Category Archives: Literature

Len Deighton on Etonians

Posted on October 10, 2019 by odeboyz

Eton, Oxbridge, Buddha class: sadistic, self-sufficient apparatchiks who controlled Whitehall by stealth, wealth and consanguinity and — no matter how friendly — inevitably closed ranks against intruders like me. Len Deighton. Hope (1995) (Kindle Locations 1945-1947). HarperCollins UK. Chris

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Book Review: Laurent Binet ~ The 7th Function of Language (translated Sam Taylor) (2018)

Posted on October 8, 2019 by odeboyz

Binet wrote the brilliant historical novel HHhH (2013) about the assassination of Heydrich in Prague in 1942. Naturally I bought this new book, without reading a review, and found myself engaging with a French intellectual. It was very bracing. The … Continue reading →

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Ten Golden Oldie books for Christmas, 2019

Posted on September 26, 2019 by odeboyz

Christmas is the book buying season with shelves full of celebrity cookbooks, autobiographies, star novelists and so on. They’re all sold at premium prices. Meanwhile there are millions of books which are superb and can be bought for a fraction … Continue reading →

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Wittgenstein as a (failed) teacher

Posted on September 2, 2019 by odeboyz

For our own part, we struck Wittgenstein as intolerably stupid.1 He would denounce us to our faces as unteachable, and at times he despaired of getting us to recognize what sort of point he was trying to get across to … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Len Deighton ~ Faith (1994)

Posted on August 26, 2019 by odeboyz

It was Deighton’s misfortune to be a brilliant author at the same time as John le Carre was also writing. Salieri had a similar problem with Mozart! So why read Deighton? I returned to Deighton after 25 years and was … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Oliver Bullough ~ Moneyland: Why thieves and crooks now rule the world and how to take it back (2018)

Posted on August 12, 2019 by odeboyz

There is an investigative book. Like all investigative books it offers revelations, which alter our perception of the foundations of society itself. Misha Glenny’s McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime (2008) is the grand-father of the genre. His book is now so … Continue reading →

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Book Review: John Carreyrou ~ Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018)

Posted on July 29, 2019 by odeboyz

Without trivialising this wonderful book I was reminded of a joke as I followed the career of Elizabeth Holmes: Q. What’s a gold mine? A. A hole in the ground owned by a liar Elizabeth worshipped Steve Jobs and Bill … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Sebastian Horsley ~ Dandy in the underworld: an unauthorised autobiography (2007)

Posted on July 1, 2019 by odeboyz

If you like train crash autobiographies this is for you. His family were rich and he was unconstrained from his earliest moments. Sebastian was a psychopath towards himself. He fell in love with Jimmy Boyle, a Scottish murderer, who was … Continue reading →

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Book Review: C Northcote Parkinson ~ Parkinson’s Law or the pursuit of progress (1957)

Posted on May 26, 2019 by odeboyz

This book is one of the most influential books that has been written. Like Catch-22 it has entered the language and the psyche of even those who haven’t read it. Parkinson’s Law is brutally simple. “Work expands so as to … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Attica Locke~ Bluebird, Bluebird (2017)

Posted on May 20, 2019 by odeboyz

The shocking thing about this book is that it’s a twenty-first century novel published exactly fifty years after ‘In The Heat Of The Night’ was released. The film and Attica Locke’s novel are set in the Deep South. In east … Continue reading →

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