CUK Book Club: Currently reading...

[ResistanceFighter]

Just finished Salem's Lot by Stephen King. Bit long and dull in places but overall it was a good slow burn.

Just started a guilty pleasure - Dan Brown Secret of Secrets

[DoctorStrangelove]

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

Done: off to Oxfam her next door but one with it. The Orange Mother****er gets a mention or two, which is remarkable considering it's a 2005 book. .

Next: "City of Woods and Fields" by Stephen Butler: one man's journey across the country in alphabetical order starting at A in Scotland and ending with Z in Cornwall. All undertaken in a 1969 1970 Morris 1000 van for some odd reason.

Said Morris 1000 van was last taxed in 1993 so is presumably now a baked bean can.

Inexplicably he chose to visit Nantyglo rather than Neath but there you go & there he went: not at all impressed.

In the 35 years since it was written many of the places he visited are no longer there including the Zennor Wayside Museum which lasted until the proprietor retired in 2015.

He was not a fan of Thatcher and her motley crew.

In essence it's a bit like Bryson's "Little Dribbling" journey from south to north but going from north to south in an increasingly infirm Morris 1000 van instead.

[DoctorStrangelove]

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

Done: off to Oxfam with it: more about Big Science being started by The Manhattan Project than anything else. Not stunningly inneresting.

Next: "The Manhattan Project: the making of the atomic bomb" by Al Cimino.

Purchased 3rd of May 2017.

[DoctorStrangelove]

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

Done: off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "Down Under" by Bill Bryson, being several visits to Australia.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Manhattan Project: the making of the atomic bomb" by Al Cimino.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Rather lightweight all in all. That's a nome de plume by the way. It's been reviewed elsewhere as being a printed Wiki posting.

Next: "This Little Britain: how one small country built the modern world" by Harry Bingham.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "This Little Britain: how one small country built the modern world" by Harry Bingham.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Inneresting enough.

Next: "The Long Descent: A user guide to the end of the industrial age" by John Michael Greer.

Purchased 7th May 2011. Mentions "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Miller and "Davy" by Pangborn and "The masters of solitude" by Kaye & Godwin. Possible "Pavane" by Keith Roberts. I've read the first & last, but not the middle two.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Down Under" by Bill Bryson.

Done: off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "At home: a short history of private life" by Bill Bryson. Not particularly short at 500 pages but there you go, being the rooms in his house & various stuff relating thereto.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Long Descent: A user guide to the end of the industrial age" by John Michael Greer.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Inneresting enough though rather preachy. Author is a Druid.

Next: "Station X: The codebreakers of Bletchley Park" by Michael Smith, 2000, C4 book.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "At home: a short history of private life" by Bill Bryson. Not particularly short at 500 pages but there you go.

Done: off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "A northern wind: Britain 1962 - 1965" by David Kynaston. Set exactly midway between Clement Atlee and Margaret "The Great She Elephantine Milksnatching Bitch" Thatcher. One who created the NHS and assorted atomic bombs and the other who sold off everything that wasn't nailed down to make her friends richer.

Gosh. Car factories in Scotland. And Wales. Stephen Ward as the patsy in the Profumo Affair: fitted up like a good 'un: was actually working for MI6 in their attempt to turn Ivanov the KGB chap. Frank Cousins. Ray Gosling. T. Dan Smith. John Poulson. Knocking everything down and building flats (many of said flats now knocked down or blown up in turn). Dear dead days beyond recall. .

Gosh. I knew about CATs (college of advanced technology) but had not previously encountered SISTERS "Special Institutions for Scientific and Technical Education and Research". . Loooogabarooo was an ex CAT when I went there. And bits of that have been demolished too. . I'm sure the library used to be across the way from the EHB.

Whilst I knew about Rolls Razor and John Bloom, I was unaware of John Bloom's affair with a chap's wife which duly led to the said chap offing said wife with with his revolver and then serving 3 years for manslaughter due to provocation. Bloom eventually went bust. You can fool some of the people etc. .

Nice mention of "7 up!", the documentary that will reach 70 this year.

Oh, and dear old Mary Whitehouse made her ineffable appearance. .

Gosh. The Boots the Chemist and WH Smiths circulating libraries.

An Australian name Donald Balfour found that St. John's church in Smith Square Westminster was still a bombed out ruin after 20 years, since then it's been restored as a concert hall.

The Moors Murderers made their despicable appearance.

Victor Value supermarket with King Korn stamps. VV taken over by Tesco.

Ken Morrison starts Wm Morrison, the supermarket. I wonder what he'd think of the current owners. .

The 1964 typhoid outbreak in Aberdeen caused by a single defective 6lb can of Argentinian corned beef (rather than the rumour of it being caused by 13 year old tins of bully beef rotated out of government civil defence stocks).

The Great Train Robbery. 30 year sentences. Jimmy Savile on TOTP and other programmes: the audience seems to have sussed how dodgy the bastard was judging by comments made to audience research.

The new beat combos included The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Animals. And far too much of the beatles. .

Julia Briggs/Gold/Ballam: first female student not to be expelled from Oxford for being pregnant.

Ah, "the White Heat of the Technological Revolution" from a speech by dear old Harold Wilson. Them were the days when we made stuff.

Chap doing 183 mph quite legally on the M1 in an AC Cobra.

Labour elected with a majority of 4.

Poor old Julian Critchley lost his seat. Never mind, once the Triumph Sodomites were available he was back in somewhere else. . Oh, and The Great She Elephant retained her seat.

Goodness me: Colin Jordan: a chap so far to the right that he split from the BNP to found a British Nazi Party aka The British Movement aka The National Socialist Movement. . Never heard of this clown before.

Hanging abolished. Just in time for another Moors Murder, this one on tape FFS.

The funeral of WSC.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Station X: The codebreakers of Bletchley Park" by Michael Smith, 2000, C4 book.

Done: off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "Longitude" by Dava Sobel. Tick Tock.