What book are you currently reading?

General Chit Chat
Message
Author
TheGreenAnger
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3286
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:40 pm
Location: Unfashionable end of the Western Spiral

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#501 Post by TheGreenAnger » Wed Oct 19, 2022 12:44 am

The average biology is horrified by that....

Jeez, it might even be easier to deal with cannibalism!
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

Pinky the pilot
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 2510
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 3:20 am
Location: Back home, looking for a bad bottle of Red
Gender:
Age: 69

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#502 Post by Pinky the pilot » Wed Oct 19, 2022 10:01 am

A couple of books published back in the 80's have had my attention just recently.

In God's Name by David Yallop; About the untimely death of Pope John Paul 1

and just started

Israel Now; Portrait of a Troubled Land by Lawrence Meyer
You only live twice. Once when you're born. Once when you've looked death in the face.

TheGreenAnger
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3286
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:40 pm
Location: Unfashionable end of the Western Spiral

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#503 Post by TheGreenAnger » Sat Oct 22, 2022 9:37 pm

Quantum Theory by David Bohm.

I started reading this book some months ago, full of my own hubris as an 1982 second-year level mathematics undergraduate (passed), all part of an LL.B degree, in the days when you had the option of studying non-legal courses for at least three years before you specialized in law at UCT.

Bohm's book is totally explicable to one of my limited mathematical skillset, but I knew what he was doing, even in death, teasing the interested neophyte, to move on in their thinking to try harder, and so I have had to go back to the basics, Lorentz transformations, LaGrangian maths, and the German quantanmists, etc. and so much more... this book will keep me busy until the day I die... :-o

If this sort of stuff interests you then read on, but prepare to just keep on reading, even if it is just to reject Bohm. ^:)^
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

User avatar
Opsboi
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 2717
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2015 5:37 pm
Location: Watching LHR D-09 E
Gender:

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#504 Post by Opsboi » Sat Oct 22, 2022 10:59 pm

TheGreenAnger wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 9:37 pm
Quantum Theory by David Bohm.

I started reading this book some months ago, full of my own hubris as an 1982 second-year level mathematics undergraduate (passed), all part of an LL.B degree, in the days when you had the option of studying non-legal courses for at least three years before you specialized in law at UCT.

Bohm's book is totally explicable to one of my limited mathematical skillset, but I knew what he was doing, even in death, teasing the interested neophyte, to move on in their thinking to try harder, and so I have had to go back to the basics, Lorentz transformations, LaGrangian maths, and the German quantanmists, etc. and so much more... this book will keep me busy until the day I die... :-o

If this sort of stuff interests you then read on, but prepare to just keep on reading, even if it is just to reject Bohm. ^:)^
'The Code of the Woosters' by PG Wodehouse is my idea of maths

TheGreenAnger
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3286
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:40 pm
Location: Unfashionable end of the Western Spiral

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#505 Post by TheGreenAnger » Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:05 pm

Opsboi wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 10:59 pm
TheGreenAnger wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 9:37 pm
Quantum Theory by David Bohm.

I started reading this book some months ago, full of my own hubris as an 1982 second-year level mathematics undergraduate (passed), all part of an LL.B degree, in the days when you had the option of studying non-legal courses for at least three years before you specialized in law at UCT.

Bohm's book is totally explicable to one of my limited mathematical skillset, but I knew what he was doing, even in death, teasing the interested neophyte, to move on in their thinking to try harder, and so I have had to go back to the basics, Lorentz transformations, LaGrangian maths, and the German quantanmists, etc. and so much more... this book will keep me busy until the day I die... :-o

If this sort of stuff interests you then read on, but prepare to just keep on reading, even if it is just to reject Bohm. ^:)^
'The Code of the Woosters' by PG Wodehouse is my idea of maths
Wodehouse is wonderful, but the code is impenetrable! =))

I suspect we have reverted, once again to this in British history...


My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

User avatar
Opsboi
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 2717
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2015 5:37 pm
Location: Watching LHR D-09 E
Gender:

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#506 Post by Opsboi » Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:25 pm

TheGreenAnger wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:05 pm

I suspect we have reverted, once again to this in British history...
Oh well, knees must...

TheGreenAnger
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3286
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:40 pm
Location: Unfashionable end of the Western Spiral

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#507 Post by TheGreenAnger » Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:26 pm

Opsboi wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:25 pm
TheGreenAnger wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:05 pm

I suspect we have reverted, once again to this in British history...
Oh well, knees must...
As the patellas drive... ;)))
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

User avatar
Opsboi
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 2717
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2015 5:37 pm
Location: Watching LHR D-09 E
Gender:

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#508 Post by Opsboi » Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:28 pm

TheGreenAnger wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:26 pm
Opsboi wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:25 pm
TheGreenAnger wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:05 pm

I suspect we have reverted, once again to this in British history...
Oh well, knees must...
As the patellas drive... ;)))
Shinful post

TheGreenAnger
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3286
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:40 pm
Location: Unfashionable end of the Western Spiral

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#509 Post by TheGreenAnger » Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:31 pm

Opsboi wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:28 pm
TheGreenAnger wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:26 pm
Opsboi wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 11:25 pm


Oh well, knees must...
As the patellas drive... ;)))
Shinful post
You have found my Achilles heel!
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

User avatar
llondel
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 5909
Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2018 3:17 am
Location: San Jose

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#510 Post by llondel » Fri Oct 28, 2022 3:35 am

Just got a book from the UK, arrived today. Ah-haaa! It's Wally Webb The Biography written by his wife Sheri. He was a BBC Radio presenter, started with Radio Norfolk back in 1980 when the station opened, and retired when they reorganised it all after the pandemic hit. He'd been in the RAF before that too. I used to listen to his 4am show because it was on at 8pm the previous night here.

User avatar
Opsboi
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 2717
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2015 5:37 pm
Location: Watching LHR D-09 E
Gender:

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#511 Post by Opsboi » Fri Oct 28, 2022 4:44 pm

Mythos by Stephen Fry

Everything you never knew or had forgotten about Greek mythology entertainingly told by a supreme raconteur

TheGreenAnger
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3286
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:40 pm
Location: Unfashionable end of the Western Spiral

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#512 Post by TheGreenAnger » Mon Nov 21, 2022 11:57 am

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

Re-reading this for the second time in decades. Really appreciating it this time.

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/ ... frontcover
Daedalus

I

Like the enormous liner of his limbs
and fell.
Remain behind, look on
What’s left of what was once in blighted remains.
That imponderable body
Smote my desire, now smitten
Mortally.
I lift his head, his death dampens
The moist palm of my hand like handled fear
Like fear cramping my hand
and stand.
Remain behind, entertain posthumous fear.

II

Come where no crowds can trouble us divert us
No acrobats hawkers bottles or street musicians
No towering necks like buildings overlook
Intimate revelation.

I take your hand
Spectre
And steadily lead you
Across morning haunted lawns in earlier
Days, and show
With a reversal of our growing older
How it began, what caused, the germ of time.

Where florid in the night pregnant nightdresses
Proceed sedately down unlighted stairs
Like people. And in the garden
Large lake unreal. Hark, I hear visitant
Swans, and the moths in the trees
Like minor caverns humming. There he draws
Antennae from paralyzed spiders, weapons
In his warlock fingers brandished: or runs
Engendering the eventual major strength like engines
Preparant. I cannot discern you in the leaves or in the
Undergrowth, when starting down the steep hills
He flies precipitate: Spectre, Spectre, where
If among these early places lie you, do you lie?

He fell, not then. Recently sure has fallen from that high
Platform. Formed in fearlessness, has fallen
Like through thought’s clouds through fear, as You stood
Waiting with wanting breast to catch, he in his fall
Evaded. Passed towards a grave straight through.
Of Course You Knew, for saw his comet face
Approaching downward like irresistible.
I mourn him. Him I mourn, from morn to morning.

III

Where once he trod
I cannot tread;
From the home he is gone from
I am prohibited:
We cannot be
While he is gone from being;
While he is not with being
I am as well miserably unloving;
Totally bereft I too am totally absent,
Appearing here, although
Bruisable and buriable seeming, am too bruised
In my dead
To buried.
Spectre who spreads
Internal dissension,
Dividing the unit army of the body
To coward forces,
Since I have brought
To these private places
Sick with his not being, with his recalled
Reverberant fleet blooms of doing and coming,
Empty with his going, since accomplished, entertained,
Shown choicest hothouse blossoms, phenomenal
Plants he acted on the air like dances lasting,
Since he is not here but where you know with doom—

IV

Where wander those once known herons
Or rabbits here
With shattered entrapped forepaws pitiable in crimson
Killing have known,
And seven-year-old boys locked among ominous
Shadows, enveloped
Have known, and are
At the unmerciful onrush of determined seas
Gathers small craft
There the acquainted faces of the dead sailors
Sight that sees
Where those once known herons fled in fear, to where I
Like lonely herons
The abandoned heroine

V

Go. With mild gradual descent
Burden the memory
Not as he fell, in anger, in the combat
With forms invisible intactual fought
On that mortal rooftop: not with celestial
Speed brought down, in meritorious
Defeat no beating, but like lamed
Herons or birds in wounded slope
Descending down to lamentable homes
In scraggy caves, borne down by death, I come
Drawn down to earth, and underneath
The earth, like one drawn under
Lethal water by an unknown weight
Unseen invisible, but not unknown is fear.
- George Barker
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

TheGreenAnger
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3286
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:40 pm
Location: Unfashionable end of the Western Spiral

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#513 Post by TheGreenAnger » Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:30 pm

Test Gods.JPG

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

In the spirit of The Right Stuff, updated for the 21st century, Test Gods is an epic story about extreme bravery and sacrifice, about the thin line between lunacy and genius. Most of all, it is a story about the pursuit of meaning in our lives--and the fulfillment of our dreams.

Working from exclusive inside reporting, New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle tells the remarkable story of the test pilots, engineers, and visionaries behind Virgin Galactic's campaign to build a space tourism company. Schmidle follows a handful of characters--Mark Stucky, Virgin's lead test pilot; Richard Branson, the eccentric billionaire funding the venture; Mike Moses, the grounded, unflappable president; Mike Alsbury, the test pilot killed in a fatal crash; and others--through personal and professional dramas, in pursuit of their collective goal: to make space tourism a reality.

Along the way, Schmidle weaves his relationship with his father--a former fighter pilot and decorated war hero--into the tragedies and triumphs that Branson's team confronts out in the Mojave desert as they design, build, and test-fly their private rocket ship. Gripping and novelistic, Test Gods leads us, through human drama, into a previously unseen world--and beyond.
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

User avatar
Woody
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 10244
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:33 pm
Location: Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand
Age: 59

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#514 Post by Woody » Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:50 pm

I know which book I won’t be reading next :D
When all else fails, read the instructions.

User avatar
OFSO
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 18599
Joined: Sat Aug 22, 2015 6:39 pm
Location: Teddington UK and Roses Catalunia
Gender:
Age: 80

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#515 Post by OFSO » Tue Jan 10, 2023 8:07 pm

"A Murder of Quality", for the nth time, because I like George Smiley.

User avatar
Opsboi
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 2717
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2015 5:37 pm
Location: Watching LHR D-09 E
Gender:

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#516 Post by Opsboi » Wed Jan 11, 2023 1:39 pm

'SAS Rogue Heroes' by Ben Macintyre

As compelling as the TV series based on the same book

User avatar
Mrs Ex-Ascot
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 4581
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2015 7:18 am
Location: Botswana but sometimes Greece
Age: 59

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#517 Post by Mrs Ex-Ascot » Wed Jan 11, 2023 2:55 pm

Opsboi wrote:
Wed Jan 11, 2023 1:39 pm
'SAS Rogue Heroes' by Ben Macintyre

As compelling as the TV series based on the same book
Thank you for the good review; have been considering it for when I have finished Hitler by Ian Kershaw. However, as I am only 7% through said tome, I may take a break for the SAS. :D
RAF 32 Sqn B Flt ; Twin Squirrels.

User avatar
Smeagol
Capt
Capt
Posts: 1488
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:15 pm
Location: UK, Carrot Cruncher Country
Gender:
Age: 72

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#518 Post by Smeagol » Wed Jan 11, 2023 4:20 pm

Just started reading Vulcan 607 by Rowland White, the story of the attack on the airfield at Port Stanley.
Maybe there is someone on this forum who was involved....?
We hates Bagginses!

User avatar
Wodrick
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 8332
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2015 8:23 am
Location: Torrox Campo, Andalucia.
Gender:
Age: 74

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#519 Post by Wodrick » Wed Jan 11, 2023 4:54 pm

There was one that I can think of but he saw his bum and left.

PHXPhlyer
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 8239
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2018 2:56 pm
Location: PHX
Gender:
Age: 69

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#520 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Jan 11, 2023 5:09 pm

Opsboi wrote:
Wed Jan 11, 2023 1:39 pm
'SAS Rogue Heroes' by Ben Macintyre

As compelling as the TV series based on the same book
My library has this book in e format as well as print, large print and book on CD. :-bd
All checked out with several holds as well. :-o
No hurry as I have a long list of books to read, at the library and my own collection.

PP

Post Reply