This is the second short story collection from the bus-driving author of The Restraint of Beasts and recent ‘Best-Novel-About-A-Bus-System-Ever-Written’ The Maintenance of Headway. Not much happens in a lot of these, but workaday absurdity and Mills’ deadpan style are irresistibly funny.
Screwtop Thompson by Magnus Mills
The Ancestor’s Tale: Richard Dawkins
Released before his elevation to poster boy for Atheism, scourge of Creationists and God-botherer’s the world over, The Ancestor’s Tale is almost certainly his most wondrous and remarkable work: a reverse history of all life on Earth that celebrates the true wonders of nature and evolution. It may appear an epic tome (largely because it is), but Dawkins has a lot to share, and combined with his unique verve/arrogance/certainty, it makes for a splendidly engaging read that’s over before you know it and, better still, leaves you feeling infinitely cleverer.
Cold Comfort Farm: Stella Gibbons
An unsubtle satire on the genres of the turgid, overwrought and overwritten considered important literature (Gibbons tartly highlights the passages she considers most characteristic of such); an outright attack on its many clichés (the doom, tragedy and vapid characterisation, all of which face the brunt of Gibbon’s put down’s and her heroine’s belligerent common sense); but more importantly, just one of the funniest books ever, with more wit, sarcasm, one-liners and general brilliance in a mere 233 pages than other writers have managed in an entire lifetime’s output.
Imperial Bedrooms: Bret Easton Ellis
The notorious American Psycho author returns with a sequel to Less Than Zero: the debut novel he wrote when he was just nineteen. Imperial Bedrooms revisits the lives of Ellis’ young and drugged-up LA social elite, only now it’s 2010, so they’ve all grown up into the middle-aged and drugged-up LA social elite. It features some stomach-churning violence that’s right up there with American Psycho, and I think it’s one of Ellis’ best.