Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead The final book in Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy featuring the further adventures of Carney and Pepper. The whole series is brilliant, but Cool Machine is maybe the best of the three. Also a good companion to Heather Ann Thompson’s (non-fic) Fear and Fury. #BookSky 021 2
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 04/10/20261873 by Liaquat Ahamed Engaging account of the first global financial crisis. States, institutions and individuals all go big on new technology (the railroads), then a crash, then political instability, then a rise in extremism. Sort of. Really, the story is far from simple. #BookSky 181 8
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 02/10/2026It’s Friday afternoon lads and lasses. Another week without getting found out. And a new Hermanos Gutierrez record. 000 0
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Card in the new Christmas catalogue from the RNLI might be a little too on the nose. 000 0
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Lol. Spare a thought for the fringey elements of the Celtic support who are getting ready to jemmy their way into English phone-ins about City. 010 1
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 19/09/2026What was the Leadmill. Last time I was here, it was to see Mercury Rev when they were touring Yerself Is Steam. The lead singer - the troubled one - got hoyed out for fighting with the lad on the t-shirt stand. 000 0
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 12/09/2026Fear and Fury by Heather Ann Thompson Bernie Goetz was previously only a line in a Lou Reed song to me. A flawed but brilliant book, it traces a line from Goetz to Zimmerman to Rittenhouse to January 6. Peaks with a gripping account of the Goetz trial and again in the closing chapters. #BookSky 162 6
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 12/09/2026Saw a blackboard today that Einstein wrote on. So that’s something. 100 1
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 04/09/2026(Screenshots from the Times report) People have been warning for years about the risks of polls-led journalism. So I think we need more from the newspapers than this - What due diligence was done before publishing these polls? What will they do differently in the future? 000 0
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 30/08/2026Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan The first 18 months of the second Trump presidency told in grim detail. In the authors’ telling, the Regime Change of the title isn’t Iran or Venezuela but the careless upending of norms in the US and across the world. #BookSky 140 4
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Against expectations, this is good from Giles Coren. www.thetimes.com/article/becc... 111 1
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 20/08/2026Give me a single image from a film that immediately makes you hear the song from the soundtrack in your head. 000 0
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 20/08/2026The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout A beautiful little hymn to American decency and dignity. The sort of book where - when you finish a chapter - you feel like you come up for air, take a big gulp and dive back in again. #BookSky 181 8
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 18/08/2026Disability: a History of Resistance by David Turner Traces the history of disability activism from the 16th century to the present day. Every chapter has at least one story which could be turned into a Netflix drama. Enraging and inspiring, recommend. #BookSky 241 4
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 18/08/2026Airbnb owners! Don’t select household appliances which require guests to search for the manual when they just want it to do basic things like - in the case of this oven - get hot. 101 1
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 18/08/2026He shoots, he scores. Every par of this from @stephenkb.bsky.social hits the back of the net. Tbh, I wasn’t that engaged with the Arday story until he died. What has amazed me since is how many people involved in the reporting have rushed to exonerate themselves. www.ft.com/content/5f92... 39620 96
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 18/08/2026It’s not the children I’m worried about (especially). 000 0
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 18/08/2026Was solidarity already dead as an idea before social media? If not, I think it might have killed it off. (Just reading this - interesting chapter about how 70s disability campaigners were inspired by Mandela. Ie, they didn’t see anti-racism as a barrier or a distraction but as an enabler). 011 1
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 14/08/2026ANYWAY If you haven’t read this, I strongly recommend it. 101 1
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 13/08/2026Same. Except it was before my interview for the journalism course at Preston. 000 0
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 08/08/2026Good People by Patmeena Sabit A book sort of in the style of a true crime documentary. A young woman, daughter of Afghan immigrants, dies in a car accident after falling out with her parents. But was it an accident? An addictive read, with ambitions to say important things. #BookSky 161 6
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 28/07/2026Stay Alive by Scott Rowley The advent of baggy, house and grunge means there’s an interrupted timeline for 80s bands like Big Country. Running parallel is Stuart Adamson’s desperately sad - and very Scottish - story. Both are captured with clear-eyed compassion in this excellent book. #BookSky 111 1
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 26/07/2026The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman Agatha Christie meets Muriel Spark with plenty of the darkness and humour of both. A lodging house mystery set in 50s Britain, coloured by war memories, the fag end of rationing, shabby pubs and service revolvers. Would make an ace holiday read. #BookSky 260 6
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 18/07/2026Transcription by Ben Lerner A beautiful fraction of a book, like a Sumi-e painting which captures its subjects in the fewest brushstrokes. Except. The subjects are, by definition, unreliable narrators as the story turns on a broken phone and the failure to record an interview. #BookSky 141 4
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 13/07/2026Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead Second book in the noir-ish Harlem Trilogy, and with the action moving to the 70s, even more of a vibe than the first. The Jackson 5 are in town, Harlem is (literally) aflame and a new New York is rising, twin towers and all. You’ll love it. #BookSky 161 6
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 12/07/2026Bellingham is - of course - brilliant and I’m very much not anyone-but-England but come on. Charlton’s England beat - consecutively - France, Argentina, Portugal and West Germany. Bellingham’s England haven’t played anyone ranked in the top 10 yet. 200 2
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 11/07/2026Trying (and mostly failing) to film the swallows. 000 0
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 11/07/2026Now is the time for lithe and lissome Scandinavians. 000 0
Scott Dougal @scottdougal.bsky.social · 05/07/2026*Now* it’s changed? Well I’ve been reading the same column, by the same bloke, every two years for about two decades, so that can’t be right. 100 1
