Long bus rides in traffic and lots of waiting for late buses means another review, shortly after the other one.

The book is “Or is That Just Me?” by Richard Hammond. Yes Richard Hammond of Top Gear fame. I had previously read one of his books being “On the Edge” which follows his life threatening car crash a number of years ago and his road to recovery. That was a pretty sombre book looking at his life and the crash and how it affected all of those around him. This is definately a more light hearted book. Filled with lots more humour and random thoughts at times. The randomness of this book is actually kind of good.

“Or is That Just Me?” is all about Richard’s road to his 40th Birthday. All the big events (which for some reason or other tended to involve a hospital stay) leading up to his dreaded turn to be the big Four Zero. I am a long way off this mark myself but it did kind of make me think a few times “why am I actually scared of that age?” The book seemingly jumps from one tangent to the next and you can get lost easily. It is as though he is writing his own thoughts down and if something pops into his head, he just keeps writing it down. Kind of makes for interesting reading actually, as though he is actually talking to you. I would love to hear this book as an audio book with Hammond actually narrating it. Would probably be hilarious.

Some very good tales and a great light hearted read. Something I need right now after coming up to a rough time of the year!

It’s been a while since my last review but they won’t end that easily.

This book is Joint Force Harrier by Commander Ade Orchard RN.   As the title suggests this book is about the Harrier. Unlike my last book on the Harrier this one is from the British perspective, specifically the Royal Navy.

A bit of background though. The Harrier originally designed by Hawker Siddely had two main variants the “Sea Harrier” for the Royal Navy and the GR variants for the Royal Air Force. Eventually the Sea Harrier was decommissioned and both services now use one of the GR Variants (this book refers specifically to the GR7).

The book is about (and written by) the CO of 800 NAS (Naval Air Squadron) the first dedicated Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm squadron to fly the GR7 in combat and their 4 month deployment to Afghanistan. During those 4 months they dropped more bombs and weapons than the RAF in the deployment prior to them.

It’s good to get a different perspective on the war compared to my last Harrier book. The differences between the US and British Harrier forces seems so far apart let alone between the RN and RAF. The book has some good details about the Harrier itself about how the pilots would deal with certain situations, how to start up and things like that, something the last book didn’t really cover.

It also has the sort of things you would expect, the fact that most of the pilots act like children (but not as bad as the American’s it seems). But it does seem good to have it from a British perspective who obviously operation differently.

Highly recommend this book for someone looking for a different take on the Air War in Afghanistan, especially if you want to read about Close Air Support for the troops.

Well this was the lamest book I have read lately

The book is A Food Lover’s Treasury by Julie Rugg & Lynda Murphy. But that’s not who really wrote it. This book was crap. But i still read it, cause i bought it (thankfully I think it only cost $1 or $2 at a Second hand book stall). The book was just flat out crap. I thought it would be someones story about eating etc but no. Far off it.

What it really is, is excerpts from other peoples books on food. Mainly british books from the 1800s its just this random collection of crap.

Do Not Read.

It’s good to be back to real books for a while

This time the book is Immediate Response by Major Mark Hammond. This is an #avgeek book without a doubt. It follows Mark Hammond a Major in the Royal Marines (from the UK) who flies CH-47 Chinnoks on exchange with the Royal Air Force.

This is truly the kind of book I like, full of stories of bravery, hardship but most of all it shows the real side of the pilots out there in the world. It tells the truth of the situation.

Pilots have egos. They need them to do what they do and stay good at it. What this does is turn Adult males into children at times. Dirty jokes, bad language, stupid pranks. It’s all there, he doesn’t lie about it. He doesn’t disguise it. The truth about the way the pilots and crew act amke this book so much better.

The main thing about the book is it gives a different perspective to the Afghanistan conflict. The Chinook pilots rotate in and out for 2 months every 6 months so much shorter than I thought but when they are called on at any moment to fly in and pick up a wounded soldier, I guess it’s more appropriate than spending 6-8 months in Afghanistan flying the whole time, it probably keeps the pilots more “fresh”.

The one thing that it does show is also the humility of some of these pilots. The author received a DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) for his efforts on one particular day flying 3 times in and out of battle to pick people up. Yet he didn’t see the situation as something that merited the award. He was more wanting to give it to the other crew who he thought deserved it more. Is this the other side of the pilots ego? When they know they have done something amazing to other people, is it just “another day in the office” to them?

I truly did enjoy this book and suggest everyone have a read of it.

The last book from my classics list for a while, back to Avgeek books now

The book is “The Adventure of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain. Something that i am sure most people would of red as a child or in school. I am pretty sure I had read this as a child, but i really can’t tell if I did or not. The book follows the adventures of Tom Sawyer and what is seemingly his actions as a young school boy.

I don’t know what it is about this book but it just confuses me. Sure it was written based on the american south in the late 1800s. But I can’t quite work out if it is the way it is written or I just don’t understand it but it confused the heck out of me. The text, the descriptions of certain things just felt off. But then I don’t know how life was back then. To be honest it was a bit confusing and in some cases quite boring.

The book jumps around quite a bit and it describes him “smoking and drinking” but I swear that he would be like 7 or 8 years old? If that is true, did people really let their children do that back then? So confusing!!!! Maybe I am just to modern or something but yeah, that threw me for a loop at least.

I ticked Tom Sawyer off the list, now to just read Huckleberry Finn at some stage which is the other book that goes with this one (both characters appear in both books apparently).

Managed to tick another book off my classics list.

This time it is War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. This is a classic book if there ever was one. Dating way way back it is something you should probably have read on school, I just never did.

The book surprised me in a number of ways. First off let me say that if you have seen any movie in the past about War of the Worlds (and I’m not just talking about the Tom Cruise crap fest from a few years ago) you have no idea what the book is like. Sure the overall gist is the same, Martians invade earth,  but that’s it. Everything is had seen to this point always lead me to believe it was about Martians landing in the USA. Nope, in the book its actually London. That was the first shock. The second was just how the book flowed. It was written kind of like a biography almost (similar to Moby Dick) and didn’t at all feel like a piece of fiction. It felt more like a historical piece.

Overall the book was good, not to short, not to long. Not boring yet not overly thrilling. Definitely makes me now want to see one of the movies and judge it while ripping it to shreds thinking “you butchered it”, but I know why the movies were changed so much from the book, you would be bored sitting in a theater watching a direct copy of that book in movie format. You would demand your money back so quickly.

The book was a read I would recommend if you have the time, pretty sure you should find it out there on the free lists. It should help kill some time.

Finished a book from my classics list today

The book is the classic tale of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. This book has been around for quite some time as it was written in 1851 so truly one of the oldest books I have ever read (i think the bible is the oldest, if that counts). The book is a tale of adventure on the open sea. It is the epic story of Man vs Beast as Captain Ahab takes on the White Whale, Moby Dick.

However this isn’t exactly how I thought it was going to be. The book was definately a bit more old fashioned and written in that old style that is a little bit hard to follow at times (but I coped) and it jumped around a lot going here and there so it was a little tough to follow sometimes. The writing was definately not always easy to follow and at times i was actually a little bored as it explained a lot of things about whales, not really a fictional tale and felt more like a non fiction story of someones report on whaling in the 1850s.

Either way the book was definately something to tick off my Classics list and it was not all that bad! I can’t really complain at all.

Not the most appropriate of titles but for this book, but why would I expect anything different from this author.

The book is Sloppy Seconds by Tucker Max. Yes another Tucker Max book but this is his last book.

This time it’s only a very short book so that means a short review.  To be honest I wasn’t going to do a review but I figured I have nothing else to do on the bus ride to work.

This book as the title eludes to is pretty much the leftover bits and pieces that never made it to the other books. But it starts off with a number of stories from previous books and in the beginning I almost stopped reading it because if it was just all repeats, why bother? Thankfully it wasn’t and I stuck it out.

The stories in this book are actually a little bit more shorter and some of them don’t hold as much allure as the ones in the main books, which is probably why they were left out in the first place.

A short book,  makes for quick reading but the one thing this book has going for it is that it is free. Yes free. The book is intended as a gift to the fans and hence is free on Amazon. So anyone with a Kindle account can have it… Definitely worth the cost, even if you’re bored and nothing better to read, I mean seriously why wouldn’t you… what have you got to lose.