Paperbacks reviewed by William Leith

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion (Penguin, £7.99)

In this sequel to The Rosie Project, Don, a scientist, tells us: “I accepted that I was wired differently from most people, or, more precisely, that my wiring was towards one end of a spectrum of different human configurations.” Another way of putting it is: “without people like me, we would not have penicillin or computers”. The brilliance of this book lies in the way Don describes ordinary people, and the strange, emotion-driven way they express themselves. Having married Rosie (his description of the wedding is lovely), Don is now living with his wife in New York. Early in the book he has a “meltdown”. A real pleasure to read.

The News by Alain de Botton (Penguin, £10.99)

As Alain de Botton points out, every so often “we interrupt whatever we are doing in order to check the news”. We select a medium, and then listen to someone telling us about what has been happening. Interestingly, “the one thing the news skilfully avoids training its eye on is itself”. One cannot imagine the news telling us how weird it is that we are so obsessed with the news. And, as he comprehensively shows us, the news, and our fixation with it, is weird. As always, de Botton has noticed some very important things that nobody else seems to have noticed, even though they are staring us in the face.

All That is Solid by Danny Dorling (Penguin, £9.99)

Everybody spends a lot of time thinking about house prices, even though they might have trained themselves to avoid mentioning the subject in public. Many of us are conflicted in this area. We might sort of like the fact that prices tend to rise but also feel that this is a disaster in the long run. This is the book you want if you want to explore the theory that housing in Britain, and particularly in London, is a disaster. Nobody I can think of has explained it better. “If people hoarded food on the basis that its value was sure to go up when others began to starve and would pay anything, we would stop their hoarding.” Very well put.