Eric Blair aka George Orwell
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| Basically a large part of my youth was spent reading. My grandmother (still going) helped run a charity shop and I inherited a huge collection of third hand books from my uncles | |||||||||||
| Right from the start I was hooked and because I lived in a wooden house with a thin felted roof on the side of a hilly river valley surrounded by woods I succumbed to the joys of Edit Blytons various mystery books. The first of these I read was "Spiggy holes" on one very stormy night with the wind howling and rain lashing on the timbers over head. Wrapped up in the warmth of my bed I was instantly addicted. I recommend you blow the dust off these and rescue them from your attic and have another go reading them as an adult, you will have missed their magic and may get a glimpse of the past. I must not forget to mention J.R.R.Tolkien and Captain W.E. Johns | |||||||||||
| His "Guides to Science Books 1& 2", lead me through a secondary education where teachers taught "Monkey see, Monkey do", but his words showed me how to see science in action in the everyday world around me. You just have to use your imagination | |||||||||||
| Around about 1979 I purchased a newly published comic called "Starlord" which later merged with a slightly older publication called "2000AD", which to this day (except for a gap of a year or two in boarding school) I still purchase and read with glee. But this introduced me to the pleasures of Science Fiction, which I read for most of my teens, and I'll still at it now. My backbone author was the late master Isaac Asimov, creator or the "Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series amongst with so many others. He was by education a biochemist and published many works in popular science. | |||||||||||
| I usually have several books on the go at once; a favourite of mine over the past few years is the author Terry Prachett. I can only hope that you too get to look at the world through a right angle as he does. Other current books I've on the go are related to the lives of the people involved in the first and second world wars and in particular in those men who served in the German U-boat service. I find myself at the stage where I need and want to understand why humanity causes such self imposed misery. I also read numerous books of a scientific nature. | |||||||||||
| I figure that if we left gods out of the equation and understood we have just one shot of this, that the legs we have through evolution, are for the express purpose of getting up off our asses, standing our own two feet and just getting on with things, the world could be a better place. Promises of a "hereafter" are just carrots on a stick, look over your shoulder and there's some bastard with a whip going places on your efforts. Think free to be free. The Universe is even more special if you understand how a simple blade of grass forms, grows, feeds, and dies. If you cannot see the "manufacturers tag" just enjoy the universe for being there anyway. | |||||||||||
| "On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time." Eric Blair aka George Orwell |
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| Venus image courtesy of STSCI & NASA STScI-PRC95-16 by L. Esposito | |||||||||||