CUK Book Club: Currently reading...

[Uncle Albert]

Rayuela (or Hopscotch in the translated version) by Julio Cortazar. A novel in 155 chapters, you're meant to read the first 50ish in order and then just leap around the rest of them. There's a suggested order that leaves chapter 56 out entirely but the author was happy for you to skip around as much as you like.

Despite all that, it's very good so far.

[vetran]

Rayuela (or Hopscotch in the translated version) by Julio Cortazar. A novel in 155 chapters, you're meant to read the first 50ish in order and then just leap around the rest of them. There's a suggested order that leaves chapter 56 out entirely but the author was happy for you to skip around as much as you like.

Despite all that, it's very good so far.

sounds like the DMBok

[DoctorStrangelove]

Done. Mildly amusing in its way. Off to Oxfam with it.

It goes into some detail on Peter Wright, "Spycatcher", Wright's input to "Their trade is Treachery", Chapman Pincher, etc. etc. etc. No mention, however, of "The Thing". .

Reminded me that "One Girl's War" by Joan Miller that resides in a pile, another book that Thatcher tried to ban. .

Next: "The changing anatomy of Britain (revised & updated post election edition)" by Anthony Sampson.

The election in question being the 1979 that brought in someone who managed to destroy entire swathes of British Industry.

The Reds didn't need Harold Wilson, they did just as well with that bitch. Now there's a rumour: Thatcher the Soviet Spy.

Review of the New New Anatomy (i.e. a post millennial one rather than a 1980s one):

https://www.theoldie.co.uk/blog/anat...nthony-sampson

Gosh there's a lot of anatomy that's changed out of all recognition.

Who remembers Central Television, Thames TV, LWT, Channel, or Harlech? All gone as if they'd never been.

Oh the alphabet soup of the quangocracy:

NEB: National Enterprise Board. Beam me up.

NRDC: National Research and Development Corporation.

BTG: the combination of the above into the British Technology Group, this last now, after privatisation was bought by Boston Scientific Corporation, incorporated in Delaware, always a good sign. .

IRC: The Industrial Reorganisation Corporation: a Wilson invented quango. Never heard of it.

Done. Thank feck. Altogether too much about Thatcher and too early for the Great Day she got booted out.

Off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "Elephants on Acid and other bizarre experiments" by Alex Boese. Hopefully a Thatcher the Milk Snatcher free zone.

<spoiler> The elephant croaked</spoiler>

Just think how different the country would be if The Great She Elephant had been dosed with acid.

It'll have to wait for me to finish fixing Threaded's Time Machine so I can go back & do it.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Elephants on Acid and other bizarre experiments" by Alex Boese. Hopefully a Thatcher the Milk Snatcher free zone.

Done. Off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "Would you believe it? Odd tales from around the world" by Philip Mason.

This one won't take long. .

Oh there's some lovely things in this tome including stuff it's hard to forget, Auburn, Maine 1984 being one of them.

Compared with that the nutters keeping their dead relatives close pales into insignificance.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Would you believe it? Odd tales from around the world" by Philip Mason.

This one won't take long. .

Oh there's some lovely things in this tome including stuff it's hard to forget, Auburn, Maine 1984 being one of them.

Compared with that the nutters keeping their dead relatives close pales into insignificance.

There, it didn't take long. Done. Off to Oxfam with it.

Next: TBD "The Age of Automation" by Leon Bagrit, being the 1964 Reith Lectures.

It's short. 92 pages including the Epilogue.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: TBD "The Age of Automation" by Leon Bagrit, being the 1964 Reith Lectures.

It's short. 92 pages including the Epilogue.

Done: Off to Oxfam with it.

Goodness me, 1964 is a looooooong time ago.

He foresees, quite presciently, portable computers, networking, much of the technofix.

Mentions Project MAC.

He foresees retiring age decreasing from 65 to 60 to 55 or even earlier. .

He foresees only requiring one income to support a family. .

He thinks the Welfare State will improve & improve as GDP increases. .

He foresees increasing leisure. .

He thinks GDP will increase 4%/year. .

He didn't foresee That Bloody Woman & her malignant effects, or the monetarists or endless austerity or the rich 1% getting ever richer while the rest go to the wall.

He thinks that Russia will turn into a supplier of goods & services but doesn't foresee the rise of China. Then again, who did? I blame Tricky Dicky & fecking ping pong.

Next: TBD "Silicon Snake Oil" by Clifford Stoll, mostly because it's shorter than "The Newtonian Casino" by Thomas A. Bass.

And turns out not to be "The Cuckoo's Egg" which is what I thought it was. .

Well he's got a downer on the interweb: I suppose all there was was ascii pron. .

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: TBD "Silicon Snake Oil" by Clifford Stoll, mostly because it's shorter than "The Newtonian Casino" by Thomas A. Bass.

Done. Off to Oxfam with it. A few good points but much of it is rendered irrelevant by nearly 30 years of "progress".

Picked up "The Newtonian Casino" again but decided to read "Palace of Varieties" by Julian Critchley instead. It's shorter.

A chap who was not a fan of That Bloody Woman who he so memorably referred to as "A label on a can of worms"..

The Conservative Party can boast of being the most successful democratic political party in the world.

It is certainly the longest lived.

It used to be the party of the upper class, which, while taking care to recruit into its ranks the brighter members of the middle, relied on the votes of the deferential working class,

Until recently it was not an ideological party*, although in the past it had torn itself apart in disputes over free trade versus protectionism, and over rearmament before Hitler's War.

It has a tradition of relative tolerance.

Dissent even now is not punished by expulsion or even by a conspiracy to bring about deselection within the constituency;** dissent is regarded as a luxury which is paid for in the coin of neglect

In a party in which the great majority of its MPs are thirsting for office, failure to win promotion is punishment enough.

Thus the Tory party remains, as is Labour, a broad coalition, the "broad church" to which political commentators so often refer.***

Its span can stretch as far as Critchley on the left and Terry Dicks on the right.

*That was then.

**How things have changed.

***Not so broad now after Bunter & co, in the footsteps of That Bloody Woman.

The book was written slightly before the Downfall of The Glorious Leader, which I remember hearing of whilst in my bath. It made my day.

Curiously it was sent by the author to someone around here, the letter from Critchley being glued inside the cover.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Picked up "The Newtonian Casino" again but decided to read "Palace of Varieties" by Julian Critchley instead. It's shorter.

A chap who was not a fan of That Bloody Woman who he so memorably referred to as "A label on a can of worms"..

Done. Very good. Off to Oxfam with it.

Then looked at "Floating Voter" by Julian Critchley but it's a novel so "A bag of Boiled Sweets" by said gentlemen, being his autobiography, was substituted.


"The tile-hung pretty houses covered with wisteria, in every gravelled driveway a Triumph Sodomite". .

I do like his turn of phrase.

The Great She Elephant

describing Thatcher to a t.

He termed the advent of Tebbit et al and the election of The Great She Elephant as leader as "The Peasants Revolt". .

Again, this and "Floating Voter" were complimentary copies sent by Critchely to someone by the name of Greening.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Given the number of trained engineers employed and the current expansion down in Yeovil, yep.

Pity some of the others elsewhere haven't remember how to make propshafts.

On the other hand there's nothing much to fly off the white elephants anyway.

How are the mighty fallen.

It's managed decline & no mistake.

Oh, look, the other one hasn't sailed either.

[Zigenare]

Pity some of the others elsewhere haven't remember how to make propshafts.

On the other hand there's nothing much to fly off the white elephants anyway.

How are the mighty fallen.

It's managed decline & no mistake.

<cough>Tempest</cough>