corblimey has got too many books

25.City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism (Krane). I really enjoyed a week I spent in UAE late last year, and picked this up while I was there. The book is slightly unbalanced, spending more time on how great UAE and Dubai in particular is (with a bit too much focus on the lives of the ruling sheikhs) and less time on the consequences of what's going on out there, with its horrendous energy needs, lack of civic planning, etc. Very interesting nonetheless, and makes me want to go back and see some more of the place.

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27. Robo-Hunter: The Droid Files Vol. 1 (Wagner, Gibson). I chose this ahead of starting to read the last book as I thought it'd be a good antidote. As it was, Aquariums of Pyonyang wasn't as bad as I feared, and this wasn't as good as I'd hope. Gibson was my favourite artist growing up, the work he did on Halo Jones was superb, but this is less so. Maybe he's still learning his craft or something, but it's definitely not as polished as the later work. In the meantime, the stories themselves are lengthy and meandering, something that probably wouldn't be as noticeable when you're 10 and getting 5 pages every week.

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29. The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (Hopkirk). I think I've found my book of the year, it's definitely going to take something special to eclipse this look at 100 years of antagonism between Russia and England and how it played out in the countries of Central Asia. The subtitle makes it sound like it's going to be about the British stiff upper lip and those darned uncultured Russkies, but it's nothing of the sort, and goes some way to explaining why that region is still in such a state centuries later. Highly recommended to anyone with a love of history, Asia, stories of derring-do or just blooming good books.

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31. Japan At War (Zavo). I applaud the effort, and while the parts of the book that deal with the situation unfolding in the Far East are interesting, albeit probably told better in other books, the vast majority of the book is given over to memoir-style vignettes from Japanese and others who were involved in the war effort. As per most memoirs, it's fairly biased ("I don't think I was doing anything wrong killing all those Chinese") and I've already decided I dislike memoirs, so it never stood a chance really. Back to actual history, I think.

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33. Get a Life!: The Little Red Book of the White Dot (Burke). I thought this would a fun examination of why TV is "bad" and doing other stuff is "good", but it's actually taking itself so seriously, I gave up about halfway through. Plus I don't have a problem with tv watching. I could give up any time. Ooh, there's a MacGyver reboot?!

35. Real Roy of the Rovers Stuff!: Roy's True Story (Tomlinson). Barrie Tomlinson was the editor of both Tiger and Roy of the Rovers in the late 70s, 80s, during the hey day of these comic institutions. A book by him should be fascinating, dealing with day to day life at the helm of 2 of the most popular comics around, how they came to be, what were the pitfalls and what were the glories. *Should have*. Instead, it's an extremely short book divided up into several sections, all of which are short and bare bones. Roy Race's life story, a chapter about press releases (!), some pictures of a RR cutout standing near some celebrities. Finally, towards the end, there's a short section on how the strip was written and drawn, but far too short.

Most annoyingly, Barrie tries repeatedly to assure us that Race is a real person, and anything that he did as an editor had "Roy's blessing". This implies to me that the audience for this is a lot younger than me, but this really is one for those of us who actually bought the comic, surely?!

Terrible.

1. Alan Partridge: Nomad (Partridge). For a while, nobody could touch Bill Bryson's walking books for me - I even modelled my vacations on him for a while - albeit recently his travel work leaves a lot to be desired. Steve Coogan's travelogue is basically Bryson, but for idiots. His intended aim is to walk some 150 miles in honour of his father who did the same journey (in a car, mind) some years before. Very funny in places, although I'm not sure taking in the events of the AP movie was a wise move, as that movie is pretty bad. Good start to the year though.

3. Collected Works of 27b/6. Victorian Edition (Thorne). Well, this was an odd thing to buy. I was expected 'collected' works, I got 100 pages consisting of one paragraph mostly taken out of context from Thorne's writing along with a 'Victorian' style picture beneath it. And... that's it. fair due to Mr.Thorne for rehashing previous books in spectacularly lazy style, but I'm done.

5. Miracle In The Andes (Parrado). I'll be honest, when I started reading this book about a flight that crashes in the Andes with a team of rugby players aboard, I didn't it was that flight and that team, but it is. Parrado glosses over most of the "unpleasantness" and concentrates on describing the unbelievably harsh conditions in which the survivors find themselves. His journey to rescue is equally unbelievable, but of course, it's all true. There's a short section about what happened afterwards with Parrado going on to racing cars for a living (cos why wouldn't you), but the meat of the story is truly fascinating.

7. Waterford Whispers News 2016 (Williamson). I'd never heard of WWN before I joined Facebook middle of last year, and while its articles are relatively amusing (although these days, I have to check it's not WWN when I read something Trump has done), I was surprised it had enough of a following for there to be a book (and the third one aswell). I got it as a stocking filler and while it's very like the Onion in terms of parody and most of the time, the headline is the funniest part, the Irish slant keeps it interesting - at least until they start talking about some Irish celebrity, of whom I have never heard.

9. To the Edge of the World: The Story of the Trans-Siberian Railway (Wolmar). Well researched and well written account of the planning, execution and the subsequent trouble the line caused, as the country of Russia went through a massive upheaval (the end of the tsarist era, the beginning of communism, 2 world wars, etc). The events do tend to take some of the focus off the story, and it seems that the author was trying to shoehorn in the use of the railway during these turbulent times, not wholly succesfully. When he concetrates on teh railway, it's pretty damn good.

Finally though, and always the sign of a good book, it made me scamper off to Amazon to add some Russian Revolution based books to my basket. It's fun to learn!

11. Fascinating Footnotes From History (Milton). Note to self: contact Mr.Milton to exaplin what 'fascinating' means, because there's no evidence in here that he's altogether sure. Overall, it's basically sub-QI stuff, the sort of thing that would spark a question from Stephen Fry "how many English women did Hitler impregnate?" - that sort of thing. Is Stephen Fry still doing QI?

13. Dumbing Us Down (Gatto). Not a history of compulsory schooling as I expected, but a treatise on why it doesn't work. Interesting enough in places, I guess, but overall not very compelling.

15. Betrayal (Boston Globe). The book behind the movie Spotlight, this is a distressing and upsetting tale of abuse in the Catholic church, focussing mostly on the Boston dioceses as exposed by the Globe. The litany of abuse, the cover ups, the small steps of restitution made by the Church as the cases became public, it's all fairly depressing, even for a lapsed Catholic like myself. The book itself is well written, although it jumps around a lot and gets itself tied in knots - it might have been better to focus on a few of the worse offenders.

17. Invention of Paris (Hazan)
A fascinating history of and guide to the nooks, crannies and passages of Paris. It has 2 problems:
1. It makes brief mention of important Paris-based historical events and people in a way that suggests you're a fool if you don't understand the literary references.
2. It made my inner reading voice go a bit poncy as it tried to properly pronounce the multitude of sometimes unnecessary French words.
On the good side (maybe), I added about a million things to my itinerary for my forthcoming trip to Paris.

19. Travelled Far (Foskett)
A short book filled with short chapters describing various hikes the author has undertaken. It sounded like it might be right up my alley, as someone who loves day hiking and is always looking for ideas. Unfortunately, despite its length it needs some editing, and it's almost completely charmless in its descriptions of the walks, reading more like blog posts than an actual novel. Terrible.

20. Working the London Underground (Pedroche)
Another history of the London Underground, doesn't really add anything more to the story that I didn't know already, but recommended as a starter book on the topic. The second part where it details some of the work done by the staff, and how it's changed down through the years was better, but not indepth enough for my liking.

22. Ticket to Ride (Chesshyre)
Years ago, when I planned my travel bucket list, train journeys featured strongly on it, but as I've gone to actually plan trips involving train travel, I've been less sure of how I would enjoy them. This book goes some way to confirming my fears. It's nice to read about the author enjoying long distance travel in far off countries (and France), but everything he writes about the actual experience makes me sure that while I won't avoid train travel, I won't be planning with the sole objective of train travel again.

I guess that's a good thing. Good book, although the last chapter feels like a bit of filler lobbed in at the last minute and not wholly connected to the rest.

24. Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Boo)
Not sure why I picked this up, but thought I might enjoy it once I got into it. Well, I didn't get into it before it ended. It's a fairly non descript book, the crippling poverty and day-to-day survival masking a rather trite tale about.. well about nothing really.

26. I'm Not with the Band (Patterson)
Part personal memoir, part rehashing of interviews the author had with various pop 'types'. The memoir part didn't interest me at all, and the interviews were for the most part pretty bad. She started working in the industry in the last 80s, which everyone agrees was the worse era for music, and then continues through the grunge years, the navel gazing years, the 'mad'chester years, Britney, etc etc. It's not entirely terrible, with a few shining moments, but on the whole, not great

28. Dog Company (O'Donnell)
I visited Normandy on a tour recently, and one of the stops was Pointe du Hoc where our guide regaled us with the story of the Rangers who attached Pointe Du Hoc on D-day in an effort to silence the guns there. I'd never heard of that story, so picked up this book on my return. I may have picked the wrong book. While the feat is still immense, this book is terrible. I hate sound effects ("BOOM!") in novels, and its get very confused with itself (probably a by-product of the confusing day itself, but could still be organised a bit better). I'm still impressed by what the Rangers did, and am happy to have learned something new, but this isn't the right way to learn it.

30. 438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea (Franklin)
This is a slightly unbelievable tale of a fisherman who's boat is damaged in a storm and he ends up drifting 9000 miles across the Pacific, washing up on the Marshall Islands. It's a true story, but since the fisherman is on his own for most of the journey, his account of how he survived gets a little bit implausible at times.

The last "incredible survival" book I read was Miracle In The Andes, and this pales in comparison to that one.

32. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (Acemoglu, Robinson)
Well we find out on about page 17 (spoiler: ) and the rest of the 400 pages just serves to drive that point home. The "nations" chosen as example are a mixed bag, and basically it's a speedy clatter through the history of the world. Not bad, but not great.

34. Room (Donoghue)
The movie has been on my to-watch list since release, but I thought I'd check out the book first. Like most works of fiction these days, I just didn't care for it. It's an interesting story but there are too many cutesy framing devices for my liking. I won't ruin the ending, but suffice to say that I've crossed the movie off my list aswell. Maybe I shouldn't read movie books until I've see the movie movie.