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

Can I join ?

Right, there is a place to go...

Click on the Nickname thing, laugh at my coding, then offer suggestions on books and how to improve the page.

Andy

Nice page, you have obviously got the hang of GuideML Andy.

I had a random thought while stop-starting on the M4 between Junctions 7 and 8/9 this evening: a month is a long time on hootoo, why not have two threads going at any one time, one fiction started on (say) the first of each month, and one non-fiction started on (say) the fifteenth. This would give people a choice, and stop the group just fading away.

A few more suggestions:

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawkins
and while I am on a roll
Treasure Island, featuring Jim Hawkins

Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
The Diaries - Alan Clarke
Surely you are joking, Mr Feynemann - Richard Feynemann

I'd also be interested in decent rock biographies (music, or dinasaurs, or the Stones, which count as both, I guess); and other biographies, too. Not to mention soft-science, and anything by Angela Carter.

Ben
'I did not love reading, you do not love to breathe' - Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (and there's another one).

I've just been through biogs of Galileo and Feynman and the latter struck me as incomprehensibly intelligent. I like the anecdote trotted out by one of his 'rivals' when asked about the Feynman method of problem solving in physics.

"You write the problem on the board, think very hard for a few minutes, and write down the answer."

I've also went through Unweaving the Rainbow over Christmas - I've discovered the University Library's History of Science section (I almost wept when I saw the treasures it contained) and have been in hogs' heaven since.

By far and away the best 'Rock Biography' i've ever read was "Englands Dreaming" by Jon Savage. Ostensibly a 'biography of the Sex Pistols and Punk Rock', it was in fact a critique of the youth movements, musical cultures, popular politics and social change over the whole of the seventies. On top of this the actual story of the Sex Pistols themselves was so ridiculously entertaining that you cloudn't make up a better yarn, and kept you reading so avidly that you hardly noticed the lengthy and involved sociology essay that forms the bulk of the book.

Unfortunately is 540 pages (of admittedly large print with illustrations) so it's pushing it on length. I read it oin a couple of days though, and i don't read fast.

Beyond that the best musical biography i've ever read is "Woody Guthrie: A Life" by Joe Klein. One of the most moving and exiting and exasperating books ever. A wonderful story, full of both tragedy and triumph. A rags to different rags kind of story. When i read the final section it took me four hours because my eyes were so full of tears i couldn't read any more.

Again quite a big book (small text this time - no pictures). I think that anyone with a life worth writing about is going to have a pretty hefty biography. The exceptions being autobiographical things like the Maya Angelou books.

If you want to sign up for the Book Group go to the List of Members here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/F83198?thread=163875 To join in on conversations on February's book (The Time Machine by H G Wells) go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/A688340 To make suggestions for next months book, go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/F83198?thread=163678 Or to just look around the book group, go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/U189342 Phew, Andy's been busy!

Yeah, GuidePost is great...


And count me in too!



Shee

The discussion is beginning...


Get yourselves over to http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/U189342 to join in the fun.