View Full Version : What are you Reading today!
Not read the Adams "trilogy" since school, need a bit of whimsey so getting stuck in.
Never read this Asimov, pretty well referenced in culture so thought I'd give it a look.
https://i.imgur.com/wCA82rj.jpeg
Both good reads Gary.
There are some clever ideas in Douglas Adam's sci-fi comedy.
And I"m sure you know Asimov compiled the three laws of robotics.
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Yeah Barry, the 3 laws seems to be everywhere in cultural sci-fi really?
Read a fair whack of Asimov, particularly his short stories, but never read I Robot for some weird reason.
Seen it in the Library today when I was picking up Hitchikers, thought, why not.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/5p8AAeSw4iFozAv-/s-l1600.webp
The only other books by Umberto Eco I have read are 'Foucault's Pendulum' and 'The Name of the Rose' (which is somewhat different and bleaker than the film of the same name). Eco's books are never an easy read; being a professor of semiotics, they are in fact quite challenging.
This book tells the tale of Yambo, a rare-book dealer who has suffered a bizarre firm of memory loss. He can remember every book he has ever read, but nothing about his own life. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to his old family home and searches through the boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums and diaries kept in the attic. And so Yambo relives his youth: Mussolini, Catholic education, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple innocent image: that of his first love.
Mikeandvan
21-07-2026, 21:14
History of England - Peter Ackroyd, didn't realise this was only vol 1 though! Those Norman kings were total ****s!
Just finished Middlemarch . . . hard work!
History of England - Peter Ackroyd, didn't realise this was only vol 1 though! Those Norman kings were total ****s!
Most were bastards I think it pretty much required in those days.
I've got A.N Wilson's 'The Victorians' to read. Not started it yet. It's thicker than the phone book!
Mikeandvan
22-07-2026, 20:05
Most were bastards I think it pretty much required in those days.
I've got A.N Wilson's 'The Victorians' to read. Not started it yet. It's thicker than the phone book!
What surprised me was their complete lack of care to the country as a whole, they just rinsed it for taxes, but then spent the taxes, mostly on wars to benefit themselves, gaining land etc.
I got through a Stalin biography a few months back, and about half way through realised it was only vol 1, vol2 is another 800 dense pages of misery.
What surprised me was their complete lack of care to the country as a whole, they just rinsed it for taxes, but then spent the taxes, mostly on wars to benefit themselves, gaining land etc.
I got through a Stalin biography a few months back, and about half way through realised it was only vol 1, vol2 is another 800 dense pages of misery.
Someone lent me Bullock's 'Hitler & Stalin' years ago which is another bible-size read. I did make it through but my memory of the Stalin part is just him endlessly ordering people to be taken out and shot.
English kings (and queens) didn't really come under control until the Restoration. I mean even as late as Elizabeth I she was ordering the sailors to stay on board the ships after the Armada was defeated in the hope that most would die of disease so she wouldn't have to pay them. Didn't give a monkey's.
Just started The Iliad - never read it before, I did do The Odyssey at school, although I don't think I ever finished it. I'll read The Odyssey when I finish The Iliad.
Both will be the E. V. Rieu translations.
Think I'll reread The Odyssey before I see the film. Also the E. V. Rieu translation.
Mikeandvan
23-07-2026, 19:02
Think I'll reread The Odyssey before I see the film. Also the E. V. Rieu translation.
What's it like?
Do you mean the film or the book?
Pigmy Pony
24-07-2026, 18:28
I remember as a kid seeing a film on telly with Kirk Douglas. I think it was called Ulysses. He was quite handy with a bow and arrow iirc. Is that the same story?
Edit: no need to answer that, I've looked it up on on Wikipedia.
I'll give that new film a watch, but it's 3 hours. I'll never stay awake through that at the cinema, so I'll look forward to seeing it on TV :)
I felt the same about Oppenheimer. It too, was overlong and overcomplicated, and the four part BBC mini-series starring Sam Waterston as Oppenheimer was just as good IMO, if not better.
Mikeandvan
24-07-2026, 19:24
The book.
Mikeandvan
24-07-2026, 19:26
Couldn't watch that too much mumbling.
The book.
It's long; over 500 pages and a difficult read, involving many characters. However the 'story' is 3,000 years old, and a good translation preserves the lyricism of Homer's tale.
So difficult yes, but worth the effort.
You can follow my father's advice to me when I was a schoolboy which was 'Just read the Classic Comic version, it's much quicker and it gives you the gist.'
No use to me at the time since he was forgetting that he'd grown up in America and you couldn't get them here. But nowadays thanks to the magic of the internet you can get them. But not cheap:
https://i.ibb.co/S7MP5cFZ/s-l1600-1.webp (https://ibb.co/wrPRB752)
Pigmy Pony
24-07-2026, 21:11
You can tell that comic's old, it was before Pampers was invented. Curious thing - how can someone with one eye look crosseyed?
You can tell that comic's old, it was before Pampers was invented.
Yes - we can reliably date it to somewhere between Alice bands and Pampers.
I'll give that new film a watch, but it's 3 hours. I'll never stay awake through that at the cinema, so I'll look forward to seeing it on TV
To be honest it will be a waste of time on a TV, it's all about cinematic spectacle - if you can't see it in a cinema I wouldn't bother and to be honest you would fall asleep in a cinema. I started looking at my watch after 1h 10 minutes and it's 2h 52m!!!
Very low tier Nolan, it's a sterile, mainstream Hollywood summer blockbuster made for people who like Marvel films, it'll make over a billion dollars though.
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