Lockdown and a couple of long Bank Holiday weekends has allowed me to catch up on some reading. It's been a mix of rereading old favourites and trying out some new material.
I read a lot of science fiction and have done since I was a teenager. I started out on the books I could find in the local library, children's Science Fiction and once I had read everything the children's section had to offer I moved onto the adult shelves. Some of the children's science fiction was complete tosh, more fantasy than science others were more rooted in actual physics. After that I moved onto adult SF with paperback reprints of the greats of the post war science fiction scene Clarke, Heinlein Poul Andersen Asimov and their contemporaries mixed with the newer writers of the late sixties onwards like Larry Niven.
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| He didn't just write Biggles! (by the way this is tosh!) |
That gave me a taste for slightly harder edged SF with at least some connection to actual science although I do like a good page turner in the tradition of 'Space Opera' stories from the golden age. I am currently working my way through the Expanse series. I have enjoyed the Amazon TV version and as I will probably have to wait another year for the next series thought I should try the books. They came well recommended and so far they haven't failed to keep me turning pages (well actually scrolling through screens).
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| Well worth a read especially if you enjoyed the TV version |
My other current reading is a new set of rules, well new to me anyway. 'Dahlgren and Columbiad' by David Manley. These are quick play Naval rules for the Ironclad era 1860 to 1885. I had been toying with doing ACW ironclads for a while and Jim Jackman's excellent blog 'Jims Wargames Workbench' tipped me over the edge. His blog can be found here
http://jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.com/ .
The rules look really easy to use and are simple to read through so I suspect that I will be buying some teeny tiny ironclads from Tumbling Dice in the very near future.
So that's it for this post Remember stay safe and be alert, as the man said ...'We need lerts'
Post script - I have sent Tumbling Dice an order for the forces for the Monitor v Virginia fight (for both days so it includes some smaller ships too) plus the ironclads for the Pacific war of 1879 between Chile, Bolivia and Peru. Should be easy to paint they are in 1/2400th scale!
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