A heavy seasonal cold/cough/lurgy spread over the last seven days has provided some additional time to catch up with reading, plus a look back at one I read a very long time ago.
The subject of this book is everywhere at the moment with various clips appearing on YouTube Shorts, Facebook/Instagram Reels to name a few places.
It’s an old book (published in 2016) however it’s a great story of just how much effort was required to get the space race going in the early days and how much it relied on ‘Human Computers‘ for accurate calculations.
It’s also a story of the iron will determination to succeed on a chosen career despite all the obstacles thrown at the main characters. It’s a great book; the film was also very good. But I don’t have the T-shirt!
I read this book a while ago but came across it last week while looking for something and it fell off a bookshelf; so, I had to have another look at it.
A great story that brings Hong Kong to life in the mind of the reader – well, it did in mine. I must have visited Hong Kong over 20 times during my lifetime and I never tired of it. Although I have not been there for some 20 years, I never tire of reading stories about the place.
Yes, it has changed and is no more the place I and many others remember. However, books like this bring back fond memories of a time gone by, never to return.
I cannot believe that it is 35 Years since I first read this book and it is still on my bookshelf!
Barbara Tuchmann has written some great books over her literary career, including The Zimmerman Telegram & Note’s from China to name a couple.
I mention this as I choose as part of my Waterstones Christmas gift card another of her books, this time The Guns of August – previously published in the UK as August 1914.
It’s another telling of the early months of WW1; having read several different interpretations of this period, I await with interest her telling of this disaster in the making.
Beasley's Place 