Friday 23 August 2013

Books and Stuff

What I've been reading this week...

I finished Patrick Moore, 80 Not Out: The Autobiography.

Not so much an autobiography as as series of reminiscences about his career: he famously covers the first 25 years of his life in three pages, and though he keeps mentioning the his RAF service and the fact his finacee was killed in the war, he doesn't tell us anything about it.  This perhaps is not such a bad thing - after all it's his career is of interest, and he is able to tell us something about all the major events in astronomy and space exploration in the second half of the C20th.

Where he does move away from the stars, I'm sorry to say that he comes across as a deeply odd, and quite immature, man.  Perhaps the hints he gives about his upbringing explain this: it would be nice to know more.  All in all, this made me feel like reading a proper biography of him!

A warning:  although he claims not to be right wing, his views on sexual and racial equality should not be read by the faint of heart!

Moore features on the Interesting Obits section of the blog.

I carried on reading Untying the Knots and started John Baxter, A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict.



What I bought this week...

Nothing!  Austerity hits the bookshelves.

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