Richard Osman Disturbed Me

Earlier this year, the BBC game show Pointless started releasing full episodes on YouTube. For the American audience, it’s a quiz show that works like the opposite of Family Feud: the rarer the answer, the better off your team is. Anyway, the YouTube algorithm did its job a little too well. For a whole week, that’s all I watched during my free time. JoJo be damned! (Kidding. We still had our fun together.)

Thanks to two centuries of British rule, their dry humor stuck to me like vibudhi on a priest’s forehead. That’s how I first encountered Richard Osman, the show’s co-host and resident “pointless friend” to Alexander Armstrong. Together, they kept the show thoroughly entertaining. One hilarious thing about Pointless was how low the prize money was. People truly joined for funsies. Anyway, let this Chatty McChatterpants crawl out of this nostalgic rabbit hole now.

In my last post, I mentioned I was reading Frieda McFadden’s Do Not Disturb. And I was—when I wrote the post. But part of my brain kept chirping at me to finish books I’d already started. So I went back to The Thursday Murder Club, Osman’s debut novel. I’d read eight chapters about ten days ago. Each chapter was roughly a page and a half—not long, but the buildup was slow. Still, I told myself, you are not a quitter!

Turns out, I didn’t need that pep talk for long. Just two chapters in, and the plot went from residential-speed limit to freeway cruising. By Monday evening, I’d finished all 115 chapters. Depending on convenience, I toggled between Apple Books on my phone and the paperback copy. Phone in bed before sleep, paperback on the patio with a cuppa coffee.

The only other content I consumed this weekend was the Hungarian Grand Prix. So yeah, if the book is gripping enough, not even the algorithms can break my focus.

Now comes the real mystery. What to read next? Should I go back and finish Do Not Disturb like a responsible adult? Or start fresh with one of these:

1. Conclave by Robert Harris 
2. Cascade Failure by L.M. Sagas
3. Long Road to Mercy by David Baldacci

Let’s see what wins: momentum or novelty.