Jamie's comments (member since Aug 29, 2007)

Jamie's comments from the SDMB - Straight Dope group.

I don't know, Cassa. I'm usually a completest too, but I didn't even make it through all of the original six. I think Dune works well as a standalone novel. If you really enjoy it, the prequels might be worth reading since they invent a backstory for the characters. But like I said, I didn't like them enough to continue after the first prequel trilogy.

I'd say certainly start with Dune, not with the prequels co-written by Herbert's son.

I stopped after the first 3 or 4 of the original books. I love the first novel - I started reading Dune when I was too young to understand it, and read it repeatedly over the years (I also love the Lynch movie) but I wasn't crazy about the rest of them.

I read the first three of the prequels when they were published, and they were okay; interesting only because they were about characters that I already cared about. And I don't think I'm particularly squeamish, but by the time I got to House Harkonnen I was tired of reading about torture and atrocities.

The doper pepperlandgirl is an author, Pepper Espinoza.

There are several books that I tried to read when I was too young, and it took me years to get around to trying them again. And I used to exclude entire genres out of ignorance and based on false assumptions. My reading experience continues to improve as I age.

High school English class taught me that any book labeled a "classic" was by definition boring. And since I got a BS degree in college, I didn't read much literature there. So I had to discover the good stuff on my own.

I'm Eleanor of Aquitaine. I post mostly in the book threads, too.

Question for the Lonesome Dove fans (I'm reading it now): Gus says "'I god" a lot. I've never seen this exclamation before. Is it supposed to be a corruption of "My god"?

On the way back from Birmingham on Saturday (we dropped the kids off to stay with their grandparents for a week!) we stopped by a tiny used bookstore just below Huntsville. We used to be regulars there when we lived closer to it.

It's the biggest disaster of a store you've ever seen in your life. It's crammed floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall with books, hardbacks and paperbacks mixed together and only approximately sorted by author. Books are stacked on tables, piled on the floor, and double-layered on the bookshelves. There's barely enough aisle space for one person to squeeze through.

It's hardly worth the effort to go there - unless, of course, you're the kind of person who doesn't mind sitting down on the floor and sorting through piles of books, or endlessly shifting the front row of books aside to get a look at the back row. I don't like shopping at discount clothing stores because I begrudge the amount of time needed to sort through haphazard racks of clothes. But browsing used bookstores seems adventurous rather than time-wasting.

Poor Julie. :(

My only ambition is to make myself read some non-fiction once in a while. I read a little over 100 books a year without trying hard, but it's mostly fiction and some of it is pretty frivolous.

Reading is my primary source of entertainment. I don't participate in the challenges I see on the board because I'm afraid I would resent being "forced" to read something for no other reason than to meet a goal. But it's fun to follow along as everyone else strives toward their goals.

I haven't yet. Neither of my local used bookstores had a copy, so I was just getting ready to order one. Maybe I won't now. :)

It sounds good to me. I'll look for a copy and join you - I've enjoyed your picks so far!

I'm expecting an influx of new books for Christmas, so I will probably be reading these in late December and January, if anybody is interested in discussing:

Lonesome Dove
Dissolution, C.J.Sansom
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

My ratings were way too high when I first entered my books, but I have gone through and adjusted them, trying to make my 5-star ratings more significant. But I still probably skew too high. I have a lot of 4-star books, and I don't have a lot of 1-stars because if I dislike the book that much then I usually won't finish it, and then I hate to rate a book I didn't actually read.

Pam, I'll get Lonesome Dove for Christmas one way or another. Every year my father goes out shopping on Christmas Eve in a desperate rush. The men of the family get whatever tool is on display in the aisle at Sears, and the women get gift cards from a bookstore. We're fine with that once we steered him to B&N instead of the horrid Waldenbooks.

I know the Dopers rave about Pratchett, but his stuff sounds too whimsical for my taste. And I haven't read any Russian novels at all, although I have a pretty copy of Anna Karenina in the house.

What's a famous book that you've always meant to read but have somehow never gotten around to?

Mine is Lonesome Dove. I don't think I've ever read a "western" before, but I've always heard that this is a great book. I've been keeping an eye out for it in my local used bookstore for a couple of years now with no luck, so I've finally decided to put it on my Christmas list.

For my birthday, I just got:

Blue Shoes and Happiness
by Alexander McCall Smith

The Triumph of Caesar
by Steven Saylor

Undead and Unworthy
by MaryJanice Davidson

Cry Wolf
by Patricia Briggs

Marsbound
by Joe Haldeman (releases next week, but it's pre-ordered!)

And I'll be buying these this fall, as soon as they're released:

Every Last Drop
by Charlie Huston

Devil's Brood
by Sharon Kay Penman (the conclusion of her Henry & Eleanor trilogy, yay!)

I don't usually like Slug's drawings either, but this one works. Thanks for finding it, Shoshanapnw.

Several. All of the group reads I've done here were books I probably would not have read on my own.

I'm most grateful for these authors I've discovered through goodreads: Steven Saylor, Charlie Huston, and Mary Doria Russell. And the books English Passengers and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

The "Whatcha Readin'?" thread on the dope led me to Michael Flynn, Neal Stephenson, David Weber, George R. R. Martin and George MacDonald Fraser.

That chapter ended with Mirella in mid-thought, and it left me stunned for a few seconds. I didn't accept what had happened until it was confirmed later by another character.

Those off-page deaths were terribly realistic, because that's how you usually hear about death, second or third hand (like Renzo coming to tell Claudette what happened to her husband).

The very casualness of the mention that Pierino, the one-armed mail man, had been executed after the war, made it horrific.

I've only read 10 of those "New Classics". My favorites of those are Angela's Ashes, Bridget Jones's Diary and A Prayer for Owen Meany. (And The Remains of the Day is one of my very favorite movies).

Lonesome Dove and Cold Mountain are on my to-read list.

I've only read 37 of the 1001 list, not counting a few I only vaguely remember being required to read in school. I'm fairly confident I'll never break 20% of that list.

I finished this last night. I'm still trying to decide if I'm angry over the ending, or if any other ending would have ruined the book. I'm a happy-endings kind of person, so it's a struggle for me to admit that they aren't always appropriate.