The Escape Artist (Matt Seaton)

Matt Seaton

The Escape Artist

A thankfully short and succinct book (see last one I read) which gets to the point clearly and quickly. A quick run through is man becomes cycling obsessive, finds how to fit in with partner, eventually has kids which stymies racing, starts cycling again, wife is terminally ill and how cycling fits into that, new partner and older kids leads to cycling again, briefly. The interest is in the description of both being an amateur racing cyclist and also how it interferes with the rest of life. Or rather how the rest of life interferes with cycle racing. Very interesting as a cyclist and probably for those who aren't. Written with honesty, a lot of humour and an obvious passion for cycling. And the rest of life too. I wonder what my wife Debbie will think of it. Although she cycles I'm not sure "cyclist" would be top of her descriptions of herself. Probably in the top 3 for me.

The Last Man (Mary Shelley)

Mary Shelley

The Last Man

I thought I'd read this having gone through Covid which is no means as bad as this plague book. Mary describes the slow descent of the human race being killed off by plague until, well you've guessed it. The interest is in the human stories of how folk cope. Having said that it reads as if it was written by a monarchist sexist rather than the daughter of feminist and anarchist philosophers. It goes on about how the heir to the thrown and other well born men are the only ones with leadership qualities and that the common people are just sheep and not very intelligent ones at that. Women are ideally those who dote on their husbands and children at any expense of their own welfare or happiness. My dodgy Amazon copy (not the one in the pic) ran to 400 pages and to be honest the story could have been written in about 100 without significantly reducing it's appeal. The wording is very wordy with extremely long descriptions often repeating themselves over and over. I usually like a bit of meandering but this was way too much. However despite all this I persevered and got through to the end with the LAST MAN (as my edition put it). Oh, of course he was English as the only nationality worth saving and the rest of the nations were killed off. I'm sure there is a lot to read into the novel if you are an expert on Byron and Percy Shelley but I'm not so maybe a lot was lost on me. Even so strange read really and not as good as Frankenstein by a long long way.