The First Post: E Squared

I intend this blog to be mostly filled with thoughts on books as and when I finish reading them, although doubtless I'll get distracted by other more shiny and sparkly things. The first one is E Squared, by Matt Beaumont (pub. 2009).

I read it back to back with its prequel, E, and, while I very much enjoyed the first one, E Squared was considerably better. Both written through a sequence of emails, E followed the events of a few weeks in a fictional advertising agency, Miller Shanks. E Squared, however, focused on a different agency containing several of the same characters a few years down the line, and also included family members and various other characters from E, scattered in various places around the world. As well as emails, the plot is told through texts and MSN conversations, which added more layers of variety and subterfuge.

The main problem I had, in both novels, was attempting to remember who the less interesting and insane characters were, as the reader is plunged straight into the action with no exposition or character description. It's easy enough to figure out the main ones quickly, but I found it difficult keeping track of the more mundane ones.

All in all though, E was highly amusing, and E Squared even more so.

By strange coincidence, the next book I've started, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, seems to be an eighteenth-century parallel, told in letters between the characters, apparently mostly gossiping about each other.

Thought of the day: What if those little blinking lights on computers are trying to communicate with us in Morse code?