h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That was a really interesting matter, there is even a French board game that exists according to wikipedia. Maybe you can do a guide entry it.

We'll see, I won't promise anything just yet.

I am surprised there isn't an entry in the guide about it already, but the entry on the Third Republic has a substantial section on it.

By the way, I'm getting to the end of that one now. I'd definitely recommend it - it's well researched, but also a page-turner. It's one of those books that keep you up at night to read on.

I'm pleasantly surprised. I read a couple of others by Robert Harris. Fatherland was an okay yarn, but just a yarn. And "Archangel" was absolutely ridiculous. My main memory of that one is of "Stalin's secret heir" running around in the woods of northern Russia with bulging eyes, a cross between the yeti and an alien from a '50s B-movie.

So I'd say this is the best of the Robert Harris novels I've read.

I absolutely adored Archangel in a similar way to Fatherland as a "what if" and then it works perfectly well - sort of a parallel universe kind of story.

Because he really does write beautifully.

I found the writing in Archangel a bit...bleh. Certainly not good enough to compensate for the story.

I found it utterly dreary.

Horses for courses.

you should know that I totally can't abide the Hitchhiker books beyond the first one... that may say something about my taste?

Maybe we ran on different courses, then.

I need to read more books, and less online news and essays, I think.

I read the first chapter of a Cold War thriller by Stella Rimmington. It will do for when I run out of other books, I think.

Then I found, on the train, Black Robe by Brian Moore. It's a very slim little novel about the interaction between Jesuit missionaries and natives in North America. I think it should be quite good.

This is really good.

There's the whole exploration of the idea of two cultures coming head on, colonialism, and the philosophical bit - but I'll be honest, the thing pulling me along is whether or not the Algonkian seer is going to have the Jesuit killed or not.

(The Jesuit watches people shagging in the bushes and then whips himself to atone. His life seems so miserable he'd be better off if they *do* kill him...)

Finished that one. Quite gristly in parts, but so is life.

Now on to "Pol Pot: The History Of A Nightmare", which in all probability will be even more gristly.

"Democratic Kampuchea" was one of the most insane regimes I've ever heard of, so I'd like to learn a bit more about how it all came to be. And how it all went so insane.

Content aside, this is the book Kindles were made for. At 550 pages, it's a bit too big to comfortably read in bed or hold with one hand. And the print is just small enough to be irritating - any smaller and I'd throw the towel in. Being able to change either of these things would be great.

That's why I'm only 25 pages on, so far.

Hmm!

He's maintaining that the intellectual underpinnings of Khmer Rouge rule weren't Maoist, or Stalinist, but mainly French.

Now I'd like him to elaborate on that theme, because it sounds interesting, but he just started going on about Sidney Bechet grooving in Paris in the 1950s instead so I'll just have to bear with him.