Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of the Mathematical Universe by Eugenia Cheng
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are some big numbers out there, footballers earn a jaw dropping amount per year, for what I am not entirely sure… The global economy is around US$107.5 trillion, there are approximately seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains of sand on the earth and it is thought that there are 10 times as many stars as that. All of these numbers are frankly huge, enormous, gargantuan even, but compared to ∞ they are a mere drop in the ocean. In this book, Eugenia Cheng takes us on a journey to the outer reaches of the mathematical universe to contemplate the slightly abstract concept that is infinity. In it she poses various questions about this number, asking if 1 + ∞ is larger than ∞ + 1, are some infinities larger than others, can you fit an infinite number of people in Hilbert’s Hotel and when does a number start becoming irrational.

Thankfully this book has lots of diagrams as Cheng sets about explaining the concepts of infinity, from the very simplest right up to the most detailed. I found most of it straightforward, but occasionally it was fairly tough going. When trying to get your head around infinity has challenged mathematicians for ages so it is not going to be easy for us mere mortals. Cheng endeavours to keep the prose readable, however, someone who has not picked up a maths book since school might struggle with this, but most of the time she gets the concepts across clearly. Overall a good introduction to infinity.

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The Internet is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Where would we be without the internet and the world wide web in particular? Since its conception in the 1960’s (yes really that long ago) it has grown at an exponential rate and has come to permeate our entire lives in a variety of different ways. In its short existence, it has had bubbles as investors have rushed into schemes, made people fortunes as well as almost become as essential as shelter, food and water. For every laudable use for the net to connect like-minded people across the globe there are many dubious activities; theft, fraud, deception and trolling spring to mind. What you also have now is a consolidation of power as the huge monoliths of the web, Facebook, Google, Amazon have brazenly bullied, bought and pushed their way to the top of the virtual pile.

With this concentration of power has come a pervasive surveillance by the state and private companies of every activity that we do online. There is a concentration of wealth in these people that own and run these organisations too. The negative effects that this is having is only just starting to become visible and from what Keen describes is happening in San Francisco with the polarisation of the rich and poor, it is not going to be pleasant as it affects the wider society. He has written an interesting take on the state of the net and some of the subjects reported in the book are quite eye opening. Whether or not we are too late to do anything about it, time will tell. 3.5 stars

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Cleopatra’s Needle: Two Wheels by the Water to Cairo by Anne Mustoe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The inspiration behind this journey is for Anne Mustoe to travel from the site of Cleopatra’s Needle on the Thames in London to the place in Egypt where the original monument came from, Heliopolis. Once again she would travel alone on her bike and to add to the challenge would follow the course of rivers and seas where possible. Her journey will take through four European countries and across the Alps before crossing the Adriatic and heading down towards where Europe meets Aisa; Turkey. The last part of her ride takes her through what is now a very troubled area of the world, as she passes Syria, Lebanon and into Egypt.

This is the first of Anne Mustoe’s books that I have read. She is a pragmatic, no nonsense type of character, who does not let most things phase her. She suffers from a knee injury, is robbed, cycles up and over the Alps and runs out of whisky and gets very wet more times than she cares to remember. She cycles solo most of the time but is joined on occasions by friends. As she rolls along the route, we are told about the people she meets and learns about the history of places that she passes through. The prose is quite matter of fact as Mustoe writes in a straightforward and competent way. It is not the best cycling travel book I have read but makes for enjoyable light reading. Will be reading some of her others, as this was one of three I picked up at the same time. 2.5 Stars

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An English Guide to Birdwatching by Nicholas Royle
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Lily Lynch and Stephen Osmer are your archetypical fashionable couple; she is an artist and he is a journalist and critic and they are heavily involved with the glamorous arty people of London. Osmer likes to write confrontational stuff about all sorts of subjects, including about an author and critic both called Nicholas Royle. Silas and Ethel Woodlock have retired to the Sussex coast to spend their final years near the sea, but what they had not taken into account is how much noise and distress the gulls would cause them. At a loss for things to do in retirement, Silas takes up creative writing and starts to think that he might have found something that he could enjoy.

When he finds his first short story ‘Gulls’ in a book called Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Birds, he is not very happy. In fact, he is livid, absolutely livid, because the story has been attributed to an author called Nicholas Royle. Woodlock knows it is not Royle’s as it is the same as the manuscript that was left in a pub several months earlier after he had passed it to Ethel to read. Woodlock finds out where Nicolas Royle lives and in a moment of fury, decides that he needs to go and talk to him about this. He arrives mid-way through a party and lets rip at Royle before events take a much sinister turn.

There were parts of this novel that I liked; the way that the Woodlock’s fitted each other well, but were unsettled by the move to a new area. In real life, there are two authors called Nicholas Royle, who are frequently muddled and I liked the way that he has picked up on this and made it an integral part of the book. I liked the short essays called Hides, but it really jarred as it didn’t fit in with the novel and I am not quite sure why the conclusion of the novel is in the final essay. It is ok, but not fantastic.

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The Secret Life: Three True Stories by Andrew O’Hagan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Modern society has become utterly reliant on the internet. It is pervasive and has many positive and negative aspects, from the way that it can bring people together to the troubling undercurrents of the darknet. In The Secret Life, Andrew O’Hagan brings us three different stories, one of a man who courted public opinion whilst holding it in contempt, a man who was thought to be someone else and shies away from the spotlight and a final story about a man who does not exist. All of these individuals live in the hazy zone between real and online life.

His first story concerns Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, the website that looks to get under every government’s skin. Assange had signed a fairly substantial deal with Canongate to tell his life story, and O’Hagan is brought in to interview, document and prepare a readable text ready for publication. Assange is a hugely complex character who suffers from justified paranoia, vanity and narcissistic tendencies, who wants to portray a particular image of himself and his website; he reviles excessive state controls that some countries apply, whilst missing the irony of applying similar rules to those that work for and with him. O’Hagan somehow manages to cobble together a manuscript for the publishers, but has come to realise that Assange doesn’t want to publish at all, merely to have the prestige of being an author.

The second essay describes how O’Hagan uses the identity of a deceased young man, Ronnie Pinn, to construct and fake real and online profile. After obtaining a birth certificate he starts by signing up to a couple of social media platforms, as the fake identity grows and the credibility of the identity is established, he starts to venture into the murky world of the dark net where illegal items are easy to obtain. It is all simple to do, but it didn’t really tell O’Hagan who Ronnie Pinn actually was, the more he investigated he realised that he was a much of a ghost in real life as he was on the net. Until one day he found out that his mother was still alive.

The third and final story is called the ‘The Satoshi Affair’ about the mysterious and elusive creator of Bitcoins. For ages no one really knew who Satoshi Nakamoto was, or if it was a group of people who pulled together the code to make the blockchain database that is the foundation of the Bitcoin credibility. There was lots of speculation as to the identity. O’Hagan was then asked to write the story of Satoshi Nakamoto, who may be an Australian web developer and former academic called Craig Wright. He had just avoided being arrested shortly after it was suggested by a website that he was Nakamoto and had headed to the UK with his wife. As O’Hagan interviews him, there are points of lucidity and certain moment when no one is actually sure if he is trying to pull the most elaborate hoax ever.

O’Hagan has bought together three fascinating stories of the modern day blend of real world and online personas and identity. It is quite shocking is some ways just what someone can achieve and obtain in the dark recesses of the net with little or no effort. The essay about Assange made for entertaining reading, just to see what he was actually like from an insiders view was quite an eye opener too. Craig Wright’s story was the hardest to get a grip on, even though he is a clever bloke and more than capable of coming up with the blockchain, there are still elements of doubt as to whether he is the legendary Nakamoto or not. Overall I thought that this was an enjoyable book of our modern age. 3.5 stars.

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The Reassembler by James May
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Modern gadgets and machines are designed to have almost no user serviceable parts, even a washing machine these days will need a technician to plug in a laptop to verify the fault before he is able to repair it. Gone are the days where most things could be repaired, though James May argues that this was because products were expensive, not particularly well made, often went wrong and so needed repairing and routine maintenance. He prefers modern gadgets that don’t need repairing or fiddling with to function. For May, reassembling items is a form of therapy; the act of creation calms and stimulates at the same time. That, and he has a thing about having the correct tools and screwdrivers in particular.

This is a nice tie into the series with lots of colour pictures from the workshop that he used on TV as he takes a pile of nicely laid out parts and makes a lawnmower and a guitar and an old Bakelite telephone. It is full of his rambling philosophy and dry sardonic wit, with short essays explaining how a specific item works, though sadly there is not as much text as I’d like. I completely get why he needs to assemble things, it is a theme that seems to be gaining traction elsewhere that using our hands to make and create is good for the soul. As an engineer (electronics and mechanical) I would have liked more detail on the items he was reassembling, but this an ideal book for the general reader.

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Night Trains: The Rise and Fall of the Sleeper by Andrew Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Modern travel is ubiquitous. For a startlingly small amount of money, you can fly to a lot of places around Europe with the budget airlines. This does involve having to get to some slightly obscure airports at some unearthly hour of the morning, pass through a moderately humiliating security check before winging your way to the sun. Have the days of glamourous travel final vanished? However, there are still ways of arriving in a foreign city feeling refreshed without having to suffer the cattle class air transport and that is to find the night trains that are still running across Europe.

Andrew Martin decides to see if they are still a viable method of travelling across the continent and to see if the glamour of the past age has rubbed off on the modern transport. Martin catches various trains across Europe; The Blue Train from the Gare de Lyon in the heart of Paris to Nice on the Mediterranean coast, The ‘Orient Express’, a train that is a legend in its own right, though they no longer recommend carrying a pistol. He travels into the twilight zone on The Nordland Railway, one of Europe’s most scenic train journeys. He takes the Berlin Night Express that travels from the Swedish city of Malmö to Berlin before heading back to Paris for The Sud Express and then Paris-Venice.

This is part travelogue and partly a nostalgic look back at the golden age of night express trains that used to flow back and forwards across Europe. It is a more expensive way to travel, but whilst it doesn’t have the prestige of years past with their gilded dining carriages and champagne flowing, going to sleep in one country and waking up in another, definitely makes the travel element a major part of the experience. It is still a relatively safe form of travel that attracts a variety of characters and because it is not always straightforward it makes for interesting reading. It was a way of him reliving some of the holidays that he had as a small child travelling Europe with his father and sister, arranged for by The British Railwaymen’s Touring Club in the early 1970’s. I have read a number of Martin’s books in the past and this is another that he has written that is definitely worth reading. 3.5 stars

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