Reading: The Book Thread

[Skub]

Is this a “recommendation” thread or a “what are you reading now” thread?

Ask Tiepin,he's the boss of this one!

[KungFooBob]

I'm currently reading The Warship by Neal Asher, but I'd also recommend The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin.

[CbfRider]

Currently "enjoying" the joy of Intermediate Swedish - A Grammar & Workbook, not recommended unless you really want to learn swedish (or as in my case have to lol). Still, it could be worse, I could be trying to learn Finnish lol

Just started 1984 again, and currently have Tom Hollands Persian Fire on the go. Love his history books and this is a cracking read so far.

[KungFooBob]

I think I've read Cibola Burn, there's so many Expanse books I forget.

[Buckaroo]

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. All about his life as a Jew and chemist during the second world war in Italy. Also Jung by Jolande Jacobi. I run personality profiling workshops and, as with many profiles (instruments as they are known in the trade, so to speak) Jung is the main man and it helps to understand his work.

[Treadeager]

I'm far from being an avid reader , but I've had this itch I've been meaning to scratch for half a blooming century ! I went to a good Grammar School but struggled with " Maffs " . In the final year ( 5th form ) , we had a great Maths Teacher who made up some of the lost ground but didn't really have enough time to help me with a decent insight into............Calculus............ I sort off accidentally bought this book off Amazon .

Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz

Haven't quite finished it yet , but it's extremely readable , with lots of maths history and loads of examples from first principles . Marcus du Sautoy's job is still quite safe . If your good old fashioned maths is ok , but falls at Calculus , you might enjoy it.......... ( I actually intend to read it through again to try and absorb a bit more ! )

Well finish it I did . It wasn't always an easy read , but well worth the effort . Several times during the read , I simply had to stop and marvel at just how truly brainy some mathematicians were/are ! Here's a precis of the ending......

Spoiler

In his theory of general relativity , Einstein had predicted the existence of gravitational "waves " , but was concerned that , being so small , they may never be detected .The theory showed that a pair of black holes , circulating around each other, would swirl the " space time " around them , stretching it and squeezing it , rhythmically . Some century later , the Nobel Prize in Physics was won by a team who had built a detector , capable of identifying a tremor in space time , one thousandth of a proton in magnitude .

On September 14th 2015 their apparatus detected that tremor .

Quote from the Author " It's a clear winter night as I write these words . I've stepped out to look at the sky . With the stars up above and the blackness of the night sky , I can't avoid feeling awe. How could we , Homo sapiens an insignificant species on an insignificant planet , adrift in a middle weight galaxy have managed to predict how space and time would tremble after two black holes collided in the vastness of the universe , a billion light years away ? We knew what that wave would sound like before it got here . And courtesy of calculus , computers and Einstein , we were right .

That gravitational wave was the faintest whisper ever heard . That soft little wave had been headed our way before we were primates , before we were mammals , from a time in our microbial past . When it arrived that day in 2015 , because we were listening- and because we knew calculus -we understood what the soft whisper meant "

Truly remarkable stuff !

[Rockburner]

I've got 3 on the go
Unkorked - Kork Ballington biography.
Cibola Burn
Data Munging with Perl

You're learning PERL? blimey, I don't envy you that....

[stray cat]

Currently reading “On Silbury Hill” by Adam Thorpe - I like Adam Thorpe books and this is so far a very interesting read about - well - Silbury Hill. Amazing how old they reckon it is; c5,4000 years old and was probably bare white chalk until millennia of grass growth covered it.

[Taipan]

So what was the book about night flights or something? A pilot wrote it? I'm sure Mr LB bought it on kindle?

[MrLongbeard]

So what was the book about night flights or something? A pilot wrote it? I'm sure Mr LB bought it on kindle?

Nope, I don't do kindle.
Books from another thread on here that I have bought are;
First Light by Geoffrey Wellum, about ww 2 pilots

And

Chickenhawk by Robert Mason, about choppers in nam..

[Gimlet]

Everything by Cormac McCarthy.

[Buckaroo]

Still reading CG Jung by Jolandi Jacobi. Boring, maybe, but Jung was a smart man.
Archetypes gets you thinking.

[Taipan]

So what was the book about night flights or something? A pilot wrote it? I'm sure Mr LB bought it on kindle?

Nope, I don't do kindle.
Books from another thread on here that I have bought are;
First Light by Geoffrey Wellum, about ww 2 pilots

And

Chickenhawk by Robert Mason, about choppers in nam..

First light, that was it. cheers

[Taipan]

ooh First Light by Geoffrey Wellum is 99p on kindle at the moment!

[Horse]

An ex-army loner.
Helps the police (while crossing them and getting arrested, twice)
Beds the girl (well, one of them)
Sorts the problems
Heads off alone
Goes by just a single name

Reacher?

Nope, this 'Archer', hero of David Baldacci's 'One Good Dead'. Set in 1950s USA.

If you like Reachers, you'll probably enjoy this.

[MrLongbeard]

I've enjoyed all of his that I've read (green) so far..

Screenshot_20200719-104038.jpg (320.77 KiB) Viewed 2636 times

[Horse]

Blimey. I'm not that well organised, but I did put this together:
https://www.therevcounter.co.uk/attachm ... 1507725060
For this:
https://www.therevcounter.co.uk/threads ... s-Emporium

Caveats
You'll need to be registered with TRC
Don't dither

[moth]

Reading this, by an expert in his field apparently. It's heavy going.



Having this read to me on Audible. It's a bit shit so it's going back



<edit>the forum software doesn't resize pics then? Oops.

[Lutin]

The "Jackson Lamb" series by Mick Herron (Slow Horses, Dead Lions, Real Tigers, Spook Street, London Rules and Joe Country - in that order).

How would I describe them? How about the Young Ones do James Bond.

[melons]

As I can't go abroad on holiday I thought I'd holiday vicariously, so bought a book about a bloke who accidently went on holiday to Spain during it's preamble to civil war. Quite immersive, but glad I'm not there (then or Now)

The Tomb in Seville, Norman Lewis