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The Big Short - review
Surprisingly good, mainly by refusing to treat anyone as the hero and having just generally unreliable narrators out for their own gain. It has the excellent line early on by a protagonist's mother, on being told "He tries to find inconsistencies within the Torah!": "well, has he found any ( Read more... ) -
Debt Updated and Expanded: the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (review)
I read this book because I have long been fascinated by the different ways people see debt. Graeber observes early on that no sympathetic fictional characters in the history of literature have lent money out at interest, but at the same time I am often told that the availability of credit helps people out of poverty in very tangible ways ( Read more... ) -
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood review
This is available on Netflix so we have spent evenings of the past three weeks or so watching it in German (making it positively educational viewing - my vocabulary has expanded, even in some ways relevant to bureaucracy...). I cannot really believe I have never before been told to watch it. I might have to name goslings after characters this year ( Read more... ) -
Books: Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding by George Monbiot
This is one of those books, like A Sand County Almanac, that reminds one of why one became an environmentalist to start with and makes one look at the world in a different light. And not altogether a depressing one - Monbiot is a good writer, skating the boundary between serious and ponderous with occasional dry wit and self-deprecation. He also ( Read more... ) -
Trying to have a life
This January I felt a familiar and semi-seasonal sense of dissatisfaction due to lack of social life ( Read more... ) -
James A Corey's Expanse series
This is a review of the five books that make up the Expanse series. I haven't read the short stories. I bought them because people said that book 5, Nemesis Games, is good and I was working my way through. They were enjoyable enough, though I'm not sure they deserve massive award recognition.
Below is a review containing mild spoilers.
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Goodbye 2015
I am currently on a train with wifi between Hamburg and Brussels, with Bjoern, on Christmas Day. Because the Europeans celebrate Christmas on the 24th and my parents can delay Christmas until the 26th, we normally do this big schlep to visit first Bjoern's family in Hamburg and then mine in the UK. Bea the cleaner is looking after the geese, who ( Read more... ) -
Random thoughts on the folksong 'Black Jack Davy'
At the moment, Folk Radio UK is playing one version of "Black Jack Davy" after another (and I am listening to it, drinking beer and chopping onions ( Read more... ) -
Micro-sadnesses
Recently I realised that I get paid to write stuff that people are paid to read. Obviously, this is not new information exactly but it is a new and slightly depressing way of thinking of it. I will continue to try to write well, but not deludedly. There is no evidence I have any talent for writing anything people would read if they were not being ( Read more... ) -
Goose selling update
We have advertised two pairs of geese for sale, and people are calling us and asking us questions about them, which is nice ( Read more... )