March 2026 Reads

 March 2026 Reads

For March I started out with a mind to read a couple of novels and something political, which I nearly managed... but The Difference Engine slowed me down a bit more than anticipated, and then I had most of a week away without many opportunities to read, and then the next thing you know the clocks have gone forward, spring is sprung and April knocks on the door once more. 

Still, an interesting selection... 

The List

The Difference Engine - William Gibson & Bruce Sterling

The Spike Milligan Letters (ed. Norma Farnes) 

The Agricola and The Germania - Tacitus

The Way I See It - Cliff Richard 

What is Anarchism?- Donald Rooum and Others

The Books 

The Difference Engine - William Gibson & Bruce Sterling

 From 1990, this is considered a foundational text of steampunk, based in a world where we see the earlier adoption of computation devices, particularly by France and the UK.  

There is an unwieldy globetrotting plot involving various characters in search of a McGuffinish set of data cards, coveted by "clackers" (hip retro-lingo for hackers) for bringing Babbage machines (ye "difference engine") grinding to a halt... in much the same way as a lengthy Untouchables-inflected middle section where a gang of four Imperial likely lads takes on a band of anarchists in an East London dockside warehouse (an idea surprisingly untouched by Guy Ritchie at time of writing) does for the novel. 

 Although touching on details of equipment (the "camphorated cellulose" data cards, steam powered racing cars, kinotype devices for projecting images, etc) Gibson and Sterling don't lavish attention on machine-gun wielding Zeppelins piloted by people with flying goggles and leather kit, as later iterations of the genre tend to; they do seem to enjoy getting into period costume and romping about a mostly-convincingly-rendered London, and the focus is the people and their intrigues within a world that is being shaped by an emerging technology, which is of course far more interesting in many respects. Still, though, with a closing section rammed with excellent but tangential riffs, I felt more a sense of loose endings and hinted-at story lines wafted past.  

The Spike Milligan Letters (ed. Norma Farnes) 

 Dear Mark

It has come to my attention beyond the grave that you found a slightly water-damaged copy of a small collection of my correspondence, on a supermarket charity table. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Yes, yes - some of them are funny, some haven't aged well, some seem to be barely-disguised cries for help that should have stayed in Norma Farnes’ filing cabinets… but that's not why I'm writing. 

Listen, chum: I know you can't resist a bit of Milligan, classing me among the absurdist geniuses from the 1950s - and rightly fucking so,  I might add - but it's precisely this sort of whim-driven impulse purchasing that’s maintaining yer Endless Piles of Books. You're never going to get through them if you carry on snapping up any old shit - even if you do read it in about half an hour. 

Focus!

Love, light, and peace 

Spike 

 Tacitus - The Agricola and The Germania

In advance of a trip to Rome I thought I'd tackle one of the "classics" on the shelf and read two pieces of Imperial Roman propaganda, one a biography of the Governor of Britain (Agricola), and one a study of the peoples of Germany. A timely reminder that history is written by the winners. Our tour guide at the Colosseum later noted that the continent-spanning frenzy of slaughter witnessed by thousands of spectators was predicated on Roman superiority and hierarchy. As actual history, The Agricola in particular is short on detail that would be useful (locations in the British Isles are frustratingly vague), but written (translated) with a certain kind of dry understatement that has likely led to the enduring appeal nearly a couple of thousand years after.      

 The Way I See It - Cliff Richard

From 1968, another impulse pick-up from the local charity shelves in the supermarket. Here's Sir Harry Webb aka Cliff Richard at age 28 offering his thoughts as a high-profile Christian on various issues. He's quite keen to deploy a kind of folksy non-judgmental casual tone (e.g. the chapter on drugs is called "Not For Me!") while also being quite low-key dogmatic in matters Christian, which comes across as insightful and annoying as you might expect. 

 

It was also interesting to note that his hankering to play Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights in some capacity had already taken firm root at this point. 

What is Anarchism? (Donald Rooum and others)

Finally shifting away from definite articles to this slender volume, which I enjoyed as the political something earlier identified. 

The first part is a general introduction to one of the still-most-misrepresented political philosophies... most of which material was familiar, but was explained with clarity. This book is from 1992 - it'd be interesting to see how a more recent interpretation would read.

Of the various anarchist heavyweights excerpted in the second half of the book, I got on particularly with Malatesta, though this was perhaps because I'd just come back from Italy and was surfing an infatuation with all such things. He just seemed to write with directness, without a suffusion of jargon, that appealed. Perhaps this is what is needed to help people get behind the ideas. 

 

 Coming Up In April

Thoughts turn to Home and Away (writing about football by Knausgaard and Ekelund), Notes To John by Joan Didion, and a pile of Italo Calvino. And the month begins with a much-anticipated trip to Barter Books in Alnwick. Oh dear, what was they a-thinking of?! Sometimes it snows BOOKS in April.