Radar 3 May 2021: Granta, Interstellar, European Super League
Trying to impose an American model of financing football in Britain is a broken one
Category Books
Book reviews
Intrusion by Ken MacLeod: dystopian rules
Intrusion is a meditation on a near future where life is regulated with a high level of morality and ethics. Extrapolated ideas on what that may look like a quite restrained with the occasional AI toy and truck. The main…
Granta 154: I’ve been away for a while – Remembering our mortality
With reportage and memoir for the industrial revolution, cholera, and coronavirus pandemic and fiction about a wandering father this was an inconsistent edition but with enough to justify it.
Klara and the sun by Kazuo Ishiguro: A human’s best friend
We are only at the beginning of AI in real life, but fiction is much further down the road of debate. This novel was an opportunity from an esteemed writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, attempts to bring to life the soul of an AI. In this case, Klara, an Artificial Friend with exceptional observational qualities. Can one be both artificial and a friend?
The Assault On Truth by Peter Oborne: Gaslighting the Nation
The Assault on Truth by Peter Oborne is a short rant, sometimes repetitive, but mercilous and meticulously researched with references to justify its ethical message: Johnson is corrupt and the media has colluded with him. That Johnson has more than a passing similarity with Trump in his pursuit of power at any price and his (past) conspirators like Cummings helped him in his mission.
Radar 1 March 2021
What is currently on my radar: music, politics, books etc. What I am reading The British in India by David Gilmour. A social history of the Raj.Fascinating and readable journey about what made India different as a British colony to…
Granta 153 – Second Nature: climate in crisis
Granta has drifted over the past few issues to this one so it was a welcome return to form. This issue was a sideways step from the usual publication with a theme in that it had a guest editor –…
Barack Obama – A Promised Land: Respectable Politics
This is a lengthy biography of Barack Obama’s time when he became senator up to the end of his first term as president. The early section on his growing up has been covered before and yet gives little away how…
Radar 6 February 2021
What is currently on my radar. What I am reading A Promised Land by Barak Obama – written as a detailed chronicle of his time in power rather than an entertaining mass market read. What podcast I am listening to…
The Silence: Don Delillo
I have not read a novel by Don Delillo before but I was more than aware of his fame to be attracted by this apparent zeitgeist novella about what would happen if, god forbid, the wifi went down. There are…