- Shute, Nevil. No Highway. New York: Vintage Books, [1948] 2020. ISBN 978-0-307-47412-4.
-
The quintessential aviation boffin story from an author who
knows his stuff (Nevil Shute Norway
ran an aircraft manufacturer
in the 1930s). The novel is more interesting and complicated
than the
movie made from it,
which is also excellent.
When I began this Reading List in January 2001, it was just that: a list of every book I'd read, updated as I finished books, without any commentary other than, perhaps, availability information and sources for out-of-print works or those from publishers not available through Amazon.com. As the 2000s progressed, I began to add remarks about many of the books, originally limited to one paragraph, but eventually as the years wore on, expanding to full-blown reviews, some sprawling to four thousand words or more and using the book as the starting point for an extended discussion on topics related to its content.
This is, sadly, to employ a term I usually despise, no longer sustainable. My time has become so entirely consumed by system administration tasks on two Web sites, especially one in which I made the disastrous blunder of basing upon WordPress, the most incompetently and irresponsible piece of…software I have ever encountered in more than fifty years of programming; shuffling papers, filling out forms, and other largely government-mandated bullshit (Can I say that here? It's my site! You bet I can.); and creating content for and participating in discussions on the premier anti-social network on the Web for intelligent people around the globe with wide-ranging interests, I simply no longer have the time to sit down, compose. edit, and publish lengthy reviews (in three locations: here, on Fourmilog, and at Ratburger.org) of every book I read.
But that hasn't kept me from reading books, which is my major recreation and escape from the grinding banality which occupies most of my time. As a consequence, I have accumulated, as of the present time, a total of no fewer than twenty-four books I've finished which are on the waiting list to be reviewed and posted here, and that doesn't count a few more I've set aside before finishing the last chapter and end material so as not to make the situation even worse and compound the feeling of guilt.
So, starting with this superb book, which despite having loved everything by Nevil Shute I've read, I'd never gotten around to reading, this list will return to its roots: a reading list with, at most, brief comments. I have marked a number of books (nine, as of now) as candidates for posts in my monthly Saturday Night Science column at Ratburger.org and, as I write reviews and remarks about them for that feature, I will integrate them back into this list.
To avoid overwhelming readers, I'll clear out the backlog by posting at most a book a day until I've caught up. Happy page-turning!
