CUK Book Club: Currently reading...

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next up: "Map Addict" by Mike Parker.

Done.

Next: "The Science Book" by Cyril Aydon.

Also: "Star Trek: the essential history etc." which is a bit more amusing than "The Science Book".

Off to Oxfam with it! I'd forgotten this one.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Also: "Star Trek: the essential history etc." which is a bit more amusing than "The Science Book".

Done: a little light reading.

Next: "Someone has blundered: calamities of the British Army in the Victorian age" by Denis Judd.

Written in 1973, reprinted in 2007, starts with the First Afghan War, then The Indian Mutiny, The Zulu Wars, the First & 2nd Boer Wars.

Quite inspiring really, that despite the overwhelming incompetence, they still managed to make the biggest empire the world has yet seen.

And: "Why things bite back" by Edward Tenner, being an examination of the perfidy of inanimate objects.

Hint: they're all out to get us.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"Why things bite back" by Edward Tenner, being an examination of the perfidy of inanimate objects.

Done, inneresting in parts, amusing in others, having been written in 1995.

The past is another country, they did things with Windows 3.11 and Win95 then.

"What Might Have Been" by Andrew Roberts: Alternative History ponderings on "what if".

Which has proved to be less than stellar, though I did laugh out loud at the though of Lenin being assassinated by Lev Harveivic Oswalt.

There's some lovely Marxist criticism of the book on line.

[GigiBronz]

The rational male - rollo tomassi. Eye opener.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"What Might Have Been" by Andrew Roberts: Alternative History ponderings on "what if".

Done with, not exactly high on the inneresting scale.

Next: "At Home" by Bill Bryson.

Much better, more inneresting & much more readable.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "At Home" by Bill Bryson.

Very good indeed.

I was about to read "Seeing Further" until I discovered he's the editor of the collection, so that's back on the shelf it came from.

"About Time" by Liz Evers "From calendars and clocks to moon cycles and light years - A history".

Seems suitably light and easy to read, unlike some of the more turgid tomes of the last month or so.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"About Time" by Liz Evers "From calendars and clocks to moon cycles and light years - A history".

Seems suitably light and easy to read, unlike some of the more turgid tomes of the last month or so.

Inneresting enough, brought up things about pendlums and escapements which were quite diverting if you like that sort of thing.

Next: "Broken Rails" by Christian Wolmar being the sad tale of Railtrack & the insanity of the way the Tory bastards privatised the railways.

"The Science Book" by Cyril Aydon.

Done. Inneresting enough, especially the bits about pendulums.

Next: "The Secrets of Station X" by Michael Smith, being the 2nd book he's written about Station X, though this one is about twice as thick as the other.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Wally Funk's Race for Space: The Extraordinary Story of a Female Aviation Pioneer eBook: Sue Nelson: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Wally Funk is taking off into space shortly, not with the bearded blunder but with Amazon.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"Broken Rails" by Christian Wolmar being the sad tale of Railtrack & the insanity of the way the Tory bastards privatised the railways.

Quite demented as ideas go. Never trust a Tory.

Next: "Code Wars: how Ultra and Magic led to Allied victory" by John Jackson.

Found this one in one of the "unread" piles, looks like I spent folding money on this back in 2011.

[OwlHoot]

From last week's haul, bought for pennies in charity shops, like nearly all my books these days

A History of the SS, by G S Graber, 1978

An eye-opener in some ways. For example, although the SS were obviously single-minded maniacs on battlefields, they were (luckily for the Allies) poor at tactics and even worse at strategy.

Myths of Britain, by Michael Senior, 1979

Quite a complicated read, delving into where and how ancient Celtic and Saxon mythology morphed into genuine early British history first written by guys like Gildas in the mid 500s, Nennius in the 600s, and of course the Venerable Bede in the 700s.

Haven't actually finished it yet, and am wondering if it will bear out my suspicion that the legendary King Arthur was none other then St Germanus of Auxerre, because "Auxerre" sounds somewhat like "Arthur".