Reading the Chunksters discussion

Participation seems to have dropped off, so maybe a quick summary would help? This week's chapters were:

Cycles - 1942. Lawrence P. Waterhouse (fictional character) at Bletchley. Description of how the Germans' Enigma military code was broken (appears historically accurate according to The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, which I read this month). Why Waterhouse changed 2701 to 2702 (this is fictional AFAIK), and the importance of not acting on every decoded message, which would alert the Germans to the breaking of their code (true).

Aloft - 1942. Bobby Shaftoe (fictional character) is in Detachment 2702. They have the body of an American military chef who died of natural causes in a plane, and they're flying in a dangerous zone where they get shot at. It's important the dead man is not shot, so they must be going to use that body for some secret purpose. Enoch Root (fictional) plants some papers on the body, and the dead man is thrown into the sea. The plane lands in Malta, which was a British colony at the time, in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Non-disclosure - 1990s. West Coast USA. Avi and Randy Waterhouse in a meeting with others involved in their business. The (fictional) island of Kinakuta in/near the Philippines looks set to become a centre of undersea telecoms cables and a data haven. Avi proposes to make money from this (I didn't get how, yet).

Ultra - 1942. Lawrence W. at Bletchley. Explanation of how coded messages arrive and decoded messages leave Bletchley Park, the fact that the German code changes and has to be broken again daily at midnight, and description of the machines designed mainly by Alan Turing (real person) to break each day's code (all true - the machines were called Bombes). L.W.'s mission is to figure out whether any of the information going out of Bletchley could alert L.W. & A.T.'s German former friend & mathematical genius Rudy von Hacklheber (fictional) to the fact that they can break the German code.

Kinakuta - 1990s. Randy W. flies in to Kinakuta. There is a memorial garden to Japanese soldiers on the island, who all died on 23 August, 1945 (8 days after Japanese surrender).

Qwghlm House - this one totally threw me. I gather from Google that Qwghlm is a fictional group of islands north of Scotland, a bit like the Shetlands, with their own language and some indigenous species that don't exist anywhere else. And apparently it's pronounced "Taghum".
Lawrence W. visits Qwghlm House (in London?), gets permission to set up wireless receiving stations on the islands.

So that turned out a little longer than I planned, but I hope it helps. For me the layering of fiction over truth in the 1940s sections is working really well.

Lorna, like you I always like one of the stories more than the other - in this case I'm preferring the 1940s story which I mostly understand because of that other book I happened to read this month, and not the 1990s one where I have little clue what they are doing ... yet.

I'll go on reading because I'm afraid if I stop I will lose all memory of the multiple plotlines :) but I'll keep notes and post whenever you open the threads.

I'm slowly catching up. I had to fit in a horror book over the weekend for Halloween. :)

Rosemary - thank you for the chapter recaps!

I've just read the first chapter so far - Cycles. So funny about Alan using a gas mask on their bike ride because of his allergies. :) I was able to somewhat keep up on the math in this chapter, at least enough to allow me to understand what was going on. Don't ask me to explain it, though. I liked the bicycle chain analogy.

I liked this last bit -

He delivers a complete dissertation on the subject of information theory as applied to the human voice, and how that governs the way telephone systems work. It is a good thing that Turing has such a large subject on which to expound, for the woods are large, and it has become increasingly obvious to Lawrence that his friend has no idea where the silver bars are buried.

So far I'm still liking both threads equally, I think. But I know what you mean about being drawn to one over the other at some point. It's still early on for me.

Just read the Aloft chapter. That one was exciting! I liked how it had a dream/flashback of Shaftoe and what happened to him.

Rosemary - thanks for the article in the last thread. It made what happened in this chapter much less confusing than it might have been. I laughed when Bobby said to the pilot "Aren't you going to check me? I'm the one who's alive!" ha ha.

I just finished the Qwghlm chapter. That one threw me for a loop as well! I immediately googled it and found the same info Rosemary posted. I’m glad I saw the pronunciation, although I would have never guessed it was pronounced that way.

My favorite line-

Waterhouse says yes to the tea because he suspects that this lady is not really earning her keep.

The hardest story line for me to switch away from is Shaftoe’s. There is just so much gripping intensity. I get hooked so easily and then we go in a different direction and it takes me a minute to change my focus.

I’m expecting to be caught up by the weekend. I’m on the castle right now. :)

All the audiobook options that are available now are great especially when you have little ones. I have not read many books in years because the kids were little. My youngest is going to be 13 now, which makes it a little easier.

I used to tell myself that I could read like I used to when they got a little older. It gave me something to look forward to when they were little and it made me sad to picture them getting bigger. They were so precious and so small. It is so much fun to have small children and they grow up too fast.

Anyways, I am starting to realize this benefit of having teenagers, which is also nice. :)