His Bloody Project, nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2016, is one of those great books that makes you wonder if it’s a true story, a fictionalised account, or just completely made up by the author. After reading the first bit, I actually went to read some reviews (which I never do in advance) to find out for sure. Graeme Mcrae Burnet’s main character—who’s “project” is the subject of the book—is Roderick John Mcrae, or Roddy as he’s called, so it seems entirely plausible that the […]
I’m pretty sure this novel was written by an AI
So, I’m not really sure how to say this, but I think this book was written by an Artificial Intelligence (AI). Not a clever one, but one that was trained by reading bad murder mysteries from the 1940s, and travel books. I’m not gonna lie, I only got half way through, and because I got a free, pre-publication (PDF) copy I tried, I really, really tried, but oh my lord this book is soooo bad. I’m gonna lay this out for you as best I can, but […]
A great primer in how both higher education and the justice system victimise women a second time in cases of rape and assault
I finally picked up Missoula just as the #metoo revelations started to pick up steam. As someone who’s had a lifetime full of #metoo moments, I was both eager and hesitant to dive into this read about multiple rape accusations in the college town of Missoula, Montana (home of the University of Montana Grizzlies!), and the school, and/or police investigations, (or lack thereof) and trials, (or lack thereof) which resulted from those accusations. This is not a good choice for the faint-hearted, or anyone who has been […]
You wouldn’t say that in a room full of strangers, why say it on social media?
In October 2017 I went to the Episodic conference, where Jon Ronson was one of the featured speakers. He was scheduled to go on just after the lunch break, and I was slightly late getting back in, which turned out not to be a problem, because instead of actually being at the conference, he was Skyping in to be interviewed by the moderator, Anna Higgs and the connection wasn’t working. This was quite weird, as Ronson actually owns a home not far from the London venue where the conference […]