Another John Scalzi book, and another good one. This one is (arguably) his first novel. Quite military based, which tends not to be my favourite.

The premise is that a bunch of old people – hence the title – join the military for, effectively, a new life. Their bodies get some upgrades to make it worthwhile. Skipping a lot of detail there because much of the fun is finding out what’s happening.

Has the company that you work for just announced that they are being acquired? Are you anxious? Are you wondering what comes next?

Obviously I can’t respond to all the specifics about your particular situation, but I do I have a track record of the companies I work for being acquired. Once, the company that acquired us was itself acquired. I’ve even started making a joke of it interviews: if your exit plan is to be bought rather than IPO, I’m your man I say. (I’m a blast, you should hire me!)

Another year, another William Boyd book [affiliate link]. I make that sound like a bad thing, but really it isn’t.

This one won’t go down as a classic, but it’s thoroughly entertaining and fast-paced, zipping between Guatemala, London and Berlin in the early sixties. It has the usual Boyd mix of well-researched historical details and character moments. He makes it seem effortless. Maybe it is easy for him now, having written so many novels, but it all works.

I forgot this in my roundup of 2025, party because it’s not the first time I’ve read it, and partly because I read it at the very end of the year.

I reread some Douglas Adams every couple of years, and every time I come away impressed. I discover details or a clever turn of phrase that I’d missed previously. I almost expect to be disappointed but it hasn’t happened yet¹.

Eight books last year, against my target of twelve. By my historical standards, not bad! Four fiction and four non-fiction is not a bad split, either.

Unusually there were a couple of books that just weren’t for me. Not objectively bad, by any means, but it turns out that comic books are really not my thing. On the other hand, William Boyd continues to entertain, and Mick Herron’s books are as fun to read as watch.

A few years ago, I read “Crisis? What crisis?”, which is about Britain in the 1970s. This is the follow-up book about the 1980s [affiliate link], though, as its author Alwyn W. Turner points out, the timelines are never quite that precise. It’s more accurate to say that this book follows Thatcher’s election as Prime Minister in 1979 to her downfall eleven years later.

Despite living through the Eighties, there’s a surprising amount of this book that I have very little recollection of. It makes me realise how little of what’s going on now that my kids are likely to remember.

I am late to the party. I’m not a purist who is going to tell you that the books are way better than the TV series, that I read the books when they first came out. Well actually, before they came out because I know somebody who knows somebody.

No. I watched the “Slow Horses” show on Apple TV+, enjoyed it, and belatedly thought that I should read the book [affiliate link] to see how similar they are.

I’ve lived in London for thirty years¹. Somehow.

I’m not entirely sure how it happened. It was never the plan. Not that I had a plan. If you’d asked me where I wanted to live, I probably wouldn’t have picked London.

I applied to a handful of jobs at the tail-end of my stint at university². The one job offer I received³ was in London. That’s how it started.

To give you an idea of how arbitrary it all was: my first employer had offices in central London and in Surrey. I looked at the train lines and found that Wimbledon was about half way between the two. That’s where I ended up.

I hear John Elledge a lot on podcasts, so when his new book came out I was immediately interested. I saw it in a bookstore, almost bought it, and then realised that I have more than enough books at home. (Un)fortunately, Amazon were selling it cheap and I caved.

The good news is that “A History of the World in 47 Borders”¹ is an entertaining read. No regrets.

It’s well researched, and full of interesting tidbits, and connecting historical events in logical ways. What stood out for me, though, was the writing. It’s informal, and you get his voice and personality in practically every sentence. Here are a few.

I’ve read a lot of Moren’s words over the years, but mostly in Macworld and Six Colors¹. I picked “The Caledonian Gambit²” entirely arbitrarily.

His fiction is… fine. It’s a bit too military to my taste, but with a bunch of spy and action for good measure. There’s some family backstory that feeds into it, leading to a well rounded story. It didn’t fully engage me but I did keep reading, and wanted to know how it ended. There were a few phrases where I thought “he’s trying too hard” but, otherwise, it’s well written.