Mike Futcher (Author of Void Station One)

Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it Mr Wilman’s Motoring Adventure: Top Gear, Grand Tour, Clarkson and Me by Andy Wilman	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
"… we really missed the simple days, and we knew there was no way we could ever get them back." (pg. 382) While it lacks the comedic flair and writing skill of And on That Bombshell, the memoir of Top Gear scriptwriter Richard Porter, Mr Wilman's Moto ...more
4 hours, 22 min ago · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Mr Wilman’s Motoring Adventure by Andy Wilman. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Mr Wilman’s Motoring Adventure by Andy Wilman <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it Rhyme and Reason: A Short History of British Poetry from the #1 bestselling author of The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A very agreeable book about a subject that strikes ordinary people with fear: English poetry. Author Mark Forsyth shows us that from its origins in Chaucer, poetry was for centuries as natural an expression as breathing, something that entertained an ...more
Nov 17, 2025 02:57PM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok The land of sweet forever by Harper Lee	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I never expected to react to a Harper Lee book with indifference, but this week the newly-released The Land of Sweet Forever managed it. To Kill a Mockingbird is an undisputed masterpiece, of course, and a wonderful read besides, and even Go Set a Wa ...more
Nov 01, 2025 04:14PM · 2 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The land of sweet forever by Harper Lee. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The land of sweet forever by Harper Lee <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I went into Art Spiegelman's celebrated Maus with my usual scepticism regarding comic books, and even the prestigious gongs thrown its way – such as the Pulitzer Prize – hadn't softened it. But reading the book did. If there's plenty more Holocaust l ...more
Oct 23, 2025 02:38PM · 2 likes · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
It's difficult to say much about The Comedy of Errors, because it doesn't seek to say much itself. It's a light, artificial whirligig of a play in which two identical twins of the same name, who are unaware of each other, are mistaken for each other ...more
Oct 14, 2025 12:08PM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it Necklace and Calabash by Robert van Gulik	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Necklace and Calabash was a bit of a shot in the dark for me – and one that, while it hit the target, was sadly nowhere near the bullseye. It was a left-field choice: a detective story set in Ancient China written in English by a Dutch diplomat in th ...more
Oct 07, 2025 03:23PM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A wonderful little book that's so slight and ethereal it eluded my attempts to really get a hold of it. A Month in the Country sees an older man looking back on a period of his youth when, just back from the horrors of the Great War, he worked in a q ...more
Sep 27, 2025 01:32PM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok Strange News from Another Star by Hermann Hesse	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A disappointing collection of short stories from Hermann Hesse, who decides to write his ideas here as fairytales and dreams. This can often leave them clunky (perhaps only in translation?) and uncompelling; while one or two of the eight stories here ...more
Sep 14, 2025 07:42AM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I was sceptical of reading the Tao Te Ching before I opened it. Often these short, simple ancient books of philosophy don't resonate well for a modern audience. Such has been their influence that their once-revolutionary thoughts can be taken by a mo ...more
Sep 09, 2025 10:52AM · 1 like · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I opened Vintage 1954 knowing it would be a harmless bit of fluff, but I was still disappointed that it didn't have more to it. I didn't mind the shallowness of the concept, in which a group of Parisians drink a bottle of 1954 vintage wine and find t ...more
Sep 03, 2025 05:06AM · 1 like · like · see review

Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it

Mr Wilman’s Motoring Adventure by Andy Wilman

Mr Wilman’s Motoring Adventure: Top Gear, Grand Tour, Clarkson and Me
by Andy Wilman

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"… we really missed the simple days, and we knew there was no way we could ever get them back." (pg. 382)

While it lacks the comedic flair and writing skill of And on That Bombshell, the memoir of Top Gear scriptwriter Richard Porter, Mr Wilman's Moto ...more

Mike Futcher rated a book liked it

Rhyme and Reason: A Short History of British Poetry from the #1 bestselling author of The Etymologicon
by Mark Forsyth (Goodreads Author)

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A very agreeable book about a subject that strikes ordinary people with fear: English poetry. Author Mark Forsyth shows us that from its origins in Chaucer, poetry was for centuries as natural an expression as breathing, something that entertained an A very agreeable book about a subject that strikes ordinary people with fear: English poetry. Author Mark Forsyth shows us that from its origins in Chaucer, poetry was for centuries as natural an expression as breathing, something that entertained and served as communication, something that had rhythm. He leads us gently through iambic pentameter and the variations on it which followed over the centuries, building up an appreciation of how poetry evolved and how verse was a part of the day-to-day communication and entertainment for many generations of English people.

In doing so, Forsyth shows us how disappointing it is that poetry reached the point that a book like this Rhyme & Reason, gently coaxing us like a frightened deer through a 'scary' topic, is even considered necessary. Poetry lost its natural place to radio and other technological and social changes, and was then killed off entirely when it was placed into the curriculum and joylessly dissected by generations of unwilling schoolchildren, in complete contrast to what it was intended for.

As he takes us on this journey, Forsyth shows us how the history of English poetry is not what we would assume; how poets that are lionised today were obscure or even unknown in their time, and only later became famous to fit interpretations of their era. Blake, for example, should be labelled a 20th-century poet because that was when he became famous (pg. 190), whilst the anti-war poets that have become synonymous with our understanding of World War One were almost entirely unknown in their time. The popular poems at the time were about how the sacrifice was justified, and are now long forgotten.

As we go along, Forsyth fleshes out the evolution of English verse, showing for example how Byron brought along the popular idea of the poet's biography contributing to the experience of the poem itself. He gives us a sense – incredible to us today, considering poetry's relegated and even maligned status – of just how central verse was to some generations (on page 61, he notes that the famous Globe theatre held a proportion of the London population that would be equivalent to 150,000 today – modern Wembley holds 90,000).

There are some mis-steps – I thought the decision to omit Shakespeare entirely from mention was a glaring mistake, particularly as Forsyth is then finally obliged to discuss him in a lengthy Postscript – but in general this is a wonderful night-light in the now dark room of poetry, showing that there are no scary monsters on the wall or under the bed here, only wonderful lines that in the last hundred years we have mistreated by forgetting our roots and by dissecting, analysing and hyper-educating them rather than allowing them to breathe. Rhyme & Reason is a commendable step in remedying this injustice. ...more

Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok

The land of sweet forever
by Harper Lee

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I never expected to react to a Harper Lee book with indifference, but this week the newly-released The Land of Sweet Forever managed it. To Kill a Mockingbird is an undisputed masterpiece, of course, and a wonderful read besides, and even Go Set a Wa ...more

Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing

The Complete Maus
by Art Spiegelman

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I went into Art Spiegelman's celebrated Maus with my usual scepticism regarding comic books, and even the prestigious gongs thrown its way – such as the Pulitzer Prize – hadn't softened it. But reading the book did. If there's plenty more Holocaust l I went into Art Spiegelman's celebrated Maus with my usual scepticism regarding comic books, and even the prestigious gongs thrown its way – such as the Pulitzer Prize – hadn't softened it. But reading the book did. If there's plenty more Holocaust literature that actually delves deeper and darker into that incomprehensible nightmare, the main power of Maus is that it gets you to drop your guard. The recasting of Jews as mice and Germans as cats is more than mere allegory, and certainly more than a reader-friendly gimmick; what it does is open up something more intuitive in our brains. It prompts that trusting, effortless comprehension that we feel as children when reading stories such as Aesop's fables.

Our armour and artifice removed, the raw, banal horror of the Holocaust strikes us all the more violently when reading Maus. Whether it's small moments of wretched humanity like a grateful prisoner bursting into tears when Vladek gifts him a pair of wooden clogs that actually fit him, only for the reader to be told matter-of-factly in the following few panes that he was gassed soon after, or the broader tragic notes such as the funnelling of exhausted, meek victims towards the ovens, the highly visual and uncompromising, matter-of-fact telling of it hits us in a way that genuine novels and even film cannot.

Maus has other merits, not least its distinctive art style, its innovative meta-fictional approach and its highlighting of the ways in which survivors (and their children) carried the guilt and weight and trauma for decades after the camps, but it's this quality – the mere existence of Maus in the medium of a comic book – that gives it its force. Film presents a story starkly and with 'realism'; novels require our attentive engagement. Both approaches we can rationalise and protect ourselves against to some extent, and are adept at doing so throughout our lives, often unconsciously. But for a reader there's no road map for navigating your way through this disturbing topic in the comic book medium, and so when you read it, it's as though you're learning it for the first time, unvarnished and unsanitised. Your brain actually has to process it, rather than routinely file it away with assumptions and its safeguards. It's a deeply unusual feeling, and one of the more singular reading experiences I've had in quite some time. ...more

Mike Futcher rated a book liked it

The Comedy of Errors
by William Shakespeare

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It's difficult to say much about The Comedy of Errors, because it doesn't seek to say much itself. It's a light, artificial whirligig of a play in which two identical twins of the same name, who are unaware of each other, are mistaken for each other ...more

Mike Futcher rated a book liked it

Necklace and Calabash
by Robert van Gulik

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Necklace and Calabash was a bit of a shot in the dark for me – and one that, while it hit the target, was sadly nowhere near the bullseye. It was a left-field choice: a detective story set in Ancient China written in English by a Dutch diplomat in th ...more

Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it

A Month in the Country
by J.L. Carr

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A wonderful little book that's so slight and ethereal it eluded my attempts to really get a hold of it. A Month in the Country sees an older man looking back on a period of his youth when, just back from the horrors of the Great War, he worked in a q A wonderful little book that's so slight and ethereal it eluded my attempts to really get a hold of it. A Month in the Country sees an older man looking back on a period of his youth when, just back from the horrors of the Great War, he worked in a quaint Yorkshire village in the 1920s restoring a painting on the wall of the local church. He made a few friendly connections, fell for the vicar's beautiful young wife (an unrequited love) and spent time alone, focused on his restoration work while village life moved quietly around him. In short, he found some peace in his soul and, in his old age, recalls it fondly.

This is all the book is, and to be honest it's enough. As much as I would have liked there to be more structure: for the characters to have arcs, for themes to emerge, for the prose to dwell on the pastoral beauty of the surroundings, I knew that's not what the book was. As much as I would have liked the relationship with the vicar's wife to find resolution, I know this is how life is, as opposed to novels: a connection failing for want of the right word, a moment of timidity or things left unspoken, an anticlimactic end to your hopes and only 'what ifs' that you file away in your memories for the rest of your days.

J. L. Carr's book is lovely: a slice of pastoral warmth that's not so much a novel but more a snapshot of Eden captured by someone moments before it faded, like those wonderful dreams you have that fall out of memory shortly after you wake, no matter how hard you try to hold on to them. For those of a gentle disposition, Carr's village and the experience of his protagonist represent that feeling of mundane bliss we long for, the place and time when things relent. One finishes the book knowing there would be no greater place to rest than in a quiet English village with good people and simple meals, as you enjoy your work and a beautiful woman comes to speak with you and summer lights the fields with gold and you know it must soon end. For the book to be longer, or more dynamic or literary, would spoil that singular effect. ...more

Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok

Strange News from Another Star
by Hermann Hesse

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1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

A disappointing collection of short stories from Hermann Hesse, who decides to write his ideas here as fairytales and dreams. This can often leave them clunky (perhaps only in translation?) and uncompelling; while one or two of the eight stories here ...more

Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing

Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu

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1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

I was sceptical of reading the Tao Te Ching before I opened it. Often these short, simple ancient books of philosophy don't resonate well for a modern audience. Such has been their influence that their once-revolutionary thoughts can be taken by a mo ...more

Mike Futcher rated a book it was ok

Vintage 1954
by Antoine Laurain

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I opened Vintage 1954 knowing it would be a harmless bit of fluff, but I was still disappointed that it didn't have more to it. I didn't mind the shallowness of the concept, in which a group of Parisians drink a bottle of 1954 vintage wine and find t ...more

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	Void Station One 3.40 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 2023 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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