Books
These are the books I'm currently reading, and have read with my reviews on Goodreads.
Currently
Dungeon Crawler Carl
By Matt Dinniman
Published 2020
Previously
My rating system:
19-Aug '26
11 days
Highlights 2
Really enjoyed it, weirdly relatable and kept coming back for more.
9-Aug '26
11 days
Highlights 7
Really enjoyed it. Lots of stupid tales - surprisingly fresh for 1889.
15-Jul '26
10 days
Quick easy read. Little repetitive, but shines a nice light.
15-May '26
13 days
Highlights 2
Took me a minute to get into, but then…I cried. The good kind.
6-Apr '26
1 month
Highlights 23
Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story
"Our diverse literary heritage reveals that we do not need
6-Dec '25
2 months
Highlights 10
Made me hungry and could even smell the foods, but took me a long time to read which made it feel extremely stretched and disconnected.
6-Oct '25
2 months
Highlights 36
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
I'd recommend anyone who wants to understand the emergence of AI and OpenAI in particular to read this book.
12-Aug '25
21 days
Highlights 4
No quite the same murderfest from Sweetpea 1, but still enjoyably angry at the world.
16-Jun '25
4 days
Highlights 9
Spike Milligan: Man of Letters
A book of letters…kinda made me want to write letters…
15-Jun '25
2 months
Highlights 8
300 pages but wow it felt 4 times longer...
26-Apr '25
1 month
Highlights 20
Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War
Maybe you've read this book, and you feel a sense of despair.
25-Feb '25
25 days
Highlights 3
Facinating for when it was written, but felt like it was sort of missing a story
24-Nov '24
4 months
Highlights 14
Incredible world building, but I definitely felt the story lost me multiple times.
5-Aug '24
26 days
Highlights 5
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Really interesting ideas sandwiched in a bit of a weird trip.
10-Jul '24
1 month
Highlights 5
A romance story, some clever writing, slightly predictable, not entirely my bag.
29-May '24
16 days
Highlights 7
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Favourite book of my year: wonderful.
24-Jan '24
19 days
Highlights 9
A heartwarming story where not everything needs to be okay.
1-Jan '24
23 days
Highlights 5
Born to be Mild: Adventures for the Anxious
Some laughs but ultimately turned into a journal.
9-Dec '23
21 days
Highlights 1
Great addition to the story of a struggling Murderbot.
18-Nov '23
21 days
Highlights 2
Surprisingly modern for a book written nearly 100 years ago. A solid murder mystery.
28-Oct '23
2 months
Highlights 7
Felt like a long read and felt a little like it was trying to be Red Dwarf a few times, but eventually settled into an interesting and fun story.
9-Sep '23
10 days
Highlights 3
So good on all levels. Utterly polished and wonderfully likeable characters.
16-Aug '23
15 days
I found the storytelling device clumsy and distracting, the first miss (for me) from Hunter.
2-Aug '23
1 month
Highlights 3
Having seen the author present at a conference, I wanted to read this story: and I'm glad I did.
30-Jun '23
9 days
Highlights 1
Bit of a "beach read", but simple and enjoyable enough.
10-Dec '22
4 months
Highlights 6
Way, way, way too long. Barely any story in the 860 pages, it gets some drama around 85% in and holds on for a short while.
20-Aug '22
5 days
Highlights 1
Literal page turner. Over 400 pages and I swallowed it in days.
15-Aug '22
27 days
Highlights 3
A lovely, gentle mystery set in 1930s Singapore.
15-Aug '22
27 days
Highlights 1
Was one of the first "big" books I read as a kid. Sadly it didn't hold up to the test of time.
20-Jul '22
4 months
Highlights 7
Accidentally thought this was a work of fiction (it's not), but still enjoyed the book.
16-Feb '22
1 month
I wanted to enjoy this, but perhaps too smart for an actual story.
31-Dec '21
5 days
Highlights 5
Didn't so much smash the patriarchy than slit it's throat and stand over it whilst it bled out!
29-Dec '21
3 days
Highlights 2
Lovely but I found the language almost too distracting.
12-Dec '21
14 days
Highlights 1
Took a while to warm to the characters, but worth it in the end.
6-Sep '21
2 days
Highlights 1
Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory
Very brief but a good bridging story.
4-Jul '21
23 days
Highlights 13
Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
A real kind of urgency and excitement in their writing. Superb.
30-May '21
29 days
Highlights 7
After I got used to the technical aspect of the writing, a really engrossing story.
2-May '21
5 days
Highlights 2
Interesting, but found I got lost in the timeline of the story quite often.
28-Apr '21
2 months
Highlights 10
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within
Surprisingly difficult to connect with.
25-Feb '21
17 days
Highlights 3
James Acaster's Classic Scrapes
Acaster also has a distinctive style if you've seen him on screen so in reading his stories, Acaster's voice really leaps from the words on the page.
8-Feb '21
13 days
Highlights 9
To Be Taught is another excellent story from Becky Chambers. Gently, honest, touching and inquisitive about the universe.
27-Jan '21
8 days
Highlights 5
Growing up with Lenny Henry as a stable diet of light comedy his early years story was enlightening.
25-Dec '20
12 days
Highlights 7
Many, many personal stories of Christmas, perfect for Christmas time reading even if most carry the same message: family.
21-Oct '20
20 days
Highlights 11
A zoomed out view of the universe that Chambers' has created mostly from the human species point of view.
1-Oct '20
17 days
Highlights 7
Enjoyed this story - it had a lot of warmth.
7-Sep '20
9 days
Highlights 28
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
This is the first book, that I can remember, that has made me laugh (multiple times) out loud(!) and
30-Aug '20
21 days
Highlights 5
A well told tale of magic and adventure. And more of a starting point for its movie counterpart⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
10-Aug '20
7 days
Highlights 3
The hate crimes make this for brutal reading, but, as always, incredible engaging.
4-Aug '20
9 days
Highlights 7
My first Christie book, and it did not disappoint.
26-Jul '20
22 days
Highlights 14
This is a hard book to read, partly for the confused start, but also the very real ending. A deep insight into clinical depression.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
16-Jul '20
1 month
Spectrum Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner
Pretty gentle and sensible introduction to assembly and machine code. I'm pretty familiar with 8-bit assembly already but this helped to lay some decent foundations.
26-Apr '20
7 days
Highlights 8
Innocent and beautiful and left me wanting to take pause when looking around.
19-Apr '20
10 days
Highlights 8
Fun writing but does end up being a game by game review.
10-Apr '20
14 days
Highlights 15
Good lord I miss this woman. I could read and listen to her stories all day.
28-Mar '20
2 months
Highlights 16
Interesting, well written and some nice ideas, but for me, wow, a long read that seemingly never ended.
24-Jan '20
15 days
Highlights 22
Thought provoking, some interesting ideas, but a tough act to follow.
26-Nov '19
10 days
Highlights 3
Engaging from the very first pages, brilliant writing and ideas with some sci-fi without the need to explain absolutely everything. Loved it.
17-Nov '19
20 days
Highlights 7
Decent sci-fi read, not terribly challenging, perhaps a bit overly grim towards the end, but entertaining all round.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
29-Oct '19
2 months
Highlights 25
If this were a technical rating, the book would get 5 stars. For me however, the book felt like a bit of a slog. It took me 2 months to read it and the story line, good gosh, feels like it is stretched across time.
1-Sep '19
8 days
Highlights 3
The Afterlife of Walter Augustus
A bit obvious, uneventful and a miss for me.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
26-Aug '19
7 months
Highlights 1
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Unexpected scary bits!⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
24-Aug '19 (twice)
8 days
Highlights 16
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
All throughout reading this book, I found myself smiling.
17-Aug '19
1 month
Highlights 13
A tough/hard science start, but gets picks up and good gosh, the ideas in this book are…wow, expansive!
18-Jul '19
12 days
Highlights 9
My first \"hard science\" read, but had me immediately inspired to learn more about physics.
6-Jul '19
7 days
Highlights 6
I loved it; gripping, heart warming, shameful, despairing, brilliant and quite beautiful.
30-Jun '19
13 days
Highlights 4
Well paced, well written and engaging crime thriller. Not my typical cup of tea, but really enjoyed it.
17-Jun '19
11 days
There's a clever story in here, with some decent humour but for me, personally, the undertone of sexism and 1980s machismo was a turn off.
30-May '19
11 days
Highlights 4
Certainly a page turner and an easy read. Interesting concepts on near-future issues, but I was left feeling a bit…unchallenged.
19-May '19
24 days
Highlights 15
Great page turner, and I loved the concept of how an individual exits whilst always forgotten in the world.
2-May '19
1 day
Beautifully illustrated and communicated. Some particular pages rang more than true for me and it's useful and helps to see the way others articulate their own depression.
25-Apr '19
20 days
Highlights 5
I loved the concept behind this story, but sadly the delivered story fell fairly flat for me.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
22-Mar '19
26 days
Highlights 18
Absolutely superb stuff. This book was recommended separately by three different friends, and it lived up to expectations.
25-Feb '19
17 days
Highlights 23
In general, the concepts and ideas are pretty solid. A lot of common sense that revolves around using sunlight to help with sleep patterns. Somehow I personally experienced a similar sleeping pattern (sticking to a regular alarm, getting up quickly, getting sunlight) and it worked incredibly well for me for 2 years (until I broke the pattern).
8-Feb '19
17 days
Highlights 8
Enjoyed this book. Definitely a modern look at the possibilities of the future ahead of us. I have to admin I was expecting more robots and augmentations and sci-fi, but this leant more towards a political statement in particular about free access to healthcare (which is something I care a lot about being in the UK and having the NHS).
22-Jan '19
13 days
Highlights 5
I wanted to love this book but I kinda fell short right at the end. However, the two protagonists: Patricia and Lawrence are beautifully written.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
10-Jan '19
5 days
Highlights 1
I've read and enjoyed the previous two Clement stories. This story was fun, and a very easy read (for me to get through 400 pages in a matter of days is testament to that).
6-Jan '19
1 month
Highlights 64
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes
Goodness me, this was a good book!
2-Jan '19
4 months
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I read this to my son, who turned 7 just after we started. We did end up doing some epic bedtime reading sessions to complete whole chapters. And as with books I've read to him, I shall let his own words dictate this review :)⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
1-Jan '19
10 days
Highlights 9
I did enjoy this story (the 3 stars wasn't a 5 for any negative reasons) - it's pretty well paced, and discusses some particularly interesting ideas.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
22-Dec '18
6 days
Highlights 4
Christmas Jars Collector's Edition
A sweet tale of kindness. I asked for recommendations for Christmas–feelings books, and this is one that came up, and it does indeed do a good job of getting those feel–good vibes going.
17-Dec '18 (twice)
1 day
Good to read aloud to the kids (took about 15-20 minutes), and a beautiful message in the story, whereby the adult reading...me...might have caught a frog in their throat!⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
16-Dec '18
1 day
I didn't quite expect the book (read on my Kindle) to be *quite* that short.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
28-Nov '18
23 days
Highlights 8
I read the first installment of the Murderbot a few months back (as an Amazon single), but after reading it, I decided I was going to pony up the £8 for the following 3 books - although probably the most I've spent on a single book, let alone 3 books - absolutely totally worth it. I **loved** this series.
4-Nov '18
18 days
Highlights 6
As usual from the MurderBot series: excellent, fresh and entertaining.
16-Oct '18
7 days
Highlights 6
Uh! I love this character! This is the 2nd book in the murderbot books and the main character, who I realise now doesn't have a name (nor gender as it's a bot) is so fun to read.
9-Oct '18
22 days
Highlights 11
The two stars are for: fairly decent writing, it wasn't a rabib page turner, but it was relatively easy going for the most part.
17-Sep '18
8 days
Highlights 20
Really quite beautiful. I found myself drawing out my reading time for this book, and almost wanting to find a tree to sit under and slowly soak up this story.
10-Sep '18
3 days
Highlights 7
Really enjoyed this thriller. An easy read and natural page turner (with nice short chapters). I was also drawn to this book because I know Brighton (UK) very very well, and I love reading stories located in places that are familiar to me.
6-Sep '18
3 months
I read this aloud to my son at bedtime (6 turning 7 in a month). It took a chunk of time, and making the voices distinct was fun and tricky!⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
20-Aug '18
6 days
Highlights 9
Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls
Fun stuff. I didn't realise this was the sixth novel of a series, but it really didn't matter - and almost added more depth since the characters had a lot more backstory.
11-Aug '18
10 days
Highlights 24
Wow. I loved this book. I'm not entirely sure how I found it - I suspect Amazon randomly recommended it to me, and it was definitely a random purchase - but so glad I did.
1-Aug '18
3 days
Highlights 14
My hospital read! I spent a day and night in hospital for tonsillitis, and managed to read through this book (though there's not a whole lot to do in hospital!).
30-Jul '18
13 days
Highlights 9
Unsure. I have to admit that reading this book I often felt a little lost as to what was happening and why, but just carried on to enjoy the ride.
12-Jul '18
10 months
Highlights 26
I read this book based on a recommendation regarding eating fats. On the title alone, I probably would have ignored this book, but the contents is absolutely superb.
9-Jul '18
7 days
Highlights 20
Such good fun. I think my favourite character was actually Dog. I loved the inner monologue that went with the Hell Hound!
3-Jul '18
3 days
Highlights 15
The story of an 11 year old boy after his father dies. The story uses a unique story telling device where it's told from the boys mind (or imagined diary), but the result is a stream of consciousness, littered with rule-breaking authoring techniques.
30-Jun '18
8 days
Highlights 25
Oh wow. Where do I begin with my review? I'm always amazed at how current a book written in 1931 can be so current and readable nearly a century later in 2018.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
21-Jun '18
6 days
Highlights 34
I've now read two Carrie Fisher books and I've loved them both. She is…was such a superb author chock full of quotable lines.
15-Jun '18
26 days
Highlights 10
(warning: not really a review, more of a thing to remind me of the book)⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
10-Jun '18
1 day
Jessica Jones, Vol. 2: The Secrets of Maria Hill
Always great stuff from Bendis and Gaydos.
7-Jun '18
3 months
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Read aloud to the 6 year old. A little scary for him at times, and frankly I'm amazed that he can follow the story whilst I read and he (sometimes) plays with Lego!
20-May '18
15 days
Highlights 7
A future in my past written in a distant past. What an amazing book. Orwell's writing has lasted near perfectly (i.e. modern and in context) some 70 years later (which frankly blows my mind).⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
5-May '18
12 days
Highlights 20
Stories of Your Life and Others
I absolutely loved this collection of stories. Inspiring, beautiful, not-so-sci-fi that it was disconnected from our world.
22-Apr '18
13 days
Wow this book was a slow read given that it was only 198 pages. It took me 4 weeks, which, isn't a huge amount of time, but the first 80% of the book felt like an age that just wouldn't end.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
31-Mar '18
23 days
Highlights 1
Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years
I had a hard time reading this book, took me a long time as I found Mole and the surrounding characters extremely…sad or pathetic or selfish. It continued on like this until about 80% where I started to enjoy the book a little more and the characters finally start to bloom and become more complex, and endearing.
3-Mar '18
8 days
Proper page turner thriller that seemed to get faster and more intense as the book worked it's way to its ending.
11-Feb '18
12 days
Highlights 8
Really enjoyed it, and after reading Pearson's '86 fix and the sequel, I'm pretty certain I'll continue to read his books.
31-Jan '18
10 days
Highlights 20
Beautiful. Inspiring. Amazing. I loved this third installment of Binti's adventure. What an amazing world and collection of characters Nnedi Okorafor has made.
22-Jan '18
15 days
The story was interesting enough, but I ended up getting frustrated with both the author's portrayal of women throughout the book (always using physical traits to describe them, like beautiful, or soft skin), and then there's an entire chapter dedicated to sexist undertones of "how women are past their prime by 30s".
7-Jan '18
3 days
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 1: Squirrel Power
Nice alternative to the super heroes I've read in the past. A very strong young woman (that I'd want to share with my kids), and surprisingly doesn't kick butts as often as she alludes to, but uses sensible discussion and compassion to bypass her foes.
4-Jan '18
2 days
Highlights 16
Wishful Drinking: Carrie Fisher
Very easy and quick read (for me). The writing is extremely conversational (which makes for a nice change).
2-Jan '18
4 days
Highlights 19
Loved this book. For me, it puts a magnifying glass on the grotesque behaviours that men have and still do, inflict on women, simply because of gender, this warped idea that one is stronger than the other. As a man this book is a huge insight into the reality of the power struggle, along with being a great page turner and great thriller.
2-Jan '18
1 day
Another superb Saga volume. The artwork is so incredible, subtle and respectful - as in the writing.
29-Dec '17
21 days
Highlights 17
A beautiful tale, and the detail of the characters, their surroundings and the history throughout the book made me often wonder if it was actually a biography!
26-Dec '17
5 days
Highlights 2
I've known the story for many, many years, and had voices for the characters in my head, but had never read it. Really good, classic stuff. Dickens certainly knew how to string out a sentence too! They'd often start at the end of one page, continue through the next, and finish on the third!
8-Oct '17
9 days
Loved it. I happened to read this directly after the '86 Fix, and although it didn't have the same "retro" feel of the first book, it was superb all the same.⚠️ review includes spoilers ⚠️
26-Aug '17
4 days
I loved this book. I'm not a fan of the apocalyptic stories, but this is so well told both from the storyline, but also the _way_ the story was written and each chapter is given from the perspective of the character (whilst still being 3rd person)—that I couldn't put the book down. Love it.
28-Apr '17 (twice)
9 days
Highlights 11
My first read-twice book. A love letter to humanity.
1-Mar '17
16 days
I loved this story. It helps that I'm a dad with a son who has some similarities to the characters, but I found this story so warm and loving. I also found myself dragging the ending out just so that I could continue to have these characters in my life a little longer.
26-Dec '16 (twice)
6 days
Always lovely. Though kinda ends about 25% short of the actual ending, then it's a little dragged out.