Well slap my thigh, if it isn’t the Windmill Friday Feeling!

Social networks: a 21st century phenomenon right? Wrong, according to this article, which tracks Voltaire’s 18th century Republic of Letters, a powerful influence on the Enlightenment.

While I’m not exactly a ‘grammar Nazi’ (I make far too many mistakes myself to ever be called that) I do wince at the state of some people’s Facebook spelling. Others do rather more than wince, as these Obnoxious Responces to Misspellings on Facebook attest.

One of the things I love about the internet is the random stuff that you come across that makes you think afresh about something extremely commonplace. So, we have this: The Unsung Heros of Biscuit Embossing. Brilliant!

AND FINALLY, because we are a publishing blog after all, it’s only right that we end with The World’s Most Inspiring Bookstores according to Salon.com. Good weekends all!

On Thursday 30th June from 4-5pm, Haley Tanner will be taking over the Windmill Twitter and answering your questions about her book Vaclav and Lena.

To ask her a question, send it to @WindmillBooks with the hastag #vaclav, with the five best questions winning three Windmill Books of your choice. For inspiration, head over to the Windmill Book Club, where we have Haley Tanner on what inspired her to write Vaclav and Lena.

El Sicario - Room 164, the documentary about a drug cartel hitman in Juárez, Mexico, has won the Grand Jury Award at the London Documentary Festival. William Heinemann will publish the book in paperback in July. From the judges:

The sicario is highly intelligent, very articulate and all too believable … as remarkable for its inventiveness as for its shocking content.

Watch the book’s trailer below.

Pre-order the book today at Amazon, Waterstone’s, rBooks, or at your local bookshop.

Dads - if yours is anything like mine, they’re pretty much impossible to buy presents for. Well fear not! For today, Windmill and Waterstone’s together bring you the ten, never-fail, tried and tested, absolute best books for dads anywhere. Starting with…

The thriller addict

We debated which of Robert Harris’s books to plump for here - the historical epic of Pompeii, or the modern political conspiracy of The Ghost - but in the end went back to his first: a bonafide, cast-iron classic of the genre.  The shoutline says it all: ‘What if Hitler had won?’, but what follows is a plot that twists and turns in ways you will never expect.

‘The highest form of thriller … non-stop excitement’ The Times

Buy it now

The historian

Matthew Parker’s history of the British Empire’s exploits in the West Indies is a riveting tale of corruption, power, and family. One of the darkest episodes in British history, the effects of which are still being felt today.

‘A fascinating subject, and a book worthy of it…there isn’t a dull page’ Daily Telegraph

Buy it now

The adventurer

Nick Harkaway’s debut exploded onto the scene with its swashbuckling, karate kicking adventure into the chaotic Gone-Away World, but the action never takes the place of the strength of the characters, in particular the friendship between the central duo.

‘Its scope and ambition are extraordinary, its execution is often breathtaking, and its style is by turns hilarious, outrageous, devastating, hip and profound … Hugely entertaining’ Independent on Sunday

Buy it now

The scientist

Christopher Potter takes us on a journey to discover our place in the universe, from planets and galaxies, to molecules, atoms, and the strange quantum world of the ultra-small, along the way giving us a history and philosophy of science. Incredible, mind expanding stuff.

‘One of the best popular science books I have ever read’ Guardian

Buy it now

The satirist

You know how some dads like to keep hold of the remote control, no matter what? Turns out God is no different! Having left his son Jesus in charge for a few hundred years, God returns to find Earth in a very unholy mess. He decides there is only one thing for it: He’s sending the kid back, to teach the one true commandment - ‘Be Nice’ - through the medium of American Pop Star. Featuring the return of the devilish Stephen Stelfox, this is a hilarious and merciless satire on religion from the author of Kill Your Friends.

‘Deeply, intelligently satirical. In lesser hands it could easily have become a crass rant. Yet Niven provides hilarious, perceptive entertainment’ Mirror

Buy it now

The politician

Whatever your political persuasion, Tony Blair’s autobiography has proved to be necessary reading for anyone wanting to see how the decisions at the very top are made. An extraordinarily candid book from one of the most charismatic leaders in recent memory.

Buy it now

The literary bookworm

A poetic and moving meditation on fatherhood, Tinkers was the first debut to win the Pulitzer Prize in ten years. An old man lies dying in his bed, and a world of memories collapses around him.

‘Wonderful, lyrical … Triumphant … A beautiful, moving and elegiac lament on the human condition’ The Times

Buy it now

The psychologist

What if you were told that a psychopathic arsonist might also be the person most likely to save you from a burning building? This book is about a special kind of persuasion: ‘flipnosis’. It has an incubation period of just seconds, and can instantly disarm even the most discerning mind. Flipnosis is black-belt mind control.

‘A wide-ranging and entertaining tour of the science of persuasion and influence … exposing, along with many other wonders, just how many scientists are currently at work in the shadowy territories of human personality, psychological improvement and, essentially, mind control’ Sunday Times

Buy it now

The hard-boiled detective

The first book of the acclaimed, genre busting LA Quartet, The Black Dahlia is a masterclass of pared-down crime noir.

‘A mesmerising study of the psycho-sexual obsession…extraordinarily well written’ The Times

Buy it now

The businessman

Samuel Johnson shortlisted and winner of the FT/Goldman Sachs award, this is a vivid, dramatic account of the four men whose personal and professional actions led to the world economic collapse of the late 1920s.

‘Brilliant… a colourful monetary and financial history…Lords of Finance will help to educate as it entertains’ TLS

Buy it now

It’s week two of our book club for the fantastic Vaclav and Lena - I hope you’re enjoying reading this wonderful book (the Financial Times certainly did). Now you can download the handy Vaclav and Lena Reading Group Guide, to get the discussion going in your group!

Next week: Haley Tanner tells us what inspired her to write the book.

Vaclav and Lena is out now. Buy it from rbooks, Amazon, Waterstones, or your local bookshop.

There’s music playing now. It fills the room as Mr Satoshi stands over me, pressing his thumbs into my scalp.

Mr Satoshi is a hairdresser. Before every haircut, he toys with my skull as if testing a mango for ripeness. And halfway through this toying, he gives me a look in the mirror. It’s a look that suggests he wants to put the mango back on the shelf and exchange it for a better one.

“I can only do best I can,” he says, staring down at my double crown. 

Dire Straits blasts out of Bose speakers, rebounding off metal and glass. My hairdresser back in London always plays gentle muzak - a panpipe version of Celine Dion, or the sound of blue whales making love to other blue whales, or perhaps having a fling with a high-pitched dolphin (it’s not always clear). But Mr Satoshi prefers classic rock.

There are probably better barbers in Tokyo, but on my arrival in Japan a few months ago this was the first one I found. As an expat living in Japan I find myself craving routine. I don’t want a different hair salon every time. I am a creature of habit, and so is Mr Satoshi. He tosses the gown around my neck like a magician, every time. He launches straight into the head-squeezing routine, every time. And he always greets my description of the Ideal Jonathan Lee Haircut with a silent wince that causes his glasses to ride up his nose. The lenses are the thickness of bullet-proof perspex. This is disconcerting, but not as disconcerting as the fact that he only ever seems to peer over the top of them.

“You have a thick hair,” he announces, the same words he utters every time I visit. “This a method to best thin it.”

He shuffles around and strokes his beard. Beneath the mirror is a ledge bearing an open box of scissors, clippers and razors. He inspects my fringe closely, then attacks a huge clump of it.

* * *

It is only when he starts to trim the sides that his methods become less dangerous. This is when we talk. I tell him my impressions of Tokyo. He nods now and again. When he speaks, which is very occasionally, he teaches me something new.

We talk about how on the one hand the population has a huge affinity for the traditions of Japan’s past, but on the other Tokyo is a city in which everything is sparkling and new - the ultimate 21st century playground.

I mention how I walked into a bar on Saturday and saw a Japanese man drinking a pint of Asahi. On the stool opposite, his tiny son was swigging froth from a brown glass bottle with ‘KidsBeer’ printed on the side.

I tell him that the toilet in my apartment has more buttons and levers than a 747 cockpit, plus a built-in bidet which, as AA Gill put it, leaves you questioning your sexuality. 

Mr Satoshi tells me that ‘AA’ is not a pre-name that he has come across.

One minute you’re trying your hand at an ancient art like ikebana or calligraphy; the next you’re buying ice cream from a vending machine that also sells used schoolgirls’ knickers. On Saturday a local host takes you to a 1,000-year-old temple, and on Sunday you dine in a high-rise waterworld where customers catch their own supper with a miniature fishing rod. As an expat I am confronted with the twin Japanese obsessions - tradition and newness - and it makes for a place that is difficult to access but fascinating to behold.  

Mr Satoshi enjoys the fact that I am intrigued by these contrasts. He tells me that Japan is the land of variety.

* * *

One day I tell Mr Satoshi that I am thinking of writing a novel. I might drop my main character, a confused Westerner, into the middle of Japan’s contradictory capital. A photographer, perhaps. Someone who has lost his creative urge. Maybe lost something else, too: someone he loved. He’ll be searching for a mysterious individual - that will be the thing that propels the narrative forward. And in the process, he’ll come to understand himself a little better.

Mr Satoshi queries this last bit. “Understand himself?”

“Yeah.”

“I do not like it when a book is full of chiizu,” he says, and uses his hand to fan away a pretend smell.

“It won’t be cheesy,” I say. “At least, that’s not my intention.”

“Good,” he says. “How many words complete?”

I make my thumb and forefinger into a zero. He laughs harder than I’ve ever heard him laugh before.

“Maybe I’ll call one of the characters Mr Satoshi,” I say. “It’s a mysterious-sounding name.”

“Yes,” he says. “A better name than AA.”

Who is Mr Satoshi by Jonathan Lee is out in paperback in July. Order it from Amazon, Play, Waterstones, or your local bookshop.