Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse by David Mitchell

Few people do outrage better than David Mitchell.  Think about his many appearances on the Q.I. television show - it only takes a non-sequitur or a bit of ambiguity to set off his sense of outrage, often with hilarious results.

In Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse, Mitchell's outrage is front and centre.  This time it is modern life, especially life in a post-Global Financial Crisis world, that gets him going. 

Mitchell ranges across wide variety of topics, including offence-taking and forced apologies, corporate monopolies, sport, politics and chocolate-flavoured toothpaste.  His observations are acute, his analysis is deep, and his pronouncements are often as withering as they are humorous. And all this is wrapped up in an eloquent, coherent and forceful prose.

The text itself is a compilation of articles Mitchell wrote for Britain's Observer newspaper over a number of years.  This sometimes works to the detriment of the book as some of the writing is highly topical, and the nuances of certain topics may be lost on contemporary readers.  Also, as Mitchell was writing for a U.K. audience, some of the matters he raises may not be that identifiable for readers from other parts of the world. This is a quibble, and the quality of Mitchell's prose and thoughts more than make up for it.

Overall, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse is an entertaining, revealing and thought-provoking book with many laugh-out-loud moments.  Of course, this has outraged me, and I await author's unreserved apology.