with the trademark John Birmingham wry irreverance.

As a Muppet fan I’ve long been drawn to the wholesomeness and creativity of Henson, tweaked by his Bohemian streak. So this biography was a wonderful chance to get a fuller picture of the story & timelines of things. SO many elements I didn’t realise, like former Disney CEO Michael Eisner being the one who got the Muppets their first break on the ABC network. A genuinely loving book, reminding the reader what a unique and special guy Henson was.

See, I shoulda written this at the time rather than months later. I think the lasting impression I had of this was that it was an amusing collection of short stories, some of which (and more than I’d care for) involved football. I’ve absolutely no idea what prompted me to buy/read this, and I’m not aware of my life being any the richer for having done so. Still, variety, I suppose.

Subtitled “How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives” – an interesting read this, given that it was published in 2011… so, a company biopic from 10 years ago for a company that’s very much continued aggressively evolving to present day. Steven Levy writes candidly and with great insight (and clearly, access) on the origin stories of Larry and Sergey, and the genesis of the company from its roots as a research project from Stanford.

I was very interested to read the internal wrangling over the power of data vs. privacy, the famed “20% time”, and the great Google push into China (up to that point one of the most significant moves they’d made). It blew my mind that Google Glass didn’t feature at all – but then, it was from 2014. So, maybe there’s a 10th Anniversary edition out there? I can’t remember when Marissa Mayer left Google either, but it was interesting how prominently her name featured in this book, given her latter movements.

As autobiographies go, it was fine. The story of the genesis and the quirks/behind-the-scnes stuff of Viz magazine were great, and I suppose in a way it was slightly comforting to be reading the story of a fairly ordinary chap who carved out a career pratting about with his mates – with the warts & all tales of the various cockups along the way… I finished the book thinking that the most notable thing about it, though, was the fact that for some reason my copy came with 3 (identical) dust jackets. Top that, readers!

This book of memoirs felt like Barry Cryer didn’t really want to write it – but I’m really glad he did, and loved every moment of it. It’s a bit biased – I’d read a shopping list if I knew Baz had written it. The ONLY thing I didn’t love about this book is that he didn’t go into more depth/detail on some of the stories.

Not so much a series of short stories, as a collection of recollections between 1 and 4 pages long – from the author the then-slightly-successful South London comedian, Mark Steel. In the nearly 30 years since the book’s publication he’s continued ploughing his comedic furrow but stayed true enough to his roots that these stories are unmistakeably by him. I’d be intrigued to see how he’d tell them differently today. Always political, and usually hilarious. And that says nothing useful about the book, does it?

Gripping and comprehensive read about the rise and fall of Cameron – infamously, this was the book that was sensationalised for the appendage/dead pig/mouth story. But more insightfully it detailed a portrait of Cameron being a near-effortlessly talented politician, with the will to ruthlessly get to the top and then no ideas about what to do once he got here. Equally interesting was the appendix which characterised Ashcroft’s opinion polling data, which to my mind painted a much more interesting picture of the sorts of data insights it’s possible to get.