Just started reading "Blue Mauritius. The Hunt for the World's Most Valuable Stamps" by Helen Morgan.
At an auction in 1903 Lot 301 Mauritius 1847 twopence Post Office, unused with large margins,, a fine example, was put up for sale. The bidding started at £500 and was knocked down at the record bid of £1450 to an agent, Mr J Crawford.
Shortly afterwards, in conversation with the Prince of Wales, a royal courtier remarked "Did your Royal Highness hear that some damned fool has just paid £1450 for a stamp?
"Yes" the future George V is reputed to have replied "I was the damned fool".
  2 Members like this post. Login to Like.
"StayAlert.......Control The Virus.......Save Lives."
No stamps in this one, but I have just attempted to read "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielswski once again. Very difficult book to read. It is about a house that is larger than it looks. The edition I have is the full colour version. Text is cramped in most pages, some pages there is but one word. Upside down text, diagonal, sideways, nothing but a couple words buried in X's! Footnoes that run pages long, footnotes for some footnotes as well. Sidenotes too!
So far it is a slog. I doubt I'll get very far into it, but I am trying...
I also have "Only Revolutions" which is another of his creations. Just as difficult!
I'm with Ians wife on this one, very much enjoy the Pratchett books, always find the humour reflective of mankind as a whole.
Also read a number of wildlife/gardening books as part of my interest in natural history.
I'm in the middle of the Leonardo Da Vinci biography by Walter Isaacson, whose books are terrific. Who knew that Cesare Borgia, Niccola Machiavelli, and Leonardo were best buds once! (so to speak)
I'm another Terry Prachett fan. I like the way he can take the 'mickey' out of whole genres, but I think I've read them all. I have Ben Goldacre's Bad Science on my iPad but I haven't started it yet.
I'm halfway through Dorothy L Sayers's Gaudy Night, about a spot of bother at an Oxford ladies' college in 1935. It's entertaining but nothing like the Cambridge men's college I went to, admittedly 30 years later,
Other books waiting to be read are Wilding (a bit hard going), Irish Freedom (I'm stalled at about 1800), Modiano's Occupation Trilogy, (can't get started), Edna O'Brian's Irish Girls (ditto) and a sort of anthology of articles about the Radio 4 Today programme. Oh, and Vanished Kingdoms. - a history of obscure European states that once flourished but then disappeared. It's a slog.
And the winner for readability is ... Dorothy by a mile.
I got the vanished kingdoms book for my birthday last year. It is in the "waiting to be read" queue.
Currently reading "Japrocksampler: How the Post-war Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock 'n' Roll" by Julian Cope, a very entertaining book about Japanese underground rock bands and the post war popular culture in Japan.
Simultaneously busy with "Imprimatur", a historic novel by Monaldi & Sorti and going through a few books about the Hanseatic League and the history of Danzig for a project I am working at.
But I must admit that I do less reading than I used to do recently, due to the fact that my wife decided it was a good idea to subscribe to Netflix. I was against it at first, but now we have it, I must admit it is quite addictive. I am not a binge-watcher, but I do like the idea of being able to watch what I like whenever I like.
As for Terry Pratchett and his discworld novels, I read a number of them, many years ago. Hilarious at times, but after a while (5, 6 books or so) I got fed up with it and quit going after them in the library.
I'm a huge mystery fan and have recently been reading Swedish mysteries. I just read Meet Me in Malmo by Torquil MacLeod. I finished the Sandhamn mysteries series by Viveca Sten and I'm waiting for the next one to be released (May 8th). I also just read the new Vince Milam Case Lee mystery The Hawaii Job.
My wife is an avid reader ,she has every single book written by Engish auther Katherine Cookson ,also Patricia Cornwell, at the moment it's Michael Connelly's turn.
Me afraid I'm not a book reader ,I do read but mainly magazines on stamps ,computers and photography.
Brian
I went to a talk given by Ken Hom, the chef, at our club in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago and picked up his autobiography, My Stir-Fried Life. I haven't started it yet. Maybe when we go into lock down.
I've just finished a book titled "Tigers in the mud" by Otto Carius, the second highest "scoring" (and I don't like that description) tank ace of the Wermacht in WWII.
An alternate to all that I was raised upon....how interesting.
If anyone is interested in an opposing viewpoint, from one who was there, then I do recommend this book.
For myself, the training and leadership described are very inspiring. It is not hard to understand, after reading this book, how our allied armies had such difficulty in defeating the German armies in WWII. God help me for thinking that maybe "Bomber" Harris (the most evil man ever to live) was right.
Books that are conflicting, and difficult to read, are the best...but never so easy to take.
Login to Like this post
Please Note: Postings that were loaded from the old Discussion Board cannot be edited.