Shiny Linkiness

I’ve been very remiss, and forgetting to link to my various reviews over at Shiny New Books, here are my latest from this month and last:

The Gift of a Radio by Justin Webb

Webb’s memoir of his childhood and years up until he joined the BBC in 1984 is a candid, funny and touching and portrait of living through the 1960s and 1970s.

His childhood wasn’t conventional with a celebrity father he never met properly and a mentally ill stepfather whom he loathed, followed by the Dickensian conditions at his Quaker boarding school. An entertaining and self-dreprecating writer with an ear for the bon mot, this memoir is a superb read.

Read my full review HERE

Justin Webb, The Gift of a Radio (Doubleday, 2022). 978-0857527721, 245pp., hardback.

BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link (free UK P&P)


Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology by A J Lees

Lees’ third volume of memoir/essays for Notting Hill Editions looks at his career as a neurologist and the particular skills needed to be a good one. Those are namely observation and listening, and in each of the essays he draws out aspects of those skills – which he learned as a boy birdwatching. He’s an elegant writer and this little book is great.

Read my full review HERE.

A J Lees, Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology (Notting Hill Editions, 2022). 978-1912559367, 154pp., clothbound hardback.

BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.


Whatever Gets You Through the Night by Charlie Higson

I’m so glad that Higson has returned to adult thrillers after years of TV and children’s books. He started out writing nasty, funny thrillers in the 1990s before getting diverted.

This thriller is set on Corfu, where a nasty tech-mogul runs a ‘tennis camp’ for teenage girls, and Macintyre is engaged by the father of one of them to extract her. There are a host of other villains that get in the way, Albanian drug barons, the mogul’s psychopath security chief and more. It’s satirical, huge fun, nasty, sun-soaked and thrilling.

Read my full review HERE.

Charlie Higson, Whatever Gets You Through the Night (Little, Brown, 2022) ISBN 9781408714287, hardback, 390pp..

BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.


The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein by Sharon Ruston

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is supremely concerned with the subject of life and death. Writing it required more than a passing knowledge of how far science and medicine had reached then in order to extend it plausibly into the realms of science fantasy. Ruston, Chair of Romanticism at Lancaster University, takes us back to the 1800s, to explore where science and medicine were heading and how the key thinkers of the day would influence the young writer.

This short, lavishly illustrated volume is absolutely fascinating. Ruston’s enthusiasm for the subject makes for a lively read that would appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of medicine.

Read my full review HERE

Sharon Ruston, The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein (Bodleian, 2021). 978-1851245574, 152pp. plus 32pp. illus., hardback.

BUY at Blackwell’s via our affiliate link (free UK P&P)

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