nonfiction – Yeah nah.

Book reviews: ten not-so-rapid

October 21, 2025October 22, 2025 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Well well well. It appears that the whole keep-up-to-date-with-reviews intention is something that withers in the overwhelming heat of oh-shit-work-deadlines and oh-shit-spring-gardening.

Pictured: the Australian outdoors

Consequently, it’s been a while since I’ve written. The good news (for me!) is that I’ve not stopped reading, and so have a raft of things to pontificate about now that I’ve finally got some time to get thoughts down.

(I was considering some kind of Droste effect of a photograph of me editing this post editing this post editing this post but I realised that I lack the technical elan to carry this out without using AI, and given that the world already looks like the image above due to people using this fucked tech to accelerate the Rule 34 singularity, that you could use your brain to picture it instead. I dunno, maybe your version is more handsome or charming or something. We live in hope.)

(Also, did you know that Microsoft once had an OS called ‘Singularity‘? I assume ‘Torment Nexus‘ was taken.)

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Book reviews: serial killers, too much booze, Japan, film horror, fascist yoga, subs, viaducts and goths

August 11, 2025August 18, 2025 CaptainFezLeave a comment

That’s quite a mouthful.

The reason we’re dealing with this random assemblage of topics is because once more I’ve been unable to keep up with the whole “write a review after you’ve finished five books” thing. So this time around you’re getting ten for the price of five.

Which is nothing, as this blog is free. So you get good (reviews) for nothing? Sweet.

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Book reviews: thirtysomething

June 9, 2025June 9, 2025 CaptainFez1 Comment

It seems I am eternally late in writing up these reviews. I would like to say that’s down to my overwhelming desire to read as opposed to my overwhelming draw towards lethargy, but you and I both know that’d be a lie.

So to make up for the time between posting – admittedly there’s been trips away and lots of work in between – I’m giving you ten reviews today. Not sure if that qualifies as a punishment for me or for you, but let’s embark on this journey together.

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Book reviews: a buncha fours (and a five)

April 10, 2025April 10, 2025 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Not much in the way of preamble, now: here’s another tranche of book reviews. Delighted that they all were cracking reads, which I assume means I’m going to read an absolutely terrible piece of shit next as some kind of literary karmic revenge.

I wonder what sort of literary hat suits me LOL it’s a dunce cap I already know.

We’ll see.

(Although I’m already reading something that’s a three-star at best so hopefully I can channel all the due shittiness into that one and thus escape any more dire reads than are absolutely necessary.)

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Book review: Shutting Out the Sun

October 2, 2023October 4, 2023 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Generated its Own Lost Generation by Michael Zielenziger.
My rating: three stars

Japan is a country that’s had a Bit Of A Time. At the end of WWII is was bombed into atomic submission (twice) by the nation that would become the defacto dictator of political structure and positions of power, it experienced unprecedented growth and became one of the richest countries in the world.

Then, of course, there was a bubble and everything went tits-up. Security was no longer assured. Birth rates fell. Productivity fell through the floor. Entrenched ways of working started to inhibit growth, rather than spur it to nation-envying heights. And millions of adults locked themselves away from the world in voluntary seclusion, becoming hikikomori, individuals choosing to withdraw from the world entirely, often placing burdens on the familial unit.

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Book review: a few months’ worth, why not?

August 22, 2023August 22, 2023 CaptainFez1 Comment

As is eternally the case, I’m behind on my book reviews. Way more behind than I’ve been in quite a while. This post is three times as long as the last one.

(TWENTY-FOUR BOOKS WHAT THE HELL MAN.)

I mean, I did get made permanent at my new job. I did go to Dark Mofo (aka Goth Schoolies), though this – depressingly – turned out to be much more lame than expected. And I did catch COVID after three years of avoiding the bloody thing, giving me further evidence that I should really stay the fuck home as much as possible.

(Which, to be fair, probably counts as my House Words.)

Point is, there’s been a bit on. And so with a meagre clutch of excuses, let’s get to the books I’ve been reading since I last graced your eyeballs.

(Mercifully, I’ve been doing a bit more reading which, if nothing else, makes me feel a bit better. YMMV, mind.)

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Book reviews: Trick Mirror and Toxic

September 23, 2022December 31, 2022 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Two reviews for the price of one! Well, I guess they’re all free, so that argument probably doesn’t hold much water. Anyway, I recently powered through two books of nonfiction about important issues, so it made sense to whack ’em both in here.

SERIOUS BUSINESS.

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Book review: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

September 18, 2022December 31, 2022 CaptainFez1 Comment

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber
My rating: three stars

If ever there was a title to get me through the door, then this was it. How could I resist? The thing I didn’t know when I began Bullshit Jobs, though, was that Graeber’s position wasn’t that work as a whole was bullshit.

This I had to learn. (See, there’s also plain shit jobs, which are very different from bullshit jobs.)

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A reading recap (2021)

December 30, 2021 CaptainFez1 Comment

This year, I had intended to write reviews of everything I read.

Obviously, with this year being this year I haven’t been able to do that for a lot of the books I ploughed through. I really wanted to record some thoughts on them, because it’s an important part of the reading process, for me: it helps bed down each book in my mind, so that I’m not taken by surprise halfway through an unintended reread by a plot development that suddenly reminds me that oh yeah, I’ve read this before.

Part of my process this year has involved the taking of notes to serve as a sort of memory aid for my reading. Generally, they require a Rosetta Stone to be sifted through, even by me, so they’re not particularly enlightening on their own, but they do allow me to crack out a couple of brief thoughts about what I’ve read this year.

Yes, there is a certain type of pen I like to use while writing these. No, they’re probably not very profound. But hey, there’s two notebooks full of them this year, so I guess that’s meaningful.

So that’s what I’m doing here.

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Book review: Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom

February 28, 2021 CaptainFez2 Comments

Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom by Nik Cohn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.

I came to this book as many did, I suspect, because it featured on that list of David Bowie’s 100 favourite books which circulated a couple of years ago. (The list also is explored in a podcast, if you’re interested.)

It makes sense that Bowie would be a fan of this work, given that it’s an enthusiastic, bitchy exploration of early rock. After all, the work is titled for Little Richard’s protean good-time yawp from ‘Tutti Fruitti’, the song that made Bowie “see God”.

After a couple of years of looking, I found a copy replete with terrifying cover. It was written in 1968 and revised in 1972. Kit Lambert, erstwhile manager of The Who introduces the work and sets things rolling: the text covers a brief period in music, but one of supreme importance for everything rock-related that came afterwards. All that’s covered is the period from Bill Haley’s initial popularity until 1966 – that’s it.

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