Latest books

Monday, 13 Jul 2026 8:25 pm

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library

by Michiko Aoyama
Published 2021 247 pages

Good — quaint. Sometimes it’s nice to read a book with little stakes and nice endings. People find themselves at inflection points in their lives and navigate those points with the help of books that nudge them in just the right direction. People open to new possibilities and opportunities, willing to do a little bit of openminded self-reflection.
I like the bit at the end about how society is just the connections between different people — and how characters from earlier and later in the story sort of wander by and through each other’s lives. I like anthologies like this. Good and comforting.
Saturday, 20 Jun 2026 1:30 pm

Doggerland

by Ben Smith
Published 2019 248 pages

I like dystopian science fiction, and I like books set near where I live. I see the Redcar wind farm pretty often and I think it looks awesome, and I love the idea that the North Sea is really not even that deep and it had humans living all over it not even that long ago: and so I thought I'd be primed to like Doggerland. But I didn't.
Because I don't like books that promise to go somewhere and then don't; I don't like books that pose questions like what happened to humanity or what happened to this guy's dad and refuse to even hint towards answers. I'm ok with you won't learn the truth but not learning the truth is the point; I don't like always going back to Infinite Jest but the whole point of Infinite Jest lies beyond the front and back covers of the book and it's still like my favourite book ever. Doggerland draws a lot of comparisons to The Road, which I wasn't a big fan of either.
I like straightforward prose, which Ben Smith does do a bunch of; but interspersed with the story there are short chapters describing how Doggerland was reflooded thousands of years ago, and these have all the hallmarks of bad AI writing, e.g.:
The only sound was the crackle of frozen mud and ice rind, which was the water, down to its very molecules, repeating its mantra: solidity is nothing but an interruption to continuous flow, an obstacle to be overcome, an imbalance to be rectified.
Tuesday, 19 May 2026 9:00 pm

A Storm of Swords

by George R. R. Martin
Published 2000 973 pages

More of the same, not going to lie. Holy smokes these books are easy to read. It’s all just clever foreshadowing and good characterwork and bits of plot that all fit together like a puzzle. Obviously not everyone’s cup of tea but it tickles all of the same hormone receptors as a well-produced YouTube video for me, which I think is just about the highest praise that a millennial can give. Not much more to say than that.
Thursday, 30 Apr 2026 8:45 pm

Slouching Towards Utopia

by J. Bradford DeLong
Published 2022 624 pages

An Economic History of the Twenty-First Century
What do I want to say about this? It is what it says on the can. I read this on the advice of a vibecoded website that aggregated all of the book recommendations on Ezra Klein's podcast. I should have known better.
The book is about how, despite the fact that humanity has had access to staggering prosperity since around the year 1870, we have struggled to actually apply it to the problems of inequality and human suffering, except for maybe during the thirty years after World War II. The tone is optimistic but frustrated. The tools are right there guys, etc. etc.
I get the sense that this is one of those books for people with a friend group who all also read books and pat each other on the back for being enlightened and kind of wealthy and totally insulated from exactly the kinds of problems that DeLong is nominally frustrated about, which is the kind if person I would be, probably, if there were any other people like that around here for me to be like that with, but which there aren't.
Wednesday, 22 Apr 2026 10:36 pm

Yesteryear

by Caro Claire Burke
Published 2026 400 pages

Photo by arquidis molina on Unsplash
I read a tweet about how Anne Hathaway is making a movie about a book about a tradwife influencer who magically wakes up in the year 1855. I thought to myself, that’s a fun idea, and then read the book, Yesteryear. It was eminently not fun.
The book is written in the first person, and the first person is miserable. She’s bitter and mean and she assumes that everyone around her is also bitter and mean. The world of Yesteryear is populated exclusively by expats from the most pathologically riled-up corners of the modern media ecosystem: woke liberals, redpilled manosphereites, NPCs with coloured hair and piercings, psycho MAGA diehards.
It feels like a pervasive living nightmare (which, of course, it is) — but there is no knowing wink towards the kinder, subtler world that actually exists out there.
The twist at the end redeems none of it, I’m afraid. I’m not even sure that I would say it was neat. It did not reframe things redemptorily. It did not reveal new information. I knew there would be a twist, and I'd hoped that it would explain why everyone was a terrible person — maybe everyone around Natalie is actually happy and nice, but her relentless narcissism hardens her to the beauty of the world? — but no: every other character really was stupid and horrible the whole time.
Upsetting book, upsetting people, upsetting story, feels almost like a strawman vendetta against conservatives or influencers or karens or something, oh & it turns out Anne Hathaway consulted on writing the book as well?