2023, book 3: Without Enigma: the Ultra and Fellgiebel riddles, Kenneth Macksey

The premise here is that the Axis became aware of the breaking of Enigma and phased it out in favour of Lorenz, code books, etc. It's OK. An interesting subject, but I would much prefer to read a regular history in parallel with the speculative one. The clarifying chapter endnotes that try to indicate where history and fiction differ are not clarifying enough, nor do I think the ordering works: the true history should come first. Anyway, it's OK. An interesting premise, but not executed terribly well.

2023, book 2: Japanese schoolgirl confidential: how teenage girls made a nation cool, Brian Ashcraft & Shoko Ueda

Not very interesting. The thesis is that "schoolgirls are young, they have their whole lives ahead of them, everybody is nostalgic for that time, and so everyone considers them cool and full of possibility, and (therefore?) they are the drivers of what's cool in pop culture." The most interesting part is the smattering of pop culture references: Egg/Popteen/Ranzuki magazines, Tokyo Girls Collection fashion festival, pinku eiga, and a smattering of idols, anime, and manga.