Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms What are you reading?

A book entitled "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman" by Feynman a nobel prize winning theoretical physicist. (1/3 of the prize - quantum electrodynamics). And judging by the book, a Nobel prize winning narcisist too. Whilst the subject he got his prize for is interesting, or would be if I understoood it, his practical jokes and bongo drumming figure much larger in the book and mostly are schoolboy stuff.

He could also have written interestingly on the tecnicalities of the atom bomb and the work at los Alamos where he spent his war years.

A young man working with my son read physics at Oxford as I did and recommended the book as the most interesting he had read for some time. It doesnt reflect that well on the young man to be honest.

I think the clue is in the title. It shows he was human and not just a one track genius. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Feynman wrote a great book called something like "seven easy lessons". It's a helluva hard read. Fascinating bloke though.
Nick

Think Like a Bird by Alex Kimbell. It's out of print so you will need to track down a copy on Amazon or elsewhere. Next to Fate is the Hunter by Ernest K Gann one of the best books by a pilot. Geat writing and great piloting. Wikipaedia tells me the author is living in Devon and still writing. After training on Austers at Middle Wallop he is sent to the Middle East and flies DH Beavers during the Aden crisis of the `60s. First chapter will draw you in as his DH Beaver is brought down by gunfire and alternating chapters take you back to this scene as he carries you through his training and then life as an army pilot. My daughters sent it to me for my birthday and I read it cover to cover with only a few breaks for food and drink.

Richard Feynman was one of finest physicists ever. As a physics student I foud his lectures not for me, now I love to watch his lectures and interviews on youtube.
Heinz, the biography of Lorentz is in Dutch... but indeed he was a remarkable man. He was a truly homo universalis, spoke his languages and a diplomat. Made him very well placed to chair the famous Solvay conderences.

The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk, published by Penguin.
It is a profound work on the nature, causes, and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, and how it affects both mind and body.
It is, for me, a ground-breaking (and I wouldn't say that unless it was deserved) work.
And by PTSD, we are not simply talking about the effects of war and disaster, but also of the various forms of abuse that leaves both children and adults struggling to cope with life.

I've just read "A woman of no importance" - Sonia Purnell's account of the exploits of Virginia Hall, an American woman who became a British SOE agent in France, and then when they wouldn't send her back into the field she joined the OSS and went back for them. Incredible story of an unbelievably resourceful and courageous woman.


While we're on that subject, I as rather taken with a tweet by Dan Snow 3 days ago, that it was the anniversary of the death in 2018 of Dutch Resistant Freddie Oversteegen.

From the age of 14, she would seduce collaborators and SS men, take them into the woods and shoot them. Seems worthy of further research.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuT_Wd7-kq4

If anyone fancies something lighter than the detailed non-fiction stuff you all seem to like so much, I can thoroughly recommend two books by Jonas Jonasson:

"The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden"

and

"Hitman Anders and the Meaning of it All"

both written in an unusual but very engaging style, and properly madcap funny in a way I've not really come across since Tom Sharpe.

I'm currently on the latest John Rebus novel "In a House of Lies" which is well up to Ian Rankin's high standard.

I enjoyed many Tom Sharpe novels.

Riotous assembly and Indecent exposure were both works of genius (and also made Sharpe Persona Non Grata in South Africa).