Book Club

 I'd like to recommend a novel, and to tell you a little bit about it.

It's called "Just Stab Me Now" and for the most part it's a fantasy and romance story about a widowed noblewoman on a diplomatic mission to the court of a foreign queen. It's also a story about an office worker and part-time author who's writing the story you're reading. It's also a series of vignettes that take place entirely in the author's imagination as she "talks" to the characters while she's writing her book.

Despite the fact that the real author, Jill Bearup, has invented a whole new way of telling a story, it's not a masterwork of literature. What it is is great entertainment. It's a nice length, it's an easy pageturning read, and it's a whole lot of fun. There are two adventure stories that are thoroughly entertaining, there are two romance stories and one of them is genuinely heartwarming, and the way that the characters rebel against the author is laugh-out-loud funny.

I feel a bit bad for the author. She's come up with something as new and inventive as the epistolary novel, but I think it's one-and-done rather than the start of a whole new genre.

The best bit is that the author and the characters can talk about the tropes and forms of romantasy, but still use them or subvert them. I think it's both a love letter to and scathing criticism of romantasy genre fiction.

Richard "TLS" B

Escapology

 I have a reputation for getting into ridiculous situations. I swear that this one isn't real, just the product of a thought experiment: I'm wet and cold, wearing only swimming trunks and a climbing harness. I'm in a wheelie bin full of water that's balanced precariously on a plank. There's spilled water everywhere. I'm desperately trying to reach the jack handle of an engine hoist that's attached to my harness, to lift me vertically out of the wheelie bin.

I'm a bit worried about my weight, but I don't know what my target weight should be, so I'd like to know how much muscle and how much fat I'm carrying. I can weigh myself easily enough and measure my height, but I'd need to know my volume to work out my density. Obviously that would be done by submerging myself and measuring how much water is displaced. If I had a bath I could make a couple of marks on the side of it with wax pencil - one for the water level when I'm completely covered and another one when I'm out of it. Then it would simply be matter of counting how many buckets of water it takes to fill it back up to the top mark. I don't have a bath, nor waterproof pencil, nor goggles to see where I'm making the top mark when I'm underwater.

I do have a wheelie bin, and I'm pretty sure I could fit in it. It would seem to be much simpler to fill it to the brim, then get in it, and measure how much water was displaced. I couldn't sweep all the spilled water up off the garage floor well enough to measure it, but I could weigh the bin it before and after. My bathroom scales don't go up far enough to cope with a wheelie bin full of water, but that's easily dealt with. We'll put a scaffold plank on a paving stone at one end and the bathroom scales at the other. The wheelie bin will be on the plank 20% of the way from the stone to the scales. A little applied maths will tell of the actual weight.

The only problem that remains is getting in and out of the water filled wheelie bin without tipping it over and without getting stuck.

Richard "apparently a gym can do this more easily" B

Choice of Words

 There's an old saying in computer programming that the two really hard problems are naming things and cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors.

I think I've got a pretty good vocabulary, but I was drinking with a very skilled software engineer who has a superb vocabulary and he took the liberty of filling in the holes in mine.

I was telling a story about how awkward it was taking the phone number of a single pretty woman at the climbing gym who was less than half my age. I swear that we swapped numbers so that I could add her to a whatsapp group of people that climb after work on a Monday evening, not anything... ummm...

My friend instantly filled in the word "predatory".

Richard "how about unseemly" B

Rocky

I recently saw the film Project Hail Mary at the cinema. I'll let you know what I thought of it in a minute, but we have to go on a long detour first. To my shame I got caught up in the hype of commentators and critics saying how wonderful the film was and I saw it the week it opened.

In 1995 there was an album called Jagged Little Pill that generated the same amount of critical acclaim and excitement. You couldn't turn on the radio without hearing it, and everybody was saying how wonderful it was. I distinctly remember watching some music awards programme and there was one dissenting voice who said it was a good album, but nothing special. That in a few years time nobody would be saying it was particularly important. He was right. There have been plenty of good albums by a female singer song writer with something to say, the only thing different about this one was that it had swearing and funk rock bass playing.

My review of Project Hail Mary: It's a good film, you'd probably enjoy it. It's a long way from the best sci-fi film ever made.

I think what has happened is that cinema has been pretty mediocre for a while, and sci-fi has been completely overlooked in favour of franchises and superheroes. I don't think the critics and commentators would be praising P.H.M so wildly if it had come out in the same decade as, say, The Day The Earth Stood Still, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters, Alien, The Terminator, The Matrix, or Contact.

Richard "The Critic was Paul Gambaccini" B

Null

 There are lots of questions that seem like they would produce a simple yes or no answer, but in fact they don't.

I think I annoyed my brother a little bit by answering "yes" to "have you got a barometer?" and then, after quite a long conversation answering "no" to "have you got a serviceable barometer". However I stand by my first answer. I kept my late father's barometer for sentimental and historical reasons. While the needle does move a little bit, it's unreliable and wildly out of calibration.

If the answer to "have you still got dad's barometer" is "yes" then the answer to "have you got a barometer?" must also be "yes"

Richard "Do you still beat your wife?" B

OBD2

 I usually consider myself to be pretty good at faultfinding, but the evidence from this week doesn't back up that idea.

Pulling away or changing direction in my Fiat Panda started making a gurgling noise. My first thought was fuel, but nothing smelled of petrol, so that didn't seem likely. There must be rainwater getting in. No. Everything was about as dry/damp as it usually was. It can't have been hydraulic fluid because the clutch and brakes worked fine. There also isn't a pubble under the car. The coolant level is normal, so I was stumped. Battery Acid! The battery must be half empty and the engine bay will be corroding terribly. No, it was dusty and dry like usual.

The answer came when I tried to go rock climbing. I had left my gym bag in the back of the car and there was a half drunk bottle of water in it.

Richard "hydration" B