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

but was it any good?

I'm all because my colleagues at work got me a EUR 50 voucher for Amazon for my birthday, and I've just spent it

I'm reading Howard Goodall's "Big Bangs", subtitled 5 discoveries that changed musical history.

Forever Odd by Dean Koontz

Not bad, Sho, though I can't remember it too well now.

Finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which is about a fifteen-year-old boy with Asperger's Syndrome who sets out to investigate who killed his neighbour's dog. It's written as if the kid himself wrote it, so it often has extraneous details that he noticed because of the syndrome, also descriptions of mathematics and physics that are only vaguely related to events. And yet the underlying story is never lost.

Now I'm on British Summer Time by Paul Cornell. Best known as a Doctor Who author and now scriptwriter this is him writing a "proper book" (his own words, though no doubt somewhat ironic). I'm rather keen on the idea that a man from 128 years in the future knows that Ramprakash and Hussein were England cricket captains, but doesn't know that we have a Queen as head of state. Obviously he only remembered the most important stuff in history class.

The Master and Margarita
(Bulgakov)


One of the most amazing books ever written.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Margarita-Michail-Bulgakov/dp/customer-reviews/5699152164/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&customer-reviews.start=1&qid=1198182574&sr=1-60#customerReviews

oh that is one of my favourites. I meant to read it again this year but forgot.
I did see something on the internet that it was to be made into a musical.

A Wizzard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin
so far so fantastic, and I'll be reading it to the Gruesomes shortly

I've now read The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green. It's apparently based on various old stories and ballads - the author says in the introduction that there is no one great source to compare with Mallory's Morte d'Arthur. Just as well because I thought Mallory was pretty dull.

There were a few things that surprised me:
Firstly it's very wide-ranging going between Sherwood, Barnsdale, the Yorkshire Dales, Pendle and even Scarborough and Robin Hood's Bay (to think when I wrote the article on North Yorkshire I couldn't find a decent story as to why RHB is so called). This may or may not be a consequence of using various different stories.

Secondly Marian is an accomplished archer and swordswoman. I always figured anything like that was a later addition because having maidens in distress crying for brave heroes to rescue them is rather non-PC.

Thirdly there was a lot of Saxon/Norman rivalry, with Robin claiming the title Earl of Huntingdon, despite there being a Norman nobleman of that name. It's entirely reasonable for a twelfth century setting, but wasn't in any other versions I've seen.

I'm now reading my Christmas present: Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod which is a rather hilarious book about modern German grammar.
yes, I know...

Ah, German, fond memories of my college days last century.

"Mutter, wir haben post." "Noch ein bier, bitte." "Scheisskopf."

That's about it. So if I travel thru Germany, I'm in good shape with mother, mail, beer, and ... officers.

Journeys from the centre of the earth by iain stewart.

I'm just coming to the end of Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian. I'm also reading The Age of Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm (sp?) about the effect on the world of the Industrial ('English') and French revolutions.

Regarding Marian being an archer and swordswoman, I came across that many years ago in a book of Robin Hood stories. From memory, it was back in the early 1970s, a time when 'PC' wasn't even thought of. It certainly wasn't a book written by "women's lib" fanatics - in fact, I'm pretty sure the author was a man. According to Terry Jones in his Medieval Lives series, the idea of medieval women being shy, modest, stay-at-home creatures is something the Victorians came up with because it was how they thought women should be. Real medieval women were nothing like that.

<>

This reminds me of Peter Jackson's outrageous claim when he was making the LotR films, that he personally had liberated Eowyn, and turned her from a beautiful Princess staying at home with her maids and her embroidery, and turned her into a great woman warrior with sword and number 8 wire. (You'd have to be here to get that.)
Tolkien, he claimed was an "old reactionary religious Brit", and it took a good Kiwi bloke like Jackson, to make Eowyn be something morte than a ninny. I can only assume that Jackson believed that the audience for the film would consist only of people who hadn't read the books!

Vicky

>> A Wizzard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin <<

Ursula Le guin added to the Earthsea Trilogy (as was) a few years ago, to make it up to the Earthsea Quartet (none of that "increasingly-inaccurately-named" malarkey for *her*! ) with "Tehanu", published in 1990. It's well worth effort.

Currently re-reading The Amber Spyglass...still good.

RF

Not a thread I've been following too closely but having just finished 'The Draco Tavern' by Larry Niven I feel it incumbent upon me to advise hootooists of its rather 'Restaurant at the End of the Universe' properties which made it feel so safe and familiar. The Draco Tavern is actually on Earth and where all sorts of alien visitors gather.

In a way it resolves some of what I felt was unfinished business at the imaginary Restaurant in my mind by providing glimpses and insights into a variety of other alien species that were not part of the HHGttG story. Niven's style is almost anorexic and each chapter is a story unto itself, like snack food.

peace
~jwf~

Beneath the Bleeding by Val McDermid...

A bit slower than other Val McDemid - Carol Jordan/Tony Hill - books I've read. Not much in the way of torture and murder (so far) that I'm used to from her. I read them in bed, scares the hell out of me, and makes me nervous getting up to use the loo during the night but I still enjoy reading them.

Emmily

Also starting 'Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold' by Tom Schachtman.

Riveting scientific history lesson of how temperature was scaled and the lower limit set and the discoveries along the way.

Blimey, did Jackson really say that? It really doesn't stand up to any kind of examination.

Anyway, I'm now reading Flash for Freedom! by George MacDonald Fraser. If you've read any of the Flashman Chronicles you'll have a good idea what to expect as Flashy flees the country following a somewhat violent disagreement over a card game to find himself in worse bother than if he'd just stayed where he was. Suffice it to say that I've so far learnt about Chartists and the slave trade.

" 'The Draco Tavern' by Larry Niven"

I've also been reading a chapter every few days, and I agree its bite-sized stuff. I read somewhere Niven wrote it (writes it?) almost as a quick escape from heavier stuff, like Lyle Lovett playing ping-pong during recording sessions (true, and the scores are in some liner notes).

But Niven retains my "Greatest SF Story Ever" level with "Inconstant Moon". I only recently learned that the title is from & "Romeo Juliet".

Also reading Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay (Autobiography). It's no secret that I'd run away with him at the drop of a hat. doesn't mind - he says he'd come with me. But having read the start of this I wonder that he is as sane as he is.