Not at all my favourite of the Slough House books.
Still, the humour and banter of Jackson Lamb alone makes it worth reading.
Roderick Ho is entertaining, as well.
One of the regulars is kidnapped. And it all goes wrong after that. 😀
This is the Mick Herron’s third novel in the Slough House series. …
In addition to the inhabitants of Slough House, the main characters are Dame Ingrid Tearney, the head of the service, and Diana – ‘Lady Di’ – Taverner, who wants to be head of the service. The two women clearly loathe each other – a fact that Herron conveys superbly by having them behave towards each other with a studied politeness.
There is somebody else who wants to run the intelligence service – Peter Judd, the Home Secretary, within whose department the intelligence service is included. He wants to control it as part of his career plan to become Prime Minister. There is a deliberate similarity to the popular side of Boris Johnson in his portrayal. …
I’ve never been to Pakistan. But am keen to go as there is terrific hiking in the Himalaya.
I read this excellent book as research.
Sadly, in terms of progress, India has done far better since Partition .
The invasion in 1979 by the Soviet Union was a huge setback, of course.
Declan Walsh is an Irish author and journalist who is the Chief Africa Correspondent for The New York Times.
Walsh was expelled from Pakistan in May 2013—an experience he wrote about in his 2020 book The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State—but continued covering the country from London.
The subtitle of the book is Dispatches from a Divided Nation and the author criss-crosses those political, religious, ethnic and generational fault lines, assembling a portrait of the vast country of 220 million people through his travels and the lives of the nine compelling protagonists.
Walsh is a wonderful writer, with a gift for sketching an impression of a place, time and ambience with a few brief lines. …
What also shines through is the relish with which Walsh throws himself into the far corners of Pakistan, into crowds, celebrations and rites, with a drive born of fascination with the land and its people. …
“Above all, Pakistanis are survivors. Yet a country, like a person, may only have nine lives. Rather than fate to overtake them, some of the people I met in the Insha’Allah nation took matters into their own hands…”
Cory Doctorow is one of the most respected Tech pundits. Super smart. Incredibly well spoken.
Too smart for school. Though he attended 4 universities — he never got a degree. 😀
His novel called Red Team Blues (April 2023) is a financial thriller about cybersecurity.
Martin Hench is an entertaining character. 67-years-old. Steeped in Silicon Valley. In this book, Martin makes $300 million in just a few days. Then ends up penniless and homeless in the tent cities of San Francisco.
The story is merely a vehicle for Cory to reflect on the current state of technology and politics. I learned a lot.
Though Kingsolver lives in southern Appalachia, I can’t fathom how effectively she puts herself into the mind of the boy — Demon Copperhead. It’s a coming of age story.
Ground zero of the opium epidemic. Demon is born to a drug-using teenage single mother in a trailer in Lee County, Virginia.
Since his mother is in and out of rehab, Demon is partly raised by the sprawling, warm-hearted Peggot clan.
Almost everyone in this dirt poor place is drastically hurt by the Sackler family’s killer drug OxyContin.
“I don’t know a single person my age that’s not taking pills,” Demon says at one point.
The Sacklers paid a $6 billion settlement to avoidcivil lawsuits. It’s fair to call them killers.
I listened to the audio book. Recommended, as the reader has the right accent and tone of voice.
Ultimately, I had to quit after day 3 because of illness.
Drinking from the same hoses and standing pipes as every other cyclist, I suffered some sort of stomach problem. Diarrhea. Threw up on my shoes, at one point.
Didn’t eat for about 36 hours.
BUT if not sick I might have still quit after Siena. Completing about 190km of the 472 total.
For one thing, the afternoon lightning storms were terrifying. Even the most experienced riders hunker down in lightning. Two were killed in Tuscany as I post — both hit by falling trees.
The rain turned some trails into impassable mud baths. … Though it did soften up some other trails.
My bike is excellent for normal bikepacking — but the Tuscany Trail was far more technical than I’d expected. A mountain bike with very little weight attached is what most experience riders were rocking.
I was envious of the electric mountain bikes.
My bike was the 2nd most inappropriate rig. Worse was a 2-person tandem. Husband and wife. I wished them luck.
I was cycling with ALL my gear for a months long trip.
On one of the many downhill, rocky trails a screw came loose on my front pannier rack. So my front saddle bags were rocking side-to-side.
In Siena I took as much off the bike as possible (see photo below) and went to find luggage storage.
IF you Google “siena luggage storage” you’ll find a wealth of options.
All lies. In Siena there are only tobacco shops who hold a few bags as side income. And they only open randomly. Not Sundays. … And this was Sunday.
WHY doesn’t Siena have 24-hour lockers like most Italian tourist cities.
My theory since age-17 is that Italy is hopeless for tourists.
Nothing works. Nothing is open when you need it.
A long history of government inefficiency and corruption makes it this way.
Note that Germany and Switzerland next door are two of the most efficient nations.
There are no real enforced rules in Italy. Yet every time a tourist turns around somebody is yelling at you for violating an unnecessary rule. Yeesh.
When tourists complain, it’s explained that Italians don’t care about entrepreneurship nor efficiency because they value lifestyle over money. I don’t buy it.
Chain-smoking and sipping tiny espressos is not a healthy lifestyle.
I’d definitely return to Tuscany for cycling. But not likely the most famous ride ➙ the Tuscany Trail.
For one thing, it’s mainly a ca$h grab by organizers. They spend very little and pocket over 100 € / person. Normally capped at 3000, in 2023 they went up to about 4700 bikes. Too many for these trails and small towns.
Better, for example. is the Ganza Gravel event. October is much better weather than June. Cyclists have 3-4 different routes to choose from. Folks get together for meals in the evenings. There might even be a food festival at the end.
For those who are not really cyclists, the supported electric bike tours looked very good to me. Not inexpensive.
As I was going to be out of town on Alberta election day — May 29, 2023 — I voted by mail. Early.
And It was easy to vote by mail. I could write in the candidate running in my riding, or the Party.
I was voting against the unelected premier Danielle Smith as she’s untrustworthy and a rightwing whacko. The NDP is the only alternative that MIGHT form the next government so I voted for Rachel Notley.
IF unelected whacko Danielle Smith manages to lose in historically conservative Alberta, she’ll certainly claim a BIG LIE as she’s a fan of Trump and DeSantis.
I feel the GOP USA has only one overriding goal ➙ make the rich, richer.
To that end they don’t want to improve education, health care, nor raise the minimum wage.
Greedy Americans are why there’s so much poverty in the most affluent nation of the world.
Green River, Utah
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of Evicted, Matthew Desmond, reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy.
Why?
Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? …
The upper looks good. And is not all that uncomfortable. It does require some concentration to speak clearly. And I do have to eat … differently.
The bottom is larger and much less comfortable. I’m hoping it gets better seated over time. The denturist made some adjustments after a couple of weeks. That has helped. Some.
I’ll go back again in 6 months.
My remaining REAL bottom teeth are in rough shape, as well. I’ll probably have to do something with them in the next couple of years.
One downside with dentures is that you must remove and clean them at night. Put them back in place in the morning.
Rick McCharles 