Reading - January 2023

The Great British Dream Factory by Dominic Sandbrook (2015)

In a way, this reminds me of some of Bill Bryson's later books, overly crammed with information because the author can't bear to leave a single fascinating titbit out. As a result, despite being constantly interesting, the whole thing started to become a bit of a chore to read - I felt like I was full of facts and stuffed with statistics, to the detriment of the overall theme of the book. Britain has produced a wide variety of popular culture that has had a huge impact worldwide, and perhaps only a book this dense could do it justice. Nevertheless, well worth reading and I am pleased I persevered.

Syrup by Maxx Barry (1999)

I really enjoyed this the first time I read it (almost ten years ago!), enough to want to buy a copy and read it again. This time round I notice the satire elements more clearly, for some reason. Still a nice easy read and a satisfying end. It's also been adapted into a film, which I didn't know. I notice that Max Barry (only one "x" these days) has written several other books but I was never tempted to look for them, for some reason. Time to rectify that!

The Biggest Ever Tim Vine Joke Book by Tim Vine (2010)

Hard to argue with the quantity of one-liners here, and there are some gems, but they really need Tim Vine's delivery to make them work.

The Private Eye Annual 2022 edited by Ian Hislop (er, 2022)

I subscribed to Private Eye for a couple of years a long time ago. I stopped because it was basically the same magazine every time. That's because the subjects it satirises don't change: political incompetence, corporate greed, public pretentiousness - these are all human traits that need to be highlighted but will always be with us. I feel like it's important that someone points these things out but reading it week after week was kind of numbing as well as depressing, and their default view of "The government is wrong again! What are they doing?" is too predictable. The annual is a nicely compressed summary of the year and avoids some of these problems by being short. It's a bit hit and miss, but when it hits, it's very on-target.

 The Political Animal by Jeremy Paxman (2002)

Twenty years old yet still very accurate - if anything, more so. The UK's political system has ossified and so now politicians are stuck in modes of behaviour that everyone realises and acknowledges are ludicrous: from the public who are bored of the play acting, via the journalists who still shoot down anyone who doesn't follow the rules, to the hapless politicians themselves, caught in a game that they belatedly realise isn't worth playing. Those who make it through to the highest positions are truly very odd people. Boris Johnson (the oddest, most narcistic of them all) gets some mentions, proving that he never changed and yet still managed to become Prime Minister.