Scroggie! Give him a knighthood

In The Guardian's series, Books That Have Changed My Life, politico-literary cerebralists admit to being bowled over by The Rights Of Man, Middlemarch, Das Kapital, The Second Sex, etc.

But who comes uninfluenced to such works? I believe these readers' lives were already changing (intellectually) before they turned the first page. That these books, often requiring much effort, were mere confirmation.

And those are the honest ones. Others... well you gotta believe they're flaunting.

I can afford not to flaunt. I arrived at National Service in the RAF knowing, quite frankly, bugger-all. My schooling was a disaster and two years in newspapers had taught me to type and to write shorter sentences. The RAF said I had the capacity to maintain and repair their radio equipment. Eight months of training from the structure of the atom to the tripes of the radio altimeter. Thereafter I took on technical journalism (especially in the USA) that would previously have been beyond me. Later still I started to love science.

Step forward Foundations Of Wireless And Electronics by Marcus Graham Scroggie - a genuine life changer.

JOE’S NUDGE

Hey, poetry needn’t always be solemn and profound. It can be fun, so long as it has something to say. This limerick’s complete:

I wish I weren’t doing Divvers
It honestly gives me the shivers,
I don’t know the facts
Of the Gospels and Acts
And tomorrow they’ll drag all the rivers.

Reasons why. It benefits that the delinquent student is doing a serious subject,  divinity (Divvers) – otherwise theology. But what about the punchline? An effortless bit of compression and an exhilarating leap forward. Good wordsmithing.

Anon