Reviewing the Mail: Week of June 6, 2026

I had my annual visit to the eye doctor this week, which means - since she's in Manhattan near Union Square - taking a whole day off work and using that opportunity to do some shopping at the Strand. I still miss the review-copy bonanza that store used to be, but all things decline into the West, I suppose, and it's a big, pretty-good standard indy book store these days.

Here's what I found on this trip:

I am about three decades later starting to read Christopher Brookmyre - is he even still writing these days? - but I've vaguely thought about his stuff pretty much all that time. This time, I found a copy of his first novel Quite Ugly One Morning, which is a short humorous thriller, and I figured I have a better chance of reading it is it's on the shelf.

Tom Gauld had a new book of science cartoons late last year: Physics for Cats. I'm a big fan of Gauld; he's one of the few cartoonists whose books I still buy in actual physical form and keep, so take that as a glowing recommendation.

I'm still a couple of books behind on Nick Hornby, but I seem to be catching up: I grabbed a copy of Just Like You, his 2020 novel. I'm pretty sure it's a story about middle-class English people with love trouble: this one is about a fortyish woman who becomes the December in a May-December relationship - I think, front hints in the back-cover copy, that the chap she pick up to be May is also Black, or similarly "clearly unsuitable" for her.

Somehow I also got behind on Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries, which I was reading consistently for twenty-plus years. I think Blonde Faith is the first one I missed - there are several more, including one more I already have - so I may be able to catch up.

I saw the movie made of Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare at Goats, way back near when it came out., And I've read several of his other books of reportage. But I never read this one - now I can.

And last is a collection of miscellaneous travel pieces by Paul Theroux: Sunrise with Seamonsters. As far as I can tell, he's had a book like this for roughly each decade of his career - this was the first one, starting with short pieces from the late '60s.