The Missionary Position

 Here follows an ordered list, in order of preference, of three books by coincidentally deceased authors.

The Missionary Position

This was my second reading thereof, having received it as an Xmas present. I’m delighted to report that a fuzzy memory may well mean, I can enjoy many other old favorites. It’s very brief, and like all Hitchens’s work, it makes one think. I remember reading about Mother Teresa in a primary-school, religion book, in a chapter dedicated to her. This book takes a different angle on the now-saint --despite Christopher Hitchens’s best efforts-- I won’t ruin it; get yourself a copy, but two quotes kept coming to me as I read. Both I learned about through Christopher Hitchens, in happier times.

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” ― Steven Weinberg

"Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and he can sleep 'til noon." — Mark Twain

The thing about Mother Teresa and the main message in this book is that Mother Teresa was not a lover of the poor, as she is so often painted, but a lover of suffering. Not in a masochistic way, but as a means of, she believed, being closer to God.

The Inimitable Jeeves.

It was through Christopher Hitchens that I learned of P.G. Wodehouse (I had to make a correction there; I had called him J.P), so as well as producing several books that I will enjoy time and time again, it seems; he also made a very useful recommendation. As well as Jeeves and Wooster -- yes, that Jeeves & Wooster-- Wodehouse also created other characters in both his series-- the other being a series set around the fictional Blandings Castle -- that I’ll look forward to getting to know. Jeeves is the star of this show as a man-servant, or butler, to a spoiled, foolish aristocrat. This maiden outing sees Jeeves, played expertly by Stephen Fry in that 90s sitcom, very skillfully manipulating any situation he finds himself and his employer in, directly as a result of his employer’s missteps.

The First World War.

This was, as they say in Germany, a difficult birth. I’m going to blame my injuries for my confusion, but it is excruciatingly detailed. After being pushed out from March to April; I took two breaks, in the shapes of numbers 1 and 2 in this list. Check this out:

Each page is not as jam-packed as that example, but not far off.  It’s no surprise to me that John Keegan went on to be a Knight of the realm, because he was certainly on the side of the Allies. You may think “why not?”, and I would have no good answer for you, except to say that all wars are senseless, not least this one, and a telling of it should make an effort to be unbiased. If you wish to get your facts straight about WW1, this won’t be matched, for brute research but, if you wish to enjoy that learning experience, I would not recommend this, even though it does provide an excellent workout as Neuropsychology, and I plan to gauge my progress in the future, by attempting the sequel.

June

I’m going to be a little self indulgent next time, and nerd-out a bit. I will take this opportunity to get cracking on my Maths reeducation.

As well as that, and because I have some experience with Python, I will interleave it with this, and hopefully I will get to use something from the cookbook to help with exercises from the Maths book, all of which I’ll hopefully share on github.

As comic relief, I’ll also read the next in the Jeeves series.