This is going to be my last post for several weeks. I'll be flying off to Australia tomorrow and, with a full schedule, I don't expect to be reading much - and definitely not writing reviews. I expect to be back at the end of the year with some more book reviews and maybe the …
Author: Andrew G Lockhart
My name is Andrew Lockhart and I grew up in Coatbridge, Scotland. I studied at Glasgow University. After spending three decades in planning, statistics and international sales and marketing, I am now an author, family historian and owner of Magda Green Books. Apart from writing (and reading great books) and blogging, my other interests are science, music of all sorts, and traveling the world.
The Martian
by Andy Weir I had avoided buying this book for so long. I saw the film and enjoyed it so much, and that made me wary. So many wonderful novels are turned into dreadful films. Great movies from mediocre novels are not so common - but it happens often enough! So, as I said, I …
Hag-Seed
by Margaret Atwood 'Hag-seed, hence! Fetch us in fuel. And be quick, thou'rt best to answer other business.' [Prospero to Caliban, The Tempest] From the off, we suspect that Hag-Seed might be be Atwood at her most provocatively outrageous. However, post-prologue, the novel settles down to a semblance of normality. Felix is sacked as artistic …
Farewell to South Africa
[I wrote this piece a while ago, an imagining of my mother's experience on leaving her childhood home. I hope you enjoy it.] The taxi pulled up on the quayside. From my seat in the back, I looked up at the massive hull of the ship in the berth. Now that the time had come, …
Building a Foundation
Foundation's Edge & Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, published in novel form in 1951-53 was first conceived as a series of short stories in the 1940s. [See https://bookheathen.wordpress.com/2016/09/15/history-of-the-future/%5D Complete in themselves and as a unit, the three novels did not need a follow-up. Asimov turned his attention to other matters. Apart …
Life Lessons
Continuing my science theme, I have been reading No Dream Is Too High by Buzz Aldrin. It's not exactly a book about science, nor is it strictly an autobiography. Rather, it's one man's recipe for life, peppered with anecdotes from 87 years of living. Everyone knows Buzz Aldrin as the second man to set foot …
Childhood's End
by Arthur C Clarke A Review You may have noticed that I've been spending the past few weeks reading science "stuff", and that includes both fact and fiction. Today, I'd like to share with you a book by one of my favourite sci-fi authors. Arthur C Clarke, like Isaac Asimov (another favourite), was a scientist. …
Book Review: Measuring the World
by Daniel Kehlmann (Die Vermesserung der Welt) This novel is a double biography of two of the giants of science, Carl Friedrich Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt, fast-paced and told with irreverent humour. 'It was both odd and unjust, said Gauss .... that you were born into a particular time and held prisoner there whether …
A Reality Check
Review: Reality Is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli 'The only true infinite thing is our ignorance.' Carlo Rovelli is a professional scientist, a theoretical physicist who specialises in the study of quantum gravity. In this book he traces the developments in scientific thought that have led to our present knowledge of the cosmos. …
Zafon's Barcelona (3)
The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon trans. by Lucia Graves 'Cast against the light from the street, the silhouette resembled a tree trunk lashed by the wind. The visitor ....took one step forward, limping visibly. He had the cold eyes of a bird of prey, patient and calculating.' The Prisoner of Heaven is …
Magda Green Books 