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What are U reading these days? (PART SEVEN) (2011) (ONGOING THREAD for 2011)
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Nina
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Mar 12, 2011 04:44PM
The book is far better than the movie. Do read it. And the other three. If you read number two, The Girl who Played with Fire, you'll not resist reading, The Girl Who kicked the Hornet's Nest. I do think the latter one was far, far better than the movie. So much was left out of the movie. nina
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Nina, sooner or later I will probably read at least one of the Stieg Larsson books. Meanwhile, I am still reading _Gone with the Wind_ and am still enjoying it. In between, I'm sampling other books and have others waiting to be read. Don't we all! :) It's so great to have all these books and movies to look forward to.
I, too, have Gone With the Wind, on my list. You make it sound so worthwhile. nina
Nina, you will LOVE GWTW! If you love Clark Gable, you will find him in the book! :) It's a grand story of the Civil War and the people who went through it. Scarlett is a unique character. For me the book is cozy reading. I guess that's because of the romance which is a big part of it. But there's so much more. You get to LOVE all the characters. I am in awe of Margaret Mitchell. She wrote wonderful dialogue! She also described Scarlett's inner thoughts so well. I can't say enough good things about the book. It's easy reading too. Very straight-forward. No convolutions of the plot. Very well done.
Thanks,Joy, I live only three blocks from our library so next week my first walk will be to pick up the book. I hope they have it on the shelves. Nina
Joy H. wrote: "What are U reading these days? (PART SEVEN) (2011)(continued from Part Six)"
I am reading, "Chariots of the Gods", by Erich Von Daniken
Kathy wrote: "I am reading, "Chariots of the Gods", by Erich Von Daniken"Hi Kathy. It's good to see you here again.
A documentary, based on that book, Chariots of the Gods, was made in 1970.
Below are links to web pages about the film:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065702/
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Cha...
Netflix says:
=====================================================
"Erich Von Daniken's film explores the possibility of extraterrestrial influence on Egypt's pyramids, ancient cave drawings, crop designs and the Easter Island monuments, among other notable landmarks. Based on Von Daniken's book, the film has become a "go-to" movie for those who suspect aliens have visited Earth -- and that their presence aided the sophisticated culture of ancient civilizations."
=========================================================
Sounds like a controversial book but it can be interesting to speculate about all those possibilities.
PS-I was recently watching a documentary about Machu Picchu, the site of ancient ruins in Peru.
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Gho...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Pi...
It's mind-boggling how the ancient Incas managed to build those edifices from heavy stones so high up in the Andes Mountains.
Kathy, does Daniken mention Machu Picchu?
I read Chariots of the Gods myself when I was in college, and have reviewed it here on Goodreads. For whatever it's worth, here's the link to my review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... .A book I've read but haven't reviewed, which gives a serious archaeologist's response to Von Daniken, is Crash go the chariots!: An alternative to "Chariots of the Gods",.
Werner, I read your review of COTG. I think it's perfectly OK to rate a book with one star and then write no comment. The one star speaks volumes. :) However, it's always interesting to read your reviews, no matter how many stars you give.
I read "Chariot of the Gods" & felt pretty much the way Werner did about the man & his writings. One thing I really didn't like was that he made out primitive man to be stupid - not just ignorant, but lacking in intelligence.
Hey Werner, I recall James "The Amazing" Randi doing a pretty thorough thrashing of Von Daniken's ideas in his book "Flim Flam."
He also sets about debunkiing other claims, such as the Bermuda Triangle,the paranormal, etc.
Arnie, we have that book (Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions) here at the library where I work, though I haven't read it myself. I know Randi by reputation, though, and I'm not surprised that he'd find Von Daniken an excellent target!
Hi Arnie. Good to see you here again. _Flim-Flam_ is a great title for a book like that!
Yesterday, I started on The Judging: The Corescu Chronicles Book One, a vampire-fiction series opener by my Goodreads friend Ellen C. Maze. I've been promising her a review of this one for some time, and was anxious to read it anyway (I have a soft spot for vampire fiction written from a Christian perspective).
I just finished reading Aces High, the second in the Wild Cards series.http://www.goodreads.com/series/40686...
They're a lot of fun. Imagine some of the best SF & fantasy writers getting together & letting their imaginations run wild in a series of short stories. This book could have almost been written by one person, so closely tied together were the stories. It's pretty incredible.
I generally don't like short stories but this one sounds really good and worth the read. I'll check it out, thanks Jim.
If any of you plan to see, "Jane Eyre," when it comes out you might enjoy reading, "Romancing Miss Bronte," by Juliet Gael. It is a novel but gives you an interesting background of the author, Charlotte Bronte. nina
Nina, Romancing Miss Bronte sounds like a great historical novel! I'll put it on my to-read shelf. Thank you!Here's a link to a sample online as a Google eBook:
http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader...
This link gives you the first 4 chapters free.
NOTE: When you get to the page linked above, X out the search box. It just confuses things.
Jackie, I've read several of the books over the years since they first came out & various stories in other collections. Usually, they stand alone pretty well. I've collected the first 9 books - finally - to read in order. I might get the 10th. I doubt I'll get them all. It's a never ending story & pretty good. Kind of comic book hero stuff in a lot of ways. Much better writing, though.
I'm sure I'll like it. I'll have to keep an eye out for them.
I have just discovered a great feature of Goodreads in the EXPLORE area. The feature is called "Book Talk" and can be found at the book tab on the right, after you click on "Explore".Anyway, while browsing "Book Talk", I found the following discussion quesion about _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/4...
The question being discussed is:
"Anyone finding it hard to get through?"
One of the answers was:
"I, too, found it difficult to get thru the first 100 pages. The financial part could have been shortened to make a better read. The Swedish movie did just that and the viewer didn't miss a thing!"
Another answer was: "It took me two tries to get it started. Once you start on the third chapter you will find that it's much easier to read through. And it's definitely worth it!"
Now I know I am not alone in finding TGWTDT hard to get into. Maybe I will give it another try.
How far did you get before putting it down Joy? Was it past the 3rd chapter? Just curious.
Jackie, I read only the first chapter (via my Google eBook sample). I found it very boring.PS-Here's the sample:
http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader...
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not a book for me. I found the movie too slow. That doesn't bode well for the book as they're usually filled with a lot more detail. I was just wondering if it does get better and easier to read after ch 3.
Can't find the movie* made from _Siege of Silence_ by by A. Quinnell. There's not much info about the book. Librarything.com says that it's a thriller and that it's part of a Reader's Digest condensed book:http://www.librarything.com/work/474356
http://www.librarything.com/work/4989692
Wiki say "A. J. Quinnell was the pen name of the English thriller novelist Philip Nicholson. He is best known for his novel _Man on Fire_, which has been adapted to film twice, most recently in 2004 featuring Denzel Washington."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Qu...
*PS-I just realized that Jackie, in Message 277, wasn't referring to this book. :) She was referring to _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_. So there was probably no movie made from _Siege of Silence_.
I was talking about Dragon Tattoo, when I read your post about it, Mary JL's message wasn't there yet. We posted only a minute apart. I'll edit the message to reflect Dragon Tattoo.
Thanks, Jackie. Yes, you and Mary JL were both posting at the same time.
I have to thank Nina for recommending Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson. Major Pettigrew has a droll and dry sense of humor and so does the author who created the character. Reading her writing is like eating peanuts... you just keep wanting more. Sometimes she goes into too much description but the dialogue is so entertaining. Every once in a while I find myself laughing out loud at something in the story, usually something the Major says.
Now starting A Time to Die: The Attica Prison Revolt. Dated, but I seriously doubt prisons have improved much since this was written.
Thank you for the link, Mary JL. Sounds like serious reading.
Joy: I mostly read for pleasure and read fiction.Howver, every know and then I get a craving for some non-fiction and read a bit of it. I have always been interested in prison reform from my teens--do not know why. Perhaps I read something that touched me.
The book so far is well written, but despressing.
Mary JL, I know what you mean about getting a craving for a certain genre every once in a while. We all like a change now and then.
This is a great article about ebooks, self-publishing, & the future. I'm a Konrath fan & a friend with similar views on ebooks sent this to me. It's fantastic. http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the link, Jim. Wow, it's a long article! :) I quickly scanned the article and it seems to me that the gist of it is that, with digital books becoming popular nowadays, authors can do better by self-publishing. The article predicts that digital books will become the norm. Paper books will still exist but it will become marginalized.Below are some excerpts from the article:
=================================================
Headline: Saturday, March 19, 2011
"Ebooks and Self-Publishing: A Conversation Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath"
"So the question isn’t, “Will paper disappear?” Of course it won’t, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that paper is being marginalized."
"Paper won’t disappear, but that’s not the point. The point is, paper will become a niche while digital will become the norm."
"For hundreds of years, writers couldn't reach readers without publishers. We needed them. Now, suddenly, we don't. But publishers don't seem to be taking this Very Important Fact into account."
"Currently, my novel The List [by [author:J.A. Konrath|137270]] is the #15 bestseller on all of Amazon. I wrote that book 12 years ago, and it was rejected by every major NY publisher. I self-published it on Amazon two years ago, and it has sold over 35,000 copies."
"If you look at the current Top 100 bestsellers on Kindle, twenty-seven of them are self-published. Many of those authors were rejected by NY. Yet consumers are showing us what they want to read, and voting with their wallets."
FROM: http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/
=================================================
Jim, that's very convincing. But unknown authors will have to get into the advertising business if they're going to self-publish. Isn't that true? I wonder how they'll solve that problem.
Joy H. wrote: "Thanks for the link...Jim, that's very convincing. But unknown authors will have to get into the advertising business if they're going to self-publish. Isn't that true? I wonder how they'll solve that problem. "Joy, I haven't finished the article, but I agree it's an eye-opener. I loved how Eisler compared paper & ebooks to candles & electric lighting. I think it's a very apt comparison. Keep in mind, I'm no expert, so these are just my uninformed opinions as a reader... I have a lot of thoughts here & they're kind of jumbled.
Eisler & Konrath are asking "What value do the publishers add?" & they're saying they're NOT adding much now, certainly not as much as what they're charging. Their business model is totally screwed up for the new age. I agree with them that far.
Everyone involved from publishers to readers should be asking, "What value can a publisher add?" I believe they could add a lot of value that everyone would be more than willing to pay for. Advertising, is just one of the places where publishers could & should be helping more, but haven't in the past & aren't now. I think some will, though.
As I understand it, writing a book is the foundation, but certainly not the whole house. Self-publishing has a stigma of poor quality attached to it because of lack of editing. That's a service the publishers could provide with teams of expert editors. I don't think they've kept that standard up as well as they could. I almost tossed a book in a popular series from a big publisher for poor quality not long ago. If I can't trust the publisher for that, why pay big money, when I can take my chances for free?
Traditionally, publishers provided expert editing up front, often for free. A lot of authors got started by writing short stories & used editor's rejection notes to learn their trade. That's a better way than leaving it up to the marketplace & reader's reviews, IMO. By the time an author debuted their first piece, it had been vetted. A crappy first product turns the consumer off to later products.
If you want to sell stuff on the web, you really need to pay an expert to get your site to show up when people do searches. It's not a one-time fee, but an on-going process, more of an art than a science. Publishers could & should be actively marketing, making sure their author's books pop up as the first choices in Amazon, Smashswords & other places. I don't think they are because they've never had to. Folks went to a store & had a limited selection. Now the selection is so huge that it is far beyond human limits to comprehend it & getting noticed will be tougher since books will NEVER come off the shelf. I believe there are about 1/4 million new books published each year now!
If I wanted a house built, I'd hire a contractor even though I could do it myself. (I've been a contractor.) Why? Because dealing with all the subcontractors takes a lot of time, attention to detail, & up-to-date knowledge specific to the area. My time would be better spent overseeing the contractor & earning the money to pay him in my field of expertise - the computers I've been working with for the past 20 years.
Experienced authors with a lot of output can self-publish successfully. (Success = earning a living from writing) Some new writers will, but that calls for a high level of self-discipline & savvy. All writers could spend more time writing if they didn't have to hire editors, proof-readers, marketing services & whatever else goes into getting a good book out to the readers. So, I don't think publishers are dead, but I think the big houses are dinosaurs & are going to be replaced by a new breed of publishers that take less of the profits & provide a comprehensive, agile service that authors need.
Oh, another point is that the big publishers are still basing their publishing decisions on weird ideas of what will sell & the costs involved, often including advances to authors. They need to rethink those costs & consider introducing authors through ebooks which are much less expensive to produce & don't take up shelf space. So they might have published Konrath's book, "The List" & reaped a lot of rewards.A major problem with the current publishers is they don't sell directly to the consumer & are out of touch with us, the readers. Since they swap people around a lot within the organization, I don't think they're all that in touch with their authors, either. From what some authors have told me, I don't think they really even know what the book sales are like - as hard as that is to believe. IOW, they really don't know what is going on. It's a death sentence unless they start getting more agile & use the data that is available to them.
Jim, in short, what you're saying is that publishers should get with the program. If they're smart, they probably will. They should beef up their services in the areas of editing and marketing. They're probably all scratching their heads trying to figure out how to adapt to the new paradigms.
Pretty much, Joy. It's a transitional period & they're tough on everyone, but we've seen a lot of that over the past decades, especially in the last 2. Old, conservative businesses have to get agile & meet the new technology. If they don't, they'll lose out & smaller companies will eat them alive. If they do, they're in the enviable position of having a lot of resources to throw into the ring & could become the 900 lb. gorilla of the industry. What Eisler pointed out about Apple becoming the leading music provider is a case in point.
Jim, it'll be interesting to see what the future holds. I saw a scientist on TV predicting that in the future people will have Internet access built into their heads. Hard to believe, but years ago it would have been hard to believe that, as happened earlier this week, my sister would be able to send me a message from Spain telling me that she arrived safely to start her vacation, and that I would receive it here in my living room seconds after she sent it. It's easy to take that sort of thing for granted now, but it once was science fiction.
I don't find that scientist's prediction hard to believe at all, Joy. My uncle Colin had Parkinson's & a couple of years ago I found a controller for him that worked on brain waves. I seem to have misplaced the link to it, but did a quick search & came up with this:http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/0...
As it mentions in there, Clint Eastwood flew a jet with something similar in a movie in 1982, the year my oldest was born. Now it is becoming a reality. It's not invasive. There are virtual reality glasses, some with sound built-in on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/tag/video%20gla...
I don't think putting a mind controller together with VR glasses & ear buds will take a huge leap of technology. Gaming will hit a new level, which means there's lots of money to be made.
Stimulating senses, such as smell, taste & feel are probably just around the corner. Already Trisenx is working out a way to send smell across the Internet:
http://www.sean.co.uk/a/science/trise...
How much further away is directly stimulating the brain? I have no clue or any real idea of what is involved. I somehow doubt it will be too far away. That might just be the worst day in humanity's trip, though. The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton by Larry Niven is about a detective in the future. It's been years, but I vividly remember his description of finding the corpse of a 'wirehead', someone who deliberately over rode the safties in a modern pleasure device, a wire that directly stimulated the pleasure senses of the brain. The person sat in a chair until they died from dehydration, literally pleasured to death.
A new, more perfect drug to get addicted to? Many SF writers have written stories about the idea. Some only show positive aspects, others negative. Likely the reality will be somewhere in between. Usually is.
Jim, did you ever see Surrogates? That's a technology that's begging to be abused.
Interesting stuff, Jim. Hard to believe, but it's here. What does EPOC stand for? I searched but couldn't find the answer. I'm always curious about the meaning of acronyms.I notice that the "smells" device requires a cartridge of chemicals. Nevertheless, it's an amazing development.
I find it amazing that there are so many brainy people working behind the scenes to develop these devices. They're like the shoemaker's elves who work while no one is watching (or is aware of them). But evidently, lots of people, like you, are watching. :)
Jackie wrote: "Jim, did you ever see Surrogates? That's a technology that's begging to be abused."Surrogates?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263/
I-Yi-Yi!
"Surrogates" (2009)"
"Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop (Willis) is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others' surrogates."
Another movie, Gamer is even worse than that, people experience things through other people's bodies, sort of like Surrogates but on a whole new level. For instance, I could go out dancing in your body while my physical body is at home in front of the computer. Of course, the experiences were never as benign as dancing. It was creepy and scary in a wholly realistic way.
Jackie wrote: "Jim, did you ever see Surrogates? That's a technology that's begging to be abused."Yes, I've seen it most of twice. I came in partway through the second time. I liked it.
Jackie wrote: "Another movie, Gamer is even worse than that, people experience things through other people's bodies, sort of like Surrogates but on a whole new level. For instance, I could go out dancing in your...""Creepy and scary" is right!
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