Damn this interminable gestation period - will it never end? :)
Ah, I shouldn't moan. It's week 38 now, Chris is 'full term' - this means that the baby is fully baked, but we have to leave him to stand for a bit before we can have him. It's a bit frustrating knowing he could turn up any day now, but not knowing when. Not too scared yet. We'll leave that until he arrives - I'm sure when he's lying there looking at me expecting me to look after him, that'll be when the fear'll hit.
So what have I been up to? Well, last Thursday, I spent the day in an office at Canary Wharf overlooking the Thames - turns out I should have spent less time scribbling on whiteboards and more time looking out for whales floating by. We went all the way to the Azores to go looking for whales a couple of years ago - then there I am sat in an office and one goes by the window and I miss it - what're the chances, eh?
Been working down the stack of books I got at Christmas, although before I could get into those I had to finish re-reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which proved even more satisfying on the second time through, although I almost find myself wishing he hadn't (spoiler whited out - select to read)bolted on the epilogue of scenes that tie up his characters' stories so neatly (although you've got to be happy for Jack and Eliza, you have to realise that without the epilogue, the story still works, though it has a very different character...). It's just so un-Stephensonny. Anyway, from the books I've tackled so far, conclusions:
- Terry Pratchett's Thud!
- Represents an unwelcome return to deus ex machina endings and recycled jokes after a promising sequence of more grown-up books. Find myself thinking Terry has some interesting ideas but that the weight of Discworld paraphernalia is drowning them - stories like Monstrous Regiment and Night Watch would have been better served without the sprinkling of trolls and dwarves...
- Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered The World
- Sadly not quite what I'd expected, this book claims to be a defense of enlightenment values from unreason, but in reality is woolly, picking its targets seemingly at random, based more on ad hominem and straw-man attacks than rationalist empirical argument. Instead of tackling the roots of irrationality, the author devotes much effort to attacking 'the sort of people who believe X'. Disappointing.
- Francis Spufford's The Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin
- This, on the other hand, is a wonderful, respectful, modest account of the great but understated achievements of post-war British engineering. With the exception of Concorde, all the chapters are somewhat unexpected in the topics they cover - I was deeply impressed to find chapter 3 covered the pioneering work of eight-bit home computer programmers like David Braben. The range of material, the quality of the narration, and the technical detail all contribute to a really satisfying read.
- Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled
- Simply a fantastic lesson in poetic metre and form. It won't make you a poet, but it will finally at least answer the question that has, if you are at all like me, plagued you since school days: "is there actually any more to this poetry stuff than sticking in a linebreak every few syllables?"
- Marcus Berkmann's Fatherhood: The Truth
- Yes, THAT Marcus Berkmann. Or at least, that's where I know him from. You may instead know him from such periodicals as The Daily Mail or Private Eye - there is no accounting for taste. But with a cast-iron Spectrum geek pedigree to overcome the Daily Mailness, how could I not buy his book on fatherhood? Turns out it's a pretty good book, actually, although I'll only really be able to judge it on its true merits in a few months time...
... on which note, I need to go and check on a bump. Will try to post again before it all kicks off, but if you don't hear from me for a while, i'll probably have quite a good excuse.