This is a short Japanese novel about an architect who builds a tower to house criminals. The tower is not a prison but a good quality housing block. The term Homo Miserabilis has been adopted to refer to these people, in contrast to Homo Felix for the rest of the population. This distinction is an attempt to recognise that they are not entirely in control of their own destiny, and to elicit sympathy for them.
This is a psychological indie horror game that is currently on sale on Steam. I played through it on the Steam Deck in a single sitting. It’s short and very engaging. The game is first person, and mostly a walking-sim style game. You explore the ship, talk to the crewmates, and solve simple puzzles.
This is a history book written by David Mitchell, who played Mark Corrigan on Peep Show. I love that show, and I’m interested in history, so thought I’d give this a go. This book sits at an interesting level: he is a comedian rather than a professional historian, so it’s funny, and he’s happy to gloss over details and call people twats. I think he did actually study history though, and I believe he is fascinated by it, so it’s not just a superficial celebrity book.
This is a biography of Terry Pratchett written by his assistant, Rob Wilkins. He says that Pratchett always meant to write an autobiography, and had lots of notes for the beginnings of one, but his early onset Alzheimer’s meant that it was never finished.
I spotted this in WHSmith while waiting for a flight to Hong Kong. I almost bought it, but it turned out I already had a copy on my e-reader. I read some of it while on the flight, but ended up putting it aside, as it really isn’t holiday reading. Once back, I picked it up again and finished it.
This is the third Discworld book, and the first with the witches. It introduces Granny Weatherwax, one of the main characters of the whole series.
I knew a little about Fred and Rose West before reading this. I remember seeing the house in Gloucester on the news when I was a child. This book is the first I’ve read about them, it’s written by someone who was a journalist at the time and was reporting on the case. It prominently features extracts of the interviews that Fred West gave to the police during their investigations.
I read this one on a flight to Hong Kong. It is a non-fiction book about a group of libertarians who decide to all move into a particular town and try to collectively get their ideas adopted in its running. They believe that the government, other than in its most core functions such as national defence, is a tyranny. They refuse to pay any taxes, viewing it as theft, and think nearly all regulations and laws should be repealed. They seem to believe that when they achieve this people will be truly free and come together collectively to build a kind of utopia.
This is an early SNES side-view shmup. My brother had a copy when I was young and I loved it. It’s very hard though, and so I never got far back then. There is a large amount of slowdown as the screen fills with enemies and weapons due to the CPU of the machine being pretty underpowered even for the time.
I played this on my Switch 2, after having rented it from Boomerang Rentals. I love the Pikmin series. The first three I found to all be incredibly charming and relaxing. This one is exactly the same in that regard.
This book feels like two stories in one. The first is in a Federation that appears to be Russia, which is under strict authoritarian control. The president effectively lives forever, as when their body dies the consciousness is passed on to another.
This is the original Metroid game for the NES. I loved Super Metroid, and felt like I should go back and finish the original. I’ve played it several times over the years, but I never got particularly far. The game is incredibly hard, and does not feature a map like the later sequels.
This is actually two games, which were released separately in Japan. They are a spin off of the Ace Attorney series, set in an alternative Victorian England. You play as a Japanese student who unexpectedly becomes a defence attorney. He stows away on a ship to England to join his friend who was travelling to study the English justice system.
This is a dystopian novel by Philip K. Dick, which he described as semi-autobiographical. It tells the story of Robert Arctor and his flatmates and friends, who are drug addicts. Most of them are addicted to a drug called Substance D, or death, which deteriorates the user’s brain over time until they lose track of reality.
This was originally released on the Wii in 2011, and I played it back then. I got very far in, but didn’t finish it. This is the Definitive Edition released on the Switch, which I also played when it was released but never got to the end. This time I thought I’d give it a quick try on the Switch 2 to see what it looks like, and ended up completing it finally. The game is extremely long. I think the timer was around 80 hours when I saw the ending, with plenty for me to do in it if I wanted.