I’ve had quite a year of reading. Starting for the beginning of the year…
The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain by Bill Bryson
The Book of the Year by No Such Thing as a Fish
Scott Pilgrim, Volumes 1-6 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
How Not To Be a Boy by Robert Webb
Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach
The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant
McDonald’s: Behind The Arches by John F. Love
The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google by Scott Galloway
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
World War Hulk by Grek Pak
London Call-Out: Confessions Of A Doctor In The Capital by Alex Rudd
Disney by Rees Quinn
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull
And on that Bombshell: Inside the Madness and Genius of Top Gear by Richard Porter
Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Dad School by Laura Artiss
And, right now, I’m part way through the following (all of which should be complete imminently)…
The Book of the Year 2018 by No Such Thing as a Fish
How To Be Right… in a World Gone Wrong by James O’Brien
Saturday Night at the Movies: The Extraordinary Partnerships Behind Cinema’s Greatest Scores by Jennifer Nelson
Of these, I found a few disappointing…
The Four – really disliked this and, in fact, is the only book I didn’t finish. The author has personal prejudices, particularly against Apple, which makes it hard to take anything seriously.
The Road to Little Dribbling – I used to find Bill Bryson books funny but now they just sound like an old man complaining about everything.
Small Fry – too long and became a bit of a slog in the end. Lisa writes well but is overly descriptive – something that doesn’t ring true when she’s writing from memory from the 1980s!
And if none of the above interest you, here are a selection of my favourite books…
Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English by Oliver Kamm
Adventures in Stationary: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case by James Ward
Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High Performanceby Matthew Syed
Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield
The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes by Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves
On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore by Brian Bagnall