barkingstars

Books

I read Picnic on Craggy Island by Lissa Evans. She is an author now but she had been the producer of Father Ted for two series and these are her recollections. An essential read for Ted fans that doesn’t overstay its welcome. My review is here.

I also finished Dead Lions by Mick Herron, the second book in the Slough House series. It rattled along entertainingly enough but the plot was so catastrophically dumb that I can’t bring myself to read anymore of these. My full review is here

I also read some books about AI for work but I’m not sure I can be bothered to review them.

Currently I am reading The Book of Evidence by John Banville. It is the confession of a murderer. I came across this book via AI. I prompted the AI to recommend some books for someone who likes Robertson Davies, Graham Greene, Julian Barnes and John Le Carre. It gave 12 recommendations with detailed rationales. I can’t say if these were ‘correct’ recommendations, as if there is such a thing, but they were much better than other book recommendation engines that I’ve come across. Each choice was intriguing and I will definitely try two of them. I might dabble with AI a bit more for book recommendations, this does seem like a good use case.

Rampant consumerism

Previously I mentioned I was getting into the Rubik’s Cube. This week I thought I would buy the official deluxe version. It looks just like the model you would have seen in the eighties except it has plastic coloured inserts instead of labels. It has a lovely weight and solidity to it and is very pleasing to play with.