Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style2019 / Ebook / 291 pages / USA
***
Reading about how to read and write right makes me feel productive. A veteran proofreader offers handy tips for those writing or proofing in American English, others can work it out. I got quite a few notes out of it. [AU: Are all the Trump digressions really necessary though?]
2019 / Audiobook / 310 pages / USA
***
Whether he's being selective or not, these relentless statistics are heavy. I hope some of the other civilisations out there fare better, we're done for.
Stewart Lee, March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019
***
As much as I'll always venerate Lee, I've never followed his journalism with much enthusiasm. I enjoy his antagonistically weird style, but preferred the previous, more varied assortment over this one's dogged theme. Padding it out with a stand-up transcript creates the problem that an intervening show has been skipped over in the chronicles now. When are you going to annotate Carpet Remnant World, mate?
2019 / Audiobook / 432 pages / Canada
***
Sequels are rarely necessary, but if you found the first book excessively grim and hopeless, Children of The Handmaid's Tale will provide some much-needed, hard-earned relief. Eventually.
Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth
2019 / Audiobook/ebook / 656 pages / UK
****
I re-read Pullman's classic trilogy in-between the prequel and this sequel, so got more out of the continuing story of the almost-grown-up Lyra and Pantalaimon, respectively, than I did its scene-setting predecessor. It's similarly slow and ponderous, and the unambiguously magical setting feels considerably more humdrum and non-escapist than it did in Lyra's dimension-hopping youth. This is, of course, Pullman's heavy-handed point, and although it makes for a much duller and disposable trilogy, I'm still on board and the finale's likely going to be my most eagerly-awaited book of the next few years, credulous fanboy that I am.
