One of the huge bonuses of being a writer is meeting lots of other writers. With few exceptions, they tend to be delightful, interesting, funny people, and I’ve been lucky enough to get to know some well.

It can, however, lead to quite awkward interactions when you read one of their books (first novels are the worst offenders) that are highly autobiographical- you can end up knowing more about their sex lives, their inner lives, fears and joys than that of your very best friends. Occupational hazard. Any writer that says it’s all made up in their heads is telling, you know. A lie. Me included, obviously.

Anyway, that is why it has been such a lovely relief to have the pleasure of reading the first actual, non-fiction memoir of someone I actually know. Of  everyone, I wouldn’t have expected it to be Stewart Lee, the very funny, but entirely modest stand up comedian. We’re not best mates, but I have known him for twenty years, and have always thought him absolutely brilliant, with a near- perfect knack for failing to become a giant success the first ninety five times it was offered to him.

He has a new book out, How I Escaped My Certain Fate. It’s not technically a memoir, it’s a deconstruction of his stand up, but there’s lots of personal stuff in it. But more importantly, it is totally brilliant. Almost uniquely amongst books by comedians, it is actually funny, rather than them showing off their ‘serious side’*.

What he does is examine three of his stand up routines, and note how his influences, inspirations and ideas have built over the years, which sounds like it shouldn’t work, but truly does. Stew’s work happens to be comedy, but the book isn’t about how stand- up works, it’s about how thinking works. Having the comedy element just helps make the book hilarious, as well as incredibly interesting, and, most importantly, it’s a huge insight into what it’s like to live in someone else’s brain. Like all good writing should be, of course, whether you know the writer or not. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.

*the only exceptions ever to utterly rubbish books by stand- up comedians, and I have read them all, is Alexei Sayle, who is a very good writer indeed, and, irritatingly, The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie, proving he can, in fact, do EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD.

Alas, I have just had a really bad run. Very annoying when that happens. Not always the book’s fault. Emma Donaghoe’s newly shortlisted for the Booker prize, Room is clearly absolutely brilliant, I just can’t read it whilst my children are so small- The Road upset me for a long time. I used to be able to read the bloodiest and nastiest of serial killer things, but now I simply can’t. We recently had a break-in to our garage, nothing serious, but my five year old asking me very seriously if the robbers were going to come back with guns, and me promising him faithfully that it didn’t matter, we would always keep him safe, and him happily going to sleep, even though I have of course just told him a lie, kind of got to me. The idea of any child unable to sleep and unsafe is just too harrowing- fictional or otherwise; and of course Jack in Room is only *just* fictional.

ANYWAY, that’s a digression. What else came up? I shan’t name them, nothing worse than an innocent author googling themselves and finding something awful: I would know. Let me see, there was an Into Thin Air rip-off about K2 that was both disrespectful and a cash-in, written by someone who admits freely in the introduction that he doesn’t really give a toss about climbing; a follow up to an office workplace book that I had absolutely adored, which is totally tedious (possibly it’s a lot better if you work in an office); a 1970s style farce comedy that wouldn’t have made it through the slushpile these days and a romance about a man who eats metal. Yeah, that didn’t really work for me either. Okay. I need NEW BOOKS. OOH and it is my birthday next week and I have been hinting heavily for a kindle. OOH that will be exciting. If I get it…

All good new book suggestions more than welcome…

Hope you had a lovely summer! Okay VERY quick summary of a few of my favourite summer reads this year:

The Hand that First Held Mine, Maggie O’Farrell- TOTAL tear jerker, quite lovely
The Passage, Justin Cronin- best post-apocalyptic vampire saga, like, EVER
The Privileged- Yeah, hm, was a bit overhyped for this one
The Big Short by Michael Lewis- Stunning STUNNING stuff on the financial crisis, absolutely amazing, a must-read
Alex’s Adventures in Numberland, Alex Bellos- great, I kept annoying people by announcing bits of it, in the manner of people reading Freakonomics
Nothing to Envy- oh the most harrowing non-fic about North Korea, utterly utterly heartbreaking.

Okay, normal service must resume soon, no more beach days and paddling :( Edinburgh Book Festival also a brilliant laugh, thanks to those who popped in! (Hello Heike!) and looking forward to Wigtown

I’m a terrible geek; I’ve been a Dr Who fan since 1977. I love Isaac Asimov, Douglas Adams; Half-Life, men who wear glasses and that bloke Phoebe nearly married in Friends. I’ve had the theory of special relativity explained to me by my brilliantly clever  friend Ben Moor about 90 times now, but it never will stick, I just don’t have the right kind of brain.

That doesn’t stop me, however, reading a lot around the topic. One of my favourite books of all time is Genius, about Richard Feynman, a boy from Far Rockaway who simply saw the world differently from everyone else. Unusually in Feynman, the world found someone who could communicate its oddities and bridge the gap between his world, of particles that move forwards and backwards in time; of subatomic miracles- and ours.

Most of these men, however- and they are, overwhelmingly men- don’t truly have that facility (I made absolutely no headway, NONE with A Brief History of Time) , but their lives are still fascinating. Two other wonders of the gender are The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a biography of Paul Erdos (discovering last year I have an Erdos number of only 2 made me EXTREMELY happy), and I have just finished Dr Graham Farmeloe’s wonderful, Costa-winning biography of Paul Dirac, The Strangest Man. As Terentius said, ‘nothing human is alien to me’, but these men, drifting through life with one suit and a plastic bag, living entirely in the cosmos of their heads, are certainly on the very far side. Farmeloe stops short of insisting that Dirac was clinically autistic- Dirac literally never spoke unless engaged in a direct question on his works, but by any definition the two tendencies seem to go hand in hand, which is why Feynman was such a one off. (Oh, how I would have loved to have met him. But what could I have asked him? It would have been like trying to talk to a tiger).

I did once write a physicist as a romantic hero- Finn in Talking to Addison is a string theorist, but he didn’t prove quite as popular as I’d hoped. I think he’s still my favourite out of all of them, apart from David in Class. Who is also an academic, now I come to think of it. Hmm!

And now I am, predictably, reading Alex’s Adventures in Numberland. It is nirvana for the non- maths geek wannabe maths geek out there.