What are you reading right now?

[black bart]

I am enjoying 'Neverwhere' and 'Stardust' was on last night.

There really is a 'London beneath' you know...and I know how to find it. I could take you to Henry VIII's wine cellar (one of the few surviving parts of Whitehall Palace), a lost 17C library and lost corridors/shelters with WW2 bunks...not to mention charred timbers from the Great Fire and spooky crypts.

[ET, the Extra Terrestrial]

There really is a 'London beneath' you know...and I know how to find it. I could take you to Henry VIII's wine cellar (one of the few surviving parts of Whitehall Palace), a lost 17C library and lost corridors/shelters with WW2 bunks...not to mention charred timbers from the Great Fire and spooky crypts.

Be thar buried traysure?

[Griffin]

<QUOTE Griffin> Biopsychosocial Medicine ~ Peter White

Which is a conspiracy to condemn everyone with unexplained illnesses as mentally ill. Engels has a lot to answer for.<eNDquOte>
You should look at the revisions planned for DSM V: they plan on making ordinary grief a mental disorder, and they are introducing a category for 'behavioural addictions' like gambling and using Facebook (addictions to my mind need to have a physiological aspect, like alcohol or opiates). They are also lowering the threshold for the incidence of illnesses like depression.

It looks like we will have a whole load more medicalisation of normal human ups and downs.

Yes, they've gone totally nuts. Another thing they have introduced is Somatic Syndrome Disorder - see here - so anyone with a serious biomedical illness may be diagnosed with SSD - get cancer and you are likely to be mentally ill etc. It's horrendous. There was a consultation period (I contributed) but they ignored what people said. If you saw any of the trials they did on their new diagnostics, the results were dreadful and amazing that they are going ahead regardless. It went to the printers last week. The rumour is that the APA is short of money so they are getting DSM-V out as quickly as possible.

So what you're saying is that, in your estimation, introducing new and unnecessary categories of mental disorders is a diagnosable mental disorder?

Yes. As that''s not in DSM-V one can only assume it will appear in DSM -V-R.

It's interesting to read the US version of what this is all about. From stuff I've read in the UK these mental illness categories are created to prevent insurance companies having to pay out on Permanent Health Policies - if it's physical they pay out, if it's mental they don't. Hence more and more things being defined as mental. It's also said that A lot of the "doctors" here seem to be employees, or directors of, the insurance companies. I've no idea if this is true.

Just wait til there's a category for Using Internet Forums

[black bart]

There really is a 'London beneath' you know...and I know how to find it. I could take you to Henry VIII's wine cellar (one of the few surviving parts of Whitehall Palace), a lost 17C library and lost corridors/shelters with WW2 bunks...not to mention charred timbers from the Great Fire and spooky crypts.

Be thar buried traysure?

I think there might be...in a sense...if you walk along the Thames at low tide there's no telling what you might find...if you don't get murdered. Seriously though it's quite easy to find old clay pipes.

[Nef Yoo BlackBeard]

I weed in a booke abowt a bwery notty gurl dat sneeky inna howse dat not hers !
An she break sum furnychure !
An din she et alla grewel !
An din she messy up alla beds !

rrrrr I fink goldylox be a piwit!

[black bart]

[DavidH]

"August 1914" by Barbara Tuchman. A detailed, hour-by-hour account of the outbreak of World War 1.

[black bart]

I fancy reading about Stalingrad.

[pieces o'nine]

"August 1914" by Barbara Tuchman. A detailed, hour-by-hour account of the outbreak of World War 1.

Is that not the defining feature of all Barbara Tuchman tomes?

[Rainswept]

I found one that sounds good to me, "The Lies of Locke Lamora"

I thoroughly enjoyed that and its sequel, "Red Seas Under Red Skies." Excellent characters.

Agreed, quite liked it, into book 2 now. If he does not trot out the girl soon ill be annoyed tho.

[black bart]

Neverwhere is superb. I was actually reading it whilst on the London Underground this morning and got to the bit where "Earl's Court' comes into the story and then they mentioned "Ravenscourt" just as I actually passed through "Ravenscourt Park" station!

[daftbeaker]

I read American Gods a couple of days ago. It's a really good book and struck me as a 'serious' version of Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, there are some very similar themes and ideas. I understand how they were such a good team doing Good Omens now.

I'm going to have to buy more Neil Gaiman stuff when I've finished reading Hiaasen. Your fault Roy, I started them and now I keep buying more of them

[black bart]

Any minute now I am going to run into Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar...in fact I think I used to work with them!

[tris]

Just finished "the curious case of the dog in the night-time"
Fascinating window onto (and into) the mind of an autistic "savant" whose view of the world is dominated by maths and weird rituals
And I'm trying to finish "The Cosmic Blueprint" by Paul Davies.. but it's not easy!

[Rainswept]

relistening to "God No" by Penn Jillette