{"id":6416,"date":"2026-05-31T08:59:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T08:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/?p=6416"},"modified":"2026-05-31T09:08:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T09:08:20","slug":"what-i-read-in-may-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/2026\/05\/31\/what-i-read-in-may-5\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Read In May"},"content":{"rendered":"

Featuring the struggle to reach the top of coming up to, notwithstanding inasmuch as which I just about manage to summarise the books I have read<\/del> listened to<\/del> consumed before the relevant month is out. The first two and the last were audiobooks, my regular accompaniment while walking dogs. The third was, you know, an actual book, a birthday gift from fellow bibliophile Offspring#2, and read while on vacation in Wales (where we visited Hay-on-Wye<\/a>, because, you know). In other news, I now have an account on TikTok<\/a>, so help me, where I plan, if time permits, which it usually doesn’t, to review some of the titles I read in video format.<\/p>\n

Stella Rimington: Dead Line<\/em><\/a><\/strong> the latest in the seemingly innumerable adventures of MI5 agent Liz Carlyle as she and her crew foil an attempt to disrupt a Middle-East peace conference held in Scotland.<\/p>\n

Stella Rimington – Present Danger<\/em><\/a><\/strong> Liz Carlyle is posted to Belfast, to keep her from forming an office romance with her recently bereaved boss. There she uncovers a plot to smuggle arms to a Republican splinter group.<\/p>\n

Lucy Mangan – Bookish<\/em><\/a><\/strong> The news says that there has been a steep decline in the number of people who read books<\/a>. Whether or not this is really true is perhaps a subject for another day, but in Bookish<\/em> columnist and critic Lucy Mangan celebrates her love of reading, and how books have helped her through life’s crises. It’s a sequel to Bookworm<\/em><\/a>, in which she reflects on her reading childhood, and picks up at the point where our teenage protagonist has to read stuff for her GCSE exams. (You don’t have to have read Bookworm<\/em> to enjoy Bookish<\/em> – I haven’t read it either). Mangan’s thoughts and reflections only occasionally intersect with my own – and why would they? Different people like different things, and it’s interesting to learn what others enjoy. She is, as always, a great writer (though extended parenthetical comments (some of which are nested (like this one)) that go on far longer than they should really have done for comfort might have benefited from a firmer editorial hand, or a footnote). On that subject, some of her footnotes are great: here’s one.<\/p>\n

It remains my firm belief that if you have a teenage daughter obsessed with Wuthering Heights<\/em> you should send her to her room now and not let her down until she’s thirty. Save you a lot of bother overall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She also reflects on some perhaps unexpected reading choices, such as the comfort, while as new mother, afforded by Lee Child’s novels featuring Jack Reacher, a man built like the proverbial outhouse who settles scores with fists ‘the size of supermarket chickens’.<\/p>\n

Do you know how many times a day the mother of young children longs to beat the shit out of someone?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wonderful stuff.<\/p>\n

Andy Weir – Project Hail Mary<\/em><\/a><\/strong> If you’ve read The Martian<\/em><\/a> by the same author, you’ll know what to expect. Well, almost. The set-up is similar – an astronaut is marooned, a long way from home and with no hope of rescue, but being a natural optimist and not prone to woe-is-me despondency, seeks survival and solace in being able to ‘science the shit’ out of the situation. To start with the protagonist wakes from a coma with no memory at all – not even his own name – but his memory returns in flashback as the story progresses, so we finally understand why he is there and what he is doing. Along the way he receives help from a most unexpected quarter. This is a good old-fashioned science fiction book, based more or less firmly on science, of the kind that people wrote in the Golden Age of SF<\/a> before \u00a0writers incorporated much in the way of social or political commentary. In which case you’ll either love it or loathe it. As for me, I found it refreshing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Featuring the struggle to reach the top of coming up to, notwithstanding inasmuch as which I just about manage to summarise the books I have read listened to consumed before the relevant month is out. The first two and the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2296,2294,2295,2292,2300,2299,2290,2301,2291,2298,2289,2297],"class_list":["post-6416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-andy-weir","tag-bookish","tag-bookworm","tag-dead-line","tag-jack-reacher","tag-lee-child","tag-liz-carlyle","tag-lucy-mangan","tag-present-danger","tag-project-hail-mary","tag-stella-rimington","tag-the-martian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6416"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6422,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6416\/revisions\/6422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}