Test your navigation skills

This week's New Scientist has a feature by Chris Berdik called Lost: "Birds, rats and hamsters are able to find their way around with consumate ease. So how come we can't navigate our way out of a paper bag?"

This is a very interesting article, especially if you've ever struggled to find your car in a car park. It features a report on "developmental topographical disorientation" as identified by Giuseppe Iaria of the University of Calgary and Jason Barton at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

You can test your own skills in association with their study here.

Richard Bach

I read three Richard Bach books over the weekend. Thanks to David for lending me these and other short books as I try to reach my target (less than 2 months to go!)

I didn't take to Mr Bach's works though, in fact I thought it was a lot of hippy nonsense. I would say it was well-meaning hippy nonsense, but in The Reluctant Messiah particularly there is a lot about how you only allow things to happen that you want to happen. This seems to be blaming people for their own misfortunes (which may be true some of the time but certainly isn't all of the time). It makes Mr Bach seem rather smug and uncaring, which is not how he planned to come across I'm sure. The Reluctant Messiah is also full of "meaningful" quotes which invariably made me think of that 60s/70s saying:

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead.
Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Just walk beside me, and be my friend". *

Bleurrgh!

Here's an antidote from Mr F:

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead.
Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Don't walk beside me either; in fact, just b*gger off and leave me alone".

Ah, that feels better.


*I looked at quote sites and they variously attribute this to Albert Camus and to Tennyson ...

which is amusingly unlikely.

Day 309; Book 299

The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan

Small but perfectly dark in tone, The Cement Garden is a bit of a guilty pleasure. Not because it's not beautifully written, but because you will find yourself laughing out loud at some outrageous situations, and then looking around shiftily: "Did I really laugh at that?" It's a tragedy too, and a lesson in how keeping yourself to yourself can be a Very Bad Thing.

Day 306; book 296

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

This is skillfully and poetically written, but then I'm not actually looking for poetry when I read prose. Not too much plot either. I really like more to HAPPEN when I'm reading a book*.

I also re-read The Virgin and the Gypsy by D H Lawrence. There's the usual Lawrentian guff about feelings (for feelings, read sex). There's a Freudian candlestick. There's also an hilariously-agonising description of the tedium of a never-ending evening en famille at the rectory. The book is worth reading for that alone (I don't usually associate Lawrence with hilarity).

Just edited to add: to be fair, the Napoleonic Wars happen, and we march on Moscow ... perhaps I should have said I prefer a book where the plot is more complex.


Day 305; book 295

New blog on my reading list

Scroll down on the left to find the hilarious Craftastrophe where people make things and you really wish they hadn't.

Wandering: Notes and Sketches by Hermann Hesse

Kind of slow and kind of boring, but also pleasantly soporific. However, don't rush out to buy it.

Day 303; Book 293

American Noir

Over the weekend I read 3 short books from 1930s America. They certainly were dark, but the authors managed to make you sympathise with the criminal main characters. The prose was very readable and modern, especially compared with a 1940s noir novel which I started but didn't make any progress with. It was just too self-consciously clever but these 3 I recommend:

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson

The last is the most political but is also an absorbing modern tragedy. They Shoot Horses is set in one of those Depression-era marathon dances.

I finished up by reading a science-fiction novel* (I know, I practically read it by accident). The original concept was very reminiscent of the start of the tv programme Lost, although this book predates by series by 30+ years. It really grabbed you at the start but then fizzled out a bit ...

*forgot to say that it was Seahorse in the Sky by Edmund Cooper
Day 302; Book 292