Category: READING

I just finished reading “Homo Brittanicus: The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain” by Chris Stringer. This was a book that I decided to read after hearing Chris Stringer interviewed on the Scientific American podcast a few weeks ago. He came across as a really enthusiastic, knowledgeable and skilled story teller and so I thought his book would probably be an interesting read. The book tells the story of a recent research project called the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) that set out to bring together a whole range of experts from different fields to integrate, extend and better understand the evidence for early human occupation of the British Isles. It takes the reader into the worlds of Neanderthals, early Homo variants, archaeology, anthropology, paleaoclimates and paleaontology and explores what the evidence can tell us and what it can’t tell us.

I did enjoy the book but not as much as I had expected to from listening to the podcast. It’s a little heavy going in places and I got a bit lost sometimes working out which inter-glacial period or ice age was being referred to because the overall time-line of the story isn’t that strongly put across. Still, the book took me into a world that I don’t normally encounter or think about thich is always a good thing I think. One of the key elements of the events surrounding early human occupation of Britain was the dramatic changes in sea level that accompanied changes in ice volume associated with ice ages, and there’s a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that the British Isles used to be much more connected to (what is now) mainland Europe across the North Sea. An important region of this land bridge is called Doggerland (now submerged). So, it was interesting to pick up this week’s New Scientist, Issue 2735 [21 November 2009] and read an article all about how archaeologists are turning to evidence from the seafloor (from places like Doggerland) to unlock further secrets of early human history in Europe.

I recently finished reading “The World According To Bertie”, the fourth book in Alexander McCall Smith’s “44 Scotland Street” series. These books are interesting for the way that they are constructed – McCall Smith wrote the first one (I’m not sure about the subsequent ones) as a serial in The Scotsman newspaper, with each short chapter appearing in print on successive days. So, the books are made up a lots of short chapters about four pages at a time which build through the book to tell the stories of a whole series of individual characters who sometimes interact but are often only loosely inter-related. Bertie, of this book’s title is a highly intelligent six year old boy with an insufferable “new age” mother and a put-upon father but although the book carries his name he features no more than the other half dozen or so characters that McCall Smith has introduced through the series.

I enjoyed this book less than the others in the series – perhaps the format and the character is getting a little tired – but I do think it is a clever way of putting together a book that has wide appeal. It’s inevitable that each reader will have one or two characters who they are more interested in and with a wide range of characters its hard not to be drawn to someone in the story. I think that in this particular case one or two of the less interesting and more irritating (to me) characters get more “page-time” which is probably why I didn’t enjoy it so much. It’ll be interesting to see whether McCall Smith does a fifth one in the series or whether he too is getting tired of the format – some of the plot twists and resolutions did seem a bit forced as if this might be the last one.

Last night I finished reading Francis Wheen’s book “How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World“. This is a book by Guardian journalist Wheen that sets out to explore how modern thinking has been taken over by irrational and ill-supported ideas and frameworks. I picked it up in my local Oxfam shop and thought it looked like the kind of book I might enjoy; the cover claims that it is “hilarious” and there are other reviews that describe it as “entertaining” and “amusing”. I didnt really find much to laugh at in it and rather plodded through it, not exactly not enjoying it but certainly not lapping it up with gusto. I guess it required a bit more political knowledge than I possess and so I probably didn’t get all of the points it was trying to make. Still, there were some interesting part (I can’t remember any detail about what they were though…) and it certainly stretched my brain into areas that it doesn’t normally go why can’t be a bad thing.

Last night I finished reading “Fighter Boys” by Patrick Bishop, the very well written and thoroughly research account of how RAF Fighter Command won the battle for the skies over Britain in the summer of 1940 (the period commonly referred to as the Battle of Britain). The book is based on diaries, letters and records kept by various fighter pilots at the time and with interviews with surviving family members. It’s a fascinating read that left me wondering whether it would be beneficial for every young person in the country to read this book and to discover more about the fortitude and resilience shown by everyone involved in the efforts to defend British shores from German attack. I’m a bit of a sucker for old planes going back to childhood days building Airfix models but I didn’t properly know the history and when it is written down like this, with real people and real memories it hits home quite hard. So often you find yourself reading about the exploits of such-and-such a pilot only to end the paragraph with a short sharp sentence noting when and how they were killed. Sad, uplifting, interesting and challenging in equal measure this is a great read – perhaps a little on the long side, but then those who fought off the enemy forces day after day would also have enjoyed a little more brevity and they didn’t have any choice…

I recently finished reading the seventh novel in the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser – Flashman and the Redskins. MacDonald Fraser’s takes the character of Flashman from Thomas Brown’s “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” in which Flashman is the bully who torments Tom Brown at Rugby School. In the Flashman novels, Flashie has grown up to be a high ranking soldier, knight of the realm, womaniser, cad, scoundrel and coward who works his way around the globe in a series of sdventures that bring him into contact with many famous characters and situations from real history. The novels are very cleverly done, being lightly edited versions of Flashman’s memoirs, backed up by footnotes to various types of corroborating historical evidence.

In Flashman and the Redskins, Flashie returns to the United States of America, first escaping from a tight spot by joining the wagon trains to the Californian goldrush and then, later in life, fetching up by a fairly convoluted route as a witness to General Custer’s last stand with the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn. The two sections of Flashman’s life are cleverly tied together and the level of historical detail is so great that it almost spoils the flow of the story. Of course there is never any doubt that Flashman will come through unscathed with a few more female conquests along the way but the story gives another very readable dose of Flashman magic in another unusual setting.

I’ve never been much of a history buff but I do quite enjoy reading a bit of history and I have recently really enjoyed Robert Lacey‘s “Great Tales from English History 1: Cheddar Man to the Peasants Revolt”. The book covers the period 7150BC to 1381 via a series of short sharp chapters each telling the tale of a person (or group of people) who have some historical significance. So, in this volume, which is the first of three, there are chapters on well-known figures such as King Alfred, William the Conqueror, Richard the Lionheart along with lesser-known ones like Elmer the Flying Monk. This is an easy read which whizzes you through this early period of English history (or at least history of the land that eventually becomes known as England), entertaining and informing along the way. Thoroughly recommended for someone like me who stopped studying history atthe age of about 13 but likes to know how everything fits together.