It's fun how often when reading about one thing, you pick up other bits of information.

I already knew about the female pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary (who, among other things, referred to the Spitfire as the "perfect lady's aeroplane.") I did not know about the women engineers who worked on aircraft in those days.

I give you Beatrice ( Read more... )

I believe I mentioned, over the summer, that I'd gone on a bit of a rampage with regard to books about the RAF in World War II. The aforesaid rampage caused some very interesting items to pop up in my "Recommended" lists on Amazon. (And let me note, Amazon recs have improved a great deal since the days when my purchase of Seabiscuit got me recs for ( Read more... )

Now Amazon UK thinks I might be interested in a slew of books about the DeHavilland Mosquito.

Why yes, I am. And so I will file that message immediately, before I go on another rampage.

Maybe it's just Amazon UK who's gotten so much better, but--

Some years ago, I bought a copy of Seabiscuit from Amazon. For months afterward, every time I logged in to Amazon I was offered suggestions based on the preferences indicated by my purchases. I kept getting suggestions for things like biographies of Benjamin Franklin, based on the ( Read more... )

I don't have a shopping disorder. Honestly--I can go months without buying an item from anywhere but the grocery store. I can even walk through a book store and come out empty handed. My well-known weakness for blank journals isn't indiscriminate: I'm very picky indeed about the ones I like ( Read more... )

One of the classic writers of pony novels died on June 14th, aged 90.As a horse-mad and very pedantic little girl, I adored British pony books, in which stalls were cleaned, ponies misbehaved, and most people were pretty bad riders until they'd worked at it for a while. They were better fuel for my imagination than the kind of stories in which ( Read more... )

Still with Harry Potter, in a way-- a few weeks ago I ran into something on Tumblr that I really liked, but it was in the form of a fairly complex gif and I can't quite figure out how to put it together here-- it's images that join together in a specific way to represent the Sorting Hat, with human faces in each section ( Read more... )

While I'm thinking about Harry Potter ( Read more... )

( Cut in case it gets long, and for spoilers, although face it, you probably know these better than I do. )

No, really. It's called Markhams' Master-piece, and Markham (whoever he is) would know!

At Open Library, readable online.

Published 1717 by Printed for N. and M. Boddington, at the Golden-Ball in Duck-Lane in London, And G. Conyers, at the Golden-Ring in Little Britain, and M. Wotton at the Cross Daggers in Fleet-Street . Worth a look, as long ( Read more... )