Reading - June 2025

Wayfaring Stranger by Emma John (2019)

Bluegrass is not a musical style I know much about and, having listened to a little now while reading this book, I'm afraid I'm not that bothered about learning more. But Emma John's enthusiasm for it comes across brilliantly and that carried me along completely. Her "musical journey in the American South" (the book's subtitle) doesn't come across as one that was undertaken in order to write a book, but rather driven by a genuine curiosity and desire to learn. It no doubt helped that she really can play the fiddle (there's a couple of YouTube videos if you're interested), and the result is the kind of travelogue that only an outsider (she's from London) can really write. Very enjoyable.

Redwood Bend by Robyn Carr (2012)

I'm nearing the end of the Virgin River series, and although they are all pretty similar, they're good-hearted, dramatic without being melodramatic (mostly) and feature characters you care about. However, in this instalment, the couple end up not choosing to live in Virgin River <gasp>. This is an unheard of departure and I'm not sure I like it. Seriously though, as well told and easy to read as always for this series.

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman (2022)

In this third book in the record breaking (it says here) Thursday Murder Club series, the plot is increasingly implausible - perhaps that's the point (it's a cozy armchair mystery), but it does make it a little hard if you're trying to guess the plot based on logic, and of course none of the suspense can be taken seriously because we know none of the main characters will actually be killed. But I never try anyway, so that's fine for me. An enjoyable piece of nonsense that, for some reason, I've taken over two years to get round to reading (sorry C).

How To by Randall Munroe (2019)

A nice easy and very funny re-read. I love the slight recurring theme that some of the more ridiculous ideas have actually been researched by the US Government.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (2024)

A new series from everyone's favourite quiz show host and general media polymath! Most of the things we expect from Osman are present and correct: anchoring cultural touchstones (as he acknowledges in the, er, acknowledgements, he mentions "Twix", "Greggs" and "Lee Child" in the first fifteen pages), pointless but amusing details (the directions to and from the New Forest are funny) and a signature pathos about death of loved ones. And the plot is slightly ridiculous, and the "ordinary" people turn out to be anything but. All jolly good fun though and immensely readable.

Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod (1978)

An odd mix of styles that I found hard to like, but I finished it because I wanted to know how the murder mystery played out. I hadn't realised until afterwards that it was first published in 1978, so that probably explains some of the oddities, but in fairness nothing actually jarred or stood out as hopelessly dated. It's the first in a series but I don't think I'll bother with the rest.

Mixonline Classic Tracks by various authors (2009-2025)

In a very similar vein to the Sound On Sound classic tracks series (and featuring many of the same tracks), but with less of a focus on the engineers only and with more contributions from the artists themselves. Interesting reading and introduced me to a lot of tracks that I hadn't heard before, like Eddie Money's "Two Tickets to Paradise". Full playlist here!

Never: The Autobiography by Rick Astley (2024)

I didn't know much about Rick Astley other than that - like Andrew Ridgeley - he seemed like a nice guy who did a few years in the limelight before choosing to return to a sane, normal life. It turns out it wasn't quite that simple for Rick, as we learn through this honest and engaging book. Obviously he had help writing it (the Guardian's head of music journalism Alexis Petridis is thanked right at the beginning) but it comes across as Astley's own voice, and is an easy read that's well worth the time. And it's good to know he's happy now!

Rebel Rebel by Chris O'Leary (2015)

Ian MacDonald's classic Revolution in the Head inspired many people, no doubt, to attempt the same feat on their own favoured artist. The Beatles had a nicely defined, complete output that covered only eight years and it's tempting to argue that you could select a similarly short period from David Bowie's life and gather all the most essential recordings. This nearly does that; if you started a little later than '64 and then included Low and "Heroes" you'd probably be fine. But the subtitle says "All the Songs of David Bowie from '64 to '76" and it's really not kidding, and since Bowie made so many false starts that means including a lot of fairly dull juvenalia. As a result, there's quite a bit of the book that's quite hard going, even allowing for the very fragmented nature of splitting into a commentary on individual songs. But once we reach the real hits, the narrative lights up and by the time we get to Station to Station (where this book ends), O'Leary is doing a superb job highlighting just how outré Bowie's records were for a mainstream rock star. Bowie was the first "serious" artist I got into as a teenager, and I'm so familiar with tracks like "Sweet Thing/Candidate" or "Station to Station" that's it good to be reminded how far away from blues-based rock they actually are - the closing essay on the latter is fantastic. It took me a while to get through (partly because I insisted on listening to each track while reading about it) but worth it. I'm a bit scared of the next book though - it's twice the size!

Sunset Point by Robyn Carr (2012)

Another fun instalment of the Virgin River series, and if this time I could have done without the "other woman" being quite such a caricature, and the ending not quite so abrupt, well, it didn't stop me enjoying the book overall.

Begin Again by Helly Acton (2023)

Well, the title is a bit misleading as our main character gets to see what would have happened if she had taken the other route at key moments in her life - but, crucially, she doesn't actually get to begin again. However, in what is a bit like a cross between Sliding Doors and A Christmas Carol, she does visit alternate timelines and learn about herself and her effect on others. A fun premise, well executed and easy to read, and providing a nice bit of feel-good incentive if you need it, perhaps.

Recursion by Blake Crouch (2019)

An example of the "what is reality?" strand of science fiction, in the grand tradition of Philip K. Dick and, more recently, Christopher Nolan. The only thing that marred it slightly for me was the bit where it kind of elided how implanting false memories in one person made every single person in the world go back in time - that not only didn't make sense (yeah I get that this is SF) but didn't seem to me to be consistent within the universe of the novel. So although everything that followed from that assumption was great, along with the thriller elements, it didn't quite hold true for me. Good fun though, and I ripped through it in about a day!

Modern Recording Techniques by David Miles Huber & Emiliano Caballero (10th edition, 2024)

This was recommended by a working engineer/producer (on a forum) as one of the essential, standard works on recording, so I thought it would be interesting, both as an insight into how recording audio all fits together and as a way of understanding the subject better so I could have a go myself. It's laid out (and priced) like a text book, and no doubt is used as one in many places. I can't fault its scope - it covers a lot of ground - and while the editing and fact checking could have been better in a couple of places, it really has got loads of useful information that I am sure I'll refer back to at some point. However, I didn't find it easy to read and the layout is nowhere near as good as The Producer's Manual by Paul White - although in fairness, the latter is more explicitly aimed at a hobbyist like me!

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood (2025)

Maybe I don't get out much, but I haven't seen sub-dom (maledom in this case) relationships depicted much in the kind of mainstream romance I read - or, more accurately, I haven't seen it labelled explicitly as that. There are too many books where the strong woman becomes a simpering, submissive idiot when she meets "the one", and that makes me uncomfortable, as the men nearly always come across as sexist, controlling arseholes. In this story, Hazelwood makes it very clear that the central couple make a conscious, agreed and joint choice about their relationship, and logically that is much better - but it still doesn't sit right with the part of me that is very aware of the instrinsic power balance of most male-female relationships. However, the author manages to portray consensual submissiveness without implying that actually what all women need is a man to tell them what to do - and, honestly, I can kind of see the appeal of an arrangement like this, and I really enjoyed the story and a little soujourn into this world. Sure, the MMC (I've literally only just discovered the acronyms for all this book reviewing shit) is an unrealistically perfect robot but perhaps that just how he appears to the FMC (the book's in first person from her point of view). And shorn of the (pretty mild, imho) kinkiness, the plot is a pretty standard romance arc. But that didn't stop me charging through the book in a couple of days.

My Kind of Christmas by Robyn Carr (2012)

Yeah I know it's not Christmas - but even though you don't really have to read the books in this series in order, I want to anyway, and this is where I am. A little under-developed compared to other books in the series: the characters fall in love pretty much immediately and there's a half-hearted "oh noes what if they can't be together" plot line that we all know is going to be resolved. But satisfying anyway when it is.

Talking at Night by Claire Daverley (2023)

DNF, and in the first few pages too. I find this fad - and yes, obviously that's what it is - for not using quotation marks to be ridiculous and pretentious, and it constantly takes me out of the world. Apparently Sally Rooney is one of the most notable recent authors guilty of this, and although I'd wondered about reading Normal People, that completely excludes it for me now. I've read a few articles where other authors attempt to justify redefining grammatical rules that work fine for everyone else, and they all miss the point: if you want to communicate your ideas, then a common set of rules helps your reader. Otherwise you might as well invent your own words - and let's face it, there aren't that many Shakespeares writing today. Laura Miller puts the case against this pointless affectation much better than I do.

Daydream by Hannah Grace (2024)

K says I have the fiction taste of a teenage girl, and it's hard to argue if I describe the process by which I selected this from the library: it has a cute-looking couple on the pastel-coloured cover and a classic romance plot described on the back. I didn't have particularly high expectations, so I was pleasantly surprised to find sweet characters I cared about, likeable secondary characters and a story that got me really invested!

Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZZT by Trevor Horn (2022)

A perfectly readable but slightly sketchy (in the sense of lacking detail) account of snapshots in Trevor Horn's life. Each chapter is about a specific track, although it sometimes branches out to others he worked on, but you still get the sense that there's a lot missing. In fairness, he sounds like a busy man so if he included more, the book would be twice the size!

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood (2022)

Excellent fun, with a You've Got Mail inspired sub-theme (even if it was obvious from about the first page who her correspondent was). I enjoyed seeing how the FMC went from thinking the guy hated her to realising the opposite, and if the cartoon villain was a bit Scooby Doo and one-dimensional, it didn't spoil things. And the extended rants about sexism in academia and STEM subjects in particular were great.

Funny Story by Emily Henry (2024)

Well, this meet-cute - girl moves in with ex-fiancé's new fiancé's ex - would a bit icky in real life, I think, but in the world of the story, it's kind of sweet and has lots of fun characters. There's some depth and insight into characters, but maybe not a lot of growth. But it's still a nice read and I enjoyed it.

Watching - June 2025

Hot Pursuit (2015)

Slightly ho-hum buddy movie, showing its age with some clichés (particularly about women) that I hope wouldn't get the time of day now. But funny in places, and passed the time.

The Time Traveller's Wife (2009)

I read the book about two and a half years ago and enjoyed it very much, so I was keen to see what the adaptations are like. There's a more recent TV series but I'm unlikely to get Apple TV for a while, so when this came up on Prime I was interested. It's a two hour film so of course it misses on much of the content and subtlety of the book - it can't show the internal thoughts of the characters and there's a limit to what it can show. So instead of a moving meditation on the effects of long term illness on a relationship (in my opinion, anyway) you get a sort of thriller/romance. The film brings to life some scenes well - Henry's despair at suddenly being transported to random places was much clearer in pictures than on the page - but struggles in others, particularly the ones with Henry as an adult and Clare as a child, where it's harder to ignore the slightly problematic nature of the relationship. Still, a sweet film and a nice way to pass the time.

Maestro (2023)

While I'm usually not very good at working out the underling themes of films, I think I've got this one. This is ostensibly a biopic of Leonard Bernstein, but really it's about what an amazing talent Bradley Cooper is. It's fatally infatuated with its own cleverness of direction and emotional truths, when actually it's just a posh TV melodrama, stuffed with clichés (ooh look, Bernstein is smoking in every scene! What a original, subtle and clever directorial choice!), over-theatrics - cue the Oscar nomination scene! - and poor dialogue; in one case, Cooper (did we mention that he wrote the script as well as directing and starring - blimey, what an amazing talent, eh?) has Bernstein say he "misread the room" ... in the 70s? Come on. And don't get me started on the startlingly poor choice to put Cooper in Jewface. I get that biopics are difficult - you're trying to fit decades of a real and messy life into a convenient two hour story arc - but this failed badly, in my opinion, and I was already counting the minutes to the end after about twenty minutes in. Somehow I finished it, but I couldn't get involved. 

Somewhere In Time (1980)

I was reading around the subject of The Time Traveller's Wife and this was mentioned - a little-known, slightly hokey and very sentimental romance starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour film that features time travel. Mostly forgotten now (apart from by a small but very enthusiastic fan club), there's nothing particularly special about it and if it wasn't for the big names (Christopher Plummer also features) it would be a typical TV movie - and indeed it effectively was, as apparently it got a new lease of life on early cable. So, nothing special - but I still enjoyed it more than Maestro.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (season 3, 2015-2016)

My kids are finally shaming me into watching more of this, since I haven't made much progress since last year! Is it worth it? Well, I enjoyed it, but a whole series is something like the same duration as four films, and that's a lot of time to spend with the same characters. I'll give myself a bit of a break before the next season.

F1 The Movie (2025)

A summer blockbuster about Formula One, on the biggest screen in Southampton, and with sound that shakes your seat - what's not to like? I really enjoyed the whole experience (even the fly that caught in the projector didn't annoy me); the action scenes are spectacular, there's laughs and emotional bits and some sort of redemption. The plot? Well, it's tempting to describe it as essentially a re-run of Top Gun: Maverick: old hand is called out of retirement for one last hurrah, and shows those upstart young 'uns what a real driver can do, by disregarding the rules blah blah blah. Brad Pitt's good (not as good as Tom Cruise, though), but I was pleased to hear so many British voices - this is true to F1 life, of course, but it wouldn't have surprised me if Hollywood decided that all these weird foreign accents would be too difficult for Americans to understand. But overall, although the (mostly ex-) F1 fan in me had a great time, it's hard not consider the film as a whole as pretty insubstantial, and I suspect that anyone not interested in the sport would find it a bit of a yawn (a view articulately and, I'd say, accurately, argued in Nicholas Barber's review on the BBC)

Clueless (1995)

So, anyway - it's, like, the 30th anniversary of this iconic teen romcom. And it's being re-released (briefly) into cinemas this weekend, so what better time to watch it again? At home, though - I considered going out, but it's only being shown on the smallest screens, so it would have been a bit pointless. It's still peerless, even if you could point at some moments and call them dated.