Quantum Enigma - Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttmer.
Mind-boggling stuff.
What are you reading right now? Page 220
Quote: beaky @ 5th April 2017, 5:36 PMQuantum Enigma - Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttmer.
Mind-boggling stuff.
You made that up. 
Quote: keewik @ 4th April 2017, 10:31 PM'Dictator' - Robert Harris. Talk about devious politicians! It's about Cicero and unfortunately I didn't realise it's the last of a trilogy and I haven't read the other 2 books. Next stop will be Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' as the characters will make more sense to me now.
Imperium and Lustrum are very good. I've not read the new one yet.
Harris' other Roman novel, Pompeii, is also very good.
On page 319, I think I've found the answer to one of life's problems.
I am reading 'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath. Man, does she whinge! I thought I was bad, she makes Ian Curtis look like Emma Bunton. For f**k's sake, you travel all over the world, get into the greatest unis Brit and Yank side, bonk Ted Hughes, give us a smile mate. The kid in the African relief ad exudes more lust for life than you - he doesn't consider suicide just cos some poncy pretentious professoress only gives him 99.999999999999999999999% for an allegorical, analogorical f**kallorical feces on Charles Chaucer's Sir Wankalot. The funniest bit is where she says they don't invite her to parties - I'm not surprised, you are to parties what I a to dieting. F**k this.
No idea if you're actually reading it or not or just doing a rant, but I read that book expecting it to be boring, depressing and a slog to get through, and found it funny and really enjoyable! Absolutely nothing like I'd expected. Plus it has that excellent opening sentence.
Quote: zooo @ 13th April 2017, 10:46 AMNo idea if you're actually reading it or not or just doing a rant
And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth. From every region, apes of idleness, for now a time is come to mock at form.
I've just been flipping through Dame Edna's Ednapedia: A History of Australia in a Hundred Objects. It's not Barry Humphries at his usually brilliant best. Seems to have been written in a bit of a hurry for people with short attention spans.
I am currently reading 'The Princess and the Pea'. It is total and utter f**king shit. 'Only a princess could be so soft and lovely and sweet...' Seen Camilla lately?
And now, Britain's most beloved book reviewer, Michael Monkhouse, peruses the pages of Mr Happy by Roger Hargreaves:
Roger Hargreaves takes readers on an illuminating journey of emotional intensity filled with fervent moments of ecstasy and joy. Hargreaves the illustrator gladly surrenders imitative colour and the actual dimensions of form, because by such renunciations he is able to avoid too definite a presentation of reality, which would be too purely intellectual. It is through its very incompleteness that the artwork becomes complete in beauty.
Yet beyond the artwork, there lies a terrible shadow of the darkness that dwells within us all. Mr Happy, whether through defect of judgment or odorous silence, fails in disposing of the chances of which he was lord. Not moving from the casque to the cushion, but commanding happiness, even with the same austerity and jaundiced rawness, as he controlled the forest. For as he smiles upon others, his freedom made him feared. So hated and so banished to choke on his gleaming grin. So too our virtues reveal the misery of happiness in the lost interpretation of time.
Next Week: Guest reviewer Mick Spunkhorse unsticks the ancient wonders of an old Razzle mag.
The joke's on you cos the world Razzle gave me a boner. And it hasn't worn off.
They say Animal Farm has political vertones. They completely escaped me. I assumed the greatest political thinker of the 20th century was just writing about talking pigs and geese on a magic farm.
They also detected drug references in this track. I've listened again and again and can't detect them. Do help. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCEzohw4960
I'm reading the Divine Comedy. It's not very funny is it?
I have just finished 'James and the Giant Peach'. I thought it was a true story but then the end says, 'James decided to write about his adventure in a book. And THAT is what you have just finished reading.' Then why does it say 'by Roald Dahl' on the cover? Have I been taken for a ride? Or is it a pseudonym, in which case why does he use his real name in the book? I'm confused. I've Googled 'Roald Dahl' and he wrote a lot of books, so maybe James is taking advantage of the name, but he seems really nice. I'm confused...
There's a similar issue at the end of The BFG. Dahl also seems to think he's Danny the Champion of the World, a kid / mouse who destroyed all the witches, and nephew of the biggest womanizer since Priam. Man, is he weird. Maybe he just thought he had a silly name.
Just started reading Jeremy Dyson's 'Never Trust a Rabbit'. Really enjoying it. Not comedy, but beautifully chilling. I have a hard time handling longer books lately, so I thought I'd go for a book of short stories. Kids these days (i.e. me) have no attention span. It's sad, because two of my favourite books I've ever read were David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' which is 1100 pages or so, and Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow'. I'm a sucker for sprawling metafiction, but I don't have the brain power for it anymore. Spooky horror stories are working out well for me though.
I also found a book at work called 'The Word Museum: The most remarkable English words ever forgotton' which is a little dictionary of delightful words like:
'ogerhunch' - Any frightful or loathsome creature, especially a bat.
'outcumlinws' - Strangers, coming from without; not dwelling in the neighborhood
'right croaker' - A physician who does business with the underworld, treating wounds without reporting to the police
'rough and ugly' - Well in health
'roozles' - Wretchedness of mind; the Miserables (apparently a midlands word)
'viridate' - to make green and lusty
'vorago' - A gulf, a whirlpool, a quagmire, or marvellous deep place that sucks or swallups up even rivers, and whereout nothing can come
'xanthodont' - Having yellow teeth, as a rodent,
'woonkers' - Interjection expressive of wonderment or surprise
'wordify' - To put into words (Yorkshire, Devonshire)
'word-pecker' - One that plays with words
These are just a few random ones I flipped to, but some of them are quite hilarious and very strange. Like there was one I can't find now which was a word meaning riding a certain style of horse carriage riding while selling or eating carrots and calling out from the streets to someone insulting them for their wife being a slag.
It's a silly book, but a lucky find. It was in the library at the old folks home I work at. I had to take it home with me. I also found a book printed in the 70s which was an illustrated history/guide of comedy humor publications (mostly American, sadly). Interesting nonetheless.
Quote: Davida Grimes @ 26th May 2017, 2:35 PMThe most remarkable English words ever forgotton' which is a little dictionary of delightful words
Cool, but how do we know they're real if everyone has forgotten them ? They could write any old twaddle - is twaddle in there ? It reminds me of the Blackadder episode where Robbie C played Mr Johnson the dictionary inventor.
What a great book find. Maybe we should have a thread called guess the made up word(s). Here's a starter question. One statement is false, which is it ?
Trumped up
Made up
Fecked up
Bananaed up
The clue is "Laughing stock" 
I think they're legitimate ex-words. It's published by simon & schuster. Seems legitimate to me. Though it doesn't have a biography of the author or any information on how these words were researched, other than the author's thanks to the British Library, and the Bodleian Library for allowing the author to access their "unique collections of books and manuscripts. Plus, some of the words are still in use, though their meanings have changed, for instance, 'pixelated' was apparently a word well before computers and pixels etc.
Here are some more random ones:
'yesterfang' - that which was taken, captured or caught on the previous day or former occasion.
'pudding-leather' - the stomach
'clock-falling' - There is a superstition called clock-falling which is that, if a woman enters a house after child-bearing and before being churched, the house-clock will immediately fall on its face. But a woman would never think of doing so under any circumstances.
'clowclash' - a state of confusion
'clicketing - A fox is said to go a-clicketing when he is desirous of copulation
'dendrantyhopology - Study based on the theory that man had sprung from trees
'hippospadians' - Monstrous persons that abuse themselves with a horse
'myomancy' - a kind of divination by means of mice
'ramfeezled' - to exhaust oneself with work, to wear oneself out
'slathertrash' One whose shoes are down at the heel, a slovendly-dressed person
'slister - to idle away time, to be lazy and careless (like I am riiight now)
'swazz' - to swagger
'tadago-pie' - a pie made of abortive pigs from a sow that has miscarried (eww)
'verter-water' - water found in the hollows of tombstones and rocks, a charm for warts
'zamzodden' - to heat for some time over a fire, but not to boil
'fish-fag' - a vixenish, foul-mouthed woman.
'flarting' - mocking, jeering (northumberland)
I think some of these words should be put back into common parlance. Some are just plain weird.