Magnificently quiet tale of post-apocalypse, with a 20th century archaeologist (having chanced across a time machine) picking through a deserted future London for clues to the fall of civilisation. The “romance” is thin, but the basic plot is genius.

Quiet malevolence seeps through the winter of three contract fence-builders; more flippantly brutal than Mills’ later work, but it still manages to be beautifully mundane.

Book-as-documentary – extensive quotation from Feynman and his contemporaries, interspersed with photos and only minor editorial comment. Lots of stuff I’ve read quoted elsewhere, but nicely structured and illustrated.

Read this in two bursts; the barrage of references can get a bit overwhelming. Good analysis of world myths and how they all tie back to basic life experiences, all covering suspiciously similar ground.

Excellent meta-view of narrative, anyway; worth reading before writing anything.

Perhaps slightly too well-trodden Murakami terrority (the detached loner narrator, the distant, perfect not-quite-lover), but still a complex origami of the mundane.

Some good ideas and observations, but the actual writing was very lazy and meandering, the general plot very back-of-fag-packet and uninteresting. Gave up a third of the way in.

Excellent threads on terrorism as the punctuation of boredom and the meaning of meaninglessness, but you get the feeling Ballard is uncomfortable and unconvinced by the strength of his middle-class revolution. Still a good read, though.

Signed copy for my work on the infection simulator (“to a valued ally in a noble cause”); an epic and deadpan survival-genre book, with serious little diagrams of fortress preparation and zombie-killing.

Utterly essential reading for anyone who’s working on a zombie-based novel or RPG campaign, or is seriously into the genre, but don’t be fooled by the “humour” label – the one-note survival-parody only goes so far.

Stodgily unreadable – a collection of quite interesting punctuation anecdotes glued together with boilerplate jokey journalism, and heavy, extensive quoting of other people.

Really can’t decide who this is aimed at – it opens by revelling in insane elitism and pedantry and telling the ignorant to fuck off and get a life, then goes on to explain basic apostrophe usage and apologises if the reader already knows this.

Luckily the gift-giver kept the receipt.

Bought purely on the strength of Lynx (one of the games available on Parlett’s web site). A thorough compilation of word games; simultaneously very serious and wonderfully flippant (“one player is sent upstairs to mend the hole in the roof while the others agree on a proverb”). I’ll be keeping it within finding distance.