CUK Book Club: Currently reading...

[DoctorStrangelove]

The answer being: "The Fever Trail: in search of the cure for Malaria" by Mark Honigsbaum.

Took a while, but quite a good read. What those chaps went through to source the cinchona trees was remarkably remarkable.

Next: (possibly) "The Old Straight Track" by Alfred Watkins, all about ley lines apparently, but probably missing out on the obvious Ancient Aliens explanation for it all.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"God won't save America: Psychosis of a nation" George Walden 2006.

The whys & wherefores of the demented colonials across the pond.

Not very inneresting by any stretch of the imagination, it was a bit like pulling teeth towards the end.

Next:

"The Time Traveller's guide to Restoration Britain 1660 - 1700" by Ian Mortimer.

A lot easier to read and more inneresting with it.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"The Time Traveller's guide to Restoration Britain 1660 - 1700" by Ian Mortimer.

A lot easier to read and more inneresting with it.

Done.

Next: Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon The Next Attack: The Globalisation of Jihad (London: Hodder and Stoughton,2005)

Another epic that's sat on the bookshelf for knocking on for 15 years or so.

Stone me, it reveals the neocons to be even fecking denser than I'd imagined was possible.

In the realms of believing six impossible things before breakfast sort of dense re the invasion of Eyerack.

[GregRickshaw]

Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani

[OwlHoot]

Next: (possibly) "The Old Straight Track" by Alfred Watkins, all about ley lines apparently, but probably missing out on the obvious Ancient Aliens explanation for it all.

I wouldn't waste your time with the ley lines book. The idea is a load of tulip from start to finish.

The only reason our ancestors considered certain areas in the UK, and elsewhere presumably, more sacred than others, is because it's where their ancestors first settled. (All primitive people are obsessed by the spirits of their ancestors.) That in turn was because those were the few areas, such as Salisbury plain, that had not been covered in dense impenetrable forest back in c. 10,000 BC when modern humans first canoed up the rivers exploring the strange new land of what is now the UK.

Admittedly year round springs helped, along with strange stone artifacts and shapes deposited by the receding ice, and both were in evidence in the area round Stonehenge. Back in around 7000 BC there was a row of huge wooden carved totem poles at the site where Stonehenge was later built (starting in around 3500 BC).

[Gibbon]

The Celestial Hunter - Roberto Calasso.

[DoctorStrangelove]

I wouldn't waste your time with the ley lines book. The idea is a load of tulip from start to finish.

Surely not, The Ancient Aliens Researchers so beloved of the Blaze channel believe it's all true.

How else would one align the pyramids with Sirius?

In reality, I gave up after page 5.

Mostly because it hadn't mentioned the Roswell incident.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"Big Ancestor" by F. L. Wallace: or how the human race found its interstellar origins.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5096...-h/50969-h.htm

[DoctorStrangelove]

"A short history of technology" by T.K. Derry & Trevor I. Williams.

Short in the sense of being written in 1960, not so short in the sense of being 783 pages long.

Well it's short compared with the 5 volumes of this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Tec.../dp/B000TTPGEM

"A history of Technology" by Singer in 5 volumes.

And, it must be said, enjoyably readable.

And this:

https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~jharlow/slowglass.htm

It's over half a century since I first read that & it still gets me.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Done.

Next: Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon The Next Attack: The Globalisation of Jihad (London: Hodder and Stoughton,2005)

Another epic that's sat on the bookshelf for knocking on for 15 years or so.

Stone me, it reveals the neocons to be even fecking denser than I'd imagined was possible.

In the realms of believing six impossible things before breakfast sort of dense re the invasion of Eyerack.

Glad that's over. The tulipstorms since 2005 have proved the worth of the neocons & their delusions even before The Orange Idiot appeared.

Next:

To Infinity & Beyond: "Project Orion" by George Dyson.

No vacuum cleaners were harmed in the making of this book.

I observe from the enclosed receipt that I purchased this in June of 2002, so it's matured well in the interim.