The UAFC

I've wanted to read A Short History of Everything for ages, one of those ones I never quite get round to though. Hopefully with a science background I might understand a little of it lol!

The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates...by Des Ekin.

A true account of the raid on the Irish village of Baltimore in 1631...over 100 men, women and children were captured by Barbary pirates, transported to Algiers and sold into slavery...fascinating.

WOW I would have put you down as more of a Noddy in Toy Land reader Browner

Working my way through James Rouch "The Zone" series for the first time since the Eighties.

Top class (i.e. Very, very bad) war porn. Think Sven Hassel but set in a cold war gone hot.... Real pulp fiction stuff, nowt but blood, bullets & boobs.

Surrey Red Hand wrote:WOW I would have put you down as more of a Noddy in Toy Land reader Browner

Don't knock it Surrey....great bedtime reading.

Been reading "Skylark" by Dezső Kosztolányi when I've had five minutes to meself!

The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert shea and Robert Anton Wilson, reading this again,it really is a classic,

Time to get this thread up the list again as we near Xmas. Just finished Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa, a very powerful novel about life as a Palestinian following the creation of the state of Israel. I am avid reader, but have never come across anything quite like this, not an easy read, but well worth the effort.

Currently reading Tony Blair - A Journey

Well, I've been reading it since August.

I've also been reading Sport in Society by Coaxley & Pike, Introduction to Education Studies by David Matheson, amongst other "academic" (bulls**t) texts

read last week's edition of autocar last night. a promotional marketing magazine has just landed on my desk, might give that a flick through later on this morning.

29xThePain wrote:Currently reading Tony Blair - A Journey

Well, I've been reading it since August.

Don't want you to ruin the end of it for anyone but would I be right in assuming he doesn't come off as being the total vadge we know he is in reality ?

I think the two current PM's we have in are a lot worse...

I know Labour introduced tuition fees, although TRIPLING the amount we pay for third level education is a disgrace. How NI-based students can even consider going to uni's in England, Scotland or Wales after 2012 is beyond me. The amount of loan they'll need for accommodation & living will be frightening.

How come the Scots can keep their tuition fees for Scottish students at £0, and how can the Welsh promise their students that they won't pay any more than the current £3270? (Although that figure should rise slightly in line with inflation).

Sorry, I'm being too political for a book thread

29xThePain wrote:I think the two current PM's we have in are a lot worse...

I know Labour introduced tuition fees, although TRIPLING the amount we pay for third level education is a disgrace. How NI-based students can even consider going to uni's in England, Scotland or Wales after 2012 is beyond me. The amount of loan they'll need for accommodation & living will be frightening.

How come the Scots can keep their tuition fees for Scottish students at £0, and how can the Welsh promise their students that they won't pay any more than the current £3270? (Although that figure should rise slightly in line with inflation).

Sorry, I'm being too political for a book thread

easy answer look at the political make up of the Scottish Assembly and the Welsh Assembly

The Coming of the King by Nikolai Tolstoy

29xThePain wrote:I think the two current PM's we have in are a lot worse...

I know Labour introduced tuition fees, although TRIPLING the amount we pay for third level education is a disgrace. How NI-based students can even consider going to uni's in England, Scotland or Wales after 2012 is beyond me. The amount of loan they'll need for accommodation & living will be frightening.

How come the Scots can keep their tuition fees for Scottish students at £0, and how can the Welsh promise their students that they won't pay any more than the current £3270? (Although that figure should rise slightly in line with inflation).

Sorry, I'm being too political for a book thread

Sympathise enormously - especially as I have a daughter who is hoping to head off to Newcastle Uni next September & a son who is already at Northumbria. I realise they may be better off than those starting the following year but I would like to see the clowns currently running the country coming a cropper.

Seems odd that a year ago we were fed by the media stories of how Vince Cable was a financial genius and that Gordon Brown a successful former Chancellor was now a registered buffoon.

A year on we reap the whirlwind as Cable is shown to be wireless (see what I did there?) - a buffoon who would best be served by being a contestant on a dance show, a man so stupid he thought a reasonable position to take was being the architect of legislation but not actually voting for it. A politician so lacking in wit that he thought he could boast to constituents that he was going to tweak Rupert Murdoch's nose.

Meanwhile a man who has financial nous - despite the 10p tax band fiasco - who many other countries accepted had the best plan to combat the recession is nowhere to be seen and lampooned as an oaf.

feck the media for giving us the current buffoons & lets hope when the next turn to place an X in a box (thats democracy you know - make your mark once ever 5 years) comes around that we get a crushing rejection of the "silly party of liars" and their partners "the millionaire club."

If any terrorists are reading this could I suggest that over the years you have missed a trick in not targeting Eton College - the school of upper class PMs.