Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion
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ABOUT BOOKS AND READING
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What are you reading these days? (Part ELEVEN (2015) ongoing thread for 2015
message 551:
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Werner
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Jun 01, 2015 04:51AM
You're welcome, Nina!
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Nina, did you look in the picture in my link? Downy woodpeckers have a red band across the back of their heads, but it can vary in size & shape. I've seen a large one get ruffled, which might make it seem like a tuft. On some, it's about invisible. The amount of speckling on the wings also varies a lot depending on the bird & the position. These 2 pictures might help.
Great pics, Jim! Thanks.
I had my husbnd look at your pictures and he says it's not the bird we are wondering about. Our bird is the size of a sparrow/has a black bib and a black head with two tiny red tufts coming out of the head. But, thanks anyway for your input.
Well, that combination has me stumped. Flickers are bigger even than the Downy & while they have a black bib, their heads aren't black. If you get a chance, take a picture & send it to your Extension Office. They can ID it for you. Good luck & let us know what it is, if you find out.
If and I say IF I am able to get a picture I will take your advice. The darn little bird swhooses away faster than you can blink an eye when I aim my camera. However, I will keep trying. Curious,nina
I carry a camera on my belt almost constantly. It's a little Leica, a C-Lux3, & takes great pictures. If my hands are free, it takes about 5-7 seconds to get it out & in action. I still miss opportunities all the time. They just happen too fast.I'm really peeved that I didn't carry my camera for some reason a couple of days ago. I was riding Chip along the west fence line & the sun came out to illuminate a Gold finch sitting on top of a beautiful purple thistle flower eating it. It would have made a gorgeous picture!!!
Jim wrote: "I carry a camera on my belt almost constantly. ... I didn't carry my camera for some reason a couple of days ago.... the sun came out to illuminate a Gold finch sitting on top of a beautiful purple thistle flower eating it. ..."Jim, that would have been a great picture!
Jim, when I first got my 35 mm camera with all the telephoto lenses etc someone told me the best pictures were the ones I didn't take. That coud be the case of the finch on the purple flower. I no longer have that camera. The little bird I was trying to take a picture of is when it is sitting at our feeder that is attached to the kitchen window and if I get too close they fly away fast. They also scurry about in the huge old pine tree whose limbs extends almot the length of the kitchen but it is so dense with pine needles it is hard to capture them in amongst the branches. Oh well, maybe one will sit long enough some day for me to get the picture.
I started out with a 35mm Nikkormat (The poor man's Nikon) film camera from the late 60's. I got pretty good at picking the correct film & setting everything up. I had to use a separate light meter since the built-in one was made for the old mercury batteries & the new alkalines weren't quite the right voltage. I really liked it, but when the last camera store that developed pictures closed, I went fully digital. The automated developers just didn't cut it.I wasn't thrilled with digital at first. My first digital camera was a good Sony, but I often used the floppy disk to save the pictures to, although I had a couple of memory sticks, too. They were only 8mb each. Tiny.
Now I have 3 digital cameras. The C-Lux3 is dirty inside now, but is pretty good & is the one I carry all the time. It has a 5x zoom lens, 25-125mm, but zooms twice as much as my wife's Fujitsu 12x zoom. Not sure how that works, but I'm going to try to open it up myself & clean it, I think. It takes videos, but won't zoom during one & the output is in QuickTime (.mov) format, which I don't like because I can't post it directly to many sites like Facebook.
My Leica V-Lux40 is about twice the size & cost, but takes fantastic pictures. They're both so handy that I can easily carry them on Chip, although I try to save the V-Lux for special trips. It can zoom while taking videos (.mp4 format) & has a wider range, a 20x 24-480mm lens.
I have a Canon Rebel which is a full size camera & takes different lenses. I have several for it & the 300mm zooms in more than the V-Lux. Again, I'm not sure how that works, but I can stand in the same spot & take pictures with both that prove it. The V-Lux gets about 90% of the zoom that the Canon does. It's a pain to carry around with the large lenses, but is the best one to mount on a tripod since I have a remote control with a 25' cord for it. I can use it to take timed or manual, long exposures. It doesn't take video at all.
I don't use the V-Lux very often & the Canon even less. I actually thought about selling it, but haven't found anyone that's interested. It is occasionally handy. It was my Uncle's so was free to me.
The biggest surprise to me is in the difference of the colors that each camera takes. The Leicas are newer & have some very smart software that generally picks out the correct settings for the type of picture I'm taking. If not, I can set it. The V-Lux took the best pictures of the sunset the other night, but no camera gets all the detail that the eye sees in one. Still, they were the best I've seen so far.
I like your descriptions, Jim. For a while it was fun for me with all the different lenses and setting which f-stop etc but then that camera was too heavy to take overseas so I got an easier transportable one. I used to like to take black and white and one of my photos was pubished with my travel article and then a few more also. My grandson who is an amature photographer had his sand dunes picture lit up on Times Square on New Year's day a few years back. He has also had photos pubished in Surfing magazines. It is unbeleivable how many pictures people take now compared to when we took them in to be developed. I used to mail mine to Seattle Filmworks.
Thanks & I agree, Nina. The number of pictures is only one of the great things about digital cameras, but a big one. I have a setting on the Leicas that lets me take multiple shots with each click of the button. It's called 'burst mode'. Depending on the lighting & settings, it will take them 1/10th of a second apart, I think. It's not a sure fire way of getting a great action shot, but a long step in the right direction.Taking pictures of horses is hard. I had a book on it & learned a lot. Wish I still had it, but I loaned it to my ex-DIL & she kept it after the divorce. I know that it's best to take a picture of a horse going over a jump while it is rising, just before the top of the arc, but I couldn't figure out why some pictures of a horse trotting were better than others. Turns out I need to catch them on their leading diagonal. I'm miserable at that unless they're on the correct one going in a circle. That lets me know to catch the inside foreleg as it is extended.
The automated settings usually work for me since there are so many. I usually use full automatic, but will change to sport or landscape occasionally. It's nice not having to fiddle with f-stops, ISO, & timing, although I do occasionally with the Canon. They'll all do it, but generally I don't have time with the others. The ability to quickly see results is a huge help when fiddling. No more waiting a week to get the pictures back. I can look at them in seconds.
Even better I love being able to make copies of pictures. I can fiddle with software to crop, change light & hues in seconds. Better yet, I can compare the results on the screen at the same time. It might be the best thing of all. I'm not very good at it & generally only use the simplest functions of a fairly simple photo editor, but it can make dramatic changes for the better.
Photography has sure come a long way. Printing is as easy as uploading them to Walgreen's or Walmart & picking them up a few hours later. The biggest problem is trying to store & annotate them properly so I can find them again! Tough, eh?
;)
Jim, Did you ever take Panoramic?
I haven't, Nina. I can with the V-Lux, but keep forgetting to try it. I'm usually too busy doing other stuff to remember until afterward. I just wrote a sticky note & put it on the camera. Now, if I can remember to pick up the camera when I have time to fiddle, I'll do it.
Jim,When I found the panaramic useful was when there was a large gathering of family members. Also, I did get some terrific photos of sunrises and sunsets. You might think of it in those times.
I am currently reading, "The Wright Brothers," and it is excellent. Werner or Jim, have you read it yet? I recommend it. I am no mechanic or engineer but my husband who was a graduate engineer is explaining some of it to me and he says the planes beining flown today still are using the Wright Brothers design
No, Nina, I've never read any whole books on the Wright brothers. Thanks for the recommendation, though!Having finished Doha 12 on Tuesday (I gave it five stars), I was ready to start a new book yesterday; and with perfect timing, God's Daughter, the book I recently won in a giveaway, arrived that day. It's a historical novel set in the early 1000s A.D., dealing with the Vikings in the New World, by my Goodreads friend Heather Day Gilbert. Being of Scandinavian descent myself, I'm a natural fan of Viking-oriented fiction!
Speaking of non-fiction, I'm currently enjoying An Affair to Remember: The Remarkable Love Story of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. They were quite the couple! I don't know where they got the energy to do all the things they did. So many plays, so many movies, so much traveling! So much emotion!
I always felt sorry for S.P's wife to have this affair so public.
Spencer Tracy's wife said she always thought his affair with Hepburn was only a rumor. (The book says he called his wife every day.)
No I need to use the suspension of disbelief. If we all knew it how could she possibly not? And wasn't she deaf?
They say that the press hardly ever mentioned the affair for a long time, out of courtesy to the parties involved. Hepburn and Tracy always avoided being seen together in public, in fact they went to extremes to avoid negative publicity.Their son was born deaf.
I forgot it was their son. It must have been a sad affair, in any case, with all those involved. How could they not feel a sense of guilt of their joy at the expense of another, even if the innocent party was unaware, the two participants were aware of what they were doing, behind her back, so to speak.
Nina, read the book and tell me what you think: An Affair to Remember: The Remarkable Love Story of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy by Christopher Andersen.
Joy, I will try to get it at the library and will defintiely tell you what I think. Isn't it fun to "talk" about these different books? I just did love the Robert Louis Stevenson book, "Under the Wide and Starry Skies," and apparently some good readers did and one didn't but Wednesday my book club members will be discussing it. I am curious what they think.
Nina, let us know what they thought of the book (Under the Wide and Starry Skies)".I've been reading a couple of short books by Gene Wilder. He never fails to entertain!
The Woman Who Wouldn't
FROM THE BOOK JACKET:
"A supple, unpretentious writer."---The Palm Beach Post
"A sweet, adult fable." ---Kirkus Reviews
What Is This Thing Called Love? (short stories)
"With a delicacy of feeling and a simple style that adds to the power of his fiction, Wilder creates memorable lovers and silly suitors, unexpected attraction and careful courting."
---from the book jacket
A couple of others by Wilder which I've enjoyed in the past were:
My French Whore
and
Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art [his biography]
Not familiar with that author but will check out those titles. "My French Whore," sounds intriguing.
Gene Wilder is a famous actor (and now also a writer).Here's his Wiki page with his picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Wilder
I never knew Wilder was an author. I've always liked his movies with Mel Brooks. "Young Frankenstein" is one of my favorites.
Jim wrote: "I never knew Wilder was an author. I've always liked his movies with Mel Brooks. "Young Frankenstein" is one of my favorites."Wiki says: "Since his most recent contribution to acting in 2003, Wilder has turned his attention to writing."
Wilder has a unique writing style... very simple but behind the writing you can detect his unique sense of humor and his creativity. His plots are simple but intriguing.
PS-You can read a sample of Wilder's The Woman Who Wouldn't here: https://play.google.com/books/reader?...
I looked, but my libraries don't have any of his books in audio format.
Yes, as an actor I am familiar with who Gene Wilder is but his being an author threw me off.
Besides reading the occasional short e-story, the main use I put my Kindle app to is trying out free novels in electronic format to see if they're worth buying in print. (That's a very worthwhile use of the technology, IMO.) The latest one I'm previewing this way is Dakiti by E. J. Fisch, who recently made it free for a day in this format. It's an SF series opener, and I've heard a lot of good things about it from folks who've read it.
As I've said before this/I use both. I don't like the large print books from the library but I appreciate that you can adjust the print size to your liking on the Kindle. Some books have such small print it's hard to read. I like the option of using both depending on the circumstances.
Werner and Nina, those are both good uses of Kindle. I still haven't gotten a Kindle. I still prefer the old-fashioned books. Whenever I've had the opportunity to read book samples online via Google Play or via the GR previews, I haven't really enjoyed the reading as much as hard-copy books.
Joy, Not everyone does like reading from a Kindle and I understand that but reading on my computer GR reviews is really not the same as holding the kindle in my hand and reading like from a page in a book, feels almost the same to me. But, as I said it's not for everyone. It is nice to have a choice though and for me it is good to go back and forth from a Kindle story to a book story. Right now I am reading a huge hardback, "The Queen Mother," by Lady Colin Campbell.
I made sure to get the Kindle DX so it is much larger than most & uses epaper rather than a back-lit screen, so is much easier on the eyes. I still don't like it as much as a regular book, but it gives me a lot more options for reading.
Nina, that must be quite a book! ( The Queen Mother: The Untold Story of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Who Became Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother by Lady Colin Campbell )
Jim wrote: "I made sure to get the Kindle DX so it is much larger than most & uses epaper rather than a back-lit screen, so is much easier on the eyes. I still don't like it as much as a regular book, but it ..."Jim, thanks for telling us about that feature.
I recently finished reading My Wicked, Wicked Ways by actor, Errol Flynn.I found it very interesting. Too bad he died so young (at about the age 50). He was a very adventuresome man.
I bailed out of the book, The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty. My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...In my review, I wrote the following:
=================================
I read to page 62 of this book but didn't read further because I found the story too depressing. The story concerns a daughter who fatally hit a pedestrian while driving. I don't enjoy reading about the terrible things which happen to people but I suppose that's the stuff of novels. The book seems to wallow in depressing situations. Here's a sample from page 61 & 62:
----------------------------
"...Leigh had woken up with her pillow and sheets covered in her own vomit. Waking up to the smell of it had made her vomit again, and then it was in her hair , on her blanket but she was too weak to stand up and get away."
------------------------------
I bailed out after that. I don't need to read that kind of story. For me this story has a value of only one star.
PS-I originally chose this book because I had enjoyed reading Moriarty's The Chaperone. I didn't find that depressing.
================================
BTW, I also posted a review of Moriarty's While I'm Falling. See my review at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In my review I wrote: "The book held my attention for the most part, but I didn't find it pleasurable."
PS-I found some good use of words on page 45 of Moriarty's The Rest of Her Life:"... a kind of heightened conciousness, a heightened sensitivity to truth."
To me the words refer to seeing or realizing the reality of a situation for the first time.
The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending by Jon Land was a real disappointment. I gave it 2 stars simply because I got through it thanks to a decent reader & some boring chores. My review is here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
At a glance, it looks as if this author started writing (mostly series?) in the mid 80s. This is a standalone published in 2007, so the author had 2 decades of experience. Is he just getting tired or something? I'd be interested in knowing if it is just an odd, bad effort. In that case, I might try another. Otherwise, I'll steer clear of all his works from now on. Reminds me of the last Clive Cussler book I started to read, Atlantis Found, or those awful Jack Reacher books.
Jim, one thing I've learned is that, even though we may enjoy a book by an author, it's no guarantee that we will enjoy another book by the same author. There are no guarantees.
I agree with Joy, but sometimes they are surprisingly just as good. I wonder how we will feel about Harper Lee's book.
That's true, Joy. Most authors tend to use similar methods, like any artist or workman & some are known for shoddy workmanship. An author must adhere to the logic of their world. In the case of The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending, very smart people started doing very dumb things to make the end of the story work out. For instance, a super secret hideout is suddenly a meeting place & stupid traps work.If a gun is central to the plot, the author has the responsibility to learn something about it so they can write about it believably. In Die Trying (the second in the series which I couldn't finish) Childs wrote that there were 'hundreds of small holes' in the roof of a van after being shot at from 10'-15' with no big center hole. Anyone who has ever fired a shotgun at a board, tree, or car from fairly close wouldn't make that mistake. There are also enough shot scattered around that Reacher piles them up.
I'm pretty sure Childs hasn't even seen a picture of a 12 gauge shotgun shell on the Internet. They're about 3/4" in diameter & generally about 3" long. The entire shell & including primer, powder, wadding & the crimp. How could anyone picture such a small cylinder holding enough of anything to fulfill the above description? I certainly can't. Some hyperbole is allowed, but pure idiocy snaps me out of the story.
Childs did several similar things in a previous book, but I gave him a pass since it was his first & so many people like his books. Partway through the second, he'd made too many similar errors & lost me. I won't bother to read his books at all any more.
To fill in the time before I start a common read in another one of my Goodreads groups next month, I'm reading a Xena: The Huntress And The Sphinx, a spin-off novel based on the old Xena Warrior Princess TV series (which was one of my favorite shows back in the days when I had more time for TV). I'd gotten a copy from BookMooch some time ago; and I wanted a light, quick read that will be easy to finish in the interval.
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