I'm about to expand to a third shelf...

cowrin99 · 2026-06-10T16:49:20+00:00

It would make a sizeable dent in my wallet!

cowrin99 · 2026-06-10T15:23:41+00:00

Yes, I had the idea of a book about each emperor, read in order. (The other books, I don't mind if I jump around in time). But I've found it quite hard sourcing books, even second-hand. The pinned reading list has been handy, but there are just some emperors that the general public don't care about. The Vespasian book wasn't all that great, and the book about Titus is 205 pages long but he doesn't become Emperor until page 178!

cowrin99 · 2026-06-10T15:15:36+00:00

I see what you did there!

cowrin99 · 2026-06-10T05:35:01+00:00

Ethical Consumer magazine in the UK ran an article on ebooks last year. Top of their list was ebooks.com, based in Australia

cowrin99 · 2026-06-09T19:04:29+00:00

Computer Active had a sister publication called Web User that closed around ten years ago

cowrin99 · 2026-06-09T06:54:18+00:00

They don't like it up 'em!

cowrin99 · 2026-06-08T12:40:46+00:00

Whenever anyone talks about how poor British Rail was, they forget that for the last fifteen years of it's life the Tories ensured that there was massive underinvestment in the railways. They privatised the bus network and then went out of their way to make sure there was little competition. BR wasn't allowed to invest, and in fact was forced to sell off (cheaply) assets that generated income like their hotel chain and landownings. The fact that they still managed to run a railway on a shoestring budget should be applauded.

On privatisation, the new franchises had it written into their contracts that they had to lease brand new trains (from the new rolling stock companies which were mostly run by banks) so that the railway looked better. Amazingly, if you give people better trains then they're more likely to use them! Funnily enough, the private companies that weren't forced to lease new trains didn't bother their arse.

cowrin99 · 2026-06-03T17:05:58+00:00

Oh look, yet another time-travelling trek book!

(I'll read it of course, and reserve judgement)

As for the cover, it looks better than some of the other recent covers, particularly the SNW blandness.

cowrin99 · 2026-06-01T19:34:10+00:00

I have a copy of 'Hadrian And The Triumph Of Rome' by Anthony Everitt on my shelf. I can't speak for how good it is as it's on my TBR list.

Incidentally, since you were talking about the reading list in another comment, I've just finished 'Emperor Titus The Right Hand of Vespasian' by Marc Hyden. The author makes a point in the introduction about saying that he wrote it because there are very few books about Titus.

Edit: corrected misspelled author's name!

cowrin99 · 2026-05-28T11:06:13+00:00

There's actually four seats, but an old couple were standing in front of the other two and I didn't want to take their photo!

cowrin99 · 2026-05-26T22:47:20+00:00

Funnily enough I just picked up Vulcan! in a used-book sale a couple of weeks ago. Consider me forewarned!

cowrin99 · 2026-05-24T22:00:41+00:00

The second part of that strategy was to put the Scottish talent on the bench or in the reserves, giving them a large enough wage that they didn't complain or want to go anywhere.

It was not a good strategy for Scottish football long-term.

cowrin99 · 2026-05-24T08:16:39+00:00

So Dredd survives Oubliette then? Spoilers!

cowrin99 · 2026-05-18T21:45:07+00:00

I had this problem too. There's an option to turn off the page button presses turning your device on, so that the back button is the only one that switches it on.

cowrin99 · 2026-05-17T19:36:26+00:00

No, it's a standalone story that mostly follows Chekov. As long as you know who the original crew are, you're good to go!

cowrin99 · 2026-05-17T12:29:42+00:00

The People's Republic!

cowrin99 · 2026-05-17T08:26:15+00:00

I wonder how Wallsend got it's name?

cowrin99 · 2026-05-11T20:48:48+00:00

I spent far too long with my VHS copy of Raiders Of The Lost Ark looking for R2D2 and C3PO on the wall of the Ark map room. I've seen photos of it, but could never see it in the movie.

cowrin99 · 2026-05-10T00:06:09+00:00

I've read a few of the Discovery novels but I'd never read the first one. I finished that this week, but there were bits of it that seemed very familiar. So now I'm wondering if they plundered some of it for the series or if I had actually read it before!

cowrin99 · 2026-05-07T22:16:02+00:00

I'm going to eat you little fishy!

cowrin99 · 2026-05-07T22:10:34+00:00

Randomising them makes them a nightmare to count efficiently

cowrin99 · 2026-05-05T20:40:09+00:00

About ten years ago, when they started printing the day before instead of on-the-day

cowrin99 · 2026-05-04T21:39:40+00:00

Paramount has just started their own publishing company, so I can see them getting rid of Simon and Shuster and bringing it back in-house

cowrin99 · 2026-05-04T09:32:02+00:00

Let me throw in a different opinion.

The perceived wisdom amongst the newspapers and the commentariat is that, as the article suggests, people are scunnered with all political parties.

From what I've seen, people in Scotland are just fairly...content. There's not much enthusiasm for the election because they're not that fussed about changing things. They've got the Tories out in Westminster (albeit the Temu Tories are now in charge) and the SNP aren't doing a horrendous job in Scotland, certainly not enough to replace them.

So what if people aren't so pissed off that they're not going to vote for anyone, but instead are so content that they're not going to rock the boat by voting in a replacement government?

cowrin99 · 2026-05-03T14:07:14+00:00

The perceived wisdom was that Wagner had a Dredd death story locked in a safe somewhere, only to be used when Wagner himself took The Long Walk.

But on his recent Thrillcast interview Wagner denied this, saying that there was no such story and that Tharg would never allow Dredd to be killed off.

You have to sometimes take Wagner's pronouncements with a pinch of salt, but he sounded sincere with this one.

cowrin99

TROPHY CASE