CUK Book Club: Currently reading...

[DoctorStrangelove]

I may not have mentioned "The Angry Island" written by A. A. Gill in his usual abrasive fashion, this time about the English who he appears to have hated as much as he hated the Welsh.

[Gould The Swimmer]

I've got the Bernard Cornwall Agincourt novel up next if I can ever make it through John Gault's interminally long speech.

[DoctorStrangelove]

I may not have mentioned "The Angry Island" written by A. A. Gill in his usual abrasive fashion, this time about the English who he appears to have hated as much as he hated the Welsh.

Which was finished this very morn between 06:01 and 06:57.

Mildly amusing in a mildly amusing sort of way.

Next: "The Secret Life of the Periodic Table" by Dr Ben Still.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Life.../dp/1844038858

Light & easy to read, which make a change.

<hiatus>

Curiously the good Doctor appears to think that Germanium is a suitable material for an LED.

Which it isn't.

[OwlHoot]

Haven't had much time for reading recently, as the reappearance of this thread reminded me.

But flicking through titles of some ebooks I've downloaded recently, I fancy reading some or all of the following this weekend (if time) :

30-second quantum theory - The 50 most thought-provoking quantum concepts, each explained in half a minute; P Ball et al; Icon Books (2014)

A guided tour of light beams - From lasers to optical knots; D S Simon; Morgan & Claypool (2016)

Fighting techniques of the medieval world; M Bennett et al; homas Dunne Books (2005)

The good parts of AWS; D Vassallo, J Pschorr (2019)

[DoctorStrangelove]

To my great delight I discovered that the next book in the pile was a duplicate of one I'd bought in 2007.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voices-Code.../dp/1784383139

So it was onwards to "Gordon Welchman: Bletchley Park's Architect of Ultra Intelligence" by Joel Greenberg.

What it says on the tin, plus an appendix on Enigma that goes even further than "The Hut Six Story" that caused so much fuss in 1982.

Needless to say, this last is beyond my increasingly limited comprehension these days, much as the "Hut Six Story" technicalities were back in the 1990s.

<hiatus>

And with that I can confirm that the Appendix dealing with the ins & outs of decyphering Enigma remain as impenetrable as ever.

I can just about grasp the wheel settings, the stecker settngs, and the ring settings, but the rest of it is incomprehensible.

One must feel sorry for Welchman and the way he was treated.

Turns out the 1990s reprint of the Hut Six Story differed in having his section IV cut out & replaced by an article he wrote about the Polish contribution.

[ladymuck]

Now finally onto a book that I haven't read, now that I've reacquainted myself with the series:

The New Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

[NotAllThere]

Just finished Obama's book. Now reading David Mitchell's autobiography.

[OwlHoot]

To my great delight I discovered that the next book in the pile was a duplicate of one I'd bought in 2007.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voices-Code.../dp/1784383139

So it was onwards to "Gordon Welchman: Bletchley Park's Architect of Ultra Intelligence" by Joel Greenberg.

What it says on the tin, plus an appendix on Enigma that goes even further than "The Hut Six Story" that caused so much fuss in 1982.

Needless to say, this last is beyond my increasingly limited comprehension these days, much as the "Hut Six Story" technicalities were back in the 1990s.

In case you want to read them on the move (cough)

Voices of the codebreakers - The inside story of the codemakers and codebreakers of World War II; M Paterson; F W Media Inc (2011)

Gordon Welchman - Bletchley Park's architect of ultra intelligence; J Greenberg; Frontline Books (2016)

[OwlHoot]

Now finally onto a book that I haven't read, now that I've reacquainted myself with the series:

The New Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

Oh that kind of watch, I thought it would be about wrist watches

(I have about twenty mechanical wrist watches bought in charity shops over the years, and one new one I bought with a titanium case and sapphire face. But I can't remember which one the latter is. They all look so similar! )

[AtW]

“Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott, published on March 18”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/r...book-3ndvdq6ff