A personal space for writing and rambling about the books I’ve been reading. /atom.xml Richard Hindes 2026-03-26T00:00:00Z

The inventor of the World Wide Web gives an account of his early years, the development of his breakthrough invention, and his vision for what the future of the Web should look like.

2026-03-26T00:00:00Z 2026-03-26T00:00:00Z /reviews/this-is-for-everyone/ In This is for Everyone, Sir Tim Berners-Lee traces the origins of the web from his early fascination with electronics while growing up in a household of computer scientists, to his time at CERN, where he encountered the problem of siloed information across departments and machines. It is here that the book is at its strongest, clearly articulating his central insight, which is that the links between pieces of information are more powerful than the information itself.

Lindsey Hilsum covers the career of a war correspondent who plunges herself from one crisis to another and gives us an insight into the toll it takes on her.

2026-03-22T00:00:00Z 2026-03-22T00:00:00Z /reviews/in-extremis-the-life-of-war-correspondent-marie-colvin/ In September 1999, Marie Colvin and two other reporters were the only ones to stay in East Timor. The territory was under siege from Indonesian militia, who were invading it following the end of Portuguese rule in 1975. They were the only ones willing to stay and cover the humanitarian crisis that was strangling the civillians. It was reported that up to a third of the entire population had been killed by soldiers or died from disease or from famine.

A sharp, character-driven novel about a family attempting to correct the wounds of their upbringing, only to discover how stubborn those patterns really are.

2026-03-03T15:14:53Z 2026-03-03T15:14:53Z /reviews/the-corrections/ What struck me most about The Corrections is how each member of the dysfunctional, middle class Lambert family believes they are the only reasonable one. Alfred, the patriarch, is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. His wife, Enid, who is struggling to look after the ailing Alfred, wants to get the whole family back together to the fictional Midwestern hometown of St. Jude for “one last Christmas”. As we learn more about the troubled lives of each of the family members, we learn why this is such a tall order. This is certainly a character driven novel, and Franzen produces a very detailed character study of Alfred, Enid and their 3 adult children, Gary, Chip and Denise. We learn about the many ways in which the dysfunctions of the parents cause their children to rebel and attempt to “correct” the perceived shortcomings in their parents’ relationships: Gary, the eldest son, is a high earner, is married with 3 children and makes his home in a big house in an affluent neighbourhood of Philadelphia, but wrestles with the lack of control he feels over Enid, his wife Charlotte, and his 3 children and siblings. Chip, disgraced after a workplace scandal, attempts to rebuild himself as a writer, but can never seem to focus on his manuscript. And the youngest daughter, Denise, gets in a string of several dysfunctional relationships of her own, choosing to bury herself in her career as a cook to cope with it all.

Almost 30 years on, Nick Hornby's personal and deeply self-aware account on the highs and lows of supporting a football team remains fresh and engaging.

2026-02-18T20:02:05Z 2026-02-18T20:02:05Z /reviews/fever-pitch/ Why do people obsess over sport – and do they ever grow out of it? At the tender age of 11, Nick Hornby found himself stuck between his arguing parents who would soon get divorced. Looking to bond with his father, he joins him to watch an Arsenal game in 1969. What he didn’t know then was that this single game would mark the beginning of a lifelong devotion to the club.

A review of Cory Doctorow’s argument that the internet didn’t decay by accident -- it was designed that way.

2026-02-10T00:00:00Z 2026-02-10T00:00:00Z /reviews/enshittification-why-everything-suddenly-got-worse-and-what-to-do-about-it/ Many people have a vague sense that online platforms feel worse than they used to, but struggle to explain why. Facebook is a familiar example: once a place to see updates from friends and family, it has become dominated by ads, promoted content, and algorithmic noise. In Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Cory Doctorow argues that this decline follows a predictable pattern — one driven not by cultural decay, but by economic and legal incentives that reward platforms for degrading their services over time.