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

Never heard of that one. Is it also by Richard Adams?

Yes, it is. It's a collection of short tales about El-Ehrairah and his adventures, and the tales are narrated by the Watership Down rabbits (kind of like the way the stories were related in "The Decameron"). It's only the third book by Richard Adams I've read- the second was "The Plague Dogs". "Watership Down" was a childhood favorite and I still love it, so when I saw this in the used book section of the record shop, I had to get it. It was only $1!

Oh I'll have to keep an eye out for that one then. Thanks for the tip.

Me too; I loved reading Watership Down. The cartoon film always makes me feel sad at the end but the end of the book made me feel uplifted. More Tales from WD sounds like a great addition to the original and sounds like a good read.

Nothing to do with books but Art Garfunkel's 'Bright Eyes' was at number 1 in the UK charts the day I was born.

Followed my Miss Marple with another Christie- Murder Is Easy- which was fun. I can't decide what to read next; torn between 'Scoop', 'The Third Man/The Fallen Idol' and plucking a Jeeves book from my father's shelf. Edward's mention of Psmith has veered me towards the latter.

Happy reading. Van

Reading that list I'd have said pick Scoop until you mentioned Jeeves. Go for that.

Gosh, I have a storage bin full of Agatha Christie books that won't fit in our bookshelves at the moment; I'd love to drag them out, shelve and re-read them all sometime soon. My grandma gave me most of them.

I really don't know why I didn't discover Wodehouse earlier. 'Leave It To Psmith' certainly won't be the last one I read!

I've started Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell. Set in the Stone Age, there's little chance of pitched battles as in Sharpe or even the Grail Quest series.

I thoroughly recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran. It's written by a Muslim woman who was an English Literature professor at Tehran University, and it describes the impact of the revolution in 1979, particularly on women. I knew women were restricted at the time, but I didn't realise how much. I also didn't appreciate how much things had changed since then until I saw an Iranian woman being interviewed on TV. Her head was covered, but only loosely, and she didn't wear a veil (compulsory after the revolution).

When Santa Fell to Earth by Cornelia Funke

>>and she didn't wear a veil (compulsory after the revolution).

Are you sure? I'm not defending the Iranian oppression of women, but my understanding was that veils are alien to Shia Islam. In fact - Iranian Ayatollahs have recently declared that niqab is un-Islamic.

Actually - I get a real buzz at seeing how far Iranian women are pushing the rules. The headscarf slips further and further back on the head.

The veil may well be alien to Shia Islam, but wearing one was compulsory after the revolution. Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, was forced out of her job at the University of Tehran because of her refusal to wear a veil while teaching. It's not clear whether she means a cloth to cover the head or the face. The latter is the usual meaning of veil, but it could be taken to mean any piece of cloth that completely covers the head and hair.

In the book she refers to 'new regulations restricting women's clothing in public and forcing us to wear either a chador or a long robe and scarf'. In order to enforce these regulations, shop-keepers were forbidden from transacting with unveiled women. This also could be taken to mean that women must have their heads/hair covered when they go out.

Just started Life and Fate by Vassily Grossmann. A kind of 20th Century War and Peace. But better.

Yeah...I *think* in Iran it's always been chador and headscarves, not face-covering veils.

Now I'm trying to remember the name of the Nobel-winning female ex-judge who wrote an excellent book.



Shirin Ebadi.

Started 'Special Topics in Calamity Physics' by Marissa Pessl. Meh. It's *very* literary, full of literary devices and in-jokes and references, but a bit lacking in acuity of observation and dialogue. Things like this piss me off; imo books literature should be about people and events, not writing. After 100 or so pages got bored with and read 'Desolation Island', the fantastically well-written, and relentless action-packed Aubrey-Maturin novel by Patrick O'Brian. Might go back to it if I can't think of anything better to read.

Currently reading "Stiff" by Mary Roach. Who'd have thought being dead was so interesting.

Also starting "Mein Kampf" by some Austrian fella.

Good luck with Mein Kampf. If his public speaking was anything like his writing, the 20th Century would have been a very different world - it's one of the most boring pieces of prose I've ever encountered.

I'm on the last pages of a Scottish history book dealing with the late 1600s. Not bad.

I've just finished The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga.

Dunno why I bothered, really. It's not very good. I kept expecting something to happen, for it to build to something momentous...then it ended.

So, back to Trilobite! by Richard Fortey. Hugely interesting book about...er...I forget...

RF

The Inimitable Jeeves

Just finished 'The Last English King' by Julian Rathbone. It's a historical novel set in and around 1066, with one of Harold Godwinson's bodyguards telling the story of his rise and fall.

Now I'm on 'Cloud Atlas' by David Mitchell. Too early to say what I think yet, it's not at all clear where it's going.

Went on a bit of a book buying splurge, while I was in London this week:

Decided 2009, was the year I would brush up on some cognitive psychology and linguistics.

So I've brought

"Darwin's Dangerous Idea", "Breaking the spell: religion as a natural phenomenon" and Consciousness Explained" all by Dan Dennett.

Add to this two books by Steven Pinker: "The Language Instinct" and "The Stuff of Thought"

Finally "Why Evolution is True" by Jeffery Coyne
I was supporting the NHM by buying it at the Darwin Exhibit shop - and in 2009; what with Dawkin's next book on much the same line due out in the autumn - it'll sit nicely on my 'science' shelf by the books about fossils, geology and quantum physics.

So I started on the train back "Consciousness explained" and so far am enjoying it thoroughly.

It's making sense to me of a lot of the misgivings I had towards the end of my career as an academic philosopher by discussing mind in a way sets out to challenge convetional assumptions and which distinguishes the task from Cartesian dualism but makes ready use of philosophical examples to get to what is at stake in a view which, refreshingly, is rooted firmly in the current understanding of neurology, psychiatry and evolutionary development of the brain in a way I find reminiscent of the tales penned by Oliver Sacks or Paul Broks to be.