Man and Wife - Tony Parsons

Man and Wife continues the story of Harry Silver, a story that began in Man and Boy. I found Man and Boy difficult to read as there were so many uncomfortable parallels with my own life. In this sequel there were far fewer parallels, and so I felt less of an emotional impact from the story.

The story is Harry's journey as he attempts to come to terms with a new life. A second marriage, and a son he sees once a week. It isn't what he imagined life would be like and much of the book is spent with Harry being tempted by trying to search for he imagines would be the perfect family life.

A key scene for me was where Harry is telling his mother that he wants a normal family life like she and his father did. Hiw mother's response is to point out that they felt far from normal and struggled with it for many years. The clear implication here is that many of us are, like Harry, after an idealised version of life without the struggle needed to achieve it.

While this was a good sequel it does suffer the problem that almost all sequels suffer from, it's not quite as good as the first book.

A Short History of England - Simon Jenkins

The history of England is one of the longest continuous tales of any nation. A recognisable English nation emerged during the Anglo-Saxon era and has remained intact ever since. This gives England over a 1,000 years of unbroken history. Any attempt to tell this tale in only a few hundred pages must be described as ambitious but this is what Simon Jenkins has attempted to do.

Inevitably any short version of the history of England cannot include everything, and this is certainly the case here. Sensibly the author has limited himself to the political history of England only. Other events, including those in the Celtic nations, are referred to only if they impact the political events in England. This gives the book a focus and a narrowness of narrative that allows the story to race along. This keeps it to its intention to be short albeit at the cost that you are always aware there is a lot going on off-stage.

One of the great strengths of the writing in this book is that I felt it was a continuous story. Although periods of time may have been raced through quickly, it always felt that they had been covered. This is a difficult trick to pull off as there was the odd occasion where it felt that something had been taken out during editing (presumably to keep the book short). For example, the first mention of Robert Walpole, England's first Prime Minister, was to say that he had resigned. These were few though and the writing was good enough that I couldn't spot any gaps in the historical narrative where an earlier mention of Walpole had been lost.

For me one of the great frustrations of reading a book like this is feeling the urge to want more on certain episodes in England's history. Inevitably this book does not provide much by way of depth to history but the fact I wanted to know more was probably the intention of the author. This book is not written to provide it, it is there to give an overview of English history for those who want just that, and as a starting point for those who want more. On both of these, this does an excellent job.

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick

What if the World War 2 had had a different result? This is a common question asked by alternative history novels, but The Man in the High Castle is one of the better novels I've read asking this question. The novel is set in America 15 years after they lost the war. America is divided into a Japanese controlled west coast, a German controlled east coast and an independent neutral central zone (the Rocky Mountain States). The story features several plotlines, each loosely connected to each other.

As with all alternative histories, an explanation of why history unfolded differently is needed. In this case the key event is that an attempted assassination of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 is successful. This means the USA has not recovered from the depression at the start of World War 2, they are unable to offer assistance to Britain and are unprepared for war when it arrives. While some details of the subsequent history don't seem quite right, such as the speed with which Nazi Germany has developed a space program and already has a colony on Mars, this version of history is plausible.

A key plot point within the book is the existence of an alternative history novel, banned in Nazi controlled regions, which tells a story of what would have happened had the Allies won the war. It gives another plausible, if slightly idealistic, version of an alternative history. The novel causes the characters to reflect on the outcome of the war.

Another key feature of the novel is the impact of an imposed culture on a conquered people. One of the characters in the Japanese controlled zone is constantly aware of his place in the new hierarchy of the society. It's clear he still finds it difficult as he constantly has to think ahead to plan his actions and reactions.

The various plots within the book each come to an ending but not a conclusion. Some may find that unsatisfactory but I didn't. History doesn't conclude, each story ends but also runs into the next story. History continues.

Overall an enjoyable view of what might have been had World War 2 ended differently.

Massive - Ian Sample

This is a book about people. About the people involved in one of the greatest scientific challenges of recent times - the search for the Higgs Boson. What it doesn't do is spend much time explaining the science behind the Higgs. Instead it gives good insight into how science proceeds, the people involved and how it isn't always a smooth road.

While it is mostly well written book but there was one flaw. The paperback edition I read was an updated version of the original, updated to include the story of the Higgs discovery. The original version of the book was obviously written in anticipation of the Higgs expected discovery soon after the LHC was turned on. Unfortunately the LHC had early problems and so did not discover the Higgs as soon as expected. Like many books which have an extra chapter added to update them, it sadly feels obvious that this was done.

Despite this it is a good tale, taking in many steps in the journey. From the early theoretical work, to the political manoeuvring over the construction of a new accelerator (the SSC) in the USA, and the intense behind the scenes work as researchers at CERN frantically tried to finish their work before the announcement of the discovery. It's a good tale although I did have one reservation. In the eye's of the public, the LHC has been all about discovering the Higgs. There is a considerable amount of other interesting work to be done by the LHC (and at other accelerators) but this barely gets mentioned in the book. While this is understandable for a book about the hunt for the Higgs, it is something the particle physics community would do well to address.

For anyone with an interest in science and the people involved this book is well worth a read.

Man and Boy - Tony Parsons

I found this book difficult to read. Not because its a poor book, but because it hit home emotionally in a way very few books ever have done. The story begins with the main character, Harry Silver, having a mid-life crises at the age of 30. This crises triggers a series of events that leads to his life unravelling quickly. However he soon realises what he has lost and most of the book is spent with him coming to terms with this and attempting to build a new life as a single parent.

While my life has taken a different path to that of the main character, I did find an almost disturbingly large number of parallels between his and my own that were brilliantly described. For example, I too found myself a parent younger than many of my friends and felt a sense of missing out on a huge part of my life as I spent evenings changing nappies while they were having nights out.

This is a wonderfully well written book. It was powerful enough on an emotional level to make me feel uncomfotable reading it but only because it felt so personal and as if the author could at times have been writing about my own life.

How Do We Fix This Mess? - Robert Peston

The clue to this book is the question mark at the end of the books title. The book is almost a plea, how do we fix the mess the world economy is in? This book doesn't offer a solution, a fact acknowledged by the author early in the book. Instead it is a description of the many ways in which both the global and UK economy are a mess and how we got there.

I found this book eye-opening as it revealed the many flaws in the global economy, many of which I was unaware of. The perverse way in which the richest economies are borrowing vast sums of money from poorer economies was one such flaw. This book made me realise just what a mess we are in and how far we are from resolving this in a way which does not cause more damage.

The journey to this point was well explained. But it seemed to me a long series of events which could be considered the law of unintended consequences in action. For example, financial innovation created new products which should have reduced the risks taken when investing or lending money. But the actual effect of these products was to obscure the risks being taken to such an extent that nobody fully understood what risks they were taking. Being unaware of the risks being taken encouraged more risks to be taken because many financial institutions were simply unaware of the fact they were taking risks.

Another example is the banking rules. These were biased towards banks holding supposedly low-risk assets. But some assets were classified as low risk because their risks were obscured (see above) and so the rules encouraged the banks to hold assets whose risks were not known.

Robert Peston made his name during the credit crunch. He was a well known journalist before this but only within his area of expertise. The Northern Rock story started his road to wider fame as he broke a series of stories as the crises unfolded. Yet he himself admits to missing the big story. He describes the first occasion he started worrying about the risks being taken was when he was interviewing the manager of a large city trading floor and the manager couldn't explain what they were doing in a way that he could understand. Peston worried that if he couldn't explain to a business journalist of many years experience, then did he really understand what they were doing? And if he didn't how could his bosses? But Peston didn't really follow this up, which he now regards as a mistake.

For me the biggest lesson I'll take from this book is just how far we are from resolving the current crises. It made me realise that I really don't know what the UK government is doing to resolve the crises. They talk about re balancing the economy, but I've no idea how they intend to do this or what their vision is for a rebalanced economy. Is this because the measures needed are going to be painful in the short-term and take many years to see any benefit? The government can't really plan past the next election though. Perhaps if the government laid out a plan for where we are going we could judge their progress fairly. I think some leadership is missing here.

Reading this book has also made me reassess my opinions on a few subjects. I'm a believer in the welfare state, that the government should support those who are unable to support themselves (either temporarily or permanently) through no fault of their own. But the book contrasts the low savings rate in the UK with the high rate in China and points out that the high rate in China is because they have to save for a rainy day. In the UK we have a generous welfare state which will support you if, for example, you lost your job. But if you have savings, this is taken into account and the support could be reduced. This discourages savings, which has knock-on effects in terms of the money available for the banks to lend for investment. So is this good for the economy? Does the welfare state discourage savings which in turn reduces investment, which then leads to fewer jobs and so more people in need of help? I'm not sure.

I would definitely recommend reading this book. We have a long way to go both in the UK and globally. If we all understood how we got here we may be in a better position to fix the mess that Robert Peston does such a good job of describing.

The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures - Stephen Pile

This book is a mostly entertaining series of anecdotes about the more spectacular and amusing failure. The anecdotes themselves are of a variable quality both in terms of how amusing they are and in their believability. This isn't a book I would recommend going out of your way to read, but as a book to dip into every now and then for an amusing story it is worth having.

Richer Than God - David Conn

This book is essential reading for any football fan. It is a book of two stories. It is the story of the authors life as a football fan, and the story of modern football and how owners make millions while the grass-roots of the game is played in poor facilities. David Conn grew up as a Manchester City fan, and has become a journalist writing about football and the issues surrounding the game. But he has become disillusioned with many aspects of football today despite his clear love for the game. This book is the story of how this happened and what he sees as the flaws in today's game.

Growing up, David Conn was a typical football fan. He felt he belonged to his club, and his club belonged to him. This false reality would become shattered due to his peripheral involvement in a bitter takeover battle for Manchester City. Like many City fans at the time, he wanted the then chairman Peter Swales out. Swales had made many mistakes over the years. When he took over, Manchester City were one of the top clubs in England. But by the mid-90's they were a mid-table side at best and financially on the edge. When former player Francis Lee launched a takeover bid, many fans felt he was the man to lead their club back to where they should be.

The trouble for Conn was that it never was the fans club in the first place. By the mid-90's the author was a journalist and he was asking questions. These questions would lead him first to the realisation that all football clubs were businesses. And secondly that like all businesses, the main reason they exist is to make money for their owners. This was something that felt fundamentally wrong, football was not the sport he had grown up believing it was.

Since that day David Conn has spent a great deal of time researching the business side of football and campaigning for a different type of football, one closer to that which he thought he had grown up with but which had never really existed. The story of this side of football is told in this book, in parallel with the fall and subsequent rise of Manchester City. A rise which has seen them completely transformed over the past few years by owners who should represent everything Conn dislikes about the modern game. I say should because almost paradoxically, Sheik Mansour's ownership of Manchester City has shown more respect for the history and fans of the club than any previous owners and so could be the best owners the club has had. A dilemma Conn does not shy away from exploring.

There are some factual errors in this book which most readers probably won't notice but for me, as a Manchester City fan, sadly stuck out. To give a couple of examples, in 1985 City beat Charlton 5-1 not 4-1 to win promotion and their first win of the 95-96 season wasn't against Aston Villa, but was three games earlier against Bolton. The first of these examples could be excused as a typo. But the second cannot because the author describes details of the game under the mistaken impression it was the first win of the season. Fortunately for this book though, these errors will not be noticed by most readers and have no impact on Conn's arguments about the state of football.

There are also flaws with his argument about how many aspects of modern football are not in the best interests of the game. To begin with he never fully explains what is meant by the good of the game. Should the game be run for the benefit of the Sunday league player? To provide the best possible England team? To have as many spectators as possible? In reality a balance should be struck but it wasn't clear where Conn believes this should be and so its difficult to agree with his argument that the balance is wrong. In addition he makes some contrasts without explaining the connection. For example, he contrasts the facilities he played in as an amateur (run down due to local authority spending cuts) with the millions pouring into the Premier League from TV money but he never explains why they should be connected. To me this argument was like complaining that a school cannot afford new musical instruments yet Take That can sell out a stadium tour and make millions.

But despite these flaws this is an excellent book. I agree with many of the problems in modern day football outlined in the book and found the details on how they arose informative. But perhaps the highest praise I can give this book is that it has made me think about what is meant by the phrase 'the good of the game'. What does that mean? Is it better for the game of football that the Premier League is watched by millions around the world? In isolation, the answer to this would be yes. But the effect of growing the audience around the world may have been to price out a traditional part of footballs fan base from attending the game live as the clubs needed more revenue to attract the best players which in turn attracts the TV audience. Which of these should the Premier League have prioritised? There are many examples such as this where football has made choices and there are trade-offs. I'm unsure if the right choices have been made and what would have happened had different choices been made.

In summary a must read for all football fans. A book telling us all how the game is really run and offering alternatives for how it could be run.

Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg

The main character in Dying Inside is David Selig. David has a secret gift that makes him extraordinary but he is losing that gift. His gift is the ability to read minds. He has the gift of telepathy.

The story is an exploration of the impact having such a gift on a person, and then losing it. David Selig has spent hid whole life trying to hide his ability. In doing so he has become paranoid and finds relationships with other people difficult. This ongoing quest to hide his ability is the strongest part of the book. It's told in a series of flashbacks to earlier episodes in his life. The few people who do discover his gift he has difficult relationships with, from an ex-girlfriend who discovers the secret while taking drugs, to a fellow telepath he can never quite trust, to the sister he has a strained relationship with.

At the start of the novel David's power to read minds has been diminishing for some time and he is currently trying to make a living ghost-writing papers for students at a local university. The implication of the novel is that by hiding his talent and being afraid to use it he has wasted both the talent and his obvious intelligence (which is shown by him guaranteeing good marks on the papers he ghost-writes).

Despite trying to hide and not make use of his talent, it has come to define who he is.The novel tries to explore what losing that talent does to him. Unfortunately for me, it does a poor job of this. I don't get a clear sense of what he is going through. There doesn't appear to be much difference between the character when his power to read minds is fully available in the flashbacks, and in the scenes where he is struggling with its loss.

I struggled with this book. It was too uneven for me with some very good writing mixed with some that felt a struggle to read. Overall it's a great concept for a novel which is only partly successful in realising it.