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Birds, Beasts and Relatives
Gerald Durrell 1969 (Fontana 1973)



"Birds, Beasts, and Relatives (1969) by British naturalist Gerald Durrell is the second volume of his autobiographical Corfu trilogy, published from 1954 to 1978. The trilogy are memoirs about his childhood with his family between 1935 and 1939, when they lived on the Greek island of Corfu.
As in the first book, the well-known My Family and Other Animals (1956), Durrell intersperses humorous family anecdotes with rich descriptions of the fauna and flora of Corfu. It was a formative period for his immersion in and enthusiasm for natural history. Published in 1969, this book followed the huge success of My Family. Durrell wrote Birds, Beasts and Relatives primarily to raise money for his animal-collecting expeditions." (from wikipedia)

I get the impression that everything he wrote about animals is true and most of what he wrote out people is fictionalised. Durrell's family and friends are all portrayed as amusing caricatures and there's no way he could remember the conversations that he heard as a ten year old and then transcribe them thirty years on. Like the Herriott books it is probably best viewed as an autobiographical novel and as such it's - as the Times reviewer wrote - "Delightful charming, funny... As a description of boyhood, the book is hard to fault".

The Sentinel
Lee Child and Andrew Child 2020 (Bantam 2020)



"Jack Reacher gets off the bus in a sleepy no-name town outside Nashville, Tennessee. He plans to grab a cup of coffee and move right along. Not going to happen. The town has been shut down by a cyber attack. At the centre of it all, whether he likes it or not, is Rusty Rutherford. He's an average IT guy, but he knows more than he thinks. As the bad guys move in on Rusty, Reacher moves in on them ... And now Rusty knows he's protected, he's never going to leave the big man's side. Reacher might just have to stick around and find out what the hell's gone wrong ... and then put it right, like only he can."

Someone dumped a pile of apparently unread Jack reacher hardbacks on the Tesco stall a couple of years ago, so I chose this one at random not realising it was the most recent and the first written as a fraternal collaboration.
The Reacher character is absurd if you stop to think about it. He has no personality, no inner life, no apparent motivations; more like a robot than a human being.
The plot tries to be even handed in having both fascists and communists as the baddies but you don't really care about any of that as long as Jack is punching their lights out.
I enjoyed it as a solid page turner, perfect for a long journey.

100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels
Stephen E. Andrews & Nick Rennison 2006 (A & C Black 2006)



"Want to become a science fiction buff? Want to expand your reading in your favourite genre? This is a good place to start! From the publishers of the popular Good Reading Guide comes a rich selection of some of the finest SF novels ever published. With 100 of the best titles fully reviewed and a further 500 recommended, you'll quickly become an expert in the world of science fiction." (publisher's blurb)

I've already read 42 of the selection and will have a go at some of the others in the coming months. Not surprisingly there's quite a lot of overlap with the Pringle book but this one isn't just limited to the post war period so has Verne, Wells and a few other earlier works.
A fantasy selection is also part of this series but is only avaiable from the publisher as an ebook and there's nothing available in the second hand market so possibly it was never actually printed.

Knotted Doughnuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments
Martin Gardner 1986 (Freeman 1986)



"From coincidences that seem to violate the laws of probability, to the mysterioius sequence of hexagrams in the I Ching, to the controversial and uproarious pseudoscientific economics of the Laffer curve, Knotted Doughnuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments reveals just how instructive and amusing recreational mathematics can be.
Gardner introduces his readers to mathematical games such as Sim, Chomp, and Race Track; to Newcomb's paradox; to the pencil-noodling delights of Worm Paths; and to many other mind-bending and challenging puzzles and problems." (blurb)

Number 11 of 16 compilations of columns written for Scientific American, these ones being from the early 1970s.
The maths seems to be getting harder as the series progresses and some of them pretty much baffled me from the start but I still found most of them interesting.

George Hillyard - The Man Who Moved Wimbledon
Bruce Tarran 2013 (Matador 2013)



"Hillyard was a close friend of royalty, an olympic champion, a wimbledon club secretary, an international sportsman and much more.
The story of the early years of tennis and the life of George Hillyard, intertwine in this fascinating volume of tennis history. Stunning and unique contemporary photographs transport the reader into a different age when tennis was novel and evolving rapidly." (blurb)

Biographies of British olympic medallists are now one of my reading projects. I'm not that keen on tennis since Annabel Croft retired but I did like reading this book. Hillyard reached the final of the Wimbledon doubles but his wife was a multiple singles champion. He was the head honcho at Wimbledon when it moved to its present site in 1922 hence the title. He also played first class cricket for Leicestershire and built one of the best golf courses in Britain, not to mention serving at the Battle of Jutland.
The 1908 olympic tennis was held at the old Wimbledon site which is probably why Hillyard entered despite writing that tennis in the olympics was "an incongruous farce ... why it is wanted or tolerated, when we already have the Davis Cup, is beyond my comprehension."

Uncle Silas
Sheridan Le Fanu 1864 (OUP 1989)



"Uncle Silas is an intriguing novel of deception. It's narrator, a young Victorian girl orphaned and left in the care of her sinister uncle, tells a highly charged story of intimidation, criminality and violence. Her uncle is assisted by a boorish son and a grotesque French governess in his attempts to seize his ward's fortune." (blurb)

Le Fanu wrote some good ghost stories but this novel has no supernatural or fantastic elements and is more of a pyschological mystery/horror story. I'd say it is a bit ponderous for modern tastes and the girl Maud is too feeble and wimpish with her fits of the vapours and periodic foot stamping, but it's still readable and atmospheric and the other characters are well drawn.
Listed in the "best 100 horror books", the "best 100 fantasy books" and "1001 books..."

First Bull Run 1861
Alan Hankinson 1991 (Osprey 1991)



"At Bull Run, two inexperienced, ill-trained and poorly led armies clashed in the opening engagement of the American Civil War. Culminating in a stalwart defensive fight by Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson's Virginia Brigade, this is the story of the Confederacy's first victory. The author investigates the personalities of the principal commanders and examines the opposing armies, showing how the widely varying uniforms of different units caused mistakes of identity which affected the battle at crucial points. Weapons, intelligence and the almost universal inexperience of troops on both sides are all discussed, helping to explain the events of the battle itself."

Another excellent entry in the Osprey Campaign series. If the Southern reinforcements had arrived at Bull Run slightly later, the North would have won the battle and the war (possibly) ended quickly.
It seems Incredible that Six hundred and fifty thousand people died in the American Vivil War which is more than in all the other wars the US has fought in combined. If the war had ended quickly who knows how the world would be different today, for better or worse.

Power of Three
Malcolm Saville 1968 (Girls Gone By 2020)



This is Saville's fifth Marston Baines novel. This one is set on the south coast of Brittany and the threat is from an evil triumvirate of criminal masterminds known as "power of three" who are lusting for wealth, power and a second nazi apocalypse.
There are a few problems with the book. This one, like the others, has a plot propelled by a ridiculous coincidence. Saville has a real tin ear for dialogue between his twenty year old characters with their cringeworthy lurve talk. Baines himself only shows up towards the end where his deus ex machina role is carried out offstage.
The Baines character - a shambling middle aged novelist who is actually a secret agent - is much more interesting than his oxbridge nephew and his friends who are the main focus, but we don't see enough of him. Maybe Saville thought this old geezer might alienate the teenage readers the book was aimed at.
Only two more to go in this series.

Aald Geordie's Almanack
Scott Dobson 1972 (Frank Graham 1972)



Scott Dobson's parody of "Old Moore's Almanack" with prophecies such as "The Chester-le-Street vandals association will design a bus shelter which is impossible for the council to repair".
OMA is in the Guinness Book of Records for having been published since 1697. We used to get it every year when I was a lad but I've not seen it for decades. It combined "useful" information about tides and sunrise/sunset times with astrological gibberish such as don't bet on a horse with a sheepskin noseband if there's an m in the month. I've just looked up the 2023 edition and it's got a picture of upper class twat Hugh Grant on the cover. I don't know - they say they sell out every year but for all we know they may only print 17 copies.

Sad Road to the Sea
Gerald Kersh 1947 (Heinemann 1947)



Thirty Five stories in just over two hundred pages, a handful of which are a bit pointless but most of which are very good. Kersh had a great imagination and he could pack more into a five page story than most writers can in a thick novel. I read this one as a teenager and reread it as I've started collecting Kersh's collections. A few have been reprinted recently but most are only available as sixty year old plus editions and are quite rare and expensive.