Recently I finished reading When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies, a book by Andy Beckett. It was another book I got through Amazon’s ‘Vine’ programme, in which they send me free stuff and in return I review it for them. As a child of the seventies I couldn’t resist requesting it, but [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Books'
How to be a better person
June 7th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Life
I recently read How to be a better person, a book by Seb Hunter. It was another freebie through Amazon’s ‘Vine’ programme which I chose because I enjoyed his first book and therefor though I would enjoy this one as well. Here is what I said about it.
Scary book
June 3rd, 2009 · 19 Comments · Politics
I’m still reading When The Lights Went Out - Britain in the Seventies. It is all about events thirty years ago, but has some very topical echoes, especially on the very scary page 413…
We are all Europeans now
May 10th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Life, Politics
At the moment I am reading a history of the 1970s and enjoying it a lot more than I expected to. Last night I was at the section covering Britain’s entry to the Common Market and there was an interesting poll about attitudes at the time.
Predictable
April 12th, 2009 · No Comments · Life
I had forgotten that I had read all about the book Predictably Irrational. Indeed I had forgotten that it was on my Amazon wishlist, and even forgot that I wrote about it a year ago. This week I bought it because it sounded interesting and as I started reading it something about it sounded familiar.
Only [...]
Jade Goody 1981-2009
March 27th, 2009 · 10 Comments · Life
While I was in town today I looked in the book shop window and saw a book called Jade Goody: Fighting to the end, My autobiography 1981-2001. At the time I thought that the implications were a bit distasteful.
Tags: Books
A great start
March 21st, 2009 · 6 Comments · Life
As any fule no, the best ever first line for a book is Iain Banks’ The Crow Road1 , and nothing really comes close to that. Having said that, I started reading Robert Rankin’s latest book, Necrophenia, yesterday and it does start well:
It was about a week after I’d almost saved mankind
”It was the day [...]
Tags: Books
The Black Swan
March 18th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Life
I have just finished reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which has left me reeling a little bit.
It is sort of about maths and economics but also about philosophy and science generally. I think that somebody recommended it to me in a comment on this site, but I can’t remember who that was. [...]
Told you so
March 16th, 2009 · No Comments · Politics
[Cross-posted from Common Endeavour]
I am rarely in a position to say “told you so” but someone who is in a great position to utter those words is Naseem Nicholas Taleb. I am nearing the end of his book The Black Swan (published in 2007) and on page 225 he says:
We have never lived before under [...]
Predictions
January 31st, 2009 · 2 Comments · Life, Music
Predictions are a notoriously risky business - just ask the IMF (about which Hopi Sen says everything that needs to be said I think). But getting away from the unerliability of six-month projections by the IMF, how about a prediction from 1973 that I came across this week.
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