Happy Birthday: Carroll Hall Shelby (January 11, 1923 – May 10, 2012) was an American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur.

Best known as a designer for his involvement with the AC Cobra and Mustang for Ford Motor Company, he also developed the Ford GT40 with racing legend Ken Miles, the car that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969. As of 2024, it remains the only American-built car to win at Le Mans. His and Miles's efforts were dramatized in the 2019 Oscar-winning film Ford v Ferrari.

As a driver, he was a co-driver in winning the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans driving an Aston Martin DBR1 with Roy Salvadori. He also won the 1960 Sports Car Club of America United States Auto Club Road Racing Sports Car Championship in 1960 by winning the round 1 race at Riverside International Raceway driving a Maserati Tipo 61 "Birdcage", and winning round 2 at Continental Divide Raceways driving a Chevrolet Scarab Mark II.

As an entrepreneur he established Shelby American in 1962 to manufacture and market performance vehicles. His autobiography, The Carroll Shelby Story, was published in 1967.

This is ONE (of the many) things that confuses me about US Health insurance - why its tied to a job. Surely it'd be better, more efficient and more logical for it to be tied to the individual. After all they pay for it so where is the job involved? Can any of my American readers explain it to me?

Just Finished Reading: This is Your Mind on Plants – Opium – Caffeine – Mescaline by Michael Pollan (FP: 2021) [247pp] 

This was another of those books that turned out to be not what I expected. Much like my previous book, I was expecting a somewhat scientific discussion about what various drugs/substances did to the human brain and contrasting the effects of two heavily regulated/illegal substances with the all too common one (caffeine!). 

That wasn’t what I got, though I was far from disappointed with the result. Logically the book was split into three sections – one on each ‘drug’. The first was more than a little odd. Essentially it was an upgraded version of an article the author had produced some years previously for Harper's Magazine about the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ and how, as part of that ‘conflict’ the US Government was trying to quietly eliminate the Poppy from American gardens. Fuelled by a misinformation campaign – asserting that opium poppies could not be grown in the US (they can) or that ‘normal’ poppies don’t produce opium (they do in varying quantities) and even prosecuting people who grow colourful flowers in their gardens not realising that they ‘could’ be used for opium production. The author also contrasted this failing war (and all of the ridiculous side effects of controlling seed catalogue contents) with the opioid crisis in no small part caused by ‘legitimate’ drug companies feeding doctors and patients false information about their products. Interesting stuff. The last chapter was broadly similar where the author looked at the strange history of mescaline use in the US and the fight by Native Americans to have access to it for their religious ceremonies. Again, very interesting stuff especially when the author and his wife tried mescaline during such a ceremony. 

As I haven’t taken (nor plan on taking) either substance, the section on caffeine was the most relatable. Rather than taking in the substance, something most of us do on a daily basis, the author tried to wean himself off coffee or tea for a whole three months – something I certainly couldn’t contemplate. The results were VERY interesting to say the least and even more so when he got back on the wagon with some expresso...! His speculation on the effects of coffee (and later tea) on 17th century Western civilisation certainly need more investigation, so I’ll be following up on that. One thing that did make me laugh was about the physical health benefits of the growing popularity of coffee houses. As they necessarily had to boil water to produce the brew, it meant that any bugs contained therein were effectively killed. So, largely risk-free mental stimulation. A win-win I think.  

I enjoyed this quite a lot and am looking forward to reading more from the author. He has a very cozy style and you feel that you’re learning things with almost no effort (I approve!). A fun quick read that will probably make you look at your morning coffee, as well as poppies and cacti, in a slightly different way. Recommended for an off-the-wall read.

The thing I really liked about WfH was the ability to play my music all day............

Just Couldn’t Finished Reading: This is Your Brain on Music – Understanding a Human Obsession by Daniel Levitin (FP: 2006) [267pp] 

This was quite the disappointment. I’m not 100% sure just how long this had been languishing in one of my book piles but I was looking forward to finally reading it. Things did not start well as the author spent multiple pages defining various musical terms – melody, tempo, pitch etc. - to the point where I was lost or unsure about what anything meant. I think it would have been much better to sprinkle the explanations throughout the text, even if he had to repeat himself from time to time. What was sprinkled through the first part of the book was some interesting observations and speculations but, I found, too few and too widely spaced. 

Once we moved out of musical definitions and explanations things did improve but then, I think, we hit another issue – the age of the book. At 18 years old, despite the advances made in the understanding of the human brain in the preceding years, it was really showing its age. Although the author didn’t say so specifically it did seem that the fMRI scanner used in some of the work cited was still fairly new technology. On top of that many of the ideas used were at least somewhat speculative. I couldn’t help but wonder what, in the following 18 years of investigation, had been proven to be correct – or wrong. 

Listening to music has always been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. First on the radio (and TV) and later on records, cassettes and ultimately CDs. One of the things that has long intrigued me is why I like certain music but not others. I’m sure part of that it just what I grew up hearing, which is understandable. I also imagine that at least some of the reason why I like certain types of music is an accident of how my brain is wired. The author certainly hints at this ‘answer’ to my question but what I would love to know is why my brain LOVED a piece of classical music the moment it heard it for the first time. What’s all THAT about? Is it the melody, the tempo, the pitch? It's a good question. Maybe a more modern book might be able to answer it? I did give it a good ‘go’ – 147pages if memory serves – but it just wasn’t for me.  

[Oh, and only my 2nd review of the year and already my 1st DNF. I do hope that’s not a sign for what’s coming this year....!]   

 

The Best Books of 2024. 

So, here we are at last in the very early days (or would that be daze) of 2025. Which means, naturally Janus-like we get to look both back and forward. This week I’ll be looking back to the best reads of 2024 and next Saturday I’ll look forward to my ‘plans’ for 2025. As usual the best of the best are in BOLD. I reviewed 103 books in ‘24 with a surprising 2 DNF’s. So... 

Fiction: 

1066 Turned Upside Down by Various Authors 

Surfeit of Suspects by George Bellairs 

Death in the Tunnel by Miles Burton 

The Railway Detective by Edward Marston 

4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie 

Blood on the Tracks – Railway Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards 

The Humans by Matt Haig 

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

The Late Monsieur Gallet by Georges Simenon 

Play the Red Queen by Juris Jurjevics 

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi 

The Testimony of Alys Twist by Suzannah Dunn 

The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuin 

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson 

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene 

The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa   

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien 

The Manningtree Witches by A K Blakemore 

Non-Fiction: 

The Book of Humans – A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War and the Evolution of Us by Adam Rutherford 

Nature’s Mutiny – How the Little Ice Age Transformed the West and Shaped the Present by Philipp Blom 

The Blood of Free Men – The Liberation of Paris, 1944 by Michael Neiberg 

Spying on Whales – The Past, Present and Future of the World’s Largest Animals by Nick Pyenson 

How to Speak Whale – A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication by Tom Mustill 

Divided – Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls by Tim Marshall 

Red Summer – The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America by Cameron McWhirter 

Persians – The Age of the Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones 

The Undivided Past – History Beyond our Differences by David Cannadine 

Atoms and Ashes – From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima by Serhii Plokhy 

Fracture – Life and Culture in the West 1918-1938 by Philipp Blom 

How to Make the World Add Up – Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers by Tim Harford 

The Assassination of the Archduke – Sarajevo 1914 and the Murder That Changed the World by Greg King and Sue Woolmans 

The Trigger – The Hunt for Gavrilo Princip: The Assassin who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher 

July 1914 – Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin 

Islands of Abandonment – Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn 

Shadowlands – A Journey Through Lost Britain by Matthew Green 

Napoleon in Egypt by Paul Strathern 

Echolands – A Journey in Search of Boudica by Duncan Mackay 

The Little Book of Hygge – The Danish Way to Live Well by Meik Wiking 

Pale Rider – The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney 

The Plague Year – America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright 

Stopping the Next Pandemic – How Covid-19 Can Help Us Save Humanity by Debora MacKenzie 

The Unthinkable – Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why by Amanda Ripley 

I, Warbot – The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict by Kenneth Payne 

Am I Normal? - The 200-Year Search for Normal People (And Why They Don’t Exist) by Sarah Chaney 

Priests De La Resistance! - The Loose Cannons Who Fought Fascism in the 20th Century by Fergus Butler-Gallie 

WOW! Did I have a GOOD reading year in 2024....! I did read a LOT of classic novels so quite a few have showed up here. Every year I become more and more impressed by the Classics, although in 2025 I’ll be reading much less. I’m impressed by the spread of subject matter in my non-fiction and also impressed by the age spread throughout – 140 years, from 1883 to 2023. I expect that will continue next year (probably).

Happy Birthday: James Bond (January 4, 1900 – February 14, 1989) was an American ornithologist and expert on the birds of the Caribbean, having written the definitive book on the subject: Birds of the West Indies, first published in 1936. He served as a curator of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. His name was appropriated by writer Ian Fleming for his fictional British spy of the same name; the real Bond enjoyed knowing his name was being used this way, and references to him permeate the resulting media franchise.

Ian Fleming, who was a keen bird watcher living in Jamaica, was familiar with Bond's book, and chose the name of its author for the hero of Casino Royale in 1953, apparently because he wanted a name that sounded "as ordinary as possible". Fleming wrote to the real Bond's wife, "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born." He did not contact the real James Bond about using his name in the books, and Bond did not learn of Fleming's character until the early 1960s, when Fleming's James Bond books became popular in the U.S. In 1964 during Fleming's annual winter stay at Goldeneye in Jamaica, James Bond and his wife visited Fleming unexpectedly. In his novel Dr. No Fleming referenced Bond's work by basing a large ornithological sanctuary on Dr. No's island in the Bahamas. In 1964, Fleming gave Bond a first edition copy of You Only Live Twice signed, "To the real James Bond, from the thief of his identity". In December 2008 the book was put up for auction, eventually fetching $84,000 (£56,000).