Larry’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2020)

Larry’s comments from the Nonfiction Reading - Only the Best group.

John wrote: "I have been avoiding any reading of the news these days. But, increasingly, I have found myself looking at various Washington Post pieces that I wished to read. And I always liked the Book World se..."

I am so glad that the Washington Post has restarted its weekly Book World section. Best book reviewer in the universe in the form of Michael Dirda!

John wrote: "That is a great story, Larry. I love the name of the store. Whenever I see bard, I think of all things Shakespeare. They also have a nice website.

I’ve gotten so used to reading with apps on my iP..."

I can support independent bookstores like this and by also buying paper books for friends, but when it comes to myself, I'm still sticking mainly to Kindle books ... with a few Google books thrown in.

So yesterday was the second year we followed a new "tradition" that I established last year. It's the TWELVE BOOKS OF CHRISTMAS tradition. We take our granddaughters, Ella and Cessy, to a local independent bookstore (Bard's Alley in Vienna, Virginia) and they pick out twelve books ... three for themselves, one for each other and one each for their mom and dad. Basically, Cina and I leave Ella and Cessy alone while they look for the books, but give them a little help for books for their mom and dad. Jamie had asked if we could help them find David Maraniss's Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe and Amanda said she would love a book of poetry by Rupi Kaur. One of the store staff members checked and they had just sold the last copy of the Jim Thorp biography ... EXCEPT another employee said that four boxes of books had come in and she thought that one was from the publisher. She found that box, opened it, and there were indeed more copies of this important biography. And two titles of poetry books by Rupi Kaur, and a great suggestion as to which might be the one to get. And on their own, Ella and Cessy picked out two other good books for their parents. (They did that before they even had found the three books each for themselves.)

Is Bard's Alley a great bookstore? Well, no. (I'm not sure that Northern Virginia has a great bookstore.) But it's a good little store with a more than adequate carefully curated selection of books and with very helpful employees who love books and who really like helping customers. It's the one we have chosen to support. You don't have to buy twelve books, but do consider supporting your local independent bookstore. It's important.

Here's a link to Bard's Alley: https://www.bardsalley.com/

Carol,

"There is actually a suggestion he fathered a love child through his acquaintance with one of the ladies, although this was not in Roberts' book! "

There are truths that cannot be documented for lack of evidence. I am interested in the Andrew Robert's book on Napoleon. Let me know what you think of it when you finish it.

Larry

John wrote: "The cold here just won’t quit. We were supposed to finally have a low of 45 degrees, but it was 30 degrees this morning. They’re saying now that tomorrow will be the warm up, but I won’t hold my br..."

Wow .. that was a missed forecast. I do think that many North Carolina homes would do a bit better with additional insulation. That would help with both heating and cooling of them.

Truly bad construction, John. Not fun at all.

Carol, sometimes it’s just a bad electronic device. I ordered a new Kindle Fire about six months ago. Dead on arrival … well, it actually started and then died immediately. Amazon is good on this kind of thing … I had a new one delivered the next day … even before I had a chance to drop off the old one at our local UPS storefront.

Tech problems are so frustrating! We dropped our cable box and landline telephone about four years ago and just went to streaming. We’re lucky to have fiber optic available with no data caps.

Back to the content issues. Over the past few years, it has been a very pleasant surprise to find how rapidly shows from the UK, the Continent, Australia, and New Zealand make their way into our apps (PBS, Acorn, BritBox, etc.) but very much a shock how few Canadian shows ever appear. I really don’t get it. A lot of American shows and movies are actually filmed in Canada because of the tax incentives, but still few true Canadian shows appear here.

Happy Christmas to you and your loved ones, Carol!

Carol,

I stumbled onto those instructions not purposefully looking for them but because I wondered what channels a Virgin Media Box offered. These so-called "set top boxes" are of interest to me in terms of what technology we are offered and what wins out. Right now we have three televisions, with one getting about 90 percent of the use. They all have Fire TV boxes, but I used to have a Roku box for one of them (and still have it disconnected). If you read the reviews, the Roku boxes seem to be the best, but I really got tired of trying to remember how to do things with that one and just replaced it with another Fire TV cube. I use an Apple TV box when I'm at my sons house. I despise the controller for that, but my granddaughters can do anything that they want with it.

This matter of the "best box" may end up being like the battle between VHS and Betamax VCRs. It didn't matter that the Betamax was the best technology. VHS achieved market dominance and the Betamax went away. I wonder if the Roku can stay in the market. I do think that Samsung built Rokus into some of their TVs, but I also know that they have been putting Fire TV controllers into other ones.

Carol, I took a look at the setup instructions. They do look considerably more complicated than just pugging it in. If you haven’t seen this document, take a look.

I apologize if you’ve already tried all this.

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/tv/s...

Larry

Carol, consumer electronics have simultaneously gotten so much simpler and complex over the years …. So that it is hard to know what will happen. I am sorry about the Virgin Media box. Frustrating I know.

Christmas came early … our public library acquired extra copies of ACT OF OBLIVION, and I started it yesterday. Suspense and excitement and great rendering of England and Massachusetts in the early days of the Restoration. I am so glad that you mentioned this book, Carol.

It’s supposed to be very cold here on Christmas Eve … 7 degrees … but then things turn around, going up to 63 degrees on New Year’s Day. In the DC area, We just don’t get the extended cold spells we used to get decades ago. In the winter of 1977/78, we went 39 straight days where it never climbed above freezing. I like it a lot more these days.

I could use some if that heat now too, John!

John, I love cold weather for about two weeks of the year ... and then I'm totally tired of it. That said, for us with my son and family fifteen minutes, it would be hard to move far away.

John and Carol, we live in a three level townhouse. The middle level (living room, dining study, and kitchen) and the upper level (three bedrooms with one converted into computer/TV room) really stay at about the same temperature … whether the furnace is on or the air conditioner is on). The basement probably is 5 degrees cooler in winter or summer.

Not all townhouses have similar temperature ranges. One of my sisters-in-law lived in one (a two level one) where the upstairs temperature was about 15 degrees warmer than the main level in the summer. She didn’t complain about it as much as I would have.

Carol, you make so many good points. It is sad when a few members of a nationality, Ae.g. The Albanians, take over the way we regard that whole nationality. The Albanian crime families have worked their way as the “bad guys” into several movies and videos as Sicilian ones have receded.

26 degrees here in Northern Virginia this morning. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day will be cold ones, with the temperature not climbing out of the high 20s. I don’t like the cold either, John.

Carol wrote: "Have you also got Strep A over there? It has now killed 19 children here. We also have something called a Super Cold which I have now had for the last 2 and half weeks and consists of a streaming n..."

Yep, Strep A is bad here ... really bad. But I've never heard of this Super Cold. My wife and I had bad colds about five weeks ago ... and then I had a cough that lasted for four weeks ... it slowly got better over the last three weeks.