What book are you currently reading?

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Ex-Ascot
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What book are you currently reading?

#1 Post by Ex-Ascot » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:10 pm

Just thought I would try this as a thread. Living in the middle of nowhere with no TV etc we do read a lot. Trouble is Amazon will not deliver here and we have no book shop. It is beg borrow or steal.

Just started 'The Panther' by Nelson Demille. Will report back.

I find too many characters in a book confusing. I had problems with Robinson Crusoe.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#2 Post by rgbrock1 » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:15 pm

Ex-Ascot wrote:Just thought I would try this as a thread. Living in the middle of nowhere with no TV etc we do read a lot. Trouble is Amazon will not deliver here and we have no book shop. It is beg borrow or steal.

Just started 'The Panther' by Nelson Demille. Will report back.

I find too many characters in a book confusing. I had problems with Robinson Crusoe.


Amazon doesn't deliver to your area? That's very strange as I thought they delivered virtually everywhere. I used to live in the boondocks, or the back of beyond, and they certainly delivered to me. (Via UPS of course. Or, on occasion, FEDEX.)
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#3 Post by BackToAllNightLights » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:24 pm

[font=Comic Sans MS]Re-reading
Bush Pilot with a Briefcase - biography of Grant McConachie by Ronald A.Keith
There Shall Be Wings - Personal accounts of the RAF 1918 to today(1993) by Max Arthur[/font]
History does Not repeat itself through time. It does however, sometimes rhyme.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#4 Post by Ex-Ascot » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:26 pm

RG practically no one will deliver to Botswana. Check drop down lists of countries on Internet on line sales Bots aint there. No problem with courier services. We have a much better postal system than SA who are always on strike but these companies will not deliver to us. No idea why.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#5 Post by rgbrock1 » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:30 pm

Ex-Ascot wrote:RG practically no one will deliver to Botswana. Check drop down lists of countries on Internet on line sales Bots aint there. No problem with courier services. We have a much better postal system than SA who are always on strike but these companies will not deliver to us. No idea why.


Interesting. I wonder why that is? Can you not have parcels delivered to a country other than Botswana and then have them sent on to you via postal system? Might take a bit longer but at least you can buy stuff!
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#6 Post by Ex-Ascot » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:38 pm

RG sure, we have them posted to our office in Greece and forwarded but it is a pain and expensive. We also have friends in SA who come here regularly who could bring things for us but one doesn't want to impose. We have a couple of places here who do second hand books. Also my memory is so bad I can read the same book from our library a year after the last time and not remember it.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#7 Post by stuart » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:41 pm

I download books nowadays and read them on my iPad, currently on The Secret War by Max Hastings.
it's good to be bad.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#8 Post by rgbrock1 » Wed Oct 14, 2015 4:08 pm

Currently reading 'The Science of Interstellar' by Kip Thorne and Christopher Nolan. It's a very in-depth book describing various aspects of the movie 'Interstellar", to include: worm holes, black holes, gravitational anomalies, etc.

I started it last weekend but I had to put it down after a while due to an overwhelming headache after reading a couple of chapters. :D I've since taken up reading "See Spot Run" instead. No headaches there. :)) :))
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#9 Post by probes » Wed Oct 14, 2015 5:45 pm

A book about life on a little Greek island :-B :)

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#10 Post by Maxbert » Wed Oct 14, 2015 6:58 pm

Ex-Ascot, why not Kindle? Try stopping Amazon delivering that way! 3G and WiFi, never far from a book... Oh, but Amazon won't deliver you the Kindle.... :((

Reading James P Hogan, The Two Moons, now on The Two Worlds

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#11 Post by A Lutra Continua » Wed Oct 14, 2015 7:07 pm

Skin Tight. Carl Hiaasen. Third or fourth time but still worth a read.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#12 Post by Bull at a Gate » Wed Oct 14, 2015 8:32 pm

On holiday in Tasmania, reading a good thriller, "Life or Death" by Michael Rowbotham.

I usually read on my iPad or kindle. Books are cheaper, delivered instantly, and take up no space at all. Plus, and this is helpful for those books with too many characters, there is a search function which allows me to be reminded of when I first read of some character in the book.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#13 Post by Tall Bird » Wed Oct 14, 2015 11:18 pm

I have three books on the go - one for each eye :D . Bedside book is Good Evening Mrs Craven: the Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes. The other books are Margot Asquith's Great War Diary 1914-1916 and For Love and Courage - letters sent home by Lt Col EW Hermon. A cavalry officer, Hermon was killed in 1917 on the first day of the Battle of Arras. Oh, there is a theme.....

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#14 Post by Stoneboat » Thu Oct 15, 2015 1:14 am

I usually have a couple of books on the go. I'm a whodunit nut, just finished the latest in the John Sandford 'Virgil Flowers' series, Deadline. On the go is The CAE Story by Larry Milberry, the latest in the Aviation In Canada series.

BTANL the Grant McConachie story was a fine read.
"What's the ceiling?"
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"How's the visibility?"
"Pretty good as far as I can see."

You might like the book Yukon Wings by my buddy Bob Cameron of Whitehorse. Google it. I'm building him a fleet of model airplanes for his personal collection which will go to the Yukon Transportation Museum when he passes on. Jack Scholfield wrote a couple of books about flying the left coast, No Numbered Runways, or No Numbered Airways, I forget which, and Flights Of A Coast Dog. Of course you've already read The Accidental Airline By Jim Spillsbury, the story of Queen Charlotte Airlines.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#15 Post by Hydromet » Thu Oct 15, 2015 1:29 am

Just started 'Island Home' by Tim Winton. Seems good so far, but I'm not far into it.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#16 Post by BackToAllNightLights » Thu Oct 15, 2015 2:04 am

Thank you Stoneboat.

From Bush Pilot w/a Briefcase: with some editing... Grant McConnachie's last return from Los Angeles.
" A zero-visibility smog was obscuring the entire airspace of the LA control block. Traffic was stacked two miles high. Captain Weatherbe had flight-planned for a two hour hold in the queue. Empress 90 would have to shuffle down from the top of the deck by tedious thousand-foot holding stages. Brisk, impersonal, the voice of LA Control rasped in Weatherbe's earphones: Empress 90 we have you at 15,000 over Green Meadows. contact Long Beach Approach control ...frequency 605.3...for direct-vectored descent, repeat direct vectored descent to Long Beach Airport. Direct descent! By=passing the entire traffic stack! Obviously the special nature of the mission had been recognized at a very high level. No detail neglected.
Eighteen minutes after retarding the throttles for his radar descent, Capt. Weatherbe banked CZZ into final approach, checked gear down and chopped the throttle levers full back and settled the 6-B smoothly onto runway 27, Long Beach.
Empress 90 was cleared for a quick reverse on the active, then across highway 65 to the sprawling complex of the Douglas Commercial aircraft plant. Red traffic lights flashed. Bells shrilled. Striped barriers swung down. Road traffic halted. the Canadian airliner rumbled across the highway and taxied directly into the open cavern of the Douglas hangar The ground arrangements were unobtrusive and quietly efficient. 75 minutes later the big doors yawned again to emit CZZ, props already spinning, ready for priority take-off to Vancouver.
As CZZ climbed away from the airport the voice of the Long Beach Tower operator came through.
"Empress 90, you are cleared to Area Control." Then a pause. It should have been the end of the transmission, but there was an audible click. Probably the operator had shut off the tape-recorder, for the next words were a breach of the strict rules against personal utterances on the airway radio frequencies.
"Sorry Canadian Pacific". That was all. Another click and the impersonal staccato of airway patter resumed.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#17 Post by fin » Thu Oct 15, 2015 3:24 am

I just ran through the entire 19 or 20 Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. For the third time. And all of them on-line. Free.

Before that, about 45 books by John D MacDonald.

And a bunch by Vince Flynn, Tom Clancy, Wilbur Smith, Frederick Forsyth, Stephen Hunter and Robert Ludlum. A few of these were recommendations made on an aviation website for largely British professional pilots.

Would be remiss if I didn't mention A Perfect Code by an author known to many here.

And currently reading in Kindle also, Skyfaring.

I have pretty well given up on the teevee!
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#18 Post by Pinky the pilot » Thu Oct 15, 2015 6:15 am

The Solomon Curse by Clive Cussler.

Previous book was also Cussler; The Assassin

And looking behind me in the bookshelf there is Tom Clancy, Daniel Silva, Robert Ludlum, Jeffrey Archer, Nelson DeMille, Ken Follett, Jack Higgins and Dan Brown's illustrated version of Inferno.

Plus 'The Illiad.' I'll get to that one, one day! :-?
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#19 Post by Magnus » Thu Oct 15, 2015 6:57 am

On the Kindle, a sword/sorcery series by Jeff Wheeler. Next to my chair, "The Shepherd's Crown" by Pratchett (for the 3rd time). By the bed, "Better than Fiction", a collection of short travelogues by lots of well-known authors. I also have a couple of books on photography that I dip into for ideas.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#20 Post by Ex-Ascot » Thu Oct 15, 2015 8:01 am

A book about life on a little Greek island
=)) Very funny Probes, the question is are you now reading it in your language or not?

The trouble with Kindle here is even if we could get one the download would be difficult if not impossible. The book that Probes refers to is now on Kindle. The Royalties are peanuts :((
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