Brian.

Tonight’s dram of choice is Deanston 18, Bourbon barrel matured. It’s absolutely lovely.

My go to crime fiction recommendations are anything by Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbo, and Val McDermid. They all write series and standalone books so check to make sure you don’t pick one halfway through a series.

This morning I ran my first race for quite a few years, a MoRunning 5k for charity. I wasn't expecting to perform particularly well and I was right, but somehow still managed to come in 4th overall. We were blessed with the perfect weather for it which always makes it more enjoyable.

Three more books finished in the last two weeks. The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (4/5) Time for one of my pet hates. I don't like it when publishers, and too a lesser extent writers, adopt something from a book which has had recent publishing success. I remember a glut of book titles along the lines of 'The Girl Who' or 'The Girl On' after The Girl on the Train proved to be a runaway hit. Similarly, ever since the success of The Tattooist of Auschwitz there has been a spate of titles following 'The (insert job or title) of (somewhere significant)' format. This irritates me to such an extent that I will purposefully avoid these kind of books. Ok, rant over. Despite my reservations about the title, the synopsis sounded interesting enough that I decided to give this one a go. The fact that the book is partly based in Syria also helped sway me. The book starts with husband and wife Nuri and Afra in the UK awaiting processing for their application for asylum. The rest of the book tells the story of their journey to this point and also their application process. This is a book packed with emotion and really puts into perspective the suffering many asylum seekers go through. Throughout the book I was struck as to how much detail there was in the asylum seekers journey so it wasn't a surprise to find out that Lefteri volunteered at a migrant camp in Athens in her earlier life. There is no doubt that this helped her shape the characters and the plot in a way that really tells their story. Before the Frost by Henning Mankell (3/5) Almost exactly four years ago I read the last book in the Kurt Wallander series and said goodbye to a character I had come to love reading about. I knew that Kurt appeared in this book which is about his daughter Linda and her becoming a police officer but as the time line was jumbled I decided to give it a few years before picking it up. When I finished The Troubled Man, Kurt had retired and was slowly losing his mind and his health. It felt odd reading a book set before this time period and I was also aware that this was meant to be a trilogy that stopped after one book. These things all combined to make me concerned that this book wouldn't live up to my hopes. I'll start by saying that this isn't a bad book and I don't think Mankell could write a bad book, but it just didn't feel write. Linda as a character is pretty annoying and constantly makes really bad decisions. Perhaps this was Mankell's way of portraying her as someone who has little experience with police work. Kurt was always a bit of a grumpy git when he was struggling with things, but in this book he comes across as completely unsociable and impossible to work with. There is a real disconnect between Kurt in this book and Kurt in the other books which I did not get on with. Despite these failings (in my eyes at least) I have given it 3 stars because the plot works well and it is well written. I have really struggled to read in recent weeks but this book kept me interested throughout when many others have been put aside. Das Reich by Max Hastings (2/5) This is one of the earlier books written by Hastings and is about the 2nd SS Panzer division. To achieve this aim Hastings doesn't concentrate soley on the Panzer division but jumps between the perspective of French resistance fighters and British SOE operatives. It's an admirable attempt but I feel as though it just doesn't work as desire. Around the time this book was written Hastings also wrote The Battle for the Falklands, and Bomber Command. Both of these books follow a much more tradition format and timeline and as a result felt a like a more cohesive work when I read them. I persevered with it despite getting a bit bored with it at times and I've never done that with a Hasting book before.

I just finished Das Reich by Max Hastings and picked up my next book, The Tesseract by Alex Garland.

Check out This thread.

How far in to it are you? I usually advise people to give a book 50-100 pages before abandoning it but with Crime & Punishment I would probably give it a bit more time. I’m currently reading it for a third time but I do remember struggling with it the first time I read it. However, once I had finished it I just couldn’t get it out of my head and it’s a book I still think about on a regular basis 10 years after the first read.

Can I suggest you use spoiler tags going forward as it’s very easy for someone to inadvertently read something they don’t want. Ta.

I've only managed 6 so far.

Time for my next update and another two books completed. A Murder of Quality by John le Carre (3/5) This is George Smiley book number 2 and we still haven't got to the world of espionage yet. In this book George Smiley is asked to do a favour for a friend and look into a letter she had recieved. The writer of the letter says that she thinks her husband is trying to kill her. By the time George arrives at the posh school the letter came from the wife is already dead. This was a pretty decent read, helped in no small part by it's brevity (150 pages). There is nothing amazing here but I did enjoy le Carre's criticism of the private schooling. The Vaccine by Joe Miller, Ugur Sahin, and Ozlem Tureci (3/5) Another Kindle book, this one is about how a small company in Germany called BioNTech developed the first Covid-19 vaccine. An interesting book because it investigates not only the technological side of developing a vaccine but also how international politics game into play. It also stands out that the two people behind BioNTech, husband and wife paring of Sahin and Tureci have Turkish roots. Another very interesting part to the story is how BioNTech were a cancer treatment company and not into making vaccines. At the outbreak of Covid-19 they decided to put what they know into trying to develop an MRNA vaccine for Covid. This was a huge risk for the company but it clearly paid off.

Mostly ok. I’ve got it up and running but I’m having issues getting an LCD display on the water cooling pump to work. It seems to be a common issue so I’ll have to try again tomorrow. I also need to stress test the system before I throw any heavy processing or graphics tasks at it.

An autocorrect mistake 😁 It should say PC.

I try to do the same thing at least once a year if I can. I always feel that it's the ideal way for me to decompress and kind of reset. I'm currently waiting around for a delivery of parts so I can build my new PM tomorrow.

No, I used Amazon.

I bought this yesterday so will hopefully get around to reading it before the end of the year.

Having finished with The Vaccine by Joe Miller my next book will be The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri.

I gave Insurrection a few chapters but it wasn’t grabbing me so I put it aside for the time being. Instead I picked up Before the Frost by Henning Mankell which is the only Linda Wallander book. Apparently Mankell had planned a trilogy of books but the actress who played Linda in the Swedish TV took her own life. He was so distressed over this that he couldn’t bring himself to write anymore books in the trilogy.

I had no idea there were only 4 novels. The short story collections are presented in publication order so I’ll read them in that sequence. The books also has illustrations from The Strand magazine which is a really nice touch.

I have a single book containing all the novels which is what I'm planning to work through. There is a section at the back called The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes which I'm assuming are short stories. If they are short stories I will probably dip in and out of them while I'm working my way through the novels.

At the moment I am currently reading: The Vaccine by Joe Miller Echoes of War by Bernard Lovell I am also thinking of starting Insurrection by Robyn Young so that I have some fiction on the go alongside the non-fiction.

Up at 5:30 to get my gym workout done early. Then I’ve got a variety of house maintenance jobs to do at home as well as fixing my parents oven this afternoon.

3 more books finished since my last update. Why Running Matters by Ian Mortimer (2/5) The blurb on the back of this book says "You might run for fitness. You might run for speed. But ultimately, running is about much more than the physical act itself. It is about the challenges we face in life, and how we measure up to them. It is about companionship, endurance, ambition, hope, conviction, determination, self-respect and inspiration. It is about how we choose to live our lives, and what it means to share our values with other people. " This sounded interesting to me and I expected something along similar lines to What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami which I enjoyed. Sadly this book is nothing more than a loose running memoir about the running exploits of the author. The book is full of contradictions and just comes across as pretty self indulgent. He claims that time doesn't matter to him, but every run documented includes him focusing on his and others' finishing times. He claims he is an average runner, but given his age his times are very impressive. This isn't a horrible book. It's pefectly readable but just doesn't add much to a genre which has far better books. Churchill by Andrew Roberts (5/5) For most of the year I haven't had a target number of book that I wanted to read. The main reason behind this was that I wanted to read some of the bigger books I would probably otherwise avoid. Coming in at over 1000 pages this biography of Churchill definitely fits this category. I haven't read any other books about Churchill but I thought I knew about the man pretty well. Having read this book I can safely say that this assumption was very wrong. I assumed that most of the book would be about his time as a war time Prime Minister but again I was wrong. In fact, it takes well over half the book before we get to the war. One question that I imagine a lot of people would have before reading this book is, "is it balanced?" I would respond with "yes, but." On the whole Roberts presents Churchill warts and all but nearly always offers justifications, or probable justifications for some of his more questionable actions. This is understandable as I think it's obvious that during the research and writing of this book Roberts grew to greatly admire Churchill. I really enjoyed this one and it's right up there with the very best non-fiction books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes #2) by Arthur Conan Doyle (3/5) As I'm taking a break from the extended James Bond series I wanted something else that I could read in parts. Something that isn't modern and something that had a strong main character. That was when I remembered that I had read the first in the Sherlock Holmes series but then stopped. Looking back at my records, I read A Study in Scarlet back in 2020 but with a character like Holmes I wasn't worried about the break between books. In this story Sherlock Holmes and Watson are visited by a woman called Mary Morstan. Mary tell them that her father had disappeared 10 years earlier but 4 years later she received an expensive gift. This has happened every year since and she doesn't know who sends the gift. She has recently received an invitation to meet the person who sends her these gifts and she wants Holmes and Watson to accompany her. Another enjoyable read, but for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on, I struggle to get on board completely with the Holmes stories I have read so far. I will continue the series, maybe I just need more time with Conan Doyle's writing to get used to it.

A bottle of Adnams Broadside and probably a dram or two of Old Pultney 12 year old later this evening.

Taking it relatively easy today after working nights the last few nights. I'm catching up on some home admin at the moment and then the plan is to go for an easy paced run and then relax with a book or two this evening. Glad to hear you are feeling better @poppy

I polished off the last of my Glengoyle 21 year old at the weekend and that lead to me ordering 3 new to me whiskies. Aberlour A'Bunadh, Kaiyo Mizunara Oak, and Deanston 18 year old. Should keep me warm over the winter 😀