read in transit

The Boy With the Cuckoo-Clock Heart
by: Mathias Malzieu

Fairy-tale quirk. A sometimes disappointing see-saw between extravagance and flippancy. I want to pretend that it's due to something not coming through in the translation because there were some absolutely stunning images.

Brilliant
by: Jane Brox

The history of artificial light and how it changed human life, deeply and irreversibly. Fascinating stuff about Tesla, world fairs, economics, the rise of factories, and the increasing number of stars being blotted out by our light.

Bliss
by: Peter Carey

Peter Carey does complete, mad weirdness. A man nearly dies, but wakes up believing he is dead and all the world is a simulacrum produced by Hell to torment him.

Not Now, Bernard
by: David McKee

I can't tell you how happy this book makes me. I mean, I can try, but you are unlikely to grasp exactly why just looking at it makes me giggle like a small and demented child. I found it in the wonderful St. Georges Bookshop in Berlin, just sitting propped up and waiting for me among the small selection of children's books. It is a very large, very floppy book, and when Heather and I were walking to a bar to get some of the nice German version of prosecco, I looked like I was wearing half of a very weird sandwich board. It is an unapologetically, unexpectedly, remorselessly strange story about a boy who gets eaten by a monster. It is also perfectly charming.