Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion
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ABOUT BOOKS AND READING
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What are U reading these days? (PART NINE (2013) (ongoing thread for 2013)
Wow, Jim was right. Argo was spell binding. Even if we did know the end. Now that's saying something.
Yes, Nina, I was really riveted by Argo. It was touch and go right to the end.
Twain certainly loved to point out the absurdity of our world. "From the London Times" has this pretty much summing up the story.'It is my opinion that this matter is quite simple. The prisoner at the bar was charged with murdering the man Szczepanik; he was tried for murdering the man Szczepanik; he was fairly tried and justly condemned and sentenced to death for murdering the man Szczepanik. It turns out that the man Szczepanik was not murdered at all. By the decision of the French courts in the Dreyfus matter, it is established beyond cavil or question that the decisions of courts and permanent and cannot be
revised. We are obliged to respect and adopt this precedent. It is upon precedents that the enduring edifice of jurisprudence is reared. The prisoner at the bar has been fairly and righteously condemned to death for the murder of the man Szczepanik, and, in my opinion, there is but one course to pursue in the matter: he must be hanged.'
(view spoiler)
Interesting article, Jim; thanks for sharing it! (I'd never heard of that story until now.)A case could be made that the world-spanning communication apparatus in "The Machine Stops," by E. M. Forster, also anticipates aspects of the Internet. But Forster's story was written in 1908, so Twain would still have chronological priority. Interestingly, though, neither writer (and no other SF authors I've ever run across) connected this kind of worldwide communication with computer-type technology; in Twain's story, for instance, it's the phone system that serves as the medium for this. Even after computers were invented and functional (though very big and cumbersome by our standards), the SF community was fixated on their problem-solving and "command and control" potential. That their main uses would turn out to be communication and replacing the typewriter is a concept nobody in the SF community seems to have foreseen. :-)
Jim wrote: "Twain certainly loved to point out the absurdity of our world. "From the London Times" has this pretty much summing up the story.'It is my opinion that this matter is quite simple. The prisoner..."
Jim, what "story" are you referring to?
Werner, yes, I too noted that Twain concentrated on the "phone" system. As you said, he didn't imagine communication via "computer-type technology".
"From the London Times", Joy. That's the name of the story.
I just read Growing Up Humming by Mike Spinak. It's a picture book of baby Anna's hummingbirds. WOW!!! Seriously good pics, great explanations. Fantastic for young & old. 5 stars.https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Jim wrote: "I just read Growing Up Humming by Mike Spinak. It's a picture book of baby Anna's hummingbirds. WOW!!! Seriously good pics, great explanations. Fantastic for young & old. 5 stars. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ..."Sounds great, Jim! You were lucky to get a free copy. We see hummingbirds at our house all summer. They love my flowers. :)
The author was kind enough to tell me how he took the pictures & all, too. It's incredible how fast those little things grow. The book is available on Amazon. You should get it, Joy. You'd love it.
Jim, I'm sure I would enjoy the book. I "looked inside" and saw a few of the pictures at Amazon:http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Up-Humm...
Those birds are so cute!
Today I finished reading Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand by William J. Mann. It was fascinating to watch Streisand's rise to fame (from her life as a young girl in Brooklyn). The research done by the author is incredible. There were so many people who influenced her life. A good read!
My mistake but turned out OK. I tried to order a Kurt Vonnegut book for my son and accidentally send it to me instead. But, after reading the forward re-ordered it and this time it went to the right person. Fascinating summary by the author who I think just died this year or late last year, of his life. Have any of you read this book of his short stories? "Bagombo Snuff Box."
I read "Welcome to the Monkey House" another short story collection by Vonnegut. He died back in 2007. Excellent writer with a very odd way of looking at things. He reminded me a lot of a modern day Twain with his cynicism & way with words.
His writing life was fasicinating according to what I read and yes, it did seem Twain like in many respects. Seems to me Ray Bradbury was more serious. Could be wrong. I liked both.
I think Bradbury was more serious too, Nina. I recently got the full Ray Bradbury Theater on DVD & am slowly going through the show. It's sort of like the Twilight Zone, but based on his short stories. There's a short write up on it on Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ray_...
Nina wrote: "... Have any of you read this book of his short stories? "Bagombo Snuff Box." "Haven't read it, Nina. (Bagombo Snuff Box by Kurt Vonnegut)
Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
When I think of Vonnegut, I immediately think of Slaughterhouse-Five.
Here's a link to Vonnegut's obituary at the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/boo...
He died at the age of 84 in 2007.
Joy H. wrote: "Nina wrote: "... Have any of you read this book of his short stories? "Bagombo Snuff Box." "Haven't read it, Nina. (Bagombo Snuff Box by Kurt Vonnegut)
Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Wh..."Interesting Obit and they do refer to him as a modern day Twain.
Nina wrote: "Interesting Obit and they do refer to him as a modern day Twain."Nina, I really should read some of Vonnegut's work. Perhaps that book of short stories you suggested would probably be a good choice.
Right now I've started reading Joyce Carol Oates' novel, We Were the Mulvaneys: Reading Group Guide (not the guide...I couldn't find any other link). I've always wanted to read something by Joyce Carol Oates. I think this is a good choice.
I saw the film adaptation last year and gave it 5 Netflix stars:
"We Were the Mulvaneys" (TV 2002)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0313769/?...
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/60034764...
Hope you like that Joyce carol Oates. I didn't but won't spoil it for you by saying why...
My only experience with Oates' work has been reading two of her short stories (as part of multi-author anthologies), "Queen of the Night" and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" So far, her score with me is 0-2; but that's obviously based on a very small sample of her output! I'll be interested in your review, Joy.
Werner & Nina, in 2009 I read Oates' The Gravedigger's Daughter. I gave it 5 stars out of five. See my review here:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Also see the topic in this group about the same book:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
We had good discussion there about Oates' work.
I had almost forgotten that I read the book. At times like these I really appreciate how Goodreads keeps records for us! What a pleasure to look back and remember these things!
Thanks for the links, Joy! Yes, I'd forgotten that discussion, but enjoyed recalling it when you jogged my memory. :-)
Werner, I don't think the average brain is accustomed to storing so much information in our memory banks. These days we are all dealing with "information overload"!
I have just finished a history about the Irish in America; now I am switching to science fiction--Infinity Beach.Hoping soon to catch up n a few reviews,, also!
Although I only mentioned one of them in message 483 above, my friend Henrik actually sent me two review copies of books his small press has recently published. The second one, which I started reading over the weekend, is Hex Code and Others by John Mayer. (If you click on his name there, Goodreads takes you to the author page of a different John Mayer, but this has been reported and hopefully will soon be corrected.) Like the other book, it's a collection of fiction anchored by a novella, with a few poems thrown in. In this case, the common theme is "horror;" the stories vary widely in genre (supernatural, SF, crime fiction), but they're very consistent in high quality.
I've been very limited in my reading time lately with all the mowing. I still haven't gotten to any of the weedeating or most of the spraying & then Mom was here, so almost all my 'reading' has been audio books. Except for Jackie, I doubt anyone else would be interested in E.E. Knight's Vampire Earth series. It's mostly an SF take on post apocalyptic earth invaded by aliens that are vampiric in an interesting way.My regular book is a nonfiction book by Mary Roach called Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal. It's really interesting. The first third of the book was pretty much about the mouth, then some on the stomach, but now I'm reading about the anus - a marvel of engineering according to one scientist. He points out that no one has yet been able to invent such a perfect valve to sort gas, liquid, & solids so precisely. Roach, with her typical, wonderful sense of humor, is able to make the grossest things interesting, even if I do usually read it while eating lunch.
;-)
Werner wrote: "... The second one, which I started reading over the weekend, is Hex Code and Others by John Mayer. ... it's a collection of fiction anchored by a novella, with a few poems thrown in. In this case, the common theme is "horror;" the stories vary widely in genre (supernatural, SF, crime fiction), but they're very consistent in high quality. "Werner, I read the description of the book. It says that the author, John Mayer, has "acquired a registered nurse's license". I'll bet he sees a lot of horror that way too! Yikes! :)
Jim wrote: "My regular book is a nonfiction book by Mary Roach called Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal...."Jim, I downloaded the audio version of Gulp from Audible.com. Yes, the author does a great job and I too enjoy her sense of humor.
Day Camp in Hawaii by Paula Knoderer Hrbacek is for grades 1 - 6 according to the title page. I disagree. It's not just for day camp, Hawaii, or those ages. With very little imagination, it gives any parent a lot of fun ideas of things to do with kids singly or in groups cheaply, whether you're on a trip, have a rainy vacation day, or a birthday party. Baby sitters should read it, too.My 5 star review is here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
I'm reading Ember and Ash which is set about 20 years after the events of The Castings Trilogy, one of my favorite books. I didn't even know about this one until a friend reviewed it...and she didn't know about the earlier books and still gave it a favorable review. I'm enjoying being back in that world again, with a couple of familiar characters and a bunch of new ones. I just wish I had more time, if I wasn't back to work I'd have breezed through it in a couple of days. I've had it for over a week and I'm only 1/4 of the way through! Oy. Work really has a way of interrupting my life! lol
Jim wrote: "Day Camp in Hawaii by Paula Knoderer Hrbacek is for grades 1 - 6 according to the title page. I disagree. It's not just for day camp, Hawaii, or those ages. With very little imagination, it give..."Thanks for the interesting review, Jim. That DOES sound like a useful books for parents or for people who work with children.
Jackie wrote: "I'm reading Ember and Ash which is set about 20 years after the events of The Castings Trilogy, one of my favorite books. ..."Jackie, I see that the author, Pamela Freeman, is from Australia. We see more and more nowadays about people from Australia!
About having to work, it sure eats into your leisure time!
I'm still reading We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. I love all her descriptive details as well as the slant she takes on all her characters, really fleshing them out. I'll be a while reading this one!
Last night, I started reading a collection of Western stories by pulp-era writer Les Savage, Jr., Six-Gun Bride of the Teton Bunch, and Seven Other Action-Packed Stories of the Wild West, which Jim mentioned earlier on this thread. In fact, Jim passed on his copy to Barb and I after he read it; many thanks, Jim! I'm not very far into it, but I'm liking what I've read so far.
I just finished Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach. Wow! We rely on (live for?) our gut & the sales pitch we're subjected to daily is full of misinformation & outright lies. Worse, I was completely ignorant on a lot her information because no one will discuss it. They yuck factor is too high. It's a must-read.My 5 star review is here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
I thought I'd read, "We Were the Mulvaneys" and I don't think I liked it and then the other day I came across that book in my bookcase and I am curious enought to try to read it again.
I didn't get to finish my message about my book club meeting today where we discussed interesting first lines and I was remembering the first line in "Pride and Prejudice," and I quote: "It is a truth universally acknowledged. that a single man in possession of a good fortuen, must be in want of a wife." Another first line, "Call me Ishmael," and "Marley was dead:to begin with." Do any of you have favorite first lines?
I love many first lines, Nina. Most from Zelazny's work. He had a flair for them.From Lord of Light:
It is said that fifty-three years after his liberation he returned from the Golden Cloud, to take up once again the gauntlet of Heaven, to oppose the Order of Life and the gods who ordained it so.
From Isle of the Dead:
Life is a thing--if you'll excuse a quick dab of philosophy before you know what kind of picture I'm painting--that reminds me quite a bit of the beaches around Tokyo Bay.
To Die in Italbar:
On the night he had chosen months before, Malacar Miles crossed the street numbered seven, passing beneath the glow globe he had damaged during the day.
The Dream Master:
Lovely as it was, with the blood and all, Render could sense that it was about to end.
Every one of them (& these are just a few quick examples) suck me in & make me wonder just what sort of crazy story he's sucking me into. His short stories begin even better.
Random House Audio has a new site with 5 audio books for free. Kind of interesting.http://www.tryaudiobooks.com/
I finished Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Wow. 4 star review. Very good, an oldie but a goodie.http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Werner, Jim, and Nina, thanks for your posts.I am currently listening to the audio version of The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society by Frans de Waal
To my surprise, when I did a search of our group's posts, I discovered that I had actually started a separate topic about this book in 2010. See it at:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/4...
I'm enjoying reading about the behavior of primates and how that behavior indicates that we, as well as primates, are born with an innate sense of caring about what happens to others. In other words, we naturally have empathy for one another. The author, Frans de Waal, suggests that our sense of morality has developed from this innate empathy.
I went to the GF library sale today, only 2 books from my list, Ghostlight by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Lathe of Heaven which Jim recommended. Here's the gr links to the small score I got today. I tried really hard to stay within my list. I didn't do too bad since usually I spend too much and my bag is overstuffed.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53... Love this series.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61...
I've been wanting this forever. And totally worth the trip just for this one alone. You all know how I love MZB.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59... recommended this to me. TY, Jim!
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10... After reading Fionavar, I will read anything Guy Gavriel Kay writes.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30...
I'm sure I will, it sounds like my kind of book.
Looks like you got some great acquisitions there, Jackie. Congratulations, and happy reading!
Jackie wrote: "I went to the GF library sale today, only 2 books from my list, Ghostlight by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Lathe of Heaven which Jim recommended. Here's the gr links to the small score I got today...."
Jackie, what a haul! Looks like some exciting reading!
After Jim recommended The Lathe of Heaven, I put the 1980 film adaptation on my Netflix queue. There's a very long wait.
1980 film version: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081036/?...
2002 film version: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290230/?...
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Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group
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As I listen to an audio version of his autobiography, it's obvious that the man had an extremely active and fertile mind.
PS-Thanks for the link to the article. ( http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/01/08/Ma... )