1999 / Audiobook / 390 pages / UK
*
If you read the blurb hoping for a conspiracy thriller, or had forgotten that Banks' "mainstream" novels had any traces of the fanciful stripped out of them by the '90s, you'd probably be disappointed by this tediously humdrum romcom take on Chris Carter's Millennium.
2004 / Audiobook / 141 pages / USA
**
I've never got the Beatles obsession, but I like their later albums well enough and could do with knowing them better. This wasn't very illuminating, focusing more on the artists' personal lives and the context than digging into the music like I like. Maybe there's not that much to it.
2010 / Ebook / 300 pages / USA
****
Smarter than the average baby book, this is the usual 21st-century advice backed up by reliable studies and evolutionary biology. We'll see how things turn out.
2014 / Ebook / 113 pages / USA
**
Some timeless tips and old-school cheese packaged with the dubious USP of urgency. I didn't sign up to the course he kept pushing, so he can't be that good.
2014 / Audiobook / 609 pages / UK
***
I'd been disappointed that Mitchell's novels post Cloud Atlas weren't the lesser retreads of that style I'd been expecting, but he got there in the end. Omitting the pastiche aspect, and taking place over a less impressive timeline with more explicit connections, this ends up being the more coherent novel. Never mind.
