New Books of 2015 pt.3
This is the third batch of physical books that I have acquired this year. The reasons and methods of acquisition are more diverse than the first and second batches. There are nine books here, bringing the running total of hard copy books acquired during 2015 so far to 23, which increases my paper book reading target from the original 20 to 28 (because I said I'd try and read the greater of 20 or five more than I'd acquired.) So far I've finished 15 books, of which seven were paper. You can see my 2015 reading progress on Goodreads. A quarter of the way through the year and I've picked up more physical books than I expected to for the whole year. However some of this is front loaded because my birthday is in January. Also I managed to only…
General Election Opinion Polls
All the opinion polls that you look at for the UK General Election in May show a hung Parliament as the most likely outcome. However, things are likely to crystallise a bit more over the next few weeks now that Parliament has been prorogued and the election officially called (although we've not had any doubt over the date this time). If you read my previous series on the opinion polling for the Scottish Independence Referendum then you might be familiar with the graphs I produced. However that approach isn't really helpful for the General Election. With the Independence Referendum there was a single binary question, and the aggregate national answer was what counted. So to predict the result you could simply track the polls and look at the trends. The 2015 General Election is a series of 650 first past the…
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Book Review – Divergent by Veronica Roth
Divergent by Veronica Roth My rating: 4 of 5 stars Unusually I broke my general rule of not reading books that I've seen the movie of first. I saw Divergent on DVD over the Christmas break, and while I sort of enjoyed it I also picked some holes in it. The person that had brought the DVD told me that the book was better, and when I saw it advertised cheaper in paperback than on kindle I thought I'd give it a try. I wasn't disappointed. Almost all of the things that had jarred with the movie were addressed properly in the book. The world built for the story makes more sense in the book than it does in the movie, largely because the movie needs to edit out some of the parts. That said there are still holes, like…
Author Interview – Samantha Bryant
This week's interview is with Samantha Bryant. Her new novel, Going Through the Change, is available on pre-order and will be released on 23rd April. It's a superhero novel with a twist. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I’ve always written, starting with little stories and poems as a child. It probably grew from a general love of words and stories. I just get this feeling, I describe as “itchy fingers” and I have to create something out of words. I get darn grumpy when I want to write and can’t. I’ve been taking it seriously for about two years now. When I was getting ready to turn 42, I had a little talk with myself and we agreed that it was time to try this in earnest or just let it go. That’s when…
Warning! Politics and Elections Ahead
A ballot paper used in the 2005 UK General Election. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) If you are in the UK it won't have escaped your notice that we have a General Election in a few weeks (on Thursday 7th May). Campaigning hasn't moved into high gear yet, but it will next week when Parliament is prorogued. (Maybe that word implies a lot about our politicians, pro rogues!) don't care about politics? Voting isn't mandatory in the UK. However, t if you don't vote don't expect anyone to listen to you complain about the government or anything affected by what it does. That includes the economy, housing, immigration, defence, policing, traffic, trains, prices of things, the NHS, public services, or just about everything else. In fact you can probably only talk about the weather, reality TV and football. I personally don't want…