Hey, if you like books.....

For a long time the day job took all my energy from me, when I wasn't drawing and painting. These days I am reading a lot more because I get sent advance copies to review on GoodReads and Amazon and the like, though in a lot of cases these are pot boilers rather than Great Literature. I have also been ordering some non fiction too though

No worries! Deckard's attitude to the Toad was kind of a transformation for Deckard for me. He found meaning in Mercer's reverence for the natural world and at the same time he had found empathy for the synthetic world because he kept it regardless of the outcome. He sort of found peace with the two aspects of sentience in that part. Out of all the fantastic things that happen in the book he finds his epiphany in something that we would take for granted. 

I caught up a little bit... then attended university at 28, where the habit of reading took hold.  For many years, in my 30s and 40s, I wouldn't be seen without a book.  The book habit for me then was like the mobile phone habit with many people now.  I would read walking down the street, on the bus, in the bath - everywhere.  That habit died in me when I had my last breakdown, in 2010.  It's only recently started to come back again... very slowly and gradually, by going back to tried and trusted favourites.  It's more of a struggle now, though.  I think my attention span - always very low - has fizzled out.  I almost have to force myself to sit and read.

Your list of reading sounds impressive though

I'm '59 vintage, too.  Robert Smith is 3 weeks my senior!  Morrissey was born the day after I was.  Andrew Eldritch is in there as well.  He wrote a fine song entitled '1959' - on the 'Floodland' album.

I didn't fail a single exam at school.

That's my spin on the fact that I didn't sit any!

The more I think about those times now, the more I wonder how on earth I managed to get through 10 years of schooling (I left - or rather, I stopped going - at 15) and never learn a thing.  I don't exaggerate.  I could read and write when I started.  That was about as far as I got.  The rest is a blank.  I didn't read a serious book until I was 26.

I know. Whether or not he did it as part of his French exams I don't know but he is 1959 vintage, so he could have.

Was Black Roses written by the boyfriend of the girl who was murdered, Sophie Lancaster?

John Cleland...?

Smith was directly influenced by his reading of 'L'Etranger' in the writing of 'Killing an Arab'.

(titter!)

There seems to be a rather zealous editor. I wonder what will happen to aunt Fanny......

“The best way to treat obstacles is to use them as stepping-stones. Laugh at them, tread on them, and let them lead you to something better.”
― Enid Blyton, Mr Galliano's Circus

poor ***.. always represented as a series of asterisks .

'Oh no,' howled Anna. ' George, stop Timmy from doing all that dreadful sniffing. I think he's found another dead body!'

'Right' said Julian, firmly taking charge. 'George, go and take Anna to the cloakroom. She's gone such a funny green colour. ***, we'll guard the body until the police come.' 

'But who will run and dial 999?' demanded *** excitedly, his eyes shining. 'What a spiffing adventure! I've never seen dead bodies before. We'll have to get to the bottom of it!'

'Woof!' barked Timmy. And sure enough, the children could see a dead lady's white hand poking out from under a dense pile of school books. Dear oh dear oh dear. 

Ok had a bit of a doh moment there. He thought it was real but his wife then found the control panel. I thought it pointed at a profound pessimism, in terms of discerning any difference between the real and the ersatz

Thank you for confirming my suspicions about the goat but the toad had a control panel. It was a real synthetic though. Are synthetics real? That brings us back to the start.

Hopefully Attenborough's dead or attitudes have changed before he gives that voiceover! It did bring a smile to my face though!

Murder and ginger beer all the way,,, poor Timmy

And I must say I wonder if it is all humans who are like that? Or just so-called humans from industrially developed cultures?

Remember in the states, Australia and New Zealand, the so-called called savages in fact had a far more evolved understanding of our place within Nature, that we are part of it, than the newly-arrived Europeans did. It was not they that overfished the seas, created polluting factories, over farmed the land, drive the buffalo into near extinction?

The mentality that allows humans to create machines, factories, to keys, computers alongside robots may be what is also behind that inability to Ree that we are also so good at cutting off the branch we are sitting in. There is s kind of of a myopia there.

I am not saying that I would rather live in a nomadic tribe in a teepee necessarily as slavish adherence to custom can mean horrors like FGM too. 

Something is very wrong with s species though if it could justify having a nuclear war and push all other life into extinction beyondbtgat anywaylet alone with all the inequality that exists. 

Actually the other androids are spiteful and cruel too. The fugitive Pris is more than happy to bait the chickenhearted Isidore once she realises he is a retard, thanks to the radiation. 

I thought the pod people demonstrate better what it might mean to be less than human. In Invasion of the Body snatchers.