Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 9

“Q” by Christina Dalcher (2020)

“It’s impossible to know what you would do to escape a shitty marriage and give your daughters a fair shot at success.”

I was never a big fan of exams, and actually haven’t taken one in over fifteen years. I don’t miss the two hours of silence, the careful turning over of pages, the stress of trying to remember what exactly a covalent bond is or what Hamlet was really wanging on about. The idea, then, of a world where exams rule, doesn’t exactly make me want to set up my holiday plans.

In the ne...

“At Home” by Bill Bryson (2010)

“Some time after we moved into a former Church of England rectory in a village of tranquil anonymity in Norfolk, I had occasion to go up into the attaci to look for the source of a slow but mysterious drip.”

Bill Bryson had just finished writing A Short History of Nearly Everything, when he had cause to go into his attic, as mentioned in the above quote. I’ve read that book and it’s an outstanding introduction to pretty much every concept in physics, chemistry and biology that you could ever nee...

“They Both Die At The End” by Adam Silvera (2017)

“Death-Cast is calling with the warning of a lifetime – I’m going to die today.”

Death is something that probably plays on the minds of many of us, far more than we even realise or would admit. I think the pandemic didn’t help with that. Having the knowledge of when or how you’re going to die seems a recurring theme in fiction – my TBR pile alone contains at least one other right now – and it’s interesting to see how different authors take it on. Here’s Adam Silvera’s version.

Mateo and Rufus bo...

“Under The Rainbow” by Celia Laskey (2020)

“I’m sitting in second-period biology, where I should be diagramming a chain of DNA but instead I’m diagramming something way more fascinating: the back of Jake Strommer’s neck.”

Acceptable of “alternative lifestyles” (a horrible phrase, actually) feels like it’s constantly wavering. There’s always someone that is needed as a scapegoat, it seems. The queer community has always struggled, and every time we think things are improving, there will be a news story about some horrific hate crime that ...

“Arsenic For Tea” by Robin Stevens (2015)

“Something dreadful has happened to Mr Curtis.”

I return at last to the Wells and Wong Detective Agency, to find, as I suspected, that these two are just the next in the long line of fictional detectives cursed to have murder happen around them at all times.

It’s the summer holidays and, after the excitement of solving a murder at Deepdean School for Girls, Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are ready to relax at Daisy’s family seat, Fallingford, for her fourteenth birthday. As family and friends descen...

“How To Produce Comedy Bronze” by Jon Plowman (2018)

“Before I start this is really just to give you, the reader, a bit of background about the whens and whats and wheres of me, the writer.”

If you know comedy well, you at least know the name Jon Plowman. He’s the rarest of things in television – a background chap who has become famous himself. There aren’t many, as most of the limelight goes to the actors and presenters, but behind their shiny façade are dozens of hardworking directors, writers, camera operators, sound engineers, location scouts ...

“The Victorian Chaise-Longue” by Marghanita Laski (1953)

“‘Will you give me your word of honour.’ said Melanie, ‘that I am not going to die?'”

Persephone Books is one of those little publishing houses that has found its niche. Based in Bath, they specialise in forgotten authors – mostly female – from the twentieth century who have been out of print or otherwise neglected. While mostly printing fiction, they also print some non-fiction. Persephone has dug up a good number of gems, including this, which was one of the books that made up my beloved The B...

“The Appeal” by Janice Hallett (2021)

“As discussed, it is best you know nothing before you read the enclosed.”

Another week, another murder in the fictional world. But this time it’s all over and done with – but what if it wasn’t solved correctly?

Things are getting dramatic in the small town of Lockwood. It seems that things are going to be fraught enough with the casting of the amateur dramatic society’s staging of All My Sons, but that’s soon taken over by the horrible news that two-year-old Poppy, granddaughter of the town’s mo...

“The Plot” by Jean Hanff Korelitz (2021)

“Jacob Finch Bonner, the once promising author of the ‘New and Noteworthy’ (The New York Times Book Review) novel The Invention of Wonder, let himself into the office he’d been assigned on the second floor of Richard Peng Hall…”

Coming up with plots is one of the hardest bits of writing, other than actually sitting down and putting the time in to write it. This seems to be why big companies love a remake – no one has to bother coming up with a new plot. They say, though, there are only seven plo...

“Packing For Mars” by Mary Roach (2010)

“To the rocket scientist, you are a problem.”

Humans are particularly designed for life on Earth. This is great for where we spend most of our time, as we can cope with all the gravity, air, water and nature that we’ve grown up around. When it comes to going into space, we’re kinda screwed. In this excellent book, Mary Roach finds out what it takes to go into space and whether a Mars mission is really feasible.

Containing many interviews with those at NASA, JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency), as w...