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The third (and final for now) in my little run of Harry Baker’s poetry – though actually his first chronologically, written while he was still a student, so that made me feel old! I was pre-ordering his next book which comes out next year, and added this on to get free delivery and complete my collection!

From time to time, I thought the feel of this book was a bit different to the others, some of the poems felt a lot longer, which I sometimes struggled to focus the whole way through, but that’s on me. That said, there were still plenty I liked, including “59” (a love poem about prime numbers), “The scientist and the bumblebee” (looking at believing in impossible things, since scientists have apparently proved that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly) “Monopoly” (to the tune of “That’s what makes you beautiful” by One Direction), and finally “Haiku deathmatch”, which was actually 59 haikus broken into 4 sets throughout the book. I say haikus, I would argue that the 5-7-5 structure was lost pretty quickly, but they were so fun, and punny, that I forgave it!

Less than a month after reading his third book, I’ve now read his second (also, his first is on order and fourth is on pre-order!). I was privileged to see Harry perform live last week, and so got this book then! The poems take on another dimension when performed, but it’s still great to be able to have copies of them to be able to pick up and read any time.

This time the maths and German themes felt even more prominent, as well as chat about marathons and his mum. There’s a poem that runs through the book with a stanza between each other poem, taking you through the maths of a marathon!

Again, it’s crazy hard to narrow it down to a few favourites, but I loved “Falafellöffel” (translation: falafel spoon), “Knees” (how great his are), “Toilet Seat” (the joy of a new one), “An A-Z of Time and Space” (what it says on the tin) and “Christmas Through the Ages” (a look back on the first 24 Christmasses of his life)! Even his chat between the poems, introducing them was really fun and warm too, and gave you a good feel for what he’s probably like.

This book also introduced me to the concept of a Dougie Day (and the excellent young man who inspired it), but I was devastated to find I’d missed mine!

I’ve loved Harry Baker’s stuff on socials for a long time, and really wanted to get one of his books. My brother kindly got me this for my birthday, and I read it in 2 days.

Harry’s interests are based around maths, dinosaurs and German, but he’s also a Christian – while not a perfect overlap, it’s pretty close all things considered!

Now, this IS a poetry book, and as a general rule, I am NOT into poetry. I hated studying it at school, and often find it’s just a bit too fancy. But when I do like it, is when it’s fun, and a lot of these are! A handful are more meaningful, but still in his style and so not too much for me to handle, and I really appreciated them too.

I would say my favourites from this book were: “20 Achievable New Year’s Resolutions”, “An Ode to Postcodes”, “Things I Learnt from Interrailling”, and “Trying”, but I loved nearly all of them, and really had to try hard to not list over half the book in picking favourites!

Big fun, big feelings, loved it. Can’t wait to get his other books.