Five Minute Fiction

Basically kicking myself that show #42 ISN'T a review of a Hitch-Hiker novel or something numerically appropriate. What sort of rank amateur am I, you might ask?A really rank one, obvs. Now shut up and listen.

An Embarrassment of Riches - The Writing Career of Robert Newman. This week we look at his intensely brainy new comedy book about evolution. 

This week it's all about Cats. Cats, and eye-watering scenes of audio torture as our tame actor Tudor Beamage gives us a terrible peek into his brutal world. All in the name of books.    I ask you.

Let's nail my colours to the mast here. If Knausgaard thought it was a struggle to write the bloody thing, that's nothing compared to what I feel after reading half of book one. God have mercy.

Murakami. Running. Minimalist.

Shoutouts this week to Robin and Josie's Book Shambles and Backlisted - two other fine book-related podcasts.I'm discussing Back To Moscow by Guillermo Erades - a drinking and shagging bildungsroman which rapidly became hella-compelling and almost addictive. The actor Tudor Beamage, meanwhile, delves into the fan-mail in order to validate his existence and learns of a dangerous movement... Peace, love and books X 

This week's show was recorded last week when I wasn't here.  We glance ahead to a few of the big 2016 titles we're looking forward to at 5MF. Let us know what novels you're eagerly awaiting, at @theiainmartin  Blame Canada, peace out.

I will be away from my desk on a sales trip to Germany and Switzerland until February 18th and won't be checking my emails during this time. For all urgent enquiries please contact bigboybeamage@thedancingbear.co.uk in my absence.   Thanks!

One of the best books I've ever read, this week, while the hard man's hard man Tudor Beamage takes us into realms of eye-watering horror with this week's The Spoken Word sentence. Business as usual, really. Come in, bookfolk, come in...

We drift back into the Whoniverse this week to examine George Mann's War Doctor novel Engines of War, because I've been very busy moving back to the UK and haven't had time to read a big long grown-up book. Our new Spoken Word performer demonstrates himself to be a man very much of the world, too. Not that I'm jealous.*   *I am. A bit. 

SPOILER ALERT: I did not warm to David Mitchell's new novella about soul vampires, orisons, operandae, lacunas and related gubbins. On the other hand, coming up in this week's show we have a new presenter of The Spoken Word and a clear victory for Waterstone's in "Algorithm of the Night". So, onwards and upwards.  Just step over that dead body, there...  

This week's episode looks at a debut novel from a new writer and, we suspect - Bronte scholar - Catherine Lowell.   There are no plugs for my SF Kindle series Winterhill which is having a great week.   We also feature a legal stalemate and the author of all our ills, alcoholic actor Bryce D'Abo, cackles and jeers at us, from his new job presenting the Shipping Forecast. It's a strange world.

In something of a shock for a so-called quiet month, we're confronted with one of the strongest and most genuinely exciting books I can remember getting my grubby little protuberances on in quite a long time. To celebrate, our tame robot KAR3N picks a bad time to have a bath and for the second time we compare the recommendation algorithms of Amazon and Waterstones.com. So come and pop my latest nonsense on your iPotato and let's talk about some books. Oh go on. 

Let's kick off 2016 with a really good, short, delicate but excellent novel from the pen of an established master. And I'm not talking about Michelle Gomez. Following swiftly on from this, the to-read pile is fulsome and furious so it's all hands to the pumps. By which I mean books. Luckily KAR3N is here to help with our free audiobook segment The Spoken Word, and in the background there's the soothing sounds of Radio Four.  What's the worst that could happen?

Uploaded at the quite nice Dems tearooms in Canterbury, it's the final 5MF of 2015 so we look back at some of the books that have rocked my world, recycle a quite popular sketch from an earlier show, unveil my personal best book of 2015, and catch up with former audiobook performer (and prick) Bryce D'Abo. 

This week's 5MF was recorded in Southwark, London, and is being beamed up into the nethersphere from Colchester, setting for my as-yet-unwritten historical magical-realism tale CAMVLODVNVM. It's Christmas week, so everyone's silver bells are comprehensively a-jingle, except in my podcast where is is resolutely business very much as usual. This week we're curling up with a wonderful collection of short stories which combine comedic observation with psychological horror to examine and excavate the empty littleness of the life of the American Housewife. Karen the robot has this week's free sentence from our audiobook giveaway for you too, so it really is business as usual. But not next week. Next week is going to be different. Oh yes. 

Swigging heartily from my Johnny Rockets mug, I'm kicking back and relaxing in the stress-free bliss of my newly empty studio. It's time therefore to tell you about what I've been reading this week, which is the frankly amazing novel Number Eleven by Jonathan Coe. And it is awesome. Come and listen. Along the way there's a tiny plug for a Kindle-only science fiction series, and we get to meet a giant robot who loves books. You don't get THAT on Serial.

Another all-time favourite novel gets its chance to wriggle at you seductively and pout in a frankly vampish manner while you peruse it lustfully. Do you feel ashamed? You should. This week we're looking at the debut novel from Paul Hoffman, one of my favouritest books ever. What else is new? Well, in an attempt to see if anyone ever reads these little descriptions, I'm offering a free drink to the first person to tweet me @theiainmartin to claim it (terms and conditions apply) and there's a surprise in store for the actor Bryce D'abo who is about to feel the cold, wet end of EU Employment Law's love-truncheon. Welcome in books, y'all.

In a terrible turn of events, Bryce D'Abo (he played a milkman in Morse in about 1993) has staged a coup d'etat and taken over the Five Minute Fiction studio. What audio horrors await? God let's hope he doesn't start all that Gilbert & Sullivan nonsense. Luckily there's a bit of book chat too as we look back at one of the genuine classics of the 21st Century.

There's a newfound sense of peace and amity in the Five Minute Fiction studio as Bryce D'Abo seems to be behaving himself, and our new Creative Writing course headed up by Keef Richards from the Strolling Bones is proving to be a provocative and exciting project. So this week we dust off an old paperback and curl up with a contemporary masterpiece of lady-chopping and drug-hoovering, American Psycho. Is it more than just a one-note joke? Is it deep and meaningful? Let us consider it, coldly, as men and women of science.