Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Oh? Actually I haven't read any except the Verne one... excuse my ignorance, but what is ERB? :P
Would you tell us more of ERB and Rucker?

Linda wrote: "Did you see him? Literally chillin'........can't remember if he was sick or not.

..."

As Murphy would have it, my PC zonked out last night and my laptop's browser and Flash player suddenly aren't friends anymore, so quite frustratingly, i can't see that until i fix up either of those...

In any case - these 'friendly' or 'human-seeking' coyotes might be how humans started to acquire dogs in the first place - the canine predecessors of domestic dogs figured out that human leftovers are where the easy food is at.

Marita wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Shall we make a vague date to make a discussion of it sometime in 2016?
Oh, and while I have your attention - which is your favorite Murakami?"

[book:The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle|1..."

Sounds good! At least it's a more manageable length than IQ84....
I have also been wondering if we should simply have a poll on which members can choose which Murakami to read.

GT wrote: "LOL that is bad but funny. We live on a lake across from a place where they hunt deer (and plant pot). One night I was on my balcony listening to music and heard this strange sound under me (its pi..."

Ugh, rutting noises at night - we have people whose cats aren't neutered - they have to be by law, but...

Also, do your turkeys scream?

Sounds like you and Linda have had enough animal adventures to last you a lifetime.

At least in Chicago you'd have to go to the zoo to have those. ;)

Ok, but seriously - you're right, car-accidents are not fun. I have a head-on-head collision with myself sitting in front on the passenger side under the belt, and my back and neck was never the same after that. :(

GT wrote: "Yeah, this place has not been the same since the Amazon take over. Facebook did me a favor. I'm surrounded by ultra conservatives and I could not ignore getting in debates with them. So much wasted..."

Yarp, I have a relative or 2 living in red-neck country, so I know whatcha mean. I always refer to red-necks just to take the mickey out of them and it works every time! XD Boy, but I'm a meanie! *ducks and runs*

Btw, GT! So did you get over your cow smash business? I actually saw an accident happen in front of my eyes today - woman was speeding and fiddling on her phone an obvs never saw the other car standing still waiting to turn off, until the last moment (around a bend, see), and KaWHAM! I have never seen the front end of a car so utterly destroyed. You could sweep what was left of it off the road with a broom- in fact, they did. Her airbag and her seatbelt saved her life... but yeah, she was pretty messed up... :(

Ooh nice about the history and the Calvino. Hope you'll come and discuss with us.

Hmm, about the facebook. I feel glad I never felt comfortable in investing too much of myself on facebook, and I stopped going there when i realized facebook owns you and everything you post there.

Ha, but their loss is our gain! The old gang isn't the same here anymore on GR, most of us have gotten busy and moved on and made new friends, -miss the old times sometimes, but hey, I've found a lot of nice new friends in the last year or two. :)

In any case, very happy to have you back! :)))

Oh, btw, good luck with the move!

GT wrote: "Check. Check. Check."

GT!!!! I just thought about you a few days ago and wondered what had happened to you and how things are going with you! Well, what a blast from the past!! :O Are you here to stay, or just rolling by? Would be nice if you tarried awhile. ;)

...and yes, I still read history stuff, you?

Nate D wrote: "That's actually amazing that yo have a copy on hand. Nice find."
Oh goodie!

Lori (Hellian) wrote: "I really liked Seveneves, but Stephenson is one of my very favorites, i think it's not as good as Reamde or Anathem but it still made me think. IMO Quicksilver is not the place to start, he gets ve..."

Most of us have already read some Neil Stephenson or other, though. The reason I've been wanting to do Quicksilver, is because of the history of science aspect, but meh, I realize the book is not really suited for a group discussion, because of it being so long. I suspect such a discussion would soon fizzle out...

We -did- finish Foucault's Pendulum by Eco, though, so... you never know! :P

Nate D wrote: "Oh absolutely. That is, I think, just about her earliest work, but it serves as a rapid microcosm of what she does so well. Though I don't think it's even remotely in print, besides being contained within the copy of he collection House of Fear that I managed to find at the library.
..."

Hm. I asked you about that book, because that is the only work of hers that I actually could find at my own library. (It's out though.) But I asked for it, and apparently it's coming in soon, so that's good. :)
Thanks!

Yolande wrote: "It's about this woman detective Laure Berthaud and her team who investigate and try to solve various crimes from serial killers to terrorism, drug cartels or smaller crimes. A lot of it is also abo..."

Wow, it sounds like a very interesting look into the French system. The only French shows I have ever seen, have been more romantic type things - oh, with the exception of - I think they used to have a show about Arsene Lupin that I saw a few episodes of? ..but I mean, most of the few French shows I saw were not set in a modern-day setting. The show you describe sounds modern.

I must try and find an outlet for foreign language shows. The thing with French movies, though, is that I find they talk too fast for me to be able to pick up anything they say, even if I know the words on black-and-white... :P

The problem is usually to get hold of these shows. I used to buy series, but nowadays I'd only do that for something really special, like Firefly, for example.

Otherwise, I get them as rentals. I prefer getting my shows this way, because I like to binge. XD

Will look out for the show you mentioned.

Well, I am a terribly curious and impatient person, so the only 2 shows I watch while it's still airing, is Silicon Valley and GOT, - don't ask me why the latter, what with all the horror and rape and torture going on in it - I suppose my subconscious has decided that I emotionally invested too much in the show already to stop watching it now.

...but in any case, I have discovered one or two Canadian shows that are pretty nice. To anybody who enjoys both mysteries/detective and steampunk, there's an excellent show already in its 7th or 8th season called Murdoch Mysteries .

The show is set in Toronto at the turn of the previous century (it starts in the late 1800's).

It's very cute in how it presages modern technology, and even just modern little sayings and things - for example, they invent how to take fingerprints and call them "fingermarks", and you see how they started using the saying "it's not my cuppa tea", in quite humorous vein.

The show opens where people are introduced to the possibility of electricity for domestic use, and all kinds of devices are invented in the course of the show, like the telegraph, the telephone, later on the petrol engine, and so forth.

These are just a backdrop to the (mostly episodic) show, though - detective Murdoch is a very intelligent and forward-looking person who loves approaching his murder mysteries from a scientific angle.

Anyway, I could say lots more about the show, but hey - they're not paying me to promote it (yet). :D

Does anybody around here watch any TV shows, btw?

Jennifer wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Has anybody gone to see
Mr. Holmes yet? Looks like something worthwhile catching?"

It looks interesting. I just watched Maggie :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1881002/ "

Hmm, funny, I've never really enjoyed the zombie trope. Even as a teen, I was far more attracted to the vampire and werewolf kind of thing than zombies.

To me, as a kid, zombies always did seem frightening in the way that tanks or robots can be in that they sort of just mechanistically keep going, but meh, if you think about it, they're kinda boring, too.

But Maggie does seem as if it approaches the thing from a different angle. Does she lose her (view spoiler)[brains (hide spoiler)] like the average zombie, Jennifer?

Boo, and now I went and forgot to go see Mr Holmes. Wonder if it's still showing. I'll catch it on the vid circuit then...

Jennifer wrote: "Irony: Because I read The End of Alice, GR recommends Hogg , which I have never heard of the book or the author, until I saw it/him mentioned here. And GR, just because I ..."

:) Yeah...
You know, my GR pages tend to have so much clutter that I more often than not, look right past those rec's without even noticing them, but I have had a few howlers with the "Read 'this' because you have 'that' on your shelf "....

Anyway, from people's reactions, I don't know if I'd have the guts to read The End of Alice, but on the other hand, the curious cat inside me needs to know...

Nate D wrote: "Thanks for the invitation, Traveler! As far as Delaney goes, Dhalgren makes the best case as essential 20th century lit (see Aubrey's recent 5-star review!), or Babel-17 for fast sci-fi entertainme..."

Thanks for all the recommendations! I wonder if there are any good stories in The Oval Lady, Other Stories: Six Surreal Stories

Ruth wrote: "I am usually a big fan of Banks, though I haven't read The Wasp Factory yet."

Nate D wrote: "Traveller, I very much hope that Hogg isn't your only foray into Delaney. It's a very determined outlier.

I really must read High-Rise, though -- Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, is probably his..."

Hi Nate! How lovely to see you popping up here!
I know Delaney is good, and I might have read some of his other fiction that I can't remember, but Hogg really put me off him. However, I am willing to try his other work, of course, especially if I get any firm recommendation.

@ Ruth and Nate: I see that other "polymath"/eclectic reader groups have 2 discussions a month that they divide between genres. We've been thinking of splitting this group in a similar manner into 2 sections: mainly a lit-fic section and mainly a speculative/SF section, since that seems to be where the group's interests mainly lie, and where most of my own fiction interests lie.

Then we can discuss relatively controversial authors like Ballard, Banks, Delaney, Palanuik, Rice Burroughs, Bret Easton Ellis etc. in the 'speculative' section...