Direct Red by Gabriel Weston, 100 word review

There’s an inner conflict that takes place when reading this book - the compulsion to keep reading versus the instinct to recoil at all the grisly details. It’s a semi-fictionalised memoir by a surgeon, relativly short, and written in such a clean, spare (surgical?) style that you can’t help but believe wholly in its authenticity. The balance of humanity and compassion to resolute clear-headedness is pitch-perfect. When dealing with tragedy, misery and waste, Weston is neither sentimental nor cold. Triumph is always muted and there is disdain (without self-righteousness) for pompousity and needless blundering. Eye-opening stuff.

Porn & Pong, 100 word review

 

Intriguing look at the narrative of sexual content in video games against the backdrop of wider Western culture and its changing attitude to pornography via video recorders, reality TV, Prince and Will & Grace, among others. Porn & Pong is light on penetrating analysis but very approachable and well researched, although sometimes Brown seems too ready to read significance into sales figures, stating them as if they prove a point (other than the obvious ‘sex sells’). The proofing is a little sloppy, while too much space is afforded to the execrable Leisure Suit Larry games and Dead or Alive’s bouncing boob technology.