vodkafan

Welcome Matt! I just wanted to be the first to say that...this is a great place. What sort of books do you read for pleasure? I enjoyed The Slap myself. Hard to place it into a genre. Hey did you know there is another Matt Johnson author in America? I just googled and you both came up.

Hi Angury, I have read a few but neglected to update my reading blog, so I have forgotten the titles! Must have a think. The brain book was the best for sure...

Happy Birthday Gaia .

Hope that tornado passes by and goes somewhere else. Pleased that you got your new house!

How did this go Virginia? Did he accept the offer?

Middlemarch looks interesting. I haven't got around to reading any Eliot yet but she is on my list.... I just read a really exciting book that would probably be up your street. The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. It is about Neuroplasticity. Among other things, it touches on why psychoanalysis and cognitive therapy work: they can actually change and rewire our brains.

"We're something in the air......"

Sounds good!

I have been watching Orphan Black, a thriller series about the consequences and implications of cloning. There are 50 episodes in all, been watching two a week, done 14 so far. The actress (Tatiana Maslaney) who plays all the different clones does an amazing job.

My friend is trying to get me to go to see Blade Runner 2049. However the last 3 big SF films I had been looking forward to (Ghost In The Shell, Alien Covenant, Valerian) all fell short of expectations. I really don't know if I can stand them ruining the memory of the first Blade Runner film for me if this one turns out to be pants.

Good luck with the new job Angury. You are still reading some interesting books I see.

September has been a pretty good reading month. Seven books completed, although I have at least four more on the go.

Alien Covenant. Disappointed. I seem to be saying that about every film I have seen lately. I wanted to watch a sequel to Prometheus with it's interesting questions but we got none of that. Instead we got yet another Alien film with more creatures bursting out of chests and another naughty robot. Nothing new at all. Glad I didn't see it at the cinema, at least.

Willoyd, congratulations on being retired. I read Sightlines a couple of years back and enjoyed it, a corpus that defies placing readily in any genre....I really want to go to that whale museum in Bergen.

Hi Anna , your books are very varied. I read An American In The Gulag years ago , a true story but I can't remember the author. He was lucky to survive too.

Hi Ian, I didn't find Time And Time Again at all preachy, it's like the author took a holiday from himself.

Time And Time Again 4/5 Ben Elton This book was a real surprise. Firstly, because I had to get over my prejudice against Ben Elton. I have no doubt laughed at sit coms he has written, but every time I have seen him in a stand up routine I am a bit turned off by his overtly political and rather sarcastic manner. I also tried to read one of his other books a long time ago (can't remember which one) but didn't finish it. However, this one was different. It's about Time Travel, which got me half hooked before I even opened it. It starts off as a sort of rip-roaring adventure, very light on the pseudo-science, but the last few chapters it is unashamed conceptual Science Fiction. Couple of good twists. The protagonist can be ruthless which is refreshing.

Tell us what day you are coming, we will all stay indoors

Raven has got my point exactly. But Claire makes many cogent points at the practical level. The majority of folks would need the transport at the same peak times every day. And many people do nowadays live considerable distances from where they work. This would be , as Raven says, a major mind shift and also a change in the way we live.

I have not owned a car for about four years now, because living in a bedsit I have nowhere to park one. But I have had to hire cars quite a lot this year for essential family occasions. It was on the jam-packed motorway last week that I had a sudden lightning -bolt insight of what has to happen in the future. I believe that for the good of all, personal car ownership must end. I don't know how many cars there are in the UK, but I know that it is too many. The road infrastructure was not meant to hold this much traffic. And then of course there are all the pollution issues and the waste of precious resources. You can argue that electric cars will bring down the pollution problems, but the mining of lithium for the new generation of lightweight batteries (and disposal of same) will just bring another set of problems. My main bugbear is the huge waste: nobody drives their car for enough hours in a day to really justify personal ownership. Let's face it, even if you drive for an hour to get to work everyday, your car will sit idle in a car park for a third of the day before you drive it home and then it will sit on the street or on your drive another third of the day at night while you sleep. They really are just an awful expensive luxury most of the time. Imagine a world where streets were spacious tree lined avenues empty of parked cars. How would this be achieved? I would do away with 95% of the small cars on the roads. Instead, there would be a pool of vehicles buzzing around which you could apply in advance to have a car for a time. A bit like in the war maybe when only essential journeys were allowed. The cars would probably be highly robotized anyway, we are heading that way. If you needed one at short notice you would maybe just call for it with an app on your phone. So there would be far less cars on the roads, but they would be fully employed everyday. Imagine having your breakfast , getting the kids ready for school and then stepping out the house and a car would whisk you and them to school and drop you off. But then it would zip off somewhere else for another errand. I envision that only government officials would be authorized their own cars, or maybe private corporations would be allowed so many to distribute as needed to employees who needed to travel. I doubt that people would give up their cars without a fight. And insurance companies wouldn't like it, and the car companies.... What do people think? Could it work? If not , why not?

I saw Dunkirk just before my holiday. I thought it was pretty good. I like the way time was jumbled up and the individual stories overlapped each other. The air combats seemed just a little bit too slow and relaxed to me compared to the extremely fraught life or death tensions of the landings! The stress of the old man on the little boat was also well acted. When things started going wrong he was only just equal to it, he kept going but the sadness was crushing him. The scenes of how quickly boats sank were terrifying. Water = death in this film. I don't follow teen pop groups so I didn't know which one was Harry Styles. I think he was the one who joined them under the pier? I think it was good the way it concentrated on a few individual stories. The way it was done it is a very British film. If Hollywood had done it the finished result would have been very different. It would be like the difference between watching "Casualty" and "ER". Thumbs up from me. I might watch "Weekend a Zuydcoote" tonight to compare. It's a 1964 French film showing the French view of events.

Glad you have discovered a new major line of interest, Angury! It will be interesting how philosophy and psychology may intersect and feed each other for you. (or maybe they won't at all?) So who is the next philosopher on your list?

Hi Angury, I would certainly recommend the Isle Of Wight. If you have kids though you need a car to get around the island quickly. We tried to do 2 major things a day. On your own or in a couple it is great to cycle around. I am completely the opposite to you! I prefer the cheapest possible copy of a book as to me it's just the reading that's important. I don't mind if they are tatty. I am halfway through In Search Of Shrodinger's Cat but I have dipped into Up And Down Stairs and The Man From Maybe

Just got back from a week's family holiday in (on?) the Isle Of Wight. Seen lots of nice Victorian history. Picked up a few second hand books: Inverted World Christopher Priest . The cover got smeared in Barbecue sauce (don't ask) but I managed to save it The Heroines Of SOE Beryl E. Escott The Time Traders (US 1958 copy) Andre Norton Now And Then William Corlett The Man From Maybe Leo P. Kelley (Been looking for this book 25 years couldn't remember the title!) The Railway Detective Edward Marston In Search Of Shrodinger's Cat John Gribbin Up And Down Stairs The History Of The Country House Servant Jeremy Musson

I was born in January so I should be in the Olympics...