What book are you currently reading?

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TheGreenGoblin
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#321 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:36 am

"The night was sultry, but no more sultry than Lula Divine, as she leant over Marlowe's desk and gave her red lips just a scintilla of a lick... "Oh Philip, how can I ever repay you?" she said, or rather half whispered, half blew, at him and then backed off with a shrug of her shoulders and a twitch of her upper lip. "You are so anchored here in this dusty office all the time. What's a girl to do with her favourite private Dick?" The invitation hung as heavy as her scent and as purple as these prose...! =))
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#322 Post by Opsboi » Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:33 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:36 am
"The night was sultry, but no more sultry than Lula Divine, as she leant over Marlowe's desk and gave her red lips just a scintilla of a lick... "Oh Philip, how can I ever repay you?" she said, or rather half whispered, half blew, at him and then backed off with a shrug of her shoulders and a twitch of her upper lip. "You are so anchored here in this dusty office all the time. What's a girl to do with her favourite private Dick?" The invitation hung as heavy as her scent and as purple as these prose...! =))
I couldn't help but notice that, beneath her clothes, she was completely naked

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#323 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Mon Jul 26, 2021 4:12 pm

Opsboi wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:33 pm
TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:36 am
"The night was sultry, but no more sultry than Lula Divine, as she leant over Marlowe's desk and gave her red lips just a scintilla of a lick... "Oh Philip, how can I ever repay you?" she said, or rather half whispered, half blew, at him and then backed off with a shrug of her shoulders and a twitch of her upper lip. "You are so anchored here in this dusty office all the time. What's a girl to do with her favourite private Dick?" The invitation hung as heavy as her scent and as purple as these prose...! =))
I couldn't help but notice that, beneath her clothes, she was completely naked
Brilliant... I feel we have a masterpiece on the way here... =))
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#324 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:39 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Sat Oct 24, 2020 5:52 pm
TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Wed Oct 21, 2020 7:23 pm
Bought Jasper Rees's, 'Let's Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood' earlier today. Still a lot to read but it is very good thus far.

She was an amazing, complex and very funny woman.
All that I said above still stands but the book begins to pall well before the end as it is too factually turgid and, although well researched, begins to read like a rewriting of her work diary and really doesn't give any insight into her marriage and subsequent divorce or other relationships and is obviously written by an avid fan so that it begins to tend towards the hagiographic as the pages grind relentlessly by. I will return to it presently and finish it in more digestible chunks.

This book on the other hand was purchased by me yesterday and read in one delightful blitzkrieg! It is a must read for anybody interested in aviation and the history of Germany, the air war and German aerial reconnaissance during the Second World War.

Sommer, Erich. Luftwaffe Eagle
In this compelling memoir, Erich Sommer recalls his life in pre-war Germany and the adventures he had flying for the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. Born in 1912, the third son of a district court judge, Erich grew up in an atmosphere of uncertainty following the First World War. In 1932 he started training as a brewery engineer, shortly afterwards the Nazis came to power. The implications this had on the lives of average Germans are described in great detail.

When war came in 1939, he became a navigator, successfully serving with the Luftwaffe’s first pathfinding unit, then a special and little-known control commission in Morocco to monitor the disarmament of Vichy French forces. This led to training as a pilot and Erich joining the high-altitude reconnaissance squadron in missions over Britain. He was then sent to the Russian Front, flying the relatively rare Junkers Ju 86 bomber and high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft fitted with pressurized cabins. He also flew the He 11 in a radar-equipped anti-shipping unit and the revolutionary Arado Ar 234 jet – leading to Erich’s participation in the world’s first jet-reconnaissance sortie over the invasion front and ending his war in Italy. After the war, Erich moved with his wife to Australia where he lived peacefully until his death in 2004.

With a detailed introduction from acclaimed Luftwaffe historian J. Richard Smith and illustrated throughout with photographs from private family albums, Luftwaffe Eagle is a fascinating insight into the life of an exceptional Luftwaffe pilot and navigator.
Highly recommended. Spitzenklasse! :-bd
Erich Sommer - Home movies

Erich Sommer.JPG
https://www.barryspicerart.com/store/p/ ... 234b-blitz

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#325 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Jan 19, 2022 6:32 pm

Added to my (enormous) list of Ebooks available from my local library. :YMAPPLAUSE: :-bd

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#326 Post by Hydromet » Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:43 pm

Re-reading one of my favourites, Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck, after a recent short stay in California. I love Steinbeck's writing style and his development of the characters. Highly recommended.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#327 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:49 pm

+1
I even like the movie of the same name even though it was a mashup of two Steinbeck books.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#328 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:34 am

Hydromet wrote:
Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:43 pm
Re-reading one of my favourites, Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck, after a recent short stay in California. I love Steinbeck's writing style and his development of the characters. Highly recommended.
+1

Talking of California and Cannery Row I also really enjoyed Log From The Sea of Cortez... Ed Ricketts was an amazing character.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Ricketts

Excerpt on Ed Ricketts
Although slight in build, when he was angry, Ed had no fear and could really be dangerous. On an occasion one of our cops was pistol-whipping a drunk in the middle of the night. Ed attacked the cop with his bare hands, and his fury was so great that the cop released the drunk.

This hatred was only for reasonless cruelty. When the infliction of pain was necessary, he had little feeling about it. Once during the depression we found we could buy a live sheep for three dollars. This may seem incredible now but it was so. It was a great deal of food and even for those days a great bargain. Then we had the sheep and none of us could kill it. But Ed cut its throat with no emotion whatever, and even explained to the rest of us who were upset that bleeding to death is quite painless if there is no fear involved. the pain of opening a vein is slight if the instrument is sharp, and he had opened the jugular with a scapel and had not frightened the animal, so that our secondary or empathic pain was probably much greater than that of the sheep.

His feeling for psychic pain in normal people was also philosophic. He would say that nearly everything that can happen to people not only does happen but has happened for a million years. "Therefore," he would say, "for everything that can happen there is a channel or mechanism in the human to take care of it--a channel worn down in prehistory and transmitted in the genes."

He disliked time intensely unless it was part of an observation or an experiment. He was invariably and consciously late for appointments. He said he had once worked for a railroad where his whole life had been regulated by a second hand and that he had then conceived his disgust, a disgust for exactness in time. To my knowledge, that is the only time he ever spoke of his railroad experience. If you asked him to dinner at seven, he might get there at nine. On the other hand, if a good low collecting time was at 6:53, he would be in the tide pool at 6:52.

The farther I get into this the more apparent it becomes to me that no rule was final. He himself was not conscious of any rules of behavior in himself, although he observed behavior patterns in other people with delight.

For many years he wore a beard, not large, and slightly pointed, which accentuated his half-goat, half-Christ appearance. He had started wearing the beard because some girl he wanted thought he had a weak chin. He didn't have a weak chin, but as long as she thought so he cultivated his beard. This was probably during the period of the prognathous Arrow Collar men in the advertising pages. Many girls later he was still wearing the beard because he was used to it. He kept it until the Army made him shave it off in the Second World War. His beard sometimes caused a disturbance. Small boys often followed Ed, baaing like sheep. He developed a perfect defense against this. He said he would turn and baa back at them, which invariably so embarrassed the boys that they slipped shyly away.

Ed had a strange and courteous relationship with dogs, although he never owned one or wanted to. Passing a dog on the street, he greeted it with dignity and, when driving, often tipped his hat and smiled and waved at dogs on the sidewalk. And damned if they didn't smile back at him. Cats, on the other hand, did not arouse any enthusiasm in him. However, he always remembered one cat with admiration. It was in the old days before the fire when Ed's father was still alive and doing odd jobs about the laboratory. The cat in question took a dislike to Ed's father and developed a spite tactic which charmed Ed. The cat would climb up on a shelf and pee on Ed's father when he went by--the cat did it not once but many times.

He regarded his father with affection. "He has one quality of genius," Ed would say. "He is always wrong. If a man makes a million decisions and judgments at random, it is perhaps mathematically tenable to suppose that he will be right half the time and wrong half the time. But you take my father--he is wrong all of the time about everything. That is a matter not of luck but of selection. That requires genius."
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23188W/Sea_of_Cortez
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You must have somewhere
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Your destination remains
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#329 Post by FD2 » Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:51 am

Cannery Row was one of my mother's favourites. Thanks for the recommends - I've just ordered it on Kindle.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#330 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Jan 20, 2022 3:11 am

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:34 am
Hydromet wrote:
Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:43 pm
Re-reading one of my favourites, Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck, after a recent short stay in California. I love Steinbeck's writing style and his development of the characters. Highly recommended.
+1

Talking of California and Cannery Row I also really enjoyed Log From The Sea of Cortez... Ed Ricketts was an amazing character.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Ricketts

Excerpt on Ed Ricketts
Although slight in build, when he was angry, Ed had no fear and could really be dangerous. On an occasion one of our cops was pistol-whipping a drunk in the middle of the night. Ed attacked the cop with his bare hands, and his fury was so great that the cop released the drunk.

This hatred was only for reasonless cruelty. When the infliction of pain was necessary, he had little feeling about it. Once during the depression we found we could buy a live sheep for three dollars. This may seem incredible now but it was so. It was a great deal of food and even for those days a great bargain. Then we had the sheep and none of us could kill it. But Ed cut its throat with no emotion whatever, and even explained to the rest of us who were upset that bleeding to death is quite painless if there is no fear involved. the pain of opening a vein is slight if the instrument is sharp, and he had opened the jugular with a scapel and had not frightened the animal, so that our secondary or empathic pain was probably much greater than that of the sheep.

His feeling for psychic pain in normal people was also philosophic. He would say that nearly everything that can happen to people not only does happen but has happened for a million years. "Therefore," he would say, "for everything that can happen there is a channel or mechanism in the human to take care of it--a channel worn down in prehistory and transmitted in the genes."

He disliked time intensely unless it was part of an observation or an experiment. He was invariably and consciously late for appointments. He said he had once worked for a railroad where his whole life had been regulated by a second hand and that he had then conceived his disgust, a disgust for exactness in time. To my knowledge, that is the only time he ever spoke of his railroad experience. If you asked him to dinner at seven, he might get there at nine. On the other hand, if a good low collecting time was at 6:53, he would be in the tide pool at 6:52.

The farther I get into this the more apparent it becomes to me that no rule was final. He himself was not conscious of any rules of behavior in himself, although he observed behavior patterns in other people with delight.

For many years he wore a beard, not large, and slightly pointed, which accentuated his half-goat, half-Christ appearance. He had started wearing the beard because some girl he wanted thought he had a weak chin. He didn't have a weak chin, but as long as she thought so he cultivated his beard. This was probably during the period of the prognathous Arrow Collar men in the advertising pages. Many girls later he was still wearing the beard because he was used to it. He kept it until the Army made him shave it off in the Second World War. His beard sometimes caused a disturbance. Small boys often followed Ed, baaing like sheep. He developed a perfect defense against this. He said he would turn and baa back at them, which invariably so embarrassed the boys that they slipped shyly away.

Ed had a strange and courteous relationship with dogs, although he never owned one or wanted to. Passing a dog on the street, he greeted it with dignity and, when driving, often tipped his hat and smiled and waved at dogs on the sidewalk. And damned if they didn't smile back at him. Cats, on the other hand, did not arouse any enthusiasm in him. However, he always remembered one cat with admiration. It was in the old days before the fire when Ed's father was still alive and doing odd jobs about the laboratory. The cat in question took a dislike to Ed's father and developed a spite tactic which charmed Ed. The cat would climb up on a shelf and pee on Ed's father when he went by--the cat did it not once but many times.

He regarded his father with affection. "He has one quality of genius," Ed would say. "He is always wrong. If a man makes a million decisions and judgments at random, it is perhaps mathematically tenable to suppose that he will be right half the time and wrong half the time. But you take my father--he is wrong all of the time about everything. That is a matter not of luck but of selection. That requires genius."
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23188W/Sea_of_Cortez
Yet another book on my already too extensive "To read" list.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#331 Post by Hydromet » Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:21 am

Talking of California and Cannery Row I also really enjoyed Log From The Sea of Cortez... Ed Ricketts was an amazing character.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Ricketts

Yes, that was another excellent book. He was an author who could make almost any topic riveting. "Travels with Charlie: In Search of America" is also worth reading.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#332 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Jan 20, 2022 10:59 am

This is a case where reading one book has led to me reading another and ordering another two as a result of reading the first two.

The first In this chain of reading causation was "Jet Man: The Making and Breaking of Frank Whittle, Genius of the Jet Revolution by Duncan Campbell-Smith". An excellently written, interesting, and well researched biography of Frank Whittle, telling a story that is enjoyable for having a hero, in the Greek sense, and his tragedy, namely Whittle, and also many villains, namely specific people in the RAF, British government, government ministries, civil manufacturing companies and sundry industrial leaders, in the 1930's and during the war, with the leading villain roles being assigned to Alan Arnold Griffith and George Bulman and other dramatis personae, including the Rover Company under the Wilks Brothers as well as British Thomson-Houston.

I finished the book feeling, unjustifiable loathing for some of the above mentioned parties and people, and almost fell for the fable, and the old British shibboleth of a lone English genius, a boffin, working in extremis, under the duress of historical circumstances, fighting against all the odds to overcome the shortsighted naysayers and bumbling bureaucrats, general ignorance, fools, apathy, politicians and vested industrial interests. Thus I almost fell for that simplistic narrative, but once I thought about it, the subtler truth, highlighted between the lines in this book became clear, and the story that emerges is more nuanced, and the tragic hero, more human, and more tragic with more inherent fatal flaws than one might have expected, from those, in even the greatest of Greek tragedies.

Having become intrigued, I have have purchased, and now read, "Frank Whittle" by Andrew Nahum, and have purchased and will read Whittle's own autobiography "Jet – The Story of a Pioneer" as well as George Bulman's memoirs...

A bit OCD or over the top, one might argue, but one can never be too thorough when dealing with a historically fascinating saga like the story of Whittle, and Britain's role in the development of the jet engine.
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Your destination remains
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#333 Post by limeygal » Thu Jan 20, 2022 11:44 am

Just finished The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence. Also on the go: The Idle Beekeeper by Bill Anderson; and Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya by William Carlsen. Always read two or three non-fiction books and a mystery novel at a time.

Also enjoy Steinbeck-have read them all over the years.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#334 Post by 1DC » Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:44 pm

Well on with Billy Connolly's biography.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#335 Post by om15 » Thu Jan 20, 2022 6:58 pm

Hello Russia, Goodbye England by Derek Robinson, might interest PN.

A couple of chapters into a new (to me) author, very gripping and tightly written,

https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/domin ... 444775563/

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#336 Post by FD2 » Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:23 pm

'The Lightning Thread' by David Profumo. He was fishing correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph for many years and his column was always a good weekend read. In this book he relates tales of his fishing trips around the world with great prose style and much humour (often self-deprecating). He is the son of John Profumo and Valerie Hobson the actress. https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/book ... 1471186554

Also Billy Connolly's biography, like 1DC. What a life, sadly coming to an end with his Parkinson's.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#337 Post by Ibbie » Fri Jan 21, 2022 11:08 am

Deltics Across The Pennines,

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#338 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Jan 21, 2022 12:06 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Thu Jan 20, 2022 10:59 am
This is a case where reading one book has led to me reading another and ordering another two as a result of reading the first two.

Having become intrigued, I have have purchased, and now read, "Frank Whittle" by Andrew Nahum, and have purchased and will read Whittle's own autobiography "Jet – The Story of a Pioneer" as well as George Bulman's memoirs...

Bulman's memoirs are a superb buy... in beautiful condition and published by the Roll Royce Heritage Trust and full of fine, historical photographs and engine diagrams as well. Even better, I managed to smuggle the book in without it being detected by my better half, who is now the uber book comptroller, fighting to prevent any further aviation related literature entering into the house. =))

Bulman.JPG
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Your destination remains
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#339 Post by Rossian » Fri Jan 21, 2022 12:29 pm

"Artic Airmen" by Ernest Schofield and Roy Conyers Nesbit. My distant memories of sweeping snow off Shackleton and Nimrod wings in north Norway and Iceland pale in difficulty with what these guys went through. "Chapeau" as we say in Morayshire. Oh, and it was the first squadron that I was on.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#340 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jan 23, 2022 7:00 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Thu Jan 20, 2022 10:59 am
This is a case where reading one book has led to me reading another and ordering another two as a result of reading the first two.

The first In this chain of reading causation was "Jet Man: The Making and Breaking of Frank Whittle, Genius of the Jet Revolution by Duncan Campbell-Smith". An excellently written, interesting, and well researched biography of Frank Whittle, telling a story that is enjoyable for having a hero, in the Greek sense, and his tragedy, namely Whittle, and also many villains, namely specific people in the RAF, British government, government ministries, civil manufacturing companies and sundry industrial leaders, in the 1930's and during the war, with the leading villain roles being assigned to Alan Arnold Griffith and George Bulman and other dramatis personae, including the Rover Company under the Wilks Brothers as well as British Thomson-Houston.

I finished the book feeling, unjustifiable loathing for some of the above mentioned parties and people, and almost fell for the fable, and the old British shibboleth of a lone English genius, a boffin, working in extremis, under the duress of historical circumstances, fighting against all the odds to overcome the shortsighted naysayers and bumbling bureaucrats, general ignorance, fools, apathy, politicians and vested industrial interests. Thus I almost fell for that simplistic narrative, but once I thought about it, the subtler truth, highlighted between the lines in this book became clear, and the story that emerges is more nuanced, and the tragic hero, more human, and more tragic with more inherent fatal flaws than one might have expected, from those, in even the greatest of Greek tragedies.

Having become intrigued, I have have purchased, and now read, "Frank Whittle" by Andrew Nahum, and have purchased and will read Whittle's own autobiography "Jet – The Story of a Pioneer" as well as George Bulman's memoirs...

A bit OCD or over the top, one might argue, but one can never be too thorough when dealing with a historically fascinating saga like the story of Whittle, and Britain's role in the development of the jet engine.
The link I posted to George Bulman is erroneous. I should have referred to George Purvis Bulman and not the test pilot.

http://enginehistory.org/Piston/Rolls-R ... HMA1.shtml
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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