Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Vintage / Penguin Random House, 2024, paperback 136 pages) A Day in the Life Six people get up, eat, exercise, do their jobs, take time to reflect, look out of the window, socialise and go to sleep. Just an ordinary day. Each of them have their every waking hour mapped out:… Continue reading Falling Forever
Category: Review
Losing Your Marbles
The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions by Adam Kuper (2023, Profile Books, 416 pages) Jump in… Holiday Souvenirs As Western Europeans forged trade routes and “discovered” New Worlds in Africa, Asia and America, planting their flags and striding over their colonies, so the first huge accumulations of cultural artefacts were… Continue reading Losing Your Marbles
Rock Steady
Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Authorised Biography of Charlie Watts by Paul Sexton (2022, Mudlark, 344 pp. paperback) Jump in… Ploughing his own Furrow I don’t usually read rock biographies. The people in the entertainment and music industry are rarely interesting to me. Learning about their indulgences or often chaotic lifestyles is more likely to detract… Continue reading Rock Steady
No Regrets
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig Published by Cannongate Books, 2020, 288 pp. I love this book. Simple as that. I was amused, interested and in the end really moved by this story. To the extent that I nearly missed my stop on the train, and had to hurry onto the platform with tears on… Continue reading No Regrets
Firestarters
The Prometheans: John Martin and the Generation that Stole the Future by Max Adams Published by Quercus, 2009, 300 pp. There are young radicals calling for the overthrow of the system; here is art and literature stirring up popular unrest, and incurring a culture war backlash; and bewildering advances in science and technology giving people… Continue reading Firestarters
But where is everyone?
But where is everyone? The Fermi Paradox (reported from a casual conversation between Enrico Fermi and colleagues about extra-terrestrial life, in 1950 Jump in… Introduction Inspiration Discrimination Elsewhere… Alien Worlds: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos by Lisa Kaltenegger Published by Allen Lane / Penguin Random House books (2024), 275 pages Introduction Please don’t be put… Continue reading But where is everyone?
Re-reading Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880, translated by by David McDuff in Penguin Classics series, 1993/2003, 1013 pages. These are my personal reflections on re-reading the novel. There are no spoilers and no attempt at a plot summary. A symphony Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is a Mahler Symphony of a novel: it is… Continue reading Re-reading Karamazov
A Year in the Dark
Review of Phillip’s Stargazing 2024 & Night Sky Almanac 2024 There are several publications that offer a guide to the night sky for the year ahead, and here are two of them. Of course if you are interested in astronomy, you may already have reference books, star charts and on-line aids to navigating the night… Continue reading A Year in the Dark
Teaching the garden to weed itself
What do you get if you cross an unconventional economist with a talented journalist? If the economist if Steven D Levitt and the writer is Stephen J Dubner, then the result is a series of best-selling books and a hugely popular podcast. Along the way it will entertain and astonish a lot of people, make… Continue reading Teaching the garden to weed itself
Galactic Archaeology
A review of “The Ins and Outs of the Milky Way” The Vectis Astronomical Society public talk for May 2023 by Professor Sean Ryan Seeing the Milky Way Do we ever look up at the night sky and think how the view is never-changing, except for the wandering planets against a timeless backdrop of the… Continue reading Galactic Archaeology