CUK Book Club: Currently reading...

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Life, The Universe, and Everything" by D. Adams. This being the 2nd radio series IIRC.

Meh. Off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "So long and thanks for all the fish" by D. Adams (1984). Talk about flogging a dead donkey.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "So long and thanks for all the fish" by D. Adams (1984). Talk about flogging a dead donkey.

Done, thank feck: off to Oxfam with it: a rereading after 40 years reveals how vacuous the 3rd & 4th books were. It would have been better if he hadn't bothered because they're not worth reading, they read exactly as if he'd been imprisoned in a room & compelled to write. .

Next: but it will have nothing to do with H2G2. I'd get rid of the VHS cassettes of the tv series* but no one has a player any more. .

Next: "The Life & times of the Thunderbolt Kid" by Bill Bryson.

Larf out loud funny at times. .

And mentions:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS195604...t-txIN--------

.

Dunno why but the chemistry set tale was really really funny: I remember doing dumb things like that back in the day.

*The tv series is much better than the books, though not quite as good as the radio series, whilst being infinitely better than the truly dire film.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Philby: the spy who betrayed a generation" by Bruce Page, David Leitch, Phillip Knightley, 2nd ed 1969.

Gosh. Don't have to read many pages before encountering such familiar names as Blunt (still looking after Liz's paintings at the time), Roger Hollis, Dick White, Guy Liddell.

Much too early (1969) for any mention of SpyCatching of course. .

Done: off to Oxfam with it. No mention of Nicholas Elliot but I suppose he was still an anonymous bureaucrat in 1969.

Next: "V2" by Robert Harris. The fictional version of a week or so in November 1944.

Goodness me: a lady who actually did it:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-...%2C%20the%20V2.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-...wales-37265964

Unrecognised? I've never seen it referred to anywhere. Shocking.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "V2" by Robert Harris. The fictional version of a week or so in November 1944.

Done: off to Oxfam with it, having previously graced the Carmarthen free books centre and the Llys Nini greyhound rescue in Swansea. Rather good in its way. Ms YoungHusband is acknowledged in the post script.

Next: "The Manhattan Project: big science and the atom bomb" by Jeff Hughes.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Bruneval Raid: stealing Adolph's Radar" by George Millar. As is usual their engineering was a good deal more impressive than ours*, but there you go, it's probably down to using metric fittings or something. .

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Rather an inneresting book all in all.

Next: "The Doodlebugs: the dramatic story of the flying bombs of WWII" by Norman Longmate. (1981).

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Doodlebugs: the dramatic story of the flying bombs of WWII" by Norman Longmate.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. It seemed long. The reference to the poor sod who was on leave from the Navy & was killed in a rowing boat on Regents Park Lake was ironic in a very ironic way: apparently Sub-Lt John "Jack" David Pook, his fiance escaping with her life though seriously injured.

Next: "SOE: 1940-46" by M.R.D. Foot (1984, BBC), purchased in April 2013 from the Scope charity shoppe which is now the Greyhounds charity shoppe: plainly it's matured well on the bookshelf since then.

Turns out that M.R.D. Foot is the only real person mentioned by John Le Carre: in "Tinker Tailor": "Are you M.R.D. Foot" asked of Smiley as he pretends to be the historian of SIS.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Life & times of the Thunderbolt Kid" by Bill Bryson.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Very enjoyable if you're a boomer. . Twas a different age.

Next: "A walk in the woods" by Bill Bryson, accompanied by Katz.

[Martin@AS Financial]

Just finished How to run an indie label by Alan McGhee which i really enjoyed.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "SOE: 1940-46" by M.R.D. Foot (1984, BBC), purchased in April 2013 from the Scope charity shoppe which is now the Greyhounds charity shoppe: plainly it's matured well on the bookshelf since then.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Not what one might term an easy read: kept beaming out & having to go back a paragraph or half a page or a whole page. .

Next: "Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion in America" by Mark Ames.

Ah, one may have a little song in one's heart over the deaths of Neutron Jack and Al "chainsaw" Dunlap. There'll be a much louder and longer song when the Orange Mofo departs. May it be soon.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "A walk in the woods" by Bill Bryson, accompanied by Katz.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Reading the last few pages stopped me taking a sledge hammer to the TD.

Next: "The road to little dribbling: more notes from a small island" by Bill Bryson.