Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 8

“Five Minds” by Guy Morpuss (2021)

“What to call it?”

The human population is due to hit eight billion in around a month’s time. That’s November 2022, for those of you in the future, already dealing with this. This rapid growth is one of the biggest issues facing humanity now, as we struggle to find space and food for everyone. What we do about the growing numbers, we don’t know, as every idea seems controversial. In Guy Morpuss’s novel, we see one version of how we could solve it.

When the planet’s overpopulation reached critica...

“The Things We Do To Our Friends” by Heather Darwent (2023)

“Three girls dance in front of him.”

Has there always been a genre of “horrible, rich people being horrible and rich to each other”? Sometimes, I find it lacking, but other times, it’s good fun. There is a subset of this for horrible, rich people at university getting caught up in things above and beyond their capabilities. The Secret History may have kicked off the trend, and books like If We Were Villains have followed along nicely. In this new addition to the genre, due out next year, we head...

“Logging Off” by Nick Spalding (2020)

“Oh my God.”

Do we all spend too much time online these days? I know I do. It’s just so easy. Open up Twitter to check something for ten seconds, then suddenly an hour has passed and the book you were meant to read or the dinner you were meant to cook just hasn’t happened. I need to get better at turning the Internet off some evenings, but as this book proves, it’s not always as easy as that.

Andy Bellows is addicted to the Internet. Every waking minute is spent checking Twitter, arguing on Face...

“Reprieve” by James Han Mattson (2021)

“When you got to Cell Five, what did you see?”

Spooky season approaches, so it’s time to dive into some of the creepier tomes on the shelf. I’ve only done a couple of escape rooms in my time, but I’ve enjoyed them. I like the puzzle element, but in this novel, we discover one with a difference.

Quigley House in Lincoln, Nebraska has become renowned for its escape room. Contestants must play through six cells, finding envelopes, until they reach the final cell and can be awarded with a huge cash ...

“Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman” by Lucy Worsley (2022)

“Agatha Christie was sitting quietly on the train when she overheard a stranger saying her name.”

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you’ll know that there are few people in the world more obsessed with Agatha Christie than me. I’m someone who once made a purposeful pilgrimage to her grave. My last birthday was spent in Torquay, in the hotel where she had her honeymoon. She’s the first guest at my fantasy dinner party. I love the woman, and her work. Earlier this year, I read her...

“Red Sauce Brown Sauce” by Felicity Cloake (2022)

“Many people spent 2020 homeschooling their children, or trying to work at the same kitchen table as their four flatmates.”

There are few things I like more – Agatha Christie, the Mr Men, baths, good vodka – than breakfast. It’s the meal that sets us up for the day, and whether it’s just some buttered toast, or the full greasy works, I try never to miss it. Felicity Cloake, food writer for the Guardian, feels similarly. She and I both note that breakfast is one of those things that the British s...

“The Immortalists” by Chloe Benjamin (2018)

“Varya is thirteen.”

It’s not a unique idea in fiction, this: if you could find out when you were going to die, would you? Personally, I don’t think I would. It’s too much pressure. Better to not know, rather than sit and obsess about it and miss out on the life you could be having. After all, what if it’s wrong? But I’m not one of the Gold family.

The Gold children – Varya, Daniel, Klara and Simon – are living in New York at the tail end of the sixties when they learn there’s a woman in the nei...

“Miss Aldridge Regrets” by Louise Hare (2022)

“The doorman barely glanced at me as I approached, slipping past him and down the stairs into the basement club, the stale air thick with cigarette smoke.”

One of the perks of working in a bookshop is occasionally getting your hands on proof copies of novels before they hit the shelves. One of the drawbacks, however, is that my reading list is so long already that by the time I get to said proofs, they’ve already been published. So this is one that has sat on my shelf for ages, but actually came...

“Last One At The Party” by Bethany Clift (2021)

“‘Fuck you!’ Those are the very last words that I spoke to another living person.”

Well, I knew this day would come. Here is the first book I’ve read that actively mentions Covid-19. I sometimes forget that it’s all happening still, or what really did happen. I don’t think we’ve ever really processed it: a whole planet, traumatised. A lot of what’s happened since makes a lot more sense somehow when you put it like that, I think. But it’s part of humanity’s story now, as locked in as the Black De...

Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022

In 2019, I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the first time, with plans to return every year from then on. Unfortunately, something happened in the world and that sort of became an impossibility. Now in 2022, I finally managed to make it back. We travelled up in a scorching week – the first time I’ve ever been to Scotland and not seen any rain – and packed in fifteen shows in five days. Here’s everything we saw…

Ugly Animal Appreciation Society

We opened our week at the biggest arts fest...