All Activity

in a few miserable

I read a total of 80 books this year. It’s more than I’ve ever read and I’m very pleased.

Hooray!

I've bought myself three 😊 A secondhand recipe book ( published 1978) to replace my worn out one which has pages missing and a bit stuck together in places, containing recipes I still often use. A very funny book written by a local chappie who we know. And The Country Commonplace Book by Miranda Mills.

his tumultuous stomach contents

Hand Me Down That Can of Beans ~ Paint Your Wagon

Something's Got a Hold on Me - Etta James

Hold me now - The Thompson Twins

I have a Kindle too so an Amazon voucher is ideal (and I am grateful)

I would rather get an Amazon voucher than an actual book because all my reading nowadays is on a Kindle. My eyesight isn't the best, and I can adjust the print size on kindle and it makes my reading more enjoyable.

I did get an Amazon voucher, though

I Want to Hold Your Hand - The Beatles

Me too. I can always find room for more ……

Me neither, but then I've got so many.....

Don't you want me - The Human League

Neither did I.

Just because I’m nosy, did anybody get any books for Christmas? I did not, sadly.

This book is about the Rolls Royce Merlin, which powered Spitfires, Huricanes, Mosquitos, Lancasters, P51 Mustangs and numerous other aircraft. Definitely the most important aircraft engine produced in Britain during WW2. I am about half way through. It is a bit different to what I was expecting. I thought it would be about superchargers, carburettors, high octane fuels and compressor ratios, rare metals, coolant temperatures, etc, etc. Instead, it started off with gliders, the development of the internal combustion and the early days of flight. Then it recounts how Henry Royce met Charles Rolls who formed the company, Rolls Royce. Then it proceeds through WW1, the interwar years, and then WW2, which I am getting to now. The book is not so much about the engineering, but the pretty wide characters that got involved along the way. For example, there is a chapter on Lady Lucy Houston, who started off as a chorus dancer in Paris and monkey branched her way into the British aristocracy. She put up the money for Britain's Scheider Cup entry for flying boats after the Labour government pulled its funding in 1931. So far my favourite character is Henry Royce himself. He started off as a humble apprentice. He would look at at a piece of engineering someone else had done and find a way of improving it. These days Rolls Royce cars are about opulence, but back in the early days, Rolls Royce cars gained the reputation for reliability and smoothness. Henry Royce was a perfectionist. He insisted that his engineers get their designs right on the draught board, before going to the next stage and attempting to fix it then. I used to be a computer programmer, and on the software engineering course I attended, we were taught to get the specifications right, before the high level design, and then the high level design before the detailed design, and then the code. It was very difficult to do. Henry Royce reminded me a bit of some of the very clever engineers I met. He could just do things and think of solutions. Apparently Royce said he did not invent things; investors went broke. He just improved things. Stylistically, I find the author's asides jar. For example, he breaks off to say he closed off some apparently redundant exhausts on a Ferrari to find the engine did not sound as musical. On another aside, he says he talked to a survivor of the Guernica bombing. The Nazis were testing their bombers on ordinary citizens. It was nothing directly to do with the Merlin.

dyspeptic attempts to encapsulate

not to mention his

Empire of the Damned, Jay Kristoff The second book in a trilogy, this one takes place a few years after the first one ended, but reacquaints the reader with previous events and includes a dramatis personae for the reader. I'm never sure how useful this is, especially with a long list of characters like this one has, but it's there as a term of reference should it be required. It also has black and white illustrations. As expected, this is more of the same. However, the narrator changes, and it becomes a dual narration, first from the original narrator. His sister is added and narrates separately, then both narrate together, which brings trouble because they apparently hate each other. The story, however, never falters and brings surprises. I only guessed one minor part of it. It's action-packed and frenetic, and more is learned about vampires and how they fight, not to mention a bit of the background of the main narrator. In this book, however, there are a few sex scenes. Nothing explicit and all in-keeping with the story, but the whole book is adult only - some of the descriptions of the brutality of the vampire-dictators are very gory, not to mention downright cruel and not for the faint-hearted. There is also the constant profanity. I enjoyed this one as much as the last one and look forward to the third part in due course. Recommended: if you like vampires, are not averse to gore and a few light sex scenes and can tolerate profanity.

I took Adrian back to the United Reformed Church in Bury St Edmunds. I waa going to tell them I had decided to look for another church more able to cater for little people. As it happened, Adrian behaved well this time and people seemed glad to see him again. So, I didn't tell them that. The main thing I remember from the service was one of the elders telling a story about a Comanchee girl called 'She Who Sits Alone' because she was an orphan. There was a drought, and, I can't remember exactly, but someone went up a mountainside and received a message from the Spirit in the Sky that He'd been watering the earth, but what had he been getting back? Nada, that's what. Therefore, if they wanted rain they have to sacrifice their most valuable possesions. However, the brave did not want to put his best bow on the fire. He needed it to hunt with so tribe would not starve. The squaw did not want to burn her blanket. Without it her children might freeze. The medicine man did not want to give up his bag of remedies, because he needed them to treat people when they became sick. 'She Who Sits Alone' decided she must cast her treasured doll, which she had received from her parents, of the sacrificial pyre. When she did that it started raining so she was renamed 'She Who Saved Her People'. I am not sure why I didn't like that story.

on a paper fork

Baby I'm-A Want You ~ Bread

I did not know about this and I read the Camus in August! Thanks for reviewing this and pointing that out, I will acquire ASAP. Edited to add: bought!