My Autobiography by Guy Martin

This book has convinced me that not only should you never meet you heros, but you shouldn't read their autobiographies either. If you like Guy Martin and want to carry on liking him, look away now.



I'm not a fan of motorsports so I first found Guy on television. "Come and watch this," I said to my husband, "It's like Wolverine was a Northerner building a boat.". We marvelled at his sideburns, and occasionally at his engineering and once at nearly all of him when a steam-powered shower turned evil and he had to jump out of it in a hurry. Since then I've enjoyed How Britain Worked (a wonderfully comforting programme as every episode was the same; Guy would join some bunch of brown-coated old boys as they restored old bits of stuff and win them over with his no-nonsense northern tea drinking and ability to "Shave a couple of thou off that, lad". The best bit would always be Guy turning to camera demonstrating a nice interference fit and saying, "Look at that, eh? Trick as.", or some weeks, "It were proper graft though, in them days, weren't it?") and two series of Speed (a much less cosy programmme which frequently gave the impression that it might end with the words, "This programme is dedicated to the late Guy Martin").

I guess what I was expecting from this book was some exciting bits about high-speed crashes and also the inevitable dull bits about boring out cylinders and valve timing for the hardcore. In fact the book delivers both those things, but it also shows Guy in a much less lovable light than I was expecting. By the end I felt I was looking at a man who had just done whatever he felt like at every turn and was then left wondering why everyone was so pissed off at him.

And there are the various daft things he does which just you leave you shouting at him. Like the way that the man who is happy to try to drive round the Isle of Man at over 200 mph seems to end up cheating on his girlfriend cos he can't quite get together the guts to break up with her first. Or the way that when his Dad (who is every bit as uncommunicative as Guy himself) confiscates the works van after a series of driving offenses, Guy says something along the lines of, "I figured it was his way of telling me I was sacked from the family business," and I think, "Why didn't you just ring him up and ask him, you big eejit?". And then there was the incident where Guy bypassed the TT podium and went to the tea van instead, which I had wrongly attributed to his being an unassuming lad who liked his tea. Turns out he was having a big prima donna strop.

Despite all this, I still admire Guy (well, can I ride a motorbike at 200mph? Can I bugger. I'm on the breaks of my pushbike just going down the hill from my house to the main road) but I've stopped slightly fancying him.

Here's hoping he finally gets that TT win...

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

I sort of love the Mitfords. If ever you catch yourself believing that your own family are the craziest, most dysfunctional bunch ever to escape out of an ITV sit-com and into reality, you can look at the Mitfords and reflect that your lot are nowhere near. Are any of your sisters Communists or Fascists? Have any of them actually been imprisioned for being a danger to their country? Have they had a crush on Hitler? Or eschewed the company of humans in favour of chickens? Do your parents believe that educating girls will give them fat ankles and leave them unmarriageable?

In case anyone ever reads this and they are not familiar with the British aristocracy in the inter war period, I have prepared a brief rundown of the Mitfords. (I was going to make Mitford Top Trumps but I ran out time, patience and artistic ability.)

Know Your Mitfords

Muv: a.k.a Lady Redesdale. Posh tweedy lady who won't let her daughters mingle with the garstly bourgeoisie. In her book this is pretty much everyone so Mitfords don't get out much.

Farv: Appears in Nancy's novels as "Mad Uncle Matthew" who is always shouting, "You filthy sewer!" at effete young men and threatening to have them horsewhipped. Likes hunting. Dislikes everything else.

Nancy: The novelist. Wrote Love in a Cold Climate  and The Pursuit of Love.

Diana: Fascist. Marries Oswold Mosley of the British Union of Fascits and spends WW2 interred. Completely Barking.

Pam: A boring one.

Tom: a.k.a Tudemmy. The Boy. Less loopy than the girls. Possibly because he was allowed to go to school and meet people outside his own family.

Unity: a.k.a. Baud. Fascist. Has a crush on Hitler. Spends her time in Germany hanging out with top Nazis. Tries to kill herself by shooting herself in the head when rejected by the Fuhrer. Gives herself a horrific brain injury instead and lingers on for ages.

Jessica: a.k.a. Decca. Communist. Runs away to join The International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.

Deborah: a.k.a Debo. Mocked by her older sisters for being a bit thick because all she wanted to do was marry a Duke and raise chickens but compared to being a Communist or a Fascist, that actually looks pretty sensible.

So This book is the autobiography of The Communist One. Jessica is also one of the youngest and while Nancy is being a Bright Young Thing and Diana is bringing shame on the family by divorcing*, Decca and Boud are stomping about the schoolroom being rather ineffectually home schooled by their mother and giving each other Chinese burns. For my money, the most normal thing in Decca's childhood is the weird games she plays with her siblings. In fact I think that Hure, Hare, Hure, Commencement (of unbearable pain) sounds like exactly the kind of game that my sister and I could really have got into.

The two sisters grow up without any other companions or anything to occupy themselves save reading and winding each other up. Jessica reads the pacifist literature spawned by the first world war and through that finds out about Socialism, Unity becomes a fully paid up member of the British Union of Fascists and Jessica moves further left into Communism, apparently to annoy her sister as much as anything else. Was this a time of extreme political views when all of politics was a lunatic fringe of some kind? Or is it just these girls in their insular, overheated world who have gone a bit odd in the reasoning department?

Long years seem to be spent grumpily hanging around the family home waiting for life to start. Jessica looks forward to "coming out"** as a signifier of adulthood but rightly predicts she won't meet any like minded young men in her season of balls. In this period of solitary moodiness she starts reading about the exploits of a distant relation in the press. Esmond Romilly has bought shame on his family by refusing to join the OTC, claiming to be a pacifist, escaping from Wellington public school and founding a Communist Bookshop. He sounds like just the sort of chap Jessica would like to meet, but unfortunately, he goes to fight the fascists in Spain*** and the mooning continues.

Then one day she finds out he's back in England and secures a weekend invitation to the same country house where he is convalescing. The pair seem to hit it off straight away and Esmond readily agrees to help her run away to the war in Spain.

I'm afraid I can't really take to Esmond Romilly. If he were from any other background, he'd be described as a wastrel and good-for-nothing. I think its his gambling addiction, plus the fact that he clearly fancies himself as a scammer and con artist (stealing from friends and family is apparently OK when you're a Communist). Despite this he falls for scam after scam himself, repeated losing all the money Jessica has earned on card games and bent horse races. Fortunately, being a Communist, she doesn't really mind about the money.  In fact Jessica doesn't mind about any damn fool thing that Esmond does, he is a genius in her eyes and everything they do together is just one big romantic adventure. 

Together they go to Spain, fail to report on the war, get married, come back to London and hang out with other Communists, have a baby girl who dies of measles (I got very upset for them at this point. Man, I'm glad to live in the century that I do!) and go travelling across America while they wait for the war to break out.

According to Jessica, by 1938 it was obvious that war was coming but not at all obvious whose side Britain would be on. This is a million miles from the plucky-Britain-standing-alone-against-Hitler line that we have all been spun. While I'm not at all sure of Jessica as a reliable narrator of historical facts, I still recall a number of high-profile Brits (including the King) who were favourably impressed by the Nazis. 

The book ends with the outbreak of war and Esmond joining the Canadian RAF. I looked him up and he died soon after at only 23. He never had the chance to mend his ways and stop being an idiot. I guess if I was assessed on only the first 23 years of life, I'd look a bit bloody clueless too. Jessica goes on to live to a ripe old age, but that's in other books.

Overall I enjoyed the growing up with the crazy Mitfords parts of the book but found the Romily years hard going. Jessica writes well enough that I'd look for her collected letters to her sisters, but I'm not sure I can handle any more memoir. She's at her best pointing out the ridiculous behaviour of her family and herself. When it comes to everything else she seems very sure of her opinions but totally unable to marshal anything resembling an argument in support of them. Or perhaps she assumes that her readers want celebrity gossip more than they want politics or history but I could have coped with more Communist ideology and less guff about lovely people we met in the Hamptons. That's probably just me.

*Yes, I'm afraid that for the British Aristocracy in this period divorce was WAY more embarrassing than being a fascist. 

**As a debutant, not an LGBT.

***No, I don't know how you segue from pacifism to joining in foreign wars either.

Yes Man by Danny Wallace

In the run-up to Christmas this year, I had a big work deadline causing me stress. This was all I could think about until after it had passed. Afterwards I looked around and tried to organise myself a pre-Christmas night out. Unfortunately, everybody I tried had been booked weeks ago and I was forced to continue my run of staying in.

To make matters slightly worse, I asked my husband to recommend a funny book to cheer me up and he suggested  Yes Man by Danny Wallace.

The gist of the thing is that Danny has also got into a rut of not going out which he decides to break by saying "yes" to things he would normally say no to. But he has friends who ring him up and ask him. He doesn't have to play phone tag with people for days just to remind them he exists. His friends just ring up and all he has to do is say yes. The lucky c*nt.

Anyway, before long Danny is allegedly affirming his way to the good life, saying yes at work to a TV presenting job in which he tries to wind up a Buddhist monk by poking him.

But it isn't all plain sailing. There is the time he agrees to come along with his ex and her new boyfriend on a date, donating money to any charity which asks him, spending a lot of money on travel because an advert happened to be phrased as a question and meeting up for polite conversation with a stockbroker obsessed with Sarah Brightman.

There is also the ever-so-neat plot about the girl he loves who has returned to Australia. Will Danny's resolution to say yes to everything make him brave enough to move out after her and give it a go? (Clue: of course it bloody will). Call me cynical, but things like this make me doubt that half the events described ever actually took place (think for a moment about how boring, episodic and unstructured an account of anyone's real life would be). So bearing in mind that we've agreed between us that Mr Wallace needn't be strictly truthful, that we'll allow him some license in order to better entertain us, why isn't the ****ing thing funnier?

I suppose the book worked for me in that I moved from feeling properly sorry for myself to just being a run-of-the-mill grumpy old git.

The Code Book by Simon Singh

Hurray! I think my brain is finally beginning to recover!

I've had this book on my shelf for years, but while I was going to work programming everyday it just looked like more work. Maternity leave was the right time to read it. Either my brain is starting to work properly again or Singh writes with enough clarity to penetrate the mum-fog. Probably a bit of both.

The code book is a history of cryptography from the Ceasar cypher (good enough for 1000 years then broken by Arab scholars) through to quantum cryptography. The Caesar cipher was followed by polyalphabetic ciphers (in the case of the one time pad the key is as long as msg therefore unbreakable but logistical problems distributing keys mean this method must be used sparingly). We then come to the mechanisation of encoding and the Enigma machine. The section on the breaking of the Enigma cipher was especially interesting as I had never realised the contribution made by the Polish secret service as well as the more familiar story of Bletchly Park. In many cases it was human weaknesses that made the messages decodeable ( for example, the choice of 3 letter day codes was left to the individual operators who would sometimes get lazy and use their own initials, or letters which were next to one another on the Enigma machine keyboard). Another trick was to realise that a certain message at 6am was always a weather report, so you could expect the word "wetter" near the beginning. We then move on to RSA and PGP. For the future we have the possibility of quantum cryptography. There are also interesting asides on the translation of the Rosetta Stone and linear b.

Great stuff. I feel enthused to have a go at the cyphers in the back. Then I'm going to decode the Voynich manuscript, solve the travelling salesman problem and sort out 3 body physics before the end of maternity leave...

 

The People's Manifesto by Mark Thomas

In 2009, Mark Thomas toured Britain with a stand up show where he asked the audience to suggest some policies they would like to see put into practise. At the end of the show each audience voted for their favourite policiy and all the favourites have been collected together to form this book: the demands of the people of Great Britain (or at least those of them who agree enough with Mark's left wing politics to make them feel it was worth going to see him). Anyway, it's considerably more democratic than anything offered by any major political party.

The lovely thing about these policies is how they range from the serious (renationalising the railways, requiring a referendum to go to war and introducing a "none of the above" box on ballot papers), to the trivial (everyone should be allowed the day off work on their birthday, Windsor to be renamed "Lower Slough" and overtaking lanes for pedestrians). Many of the the policies reflect a desire for fairness, or sometimes just a love of poetic justice, for example, people who support ID cards would not be allowed any curtains, those guilty of homophobic hate crime would have to serve their sentence in drag and and anyone who lets their dog shit in the street would have to wear it as a moustache.

Overall my favourite policy is that politicians should have to wear overalls like formula 1 drivers, covered with the logos of all the companies who pay them.

Pregnant and Furious

To the surprise of many, the bookclubofone is currently gestating a new life form. I have spent the first few weeks of gestation reading up on advice, violently disagreeing with it and working myself up into a big hormonal strop.

What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff

God, this book gave me the fury and no mistake. I can't imagine there's much you could do to yourself in pregnancy which would be worse for you than the stress induced by reading this. Heidi (quickly named Heidi Fuckoff by me) is obviously one of those Americans who believes that from the moment of conception the unborn child is indescribably precious while in contrast a pregnant woman is just a worthless bag of meat to carry it around in. The assumption that there is nothing you wouldn't sacrifice for your embryo/foetus, no matter how few cells it's currently composed of is pervasive and irritating. The tone of the book is shrill and preachy and it is full of advice which is so stringent as to be unfollowable. For example, if you are going to eat cherries during pregnancy, they should be organic. Your shoes must be neither high-heeled nor flat but should have a chunky, moderate heel. Buy some new ones if you have to. Although there is no actual evidence that eating nuts has any effect at all, you must avoid them to be on the safe side. What are you eating? Are you putting your love of roasted cashews above your childs health? Put that bag down you worthless whore, you're killing your baby!

For several weeks I raved and ranted at this book, promising that I was going to bury it at a crossroads with a stake through its black heart. However I have now reached a stage in the gestation process when I am a lot more serene and far hungrier so I am simply going to eat all the pages I disagree with, leaving a slender manual which might actually be of use.

Bring it on Baby: How to Have a Dude-Like Pregnancy by Zoe Williams

This was such a relief after "What To Expect..." that I couldn't even manage to get cross about the fact that it doesn't tell you how to have a dude-like pregnancy. In fact it doesn't really tell you how to do anything at all. The value of the book is that it lets you know in funny anecdotes that however worried you are about pregnancy and parenthood, Zoe has already been there and arsed it all up but both her kids are still alive, so you can stop fretting.

The Rough Guide to Pregnancy and Birth by Kaz Cooke

My favourite so far as it contains actual advice without the bossiness of What to Expect. It also has a week by week diary of the author's pregnancy which are witty and entertaining to read. Where What to Expect has pencil drawings of pregnants wearing expressions of bovine serenity, the rough guide has cartoons of fat, angry women which chimes better with my own experience.

The only thing to make me cross in this book is a very silly bit right at the end where it says you will have to think carefully about whether to let your baby have the MMR immunisation. Oh, FFS! Is Ben Goldacre completely wasting his time? Basically, you just need to decide whether you're in favour of immunisation or whether you're a total twat.

So there you have it: if you find yourself knocked up, get the rough guide as it is definitely the least bad.

Waterlog by Roger Deakin

This is an account of Roger's journey around Britain swimming in the sea, rivers, lakes and lidos.

One of the things I especially like about Roger is that although he was a lifelong green campaigner he was not one of those conservationists who want to conserve nature by keeping the hoi polloi out of it. Some of my favourite parts are Roger's arguments with gamekeepers, fishery owners, the Environment Agency and several others. I like to see him being a querolous old git.

In some ways, this is a book in which nothing much happens. None of the swims Roger undertakes are particularly extreme - he doesn't cross the channel, for instance. He considers swimming across the coryvreckan whirlpool and then sensibly reconsiders. I think this kind of adds to its charm though; there's nothing here that you couldn't manage yourself if you found the correct location.

Inspired by this, I have been enjoying the sea, a waterfall plunge pool and my local outdoor pool this summer and only caught one horrific poo disease while doing it.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

After wading through "How To Read A Book" I felt that should actually try to put the advice into practise by tackling one of the difficult books which has been lurking on my shelves for years. The Prince was probably the least intimidating of these, being quite a slender volume. The fact that it has become infamous as a sort of Linux-style HOWTO for evil overlords also makes it potentially interesting. This notorious book is also probably the longest CV-and-covering-letter in the history of the world as it was given to Lorenzo De Medici, the new ruler of Florence in the hopes that it would earn Machiavelli a place in his government. In this aim it was completely unsuccessful. In proper How To Read A Book style, I have tried to consider their 4 questions: What is the book about as a whole?, What are the detailed arguments?, Is it true? and What of it?

What is it about as a whole?
How to maintain yourself in power as the ruler of a small, undemocratic area.

What are the detailed arguments?
The book first lists of different types of principalities and the means by which each type may be held. This is followed by a section on troops of different types. We then move on to how a Prince should behave. There is then a section dealing with how to choose good ministers and avoid flatterers. To finish Machiavelli leaves us with a truly bizarre rant. More on that later.

First, I should probably condsider what Machiavelli means by a prince, because it doesn't seem to be the same as current English usage. You don't have to be son of a king, you just have to govern a "Principality" which could be something the size of a county, a small country or just a city state. We would probably use "warlord", "petty tyrant" or "robber baron" to describe Machiavelli's princes.

Another word to watch out for in the book is "Republic". The republics of Renaissance Italy were less like modern republics such as France or the USA, and more like ancient Greek republics such as Athens. For example, rulers would be drawn from amongst wealthy male citizens. There was not really much in the way of election or representation. These republics are oligarchies, not democracies.

Machiavelli believes that inherited principalities are most easily ruled: the people are used to it and no one really likes change. Just so long as you don't do anything stupid (like making the people hate you) everything will be fine. In principalities which you have conquered, the more of a dictatorial grip the last incumbent had, the easier it will be for you. If there was one all-powerful ruler and everyone else was "as slaves" then all you have to do is chase down and execute any descendents of the old prince as nobody else has the power to oppose you.

New principalities which are essentially handed to you by another more powerful ruler as a reward for your support in a joint venture can be a problem as you come into them before you have done the groundwork that would have been necessary to take them on your own (building up your armies, establishing a political powerbase, building financial reserves and so forth). Machiavelli argues that if you want to hold these territories you must go back and try to do that groundwork as soon as possible. He uses Caesare Borgia as a case study in how this should be done.

Most difficult are principalities which used to run their own affairs as republics. The people will default to hating you and resenting their loss of freedom (even ones who never actually had any in the first place!) and can easily be incited to rise up. There are only 3 options: financially ruin the area; set up a loyal puppet administration and take a hands off approach; go and live there.
The answer to many difficulties appears to be "go and live there". Machiavelli's reasoning is that you will know what's happening on the ground and can intervene in a timely fashion. If the people are disposed to like you they will be pleased that you have made their city your home, and if they don't you'll be able to strike fear into their hearts by having a few of them put to death. He observes that people can resent a distant ruler (true! Look at Scotland) and that any officials you send to rule new provinces for you are likely to be on the make and despoil them. His logic seems pretty sound and I can find only 2 flaws:

1. If the people hate you, you could be assassinated (I don't think this was considered such a big risk as at the time most princes would be expected to lead in battle and were probably reasonably accepting of violent death ).
2. You can only live in one place at a time, so the rate at which you can gain and hold territories is limited.

Despite the prevalence of mercenary armies in Italy at the time, Machiavelli believes is it best to have your own troops. Mercenaries are worse than useless: if their commanders are incompetent they are a liability, if they win battles for you, they can hold you to ransom. He illustrates this with a nice story about a ruler who has all his mercenary commanders put to death as he can't think what else he could safely do with them. Auxiliary troops are nearly as bad – they are lent to you by another Prince so cannot be relied on.

It is probably the part of the book which deals with how a prince ought to behave which earns the book its reputation. Machiavelli is credited with completely subverting all the other learned writings of the time which exhorted rulers to be merciful, godly, generous and so forth, completely turning this advice on its head.

When it comes to generousity, Machiavelli advises against spending your own money as that will make you poor. You should also think twice before using your subjects money as higher taxes will make them hate you. So what to do? Simply invade somewhere else and be generous with the loot from there! Now everyone's happy.

On the subject of mercy Machiavelli thinks that while it would be lovely to live by this Christian value, realistically, you're going to have to have someone put to death at some point and when that time comes, you should not flinch from it. He advises against using the death penalty a lot - just ringleaders of plots - and don't go nuts and start seeing conspiracies everywhere.

A prince need keep his word only when it suits him - and should not be naive enough to think others of his rank are will keep the deals they make with him.

If there is a point which Machiavelli particularly labours it is that a prince cannot afford to hated by the people. If they love you, that's great but if they fear you that's OK too. If they hate you they'll always be looking out for someone they'd prefer as a ruler. The best way to avoid being hated, he believes, is simply to resist helping yourself to your subjects womenfolk and property. He actually states that people will forgive you more readily for executing family members than for confiscating property! And I thought I had a low opinion of humanity...

The final section of The Prince is a bizarre and tangential rant about delivering Italy from foreigners. Large parts of it were apparently under the control of France and Spain at the time and Machiavelli seems to believe that the restored Medicis can save Italy from foreign scum. But the Medicis were essentially merchants and Florence had never really been a military power. For a man who throughout the book strikes me a rational (if amoral) pragmatist, this crazy-arsed patriotic call to arms seems out of character. Did he write this bit while he was drunk? Underneath this section in my copy of the book I have inscribed, "WTF?".


Is it true and what of it?
We should remember that The Prince is actually only half of Machiavelli's work on politics; he also wrote another book on how republics ought to be governed.

One of the quotes most frequently extracted from this book is that, “The Injury that you do a man should be such that you need not fear his revenge”. My Kung Fu club have appropriated this motto and it works for us as our aim is just to survive the next 10 minutes, but I don’t believe it will work for politics. The person who you “crush utterly” will have friends, family, allies, coreligionists. Even the dispossessed are dangerous; consider the Israel/Palestine conflict!

Unless you actually come to rule your own crazy, lawless third world country, it is not realistic to take the advice in the book literally. For example, as a manager in even the most ruthless industry, you will get precious little opportunity for having underlings who have outlived their usefulness put to death. If we take firing/demotion/make their job so shit they quit on their own to be the modern equivalent of execution, we can see Machiavelli's methods in every dysfunctional workplace in the land. In the book, Caesare Borgia pulls a trick where essentially he sends in his pet pitbull to sort out some tough problem, then when order has been established he steps in personally to shoot the nasty, mean dog and watches all the little people love him. I have seem the same trick work in a number of offices - the moral of the story is never be too keen to be someone else's thug.

It's also possible to apply the chapter on mercenaries to people like IT contractors or consultants.

Despite the number of macho arseholes keen to apply the values of The Prince to life in the workplace, I don't really think they're a good fit. Maybe this is just the self-justification of a person who doesn't have it in them to crush someone else for the sake of expediency, but I take the view that it's a small world and the toes you tread on today could well be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow.

The kind of thinking behind The Prince, seeing every transaction as a “zero sum game” in which if someone else wins, we lose is currently very unfashionable, but a lot of people still think and behave this way. Reading the original gives a window into their mental worlds, leaving you forewarned and forearmed.

Some Things I Still Don’t Understand
Why are those who come to power by “crimes” are considered in a separate chapter to those that do it by military force? Is it because they have murdered people who matter while the military campaigners only killed peasants?
Machiavelli thinks that ecclesiastical principalities are great because you don’t need to bother to govern them. So who is running them?
Machiavelli seems to have some sort of crush on Pope Alexander VI's son, Caesare Borgia (brother of the famous poisoner Lucretia) . I'm amazed the Pope could get away with having children – I suppose if you pay for enough mercenaries, you can get away with anything.

To finish, here's a pop-psychology quiz which claims to find out how Machiavellian you are.
Amazingly, I score 66% and am considered to be “high mach” making me charming (hope so), glib (definitely), devious ( wrong. I am missing the part of the brain used for telling lies) and manipulative (if only!). I think the truth is that I am a Machwannabe. I put it to you that truly “High Mach” individuals will lie on the quiz and make sure they come out at 50% or below to avoid warning the rest of us.

How To Read A Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren

As both my regular readers will know, sometimes I worry that I just don’t get major works of literature. Either the entire literary establishment is wrong or I am. Bearing in mind my tendency to write loops that never exit, I think it’s probably me. A couple of years ago, I hoped John Sutherland would tell me what I was doing wrong but he was peddling the politically correct line about how everyone’s opinion is equally valid.

If there is one thing that How To Read a Book is not, it’s politically correct. For example, the authors write “men” when they mean “people” and the tone of the whole book is generally like being lectured by the kind of pipe-smoking old man who belongs to a dining club. Here’s a taste,

“…most readers are at a total loss if you ask them to say briefly what the whole book is about. Partly this is owing to the widespread inability to speak concise English sentences.”

Woah… That’s me put in my rambling, ungrammatical place! Still, the book was published in the 70s; maybe slagging off your readers was OK back then. The gist of the book is that despite reading all the time, most of us never lift our comprehension above the level that we achieved in Primary School. Not only is there a lot of finger-wagging in their style, but there are actually a series of exercises in the back of the book!

At least there are some things I've been doing right: my approach to fiction which is to read it as quickly as possible, desperate to find out what happens, living in the imaginary world of the book and allowing the author to manipulate my emotions is apparently exactly how first readings should be done. The trouble is that I should then go back over it and start deconstructing but I can rarely be arsed. I also have their permission to carry on marking pages and writing in the margins of my books - their you go E, I'm not just an uncultured vandal! One of the things I've been doing wrong for years is missing out the introductions, prefaces and so forth. My rationale was that the book should stand or fall on its own merit and shouldn't have to be propped up by various bits of extraneous crap. I have now been firmly ticked off and informed that these are proper parts of the book and not optional extras.

According to the authors, there are 4 questions which you should ask when you read a book: What's it about as a whole? What are the detailed arguments? Is it true? and so what? They also define 4 levels of reading:

1. Elementary Reading – understanding the words you read
2. Inspectional Reading – using indexes, contents, and scanning
3. Analytical Reading – understanding. Looking at structure. Making judgements & drawing conclusions
4. Syntopical reading – what I would call “reading around” a subject. The only time I’ve ever done this was for A level history!

Don’t panic if you didn’t know what “syntopical” meant. They made it up. They also believe that syntopical reading is aided by using the Sytopicon - a new kind of reference book designed by Adler to allow readers to look up sections of famous texts by subject or idea. It sounds pretty horrific to use in book form so no wonder they're trying to drum up some sales here. I think it might work a lot better as a website, though, so maybe this is an idea who's time has finally come.

Despite the fact that this is less of a book and more a series of tellings-off, there are still some pretty inspirational bits. Apparently, up until the 20th century, books on science, maths and philosophy were intended to be read by intelligent lay readers rather than experts so there is no reason that with a bit of work any of us shouldn't be able to understand the works of Euclid or Plato or Darwin. Imagine reading Euclid!

In brief: I can’t like these guys, but I suspect that they’re right. I've certainly trundled through enough books half asleep and come out the other end non the wiser.

Suspecting isn’t enough though – I am a woman of science! I must therefore put “How to Read a Book” to the test: Having finished it, I now plan to try to put these techniques into practise by reading one of the truly scary books from my shelf which I’ve been putting off for years, “The Prince” by Machievelli . Stay tuned to see whether I manage to make head or tail of it, or whether I just go back to reading children’s books…

Dreams and Disasters: A History of Innovation Gone Wrong by Adam Hart Davis

I'm going to write to Adam Hart Davies and tell him to go back on do this again properly. It's a good idea but the execution is slap-dash, presumably in order to try to cash in on the success of “What the X Did For Us” in time for Christmas one year.

This book is also rather let down by the quality of the paper and the images. For example, there is a picture of Babbage's difference engine which is just a big, black blur. Just as well we're able to look up what it actually looked like online!

And it doesn't have a proper finish. It just stops right in the middle of

Bollocks To Alton Towers by Robin Halstead, Jason Hazeley, Alex Morris and Joel Morris

It happens to all of us: we are just walking past some books when we spot one that is so interesting we have to buy it. This happens quite frequently to the BookClubOf1. What is less frequent is seeing a book which is so exciting you have to buy two copies. I spotted “Bollocks To Alton Towers” whilst looking for a birthday present for my Dad and ended up purchasing one for each of us.

The premise of the book (that Britain is full of small, eccentric tourist attractions which can be more fun than the big, famous ones) was one that resonated with my own childhood. Whether through anti-capitalist principles, or financial embarrassment, our parents were always reluctant to shell out for admission to anything. By the time I was 16, it seemed as though everyone in the world had been to Disneyland, Florida apart from me. I had, however, been round an awful lot of iron age hill forts and one nuclear power station.

For anyone with a hint of geek, the temptation is to use this book like a list of Munroes and tick off the attractions as you visit them. So I'm delighted to report that I have already been to Mother Shipton's Cave (visited with my folks when very young), Tebay Services, Portmerion, House of Marbles and Avebury.

Tebay Services is Britain's only independent motorway service station. Imagine that a farm shop and a high class delicatessen had a child together, and that child grew up and, in a fit of teenage rebelliousness, announced it wanted to be a motorway service station. That is Tebay. It will still cost you a lot to eat there, but you will be eating the very best local produce instead of filthy offerings from Planet Ginster. Plus you can buy something like top-notch chocolate or venison sausages for whoever has been looking after your cat. It's worth driving to Scotland just so you can visit Tebay on the way. Honest!

I first visited Avebury for E's hen weekend and my abiding memory is of the horrors of the Mystical Tat Shop. Avebury has two gift shops, one is a National Trust one which sells lots of lavender flavour things for old ladies. The other is the mystical tat shop which sells fearsome amounts of hippy crap covered in Celtic knotwork. It also sells the single most disturbing item I've ever seen in a gift shop: figures of a sort of chubby earth-goddess with her feet round the back of her head and her hands pulling her flaps apart. Apparently, this character is called Sheila Na Gig and she is giving birth to the universe or some such shit. Much as people who are true vertigo suffers don't just worry about falling off high things, they also worry that they might go mad and jump, I had to leave the mystical tat shop for fear that I might go mad and buy several of the things. When I went home and told my husband about the Sheila na Gigs, he was of the opinion that the tat shop owner had missed a trick and they ought to contain bottle openers or pencil sharpeners.

More exciting than the attractions I've already seen, are the recommendations which are very close to home. Diggerland and the Pack O' Cards pub are within a couple of hours' drive, while A La Ronde is actually on my drive to and from work but I've never been because I got in sulk with the National Trust after visiting Castle Drogo (a faked-up, 1920s bauhaus “castle” significantly newer than my own home, but more expensive to visit). These are so close that I might as well go. Both my siblings now live in Fancy London Town where the streets are paved with stabbed teenagers. Maybe they will take me to visit the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs when I next go to see them. And maybe my Oxford-based school friend could take me to the Pitt Rivers museum...

Like Munroes, some of these attractions will be easier to collect than others. For example, next time I visit the Lakes, if the weather's too bad for walking I will be demanding a visit to Eden Ostrich World or the Pencil Museum. I would very much like to visit Bletchly but this involves going to Milton Keynes and I can't imagine why I'd ever go there. Alas, I think I have missed the chance to see Barometer World as I believe it recently closed.

So what have they missed? Well, I can't claim an encyclopedic knowledge of Britain's visitor attractions, never having been to any of the ones that cost more than £10, but here's my cheapskate's rundown of other things you could look at:

1. That nuclear power station I visited as child was Hinkley Point in Somerset and the tour is free. I remember that the guide's Geiger tube didn't even pick up any background radiation for the whole tour, so I assume it was broken. You might want to take your own GM tube just to be on the safe side.

2. The Cerne Abbas Giant. A picture of a naked man with an enormous erection, carved into the side of a Dorset hill. This ticks all the boxes: it costs nothing plus it's good for a snigger.

3. The National Lobster Hatchery, Padstow. I haven't actually been in this one, but my friend AR has and so great was his enthusiasm for it that I pass on his recommendation. This is everything you might ever want to know about lobsters for only £3, apparently.

4. Letterston fish and chip shop. There must be hundreds of fish and chip shops which claim to be Britain's best. They're like splinters of the true cross or Robert The Bruce's caves. This one, however, is the best one I've been to so far. Other honourable mentions go to Chez Fred in Poole, Squires in Braunton and the chuffing expensive one at Dart's Farm.

5. Tinside Lido, Plymouth. I love lidos, they're a reminder of a bygone age when people wore hats and were hardy enough to swim out of doors in the UK. The south west seems to have been the epicentre of lido-building and the Plymouth one is a nice example being recently restored and a good size. For £3.60 (only 45p more than my regular, municipal pool) you can enjoy 1930s architecture and outdoor swimming. Lovely.

6. Big Pit (Pwll Mawr, for those of you who speak Klingon). Big Pit is your chance to go down a real coal mine for free!

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: the origins of the internet by Katie Hafner and Mathew Lyon

As a programmer, I ought to have found this interesting, but unfortunately it was more like doing unpaid overtime. On several occasions I went to bed ahead of my husband, saying I wanted to read a bit of my book, only for him to arrive upstairs minutes later to find that its turgid prose had already stunned me into unconsciousness. Reading about someone else's marathon debugging session is only slightly less horrible than being in the midst of your own.

My one real moment of entertainment came from reading about the work of JCR Licklider. As well as having a funny name, he believed that by working with machines humans could achieve enhanced cognition. As someone who works with machines every day and often seems to be having cognitive difficulties, my response to his idea is a bitter, "Ha!". Most humans don't want their cognition enhanced and are content to muddle along with the same mixture of magical thinking and believing whatever is most convenient that we've been using ever since we were monkeys. We have created this amazing, worldwide network of machines and what do we use it for? Pornography, dating, looking at cute animals, watching amusing films of things in blenders and wanky, ego-stroking popularity contests. Some of the cleverest humans get as far as using it to pretend to be an elf. Quite frankly it would serve us all right if the Internet became self-aware and started exterminating us!

What is a little sad is that although many of the programmers mentioned were undoubtedly brilliant (and obsessive) and working at the bleeding edge of their fields, none of them got rich from their work. What you need to make money appears to middling intelligence, a sharp suit, glossy hair and a disarming smile. Bugger.

Despite the fact that I've not enjoyed this book, my friends seem to be queuing up to read it. I can't persuade them to like my favourite authors but they all want to read this crap. T! Humans, eh? They're just bloody perverse!

Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre

Not to be confused with the far superior “Agent Z and the Penguin From Mars”, Agent Zigzag is the true story of Eddie Chapman. Chapman was a criminal specialising in blowing up safes before the second world war and was languishing in Jersey prison when the island fell to the Nazis. In a bid to return to the UK mainland (or maybe just to earn some money, his motives are often pretty unclear) Chapman volunteered to spy for the Germans.

He was then left in jail in France while his request filtered through German bureaucracy. After being interviewed by the German secret service he was sprung and trained for sabotage mission to blow up the DeHavilland factory that made the Mosquito. Chapman parachuted into Britain and immediately defected. He was then used to feed inaccurate information to the Germans. MI5 faked the sabotage of the DeHavilland factory to keep his cover intact and Chapman was sent back to the Nazis via neutral Portugal.

Almost as soon as he arrived, Chapman sent a couple of bombs disguised as lumps of coal back home for the secret service to investigate, by suggesting that he smuggle them aboard the British merchant ship that brought him. The Germans then spent some time interviewing Chapman, to try to ensure that he had not been "turned" by the British. Nazi interrogation seemed to comprise mostly of taking Chapman out to expensive bars and restaurants and getting him drunk. If this is accurate, then MI5 are more than welcome to take a crack at me; I like a decent Sauvignon Blanc, Pims, Kier Royale and a cocktail of my own devising made from vodka, Archers and blue flavour Panda Pop.

After a lot of booze, Chapman was sent to Norway where he trained other German spies (passing their details on the the British). As the tide of the war turned against Germany, he was parachuted back into the UK with a mission to find out about secret U boat detection technology (there was no such thing; military intelligence just knew where subs would be due to intercepting their transmissions one the Enigma code had been cracked),radar and to feed back data to help target V1/V2 missiles.

When the war ended, Chapman was dropped by secret service. He wasn't “one of us” and didn't fit in with the public school types runnng the show. And it didn't help that he'd taken up with his criminal friends again. He lived the rest of his life as a crook. There was a film loosely based on Eddie Chapman's lifestory called "Triple Cross". I haven't seen it but I don't have high hopes for it; it's got Christopher Plumber in it.

Whatever a book blurb may say, real life is never more incredible than fiction. If I were to rewrite the story, I would have Chapman tortured by the Gestapo, stuff would really get blown up, rather than just faked and I would probably have killed off one of the nicer minor characters (Major Reed, Zigzag’s first handler or Dagmar, his Norwegian girlfriend) for extra pathos. It might be mean, but it makes a better story.

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

Bad Science is effectively the book of the blog by the lovely Ben Goldacre*. Throughout the book Ben deconstructs sloppy journalism and abuses of scientific language, roughly in order of how angry Ben gets about them. So we start with relatively harmless bollocks like detoxing and face cream, moving on to Homeopathy and Nutritionism. Then we look at the ethics of pharmaceutical companies and finally media heath scares and hoaxes like MMR. On the way there are some excellent explanations of the placebo effect, and of probability and statistics, which strike many people as counter-intuitive. And some amusing ranting at Ben's favourite awful poo lady**.

There is also a bonus chapter available from the internet, which deals with a particularly unpleasant man who has been trying to flog vitamin pills to Africa as a cure for AIDS. This was left out of earlier editions of the book, due to the filthy villain attempting to sue our Ben.

I particularly liked the final chapter in which he complains bitterly about the quality of science journalism. Ben points out that there must be loads of people with degrees in science subjects who have gone on to work in unrelated fields (yes! Yes! Here I am, Ben!) and yet whenever we get any science on in the media it has to be dumbed down so the lowest common denominator crapwits who couldn't differentiate e^x with respect to x can understand it. Where's my science, eh, world? Is it in the same place as all the trousers that actually come up to your waist have gone?

To the roll call of “cargo cult science” (things that like to use sciencey-sounding language but completely lack the rigour of the genuine article) I would like to add psychology and economics. In fact I think it would greatly benefit the world if economics were renamed “guesswork”.


*I think I have a bit of an intellectual crush on him. I'm not interested in the contents of his trousers, but I do love him a bit. If he ever wants a platonic groupie, he knows where I am!

**Amoungst other hilarious claims, Gillian believes that "foul-smelling stools" are a sign of ill health. This especially amused me; McKeith literally thinks her shit don't smell.

An Utterly Impartial History of Great Britain or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge by John O'Farrel

This book is something like an attempt to create a more up-to-date version of "1066 And all That". It is a fine example of"scattergun" humour: Most jokes are a bit rubbish, but there are a lot of them and every so often one works. Given free choice, I generally prefer to get my humourous history from the lovely Mark Steel (How clever do all the people who mocked him for still being a socialist feel now,eh?) but this book has done its share of chipping away at the vast edifice of my ignorance...

Things I didn't know before I read this:

1. That we lost the hundred years war. It should have been bit of a clue to me that we don't own France anymore. I knew all about the longbow and the Battle of Aigincourt, but I wasn't aware of the bit where the French get really good with artillery and kick our asses.
2. The last time Britain was successfully invaded by a foreign power was not 1066 but 1688 when William of Orange showed up with a massive army and a very ropey claim to the throne and was crowned king.
3. That the "Rufus Stone" in the New Forrest marks the place where William Rufus was assassinated.

Things I still can't remember:
1. Which Henry was which.
2. Which Edward was which.