Just Finished Reading: Life at the Extremes – The Science of Survival by Frances Ashcroft (FP: 2000) [306pp]

As a species that evolved to live, and indeed thrive, on the African veldt we have over the millennia moved far beyond it. There is now little ground that we have not explored and few territories that we have not settled – in time. In other to do so though we have had to adapt to some harsh conditions. Some of that adaptation has been biological but a great deal of it has been technological and cultural – allowing us to move into or at least explore areas that are not only inimical to our own species but to life in general. This is the story, the science, of mankind’s encounter with the extremes of climate and environment on Earth, below the oceans and into Space.

It is a rare place indeed that has not felt the tread of mankind. Starting at height the author (who interestingly sprinkles her own personal experiences of extreme environments throughout the book) looks at the early experiences of mountain climbers and balloonist who, for the first time in human history travelled to the edges (and sometimes beyond!) of the breathable atmosphere and looks at the effects of low oxygen on the body and why some people cope much better with altitude sickness that others. Moving into the opposite realm she explores the issues with working under enhanced air-pressure and the operation of early diving suits and the painful discovery of conditions like ‘the Bends’ first experienced in significant numbers of workers during the use of caissons used in bridge and tunnel construction in the 19^th century. Further discussion moved to the capabilities (and dangers!) of the lives of pearl divers and, later, scuba divers and the use of increasingly exotic gases to enable deeper and deeper dives.

So with pressure (and the lack thereof!) so to temperature with the science of living in both Hot and Cold zones on the planet and the adaptations forced upon those who live there – even for short expeditions to the hottest and coldest places imaginable. Lastly the author takes a few diversions – into space (and how we cope with low – or zero – gravity as well as issues like cosmic radiation) and seemingly a bit more off-topic into the realm of speed – essentially running and finally a look at the latest (20 years ago) insights into bacterial and viral extremophiles found, once we actually started looking, just about everywhere from the tundra to hot springs, and from the deepest caves to the most acidic lakes.

This was a fascinating romp through Earth’s more extreme environments and how people have adapted to live there – or simply survived brief encounters with temperatures or other factors that would, in other more sustained instances have killed them. There is a lot of information here from all over the world showcasing how humans have used both their natural abilities and their ever inventive brains to push envelopes further than most of us can imagine. So if you want a real insight into how your body copes (or fails to cope) with a cold winter or hot dry summer this is definitely the book for you. It might even save your life one day…. Recommended.  

 

 

 

"Blessed are they who are not Patriots and Idealists, and who do not feel they must dash right in and Do Something About It, something so immediately important that all doubters must be liquidated - tortured - slaughtered! Good old murder, that since the slaying of Abel by Cain has always been the new device by which all oligarchies and dictators have, for all future ages to come, removed opposition!"

Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here, (1935), p114

 

 

 

Just Finished (re?)-Reading: Emergence – The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software by Steven Johnson (FP: 2001) [234pp]

This is a possible re-read. I say ‘possible’ because I’m not entirely sure. I was moving a stack of books recently and came across another copy (a hardback this time) of this book that I have scant memory of. So, I either read it pre-Blog and essentially forgot about it or DNF’d it (again pre-Blog) and never actually finished it. Either way my re?-read didn’t produce any audible bells of recognition.

This is essentially about the (then new) science or idea of Emergence – that what look on the surface as orderly processes from a global, big-picture perspective are, at ground level, nothing of the sort. The classic case is the ant hill where everything seems ordered, regimented, under control. But looked at from the point of view of a single ant it’s nothing of the sort. For one thing it’s impossible for any one ant to conceive of the whole nest. It’s just too big, too complex and her brain (they’re all female of course apart from the occasional requirement for male ants once a new queen is hatched for simple impregnation) is just far too small and too simple to understand the totality. The Queen, at the centre of things, doesn’t give out daily orders – or indeed any orders – but spends her days laying eggs. The individual ants rely on signals from other ants to determine how to behave. They follow pheromone trails and count the number of other ants they encounter to decide if they’re needed here or need to be elsewhere doing something else. Their total instruction set is brief. But taken together, in their thousands, order emerges out of chaos and the nest endures. Like ant nests and bee hives so cities, brains and the (again at the time of publication) more advanced simulation games like SimCity. Each example has a limited set of comparatively simple rules and yet, when thousands (or millions) of actors use these rules – which individually look and indeed are chaotic, uncontrolled by any central agency and undirected for any overall purpose – a global order is spontaneously created and emerges into focused existence.

Of course thinking about it these ideas aren’t really that new. The ‘Invisible Hand’ of Adam Smith is I think drawing on this idea. You have individual actors with a primary directive to maximise their utility in preference to anything else. With millions of people doing just that you’d expect total chaos as everyone fights everyone else to maximise their take home. But, out of all those actions you get a (mostly!) functioning economy – large scale order from small scale chaos, in other words: Emergence. Despite the blank from my possible previous read this is a pretty good introduction to the idea/science of Emergence and gives you a good idea of how emergent properties come into being. Being now 20 years old it’s more than a little out of date and I imagine that there are more up to date introductions to the field out there. Even saying that it’s still worth a quick read if you can get hold of a copy. Interesting.

 

 

 Keeping fit & healthy... Kinda....

Yes, Prime Minister (2)

It’s been almost exactly a year since I (officially) started looking at reading biographies of British Prime Ministers. My idea was to start off with some of the more famous (or infamous) ones and then work backwards in time at least into the 19^th century. I don’t think I’ll ever complete the whole list (I think there’s around 70 of the buggers) and I also don’t think that all of them actually have had biographies written about them. So, how have I done over the last 12 months? Not exactly brilliantly I’m afraid. I’ve added two more PM’s to my list (both from the EARLY 19^th century!) and, rather inevitably, another book about Winston Churchill. This year I expect to add two more PM’s (both from the 20^th century this time) and maybe another book or two about Churchill. So, this is where we stand today:

Winston S. Churchill (10th May 1940 – 26th July 1945) (26th October 1951 – 5th April 1955)

Young Titan – The Making of Winston Churchill by Michael Shelden

Churchill’s First War – Young Winston and the Fight against the Taliban by Con Couchlin.

Arthur Wellesley, 1^st Duke of Wellington (22^nd January 1828 – 16^th November 1830) (17^th November 1834 – 9^th December 1834)

Wellington by S G P Ward

Spencer Perceval (4^th October 1809 – 11^th May 1812)

The Assassination of the Prime Minister – John Bellingham and the Murder of Spencer Perceval by David C Hanrahan

It is a LONG journey but we have made the first few halting steps along the way. Personally I think that it’s going to be quite a fascinating trip, but then again I am a little strange at times….

 

 

 

 

Just Finished Reading: The Death of Expertise – The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters by Tom Nichols (FP: 2017) [238pp]

It is arguable that we need our experts now more than ever. With a global Pandemic still raging across the globe, political unrest (and not just in the US) on the rise, with a world still reeling from a financial meltdown over a decade old and already feeling the effects of devastating climate change its understandable that people are looking for answers. What is less understandable is that our experts are increasing NOT being asked to provide them. In some quarters those who profess expertise in almost any area are seen as elitist (as if the idea of elites is in some way offensive. No one seems to have any problem with elite athletes for instance) and, once labelled as such, dismissed or denigrated. It is as if the democratic ideals of the sovereignty of the individual, equality before the law and one person, one vote has been extended into the knowledge sphere to state that all opinions are equally valid. Unfortunately they’re not. Firstly there is the obvious difference between opinion and informed opinion. Then there is the even more obvious difference between expert opinion and the opinions of random people being interviewed on the street or giving their opinions freely on Twitter, Facebook or even Blogger. They are not the same thing and are not equivalent. This is the argument, admittedly rather polemic at times, the author (a self-confessed expert) makes throughout this short book.

Interesting in the preface to the paperback edition he admits that he thought the rejection of expertise was a purely (or at least largely) American phenomena. Of course this is not true, although I do think that the US has gone down this road more than most other countries for a whole host of particular and cultural reasons. But America is definitely not alone in this. I still remember a government Minister saying during a debate on Brexit, in order to win his point against an expert in Economics, that the British public had had enough with experts. Unfortunately he won his point. The author points to several areas or trends that have ensured we have arrived at a place where there is apparently no final answer to anything. One I do think is mostly American is education (though I admit I have been out of the educational sphere for some time now so haven’t been exposed to some of the ‘culture’ apparently dominating University life presently). He proposes that because parents, and their pampered children, see their time in higher education as largely transactional that colleges and universities bend over backwards to ‘support’ students in their feeling of being ‘special’ which apparently includes not marking harshly and never telling a student that they’re wrong. We can all see how this can, and apparently has, get out of hand. Inevitably the Internet comes in for a lot of criticism here too. Having a question and Googling the answer (if it actually is an answer that is!) is not the same as getting an advanced degree in a subject and then spending 20-30 years researching it further and teaching it in university. Again the two activities are not equivalent. Likewise the proliferation of ‘news’ sites and, dare I say, Blogs that call themselves NEWS are not equivalent to global news agencies with highly trained, educated and experienced professional journalists. No matter how well you craft a Blog post that doesn’t make you the same as a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist - sorry.

Despite its sometimes polemic nature and the fact that it was essentially preaching to the choir (not that I’ve ever been a choirboy!) this was an interesting read that deserves to be as widely read as possible if only to slow down the seemingly unstoppable advance of the uninformed majority who, most dangerously, actually think they know what they’re talking about. Acquiring knowledge and especially a level of expertise is difficult and takes time and effort – which is why experts are rare beasts indeed. Recommended. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just Finished re-Reading: Catching Cold – 1918’s Forgotten Tragedy and the Scientific Hunt for the Virus that Caused it by Pete Davies (FP: 1999) [304pp]

This is a rare beast – a RE-read. I read it first around 20 years ago when it first came out in paperback and certainly found it interesting enough at the time to hang on to it. With the ‘current situation’ still on-going I thought it deserved to have the dust literally blown off it and to be re-read.

It starts with a slow motion panic in China. A patient has died of acute respiratory failure and the doctors have no real idea what killed her. A few days later there is another and then one more. The symptoms have commonalities although the patients – now all dead – seem to have nothing in common and also seem never to have come into contact with each other. Samples are sent to CDC in Atlanta and research units in Britain and Holland. When the results come back the panic starts. It’s a completely new strain of Influenza with what looks like a high lethality. Doctors are dispatched to China to find out more and co-ordinate a response.  Another case is discovered and then another. They are widely dispersed and, again, seem to have not come into contact with each other. As they fight for their lives a decision is made. ALL wildfowl in the affect zone are to be killed and incinerated – immediately. Weeks later, with hundreds of thousands of dead birds burnt and buried, no new cases in humans have been reported. It looks like a potential bullet has been dodged and there is talk of another ‘1918’.

Until recently, as we are now only too aware, the 1918 Influenza Pandemic mislabelled the ‘Spanish Flu’ had been largely forgotten. After events in China around 20 years ago the disaster of that Pandemic was very much in the minds of some of the world’s top Epidemiologists. The problem was, even with gene sequencing coming on-line there was nothing available to sequence. No ‘live’ virus existed anywhere in the world. So it was time to go looking for it. The main focus of the book was the project to exhume bodies that had died of the ‘Spanish flu’ above the Arctic circle where they would have remained cold enough for tissue recovered from them to, potentially at least, still hold the virus. Two other lines of investigation were also followed in somewhat less detail – the existing holdings of the US Army Medical Service and a ‘freelance’ investigator operating in Alaska. The concern I still remember from 20 years ago was that the virus could indeed to found and then accidentally released into the environment with devastating consequences.

This was actually an interesting and valuable re-read. A good chunk of the book spent time looking at the world-wide effects of the 1918 Pandemic and the attempts to hold it back. Naturally as the theory of viruses was only just being discussed and the fact that no virus had ever been isolated at that time it was impossible to do much except essentially keep away from other people – AKA Social Distance. But they did try, or at least think about, other things – including encouraging people to smoke and, my particular favourite, inject people with creosote! There is nothing new under the Sun it seems. If you can get hold of this book and are still interested in reading about something that we’re all actually experiencing this is well worth the effort. More Pandemic reading to come.      

 

 

 

Influencer……

As part of my ongoing quest to ‘Understand the World’ I have over the past few years been reading a handful of significant or influential books each year. As these works changed the world in ways both large and small I thought that they’d give me at least some insight, both large and small, into the reasons exactly why the world is the way it is. As with life itself this is very much an ongoing project without any clearly defined end point. My short term aim is to read at least three such books each year. Below is the list of works read so far (in chronological order read) with the most recent in BOLD.

Rock of Ages – Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould

How Children Fail by John Holt

The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard

Suffragette – My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst

The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

The Old Straight Track - Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones by Alfred Watkins

The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

All The President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D H Lawrence

The True Believer – Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer

The Rights of Man by H G Wells

The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes

The Two Cultures by C P Snow

The City by Max Weber

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

The War of the Flea – A Study of Guerrilla Warfare Theory & Practice by Robert Taber

Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P Newton

Seize the Time – The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P Newton by Bobby Searle

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

The Autobiography of Malcolm X with the assistance of Alex Haley

Achtung Panzer! – The Development of Tank Warfare by Heinz Guderian

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore

About Looking by John Berger

A Vindication of The Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

War on Wheels – The Evolution of an Idea by C R Kutz

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Design as Art by Bruno Munari

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

Why I am not a Christian by Bertrand Russell

The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz

The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

The Rebel by Albert Camus

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

A Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara

So, not exactly a huge leap forward in significance but any progress is still progress I guess! These books are prompted by a pair of ‘Wild Cards’ (of which more later) in my ‘Read Next’ stack resting rather precariously on my sofa. I have since increased this number to three. So, here’s to 2021 and hopefully many more significant reads.

 

 

 

Just Finished Reading: The Assassination of the Prime Minister – John Bellingham and the Murder of Spencer Perceval by David C Hanrahan (FP: 2012) [215pp]

The Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Spencer Percival, was late for the debate. As he walked across the lobby in the Houses of Parliament on the evening of Monday 11^th May 1812 he greeted friends and political opponents alike with nods and a smile. Shortly after 5.15pm a man who had been patiently waiting, seated on a nearby bench, rose up, walked towards the Prime Minister as if to greet him in kind. Calmly he pulled out a loaded pistol, pointed it at the Prime Minister’s chest and pulled the trigger. Within a few moments the Prime Minister was dead and John Bellingham was in custody. Within two days Bellingham would stand trial for the murder which, he explained, was to ‘gain his day in court’ to have grievances addressed which he had tried for many months to have the government look into. Shuffled from department to department with no prospect of restitution of his perceived losses from business dealings in Russia he felt that he had no alternative but to shoot, and quite possibly kill, a major government figure to get the attention he believed he deserved. Unfortunately for the Prime Minister he was the first major figure Bellingham saw that evening. Four days later, only six days after the assassination John Billingham was hanged for his crime but was justice served? Was Bellingham in his correct mind during the attack? Why was the trial and execution so swift that witnesses from Liverpool, who arrived only hours after the short trial had finished, not allowed to speak in his defence?

This was a rather strange little book. I was aware that a Prime Minister had indeed been assassinated in the 19^th century but wasn’t entirely sure who or when. As part of my PM reading quest (or at least sort of as I’m supposedly concentrating on 20^th century Prime Ministers initially!) I thought this book was too good to miss. It is a rather bizarre tale – reasonably if sometimes annoyingly told. Bellingham had no direct issue with the PM. He just wanted to create the situation where the authorities HAD to question his motives and therefore, he assumed, resolve his outstanding case in his favour. The actual death of the Prime Minister was incidental to the whole affair. Unfortunately for Bellingham the defence of ‘guilty but insane’ had yet to appear on the statue books and so legal insanity was not a defence he could have offered. Indeed although his lawyers tried to argue this defence Bellingham himself refuted it. Was he insane? Possibly. His action in assassinating the Prime Minister had no direct linkage with his outstanding disagreement with the government and, it seemed for several years preceding the attack, he had been badgering various departments by letter or by arranging meeting with various officials. It seems that Bellingham developed an idee fixe that totally dominated his world. The only way to discharge it was at the pull of a trigger.

This short work was essentially in two halves. The first was a potted biography of Spencer Perceval and his political career as well as the foundations of Bellingham’s apparent case against the British government. The second half consisted largely of transcripts of the trial, the execution and aftermath. The problem I had here is that much of the evidence Bellingham presented – in those days in British courts the lawyers advised the defendant (who essentially presented his own case to the judge) without addressing the court directly – had already been covered in part one so seemed to be rather redundant. Overall an interesting read regarding a unique event in British political history.   

Jeeze America.... Grow the Fuck Up!.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just Finished Reading: Sharpe’s Escape by Bernard Cornwell (FP: 2004) [443pp]

Portugal, 1810. While politicians debated the prosecution, and the cost, of the war with France in Parliament they had sent the Duke of Wellington to Portugal to show the flag and, if necessary, leave from Lisbon in an orderly fashion. No one expected him to fight and no one certainly expected him to win against Napoleon’s generals. Wellington, however, had other ideas. He was certainly willing to fight – given the ground of his choosing but he knew that, with the forces at his disposal – both the known quantity of the British army and the as yet unknown one of the retrained Portuguese one – wouldn’t allow him too much latitude in any conflict. But he knew of the enemy’s weakness: their logistics. Their supply train was both long and arduous running as it did through territory occupied by local guerrilla bands. So through necessity the French, as much as possible, lived off the land. Wellington meant to stop that and that was were Captain Richard Sharpe and his men came in. Sharpe was tasked, along with every other British officer, to deny the enemy any chance of acquiring food and drink in their slow pursuit of the Allied forces as they slowly retreated to Lisbon. But, where there is retreat there is opportunity – at least for those with the guts and the avarice to take the chance of dealing with the desperate French army for the offer of gold. When Sharpe foils such a plan he makes a deadly enemy who dedicates himself to Sharpe’s painful and permanent demise.

This is my first Sharpe novel in FOUR years (how time flies!) and I’d forgotten just how entertaining they are. First there is the authors command [grin] of the battlefield. Not only does he understand the actual campaign itself (which translates mostly faithfully – with the usual artist licence, this is fiction after all) but the ‘tone’ feels right in the relationship between officers and men and the inevitable issues along the chain of command. Along with the, as ever, brilliant soldiers dialogue it quickly suspends disbelief and immerses you in the life of the novel. Admittedly now, after 16 of the Sharpe novels under my belt (and with a 17^th already in the review pile) it did feel, almost throughout the whole reading experience, like coming home. It was both a delightful and comforting experience. The two actual battles – a large one near the start and an element of a shorter one near the end – were both interesting and exciting as Sharpe (later on) got his ‘mojo’ back and cleverly kicked some French arse. But between the battles most of the book revolved around a confinement (hence the title of the book) followed by a return to the lines across hostile territory. Along that journey we are introduced (or reintroduced) to a Portuguese officer - Captain Jorge Vicente - who knew Sharpe previously and what has to be one of my favourite subsidiary characters in a Sharpe novel for a while – the English governess Sarah Fry who was a brilliant invention and I loved to see her go through the experience of confinement with Sharpe, Harper and Vicente, escape and grow throughout the rest of the journey to Lisbon. She most definitely made me smile (and often laugh out loud) every time she appeared on the page! Overall this was a cracking read. Being a war novel there is a deal of fighting, killing and dying and some of it is passing brutal – especially where Sharpe’s enemy Luis Ferreira is concerned – who is a NASTY piece of work -  but those who have read Sharpe before know that his enemies do not prosper, oh they do not…. I had a great deal of fun re-familiarising myself with Richard Sharpe and will endeavour to finish the series this year. Definitely recommended.

 

"Most interestingly, [Adam Smith] is disarmingly honest concerning the political effects of capitalism, noting that 'wherever there is property there is great inequality', such that 'the acquisition of valuable and extensive property.... necessarily requires the establishment of civil government.' A civil government that, 'in so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.'

Austerity - The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth, p112 

New Year…. New Labels…..

Yes, I’ve been playing with labels again over on the far right. Part of the reason I did this was in recognition of new reading ‘streams’ coming on line in the year(s) ahead. Other labels are simply in recognition that a sub-category has grown up enough to move out and set up its own place. So, without further ado..

 

Between – as in between the World Wars. With so much focus on both wars I’ve always wondered what exactly happened *between* them. Watching some YouTube History videos on the subject the answer is – a LOT. 1918-1939 were most certainly not years of peace, or political and technological upheaval. In many ways the Modern World we live in had its birth pangs between the wars.

Democracy – under assault or just fine & dandy? You decide (usually every 4-5 years!). The political concept has had a rocky path over the centuries but can it last much longer?

Napoleonic – after discussing the era with Stephen recently I decided to give the age (1803-1815) its own label to see if I can build my knowledge on more than Richard Sharpe novels.

Punk – No, not the music genre (there will be some of that coming but in the existing Music label) but rather Steampunk and Cyberpunk. Oh, apparently there’s something called Dieselpunk too…. Go figure!

T-shirt – Rather self-explanatory and my favourite type of apparel!  

Two more to come (probably):

Civil War – covering the American, English, Spanish and Russian presently but others as we go forward.

Sport – Yes, I know… A real shocker there. But this is me remember so nothing will be straight-forward… [grin]

 

 

The Best Books of 2020

 

I reviewed 89 books this year (lockdown & retirement definitely have positive sides!) with just 1 DNF (as is often the case). As usual I’ll split the Best’s between Fiction and Non-fiction with the Best of the Best in each category in BOLD. At the end of that I’ll do a summary and give my feelings on the year just gone.

Fiction:

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

The Misbegotten by Katherine Webb

Nod by Adrian Barnes

The Last by Hanna Jameson

Feed by Mira Grant

The Outlander by Gil Adamson

The Street Philosopher by Matthew Plampin

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

A Vengeful Longing by R N Morris

Imperial 109 by Richard Doyle

Shelter In Place by Nora Roberts

The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman

Drums Along the Khyber by Duncan MacNeil

The Death of the Fronsac by Neal Ascherson

The Plague by Albert Camus

Ice Cold Heart by P J Tracy

The Final Hour by Tom Wood

The English Monster or The Melancholy Transactions of William Ablass by Lloyd Shepherd

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

The Privateersman by Richard Woodman

 

Non-Fiction:

To Engineer is Human – The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski

War Against the Taliban – Why It All Went Wrong in Afghanistan by Sandy Gall

We Have Been Harmonised – Life in China’s Surveillance State by Kai Strittmatter

The Jail Busters – The Secret Story of MI6, The French Resistance & Operation Jericho by Robert Lyman

The Nile – Downriver through Egypt’s Past and Present by Toby Wilkinson

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

Caught in the Revolution – Petrograd 1917 by Helen Rappaport

Operation Kronstadt by Harry Ferguson

Inviting Disaster – Lessons from the Edge of Technology: An Inside look at Catastrophes and Why they Happen by James R Chiles

The Kamikaze Hunters – Fighting for the Pacific, 1945 by Will Iredale

Trans-Europe Express – Tours of a Lost Continent by Owen Hatherley

How Democracies Die – What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

The Indian Mutiny 1857 by Saul David

Proust and The Squid – The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf

As you can see from the above LONG list I had a bumper year for excellent reads even taking into account the fact that I read (or at least reviewed!) around 20 more books than in a normal year. Age range wise it was a pretty good year too. Although most of the publication dates post-date 2000 there is a fair scattering of dates throughout the 1970’s, 60’s, 50’s and as far back as 1929 and they included 3 Classics. Only 18 of the reviewed books were by women which is a figure I’ll try to improve this year. I think that the overall subject range was pretty good and will be expanding again in ‘21. Definitely a GOOD year – at least for reading.

Some more stats

My Review Pile is persistent at 13. I think I know why this is so. Presently – and going forward – I’m reviewing 2 books a week. I can’t really see that changing. On average I’m probably reading 80-100 pages a day which means to get the Review Pile down I’m going to have to AVERAGE books in excess of 350pp. Since records began – on 22nd October 2020 – my HIGHEST average peaked at 331pp and is presently down at 316pp. My largest book read (again since records began WAY back in last October) was 455pp. MUCH larger books are on the way and will need to be to get the average regularly over 350pp. But that’s one of my challenges for THIS year – of which more later!  

 

 Cozy.... Isolated..... Safe.....

 

 HAPPY New Year! Can't be any worse.... Right?