Lockdown/ Corona Books

[mickbrown]

25 minutes ago, Dimron said:

I really rated these, picked up the last book in the series and than had to go back to the beginning, any books that have Stalin has a regular character are fine by me

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/e/sam-eastland/inspector-pekkala/

If you're into stuff set in Soviet era Russia try Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. First book in a series of 3 about a KBG bloke.

[Dimron]

41 minutes ago, mickbrown said:

If you're into stuff set in Soviet era Russia try Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. First book in a series of 3 about a KBG bloke.

Cheers for that. I've been scratching around for something new for a while

[Boothy]

Chasing the Scream is the best I've read in a long time. Very thought provoking. There's a couple of podcast with the author worth listening to as well.

[Boby Brno]

Pretty much read a book a week since this all started. Mainly detective fiction based in Berlin before, during and after the war. The Phillip Kerr novels and a few others of a similar vein. A few other topics for a change and a few bio’s.

More importantly, I finally and reluctantly changed from paper to digital. First with the iPad and Apple Books and then bought myself a cheaper tablet (wife complained about me monopolising it) and now use the kindle app. 
I miss Waterstones though. Might go in for a coffee soon.

[mickbrown]

2 hours ago, Boby Brno said:

Pretty much read a book a week since this all started. Mainly detective fiction based in Berlin before, during and after the war. The Phillip Kerr novels and a few others of a similar vein. A few other topics for a change and a few bio’s.

More importantly, I finally and reluctantly changed from paper to digital. First with the iPad and Apple Books and then bought myself a cheaper tablet (wife complained about me monopolising it) and now use the kindle app. 
I miss Waterstones though. Might go in for a coffee soon.

If you're sticking with digital I'd  recommend a Kindle Paperwhite. Far kinder on the eyes than a regular tablet.

[Casino]

Aye and you can read in the sun

[Boby Brno]

15 hours ago, mickbrown said:

If you're sticking with digital I'd  recommend a Kindle Paperwhite. Far kinder on the eyes than a regular tablet.

Ta very much but I found the kindle too small. I know you can increase the font size and all that but just preferred a tablet with its added benefits. 
 

[mickbrown]

26 minutes ago, Boby Brno said:

Ta very much but I found the kindle too small. I know you can increase the font size and all that but just preferred a tablet with its added benefits. 
 

Aye, they are pretty dinky.

[Youri McAnespie]

Don't most tablets have bluelight filters these days?

 

[Mona]

Agent zigzag - Ben Macintyre

authors notes

I was first alerted to the existence of the Englishman Eddie Chapman by his obituary in The Times. Among the lives of the great and good, here was a character who had achieved a certain greatness, but in ways that were far from conventionally good. The obituary was intriguing as much for what it did not say — and could not know — about Chapman's exploits in the Second World War, since those details remained under seal in MI5's secret archives. At that time, it seemed the full story of Eddie Chapman would never be told. But then, under a new policy of openness, MI5 began the selective release of hitherto classified information that could not embarrass the living or damage national security. The first 'Zigzag files' were released to the National Archives in 2001. These declassified archives contain more than 1,700 pages of documents relating to Chapman's case: transcripts of interrogations, detailed wireless intercepts, reports, descriptions, diagrams, internal memos, minutes, letters and photographs.

[embankment]

Joe Banks - Hawkwind " Days of the Underground "( fans only encyclopedia).

Alan Brazil - only here for a visit. ( not bad)

Bernie Marsden- Where's my Guitar.( great insight to the music business)

 

[Not in Crawley]

Had a tablet but gave it away, just prefer books and I like having bookshelves in the house.

[Youri McAnespie]

Until I gave up reading 🤥 I preferred physical books, but there's the problem of what to do with them...

I went through a phase of passing on books I'd enjoyed and matching them with the interests of mates, colleagues and acquaintances - used to piss me off though when they then didn't read them, took me back to my former life of fruitless enthusing...

Of course there's the charity shop, but someone involved told me they often send unsold ones to the recycle plant by weight for pennies.

My sister (aspirins/ironing board) is a voracious reader and is particularly unfussy, she also has hoarding tendencies, so her house is full of shite Lee Child knockoffs in crap condition she's already read.

I hate sending books to their final end, even shite, but what else can one do?

I find it amusing visiting homes and offices of book-keepers and noticing the contrived way their cache is kept/stored - all the high-brow and esoteric stuff in plain view covered in dust and all the trash they really read well-thumbed and dust free but high up and out of sight.

[Not in Crawley]

19 minutes ago, Youri McAnespie said:

Until I gave up reading 🤥 I preferred physical books, but there's the problem of what to do with them...

I went through a phase of passing on books I'd enjoyed and matching them with the interests of mates, colleagues and acquaintances - used to piss me off though when they then didn't read them, took me back to my former life of fruitless enthusing...

Of course there's the charity shop, but someone involved told me they often send unsold ones to the recycle plant by weight for pennies.

My sister (aspirins/ironing board) is a voracious reader and is particularly unfussy, she also has hoarding tendencies, so her house is full of shite Lee Child knockoffs in crap condition she's already read.

I hate sending books to their final end, even shite, but what else can one do?

I find it amusing visiting homes and offices of book-keepers and noticing the contrived way their cache is kept/stored - all the high-brow and esoteric stuff in plain view covered in dust and all the trash they really read well-thumbed and dust free but high up and out of sight.

We also find it a bit difficult, but had a cull last summer and gave a load away to charity shops - my other half was still clinging onto her degree dissertation books, which were also so out of date to be next to useless for current students to use.

I keep books I've really enjoyed, either to pass them on, or because I want to keep them. We have three bookshelves - one is just filled with cookery books.

Then there is the pile - I will read one day pile - you know the ones you take on holiday and go, this year I will read Tristram Shandy and end up reading some David Nicholls coming of age enjoyable pap. I'll be buried with Tristram Shandy, that and For Whom The Bell Tolls both of which have travelled with me everywhere and I think I've made it to pg 90 in one and past the first chapter in the other.

As for the aesthetic, I do like the look of them, and its always newest books at the front at those are the ones we're reading, a few choice postcards leaning against. I like it, nicely dishelved. The cookery book one is a thing of beauty as most cookery books are hardback and look amazing.

[Youri McAnespie]

Shortly after I left home in '97 I went back and cleared out the car-hole (garage cum shack), I reluctantly chucked all my childhood books; Encyclopedia of Space, Prehistoric Life, Reptiles and Amphibians - stuff like that...

I'd read them and re-read them as a kid so they were so tatty they couldn't be passed on, but the photos and artwork in them are burned into my brain - I'd love to have them back just for a refresher.

Somewhat related, some upright slabbing that seperated our carhole from next door's had slumped and created a gap a skinny kid could slip through...

My mam said the skinny kid from next door kept knocking on asking if the fishing tackle basket (in our garage and visible through the gap) was for sale which I thought was odd, my mam said he was most persistent and it was definitely the basket that he desired, not the more modern plastic seatbox. Very odd.

Until I did the tidy up, opening the basket it had a keepnet bag within that was full of my old Fiesta, Club International, Razzles etc.

I must have stashed them there after not having the heart to bin them outright before I left home.

The internet was still in relative infancy then - hence this kid's desire to take up angling in an antiquated style.

I wondered if he grown too big to slip through the gap to plunder this ad-hoc free library and moved onto Plan B...

 

[Not in Crawley]

9 minutes ago, Youri McAnespie said:

Shortly after I left home in '97 I went back and cleared out the car-hole (garage cum shack), I reluctantly chucked all my childhood books; Encyclopedia of Space, Prehistoric Life, Reptiles and Amphibians - stuff like that...

I'd read them and re-read them as a kid so they were so tatty they couldn't be passed on, but the photos and artwork in them are burned into my brain - I'd love to have them back just for a refresher.

Somewhat related, some upright slabbing that seperated our carhole from next door's had slumped and created a gap a skinny kid could slip through...

My mam said the skinny kid from next door kept knocking on asking if the fishing tackle basket (in our garage and visible through the gap) was for sale which I thought was odd, my mam said he was most persistent and it was definitely the basket that he desired, not the more modern plastic seatbox. Very odd.

Until I did the tidy up, opening the basket it had a keepnet bag within that was full of my old Fiesta, Club International, Razzles etc.

I must have stashed them there after not having the heart to bin them outright before I left home.

The internet was still in relative infancy then - hence this kid's desire to take up angling in an antiquated style.

I wondered if he grown too big to slip through the gap to plunder this ad-hoc free library and moved onto Plan B...

 

You didn't just throw them in a local park scrubland?

[Youri McAnespie]

I think because of DNA technology fears...

They could be planted to fit me up...

I hadn't been naughty enough, or rather hadn't been caught (in adulthood) to have my DNA taken at that point (not sex-crime naughtiness I might add) but I was still being naughty enough it was a possibility.

I'd rather sex-related stuff which accidentally had my DNA through poor aim wasn't out there.

Potentially to be utilised by a sex criminal to throw the lazy coppers off the scent.

[Youri McAnespie]

I was right by the way.

I did get apprehended over some trifling silly bother.

I learned two things...

A. Telling two female coppers that something is a trifling silly bother and their time would be best used elsewhere isn't a good idea.

B. Refusal to supply DNA means a night in the cells, my civil-liberties stance deserted me at that point, it was a summer Friday early evening during the World Cup ffs and I was mid-drinking spree.