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First review of the year Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon “Don't forget the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.” This isn’t my first Pynchon. I loved Mason and Dixon and The Crying of Lot 49 was ok. This one was published in 1973 and concerns the Second World War and it’s aftermath. Of course, he’s produced another novel in the last year, which I may one day read as well! Going into detail about the plot would take too long. Suffice to say that it focuses on (initially) the production and delivery of V2 rockets by the Germans towards the end of the war. It covers the period from late 1944 to September 1945. The plot is intricate and convoluted. There are many recurring characters, and Pynchon is quite inventive with names (one of the US navy’s ships is called the USS John E Badass: today that piece of satire is uncomfortably close to the truth). The novel goes into the science and engineering behind the rockets as well as their production and the search for the secrets behind them by the various allied powers after the war. Pynchon also uses low and high culture and there are lyrics to many popular songs, some of which are certainly made up. He captures the chaos on the continent after the collapse of Nazi Germany very well. Pynchon does endeavour to shock at times and manages it rather well, although he does have a point to make. Despite all the chaos the rocket and its technology is in the hands of the state-corporatist powers and capitalism has weathered the storm. Pynchon is also interested in ecology and the natural world and is also it seems, a bit of a pessimist as he describes the western economic system: “a system whose only aim is to violate the [natural] Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that “productivity” and “earnings” keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it’s only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which sooner or later must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.” The messiness of the novel just reflects that war is a messy business and the real losers are the ordinary citizens on both sides. It’s a magnificent novel, all 902 pages of it and it is worth the hard work it takes to read it. 9 out of 10 Starting JR by William Gaddis

The first review of the year. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon “Don't forget the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.” This isn’t my first Pynchon. I loved Mason and Dixon and The Crying of Lot 49 was ok. This one was published in 1973 and concerns the Second World War and it’s aftermath. Of course, he’s produced another novel in the last year, which I may one day read as well! Going into detail about the plot would take too long. Suffice to say that it focuses on (initially) the production and delivery of V2 rockets by the Germans towards the end of the war. It covers the period from late 1944 to September 1945. The plot is intricate and convoluted. There are many recurring characters, and Pynchon is quite inventive with names (one of the US navy’s ships is called the USS John E Badass: today that piece of satire is uncomfortably close to the truth). The novel goes into the science and engineering behind the rockets as well as their production and the search for the secrets behind them by the various allied powers after the war. Pynchon also uses low and high culture and there are lyrics to many popular songs, some of which are certainly made up. He captures the chaos on the continent after the collapse of Nazi Germany very well. Pynchon does endeavour to shock at times and manages it rather well, although he does have a point to make. Despite all the chaos the rocket and its technology is in the hands of the state-corporatist powers and capitalism has weathered the storm. Pynchon is also interested in ecology and the natural world and is also it seems, a bit of a pessimist as he describes the western economic system: “a system whose only aim is to violate the [natural] Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that “productivity” and “earnings” keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it’s only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which sooner or later must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.” The messiness of the novel just reflects that war is a messy business and the real losers are the ordinary citizens on both sides. It’s a magnificent novel, all 902 pages of it and it is worth the hard work it takes to read it. 9 out of 10 Starting JR by William Gaddis

Sounds good to me. I’m not experienced enough at knitting to try garments that are much more than a hat or a scarf - the last scarf was appalling and would keep me warm only by virtue of the fact that it’s real wool, to which I’m allergic, so unlikely to wear it (I was curious about the pattern and that was the easiest yarn to hand). I need more practice.

No books - I think the family reckons I have enough (not true of course) but my husband did give me Myrtle the dress form so I no longer have to try on half finished pieces of knitting to check it fits.

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.