Euan Lawson
January 2024 reading list
- Finding Your Comic Genius by Adam Bloom
- Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World’s Most Secretive Industry by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
- Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
- The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
A couple of quite different books to kick off the new year. Adam Bloom’s book is a fascinating insight into the mechanics and practice of stand-up comedy while Dead in the Water offers a revealing glimpse into another morally flexible global industry.
No prizes for noting I then went on a Douglas Adams spree. As you might guess given my vintage I have read these books before but it has been more years than I dare even try to remember. I have to admit I started them on a whim. At the University, we have to get new posts through the Vacancy Oversight Group (VOG). It’s not always the most straightforward of processes. It is not, as far as I know, staffed by Vogons.°
“They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.”
It made me laugh though. And, rather happily, I went and enjoyed Douglas Adams’ wonderful books again. That, in turn, brought me to some more science fiction. After making a pratt of myself in a meeting where I managed to half remember the title of Liu’s book, I decided to give it the read it merited. (Actually I should say, ‘two-thirds’ remembered as I called it the two-body problem. Muppet.)
I am also now in the process of reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir°. I am halfway through the audiobook and it is superb in that format.