2026 in Books: February

Well, having started strong with 4 proper-length novels in January, February has been a little busy, so I’ve read rather less.

In my defence, I finished a book on Sunday, so if February was a proper-length month I’d have squeezed in another. Ah well, at least I’ve got a headstart on March!

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

Project Hail Mary was a Christmas present from one of my most reliable book-choosing friends. She usually skews more towards fantasy (at least in her presents to me), so I was mildly surprised to find myself unwrapping what was patently going to be reasonably hard sci-fi. And set in space. I often don’t get on well with books set in space. But, like I said, she’s very reliable.

“I have four rough circles, each a couple of inches across. Yes, inches. When I’m stressed out, I revert to imperial units. It’s hard to be an American, okay?”

— Project Hail Mary

And everyone liked The Martian, right?

It was, of course, fine. The books cracks along at a tremendous pace, manages not to have vast tracts of turgid prose about the insides of spaceships, and is broadly speaking very silly.

Dr Grace - our unlikely space hero, suffering from amnesia and inexplicably solo on a large spaceship - has a very lightweight, chatty narration style that is incredibly easy to read.

We do, over the course of his adventures, get moderately vast tracts of space logistics, some of which I found a little difficult to follow - but I think that’s on me. I usually can’t keep up if anyone describes a layout more complicated than a small potting shed.

The story does use the same device over and over again: Dr Grace has a problem! Dr Grace can jury-rig himself a solution using a thing that is already on the ship, some alien tech and a lot of maths! He is basically a one-man A-Team In Space.

But… while I wouldn’t like to stand bail for all the solutions being completely plausible, they are plausible enough. They feel like a bunch of little puzzles with very satisfying conclusions. Anyway, the cover-blurb says Tim Peake liked the book, which seems good enough to me.

Despite my space-based misgivings, this book was massive fun.

Once Upon A Tome - Oliver Darkshire

This book - also a Christmas present - is subtitled “The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller”. I suppose technically it is non-fiction, but it is another very quick, easy and entertaining read.

“Unlike other disciplines, book cataloguing is less an art, not really a science, and more of a completely unstandardized, decentralized carnival fire.”

— Once Upon A Tome

In a series of very short chapters (which are the absolute devil for making readers think “ok, just one more, then I’ll…”) the author recounts the deeply peculiar - and probably mostly true - life of an apprentice at a shop which claims to be the oldest bookshop in the world. (At least he says it did at the time, its website now claims, slightly more circumspectly, that it is “the longest-established rare book dealer in Europe”.)

If you are the sort of person who likes hanging around in second-hand bookshops, and sincerely wish to believe that all booksellers are mad as hatters, shuffling about in a sort of genteel chaos of incunabula and stuffed owls, trying to avoid both demanding customers and cursed volumes, then you should read this book.

If you know that sort of person, and never quite know what to give them as a present, give them this book.

I assume that lawyers have been involved and none of the stories are actively libellous, but there is a pleasing vibe of scurrilous gossip throughout. Grab a drink, find a comfy chair, and prepare to be entertained.

You Don’t Have To Have a Dream - Tim Minchin

“Which is your job (just by the way):
To put into the world valuable ideas.”

— Tim Minchin

This is yet another very quick read - as a book it’s on the slim side, but more relevantly it’s big print, and big illustrations. The content is the transcripts of three speeches Minchin has given, each one on the occasion of receiving an honorary degree. One of which is a long-form poem.

Some of it is advice on being an artist. Some of it is suggestions of how to live better. Some of it is a bit angry, and some of it is funny, and all of it is very easy to understand and expressed with a lot of heart.

It feels like it would be pretty decent life advice for a child, though it depends how comfortable you are with your child reading the word fuck occasionally.

You Say Clickbait Like It's a Bad Thing

I’ve been thinking recently about titles. Specifically, the titles that writers give short stories.

I’m embarrassed to admit that for a long time I didn’t give that much thought to titles for the stories I write. Sometimes a title springs fully-formed into mind before a story is even written - but equally often a half-written story ends up saved in a file named after a character (or an object!) in the story, and eventually that accidentally becomes the title. I mean, titles aren’t that important, right? It’s the story that counts.

Now, if you are - say - Neil Gaiman, with a vast and enthusiastic following who will leap on a new story with delight regardless of title, you can probably get away with calling your latest work any old bollocks (or, of course, Any Old Bollocks). Spoilers: I am not Neil Gaiman. My enthusiastic following is largely limited to my parents and a couple of friends. (Also, arguably, even Neil Gaiman didn’t get where he is today by publishing stories with crap titles.)

If you publish a novel then you’ve got a title, a nice illustrated jacket, and probably a cover blurb to lure people in. If you’re very lucky, bookshops will pile your novel temptingly on tables, include it in multi-buy offers or (bless every last shop that does this) post up little handwritten notes from the staff explaining why it is awesome. A short story is much more likely to appear on a website, where casual browsers have nothing but a list of titles to choose from. So the title had better get its paw in the air and yell “pick me!”

My story Granny’s Cooking was turned down a number of times before I began to wonder whether, perhaps, its title was a bit boring. It eventually appeared in print as Cook Me A Storm. Would the magazine have taken it, regardless? I’ll likely never know, but I like to think the title-change gave it a hand up.

The most intriguing title I’ve seen recently was in an an issue of Cossmass Infinities. Browsing down the contents page, I immediately clicked on Murder or a Duck by Beth Goder. What situation could possibly result in that particular choice? I wanted to know. Then I became suspicious.

Calling your story Murder or a Duck makes an implicit promise: there is going to be some sort of dilemma, dichotomy or question of identity revolving around murder (or a duck). Your fiction had better make good on that promise. Coming up with an intriguing title is easy; coming up with an intriguing title which suits the actual story and does not leave the reader feeling cheated is quite another.

(Murder or a Duck, by the way, was delightfully silly and delivered handsomely on the promise. I recommend it.)

Intrigue isn’t the only option. I’m also strangely fond of titles which tell you (in a sense) exactly what you’re getting - for example Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island or The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat. And of titles that appear to ramble on long after they ought to have stopped, like Once More Unto the Breach (But Don’t Worry, the Inflatable Swords Are Latex-Free). And titles that include fun pop culture references, like Open House on Haunted Hill…

It’s fair to say that titles are capricious beasts, and that there’s no smart formula for coming up with them. They are, however, something that I’m going to give a lot more thought to in the future.

Next time you see me advertising a story on Twitter, let me know if I got it right!