The only reason I still have this paperback is because I find it impossible to throw books away. But unknown to me this bit of pulp fiction I bought in a junk shop in the 1970s is out of print, and I suppose because of Dan Brown and the popularity of “The Da Vince Code”, conspiracy theories are back in fashion.

This made me wonder what other hidden gems I might have lurking on my bookshelves. Here’s a random selection of books I thought might also be valuable with the Amazon sale price:

£15-  ’Behind the Flying Saucer Mystery’ by George Adamaski (1967)
£20- ‘Fischer-Spassky Move by Move’ by Larry Evans (1973)
£35 – ‘ The Silver Surfer’ by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (1978)
£44 -  ‘The Jesus Scroll’ by Donavon Joyce (1972 – out of print)
£78 – ‘Secrets Behind the Comics’ by Stan Lee (1994 – Limited edition)

Take a look around your attic, or on your bookshelves, you never know what hidden gems may be lurking there.  One person’s bit of junk is another persons antique or collectible item.

I haven’t sold anything on eBay yet, but I’ve suddenly realised I have a house full of stock.

John McNally

Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real Mockingbird of this pulitzer prize winning novel, Tom Robinson a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl.

As I read this book I remembered the film with Gregory Peck
who portrays one of the great heroes of literature, a lawyer whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.

This book is a very well written ‘page turner’ which captures the atmosphere of the deep South in 1930’s America. A time which is drifting into the shadows of the past now that we have Barack Obama as President. Although the story is very moving and poignant there was one part that made me laugh out loud.

Tom Robinson was being quizzed at the trial as to why he ran away;
“Like I says before, it weren’t safe for any n****r to be in a – fix like that.”
“But you weren’t in a fix – you testified that you were resisting Miss Ewell. Were you so scared that she’d hurt you, you ran, a big buck like you?”
“No suh, I’s scared I’d be in court, just like I am now.”
“Scared of arrest, scared you’d have to face up to what you did?”
“No suh, scared I’d hafta face up to what I didn’t do.”

This short film extract demonstrates how it was impossible for Tom Robinson to have committed the crime, yet he was still found guilty by an all white jury.

One thing jarred in the book with me, and the only other instance I can think of is with Bart Simpson and Homer. Throughout the book the children call their father by his first name Atticus. Does anyone know how or why this happens in some families?

John McNally

The Future Homemakers of America

The story follows the American women married to USA pilots, who travelled to different foreign bases with their husbands.  Laurie Graham takes us through Korea and Vietnam, revisting the Cold War years when the world was on the edge of destruction.

This is a novel about relationships set against a military background. I enjoyed this nostalgic look back to “the good old days”, reminding us of a time when not everyone had a car,phone,TV or even a toilet inside a house. (Instead you had a freezing run to the outside loo).

Although I knew this was a book about women, it took me 50 pages before I realised the person telling the story was also a woman. So I had to readjust my head to get a female perspective – quite an unusual experience.

I have read very few books by female authors, and they are mainly in my favourite genre of science fiction or science fantasy. However this book reminded me of “84 Charing Cross Road” by Helene Hanff.

It concernded the same era, 1950s and 1960s, and the same theme, an American woman interacting with an English friend. Not exactly a clash of cultures, but these books point out the differences.

I recommend both as enjoyable reads. 

John McNally

CONTACT is a novel by the late scientist Carl Sagan about first contact with alien lifeforms. Sagan’s enthusiasm and belief in Alien Intelligences led to the establishment of SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence).

Contact was an excellent science fiction novel exploring themes of religious belief, science, rationality, faith and god. Contact is also a hollywood film staring Jodie Foster. The film version however, left out my favourite part of the book.

In the novel, the Jodie Foster character travels to the far end of the universe and talks to an Alien lifeform. The alien seems so powerful and all-knowing that at one stage she asks “Are you God?”. The alien replies that he is not god, but if you want to find him, look into pye (the mathematical formula).

Returning to Earth, scientists consider the aliens enigmatic reply, and decide to set up a super-computer to print out pye, in binary form, to trillions of decimal points. After 6 months of binary print-out, there is suddenly an excited cry, from a scientist monitoring the computer.

There amongst all the ones and zeros, was a large perfectly formed circle. Within the mathematical formula for a circle, was another circle. It couldn’t have happened randomly. It could only have been placed there, by the diety who constructed the universe.

It was God’s signature, which he left for any race who gained enough intelligence to calculate pye to trillions of decimal points. It was a lovely idea.  It’s a pity that we haven’t found any such signature, and can only sustain god through faith.

John McNally

These articles could be classified as Product Reviews, EXCEPT you never read a bad review! After all, the blogger won’t make any money out of saying how bad something is.

What’s  worse than the blatant sales pitch, are those blogs where the reviews aren’t even personal. They are just a rehash of the products sales page, or a PLR article scattered with BUY buttons.

These Blog owners are making a fundamental error. They know that the purpose of the blog is to make money, however by FOCUSING on this aspect, their blog loses QUALITY. If the blog has no quality it will lose traffic, and ultimately lose money.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a famous book on philosophy, that sold millions of copies in the 1970’s.
The book criticises the scientific tradition of splitting the world between subject (YOU) and object (the BLOG). Instead the author advocates looking at the world as a whole, and the glue between subject and object is QUALITY.

Religious people also recognise how unsatisfactory the world is, when only perceived with a duality between subject and object. However their “glue” is called LOVE. The Beatles knew about this, but they didn’t need thousands of words to explain it, they could do it in one lyric. “All You Need is Love”.

“Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions, and right actions produces work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the centre of it all. ” Robert M. Pirsig,  ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ (1974) Bantam Books, page 267.

John McNally

When I choose a science fiction book I usually go for a title with ‘God’ or ‘Eternity’ or ‘Infinity’ in it. I want to travel to the furthest reaches of human imagination. I usually enjoy the book but I’m almost inevitably disappointed by the conclusion. 

I’m looking for the answer to “life, the universe and everything” (as Douglas Adams would say), but it’s obviously naive of me to think a science fiction author has got all the answers.

I’ve just finished ‘Childhood’s End’ by Arthur C Clarke, and this is the first time a books conclusion exceeded my expectations. Arthur C Clarke always tells a good story, but the ending of this book is exceptional. If Buzz Lightyear was writing this he would be justified in exclaiming “To Infinity and Beyond”.

The best visual experience I have had for travelling into infinity is at the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Here the ending is deliberately enigmatic, but it’s certainly uplifting, with the astronaut Dave Bowman being transformed into a “Star-Child”.

The conclusion of Childhood’s End is even better, with the whole of mankind being transformed. I don’t want to spoil the book for you by revealing any more, but I do recommend you read it.

John McNally

My first choice was I thought fairly ’safe’. “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey. This was also a great film with Jack Nicholson. The book however gives terrifying descriptions of probably the most evil monster in fiction: Nurse Ratched.

I’m glad to say the whole group really enjoyed the book. Next, I picked a children’s/adult crossover novel, “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak. Again the whole group liked the book. I was on a roll now, and gaining confidence, so I decided to introduce them to Science Fiction.

I obviously picked one I thought they would like, and chose “Fahrenheit 451″ by Ray Bradbury.  I was on fairly safe ground here as the novel is all about the joys of reading! Once again the group enjoyed the book, and even commented on how well it was written, (something I was unaware of)!

I had picked a few fun books, so I thought I had better introduce an “intellectual” novel, and chose “The Magus” by John Fowles. What a disaster! No-one liked the book. They thought it was pretentious, adolescent rubbish………I thought it was far too long, because I still haven’t finished it!

I’m sticking with what I know next time – So it’s back to Science Fiction! 

John McNally

This month’s book choice is a good example of this in action. I have already read three HG Wells novels; The War of the Worlds, the Time Machine, and First Men on the Moon. I think it’s easy to spot the theme here! However I didn’t realise that HG Wells also did comedy very well.

I would never have chosen to read “The History of Mr Polly”. I wouldn’t have got past the title, it simply sounds too boring to me. What a mistake that was! The History of Mr Polly is one of the most enjoyable books I have read for a long time. It’s a mixture of PG Wodehouse and the ‘Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin’.

Mr Polly is a likable but flawed character who ends up performing a heroic deed despite also being a coward. He manages to vanquish his enemy in some hilarious scenes by doing a lot of running away!

The story involves a mid-life crisis which Mr Polly decides to solve with “a spot of arson and suicide”. The suicide attempt is abandoned when Mr Polly discovers cutting your throat with a razor hurts!

The book starts with Mr Polly thoroughly bored with life to the point of contemplating suicide, yet ends with his life completely changed in a really excellent ‘happily ever after’ ending.

The theme resonates with Internet Marketing theories covering Positive Mental Attitude and the current vogue for the ‘Law of Attraction’. HG Wells sums it up in chapter 9 – The Potwell Inn;

“But when a man has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely imprisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you, you can change it. Determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether.”

John McNally

“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…”

Kublai Khan was a thirteenth century Mongolian prince who inherited the largest land empire in history from his grandfather, Genghis Khan – and doubled it! His empire reached from the Pacific to the Urals, from Siberia to Afghanistan – 60% of all Asia, one-fifth of the world’s inhabited land area. He was perhaps the most powerful man who ever lived.

Kublai Khan only seized power in his forties but he never questioned Genghis Khan’s belief that Heaven had given his people the world. His first Capital city was Xanadu on the Mongolian grasslands, but he soon realised that China was the key to a world empire due to its massive population.

He made Beijing his new Capital and after twenty years of war became the first ‘barbarian’ to conquer all of China. I was fascinated by the political and military use of barbarism that the Mongols employed. The Mongolian army would march up to a walled city and send messengers inside.

“Open the gates and your lives will be spared. Resist, and we will slaughter every man woman and child”. If the city fought back, then the Mongolian army would simply camp outside the walls for anything from 3 to 5 years until resistance crumbled. They would then carry out their threat and slaughter the city population.

Word soon spread around China, so the Mongolian army very rarely had to fight!  City gates were opened as soon as the army arrived, and the conquest of China was only delayed by the speed at which the army could march around the vast territory.

If you want to know more about Kublai Khan I can highly recommend the fascinating biography by John Man.

John McNally

The psychologist Oliver James has written a book called “Affluenza“, which is an analysis of the causes of depression in a materially affluent world. On page 284 he looks at the effect of TV;

“Studies show that the mental state we enter whilst watching TV is a passive, floating, vicarious consciousness. The emotional and sometimes visible animation of a person attending live theatre or ballet or opera, or when watching a deeply moving film, or when reading a great novel, are very rarely present…………

……….for the vast majority of the time, watching TV is a form of dead, second-hand living”.

Thank you Oliver James, for articulating what I have always felt. I like watching films, but NOT on TV! That’s the reason I called my blog film category ‘Cinema’, because that’s where all films are made to be seen. Not on a little (or even a very large) box, in somebodies front room.

When you go to the cinema to watch a film, there are no interruptions to your enjoyment of the story. There are no telephones going off, no breaks to make a cup of tea, no knocks on your front door, no adverts, no-one talking to you.

It’s just you and the story enfolding in front of you. The wide screen means that even your peripheral vision is immersed in the film. The outside world is cut off, and you can completely lose yourself in the film.  

You can get all this for 50% off, if you go on Wednesday!

John McNally