Will millionaire instead of trillionaire do?

I mean, you'd still get all the pussy/cock/coke/rock'n roll lifestyle you can handle...

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Personally I'd settle for a pint and a couple of hours paid overtime a week. I'm not going to get any of the three, but I'd still rather fantasise about being fabulously rich than about having a pint and overtime.

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Yeah but one is far less destructive at the societal level than the others. And, who knows, if there wasn't any trillionaires, just millionaires, you might get your pint and a real job too, with or without the overpaid hours, at your choice.

I mean, what would you have done if you'd be born in the late 40s, early 50s and started working in the 60s? What would you have fantasized about, given the greater (relative) rarity of trillionaires back then?

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Ah! France sorted that particular issue by allowing members of the Royal House to have champions.

That incident was discussed, and England had champions too, but it was argued that the judicial duel was different from the "modern" duel. The former is public, a part of the litigation process*, and endorsed by the authorities, while the latter is private, a matter of personal prestige rather than law, and illegal (even if widely condoned - juries systematically refused to convict unless the rules of duelling had been breached).

If you were accused of cowardice, having a champion fight for you obviously wouldn't remove that stain on your honour, even if you were prime minister.

* I'm also reading a book on Special Operations in the Middle Ages which mentions warfare as being "litigation by other means", which I thought was appropriate.

Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Yeah but one is far less destructive at the societal level than the others. And, who knows, if there wasn't any trillionaires, just millionaires, you might get your pint and a real job too, with or without the overpaid hours, at your choice. I mean, what would you have done if you'd be born in the late 40s, early 50s and started working in the 60s? What would you have fantasized about, given the greater (relative) rarity of trillionaires back then?

But fantasies aren't based on what's good for society. "One day I'm going to have my own island and a boat and the markets will tremble at my name," is extremely satisfying. "One day I'll be comfortably off, with a reasonable mortgage and an en suite bathroom," is just boring, and let's face it that's what a million quid'll get you these days.

If I'd been born in the fifties I'd probably have turned to drugs. With enough laudanum in your gin I dare say you can fantasise about anything.

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D-Day by Anthony Beevor. Actuallty about the whole of Normandy campaign. also Storm of War by Andrew Roberts, which is an overview of WW2. It occurred to me that I'd never actually read a proper history of the war, only the stuff I covered in high School, which was pretty good but left things out. Also hadn't been much interested in it.

Beyond Band of Brothers by somebody Winter, who became a major in the 101st Airborne in normandy. A boringly straight laced and card-board cutout kind of hero type guy, doesn't drink, fair bit of praying, apparently pretty much fearless. Nobody would believe this as a character in a novel.

Also Italy's Sorrow, an account of the Italian campaign. As it mentions this theatre is largely overlooked, and it's quite interesting, although in a very unusual style. Uses about 20 named characters as viewpoint devices, but then mentions them more or less only in passing.

Rifleman by Victor Gregg, who was first in the infantry and fought at El Alamein, and then joined the Paras and was dropped in Arnhem, escaping because he was in Dresedn when it was firebombed. Allegedly a personal memoir, although I'm not 100% sure I find the later bits, when he claimed to have been a "bagman's bagman" for the KGB (presumably) and to have done courier work for British intel and Hungarian resistance, entirely convincing.

Fighter by Len Deighton. This is an oft-cited book on the Battle of Britain, and it was quite interesting, in terms of discussion of the technicalities of the aircraft and radar and so on.

The Briar King, J. Gregory Keyes. Pretty good fantasy, part of a series the rest of which is not in the library, sadly.

The Liveship Traders trilogy: the Magic Ship, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny, by Robin Hobb. Sort of fantasy pirate stories, with a very good anti-hero. Very well drawn characters, quite a novel settnig for fantasy.

Before the Pyramids, Cracking Archeology's Greatest Mystery, Alan Butler and Christopher Knight. this is the sort of conspiracy stuff I occasionally read for a laugh, and appopriately enough it was in the fiction section. Sheer bullshit, full of special pleading and personal narrative rather than evidence. Purports to show there "must" have been an ancient high tech society but does nothing of the sort, instead ending up with some weak-assed claim that there is "something" buried by Freemasons in the middle of the Pentagon. Some ancient astronaught type stuff can be good RPG fodder, likes of Conspiracy X and others, but this was lame sauce with a side dish of lame.

The Great Magician, Christian Jacq. Seeing as I already had one Egypt-based conspiracy book I'd thought I'd get this as well, which was how it it presented itself. But this is one of the worst things I've ever read, absolutely zero sense of characterisation or narrative flow. It is dull, dull, dull, and has nothing to do with Egypt at all, except that the main character is a senior Freemason inducted in Egypt and taught great secrets, although what these are is as yet unknown, and will probably remain so as I'm very unlikely to read any more of this crap. This is basically an exercise in the author showing off how much he knows, or claims to know, about Masonic rituals and Mozart.

You should have told me about that. I'd have warned you - Christian Jacq is quite popular in France and he has a limitless amounts of book series on Egypt. I never even finished one of them. I tried one, gave up and they're basically all shite.

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Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark: Amazing Revelations of the Incredible Power of Gold, Laurence Gardner. This was much better as a bit of conspiracy genre. Not too much in the way of special pleading, part a lot of argument; the physics was batshit insane though. Long story short, it argues that the ark was a big capacitor used to burn gold down to a white powder that has life-extending benefits. Said ark was also translated into an alternate dimension from within Chartres cathedral, where it now remains.

Main take away for counter-factual settings and so on is the argument that Moses was actually the deposed pharoah Akhenaten. Not sure the chronology works, but the argument that the stock version of Moses life makes little sense is sound, and the idea that the name is actually an Egyptian phoneme, as in Thutmosis, is quite interesting.

The Hardest Day: Battle of Britain, 18 August 1940, Alfred Price. Rather than an overview of the battle, a look at just one day which saw the most sorties of any in the Battle, nearly a thousand on each side. Always interesting to see a closely detailed study rather than an overview.

King's Dragon, Kate Elliot. First of a series, an above average fantasy story.

Empires and Barbarians : The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe, Peter Heather. Good survey of the various barbarian intruders, pulling the general picture together. Makes an effort to sort of rehabilitate the volkerwanderung argument, which has been largely dismissed in English studies.

Now reading The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings, Robert Ferguson. Good because I've been looking for a comprehensive discussion of the Vikings for quite a while and not found one. Specifically aimed at reintroducing the violence element, which as he says has recently been downgraded to the point that they are almost treated like "long-haired toursists who roughed up the locals a bit". Most interesting argument is that the "overkill" mainfested in Viking attacks on monasteries etc. was deliberate anti-Christianity provoked by Carolingian forced conversions and sundry threats.

A bunch of Ronald Firbank stories courtesy of the Hathi trust (I love those guys and want their babies).

How I wish someone'd fill in all the details that we'd like to hear more about. Each story being more like a succession of Alma-Tadema-like images than an actual narative, we get given these discreet, crystalline little vignettes that don't even last the space of a paragraph. I want to know more about the nun who gave herself married airs "having been debauched by a demon one otiose afternoon", or about the people in the pictures in Her Dreaminess' palace.

Of course, if someone did fill in the details I wouldn't read them because the evocativeness of these episodes lies precisely in what is left out. If we had all the details everything would be ordinary and tiresome.

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