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

I'm reading 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot. I've read it before, and enjoyed it a lot ... now reading it again I'm enjoying it even more.

Middlemarch is one of the select bunch of books that sit on my bookshelf frowning at me disappointedly for having given up on them part way through, and which I know I really ought to try again.

I've just started to tackle another member of that group - Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's taken three hours to get to page 65. Only another 900 odd pages to go. If I can get through this perhaps I'll give Middlemarch another try. Or maybe Gravity's Rainbow. Or The Leopard. Or Dispatches. Or...

Just finished The Three Musketeers and started the sequel, Twenty Years After.

I've been reading George Eliot too, a short story called "Mr Gilfil's Love Story", for my music studies strangely enough. It felt a bit like reading high class Georgette Heyer.

Back from Tatton after a lovely sunny day admiring plants and show gardens. Some of the plants liked us so much they came home with us

MC

My favourite George Elliott is Silas Marner. Fantastic story.

Today I started Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. Excellent writing as usual.

I decided to go back and read something I should have done long ago. The Elements of Style (Illustrated), by Strunk, White and Kalman (Kalman being the artist; she does great covers for New Yorker Magazine, and I like her style). It's a surprisingly witty and amusing illustration of how to communicate on paper/web/whatever. Great drawings don't hurt it, either. No wonder it's been a must-read for fifty or more years.

E=mc² (and why it matters) - Prof Brian Cox and Prof Jeff Forshaw. For me this is bain scrambling stuff - but the ambitious professors claim to be able to explain the basics of Einstein's theory of relativity using maths no more complicated than Pythagoras' theorem. Hmmm. I wonder if they will manage...

I'm now reading "Vampirates - Demons of the Ocean". It is not a documentary, nor as intellectual as yours, Sho

mine is so intellectual that I got the title wrong

maybe I should go around and personally apologise to the good professor...

it's called
E=mc² (and why does it matter?)

Finished Franklin, which was a real eye-opener on why what most people think they know about the man is wrong. Reading The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt by Richard H. Wilkinson, and also Valley of the Kings by John Romer.

Is that a second Vampirates one, Mal?

I'm still on Jerome K. Jerome.

Recently I have read..

Beggars Banquet, a collection of short stories by Ian Rankin. No' bad.
Clarissa Oakes by Patrick O'Brian (again..).
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, also again.
Most of Your Inner Fish, erm, again (liked it more this time)
and started but gave up on Ringworld's Children by Larry Niven.

Started Terry Pratchett's "Unseen Academicals", (not that I've really got any time to be reading it till October)

Unseen Acidemicals, good but not as good as previous works, IMO

No, it's still the same one, KB. I can only take so much of it at once!

The Fellowship: The Story of a Revolution by John Gribbin

It's about the founding of the Royal Society, and the development of the scientific method. I do like Gribbin's books.

Just finished "The Strode Venturer" (Hammond Innes). It was just OK, I only read it because it centres around Addu Attol (in the Maldives), where I was posted when I was in the Army.

Have just started "The Prestige" (Christopher Priest)and it seems like it will be very good. It was made into a film in 2006 starring Hugh Jackson & Christion Bale ..... the reviews are very good, going to get the dvd.

Redmoss

Jeeves Takes Charge - PG Wodehouse.
fabby and marvy

Dead Heat by Dick Francis and Felix Francis.

Oh that's the one with the isn't it? I liked that one.

I'm now reading Even Money by Dick and Felix Francis and it's jogging along nicely.