Two-line reviews, hell yeah.
They don't half boost the page-viewings, so here goes...
Brute Force by Andy McNab ****
Top notch thriller caper, no questions asked, no messing about. If McNabb had wanted to get a Mann-Booker nomination, he'd have bribed the judges like everyone else; fuck it, I'm giving it four stars and I'm not even half way through.
Empire by Niall Ferguson *****
The British Empire wasn't all bad you know; though obviously it wasn't all good, what with slavery and moustaches and all. Some interesting economic angles make this revelatory reeading, including (when the game was well and truly up), Churchill borrowing an Empire's worth of cash from the USA in order to carry on the WW2 effort; the USA took the last repayment just a few years ago thanks very much, and we still wonder exactly what it was we won.
Red Strangers by Elspeth Huxley *****
Superb novel getting thoroughly inside the heads of three generations of Kikuyan tribespeople in Colonial Kenya, and a complete antidote to Empire. A masterclass in anthropological head-gaming, in which the British Empire seems utterly without rhyme, reason, or goats.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt ****
Annoyingly addictive whodunnit set in a New Hampshire Uni, in which all the characters behave like rubbery test-tubes full of bad chemicals, and never seem to go to the launderette, but the plot is good enough to take them onward and downward. Literary, pretentious and clever; almost as much as the insufferably smug Tartt might appear if she actually dared to go out.
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