Too Much Information – by Dave Gorman

8 05 2015

Or to give it its full title:

“Too Much Information …or can everyone just shut up for a moment, some of us are trying to think.” – by Dave Gorman

This book doesn’t follow a journey like America Unchained, Are You Dave Gorman, or Googlewhack Adventure, but instead takes all sorts of bits and pieces as bitesize chapters. There’s a lot of overlap with some of his stand up work, I’ve seen him live a couple of times and watched his show ‘Modern Life is Goodish‘ on Dave (the TV channel, not him!) and so some of it was familiar, and yet it was still just as funny to go through again!

This definitely covers some of the same material of the said TV show as the main gripe that he deals with in this book, is the fact that wherever we go these days we are bombarded with information everywhere. He shares anecdotes and geeky bits of information from all aspects of life. There’s a relatively hefty focus on social media and technology, which is to be expected, and advertising creeps in a lot as well.

One little detail which really lifts the book is that each time he references a story, a video, a website, or anything like that, he puts a little custom url in the footnotes so that you can type something nice and short into your web browser and find what he’s talking about!

Some of my favourite chapters would be:

  • If It Isn’t One of Your Greatest Hits Don’t Put It on a Greatest Hits Album
  • I Know They Make Make-Up But I Wonder How They Make Up the Things They Say Their Make-Up Can Do?
  • Why Do The Tweets You See in Smartphone Adverts Look Nothing Like the Tweets You See in Real Life?
  • If I Was a Shopkeeper and Someone Asked Me for a Badger Glove Puppet I Wouldn’t Come Back Offering Them a Book
  • Does Jesus Have an IMDb Page?
  • If the Third and Fourth Words of Your Advert Are Lies, What Are We Supposed to Think of the Rest of It?
  • Nobody Can Explain How They Know What a Trumpet Is. They Just Know
  • What Is the ‘Next Customer Please’ Sign Really a Sign of, Other Than Our Desire to Never Speak to One Another?
  • Kids Will Be Kids Will Be Spammers
  • Why Do the Phones In HTC’s Adverts All Show The Same Time?

I know that seems like a lot, but the book has 40 chapters, some only one page, some much longer – as I say, it’s relatively bitesize. A couple of them fit together, but if you really wanted it would probably work as a dip in and out book as well as a cover to cover read.

Hilarious, entertaining and insightful most definitely.

too much information


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You’re the one that I want – by Giovanna Fletcher

25 04 2015

This is Giovanna Fletcher’s second book after Billy and Me which I read last year. That one I described as enjoyable but a little sickly in places; this one was another easy read, but any sickliness was more bearable this time!

The book opens on Maddy walking down the aisle to marry Robert, but with doubts as their mutual best friend was the best man, Ben, and she still had confusion as to her feelings towards him. Flash back seventeen years and we come across the first time Maddy meets them both, and follow them on their lives up to that point. We have two narrators in this book, just Maddy and Ben, with occasional paragraphs thrown in from the grooms speech at the wedding.

Definitely like a warm hug in a book, easy reading, and you do feel like you get to know these people as you grow up with them. Chick lit, most definitely!

you're the one that I want


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Paper Towns – by John Green

16 04 2015

I DEFINITELY read fiction far faster than non. My previous book was about 100 pages and took me about a month. This one was about 300 pages and I read it in less than a week!

This is my third John Green book now. I’ll be honest, I picked it up because I saw it cheap and my housemate had said they were making a film of it this year, quite similar to The Fault in Our Stars I guess.

The story is about a Quentin and Margo who grew up next to each other as kids, but drifted apart as she became one of the cool kids and he did not. We meet them towards the end of Senior year of high school (yes, American author!). Margo appears at Quentin’s window one night needing to borrow his car (and him as a driver) for a night of revenge pranks. The next morning, she’s gone, and there are just clues left as to where she might be. Cue Quentin (with a little help from his friends) trying to solve the puzzle and find her! Almost like a teen mystery story I suppose!

As with John Green’s other books, the more I read, the more I wanted to read, until at the end, again, I couldn’t put it down. I’ve put a link to the film trailer below if that’s more your sort of thing! (Although Margo isn’t at all how I pictured her to be!)

paper towns


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Votewise 2015

9 04 2015

I’m one of those people that doesn’t have an allegiance to a particular political party, and so with the election coming up, and trying to read and compare all I can to form an opinion on who I’d like to vote for this time around.

This book is excellent for an unbiased overview of various policy issues with a biblical perspective, and hearing from Christian members and MPs of the five major parties.

It starts with a general intro to why we should be more involved in politics as Christians, not just at an election, it says in fact that voting should be the last thing we do! Then we cover various topics from the deficit, to Europe, to the NHS and many more and look at what the bible might have to say in each vein. The book finishes off with a couple of pages each from Christians who are either MPs for their party or members of their party, each explaining why, as a Christian, they have chosen to be a part of the party that they have.

I’d say it’s a great piece to help with your research if, like me, you haven’t settled on who to vote for in 4 weeks time. At just over 100 pages it’s not too heavy, and comes in decent size chunks to digest as well.

votewise 2015


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Birdsong – by Sebastian Faulks

11 03 2015

I could list an awful lot of thinks I didn’t like about this book.

  • I didn’t like the fact there was a very graphic, “intimate” scene quite early on in the book when I thought it was going to be about life in the trenches.
  • I didn’t like how it had so many characters that it was hard to keep track at times
  • I didn’t like how it occasionally jumped forward to the 1970s to a slightly related but quite separate plot. I was looking to learn about the war, not some random ladies life and problems in the 70s!
  • I didn’t like where the book ended, it felt weak, and didn’t end in the section/era/characters I expected or wanted it to.

…and yet, I really did enjoy this book. There was, once you’d got your head around the different sections, a thread running through the whole thing, and I got what felt like a much better idea of how horrific life was for soldiers, and also miners, in the trenches in the first world war. It definitely brought through to the front the reality of it all.

I initially bought this book because of the centenary of the first world war, and hoped to learn a lot. It wasn’t what I expected, but I did, on the whole, enjoy it!
birdsong


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Christmas with Billy & Me – by Giovanna Fletcher

26 12 2014

I’m currently partway through another book, but I got this “Novella” for Christmas (a follow-up to Giovanna’s first novel, Billy & Me), and at only about 50 pages, I read it on the day – it was the perfect length to read while the family watched Doctor Who.

It was a lovely little heart-warming read. We meet the characters a few months on from the end of the original book, and just go through December in the little town. There is a mysterious note that comes to the bakery asking for assistance with a Christmas Eve proposal, but who is it from?

Cute and uplifting – just delightful!

Christmas With Billy & Me


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The Year I Met You – by Cecelia Ahern

13 11 2014

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book written in the second person before! I’d thought a while ago how books are always written in the first or third person, but never second – that is not the case.

Jasmine has just lost her job, and her neighbour over the road has just had his wife leave him. He works on the radio and is generally very offensive – Jasmine hates him for something he once said about people with Downs Syndrome, which her sister has, and this book is written as if she is speaking to him.

We follow her year of gardening leave, working out what to do with her time, figuring out what to do at the end of it when she’s allowed to work again, a headhunter called Monday, her relationship with her neighbours who she never really knew before, and her relationship with her sister.

Feel good as Cecelia Ahern’s books always are, this is definitely another one.

I actually got this book much earlier than expected, I normally get the new Cecelia Ahern books when they come out in paperback, and this isn’t due until next summer. But last month I was in an airport, and exclusively they sell books in paperback that are only hardback in shops – expensive, yes, and still bulky in size, but it was very exciting to get it so early. Just means a long long wait for the next one now!

the year i met you


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Animal Farm – by George Orwell

8 10 2014

I never realised how short some of these ‘classics’ are! I am more than willing to work through a load of them at that length! Actually finished this a couple of days ago, but life’s been a bit too hectic to sit down and write it up…

This book actually made me really angry. It just represents a totally unjust society, where the leaders tell the people things are brilliant and that they’re all equal, when really, it couldn’t be more uneven. As the cover of the book says: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Sadly it really reminded me of the state of some countries in our world in this present day, I think that’s where my anger really came from. This isn’t just fiction, it’s a reality for so many.

The story is well told though, and the animal parts make it light enough that you don’t completely want to cry, but it just makes some excellent points while it does that.

animal farm


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Of Mice and Men – by John Steinbeck

12 09 2014

The final book in my “I need to finally read all the stuff I was meant to read at school but didn’t!” list.

I never realised just how short this book is! Only 120 pages – I could probably have done this in one sitting if I’d had a quieter week. And just as when I read To Kill A Mockingbird, it was much better than I remember at school. Again supporting my argument that books were meant to be read and enjoyed, not analysed to within an inch of their life.

The story is based around George and Lennie, two men who travel together and find ranches to work on. George is a smart guy, Lennie is something of a gentle giant, and really quite simple. He is adorable, doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, and has a love for cuddly small animals – which leads to trouble when he doesn’t realise his own strength.

It’s not the happiest of reads, but there’s a reason this book has stood the test of time and is still well read today. Like most books, it’s about getting to know the characters and wanting to know more about them.

of mice and men


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The Rosie Project – by Graeme Simsion

29 08 2014

Firstly, this is the first book review I’ve not managed to find the correct book cover for online, and it annoys me more than it should! Mine is the same as below but turquoise!

Anyway, enough of that, from the back of this book I gathered it was about a guy who decided to find the perfect woman he’d start matching them up to criteria and find the one who literally ticked all the boxes – then met Rosie who didn’t tick all the boxes, “and yet…”

However, it’s so much more than that. From the outset it’s clear that this guy is massively socially awkward, somewhere on “the spectrum” (well we all are, but this guy further along than most), and his whole life is rigidly set by schedules, criteria, etc, and so he tries this stance with women too. The book is narrated by this character, so it’s great to see how he thinks – not dissimilarly to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

There’s a fairly major sub plot to this book too, and much as it’s often perceived as a bad thing, I kind of saw where it was going from pretty early on. But as there were some major curveballs thrown in which massively made me doubt myself, it definitely kept me going, and I really was hooked, I read this in less than a week I think?! Brilliant.

the rosie project


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