Oblomov

I have an unusual and rather difficult request for my fellow members. A few books, written in the early 60s during JFK's presidency (but before his assassination) but set in a future date, describe his life afterwards, including a second term - because the writers did not know about JFK's eventual fate at the time. For example, I was reading Seven Days in May, a political thriller by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W Bailey written in 1962 but set in 1974, where there are a few allusions to the "former President Kennedy" including the suggestion of a second term. I am trying to collect as many good books as possible where this theme exists, even if JFK himself is not one of the main characters. I do not mean alternative history type stories where the writer had full knowledge of JFK's fate but decided to "change" it; I am only interested in those books actually written during his presidency but set in the future where he is either still the president or a former one. Any information would be welcome.

I just "created" some shelving space that will take around 500 paperbacks and save a lot of room elsewhere. We are having an extension built over the garage and this involved changing the orientation of the central corridor and this in turn created a convenient niche in one area, where I had shelving installed. Clever of me!

I cannot recall the exact sequence of events, but on the night in question, the dad would have gone downstairs to the car parked in the drive from where he can see his little daughter's bedroom window upstairs. As he looks up, he sees his daughter quietly standing at the window staring at him but behind her, he sees the apparition of a huge pig also staring at him.

That sequence was far more effective in the book than in the film. In the book, it is the dad, standing in the garden near the car, that sees the apparition of the pig behind his daughter at the upstairs bedroom window. In the movie, it is the mother, as she goes to close the bedroom window from the inside.

Another very strange old Sci-fi book that I found oddly memorable is World Out Of Mind by the Scottish writer J T McIntosh.

Remember the sequence towards the end where the invisible pig's hoofed feet can be felt scuttling across the bed? Brrrr!

If we accept that a book does not have to be that good in order to scare one, then The Amityville Horror takes the top spot for me. I do not rate it highly in terms of quality, but it is easy to imagine oneself going through the experiences of the family in the book. Jodie the Pig still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I have vague memories of picture books from very early childhood, certainly before my 4th birthday. I had a hernia operation in October 1959 - a month before my 4th birthday - and I recall a family friend giving me a picture book to read while I was still in hospital. We moved to Bangalore (which effectively became my hometown for the next 25 years) in July 1960 and I have a very good recollection of the arrival of a local monthly children's story magazine called Chandamama (a poetic term for the moon). It was on a subscription that the previous tenants of the house cancelled too late so that the last issue on their bill arrived anyway. My cousin and I loved it and persuaded the adults to continue the subscription, which we did for the next 22 years!

Yes, I admit that it unnnerved me too back in the 70s when i first read it. The bit about "Jodie the Pig" was particularly scary.

Several things; my knowledge of the author, the plot summary and the sort of mood I am in at the moment. Above all, I go by my gut feeling.

Not nowadays, but back in the late 60s & early 70s I was obsessed by James Hadley Chase's books. Now I go by a gut feeling, but there are some preferred authors like Thomas Harris & Robert Harris.

I want to have another go at Alistair MacLean's books. I first read them between the late 60s & late 70s and was rather critical at his poor contemporary characterisation marring the often good plots. I still feel tha same way about the unrealistic squeaky cleanliness of his "good guys", but feel that I am now able to read through those and enjoy the story for what it is. I am going to start with one of his later books - Circus.

YES! No book in particular, but just to get back properly into the good old habit of reading. I feel that in the past decade the computer has taken over a bit too much of my time and I want to change it back a bit and give more time to books.

Excellently put and I agree 100%. If you try reading Victor Hugo's Les Miserables on a plane, you are more than likely to try and jump out of it (the plane, I mean).

We are looking for a good but inexpensive kitchen mill / dry grinder with a large capacity bowl (500gm to 1Kg), preferably in metal. We need it for more than coffee grinding - to grind pulses, nuts etc. Most of the Moulinex and other models on the consumer market are too small and flimsy. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Sorry, can't help you with that. Try Googling or check in the local library?

Another book oddly suitable for a journey is Desmond Bagley's thriller High Citadel. Surprising that it was never made into a film.

Ken Follet's Night Over Water and Shirley Conran's Savages are particularly good reads over long haul flights and to continue on holidays.

Not really. I keep telling myself that I'll make up a lot of ground after I retire - in about 9 years time.

So do I, much to my wife's chagrin. The Bard must have done as well; did you know that Othello is the only Shakespearian play where the villain (Iago) gets more speaking lines than the hero?

So do I. Amateur astronomy, space exploration, paranormal phenomena, unexplained true mysteries, the Titanic, World War II, the Dravidian culture, the Knights Templar and the enigmatic English mystic Roger Bacon are among my various interests. I have got books on these subjects and several others and spends a lot of time reading and researching on them. Offhand, I'd say I read 70% NF and 30% F; included in the latter would be reading and re-reading from my vast comic collection.

Whether the Jackal is really a "bad guy" is a matter of opinion. Sure, he was a professional assassin, but by and large victims of mercinaries tend to be on the bad side themselves. I certainly wished he had succeeded in killing De Gaulle (although history told me otherwise), who was little more than a conniving, opportunistic politician - which translates to a very bad guy in my books. The others that the Jackal kills in the book are victims of circumstances - the nasty little blackmailing forger, the Baroness, the homosexual Frenchman Jules Bernard or the young CRS man at the end. The Jackal did not kill when he did not have to - like the gunsmith Paul Goossens or the concierge Madame Berthe (whom he just knocks out to gain entry). He is more of a hero than the villain in the book and I certainly felt sorry when Lebel killed him.

Sounds like a brilliant book. I wonder if they ever thought of making a movie out of this one? In the hands of a good director (like Paul Greengrass, for example), it could be a classic.

Don't get me wrong - there is a distinct difference between reading fast (my wife does that too) and "speed reading" which is a specific term that originated sometime in the Flower Power era and refers to trying to get the gist of the contents of a page by little more than a quick glance across it. Speed readers of the era often claimed to be able to read upto 200 pages in an hour by their method. Pehaps some of the books contemporary to that period allowed this to be done - probably the because the overall content did not demand any more from the few grey cells going around. But we all know that 'proper' reading, whether fast or slow, requires some degree of concentration and comprehension.

I read in a very structured way too, not necessarily by setting myself chapterly or any other goals, but making sure that I take in what I read. While I accept that people do that at different rates and there are other variables like amount of reading time available, I think this so-called "speed reading" is nothing more than a meaningless early 1970s fad that I thought did not last long. It used to be a fashion in those days for certain pseudo-intellectual types to boast that they speed read, among other things of equally dubious meaning or value.