craig robert martin

The Last Days of Budapest: The Destruction of Europe’s Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II by Adam LeBor My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews

The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was a delightful book, reminding me how great a travel writer Chatwin was. I have followed his footsteps in the mountains of Lijiang and the wind-swept ports of Chilean Patagonia. I have filled Moleskine after Moleskine of fragments during the past 20 years, but none like the delicate observations recorded in Songlines. I started using Moleskine notebooks in 2005 in homage to Chatwin. In France, these notebooks are known as carnets moleskines: 'moleskine', in this case, being its black oilcloth binding. Each time I went to Paris, I would buy a fresh supply from a papeterie in the Rue de l'Áncienne Comédie. The pages were squared and the endpapers held in place with an elastic band. I had numbered them in series. I wrote my name and address on the front page, offering a reward to the finder. To lose a passport was the least of one's worries: to lose a notebook was a catastroph...

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Permutation City by Greg Egan My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was an excellent recommendation from my son. Written in 1992, it is prescient of the modern day, and the crevasse we are attempting to cross in the world of AI. The book covers many philosophical points of consciousness and embodiment. People can make digital ‘copies’ of themselves and allow their alter egos to live on in a digital world that has all the depth and colour of our world, yet is a captive to physical constraints of computing power. Copies can think, and exhibit all that one might ascribe to a conscious being. They can also work and manipulate virtual worlds, and those become sophisticated universes of their own. At times the book’s chronology is confusing, and intentionally blurs the lines between the present, the parallel present, and the far future. It is an engaging read, and a worthy addition to the sci-fi canon. I gave it five stars. View all my reviews

Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-Mile Adventure by Monisha Rajesh My rating: 2 of 5 stars I almost gave this one star. The writer is very dismissive of her fellow travellers and of many of the places she goes. I suggest she reads some Paul Theroux or Bruce Chatwin and learns the craft of travel writing. One star was coming even before she dismissed Singapore in a poorly thought-through sentence: 'a starchy, characterless city with the superficial appeal of Dubai, and the same brutal levels of heat', yet gave pages to the (interesting) account of North Korea. In places, the writing is poor, yet there is some humour, which raised the review to two stars. I was angry about the Singapore comment for much of the book. She refers to a chap she met in London who had been interned at Changi during WW2, and uses his recollections and reflections a few times to add some historical context to the section on the death railway. She could have gone ...