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2020-01-01T20:00:00.000Z

Well hellooo - pull up a seat. You'll notice the date on this post is far in the future. That's so it stays on top of the list, and is the first you visitors see. In order to bring order out of chaos, I've categorised my bloog entries. Look, see, down there on the left. Topics! Click one to pick one!

What is it that the waitress says? "Enjoy!".

Below are all the posts in uncategorised "latest first" order.

Straight Into Darkness - Faye Kellerman

2009-02-08T16:45:00.002Z

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/books/fiction/reviews/article_1039607.php/Book_Review_Straight_into_Darkness_by_Faye_Kellerman

"If you are a fan of Kellerman, you will enjoy this work; if you haven’t discovered this author yet you’d be better off trying one of her other books."

Maybe I should have. The setting in just prewar Munich was excellent, but the main character never became real for me, and there were too many similarly named characters of whom in the end I lost track.

Rated 6/10

The Complete Roderick - John Sladek

2009-02-08T16:42:00.003Z

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/roderick.htm

I liked the intelligence, but I couldn't get on with the unreal reality in which the story is set.

unrated

The Broken World - Tim Etchells

2009-02-08T16:39:00.001Z

http://bigdumbobject.co.uk/2008/06/the-broken-world.html

I couldn't care less about computer games, and I couldn't get into this.

unrated

The Steep Approach to Garbadale - Iain Banks

2009-01-10T07:54:00.003Z

http://www.iain-banks.net/fiction/the-steep-approach-to-garbadale/

As might be expected this is a very well written book, however not much happens and despite the twist in the tail, I found it somehow unsatisfying.

Rated 7/10

The Ruffian on the Stair - Gary Newman

2008-12-31T14:07:00.004Z

http://www.constablerobinson.com/?section=books&book=the_ruffian_on_the_stair_9781845296377_hardback

I managed to get to the end of this, but it isn't worth the effort. An historic mystery leaves a plethora of unlikely soluable clues in the present. A hero with an unbelievable affliction. A daft crime in the present.

Rated 5/10

Falling - John Connor

2008-12-31T14:03:00.002Z

http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/HB-33217/Falling.htm

Entertaining thriller made more interesting by being set in West Yorkshire.

Rated 7/10

What The Dead Know - Laura Lippman

2008-12-31T13:59:00.004Z

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061128851/What_the_Dead_Know/index.aspx

Interesting "cold case" detective story with a twist in the tail that I didn't see coming.

Rated 7/10

The One From the Other - Philip Kerr

2008-12-14T22:09:00.003Z

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/kerrp/oneother.htm

Excellent "gumshoe" thriller transposed to just post-war Germany.

From the Complete Review's review:-
Philip Kerr began his writing-career with three impressive novels about German policeman and private investigator Bernie Gunther set around World War II. .... Not quite plausible enough, The One from the Other is still a thoroughly enjoyable period-thriller, and the return of Bernie Gunther a very welcome one.

Rated 7/10

A Snowball in Hell - Christopher Brookmyre

2008-12-07T19:21:00.004Z

http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Title/9780316027632

Rather bloody, but very pacey and well written. Well worth a read, if you aren't too squeamish. (I don't like true shlock, and I managed this OK)

Rated 7/10

Letter to ITV

2008-12-06T22:31:00.002Z

I despise "celebrity" programmes. Today I sent this to ITV.

Dear Sir,

Today I had the misfortune by chance to see a small part of your programme “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.” and I am writing to comment on the way in which it exploits both live insects and the baser instincts of those who choose to watch it.

At a time when the natural world is being pushed to the edge by human society, have you no feeling of your responsibility to make people value even the simplest parts of that world? If people are taught that insects, grubs and other such primitive creatures have no purpose other than to die for their amusement, why shouldn’t they apply the same attitudes to other animals and eventually their fellow men?. Being amused by the torment and death of our fellow creatures makes us all Jamie Bulger killers writ small.

Out of programmes like yours come social attitudes which end up with people like Karen Matthews, who have lost all connection to the norms of a decent society.

It is a sad day when no doubt intelligent and accomplished people can prostitute themselves to make banal trash like this.

I should like to know your rationale for using this kind of “entertainment”.

Yours faithfully,

Books Catch-Up

2008-12-06T22:23:00.005Z

Well it was my intention to record here what I read, and for a little while I did quite well. I'm going to try again, but here is the first of a couple of catch-up lists. These aren't all the books I've read, they are extacted from my library lending record - the wonders of modern technology eh?
The ones with stars are the ones that are definitely worth reading. That doesn't mean the others aren't, but they haven't lingered in my mind.

Atwood, Margaret, Alias Grace
Crichton, Michael, Airframe ***
Rathbone, Julian, - A Very English agent
Levin, Janna - A madman dreams of Turing machines
Sagan, Nick - Idlewild
Reeman, Douglas - Dust on the Sea
Smith, Ali, - The Accidental
Aldiss, Brian Wilson, - Harm
Lake, Deryn - Death and the Cornish fiddler
Chevalier, Tracy - Burning Bright
Sandford, John - The Hanged man's song
Banks, Iain - The Player of Games ***
Sandford, John - Dead Watch
Binding, Tim - Anthem
Cornwell, Bernard - Sword Song
Self, Will The Butt - An Exit Strategy
Banks, Iain - The Algebraist
Sandford, John - Invisible Prey
Cornwell, Bernard - Sea Lord
DuBois, Brendan - Resurrection Day
Crichton, Michael - State of Fear
Aldiss, Brian W., - White Mars
Rankin, Ian - Fleshmarket Close
Sandford, John -Mortal Prey ***
Roberts, Adam - Salt
Hall, Rodney - The Day We Had Hitler Home
Hopkins, Ellen - Crank
Dietrich, William - The Scourge of God
Connolly, John - The Reapers ***
Park, Paul - Coelestis **
Birch, Carol - Scapegallows **
Smith, Martin Cruz - Red Square
Preston, Douglas J. - Blasphemy
Ballard, J. G. - Millennium people
Vonnegut, Kurt -The sirens of Titan ***
Pelevin, Viktor - The helmet of horror : the myth of Theseus and the minotaur **
Cameron, Kenneth - The frightened man

Flippin' Heck

2008-11-13T21:59:00.002Z

Good Lord - this is what you get with age. I suddenly thought, I wonder how long it is since I posted anything. Looks like its over six months since I posted anything about my reading, and otherwise, over a year.

A year!!!! - And I only blinked :(

The Hanged Man's Song - John Sandford

2008-03-23T12:06:00.002Z

http://www.johnsandford.org/kidd04.html

He's sometimes a very fluent and gripping writer, and this is one of those occasions. Nice mixture of thriller and not-too-techy computer hacker stuff.

Rated 8/10

Burning Bright - Tracy Chevalier

2008-03-23T12:03:00.003Z

http://www.tchevalier.com/burningbright/index.html

About Willian Blake (perhaps) and London at the time of the French Revolution. Good enough read, but it felt like the back-drop to a main story that never happened - like a high quality bundle of sub-plots.

Rated 7/10

Airframe - Michael Crichton

2008-02-10T17:22:00.000Z

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/books-airframe-history.html

I find Crichton's characterisation a bit wooden but aside from that, this is a real page-turner with loads of satisfying technical detail, and plenty of twists and turns. The denoument comes in the last few pages, and I hadn't sussed it, although I think, looking back the clues were there.

Good read - I hardly put it down.

Rated 7/10

Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold

2008-02-10T17:16:00.000Z

http://www.carterbeatsthedevil.com/enter.html

Excellent and gripping "electrifying mystery tour" - weaves actual history with real and imagined characters. First rate.

Rated 8/10

What have I been doing?

2008-02-10T17:13:00.000Z

Well, I'm clearly not very good at this "Dear Diary business. I mean, I never meant to keep a diary here, but I am supposed to be doing book reviews. Surely I've missed something. Why no entries in January? Ho hum.

Hermann Goering on Blair's Iraq phantasy

2007-12-29T16:26:00.000Z

“Naturally the common people don't want war ... but after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Randy Alcorn - on population control

2007-12-27T13:00:00.000Z

"While it may be beneficial to replace incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent [ones], it would be more effective towards salvaging the planet to turn on light bulbs in minds darkened by political expediency and religious dogma"

Randy Alcorn, of Californians for Population Stabilization

The Handmaid's Tail - Margaret Atwood

2007-12-20T12:26:00.000Z

http://www.amazon.com/Handmaids-Tale-Novel-Margaret-Atwood/dp/038549081X

Another arrow in the quiver of anti-religion, to go with "The God Delusion" and "The Book of Dave". Some reviews say there is humour here, but I think the scenario is so possible - more so in the US now than when the book was written - that it just chills me to the bone.

Rated 8/10

The Secret - Eva Hoffman

2007-12-08T20:43:00.002Z

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01EEDD113FF933A25752C1A9649C8B63

Well, I suppose one might feel like the heroine of this novel, if one were in her position, but I doubt it. A statisfactory explanation of a certain state of mind, but not demanding or compelling.

Rated 6/10

Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

2007-12-08T20:41:00.001Z

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/books/pattern.asp

I think if I'd been on holiday, I might have read it to the end, but it lacked drive and excitement, and in the end, I gave up - around half way, I think.

Rated 5/10

Snow White & The 7 Samurai - Tom Holt

2007-11-25T17:24:00.000Z

http://www.tom-holt.com/snowwhite.htm

Another very clever book from Tom Holt. Written in 1999, the computing references are very dated, but the fairyland stuff is great.

"Gerroff! You're squashing my ears!"

The wolf eased off the pressure slightly, and the gossamer shadow under its claws stopped squirming. "Well now," the wolf growled softly, "what a surprise. And what's an elf doing in these parts?".

The elf spat. "That's Indigenous Fairylander to you, Fido".

Just loses momentum toward the end, or it would have made a nine.

Rated 8/10

The Book of Dave - Will Self

2007-11-23T20:51:00.001Z

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1783739,00.html

“The Book of Dave” is based around the rants of Dave Roth, a disgruntled East End taxi driver, who writes his woes down and buries them only to have them discovered 500 years after the flood and used as the sacred text for a religion that has taken hold in the remnants of London. Will Self’s big bold book dares to take on the grand themes in the grand manner. It is at once a profound meditation upon the nature of received religion; a love story; a caustic satire of contemporary urban life and a historical detective story set in the far future. "

This book does have some of the faults described in the linked review, but it is, nevertheless a fantastic suggestion of how revealed religion probably works, and how close you might come to understanding a document from the distant past. Read it straight after "The God Delusion" and you'll never look at a religious ceremony the same way again!

Rated 9/10

Archangel - Robert Harris

2007-11-18T11:07:00.000Z

http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/features/harris/

Excellent thriller - a real feel of menace and the frozen north. Excellent twist in the tail.

Rated 8/10

Corinne Maier, on parenthood

2007-11-15T13:43:00.000Z

"To have a child in Europe or America is immoral – more scarce resources wasted on a way of life that is ever more voracious, capricious, hungry for fuel and destructive of the environment."

from "No Kid: 40 Reasons Not to Have a Child"

You Don't Have To Be Evil etc - Tom Holt

2007-11-01T12:03:00.000Z

http://www.tom-holt.com/youdonthavetobeevil.htm

At last - after a dismal period in my library visiting life, I have found a high-rating book. The story starts off reasonably straight-forwardly, and becomes more weird, and more amusing as time progresses. Abit of a Douglas Adams feel here and there. Well worth a read!

Rated 8/10

What's It All About

2007-10-31T13:03:00.000Z

Religion is made up, and God is what you make him.

It's so blindingly obvious that it's very hard for me to understand how large numbers of intelligent people can sign up to the whole fantastic idea. No matter how "devout" people are, those who follow the religions of "The Book" (not Hitchhiker obviously) pick and choose what they are going to believe. They just have to, admit it or not, because the major proportion of what is written there is nonsense, or self contradictory, or just plain foul.

Those who don't follow the religions of the book can make up any fantasy they like, but often sign up to some Latter Day book writer. Clearly "The Book" is just like a kit of parts, from which the gullible can construct a belief system.

There is clearly something in human beings that makes them susceptible to religion. But why we should think that the religions of history, or of primative people are laughable, naive constructs, while our religion is incontavertible truth is beyond me. And what's all this modern guff about valuing each other's religion? If polytheism is piffle, where do the Hindus come in? Why are the Jews and Moslems wrong about Jesus?

... work in progress ...

Kurt Vonnegut on gullibility

2007-10-11T22:09:00.000+01:00

"All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand."

Kurt Vonnegut Jr

(thanks to Ian Turner)

An End To Growth

2007-10-10T21:50:00.001+01:00

George Monbiot has written a very lucid piece which tells what to me is a self-evident truth - economic growth has to stop.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2186525,00.html .

There are a multiplicity of simple-minded respondents incapable of understanding this one simple fact. If you live in a finite space with a finite supply of consumables GROWTH HAS TO STOP. And I for one would prefer to do it before I'm up to my knees in shit.

Windscale

2007-10-09T12:17:00.000+01:00

On the TV last night was a programme about Windscale - Sellafield to those under a certain age. The eye-witness descriptions of how bad it was were quite stunning. - "I was looking down the back of the pile into an inferno".

What was even more telling was the way in which the Government of the day covered up the scale of the disaster, and an awareness that it would be absolutely no different today :-

"Risking death from explosion and radioactive poisoning, the Windscale men averted a major tragedy. The inquiry revealed that the warnings about the risks had been hushed up or ignored. But the government kept its findings secret, and instead blamed the fire on an "error of judgement" by the very workers who had first warned of the potential problems and then battled so heroically to prevent tragedy."

If you missed it it might be on again. Read about it here.

God - does S/He exist...

2007-10-08T12:12:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about this recently, or rather, I should say I've been thinking about atheism. There are two reasons for this. (1) I consider myself to be one. (Atheist, that is, not God). (2) I 'm reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion". (3) I know, I know, but everything is mutable - my partner P is an agnostic.

Now to take 3 last, P says she is an agnostic rather than an atheist because she doesn't know if there is a God or not. Further, she claims that if the Universe is a construct, then its creator is for all intents and purposes God. Now I can't know if there is a God or not, but I feel that I don't know it at the same level that I don't know if there are ghosts or fairies. If God is as wraithlike and insubstantial as these creatures then so far as I am concerned he doesn't exist. Conversely I might agree that the universe could have a creator, although I think there is sufficient knowledge of quantum mechanics to suggest that we don't have the intellectual machinery to cope with what is beyond the universe. And I say "beyond" for want of any better word. Anyone who is viewing the universe as being "somewhere" hasn't grasped the nettle. If the universe does have a creator, however, that doesn't make it a God in the conventional sense.

My atheism, then is this :-
1) There is no supernatural being (fuzzy creator or white-haired old man don't care which) who created the earth and takes a specific interest in it.
2) The Bible and its content are human constructs.
3) Religions are, in the main mechanisms for controlling people.
4) Praying in all its manifestations is only useful as a form of meditation or emotional comfort.

Reading Now

2007-10-05T13:01:00.000+01:00

This is partly to remind me which books I've got out of the library!

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins [bought]

The Reject Pile

2007-10-05T12:59:00.001+01:00

I've decided some books aren't worth their own page, or the effort of a full review. (Sometimes this will be because they didn't grip me in the first few pages, so others might find them OK)

Resurrection Men - Ian Rankin
The Great Fire - Shirley Hazzard
Against Gravity - Gary Gibson - confused plot
Who Sleeps With Katz - Todd McEwen
The Fall of Troy - Peter Ackroyd - too literary

Insurance - Why It's Pants.

2007-09-18T13:35:00.000+01:00

So our bathroom washbasin wastepipe sheared off between the basin and the trap. It's an old lead pipe. I remembered that our boiler insurance includes household plumbing, so I rang British Gas and asked them if they would come and fix it. They took some details, and my mobile phone number, and said an engineer would ring me the following day.

At work the following day I get a phone call from the thickest voiced person I've heard for some time. It's a Dynorod plumber outside my house. I say that it might have been a good idea to either make an appointment or ring an hour in advance.

I tell him what the fault is and he says "Yer not cuvvered fo' lead". I said that that wasn't mentioned when I rang the call centre. Anyway it's a moot point, since I'm not there to let him in.

So all the time we've been paying whatever it is we've been paying for drains cover has been entirely wasted money. Pants. Or what?

"neither thou, nor thy pipework - wheresoever installed, and howsoever formed, for whatever purpose or intention, where said pipework is made of any material from which pipes might reasonably be formed, such material to include also things from which pipes might unexpectedly be formed, like blanchmange, fog, or dead mice - is covered by this insurance. The effect of this insurance is limited to us collecting money from you, and occasionally sending you glossy brochures explaining how wonderful is our cover"

The Story of General Dann etc. - Doris Lessing

2007-09-13T22:37:00.000+01:00

A social novel about the future. If the author wasn't Doris Lessing it wouldn't have got a publisher. It is a type of Science Fiction common in the 1960's. A young man, his half daughter. A "snow dog".

It was OK, but nothing to shout about.

Rated 6/10

The Seymour Tapes - Tim Lott

2007-09-13T22:34:00.000+01:00

http://www.bookmunch.co.uk/view.php?id=1552

Didn't like the style. Couldn't get on with it. Couldn't have cared less.

Rated 2/10

The Job - Douglas Kennedy

2007-09-13T22:23:00.000+01:00

Well, I couldn't find a worthwhile website for this.

It's a page-turner alright, and kept me entertained. However it has a couple of flaws in terms of believability towards the end which make it a bit of a "with one bound Jack was free" plot.

Rated 7/10

Vellum - Hal Duncan

2007-08-28T12:49:00.000+01:00

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/vellum.htm

"Its publishers, Macmillan, have likened the significance of its publication to that of Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory, and well before its publication in August numbered bound proofs were changing hands on eBay for large sums of money".

"Bravely for a first novel, Vellum abandons linearity in favour of fragmented narratives written in multiple perspectives and moving freely between different times, places and even realities."

The review above tells you what this book is meant to be, and the reviewer is mad with enthusiasm for it.

Maybe I'm not bright enough, but after chapter two I literally "lost the plot". I kept going for another 150 pages before I realised I had no idea whatsoever about what was going on.

Rated 5/10

A Special Relationship - Douglas Kennedy

2007-08-28T12:37:00.000+01:00

http://www.bookclubs.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780099468264

The blurb makes much of the American female protagonist having to come to terms with the differnt culture in England, London in particular. In fact this book is much more about two peopl who fall in lust and after a few months fall out again. Unfortunately by then she is pregnant and they are married.

On top of that, when she has the baby she goes into severe depression (endlessly described) and it turns out that her husband, whom she doesn't know at all, is an absolute bastard.

I liked the opening, and I liked the ending. The middle I managed to survive.

It transpires, that I have read another book by this guy - The Pursuit of Happiness. If I recall correctly, that was much the same in style, frustratingness and final rating.

They're both pretty good aeroplane/holiday books.

Rated 6/10

Cat Wee and Kingfishers.

2007-08-24T13:05:00.000+01:00

Well two notable things today, and they didn't seem to fall into an existing category, so here's a new one - diary.

First notable thing, Tony at work has a young dalmation puppy. Last night it weed on the carpet, and do you know, the wee patch is a perfect cat image. I'll add a link when I can upload it. Er, I'll be uploading a picture, not the actual carpet.

Second notable thing, it feels like high summer for the first time this year, so I went for a sit by the river. I thought "If I sit quietly I might see something". Sure enough a few minutes later a kingfisher came whizzing right dowen the centre of the river, from far upstream down until it was out of sight downstream. Fantastic.

Crow Lake - Mary Lawson

2007-08-22T12:22:00.000+01:00

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1973272044281340066

“Critics are raving about…Crow Lake, a tightly plotted page-turner about sibling love, murder, and invertebrate zoology in rural Ontario, set in the 1950s and ‘60s." —
Judy Stoffman, The Toronto Star"

Lawson achieves a breathless anticipatory quality in her surprisingly adept first novel, in which a child tells the story, but tells it very well indeed.” —
Danise Hoover, Booklist

I thought it was reasonably entertaining, and well written. It's amazing what critics will rave over. I wonder what happens when they come across something really great?

Rated 7/10

Pornography

2007-08-17T08:24:00.000+01:00

If you ever wanted an example of where social values are up the spout, it's in the realm of pornography. Of course when I say pornography, you immediately think of sex. But there is another sort of pornography which is far worse, and is almost uncontrolled in our society, and that is the pornography of violence.

I have never seen an erect penis, or a set of female pudenda on British TV, and certainly I have never seen these commonplace everyday body parts put in their normal everyday conjunction. And yet the other day, while switching channels, I found myself looking at a close-up of something I just couldn't resolve. What was it? A rack of lamb? Modern art? What? The camera pulled back. I was seeing, in a crime drama, the ribs and internal organs of a female corpse on a pathologists table loving reconstructed for "my" titillation. A few weeks ago I tried an episode of "Romans". A female torture victim hangs in chains, raped and whipped. The torturer says to his (again female) employer. "She won't talk, what do you want me to do?" - "Cut off her face".

Is this entertainment? Is this better for us than the sight of a bit of real sex? What it is, is pornography, that's for sure, and it taints anyone who watches it.

Drugs

2007-08-14T12:26:00.000+01:00

My theory is this, drugs are wasted on the young. The whole focus of drug taking in our society is towards completely the wrong section of society.

The young, who in general ought to be happy, healthy, and have loads to do, have no right to be consuming all those recreational drugs which would make life so much better for we oldies. I mean, many a morning, I wake up feeling as if an elephant had sat on me. Every joint in my body aches, I feel as if my head will drop off my shoulders if I move it, and I have a sneaking headache. Don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty healthy specimen of late middle age, there will be a million people far worse off than me. We clearly need a decent opiate to start off the day. Furthermore, I need speed to keep my revs up, viagra to keep my bits up, and probably several other things I don't even know about to limit the natural effects of ageing.

So come on guys, stop hanging around that school, and get down the day-centre, pronto!

Goodbye, And Thanks For All The Fish

2007-08-08T20:40:00.000+01:00

So we have said goodbye to one of our brother creatures on this benighted earth. The poor freshwater dolphin which used to live on the Yangtze river in China. Notable because it wasn't hunted or persecuted into extinction - it was just overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of human beings in its habitat.

And that is what will happen to many more harmless creatures living their harmless lives if we go on breeding like, well bacteria actually. If we were judging ourselves with an impartial eye we would see that we are a plague on the face of the earth.

Quite ironic that Douglas Adams should have put the phrase "Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!" into the mouths of the dolphins before they disappeared from the earth - their presience letting them see that the end of the world was at hand. Can we take a hint?

Foot and Mouth Again

2007-08-07T21:21:00.000+01:00

Well, it's a triumph. Looks like the outbreak is due to some sort of "escape" from Pirbright. That's not the only stupidity though. It appears that while the powers-that-be declared a three kilometre protection zone they failed to close footpaths inside that area. On being questioned this morning Hilary Benn said that footpaths immediately next to outbreaks would be closed, which seems to fall into the horse and stable door model of control to me. Cattle in the fields I walk through today might already be infected, byt symptomless. Surely common sense would closes footpaths all around Pirbright, before anymore outbreaks occur?

Foot and Mouth

2007-08-06T08:24:00.000+01:00

Well, it's either foot and mouth, or foot-in-mouth at Pirbright. It's all very well the laboratories there saying that they can find no breaches of bio-security. That's the whole point, no matter how good your systems are, in the end something will go adrift. It is arrogant to claim otherwise. That is a lesson which should be well learnt by the nuclear industry, but even more so by those who claim that a few hundred metres of open space will stop the spread of genetically modified pollen from fertilizing other crops.

That kind of thing just makes me despair. And the worst of that is, that while foot and mouth will die out, one way or another, and even nuclear contamination will decay to nothing in a few thousand years, once you modify a genetic line, it stays that way forever, perhaps with entirely unforseen consequences.

Ancestors of Avelon - Marion Zimmer Bradley

2007-08-03T12:51:00.000+01:00

I didn't realise that I'd landed in the middle of a fantasy series when I got this out of the library. I managed about twenty pages before the surfeit of daft names and the general tweeness got my goat.

Rated 0/10

A Time to Dance - Melvyn Bragg

2007-08-03T12:41:00.000+01:00

A punctilious English Banker in his fifties falls madly in love with an 18 year old Irish girl.

Perfectly readable - the hero frustrated me with his naivity, but I guess there are people like that.

Rate 7/10

The Waltz of My Serpent - Adam Eagleton

2007-08-03T12:39:00.000+01:00

The pages were green. I read 5 of them

Rated - to be fair, unrated.

Oryx & Crake - Margaret Attwood

2007-08-03T12:25:00.000+01:00

http://www.oryxandcrake.co.uk/home.asp

"A vision of the future rooted in the present,ORYX AND CRAKE marks Atwood’s bravenew return to speculative fiction."

I always smile at this kind of comment. I think of all the truly great writers of "speculative fiction" who made this mistake of admitting that what they were writing was Science Fiction, and were then consigned to the dustbin of genre prejudice.

This book is a pretty decent science fiction thriller, and I read it happily to the end. I didn't manage to second-guess it either, unlike Ishiguro's dismal attempt at a similar sort of thing in "Never Let Me Go".

Rated 7/10

Thomas Gage - James Fleming

2007-08-02T13:40:00.000+01:00

http://www.jamesfleming.co.uk/reviews_thomas_gage.htm

Didn't grab me. I was hoping for a book about society in the industrial revolution.

Rated 6/10

The Great Stink - Clare Clark

2007-07-18T21:57:00.000+01:00

http://www.thegreatstink.com/

This is a really good read - a page-turner of the first order. I can't go into detail without giving too much away. I didn't really like the main character's affliction - I don't think he would have got away with it in the sewers, without dying of some infection , but the story rose above it. Also I was so wrapped up in the love interest - and it wasn't what you'd expect, that I had to sneak a peak at the end to make sure that Tom got his girl, before being able to read the last third of the story...

Rated 8/10

No Class at all!

2007-06-23T10:28:00.000+01:00

Modern society in general has no "class". I put it down to the failure of our educational system married to the success of TV for the mentally challenged.

Near us there is a beautiful flat-roofed art-deco house for sale. The price is something approaching £800,000. The estate agent's blurb goes into all the usual detail, and then adds - "with planning permission for pitched roofs". Aaaarghhh. There are people around with £800,000 art deco houses who think it's a good idea to put pitched roofs on them? I'm sure they'll add electric wrought iron gates and reconstituted stone lions, it'll be soooo much nicer.

Incidentally, I think Brtish roofs are bollo anyway. What's with all these individually nailed slates / tiles. I'd want shallow-pitch no-maintenance fibre-glass that I could walk on, if I had the choice.

Human Capital - Stephen Amidon

2007-06-16T16:11:00.000+01:00

Human Capital

Well constructed book, with believable characters with believable motivations and behaviour. It's very rare for me to find a book where I don't say at least once, "that would never happen". I really enjoyed it.

Rated : 7/10

Be My Enemy - Christopher Brookmyre

2007-06-16T15:58:00.001+01:00

Be My Enemy

I thought this was a completely hopeless book. Is it meant to be a thriller, or shlock horror, or what? The characters are flimsy and the minor ones are undifferentiable. Their behaviour in the face of shocking events is entirely unrealistic. If you saw someone have their head cut off in front of your eyes, would you really go off into banal witticisms?

In one scene "our hero" has to climb down an improvised rope. Bearing in mind that he has come from a large hotel where there must have been any number of power cables and electric flexes which could have been tied together, Brookmyre has him use a set of human intestines.

Stupid brainless drivel. Don't waste your time

Rated : 2/10

Merry-go-round

2007-06-13T20:39:00.000+01:00

I am an inveterate listener to Radio 4, but I have to bite my lip all the time when I hear reports of the powers-that-be in many walks of life wheeling out ideas which have already been whold at least once in my lifetime.

What's all this pants about not giving children formal exams before they are 16, but letting teachers give them ad-hoc tests as and when required? Do you know, that's just what used to happen when I was at school 50 years ago.

How often are changes in the way we do things really necessary, and how often are they down to the politicians desire to make a mark? Or even just the old saw, "when in doubt reorganise"?

Best Books

2007-05-31T20:40:00.000+01:00

It is almost impossible to say what are the best books one has ever read. It depends on the mood and the moment. Here are some lists. Before I start I should like to say that these lists will always be incomplete. The second two in particular are merely representative.

First a list of a few books that I can say that I have reread, sometimes more than once, and which I have found to be unfailingly wonderful, in one way or another.

"Winter's Tale" Mark Helprin
"Cryptonomicon" Neil Stephenson
"The Trickster" Muriel Gray

Next, books that I found far more enjoyable than the average, again for a variety of reasons. Some I may have read recently, some long ago. Some will be well known to you, others will be entirely unheard of.

"The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" Robert Tressell
"Cold Mountain" Charles Frazier
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" George Orwell
"The Evolution Man" Roy Lewis
"The French Lieutenant's Woman" John Fowles
"Lord of the Rings" J.R.R. Tolkien
"Shogun" James Clavell
"Goodbye to All That" Robert Graves
"Certain Prey" John Sandford

Finally, readable books that are well worth spending time on.

"The Fifth Queen" Ford Madox Ford
"Girl With a Pearl Earring" Tracy Chevalier
"The Maid of Buttermere" Melvyn Bragg
"Empire of the Sun" J.G.Ballard

Not quite finally, because I just came across a factual book, so here's a factual list. Actually I now realise that I read very few straightforwardly factual books.

"The Blind Watchmaker" Richard Dawkins

Fear of Ducks

2007-05-30T19:00:00.000+01:00

anatidaephobia; the fear that. somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you.

Heart of Oak - Alexander Kent

2007-05-30T18:50:00.000+01:00

Heart of Oak

I used to read Alexander Kent before I discovered Patrick O'Brien. His work is nothing like as well researched, and has many inaccuracies. Still I got this book out of the library as a bed-time read. Admittedly it is late on in a series, but I found it impossible to get in to. There were back references and mental flash-backs in italics that just irritated me to hell. I gave up around page ten.

Rated : 0/10

Hornet Flight - Ken Follett

2007-05-30T18:44:00.000+01:00

Hornet Flight

A bit of a pot-boiler this, but a very readable page-turner nevertheless. And it did provide an excellent quotation.

Rated : 7/10

Melvyn Bragg, on science

2007-05-28T16:59:00.000+01:00

There are still those who are affected enough to say that they know nothing about the sciences as if this somehow makes them superior. What it makes them is rather silly, and it puts them at the fag end of that tired old British tradition of intellectual snobbery which considers all knowledge, especially science, as "trade".

Melvyn Bragg, On Giants' Shoulders.

Ken Follett, on spontaneity

2007-05-28T16:53:00.000+01:00

There's a time and place for spontaneity!

Ken Follett, Hornet's Flight

Improbable - Adam Fawer

2007-05-20T22:09:00.000+01:00

"David Caine, a compulsive gambler plagued by crippling epileptic seizures, gets more than he bargained for while testing an experimental medicine. Unsure whether he's perceiving an alternate reality or suffering a psychotic breakdown, Caine discovers that powerful forces want him for their own. A highly original debut novel by an aspiring new talent."

I thought this was an excellent book. Some reviewers claimed there was too much technical detail or that it was too heavy on scientific detail, but I think the absence of these things is a failing in much modern science fiction. In another era, this might well have been considered a "hard" science fiction novel. It did fgade slightly towards the end, but it is one of the best novels I've read for some time.

Rated : 8/10

Accountability

2007-05-20T09:21:00.000+01:00

Ah the Orwellian wonder of it all ...

While small villages buy surveillance cameras to keep an eye on Mrs Artichoke going to the bus-stop, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2494230.ece our elected representatives squirm out of the freedom of information act http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2560000.ece.

Programming - early days

2007-05-19T17:23:00.000+01:00

I remember when programming used to be fun. And I mean real fun. It was fun on all levels. It was fun doing it. It was fun being at work. The machines themselves were fun. People look back on those days now - those who didn't do it I mean, and think "how primitive","how dreadful". Only one compilation a day. Coding with pencils. Good grief. And yet it was real fun. The only way in which I can get across to those of you who weren't there how much fun it was, is by comparing it with doing Sudoku. Now, I'm not a great Sudoku fan actually - too much like work for me. But the elements are there. Problems of sometimes fiendish complexity which can be resolved using a limited set of logical operations. For those of you addicted to Sudoku that's what we early programmers were like -addicted to coding. It didn't matter that we only got one compilation a day, because we were coding in our heads all the time. When we wrote assembler, we were encouraged to write it as tightly and as efficiently as possible. We used to compare our solutions and if a particularly respected programmer claimed to have found a minimal piece of code - "I've got it down to seventeen instructions, and that's it" - we'd all start madly trying to get it down to sixteen or fifteen, or even come up with a completely new way of doing it that only took ten.

Nowadays there are so many different technologies that very few people become masters of any of them. We are all rather unsatisfactory Jacks of All Trades. And if you do become master of one - as some of us did with Delphi, you can never be quite sure that it won't become obsolete overnight, as Delphi more or less did. In those day we weren't thinking about the future, and everything there was to know about the machine I worked on was contained in less than a dozen sturdy manuals. The language I wrote was PLAN - a 24 bit word assembler, which had about 120 instructions, although generally we probably used 60 or so day to day. The other brilliant thing about those days was that we only wrote programs - admittedly on "coding sheets", but once they were written, off they went to the "punch girls" who would turn them into packs of cards. While that was going on, we would either be doing more coding, debugging last nights stuff, or intellectualising.

No typing, no staring at screens, no installing software updates. You've heard about how dreadful it was to work on a mainframe? Complete rubbish. The machine was someone else's responsibility - it either worked, or it didn't. If it went down in a hardware sense, it went down for everyone - you all got an instant teabreak and went off to socialise - if your software began to behave in a weird way, so did everyone's. No isolation, no bizarre quirks, no software that worked in one environment and not in another. And if your working environment went awry it was someone else's job to fix it. Actually, much the same applied to writing "c" on minis running unix- in fact right up to the advent of the Windows based PC in the late 80s, computing was fun.

There's some stuff about PLAN here, www.fridaycs.com/icl1900/ocode.html

Choice

2007-05-19T16:47:00.000+01:00

The adventure of capitalism! Poo!

Have you noticed something about the shopping these days? Choice has eaten its own tail. In their desperate efforts to make us buy their particular goods the nitwits in the marketing departments are actually eliminating the very products most of us want to buy.

I first noticed this in a futile attempt to buy some Flash floor powder. This simple product has been a staple product of our cleaning regime since time immemorial. Then suddenly it didn't exist any more. Before I realised this fact, I spent a tedious half hour scouring (ha ha) the shelves for my utilitarian friend. There was every sort of product with "Flash" written on it:-

... Flash Cleaner, Flash Surface Lemon Wipes, Flash Express Floor Wipes, Flash Antibacterial Surface, Flash Multi purpose Antibacterial Scrub Cloths, Flash Multi purpose Citrus Scrub Cloths Price, Flash Glass and Multi Surface Spray, Flash Multi Lemon Spray, Flash Spray with Bleach, Flash Ultimate Spray, Flash All Purpose Lemon, Flash All Purpose 1 Litre, Flash Bathroom Gel, Flash Bathroom Cleaner Trigger Spray ...

Yup, every bl**dy thing except Flash.

I've just now been down to do a bit of shopping in our local Morrisons. Time was I would breeze in and pick up a pack of five ready-to-eat plain popadums. I had a choice of two sorts - Morrisons own, and Sharwoods - indistinguishable except for 30p price difference. Then for a little while I was forced to have three extra at the same price. Oh well, Brigsy likes them too. But today, no plain popadums at all. Just spicy or garlic and coriander. Actually, there were some - but I had to buy a pack including two pots of "dip" that I didn't want for 40p more than I wanted to pay. Then off to get some couscous. There used to be some nice little packets of plain, lemon or mushrom flavoured. Gone, all gone. Now it's all Ainsley Harriet branded hedgehog and bilberry flavoured crap, monster boxes of organic something or other or another selection of less than appetising mixtures from someone I've never heard of.

And let's not pretend it's just Morrisons. Last week in my local Waitrose there were no Quaker Oats. Well there were. There were "quick" Quaker Oats. There were honey flavoured Quaker Oats, and there were organic Quaker Oats, but no straight-forwartd honest-to-god common-or-garden Quaker oats, so I bought the "organic" ones - I knew I shouldn't have, but I did. I knew I shouldn't have because they described themselves as "new chunky texture". Why do I buy Quaker Oats? - because they aren't Scotts' - which are chunky. What were these damned oats like? Indistinguishable from Scots...

Cats n' that ...

2007-05-19T16:39:00.001+01:00

I have a story to report. The other night I was heading for bed, thinking "Ah - nice early night", when in through the door comes Smudge, mowling at the top of his voice - which is always the signal that he's got some poor piece of the local fauna in his gob. I immediately - and in a very practised manner - start shouting at him "Don't drop it! Don't drop it!". This has the usual result - he drops it, and an extremely active woodmouse disappears at high speed under the cooker. This isn't quite as bad as it used to be, before I mouseproofed the underside of the cooker. In those days it was possible for an enterprising and unnoticed escapee to set up home in the cooker's fibreglass insulation. Such nest would quickly fill up with mouse wee, poo and stolen cat-biscuits. The smell when the oven was on was indescribable - and initially inexplicable.

Anyway I get the dustpan - favoured mouse catching method - and tilt the cooker on its side. Staring out at me are not one but two of the beggars. One I catch, the other just disappears, and I mean disappears - you've no idea how adept mice are at vanishing under circumstances where there's nowhere to go. Anyway I can't face hunting the kitchen for the damn thing, so I put down the humane trap and set off for bed. Then I think I'll lock the catflap, since if Smudge is on a roll, he'll be bringing rodents into the bedroom just as I head for the land of nod. Course I can't lock it, because Tabs is out, so I set it for "ins but no outs", and go to bed. At five a.m. Smudge wakes me up and will not let me go back to sleep. In the end I give in, and think I'll go down and let him out. Downstairs I find that the humane trap has caught the mouse, the neighbour's tomcat has come in and can't get out and has been asleep on the sofa (though now he's climbing the walls) and Tabs has been sick with the excitement of it all. I let them all out, shut the kitchen door go back to bed.

The Intro and the Outro

2007-05-19T16:36:00.001+01:00

Recently I was MC at a concert where a friend of mine, Mal Jardine, was performing. In introducing another act I used a simile, but refered to it as a metaphor. Mal heckled me about this, and came over in the break to gloat a bit. This was a mistake as he hadn't yet done his spot.
I had time to construct this intro for him :-

If I say Mal's like an ancient tree,that would be a simile.
But if I say he's an old bore (boar),
That would be a metaphor.
Better than tree or pig by far
He's the folk club's unaccompanied star!

So you see, in the end I let him off lightly :-)

Butterfly

2007-05-19T16:35:00.000+01:00

We all know how to deal with wasps - well, I do, see elsewhere on this website. But recently I've started work in a new place, and it's quite close to open country and near the River Wharfe (yes, I know, lucky bugger), and when the windows are open, we get random butterfly intruders. Well, I say random, maybe they have their butterfly-y purposes, but they must forget them once they're in.

Trouble with your butterfly is, that while they are much prettier than wasps, well to some eyes, they just don't seem to have sufficient brain to respond to helpful vibes. This makes it the devil's own job to catch them. They also have a tendency to come to rest high up the window, where only advanced teetering on chairs ill suited to the purpose can get you in recovery range.
Trouble is, I anthropomorphise so intensley that I just can't leave the silly things to die. Let it be known that if I plunge headlong through the window in the attempt to save such a creature, expiring 40 feet below, that I would have life no other way. However, given the number of flying creatures I have rescued over the years, I fully expect that if I do ever find myself in free fall, a phalanx of butterflies, moths, and other winged insects will appear to grip my clothing in their tiny claws and bear me up up and away.