What are you reading these days? (Part ELEVEN (2015) ongoing thread for 2015 Showing 851-900 of 1,045

[Nina]

I read Joy's commetn about enjoying your car book and it was funny as I looked for a book about cars.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Nina wrote: "I read Joy's commetn about enjoying your car book and it was funny as I looked for a book about cars."

Nina, I can understand your confusion. It's best to always try to find the beginning of the conversation before you read the reply. :)

[Werner]

I should probably make a practice of putting "car book" in quotation marks. :-)

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Werner wrote: "I should probably make a practice of putting "car book" in quotation marks. :-)"

Good idea, Werner.

[Nina]

Oh, Werner that car episode gave me a good laugh at myself.

[Werner]

Nina wrote: "Oh, Werner that car episode gave me a good laugh at myself."

Glad it did, Nina! :-)

[Nina]

Jim, Thanks for your advice on replacing water heater pipes. My husband says our current problem is the heating element and if he can drain our heater and fix that problem he hopes he won't have to change any pipes. But, we'll see. This heater is only in our kitchen. It was originally installed by prior owners so the hot water would reach the sink faster.

[Jim]

Tell your husband good luck. Hopefully he can get a hose going out the window to drain it. That's what I did. I left the water on, ran a 50' hose out the window & opened the drain valve until the water started to run, then turned off the supply & opened the overflow valve. It took a while, but siphoned it just about dry. It's so much easier than the bucket brigade.

I've rarely found an element replacement. I guess it happens in some places, but most of my experience was in an area where the water was just too acidic so it ate holes in the tank. Here it isn't, but ours was leaking, too. I'm glad the element went because otherwise I wouldn't have caught the leak.

[Nina]

Jim, the continuing hot water heater problem. There is no drain so someone will probably have to come and pump the water out. I'll keep you informed.

[Jim]

No drain? I didn't know they made them without. That's awful. There is no way to move or work on a full one.

[Nina]

Jim, My husband wonders how it ever got past inspection to be sold in the first place. It is awful. In the meantime I use the kettle to heat water on the stove.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Nina, hope your hot water problem can be solved soon.

[Nina]

As I am heating water in my kettle this morning I thought of the Syrians crossing the sea and walking hundreds of miles and figured it wouldn't hurt me to heat water on the stove. However, my husband is trying to fix the problem....

[Nina]

Jim, next step in the water heater problem or my husband's lament, "I wish it had a drain." He is now going to use an air compressror to try and blow the water by air to the open faucets in the basement and hope the water flows into the sinks an close it off so there isn't a flood. He tells me that the way the pipes are connected to this heater it means the water has to flow uphill..

[Jim]

Sounds like an interesting solution to the problem. I doubt it will work, though. As I recall the hot water pipe typically is toward the top of the tank, above the elements, while the cold water goes down to about the 1/4 mark, below the elements.



To blow the water to the sink, I'd think he'd have to unhook the cold water & blow into it, so he might get the top 1/3 or so until the water level falls below the bottom of the hot water pipe. After that, just air will come out.

I think I'd unhook the cold water pipe & hook a hose to it & siphon the water out as far as I could. Then I'd take the top element out, stick the hose in there & siphon the rest. His call, of course. I'm judging by the water heaters I know &, as I mentioned earlier, all of them have a drain so it wouldn't come up.

[Nina]

Jim there is no way to hook a hose to anything in the tank; he wishes there was. Will let you know the outcome. He'll probably work on it Thursday.

[Jim]

Could he remove the cold water line from the tank, pull the union, & shove a hose down the hole? The pipes take a 3/4" pipe so the union should have an outside diameter of almost an inch. By pulling it, he can also pull the rubber back-feed diaphragm they put in now. That would normally stop a hose from being shoved in unless it was small & stiff.

Just another thought. I hate to see you all go without hot water for so long. Personally, if I couldn't get to it until Thursday, I'd hire a plumber.

[Nina]

We are enjoying watching "The Walt Disney Bio," on public TV. It was on two hours last night and again tonight. He certainly was a genius;at least I think so. I loved all of his movies as a child/ "Snow White," "Bambi" "Fantasia," and of course, "Mary Poppins," when my children were young. I just finished read a fascinating book, although it was long and I admit to skimming a few pages. It is titled, "Wait for Me," by the Duchess of Devonshire, Deborah Mitford. Her husband's brother was married to one of Jack Kennedy's sisters. And there were other relatives of importance scattered throughout the book. Reading about the funeral of Jack Kennedy for the inside is itself sad but quite interesting.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Nina wrote: "... I just finished read a fascinating book, although it was long and I admit to skimming a few pages. It is titled, "Wait for Me," by the Duchess of Devonshire, Deborah Mitford. ..."

An audio sample can be heard here: http://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoir...

[Nina]

Yeah, hot water coming out of the kitchen faucet now. My husband accommplished this by using an air compressor to blow the water in the disengaged water heater to send the water down into our basement bathroom faucet and shower. I watched to see if the water did indeed come down and not go onto the floor. Our problem was unique/no way to connect a hose or pipe/no other way to get the way out. Problem solved and the cost was fifty dollars. A plumber would have charged twice that much and he would have taken out the heater and all sorts of problems then with water pipes etc.

[Jim]

Glad it's fixed, Nina.

[Nina]

Me too. You don't miss something until it's gone. I have a frozen trout in my freezer and wish it was gone. I don't have a clue how to cook it/we don't have an outdoor cooker/it was given to my husband and soon it is going to a daughter. i only know how to fix salmon and other fish/not. Trouble is I grew up far from the source of water.

[Jim]

Pan fry in some butter.

[Nina]

Thanks for the tip Jim. We lose our fifty year old pine tree the end of this month and the birds lose their home. We are looking at trees to replace that one on Saturday. Won't be the same but I am trying to view the newcomber in a positive way.

[Nina]

Joy, my daughter sent me this quote and so I am going to use it in the forward of my memiors and thought I'd pass it on to you.

"But How Could You Live and Have No Story to Tell."

Fyodor Dostoye Dostoyersky

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Good one, Nina.

[Werner]

As I continue to wait for the start of next month's common read in the Supernatural Fiction Reader's group, I'm now passing the time with another free review copy from my friend Andrew, The Deathcats of Asa'ican and Other Tales of a Space Vet, the collection of his ten SF stories featuring the adventures of Doc Hughes, a space-faring veterinarian. I beta read all of these stories years ago, but felt I needed a reread to do them justice in a review.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Thanks for posting, Werner.

I recently listened to an audiobook version of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt - The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It was fascinating. At that time, the White House was more like a hotel, with all the famous persons staying there to be with FDR.

[Nina]

Anything by Doris Kearns Goodwin is bound to be good. Still pain hanging about but I think I am slowly improving. Thanks again for your get well wishes. A friend just brought me supper for tonight/Spanish rice with tomatoes, garlic and green peppers from her garden and homemade dill bread. There is some compensation for ailing.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Glad to hear you're improving, Nina.

[Nina]

Still experiencing pain but not as severe or widespread so I'm hopeful soon it will be gone. Sadly, our tree came down today. Doesn't look too bare from the inside looking out but outside there is nothing where the tree once stood. I hope getting another tree will help. And the poor birds seem totally confused as to what happened to their home. My husband just came in and said it is going to be in the mid forties at night this week so we should move any plants I want saved inside so off to my garden.

[Jim]

Glad you're feeling somewhat better, Nina. We're supposed to go into the 40's tonight, too. The high tomorrow is about 60. That's going to feel awfully chilly after the 84 degree day we had yesterday or the day before. At least we got 1.5" of rain & it's supposed to keep raining until Sunday. Lighter rain, but then we might get some of the edges of the hurricane. So, we went from drought to mushroom weather!

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Sorry about your tree, Nina. Yes, the poor birds. They'll miss it too.

[Nina]

Joy, I like your comment on Mushroom weather. We actually once grew mushrooms in our basement. A qulite successful operation until our cat decided it was a great litter box.

[Jim]

Mushrooms are turning into a cottage industry around here. When I was clearing part of my woods, I took a load of 8" maple logs to the Extension Office for one of their classes on it.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Nina, it was Jim who mentioned the "mushroom weather".

[Nina]

When we were growing mushrooms it was about thirty years ago. The postman who delivered the medium and spores asked about a month later if he could come see the mushrooms.

[Nina]

Thanks for clearing up who said what for me joy. Once we had a mushroom hunting slumber party. No one slumbered after eating them. We all picked mushrooms and i sauteed them and it wss a feast.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

I love stuffed mushrooms.

[Mary JL]

I finally finished Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. It took a long time but was worth it.

Now, I have starte book one of The hunger Games Trilogy, The Hunger Games. Very well written, so far.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Thanks for posting, MaryJL.
I recently finished reading Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir by Clint Hill.
For me it was compulsive reading. So I finished it in one day.

[Werner]

This month, I'm taking part in a common read of Haunted, by the late British author James Herbert (1943-2013), in the Supernatural Fiction Readers group. Until the group picked this book for the annual read this year, Herbert wasn't on my radar (although he was a major figure in the genre in the U.K. --the bestselling novelist there during his lifetime!), but I'm enjoying the book. Since it's relatively short and reads quickly, I'm expecting to finish it tomorrow.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Enjoy your group read, Werner.

[Werner]

Will do, Joy! :-)

[Mercurialgem]

Recently finished Bronte's Villette but didn't rate it right away bc I didn't know what I wanted to give it. I hate how it ended and I really wish Lucy would have had a romance with the doctor instead. It was wordy but I liked that for the most part. Lucy was a very lonely person that kept to herself and what we read is basically about her feelings and opinions, which I like those books. Then after that I read Mitford's The Pursuit of Love and that was more lively but still a tragic end. Next? I have four that I have started but need to choose one to focus on.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Thanks for posting, Mercurialgem! Below are links to the books:
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Below is the post I made this morning at my review of Kinds of Love by May Sarton. (It's fiction and was first published in 1970.)
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I read this book sometime in the 1990's. I have just now come across the quotes which I copied from the book. They are done in my own longhand writing and there are almost 14 pages of these notes!

The author, May Sarton, had a sharp mind. She had an ability to express so much deep wisdom about life in beautiful prose. I'm amazed as I re-read my notes! Such wisdom! For example, below is a quote from page 32:
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"So it is being together that matters, not any longer what we may say or not say."
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That thought is so deep and so true and it is expressed in such a simple way.

May Sarton was indeed a philosopher; she had a deep grasp of what it means to be a human being, with all our varied experiences and their effects on our psyches.

I'm so glad I saved these notes.
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My review is at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Werner]

While I'm marking time waiting for Rebekah and Tony's visit from Australia, and for another group common read following that, I'm filling the space with stories from another anthology, Novel Ideas-Fantasy. I picked up a remaindered copy a few years ago, and this seemed like a good occasion for starting it.

[Joy H., Group Founder]

Oh,wow! A family visit from Australia! You must be so excited, Werner.

[Werner]

Yes, we're looking forward to it eagerly, Joy!