A little thread of calm?

[Trainee neophyte]

Thanks for that "T n". Hadn't heard of him. Will look out for him. If you want "towering imagination" then if you haven't already, can I suggest Isaac Asimov, especially the Foundation "Trilogy" , which, with input from others, finished up at about 7 loosely connected volumes if I remember rightly.

Then of course there's Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, & John Wyndham to name just 3 others in that genre; plus (IMO, "popular classics") such a R.E. Delderfield, especially "To Serve Them All Our Days", + other titles too;

and, and, and ..........

That would have been my standard reading list in my callow youth. Gene Wolf, Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven (I'm a huge Known Space fan - Protectors and Grogs and Kzin and Pierson's Puppeteers etc)...the list goes on and on. Unfortunately someone invented cyberpunk, and it all got edgy and grim and depressing. I like huge, monumental spacecraft and mad science and ludicrous scale - Space Opera, but it was ignored for years. There still aren't many new authors doing a good job of it, except Banks, who died of cancer recently, which was rather thoughtless of him. Terry Pratchet died, too, which is less than helpful. Charles Stross and Peter F Hamilton are two modern writers in the same vein, but not a patch on Iain M Banks, but then nobody else is.

Edit: here's a list to work your way through: some of it may be awful, but quite a lot of it is outstanding: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... pera_media There's not much in there I haven't read, so I will now be hunting down the few that have fallen through the cracks.

 

[novocaine]

Starship blackbeard and the rest of the series are ok for a cheap read.
Dennis e taylor (not the snooker player) and the bobverse for a bit of scifi humour
Joshua james and the luckys marines series is good for a few cheap hours of reading.
John walker rise of mankind was alright but fell down towards the end.
John scalzi old mans war series is pretty good, good enough for me to read it a few times now.
Final one for now, nick webb defiance series.

Thats about 40 books to keep you entertained for a week or 2 and excludes the expanse series.

Happy reading folks.

 

[Bm101]

Wha's this?
Sci fi monthly!?
I must try proper sci fi. Somehow it has always eluded me. But I've read Pratchett who I esteemed greatly sing its praises.
Do I start on Asimov?


One guy that might appeal to some for his musings on our lost ways in the natural world is Tristan Gooley.
Pinch of salt for some of it but he comes up with some astonishing stuff. Some of it is like an explanation for stuff you already seem to know just never put your finger on.
How do you find north from an isolated clump of trees? Go on it's a test. Clump of trees in a field. That's it. And no. It's not moss.
Best guesses below. Bit of fun.

If you are interested in finding your way without maps then yes you are a fella so yes you will like it. If you like the outdoors the yes. You will like it.
Its fascinating stuff regardless.
Just started the reading water one.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Starship blackbeard and the rest of the series are ok for a cheap read.
Dennis e taylor (not the snooker player) and the bobverse for a bit of scifi humour
Joshua james and the luckys marines series is good for a few cheap hours of reading.
John walker rise of mankind was alright but fell down towards the end.
John scalzi old mans war series is pretty good, good enough for me to read it a few times now.
Final one for now, nick webb defiance series.

Thats about 40 books to keep you entertained for a week or 2 and excludes the expanse series.

Happy reading folks.

Just discovered I have a John Scalzi book (The Ghost Brigades) -started reading it...I may be gone some time...

 

[novocaine]

Read old mans war first. Otherwise ghost brigade isnt going to make a whole lot of sense. Still a good book though. Red shirts is worth a read for a standalone book at some point too.

 

[doctor Bob]

I'm hoping to keep working but think we will go into lockdown in about a week.
Apart from work not mixing with others.
I've run on and off for the last 7-8 years and the aim whilst socially distancing is to improve my running as much as possible. Aiming for a sub 20 min 5k if possible. I have a treadmill and TV set up. Running to box sets at present, done peaky blinders, Narcos, now on season 5 of breaking bad brilliant all of them ...............

 

[sunnybob]

Wha's this?
Sci fi monthly!?
I must try proper sci fi. Somehow it has always eluded me. But I've read Pratchett who I esteemed greatly sing its praises.
Do I start on Asimov?

Asimov is a long read, and now 50 years out date, so yes, read all of his stuff because he was among the greatest and earliest of sci fi authors (he invented the three rules of robotics which still stand to this day.) but take the age of the book into consideration.
Terry Pratchet was the all time master of science fantasy (very different to science fiction) I have maybe a dozen of his books in my very small collection, one actually signed by him.
Tom Holt writes similar "alternative" scenarios (name dropping here, I know Tom, although havent now seen him since moving abroad)

If you want a REALLY long read to pass several days, Frank herbert's DUNE.
If you want a very amusing story, see if you can find Eric Frank Russell's The Great Explosion.

All through my early teens I went through the entire Library of sci fi of all types.
The "W" section was the most used.
John Wyndham, H.G.Wells, and Dennis Wheatley.
Another 6 months of reading.

 

[novocaine]

With you that one Doctor Bob. Ive gone of the pace these last few years so im aiming for sub 25min 5k on a regular basis (currently around 26-27 on most) then try and pull it towards sub 20 again (managed it once or twice).

No treadmill here though, i hate the things. They are for emergency hotel use only.

I dont intend to go within 2 metres of anybody, no difference to normal there though.

 

[Blackswanwood]

I have resolved to get my lawn and garden in good shape. Normally I work away a lot at this time of the year so end up doing half a job on getting it set up for the summer. After the wet winter the moss has really taken hold so the rake will be coming out in a few days after I gave it a spray yesterday.

Stay safe everyone

 

[Selwyn]

I'm hoping to keep working but think we will go into lockdown in about a week.
Apart from work not mixing with others.
I've run on and off for the last 7-8 years and the aim whilst socially distancing is to improve my running as much as possible. Aiming for a sub 20 min 5k if possible. I have a treadmill and TV set up. Running to box sets at present, done peaky blinders, Narcos, now on season 5 of breaking bad brilliant all of them ...............

You can still run outside cant you?

 

[Sawdust Sam]

For those avid readers here’s a great website for free ebooks

mod edit: not legit.

Note the woodworking reference is just what I entered in the search criteria, once you open the site you can change this to whatever you want be it an author, book name you know or a category.

Downloads are pretty instant and it’s all free.

It works on iPads great to get onto your kindle you need to convert the file independently or subscribe on the site to download in ePub. I’m happy with iPad but no doubt some of you IT savvy folk will work out an easy way to convert for kindle, if anyone does I’d be interested to hear how for my better half who’s a kindle fanatic.

You’ll be surprised how upto date this site is.

 

[Andy Kev.]

Thanks for the link. I noticed that some of the books are fairly recent and therefore surely still in copyright. That makes me wonder if it is legal to download them.

There's another matter as well: if the books are still in copyright and if they routinely are downloaded on a large scale, the publishing houses will be reluctant to commission more books and so we all lose out.

Or are there other factors of which I am unaware?

 

[Trainee neophyte]

For anyone who has an extensive collection of ebooks, Calibre is a great database which will link to your Kindle/tablet etc, and can convert any format to any format. It keeps everything organized, and means you don't have to swamp your device with 20,000 ebooks. The original Kindle particularly didn't like that. https://calibre-ebook.com/

 

[Chris152]

I just read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance for the first time, really enjoyed it.
Anyone know of any good fiction books that relate to motorcars/ rallying/ engineering that'd be good for a 16/ 17 year old? He doesn't read fiction but probably should start.
ps Kindle's in the basket but waiting for a full load before I hit 'buy'.

 

[Trevanion]

Anyone know of any good fiction books that relate to motorcars/ rallying/ engineering that'd be good for a 16/ 17 year old? He doesn't read fiction but probably should start.

What about Jets? "Not Much of an Engineer."

Whilst not engineering or really anything you mentioned, If you fancy disappearing to the Jungles of Burma amongst the teak trees and elephants in the 20s, 30s and 40s for a few hours, I can whole-heartedly recommend J.H. Williams' "Elephant Bill" and his two other books on the subject "Bandoola" and "The Spotted Deer". Well worth a read for anyone, It's a very interesting insight into the relationship between a man and his elephant(s).

 

[AES]

It's more than "a bit old-fashioned" these days Chris, but a well-known novel about MODEL engineering, written by a bloke who turned out to be a model engineer himself, is "Trustee from the Toolroom" by Nevil Shute. It was written in about 1960 (his last book actually), but was set in the 1950s, and is not so much about engineering itself but uses model engineering as an "emotion enhancer/supporter" (would you believe). IMO a very good read and again IMO, better than Shute's most famous "On the Beach". And IF by any chance he is interested in the early days of "barnstorming" aviation in the 1930s in UK (Sir Alan Cobham's Air Days festivals) , then "Round the Bend" (same author).

And going even further back, a book about explosive ordnance disposal in WW II, rather than "engineering" per se, is "The Small Back Room" by Nigel Balchin. (Blimey, my age is really showing)!

But these are the things I like most about reading anyway - an inbuilt "Beam me up Scotty" device which will take you absolutely anywhere, together with a time machine that effortlessly takes you back or forward in time, just as you like.

 

[AES]

Yup, +1 for "Not much of an Engineer" by Sir Stanley Hooker of R-R, and "Jet" (the story of the company "Power Jets" by Sir Frank Whittle).

But neither are novels, they're biographies/autobiographies (though none the worse for that).

 

[Sawdust Sam]

Thanks for the link. I noticed that some of the books are fairly recent and therefore surely still in copyright. That makes me wonder if it is legal to download them.

There's another matter as well: if the books are still in copyright and if they routinely are downloaded on a large scale, the publishing houses will be reluctant to commission more books and so we all lose out.

Or are there other factors of which I am unaware?

I have no idea regarding copyright or legality, I got the link from another forum. Ifs it’s felt inappropriate then the mods can delete it. Just trying to help and no offence intended.

 

[sammy.se]

I'm hoping to keep working but think we will go into lockdown in about a week.
Apart from work not mixing with others.
I've run on and off for the last 7-8 years and the aim whilst socially distancing is to improve my running as much as possible. Aiming for a sub 20 min 5k if possible. I have a treadmill and TV set up. Running to box sets at present, done peaky blinders, Narcos, now on season 5 of breaking bad brilliant all of them ...............

Breaking bad is a masterpiece. You can then move onto Better Call Saul. Different pace of drama-dey, but same high quality

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

 

[sammy.se]

Amazon have just launched a streaming site which has lots of children's audiobooks for free. You don't need an account or anything, you can visit here and stream them all for free through the website:

https://stories.audible.com/start-listen

It has adult classics, as well as (mostly) school age books

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