Reply to: CUK Book Club: Currently reading...

[DoctorStrangelove]

Thanks to the almighty google I finally found: "Like Young" by Theodore "Ted" Sturgeon.

https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_...p?view=theater

Been searching for this for years.

I wonder where & when I first read it.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: TBD

And having been determined, it proved thusly to be: "The British Way of Life" by Prof. K. B. Smellie, 1955, William Heinemann Ltd.

Which proved to be quite hardgoing, particularly the bit about the Constitution (Unwritten). .

Next: "The Industrial Revolutionaries" by Gavin Weightman, all about, oddly enough, the industrial revolutionaries of the 18th & 19th centuries.

It seems rather easier to read than the aforementioned tome by Prof. Smellie.


Today I found this, which is ever so jolly:

https://npolicy.org/books/Reactor-Gr.../Chapter_1.pdf

Doesn't mention Cobalt Thorium G though.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next:

To Infinity & Beyond: "Project Orion" by George Dyson.

Which looked more inneresting than it turned out to be, though the small nukes bit was diverting.

Next: TBD

And having been determined, it proved thusly to be: "The British Way of Life" by Prof. K. B. Smellie, 1955, William Heinemann Ltd.

Turns out that the good professor had his left leg below the knee and right foot blown off by a German shell in April 1917, which presumably got him out of the mincing machine for the duration.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/3983645400

However this didn't prevent him living for a total of 90 years & 3 days.

[OwlHoot]

Currently reading or recently read:

* "Terms & Conditions: Life in Girls' Boarding Schools, 1939-1979", by Ysenda Graham (2016)

* "Rome: Eternal City", by Ferdinand Addis (2018)

Both bought in a charity shop, so nothing I went out of my way to obtain, with (for the first) a suspiciously pervy motive! Actually, the first was laugh out loud funny in places and an interesting read.

The second is somewhat similar in content to the well-known "Ave Roma Immortalis" by F Marion Crawford (1898) (Gutenberg ebooks at vol 1, vol 2), but as one would expect from their publication dates quite a bit racier!

Planning to read:

* "Docker Deep Dive", by Nigel Poulton (2020-05)

* "Python Testing with pytest", by Brian Okken (2017)

Been using Docker and pytest a fair bit, so thought it was time I consolidated and increased my knowledge of them.

[NotAllThere]

Just starting Genevieve Cogman's The Dark Archives (Part of The Invisible Library series). Light weight-ish fantasy. Not quite as comic as Pratchett but there are similiarities.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Done.

Next: Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon The Next Attack: The Globalisation of Jihad (London: Hodder and Stoughton,2005)

Another epic that's sat on the bookshelf for knocking on for 15 years or so.

Stone me, it reveals the neocons to be even fecking denser than I'd imagined was possible.

In the realms of believing six impossible things before breakfast sort of dense re the invasion of Eyerack.

Glad that's over. The tulipstorms since 2005 have proved the worth of the neocons & their delusions even before The Orange Idiot appeared.

Next:

To Infinity & Beyond: "Project Orion" by George Dyson.

No vacuum cleaners were harmed in the making of this book.

I observe from the enclosed receipt that I purchased this in June of 2002, so it's matured well in the interim.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"A short history of technology" by T.K. Derry & Trevor I. Williams.

Short in the sense of being written in 1960, not so short in the sense of being 783 pages long.

Well it's short compared with the 5 volumes of this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Tec.../dp/B000TTPGEM

"A history of Technology" by Singer in 5 volumes.

And, it must be said, enjoyably readable.

And this:

https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~jharlow/slowglass.htm

It's over half a century since I first read that & it still gets me.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"Big Ancestor" by F. L. Wallace: or how the human race found its interstellar origins.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5096...-h/50969-h.htm

[DoctorStrangelove]

I wouldn't waste your time with the ley lines book. The idea is a load of tulip from start to finish.

Surely not, The Ancient Aliens Researchers so beloved of the Blaze channel believe it's all true.

How else would one align the pyramids with Sirius?

In reality, I gave up after page 5.

Mostly because it hadn't mentioned the Roswell incident.

[Gibbon]

The Celestial Hunter - Roberto Calasso.

[OwlHoot]

Next: (possibly) "The Old Straight Track" by Alfred Watkins, all about ley lines apparently, but probably missing out on the obvious Ancient Aliens explanation for it all.

I wouldn't waste your time with the ley lines book. The idea is a load of tulip from start to finish.

The only reason our ancestors considered certain areas in the UK, and elsewhere presumably, more sacred than others, is because it's where their ancestors first settled. (All primitive people are obsessed by the spirits of their ancestors.) That in turn was because those were the few areas, such as Salisbury plain, that had not been covered in dense impenetrable forest back in c. 10,000 BC when modern humans first canoed up the rivers exploring the strange new land of what is now the UK.

Admittedly year round springs helped, along with strange stone artifacts and shapes deposited by the receding ice, and both were in evidence in the area round Stonehenge. Back in around 7000 BC there was a row of huge wooden carved totem poles at the site where Stonehenge was later built (starting in around 3500 BC).

[GregRickshaw]

Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani

[DoctorStrangelove]

"The Time Traveller's guide to Restoration Britain 1660 - 1700" by Ian Mortimer.

A lot easier to read and more inneresting with it.

Done.

Next: Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon The Next Attack: The Globalisation of Jihad (London: Hodder and Stoughton,2005)

Another epic that's sat on the bookshelf for knocking on for 15 years or so.

Stone me, it reveals the neocons to be even fecking denser than I'd imagined was possible.

In the realms of believing six impossible things before breakfast sort of dense re the invasion of Eyerack.

[DoctorStrangelove]

"God won't save America: Psychosis of a nation" George Walden 2006.

The whys & wherefores of the demented colonials across the pond.

Not very inneresting by any stretch of the imagination, it was a bit like pulling teeth towards the end.

Next:

"The Time Traveller's guide to Restoration Britain 1660 - 1700" by Ian Mortimer.

A lot easier to read and more inneresting with it.

[DoctorStrangelove]

The answer being: "The Fever Trail: in search of the cure for Malaria" by Mark Honigsbaum.

Took a while, but quite a good read. What those chaps went through to source the cinchona trees was remarkably remarkable.

Next: (possibly) "The Old Straight Track" by Alfred Watkins, all about ley lines apparently, but probably missing out on the obvious Ancient Aliens explanation for it all.