I’ve been wanting to revisit Jon Ronson and Will Storr, whose books visiting extremists and cranks were both amusing and thought-provoking: October seemed an appropriate month to do so, given their tendency to visit the strange. This collection of pieces from the 1990s and early 2000s is varied both in subject and quality, ranging from the amusing (Ronson re-creating James Bond’s Aston Martin drive across France in one movie, complete with matching him drink for drink at a hotel) to the disturbing, as when he spends time with a convicted serial pedophile who got a relatively light sentence because of his fame. It appears to be more a collection of miscellany than anything else: although the “hanging out with people who believe weird things” is a consistent presence here, it’s not dominant enough to be the main theme. The only thing that links them is Ronson himself, whether he’s talking to a man once arrested for trying to split atoms in his garage, or talking to cruise ship crew about a young woman who disappeared from the boat at sea. Although there’s humor here, between the child molestation and the debt-induced family slaughter and suicide, this was generally fairly grim and uncomfortable reading.

“Don’t think of her as psychotic,” Bruce says. “Think of her as a three year-old. If you try to interview a three-year-old, you’ll think after a while that they’re not living in the same world as you. They get distracted. They don’t answer. Hang on.”
He does some fiddling with Bina48’s hard drive.

I spent a week sending e-mails: “Dear Lady, I’ve read that, if the portrait in your drawing room is moved, a ghost is apparently disturbed and manifests itself. Recently I have been contacted by the pop star Robbie Williams who would like to spend a night in a haunted house and so Iwonder whether he and I can pay a private visit.”
I expected not to hear back from anybody, but, in fact, once I invoked Robbie’s name, owners of country piles started flinging their ghosts at me as if they were their debutante daughters

Six of last year’s middle school elves, now aged thirteen, were arrested
back in April for being in the final stages of plotting a mass murder, a
Columbine-style school shooting. The information is sketchy, but
apparently they had elaborate diagrams and code names and lists of the kids they were going to kill. I’ve come to North Pole to investigate the plot. What turned those elves bad? Were they serious? Was the town [of North Pole, Alaska] just too Christmassy?

Coming up….Robert Harris’ latest, Precipice, following a lovelorn p.m, as he tries to steer Britain through the Great War.