Comic books are like ballet.

No, wait! I can explain!

I could go to see an opera or a ballet. I might enjoy it. Unless the performers fell over or were dramatically out of tune, I’m not completely sure that I would understand it or be able to assess it¹. What distinguishes a good ballet from a bad one?

So. A Better World [affiliate link]. I’d heard good things about it. The conceit: in a world where the police also serve as judge, jury and executioner, someone figures out that by diverting funds from security to education they can almost entirely eliminate crime. It’s a clever idea and one that fits perfectly into the Dredd universe.

It’s five years since the first UK lockdown.

Despite that distance, I wonder if there is anything original that can be said about 2020?

Unlikely. Knowing that removes some of the pressure. Instead, I really just want to write something to commemorate the strangest of years¹.

For the most part, personally, 2020 wasn’t a terrible year, just unusual. I’m fortunate in so many ways. I kept my job. I normally work from home anyway, so the challenge when the first lockdown hit was having to work while having two kids running around all day. Not easy, but, equally, churlish to complain when so many others were losing their jobs or having relationship issues.

I don’t have an account on TikTok. I’ve never downloaded the app. Yet I see videos that were originally uploaded there, always in portrait format with the logo in the bottom corner. Even if you’ve not used it, you have likely been impacted by it in some way. And if you follow the news, you’ll be aware of some of the controversies.

So even though I never really had much interest, it is interesting.

I’m a big fan of William Boyd. Late last year, I went to the Wimbledon Book Festival to see him interviewed and talk about “Gabriel’s Moon,” his new book. The event wasn’t just about the book, though he did read the prologue. I was predisposed to like him, of course, but I thought he came across well. Smart but not pretentious, aware of his success but hadn’t let it define him. Although I hadn’t planned to, I bought a copy of the book and got it signed.

As Tim Minchin cynically notes in the prologue [affiliate link], universities hand out honorary degrees for good PR. As a well known, articulate, and talented individual, Minchin has received a number of them and this book is the transcript of the speeches he gave when accepting three of them.

If you’ve seen any of his live performances, you’ll be able to hear him speaking as you read through. Each has that easy flow that makes his work so good. Of course, anyone who has written or performed knows that kind of “easy flow” takes a lot of work. Effortless is difficult.

After exceeding my goal of twelve books last year, I went in completely the other direction in 2024 with only five books completed.

I did, however, read an unusual mix by my standards. Only two of the books were non-fiction. So, even with the smaller number, I still managed to read more novels than I normally do. And the standard was high, too. I don’t think any of them were classics but I enjoyed them all. Not bad result!

You can’t say this book [affiliate link] lacks ambition. Jon Alexander describes the next phase of organising a society.

The challenge is that some of the definitions are quite subtle. They’re well argued in the text, but if you asked me to relay that information, I’m not sure I could. Or at least, it wouldn’t be concise or easy to digest.

He starts by defining what a Citizen is. It’s not about the country you live in, or voting or paying taxes. Rather, it’s what comes after the Subject Story (ruled by monarchs) and the Consumer Society (ruled by choice).

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

I’m surprised this didn’t get more of a response when I posted it on Mastodon, to be honest. A while ago I was talking about sci-fi books with a colleague. He was amazed I had a copy and practically begged to borrow it. (Unlike Peopleware, I did get it back!)

It is the definitive collection of cyberpunk short-stories. Much of what I wrote about Neuromancer could be written about Mirrorshades [affiliate link], so I won’t repeat myself.

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

I lent “Peopleware” [affiliate link] to a friend at some point but never got it back. I supposed they valued it as much as I do. I should probably buy the newer edition at some point.

I’m not sure if this book was the epiphany or it just happened around the same time, but at worst it was a major influence. The epiphany was that the really hard challenges in computer science were not the technical ones but the ones around people. It doesn’t mean that it’s not valuable to work on technical problems or solve them. But the challenges organising and getting people to communicate and work together effectively and build the right thing (rather than the interesting thing that we want to build) are also important, possibly more important.

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

“Neuromancer” [affiliate link] probably needs no introduction. I may not reference it as often as Hitchhikers Guide, but if you know anything about me, I doubt you’d be surprised that I include it here.

When I first read it, I’d not used, maybe never even heard of, the Internet. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to plug my brain into a computer but the idea of a global computer-based hallucination is something we now all experience every day. Maybe not exactly as Gibson wrote. Well, hopefully not.