If immortality came in a pill – would you swallow it?

That's the subject of today's new release. Welcome to Issue 4 of the 2PoundPaperback – your weekly dose of book-related insights, book news, and updates on my writing projects.

New Release:

Who Wants to Live Forever by Hanna Thomas Uose.

Premise: A Bryan Johnson-like figure invents a drug – Yareta – which effectively cures mortality. In a Brexit-like referendum, the UK votes YES to Yareta's legalisation. Sam decides to take it – and his wife, Yuki, does not. This is a profound (and terrifying) meditation on a world where ageing has become only a problem of the poor. 

Points of interest: I picked this up at Uose's event in Oxford last month and – after getting stuck on a certain long-winded Norwegian – tore through it. Despite the severity of its subject matter and the frighteningly convincing portrayals of society and the workplace in 2030, we are ultimately returned to the human – love, family, and grief.

There is technical impress, too. Uose's writing is beautiful on the line level and there is some fancy footwork in the form. But perhaps what I love most about this novel, is that it never loses its playfulness.

What I'm Reading:

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: 'Winter Dreams.'

Premise: This story traces the history of the eponymous 'winter dreams' of a boy, later man, Dexter Green, and especially as they manifest in a girl, later woman, Judy Jones.

Points of interest: Fitzgerald used short stories as a way of testing out the themes in his novels – and so scholars separate most of his stories into five respective 'clusters.'

'Winter Dreams' is generally regarded as the strongest story in the 'Gatsby cluster' and was originally published in the Gatsby-companion volume All The Sad Young Men.