Four very different books this month.
“The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”, by the surgeon Atul Gawande, is about how checklists can be key to improving outcomes in extremely complex activities like surgery, flying airplanes and building skyscraper. I had read excerpts of this in the New Yorker a few years ago and was very impressed. I liked the book as well (mildly obsessed with checklists as I am), altough not quite as much as I did another book by Gawande I read a few years ago — ‘Being Mortal’, about end of life care.
“Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line” is Ken Williams’ memoir of founding Sierra On-Line, the 1980s and 1990s computer game giant, running it successfully for many years, and seeing it be ultimately destroyed due to predatory acquisition. Very interesting if you are a fan of Sierra and want to understand the culture and the history better — but probably best avoided if you’re not.
“Jeeves and the Leap of Faith” is Ben Schott’s second Jeeves and Wooster pastiche, I liked it even more than the first (‘Jeeves and the King of Clubs’). It is not and does not attempt to be a pitch-perfect imitation: there is a lot of Schott himself, as revealed by the end-notes. But when he wants to, he writes just like Wodehouse, and there are some delicious turns of phrase. Great fun.
Finally, I read “Diary of an MP’s Wife”, by Sasha Swire, which is what it says on the tin — the diary of a Tory MP’s wife in the Cameron era. I love diaries, but this was a bit too infantile, gossipy, self-righteous for my taste. And long!
