Reading - February 2015

Guitarist (March 2015 / Issue 391)

Simon's Cat by Simon Tofield (2009)

Cute but nowhere near as funny as the YouTube cartoons. K is enjoying it.

The Week (7 February 2015 / Issue 1008)

The Week (14 February 2015 / Issue 1009)

Quirkology by Richard Wiseman (2007)

A compendium of studies into the way people think and act. Mostly fairly trivial things (the kind that make you think, "people get paid for researching this?"), but some that have serious consequences, like what unconsciously affects who people vote for (clue: nothing to do with policies). Very anecdotal but well footnoted, but a few too many occurrences of phrases like "although later studies have called this into question" - which makes me think that perhaps the initial study, however interesting, shouldn't be quoted.

The Second Book Of General Ignorance by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson (2010)

More amazing facts etc. Mostly very interesting (and with an occasional overlap with Quirkology, above), but sometimes a little too little varied in tone - "here's another thing everyone is wrong about". More for dipping into than anything else.

Simon's Cat in Kitten Chaos by Simon Tofield (2011)

Actually rather wearing after a while. Didn't finish it, despite the fact that doing so would only have taken about 10 minutes.

The Big Issue (16-22 February 2015 / Issue 1141)

The Week (21 February 2015 / Issue 1010)

How To Bake by Paul Hollywood (2012)

A good introduction to a number of types of baking, including bread. Feels a bit like a short book about bread that got expanded with other baking so that they could charge more for it, but decent amounts of info on bread-making techniques and equipment, and including some approaches and recipes I haven't come across before. Good illustrations. Suffers from a common issue with recipe books, which is that it is nicely bound but won't stay open at the page you want while you try actually make the recipe!

Lunarbaboon Vol 1 by Chris Grady (2014)

Lunarbaboon is my favourite web comic and so last year I put some cash down for my first Kickstarter project to get a copy of the first book. It contains comics from the first year, so I've mostly read them, but I think they're good enough to preserve. The book is now more generally available - buy a copy!