(no subject)

[damerell]

May 16:

• Tandem Club Journal #233 (finished since it's Dec/Jan and I think I read some of it already). From the specialised publications department. Often a bit dull, but sometimes excels with pieces like "Two Innocents Abroad" - by a British couple who went tandem touring in Germany... in 1938.
• Private Eye #1287 (finished, spurred into action by the arrival of the next Private Eye). If you've been living under a rock or in the USA or something, it is _the_ British political satire magazine - but about 2/3 of each issue is actual news reporting, albeit in a satirical style.
• Arrivee #112 (started). From the specialised publications department again, the magazine of Audax UK.
• Unseen Academicals (complete). Pratchett, humorous fantasy. It's better than Making Money - in fact, I must have liked it quite a lot since I appear to have read the whole thing in one go, and it's a fat Pratchett.

May 17:

• Arrivee #112 (finished). It's mostly about the Paris-Brest-Paris this issue, which is interesting albeit a little bittersweet, since the voice in my head still thinks I should have kept trying to qualify even though it was making me unhappy.
• Steam Railway #388 (started). Guess what this is about? For some reason they absolutely love the practice of putting single quotes around any remotely informal word or phrase. Sure, a Big Lizzie might be a 'Big Lizzie', but need a Pacific really be a 'Pacific'? A Gresley V2, a 'V2'?

May 18:

• Steam Railway #388 (finished), a "speed issue", nobly admitting that secretly the Germans probably should have the steam speed record and also the Americans were almost certainly first to 100mph. Steam Railway also (rightly?) assumes their readership already know everything so that, for example, while I know that the main line speed limit for steam is 75mph and one might be able to get permission for some engines to run at 90mph, I am no wiser as to why no-one has done that even after reading the "speed issue".
• Spaceflight vol. 53 #5 (finished), the journal of the British Interplanetary Society, they were giving them away at Eastercon. Nice article about Yuri Gagarin.