CUK Book Club: Currently reading...

[d000hg]

I got a sci-fi bundle and it was stuffed full of books I wanted to read. Full Arthur C Clarke, David Gemmell, Anne McCaffrey you name it. All the brain out D&D/Sci-fi stuff that are hardly literary masterpieces but all the classics that I like. Just never got started. Getting so many ended up being counter productive in the end.

Maybe your battered conscience raised its crippled arm

[NotAllThere]

Steve Lightle, Exodus 2. Autobiography, early 70s. Not very good at story telling, but gives a great picture of helping people behind the Iron Curtain during that time.

[d000hg]

Speaking of Kindle deals, I'm now reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (sp?) - guess you'd call it cyberpunk sci-fi (cy-fi?)

[ladymuck]

"Use of weapons" by Iain M. Banks

Top choice! I like anything by Iain M. Banks.

[ladymuck]

Maybe your battered conscience raised its crippled arm

[OwlHoot]

Books I'm about to read. (Yes I know, talk is cheap. But I will get round to reading them this week! )

"Tom Fletcher and the Angel of Death", by Sarah Matthias (enjoyed another in the same series, so thought I'd read them all although I believe they're really for teenagers)

"The Secret World of Farm Animals", by Jeffrey Masson (some tiresome vegan special pleading, but interesting insights into animal behaviour and thoughts)

"MI6, Life and Death in the British Secret Service", by Gordon Corera

[Bod]

Currently reading “In search of Schrödinger’s cat” by John Gribbin.

It does require a little bit of focus and effort, but it’s straightforward, lucid and very interesting. Turns out the atomic model that most of us were taught in school (like a miniature solar system) is total tulip.

Next up is “Chaos” by James Gleick.

Life’s too short for fiction…..

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Nathaniel's Nutmeg: how one man's courage changed the course of history" by Giles Milton.

It was page 202 before Nathaniel turned up, and he hasn't got as far as the nutmeg yet, being stuck in the Red Sea in prison for yonks.

Next: "The Spying Game" by Michael Smith, being a 2003 post 9/11 expanded rehash of a 1996 book.

Ironically it starts with Afghanistan in early September 2001, a few days before 9/11.

[d000hg]

Turns out the atomic model that most of us were taught in school (like a miniature solar system) is total tulip..

It's a conceptual simplification of an older model, used to give some sort of intuitive graspable visualisation to laymen, that works remarkably well for explaining how things behave at larger scales.


I'm now onto Bill Bryson's "The Body: A Guide for Occupants" which makes for easy low-brow reading.

[DoctorStrangelove]

It was page 202 before Nathaniel turned up, and he hasn't got as far as the nutmeg yet, being stuck in the Red Sea in prison for yonks.

And he was dead by page 305, more or less nutmeg free.

Nice people, the Dutch.

No wonder we fought the bastards.