Basically just a string of changed-name anecdotes from his web page and Guardian column, interspersed with wonderful but over-too-quickly plot points. An entertaining read, but a bit exasperating.

Black, bitter 50s philandering and casual, lets-go-down-the-pub-instead poverty. It’d be grim, hateful reading, but for the sparkling dialogue and drifting, perspective-shifting writing style.

Thoroughly digestable musings on thinking, and things to think about. Must remember to go back and read the Rubik’s Cube chapter, when I’ve found my Rubik’s Cube…

Idly picked this up whilst Chrissy was still reading it, and couldn’t quite put it down – compulsive little true-stories of coincidence and improbability, solidly told.

Flip-flop alternate narratives – one of life in grimy, near-future Sydney, and another of a far-future museum guide, from a time when the city has been emptied and made into a tourist attraction…

The lives and the thoughts of six philosophers, and how they’re directly applicable to the problems of human existence. Varyingly useful, straightforward thinking, nicely presented. Great chapter on Seneca.

More good stuff from Ridley – a bit light in places, but he still manages to pull the rug away with some genuine moments of revelatory world-changing floatingness, and an absolutely killer punchline.

A wonderfully mundane and slow-burning story of the cheerful self-referential futility of life and employment.

Excellent crystallisation of the connection between ants and brains and cities and the Internet, with lots of tangents to explore afterwards. Very quaint that the book slightly predates the blogging explosion, though, when flailing around the hopeless lack of feedback and reinforcement in web links. But still very relevant.

A novel about the time and place for insanity. Wonderfully structured, leaping around through time and perspective as the characters and events are gradually shaded in.