1 yeah, Sandy Dennis couldn't act.  Only took everyone a few years to figure that out.

2 Nerds!

3 Did I miss the discussion of Dinesh D'Souza's "Roots of Obama's Rage" here? With a few quibbles from me I can nonetheless recommend it as providing great insight into the motivations of L'il Barry Ogabe. Moreover, and very refreshingly, it also suggests a methodology for verifying this sort of speculation, inviting the reader, as it were, to use the sense God gave him or her to check things by oneself. (I believe I don't need to mention that the new film "2016" is based on D'Souza's work here.)

4 I'm not really much into reading.

5 Well only 11,100 words short of where my story should be for this date on the Camp NaNoWriMo contest.

6 Back on thrillers and catching up with Alex Berenson, The Secret Soldier. The John Wells books are spy,action reads in the same class as Vince Flynn or some earlier Brad Thor. Good stuff...

7 I do remember reading a book a bout a dolphin, God it must have been decades ago. Flipper, or something. I think George C. Scott may have been in it. I wish I could remember more. God I loved that book.

8 Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton.  Great book, changed my life from a happy go lucky gal to having a permanent stick up my ass.

9 REAMDE by Neal Stephenson.  Neal's the best!

10 Ivanhoe. Sir Walter Scott.

11 I remember reading The Bridge at Andau as a teenager. There were some really chilling stories in that book that are hard to get of my mind 40 years later.

12

This past week I read "With The Old Breed:  At Peleliu and Okinawa" by E.B. Sledge, based on a recommendation from somebody here last week.

 

Excellent   and unique read, as it is written from a grunts-eye view.  And the view is not pretty at all.  The bone-weariness of the infantryman's life,  the terror of  his first action,  watching fellow Marines being driven to insanity by  the stress of hours-long artillery bombardment - the absolute homicidal ferocity of their Japanese opponents...  I highly recommend this if you are at all interested in what war for the common  footsoldier is like.

 

Currently, I'm reading the first of Marion G. Harmon's "Wearing The Cape" novel.  It's another superhero-fiction novel featuring a late-teens Chicago debutante who manifests powers during a public attack by a powered villain.  It's a really unique take (as far as I've seen) on superheroes as quasi-law enforcement types - their training, both physical and ethical, as they have to avoid collateral damage (a la Hancock) to the civilian population so they are not pushed over from "hero" to villain.

 

Interesting treatment of how they get paid, as well.  Who pays superheroes for their services?  Especially since they're independent of the government? 

 

He borrows from several successful superhero themes with a very light hand, putting a unique twist on some old tropes.  I'm about halfway through, but unless he totally shits the bed on the ending, I'll be buying the next in the series.

 

13 And now I have to go dig up some more fucking periwinkle and create a flower bed as a nice surprise for my wife, while she and our Master Race are away on vacation for a couple of weeks.

14 Finished "Fool's Errand" a few days ago. Fantasy. Near the end a character dies and it might be the best death scene I've ever read. Read those 2 pages over and over again. Amazing. "Time to change, changer."

15 Not a Good Day to Die by Sean Naylor is a good non fiction book.  It's about Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan 2002.  Very comprehensive from the planning, to the battle, to the aftermath, and everything that went wrong.

16 Dayum, Arthur!
At breakfast, I was reading AoS on my phone and clicked on the Eastwood Quotes thing in the sidebar.  I kinda blasted all sorts of NSFW (not safe for wife) language - the wife was reading her Bible and was NOT in the mood for that.
A heads-up would've been welcome.

17 To complement The Bridge at Andau is a book written by a Hungarian who did witness and escape the Hungarian uprising.  The title is No More Comrades by Andor Heller.

Can be found on Abe Books.  Here is a 1957 copy for $2.00 plus shipping.
http://tinyurl.com/92tanr5

18 I'm reading a Kindle book called "Renewal". It's a post apocalyptic tale about nuclear war. Not bad. The book club at work is between books right now, so it is time to coast a bit.

19 Bernard Lewis memoir is a great read.

20 Just finished all that I could take of James Lee Burke's  Creole Belle. The plot is as improbable as it is incoherent and in addition to the usual cast of misfits, physcopaths, and nymphomaniacs that populate his books he has added a 90 year old Nazi, a corrupt televangelist, and his albino sidekick. There are random acts of violence and mayhem and he even throws in a torture chamber complete with medieval devices for inflicting pain and suffering. As usual he hits all of the Left Wing hot buttons, though this time he seems obsessed with class and wealth envy. It was amusing to note his plaint that the people of southern Louisiana seemed to think that Al Gore is a bloated windbag and were prone to afix bumpers stickers to their trucks stating "Global Warming is Bullshit". The usual ghosts and faux mysticism are also present and accounted for and we are still led to believe that the bloated wack job, who is the hero's sidekick, is irresistable to the ladies.  All in all, a dreary waste of time.

21 Jesus For President.

22 I just read the side of my cereal box Cheerios). I give it 3 stars.

But hey, I'm a moron, am I right?

23 I was about halfway through a rather long book called "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" when circumstances separated me from it. It's really good and I want to finish it, but it is also 3000 miles away.

24 Not reading anything because my youngest lost my Kindle somewhere in the house.

25 The Dog Stars by Peter Heller.  Post-apocolyptic.  The style is Cormac McCarthy-like; less than complete sentences in a mostly first person narrative.  Heller, however, uses words still in the English lexicon.   In this case, there's a reason for the scant sentences and phrases.  Not nearly so grim as The Road and uplifting in many parts.  An easy two-evening read.  I give it three stars on the L Rob 4.7 star scale.

26 Posted by: L Rob in OK at August 19, 2012 11:30 AM (7yvLv) Sounds good. For some reason your post made me think of "The Postman", and that made me think of the twisted mess Kevin Costner made from it, and that made me wonder if some studio will try it again, minus Costner of course.

27 The 13 Clocks by James Thurber. I read it as a tween and I still love it as a post-fecund adult. Still in print. Loathed Up the Down Staircase. Also loathed To Sir with Love.

28 Wow, slow book thread.

29 I don't think I ever saw "Up the Down Staircase", but I was absolutely in love with Sandy Dennis back in the day. There was another movie she was in which I can't remember now, but it was almost like an LSD trip.

30 "Act of Love" by Joe Lansdale.  His first published novel.  I'm always amazed how much an author grows over the years.  Although this isn't his best, it's still fairly good.  Serial killer, rape, dirty cops, cannibalism, and a character that is still showing up in his books to this day--some 20 odd years later. 

31 Since we are talking of Soviet invasions of allies to suppress liberation movements that would tear those countries out of the Warsaw Pact.  The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia is recounted in the book "The Liberators" by Viktor Suvorov.  Along with other Soviet insanities as having too much liquid fertilizer on the collective farm and dumping it in the water supply.

32 Loathed Up the Down Staircase. Also loathed To Sir with Love. Posted by: sinmi on a phone at August 19, 2012 11:35 AM (iqN91) The MAD Magazine spoof of Up the Down Staircase (the movie) was called In the Out Exit. It likely was better.

33 Also, my uncle's 1965 Playboy stash. Found in an old cabinet in the barn. Score.

34 Jesus For President.

This book irritated me so much, I couldn't finish the first chapter. Every page is crowded with so much graphics, pictures, and other extraneous shit that it looks like one of those high school textbooks written for Gen X and Y MTV junkies with zero attention span.

Plus, the authors are a couple of anabaptist lefties, so there's that.

35 eman, please never ever remind me of what Kevin Costner did to The Postman.  There was no mule in the book! 

36 Also, my uncle's 1965 Playboy stash. Found in an old cabinet in the barn. Score. Posted by: IdowhatIwant at August 19, 2012 11:39 AM (a4CUi) Nice.

37 eman, please never ever remind me of what Kevin Costner did to The Postman. There was no mule in the book! Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at August 19, 2012 11:40 AM (STjp1) Sorry, should have checked first.

38 I reread Empire of the East recently. First read was over 30 years ago. Still pretty good.

39 Its okay eman, I was so mad at what Costner did to Brin's great book.  I sometimes wonder why Brin didn't do something to the idiot.  And the stupid ever frakkin happy ending   /rant soapbox off.

40 This past week I read Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom". I'm on to his follow up, "Free to Choose"


Milton Friedman has got to be THE Subject Matter Expert. http://tinyurl.com/d3xk77


I can hear his voice as I read his book.

41 Have been slowly making my through Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Not one of those books you can race through and then toss aside. It is about a pastor in a small Iowa town in the 1950s who knows he is dying and wants to leave whatever legacy he can to his young son. His son in all likelihood will not remember much about his Dad. So the format of the book is a long letter from the Dad to the son explaining their family history (the Dad's father and grandfather were also preachers) and a commentary on day-to-day events in the lives of the family and their friends.

42

As I recall the movie "Up the Down Staircase", it ended with a happy little upbeat ending, where everything that was sorta good was sorta re-affirmed.

 

That was when movies were supposed to re-affirm our values, so yeah, it was some sappy unrealistic propaganda.  And that was a snap shot of the current culture of the late  50's. early '60's.  Hey, it was the "New Frontier".

 

I read a lot (almost all) of Heinlein's "juveniles" when I was a juvenile, and perhaps the one most important lesson that I learned was that everything does not always turn out for the best, but that people with character and values persevere.  And that to keep trying to do what was right was probably more important than a happy ending.

 

At the end of "Destination Moon", Manny Traub asks Admiral Bowles,"are we gonna make it back?"  To which the Admiral decides to truthfully admit," Probably not."

But they were going to die trying, and not lay down and quit.

43 "Stop jazzin' it, Man! This ain't no jam session."


"Shit. Wrong movie."

44 No Man Knows My History, by Fawn Brodie. A critical but remarkably respectful biography of Joseph Smith. If you're interested in learning more about Mormonism, particularly in this election year, give it a try. Their theology is wacky, but they still impress me. And frankly, I get the impression most Mormons don't really pay to much attention to the theology; I think they are drawn to to the lifestyle and community far more.

45 I first read T.H. White's "The Once and Future King" in junior high, and at that point mostly appreciated the whole Arthurian adventure and chivalry thing. Was probably the most formative book of my childhood. Re-reading now, the most striking parts are the political allegories by a classically-liberal Englishman brought to the brink of despair by WWII-era Europe. A few years ago I gave my original copy to my brother and found a good hardcover copy on Amazon. I'm sure I'll be reading this again until the day I die.

46 today...we take the heir to college...where does the time go?

47 Just read John Sandford's latest 'Prey' novel, 'Stolen Prey'...pretty good.  I find Lucas Davenport has gotten a bit dull since he got married though.  All the Prey series are pretty good...also his Virgil Flowers books.

48 Read "Wool" omnibus last weekend and it is great post-apocalyptic story.
Loved sci-fi when I was a kid, too, such as "A Wrinkle in Time." Read every Stephen King over the course of jr. high/high school and managed to not turn out to be a serial killer.

49

I was 16 years old when the Hungarian revolt occurred.  It was a bloody affair.  The Hungarians appealed to the US for help, but it was not forthcoming.  Too much risk of WWIII.  If you walk the street of Budapest today you will see building fronts that still bear the scars of the Soviet suppression.  I think the regime of Janos Kadar left all the pockmarks to remind the population of the consquences of rebellion.  They are preserved now as a reminder of how bad things used to be.

I remember quite a few Hungarian refugees later coming to the towns around where I grew up.  They still preserve quite a bit of their cultural identity, but they are undoubtedly Americans now.  Same thing with those refugees who came from Europe after WWII.

50

32, eman, "In the Out Exit" was better than the movie but I still liked the book.  And I liked To Sir, With Love as a book.  Don't remember the movie except that annoying song.

 

I did read "Up the Down Staircase" when I was in jr. High.  Can't say it had much of an effect on me, but I still vaguely recall the senior teacher's explanation to the new teacher about what the various headings of principal's memos meant.

 

Tried to read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and am still trying.

 

Read Ayn Rand like crazy after my next older sister brought home a remaindered copy of "We the Living" from the Waldenbooks where she worked.

 

This week I finished "Escaped" by Carolyn Jessop who grew up in the Fundamentalist LDS church.  She was brave.  I'm still reading "The Obamas" which reveals Michelle to be a harpy of the first order and reveals both Barry and Mich to be naifs of the first order because it apparently never occurred to them what they might be in for as President and First Lady.  Couldn't they have read some books?  It doesn't seem they are too happy living in the White House so let's give them a present in November.  And I started at least half a dozen books on my Kindle but for some reason, I haven't been able to settle down and plow through one.

 

51 46 today...we take the heir to college...where does the time go? No, that's Sandy Denny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2xODjbfYw8 I'm in love with her too. This is the greatest song ever recorded. Period.

52 Was anyone else inthe Great Books program in school? That program gave me a deep loathing for anything by Steinbeck but there were a couple books I really liked. One had the word "Steppe" in the titl and was about a Russian Jewish girl whose family was forcibly relocated by the government. I also loved Ivanhoe and a similar book called Men of Iron. Kipling's Jungle Tales and Burrough's Tarzan books, along with a variety of Sci-fi and fantasy, meant I spent *a lot* of time reading.

53

I concur about Sandy Dennis.

Bel Kaufman's  OK book was #1 for months and everyone read it.

As I very vaguely remember she was the great Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem's granddaughter or something.. that factoid meant something back then.

Not anymore.

Sandy Dennis was horrific in a number of great movies: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Out-of-towners and a host of others.

I always thought she was perpetually on the verge of tears and a breakdown.

And that voice could cut through glass

Never understood her appeal...

54 what happened to the 1 pm game thread? I got in two comments, and then, POOF -- gone.

55 The Endless Steppe?  Never read it but I've heard of it.

56 There's a hilarious 1-star review of Bridge at Amazon that complains of it being "one-sided" and "anti-communist". Seriously.

There is only one review I could see and it is a five star review.

57 Finished "Fool's Errand" a few days ago. Fantasy. Near the end a character dies and it might be the best death scene I've ever read. Read those 2 pages over and over again. Amazing.



Stick with it through the 3 books-  If you think the end of book one was a tear jerker, wait 'til you read book three.

58 Stupid sock, I don't even remember who you are now.

59 "Holy crap, it's the 19th *already*? Where did August go?"
The faster we get to November the happier I'll be.
Conn Iggulden, the guy who wrote "The Dangerous Book for Boys" has a great series of books out about various emperors and conquerors such as Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan. I recommend them all.

60

53, Texas Jew, there was even a line in the Mad magazine satire about how someone couldn't kiss the Sandy Dennis character because her lips kept twitching, most likely from being perpetually on the verge of tears.

 

61 No, that's Sandy Denny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2xODjbfYw8
I'm in love with her too.
This is the greatest song ever recorded. Period. Posted by: rickl at August 19, 2012 11:59 AM

Terrific song.  Richard Thompson is a wonderful guitarist.

62

I'm in the middle of reading For Love of Painting, Derek Hudson's biography of British portrait painter Sir Gerald Kelly.

A good sample of his work can be found in the "Your Paintings" section of the BBC website.  I especially like the portrait of the artist's wife, "Jane, XXX".  ("XXX" should be read as "thirty"; it was first exhibited in 1930.)

Interesting fact: Sir Gerald's sister was briefly married to occultist Aleister Crowley.

63

Yes... To Sir With Love

Really awful.. I think the movie came out that same summer as Up The Down Staircase, or maybe a year earlier. It was a half-assed remake of the classic Blackboard Jungle with Sidney Poitier (who played a bad boy in the earlier film and was good in it) as the decent, kind-hearted black teacher to a bunch of badass British kids.

And who can forget Lulu singing the horrific theme song? Oy..

64 I'll second REAMDE by Neal Stephenson. Every book is phenomenal, and thank god for e-readers, because my arms used to get sore from the weight of his books.

65 Everyone should force themselves to read "The Stepford Wives" at least once to get a look into why we have Sandy Fluke being attempted to be cast as a superhero....

66 There is only one review I could see and it is a five star review.

I probably linked to a different edition than the one that had that appalling review.

67

Liked Up the Down Staircase, although it strikes me that then as now, the Left has an almost touching faith in the power of a single school teacher to transform the lives of large numbers of otherwise horribly disadvantaged kids. Not saying it doesn;t cometimes happen on a case-by-case basis, but surely the concept of a single teacher transforming large numbers through the 50-minute daily bloc is a bit oversold.

Didn;t Michelle Pfeiffer star in a rtelling of UtDS called "Dangerous Minds" or something like that? I saw it and was struck by the similarities to the Bel Kaufman novel.

68

I loved "Up the Down Staircase" when I was 14. Like many books I loved when I was a teen, I doubt I'd enjoy them that much if I reread them now.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave the "Ya Ya Sisters" novel back to a friend who raved about it. Total chick book, or I should say liberal chick book. The women are supposed to be lovable and zany, but actually came off as spoiled, entitled little small town princesses, most of the men in the story are dim or oppressive, and there are gratitious insults of Republicans dropped throughout the novel. I finally stopped reading the stupid thing when the boyfriend of one of the main characters is killed in France in WWII and blame is placed on the boy's father, who pressured him to join the military. 'Cause, you know, serving in the military is a terrible macho thing and apparently nobody should have fought Hitler. Or, more precisely, cute small-town boys who love the golden Ya Ya sisters should not fight wars, it's way beneath them. At that point, I tossed the friggin' book on the floor and said "f you" to the author.

I'm sure women who think those novels are the greatest thing ever written are the ones who faint over Obama.

69

Sandy Denny was great. Sort of a new Mary Martin, along with the small-town Texas roots (Longview versus Weatherford). She even did a remake of Martin's role in Peter Pan. Hottest thing in the world until she tragically lost an eye due to some freak ailment.

I went to school with Denny's niece or sister or something. She was a deadringer for her.

70 Posted by: Adam at August 19,2012 12:03 PM (/YJYi) That was what was coming to mind, but I was only certain of the "Steppe" part. Christopher Taylor, I'll have to look into that emporer series. Unsurprisingly, my son like his Dangerous Book for Boys so that may encourage him to try some history.

71 I've been re-reading Georgette Heyer since I was in highschool, way back in the 60's. She periodically comes back in print and there are even some of her titles in ebooks.  @ titles that I've never found are: Simon the Coldheart and The Great Roxhythe.
The other book that has stuck with me is Bradberry's I Sing: the Body Electric.

72 Dinesh D'Souza? Fuck I hate brass band music. And band fags.

We used to beat up the band fags during our spare period. All the real men were in the barbershop quartets.

73 David Goyer and Michael Cassutt, "Heaven's Shadow". I don't think I'll be able to finish it. There's too much mystical "akashic memory" mumbo-jumbo in here; if I want to hear it I can always go back to the yoga festival and listen to Boulderites fart.

74 Oops, off sock!  Actually the Ya Ya Sisterhood books are exactly the sort of novels Sandra Fluke would love.  Yay, womym, boo, bad, evil men!

75 a corrupt televangelist, and his albino sidekick.
Ring! Ring! Ring!

76 Sandy Denny was great. Sort of a new Mary Martin, along with the small-town Texas roots (Longview versus Weatherford). She even did a remake of Martin's role in Peter Pan. Hottest thing in the world until she tragically lost an eye due to some freak ailment.
I went to school withDenny's niece or sister or something. She was a deadringer for her. Posted by: TexasJew at August 19, 2012 12:12 PM

That was Sandy Duncan.

77

Ooops

I meant Sandy Duncan/

Me bad..

78 69 Sandy Denny was great. Sort of a new Mary Martin, along with the small-town Texas roots (Longview versus Weatherford). She even did a remake of Martin's role in Peter Pan. Hottest thing in the world until she tragically lost an eye due to some freak ailment. I went to school withDenny's niece or sister or something. She was a deadringer for her. Posted by: TexasJew at August 19, 2012 12:12 PM (oiJah) Hold on a sec. Are you talking about Sandy Denny or Sandy Dennis? The first was a world-class singer and the second was a middling actress. But I had the hots for both of them at one time or another.

79 That was Sandy Duncan. Posted by: huerfano at August 19, 2012 12:17 PM (bAGA/) Yeah. They should have teamed her up with Peter Falk.

80 Oh, I've also been reading Imam Suyuti (d. 1505 AD)'s "Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qur'an" (first volume of four). This one is more interesting.

As the title suggests, Suyuti is a little full of himself, but he gets that out of his system in the introduction. Beyond that, he goes through everything he knows about mediaeval Islamic study of the Qur'an, and he knows a LOT. He also had access to whole libraries of early Islamic materials that are no longer around, like Ibn Marduwayh's commentary.

I can see why the Orientalists made such use of Suyuti...

81 Speaking of childhood reading, my oldest went from a non-reader to a voracious reader (which is generally a wonderful thing). The problem is that all she wants to read are manga and YA fantasy. At that age I was reading a *much* wider variety of books (forgot to mention reading everything by Agatha Christie and Louis L'amour in my previous comment), how do I get her to expand her horizons?

82

Warning: Self promotion.

But there's a point.

As promised a long time ago, I finally finished my book; A Flowershop in Baghdad.  It describes the uniqueness and kindness of this country, and the caring, positive daily interactions that the Iraqis had with us.  I was a USAF pilot on the ground in Iraq, helping build the Iraqi Air Force.  As such, I was with the Iraqis my entire year there.  We sheparded the first class of young, brave Iraqi students through their first year, culminating in some of them graduating the first Iraqi pilot training class.  The book talks about endless freedoms here by talking a little bit about my career (E1-E6, then O1-O4): that class mobility exists in very few places on the globe.  Then I describe the things that you haven't heard about; what the Iraqis thought about us, and the appreciation of what we'd tried to do there.  And keep in mind, these were guys we had tried to kill just months/years before.

They called us the "friendly side".

I had written a couple of newspaper articles, one while I was there http://tinyurl.com/9fkr7bg and another as I resigned my commission http://tinyurl.com/2vaudvx after the elections, but I was compelled to write a book about what I saw there, because it was so vastly different than what was reported.

I despise the media and Democrats (BIRM) witht the contempt of 1000 suns, and a smidge of that shows up in my book.  But not too much.

But that didn't feel like the impetous to spend that time writing this thing.  Then, goofing around on some website, (I think Kim K's), I ran across this video by Martha Gillis, about her nephew, Lt Brian Bradshaw.

http://tinyurl.com/8raozg2 (mrc link)

Thats why I wrote it.

The ad for it will start showing up here in a couple of weeks.

 

 

83 I read Neuromancer when I was very young. Too young, in fact, to really understand all of it, but what I did understand I fell in love with. I credit reading that book with having spurred me to try to be a writer, in fact. (1 published story! WOO!)

84 That was Sandy Duncan.

No, it was Brian Dennehy

85 I discovered "Northwest Passage" by Kenneth Roberts in junior year of high school. I read and re-read all I could my hands on. Loved Them all then, tried reading his books 46 years later and can't get interested. I don't know how I've changed but obviously have. Just finished "1945" by Robert Conroy and enjoyed it. The allohistory bug has bitten me hard.

86 "Guadalcanal diary" Read it at age 15. Had a great impact on my appreciation of those who came before me.

87 In my drugged-up stupor Friday night, I wrote a screenplay for a SyFy monster movie, and cast all the principle roles. But I havent read a book in ages.

88 MikeB- What a contrast with Afghanistan, huh. Or even Egypt.

It's not just the religion, it's also the people. If all of Somalia became Southern Baptists tonight, tomorrow we'd be hearing about how Baptists raided a cruise ship off the coast of Yemen. Contrariwise, Islam has had centuries to turn the Persians into Arab Muslims and, honestly, it's only ever really taken root in the seminaries there.

89 I read Neuromancer when I was very young. Too young, in fact, to really understand all of it, but what I did understand I fell in love with. I credit reading that book with having spurred me to try to be a writer, in fact. (1 published story! WOO!)

Posted by: Harlequin at August 19, 2012 12:22 PM (yIeoc)

I just finished reading the Otherworld series by Tad Williams, they reminded me a lot of Neuromancer.

90 Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

91 Posted by: Truman North, iPhone bum at August 19, 2012 12:26 PM (I2LwF)


Did the drunken pope trying to molest you make it into the movie?

92 Up The Down Staircase was a biggie for me as a kid too. I probably read that book eight or nine times. Great book.

93 "The Endless Steppe" was a pretty good book. I remembering reading it. I remember "My Side of the Mountain", "Old Yeller" "Where the Red Fern Grows", "The Yearling". Also all the old Nancy Drew books and Trixie Belden books. Then I remember reading James Michners "Hawaii", which was a precursor to all those miniseries things on TV. But I really LOVED Ellery Queen - especially his Drury Lane series. And Miss Marple.

94 Good on ya steevy.

95 I like to read 'Tropic of Cancer' to little girls.

96 88 Contrariwise, Islam has had centuries to turn the Persians into Arab Muslims and, honestly, it's only ever really taken root in the seminaries there. I don't want to go to war with Iran. I'd rather try to free the Persians from Islam. Persians are good people, generally. I knew a few back in college in the 70s.

97 Gates of Fire by Pressfield.  Grunt's eye view of the Battle of Thermopylae.  For the guy on the line, as it is, is how it has always been, and how it will always be.

98 Posted by: MikeB at August 19,2012 12:21 PM (R6G9k) What format is your book available in? I looked it up on the Kindle but couldn't find it.

99 how do I get her to expand her horizons?

From Young Adult fantasy? That's not actually a bad place to be, IMO. It often seems that fantasy written for adults insults my intelligence more.

Historical fiction is good. I loved Flashman but then, I'm male, English and a cynic. What's the equivalent for girls and/or women?

100 My sister was into Issac Asimov. He was a great writer. I still consider his short story "Nightfall" one of the classic SF stories ever. "Strikebreaker" was another one that has stayed with me. My dad got some huge book - Life's pictorial history of WWII, and I remember pouring over that for endless hours. When he was in a good mood, he would share his experiences in the Pacific Theatre. Not many times he would talk about it though.

101

Although not a childrens' book as such, I would give a kid "The Memoirs of Bernal Diaz del Castillo"  sometimes titled "The History of the Conquest of New Spain."  Although almost 500 years old, this eyewitness account of the conquest of the Aztec empire reads as easily as if it were written yesterday.

 

For you cheapoos, it's free on Kindle.

102

how do I get her to expand her horizons?

 

You will  need some  white wine, a hot tub and some quaaludes...

103 When I was a young'n (waaaaaaaay back there) I read a book entitled "Captain Ghost" - can't recall the author or much of the plot - but it made quite an impression . . . in some way.  I've wanted to re-read it so that maybe then I'd remember what the big deal was.  Anyone ever hear of it?

104 Polliwogette, what type of manga is she reading?  Find the fiction that is similar to those genres she is reading.

105

Polliwogette, Teahada hobbit who wants some R&R at August 19, 2012 12:21 PM (zWLxI)

Polliwogette, I wouldn't worry too much about broadening her horizons at this point. The important thing is that she's developing a love of books and reading. When I was 9 to about 12, I basically read books about horses and heroic dogs (anybody else ever read Albert Payson Terhune's collie books, dating from the '20's? My mom found a stack of them at a rummage sale.)

Then I went on to YA fiction - I still remember Paul Zindel and S.E. Hinton books ("The Outsider") very fondly. In high school, a couple of really exceptional English teachers helped to broaden my tastes. But the reading habit was firmly established by that point.

106 In high school, our Algebra II teacher actually assigned us to read "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott. An excellent book that will broaden how you see the universe.

107 #97 My second favorite book. First, "Ender's Game."

108 #81 Has she ready LOTR??? Harry Potter? Those are decent books and will get her started. My youngun liked the Percy Jackson books too. Also there was a whole series of books called Redwall - she enjoyed those and there were a ton of them.

109 Posted by: BoulderHobo,lord of thechartreuse longbow at August 19,2012 12:33 PM(QTHTd) It's not the YA I'm particularly concerned about, I also finf YA titles to often be better quality than "adult" titles. It's not even the fantasy genre that I'm worried about as I've read a fair share myself. Fantasy is only an issue in that it's *all* she reads. I have many of the authors I grew up with available to the kids, but if I can't get them to open one of the books (and I hesitate to just *order* them to do so) they'll never realize what they're missing.

110 I'd like to drop kick this fat douche into next week. The Hill: No more race baiting than when John Boehner says ‘let’s unshackle Wall Street, let’s unshackle big business,’” said Gibbs. “I think the vice president was correct in exactly how he explained what happens when we unshackle Wall Street and let Wall Street go back to writing its own rules.“ Asked if Biden was a “drag on the ticket,” Gibbs said “absolutely not.” “I’m happy to have Joe Biden out campaigning and telling his story to the American people, putting in front of people the choice that’s going to happen in this election,” said Gibbs. “I’m happy and proud of Joe Biden and I’m happy and proud to have him on the trail every day.” The vice president had a difficult week on the campaign trail after saying on the stump that Republican policies toward Wall Street would “put y’all back in chains,” a comment that brought swift criticism from Republicans.

111 There are some very old copies of the Koran out there, such as one I saw a special on that is buried in the Sahara in an attempt to preserve it by some tribal types. I wonder how different those copies are than the current ones running around.

112 I just finished an old book called "Escape from Freedom" by Eric Fromm. Talks about why people are attracted to authoritarian leaders.

Very scary. In one bit on Hitler, you could substitute Obama and it would be just as accurate.

Highly recommended btw.

113 100 My dad got some huge book - Life's pictorial history of WWII, and I remember pouring over that for endless hours. I remember going into a used book store in the early 90s, and seeing a whole wall full of Life magazines from WWII. There were shelves upon shelves of them, piled all the way to the ceiling. I stood there transfixed and dumbstruck. I wanted them so bad, but I only had a little money in my wallet. I asked the owner about coming back later, but he said they were already sold to a collector in Japan, and were being readied for shipment.

114 By "happy and proud" Gibbsy means he is as gay as a bagof dicks.

115 Donna V - did you ever read "The Black Stallion" as a child? How about "Misty of Chincoteague"// man I remember those Margaret Henry books. I must have been 8 or 9 when I read them.

116 Again on the topic of "it's not just the religion, it's the people" - if the Yankees convert to Islam, the planet is fucked. That was the theme of Ferrigno's "Prayers for the Assassin".

117 Libra, thanks for the tip!  A memoir of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs sounds really interesting. I love history and historical memoirs, but I've never heard of Bernal Diaz del Castillo.

118

“I’m happy and proud of Joe Biden and I’m happy and proud to have him on the trail every day.”

 

If you drop the word "proud" from that statement, I couldn't agree more.

119 One of my son's good friends from junior high is "persian". They immigrated wayyy back 20 years ago. Very very nice people. Kid is raised well, manners, etc. They are very quick to let you know they are "persian" and not "muslim". I am not sure why.

120 I have a few volumes of the Time Life WW2 books.I got them as a small boy(don't remember exactly)they came once a month until you cancelled them and the free gift were prints of a bunch of WW2 warbirds.Wish I still had those,I had them taped to the wall as a kid.I remember the volume "Prelude To War" in particular because there were nude women in it.

121 119 They could be Christians or Zoroastreans.My mom worked for a Persian Catholic.

122

"Misty of Chincoteague"

_______________________________

Oh, yeah!  In fact, I said in a thread here the other day that I loved Marguerite Henry's books so much that I wrote to her when I was about 11 or so. And I got a personal letter back, not a form letter. She answered some questions I had asked her and complimented a drawing of a horse I had included with my letter.

I still have the letter.  It's a very cherished memory from my childhood.

123 Oh my gawd, did someone say a bag of dicks?  Where!?

124 Posted by: SanAntonioRoseatAugust19,2012 12:42 PM(Q4N/v) Don't think she finished LoTR but has read the others. I think that a lot of my concern is something Bookworm wrote about in one of her posts and that is that in many modern youth books the characters and their motivations seem much more shallow and self involved (even when saving the world).

125 They are very quick to let you know they are "persian" and not "muslim". I am not sure why.

They are very proud of their ancient culture, and great kings such as Darius and Xerxes.

126 I wonder how different those copies are than the current ones running around.

The oldest Qur'ans had the suras in different orders, and words and phrases in different places. The last couple essays in Ibn Warraq's "What the Koran Really Says" get into that. There's a similar essay in Ohlig's "The Hidden History of Islam".

(The relevant essays in Ibn Warraq's "Which Koran?" are a century old and you should just google for Mingana and Arthur Jeffery. Don't reward the guy for reprinting freeware and trying to sell it.)

I have to warn that, much like Christianity, the variants in the text don't usually change the text's message. At least, in the currently-discovered manuscripts. In Islamic oral tradition, there are hints at much more drastic alterations to the text.

127  Boulder Toilet Hobo wrote:

"As the title suggests, Suyuti is a little full of himself, but he gets that out of his system in the introduction. Beyond that, he goes through everything he knows about mediaeval Islamic study of the Qur'an, and he knows a LOT. He also had access to whole libraries of early Islamic materials that are no longer around, like Ibn Marduwayh's commentary."

This along with a hundred other things makes me wonder about medieval islam being much different than what the modern would-be recreators _think_ medieval islam was like, especially if entire libraries have "gone missing" between the 15th century and today. Any comment?

128

 

Xerxes.

 

Scissor me Xerxes!

129 Oh, and I just noticed someone else also asked a similar question.

130 #125 Ok, that makes a lot of sense, also the fact that they aren't Islamic religion. I knew a lady who was Maronite Catholic (spelling) who educated me on how horrible the Maronites were being treated in Lebanon. #124 - I do agree, the characters are more shallow than some of the older books, but for now she is reading and that is a lot of the battle.

131 @10, great minds, same blood-gutter...

Last week I read Walter Scott's "Rob Roy." As an auld English Major (brushes mustache) I was dismayed at how short my attention span has become, spoilt as it is by the snap and snark of intelligent military blogs. I don't like Hemingway. But I like short sentences. Like them a lot.

Scott's narrative technique is deeply into "dark and stormy night" territory -- this from a critic who has actively defended Bulwer-Lytton. Modern readers will find themselves mouthing phrases just to keep their place in a paragraph. It's a tough slog, not made one whit easier by Scott's great service to the Anglosphere of preserving, via a shotgun pattern of wrong vowels and apostrophes, the actual pronunciation of Northumbrian and Scottish accents as he persay'v'd 'em, monn. Kipling did that too, causing many a junior-high head to spin.

I was about four chapters in when I realized that, O God, this was a Gothic Novel. Double face palm as my mind turned up my very brief personal notes on Scott: "Inventor of the Gothic Novel." So, yeah. Ripping yarn, would make a terrific movie or graphic novel, but so much frigging work, and every "spare repast" is recorded in painstaking culinary detail. He never, ever says "Then we ate."

Speaking of movies, this story has almost nothing to do with the whacking great Roth/Lange/Neeson fillum. I was patient indeed, waiting to see how a Regency writer would handle the rape and servant-using scenes, until in the second volume I realized they were just not going to be there. Suspicious that, like Braveheart, some lately-descendent Hollywood writer had re-worked the plot to his family history's v.great advantage, I had recourse to a historical thumbnail and found that Scott was the elaborator; the movie was (admittedly, with advantage) more-or-less just Rob Roy's real life. Scott's Rob Roy is a detective story with businessmen, comical servants, corrupt law-clerks, drunks aplenty, a dark-of-the-night north by northwest dash across Scotland, and one Very, Very, Hawt chick. Catholic, though.

I have one bad memory of childhood reading experience. I was an SBS kid, too, but had a handful of books Mother had obtained from the previous generation's idea of kid lit, while I was still in the cradle. Playpen. Baby Butler. One of them was Scott's Robin Hood, and, sadly for me, it was blackline-blockprint only, with no thrilling Howard Pyle posters. I got a few pages into it and gave up, despite reading years ahead of what was "grade level" back then, and despaired of ever understanding Grown-Up Literature. It was the conscious archaisms, of course: they're just indigestible, except to wannabe language scholars -- which, in the longer run, it turned out I wanna'ed.  

Recommended? Well. If you're able to enjoy the Poes's early detective and horror stories, you'll make it though all right. Scott was a conscientious scholar, doing historical homework and taking endless linguistic pains to avoid the goofs we almost expect in modern historical fiction. He deserves credit for that, at least. If you're accustomed to 20th-cent. storytelling, you will hate it. Wait for the movie, which would make a smashing side-story sequel to the other filmatic Robs Roy. Copyright's expired, so that's a heavy hint to H'wood.

132 I remember as a kid reading a book about 1956 Hungary. Believe it was called "Toward Morning" and followed the exploits of a revolutionary fighting the Soviets.

133 I think that a lot of my concern is something Bookworm wrote about in one of her posts and that is that in many modern youth books the characters and their motivations seem much more shallow and self involved (even when saving the world).

Posted by: Polliwogette, Teahada hobbit who wants some R&R at August 19, 2012 12:51 PM (zWLxI)

_________________________________________

I'm not familiar with today's YA and that might very well be the case.  What I remember about YA fiction in the mid-70's was it often had a serious moral center.  In S.E. Hinton's "That Was Then, This Is Now" a teen boy turns against his much loved adopted brother when he discovers that his brother is a drug dealer.  I also remember "My Darling, My Hamburger" (stupid title)  which was shocking to us because it had a few curse words and was about a teenaged girl who gets pregnant and is dumped by her boyfriend.  And after a lot of anguish, she decides not to get an abortion and give the baby up for adoption.  The teen sex is presented as a mistake, a moment of weakness, not as something to celebrate.  The book seemed very hip to my friends and I - kids today would probably find that message laughably quaint and old-fashioned.

134

Boulder/Polliwogette,

A Flowershop in Baghdad should be in a couple of weeks, in paperback and Kindle...It will be on Amazon.  I will advertise it here:  I owe Ace that much.  I read this blog every day. 

Even though its early, I just felt compelled to say something about it after seeing that poor woman talk about her nephew...Thats why I wrote it.  Hopefully, that lady will see that we almost gave the Iraqis a chance. I say almost because, now that we're gone, they will revert back to what they've always done.  It would take a looong presence there to change things.  And like one of the other commenters implied, it would have to be in spite of Islam, not because of it.  Thats sort of the "Flowershop" metaphor.  The gardener tenderly caring for the garden, weeding, watering feeding, etc.  Also, one of "my" Iraqis wanted to have a flowershop, but couldn't in Saddams era.  It was interesting why....

I honestly think the horde will love it. And for those of you that buy the paperback, you will then be able to use that to thump a liberal over the head.  Its about 400 pages.

Im excited to get it out there... I gave a preview copy to Larry Bond, and he loved it.  He put a blurb on the cover.

If you look up that video of Martha Gillis describing her nephew, Lt Brian Bradshaw and don't tear up, you're not human.  And after that, there ought to be a little rage.

 

135

William Manchester : " Winston Churchill: The Last Lion"

THIS is writing.  Enough to give you chills:

"The French had collapsed. The Dutch had been overwhelmed. The Belgians had surrendered. The British army, trapped, fought free and fell back toward the Channel ports, converging on a fishing town whose name was then spelled Dunkerque.

Behind them lay the sea.

It was EnglandÂ’s greatest crisis since the Norman conquest, vaster than those precipitated by Philip IIÂ’s Spanish Armada, Louis XIVÂ’s triumphant armies, or NapoleonÂ’s invasion barges massed at Boulogne.

This time Britain stood alone.

Now the 220,000 Tommies at Dunkirk, Britain’s only hope, seemed doomed. On the Flanders beaches they stood around in angular, existential attitudes, like dim purgatorial souls awaiting disposition. There appeared to be no way to bring more than a handful of them home. The Royal Navy’s vessels were inadequate. King George VI has been told that they would be lucky to save 17,000. The House of Commons was warned to prepare for “hard and heavy tidings.”

Then, from the streams and estuaries of Kent and Dover, a strange fleet appeared: trawlers and tugs, scows and fishing sloops, lifeboats and pleasure craft, smacks and coasters; the island ferry Grade Fields; Tom Sopwith’s America’s Cup challenger Endeavour; even the London fire brigade’s fire-float Massey Shaw — all of them manned by civilian volunteers:

English fathers, sailing to rescue EnglandÂ’s exhausted, bleeding sons...

...It had been over a thousand years since Alfred the Great had made himself and his countrymen one and sent them into battle transformed. Now in this new exigency, confronted by the mightiest conqueror Europe had ever known, England looked for another Alfred, a figure cast in a mold which, by the time of the Dunkirk deliverance, seemed to have been forever lostÂ…

A believer in martial glory was required, one who saw splendor in the ancient parades of victorious legions through Persepolis and could rally the nation to brave the coming German fury...

... Like Adolf Hitler he would have to be a leader of intuitive genius, a born demagogue in the original sense of the word, a believer in the supremacy of his race and his national destiny...a great tragedian who understood the appeal of martyrdom and could tell his followers the worst, hurling it to them like great hunks of bleeding meat, persuading them that the year of Dunkirk would be one in which it was “equally good to live or to die” ...

Such a man, if he existed, would be EnglandÂ’s last chance.

In London there was such a man."

136 And Evan blows up the thread...     Notepad is your friend.

137 Have recently read a number of Don Winslow's books and found them enjoyable as he tells a good story. Because I read four in a row it struck me that Winslow has a rather strange take on man/woman relationships. In the first book that I read the surfer couple finds true love but they part when she surfs away seeking fame and fortune on the pro circuit while he manfully waves goodbye. In the next one the couple that are portrayed as being madly in love separate, as he paddles off into the sunset alone to live on a Mexican beach, because he feels that it would be too traumatic for the children that his beloved will be raising (they are the orphaned off-spring of her sister) to have a male presence in their lives after having lost their natural father. Hunh? In another, the hero ends up living alone in a cottage on the moor, reading 18th century English literature, while two lovely ladies are pining for him but he leaves their letters unread. Double Hunh.  Finally, in the fourth book the hero and his enamorata sail off into the sunset together, along with the token kid, in a boat piloted by a looney who just happens to be an expert seaman. True love triumphs at last.    

138

139 Have recently read a number of Don Winslow's books and found them enjoyable as he tells a good story.


I tried to read Savages - got to about page 3. Too painfully hipster crap for my liking.

140 @136. That's cheatin'. When I write a tl'dr review, at least it's all words, not a bunch of damned air and html prompts. So, I still win.

On the THIS is writing front, ladies and gentlemen, I submit that "they stood around in angular, existential attitudes, like dim purgatorial souls awaiting disposition" is over the fuckin top, even for Manchester.

Why in the world didn't he add "On the French coast, the light gleamed, and was gone"? That would have been perfect.

I can't even hear that in Churchill's voice. Must have been one damn dark and stormy night, there in Dunkirk. Dunquerque. Whevver.

141 106 In high school, our Algebra II teacher actually assigned us to read "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott. An excellent book that will broaden how you see the universe.
**********

Just the other day I saw Obama compared in a blog to the "insane, babbling King of Pointland, a being of zero dimensions" (from Wikipedia).

Heh

142 Books this week: The second of the "Lawson Vampire" books. A significant improvement on the first one -- the author seems to be learning his craft. Many fewer of the strange plot disconnects that plagued the first one (example: character A used to regularly beat the crap out of character B when they were both kids. And yet later in the book, there's a scene in which character A, now and adult, is said to have made character B bleed for the first time ever). Much more sense of how to construct a scene and an interesting story, and cohesive characters. So I'm not bailing on the series yet, not at $3.99 a book. I bought the third one, but I didn't start in on it right away. Instead I'm re-reading "A Tramp Abroad," by Mark Twain.

His humor seems to have grown somewhat less carefree as he aged. There's nothing so far that sends me into helpless laughter, the way the "Is...is he dead?" stuff did, in "The Innocents Abroad." But there is some deep and rich humor in the stories he tells, and much of it is subtle enough that it's more enjoyable with a repeat reading. Definitely enjoying the book. I love the way he writes, the way he uses language, and in making notes about something unrelated, I found I was using a Twain-like construction to express a complex idea with clarity. I think it's easy to underestimate his use of language, because his sentences seem so simple and natural.

143 ASCII hex 20 FTW!

144

Oh, and I need a little help on this one.

Does anyone know how to make an audio book? I want to have that available as well.  It would be me reading it..  Cause I can, and all.

Thats what makes me a Republican.

 

Also, OT of my previous OT.

 

I had a pierced young man come to my door shilling for Obama.  I started laughing and told him, "man are you at the wrong house".  He asked me about the whole slate of candidates here in Ohio.

I told him, I dont care who you name, its going to be the R.

I thanked him for being involved in the politcal process, but he was in it for the wrong guy.  He was polite, so I was too..  I think he got that a lot from our neighborhood.

 

Because I'm in the 1% of the middle 30% of the top 40%, and so THATS why I want responsible government.

 

145 AnnaPuma, I did exactly the same thing as Evan here a few months ago.  I done learned my lesson.

146

The phrase you're looking for when describing books like Up the Down Staircase is "epistolary novel" - a story told by a series of documents.  Up the Down Staircase is a fabulous, though dated, modern version of that style.  I loved that book so much as a kid that I bought another copy on Amazon (used, of course) recently.  It's fascinating to see the moral structures in place in the book and compare them to the present day.  The student who gets VD doesn't get counseling and sex ed - she just gets her information sent to the Health Department and gets pulled out of school.  On the other hand, a teacher who has a student fall in love with him suffers no ill consequences, despite the student's bad end - student crushes on teachers were unexpected (and the main character is on the recieving end of a LOT of flirting from both students and teachers).

I think readers either tend to love or hate novels written in this style.  If you love them and want something surreal and graphic-artisty, read the three-book Griffin & Sabine series by Nick Bantock.  If you love them and want something that's truly a classic and seriously evil, read the French novel Les Liasons dangereuses (Dangerous Liasons) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.  It's even better if you've seen the Glenn Close movie. The portrait of the  Marquise de Merteuil (Close's character) is as fine an example of a female psychopath revealing herself in letter form as I've ever seen.  She's as narcissistic as the protagonist of American Psycho, though it's all done more subtly due to the times.  I had to rely on the glossary to understand some of the terms from the English translation, but man, is it good.

147

Suddenly, my leafing through Metals Handbook, Vol 3, "Stainless Steel ,Tool Steels and Special Purpose Metals" seems much less of a conversation topic.

148 Why in the world didn't he add "On the French coast, the light gleamed, and was gone"? That would have been perfect.

I can't even hear that in Churchill's voice. Must have been one damn dark and stormy night, there in Dunkirk. Dunquerque. Whevver.


:--)

149 MikeB, I have just put a Kindle app on my Nook tablet so I can get your book. Thank you for what you did.

150 . When I was about 10 I read "Out of the Dust" Holy crap. Talk about depressing! It was so.poignant though, and was probably the first book to really leave a deep impact, and I think the narration style had a lot to do with that.

151 On vacation a couple weeks ago I picked up a 1985 Dover Press volume entitled "Captured by The Indians: 15 Firsthand Accounts, 1750-1870", Edited by Frederick Drimmer (ISBN 048624901  . All the entries are synopsi of first-hand accounts from their respective time periods. Some exist as full books, diaries or newspaper serials, but the book rarely spends more than 30 or 40 pages per individual. Great (and pitilessly grisly) stories, plenty of footnotes to steer you to more complete works. Highly recommended as a "keep around the house"  book. Since it's a Dover I assume you can get it very cheap at Amazon, etc.

152 When I was very young, Nancy Drew. I couldn't get enough of them.

153 I'd like to throw out there the book from which I borrowed my nom de plume . . .  "The Man Who Never Missed", by Steve Perry. I sometimes call it the best sci-fi book no one has ever heard of. To give too much detail would spoil it, but I will say it is about the titular man who takes up arms against a repressive government.

154 There's a hilarious 1-star review of Bridge at Amazon that complains of it being "one-sided" and "anti-communist". Seriously. Great googly moogly, where do these idiots come from? See: School System, Public Indoctrination, 1 Ea.

155

My fourth-grade teacher read "The Good Master" to the class.  It's likely based on the author's life, about a young girl's adventures in the Hungarian countryside at her uncle's house in about 1910.  It is by Kate Seredy, with the most beautiful water color illustrations by Seredy.  At age 60 I finally found a copy available and bought it.  It's a gorgeous depiction of Hungarian peasant life.  I've always had a soft spot in my heart for anything Hungarian because of the book.  She wrote a second book about the effects of WWI on the community that's much more solemn, but is stilll moving.

156 I've read Out of the Dust as well, it is not a happy book, but it's very good and it does stay with you.

157 151 A couple years agon on vacation I read "Captured" by Scott Zesch.  Similar and an excellent read about Indian abductions in Texas.

158 Posted by: kartoffel at August 19, 2012 11:53 AM (OgNv0)

I recommended "The Once and Future King" a few weeks back, glad to see that I am not the only one that thinks this a very good book with aspects of today embedded in an ancient tragedy.

One series of  books I read in my misspent youth that of Albert Payson Terhune's colllie centric stories.  Never had a collie, and never will, but that is from no fault of Terhune.  His books did help ensure that I will continue to love dogs for the remainder of my life.  Also, his books are very safe for the young to read.

159 Well finally broke 20k words.  Only 10,600 words short of today's target word count.

160 The book that started me on a life time of reading was The Secret Sea by Robb White.  It was an adventure story about a young naval officer discharged after being wounded who goes on a treasure hunt to get money for his bother's operation.  There were good guys and bad guys and sea chases and stuff and I loved it.  I read a bunch of Robb White books after that.  They were just well written kid adventure books.

161 Go Anna!

162 Just started Hell In A Very Small Place by Bernard Fall. Book is about Dien Bien Phu.

163 What was Islam like under the Abbasids and afterward... hmm. It was more directly political; it was how rulers ruled. (Like Christianity further northwest.) It wasn't NEARLY as intolerant toward Jews and Christians as now. (Although it was pretty bad, comparable to Christian Europe.) It allowed for scholarly debate on the life of the Prophet and the means of the Koran's revelation, within limits of course. Scientific study was encouraged, even if in practice it was usually Christians doing the work. (Nowadays Christians allow for scientific inquiry but in practice it's usually Jews doing the work, heh.) High Middle Ages Islam sucked by American standards, but was a sight more civilised than, say, the Muslim Brotherhood.

164 I still have a tattered paperback copy of George Gamow's "One Two Three...Infinity", a quick-paced romp through biology,cosmology, physics, orders of infinity, topology, Relativity and other science/math topics.  Some of it's obviously dated now, but back then, as a high school sophomore, it was all revelatory stuff to me.

Earlier still, my grandmother had about five feet of shelf space filled with "National Geographic" mags from the 1930's and 40's.  It was from them that I got massive doses of geography, the history of exploration and ancient history.

The first really memorable fiction was Mika Waltari's "The Egyptian", a great read for a history buff.   Much later I read Lampedusa's "The Leopard", which was very, very good.  

According to Amazon reviews both have held up well over the years.

165 Splunge, Twain had bad business acumen most of his life, and then a series of family tragedies, and it sure showed in his attitude. By his old age, I can't help but think most people thought of him as just another pain-in-the-ass liberal who used to be funny. We can forgive him now.

Kimberly, good call on the "epistolary." There's an epistolary frame around Scott's Rob Roy, as there was around just about every novel through the mid-1800's. In theater you have the proscenium thing; ever notice how often early TV had to have an "announcer" at the beginning of a story? In the past, it just didn't make sense to people that they could hear inside another person's head. There had to be documents.

It took forever for written fiction to just start, instead of laying out a reason for the narrative being in your hands. In the grand sweep of the psyche, it's a smallish change, but it goes to show, people thought differently than we do now. Improvement? Your call.

166 The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a free Kindle download.


She was taken captive in Feb1676 during King Phillip's War in Massachusetts.

167 @160!! "He had just killed the most powerful creature in the sea, with a knife Marines used to clean their fingernails." Almost fifty years, and I never pick up a Ka-Bar without remembering Robb White. He was a character, too. Look up his bio.

168 MikeB, your book sounds interesting.  But you may find the market a hard sell because of the subject matter.  I hope I am wrong.

Donna V.  We all suffer formatting fails of one stripe or another.  Was not sure if they had heard of the Notepad trick.

The almost forgotten graveyard of empires in Europe.  Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia's War by Ed Vulliamy.  1994.

'The squalid small town nature of the violence led to the circulation of rumours which in turn fanned the flames of fighting.  One infamous case was the tale of a Croatian taxi driver being hauled out of his car and having his throat slit.  There had been a mortar attack on the accused village, with seven people killed, before the taxi driver telephoned his wife from Zenica to tell her he had decided to stay overnight.' 
pg 255 on when HVO made brutal land grabs for land promised in the Vance-Owen plan.

169

Runaway Pancake.

http://tinyurl.com/8pvt2mk

 

170 Electric cars are Teh Wave of dah future!

"Fisker Automotive Inc., a maker of luxury plug-in hybrid cars backed by U.S. government loans, plans to recall all its $103,000 Karma sedans to fix a flawed cooling fan linked to a California fire."

Wah-wah.

171

Would someone in the know please answer this question?

Does Amazon choose the price point for e-books or does the author?

Can anyone post an e-book for sale on Amazon or do they select the books?

Thank you for any info you can provide, including links. Carry On!

172 165 Splunge, Twain had bad business acumen most of his life, and then a series of family tragedies, and it sure showed in his attitude. By his old age, I can't help but think most people thought of him as just another pain-in-the-ass liberal who used to be funny. We can forgive him now.

I'm not sure that's fair on a couple of counts. I don't really see him as a liberal -- assuming you mean leftist, not classical liberal. Whatever his stage of life, the naive faith in government authority that characterizes the leftist was, to judge by what I've read of his, utterly alien to his nature.

Second, while his books may have gotten less funny as his life stress increased, I am reasonably sure that he was enthusiastically celebrated to the end both for his books, and for his speaking engagements. Evidently he had quite a gift for public speaking.

173 since we're on a book thread, I read this a little while ago (on PJMedia) and recommend it (takes five minutes):

Why Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote All Failed to Write the Great American Novel

It's not a coincidence all three befriended murderers.

by Bruce Bawer

http://tinyurl.com/8rgh73r

174

 "He had just killed the most powerful creature in the sea, with a knife Marines used to clean their fingernails." Almost fifty years, and I never pick up a Ka-Bar without remembering Robb White. He was a character, too. Look up his bio.

 

---

 

Yeah, he wrote and he lived.  That was before all of our PC bullshit.  I recall some racially insensitive terms particularly as regards the Japanese, I don't recall any inclusiveness in regards to homosexuality, and he showed the intelligent use of violence to be a moral option.  I'm pretty sure that is written hate speech.  I got that book through some sort of scholastic reading program  designed to encourage reading in elementary school students.  You'd get kicked out of school if they caught you with a copy of that book today.

 

The most pwerful crature in the sea was a giant octopus that he had to fight to get to the treasure .  I remember there was a picture of the hero on the cover in a diving suit fighting the octopus.

175 Calyx, there are two broad price points on Amazon.  Depends if you want 30% royalties or 70% royalties.  That will affect the price range for your book.

And if you are an Amazon Associate, as I became to publish e-books, you can publish your e-book whatever the subject is.

176 Does anyone know if Little Men, or Little Women are in the public domain yet? Or did Stingywood lock those up for the next 200 years? I haven't read either book in ages, and I have an hankering for both.

177

In Jr. High in the 60's I read a lot of boy's books like "The Red Car" by Don Stanford, "Hot Rod" and "Street Rod" by Henry Gregor Felsen, and "The Black Tiger" series by Patrick O'Connor. They were pretty well written. Felsen was kind of morbid. Patrick O'Connor was actually Leonard Patrick O'Connor Webberly, who wrote "The Mouse that Roared" series, also a good read.

Just recently I started reading Craig Johnson's "Longmire" books, which are an A&E series. They read a lot like Tony Hillerman, who was a fan. Worth a read.

Also started reading Sissy Spacek's autobiography, just because I have kind of a one degree of separation. Some of my cousins grew up with her in east Texas. They all have nice things to say about her. One cousin's wife said she knew her in high school, but everyone knows her high school class died in a fire.

178 The Riddle of the Sands Heard about it for years but never got around to buying it until I was looking for a book for a bud's birthday. I found a nice used copy and made the mistake of cracking it open before wrapping it up. Got him "The Atlas of Remote Islands" instead.

179 "Does anyone know if Little Men, or Little Women are in the public domain yet?"

I'm pretty sure they are.  They're both available from Dover Publications, and even the full-length version of Little Women costs around $5.00.

180 For some reason, a bilion yers ago when I was in the Navy, I really got caught up in the Destroyer series (when Sapir and Murphy were cowriting them; when Sapir died the books instantly began to suck out loud). But until then, every book was hilarious, very politically incorrect, and the authors never took themselves seriously. Some of the lines I still remember fondly, and try to work them in to conversations (but how often do I get to tell people to "try pissing up a rope"? Actually, pretty damn often these days). And of course, the first line of the second chapter of every installment: "His name was Remo[...]"

181 179 "Does anyone know if Little Men, or Little Women are in the public domain yet?"

you can download them from Project Gutenberg

http: slash slash www dot gutenberg dor org

(I have spent enough time on TinyURL today)

If you're into smut, they also have Joyce's Ulysses

182 Sticky Wicket -- here's Little Women:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/514

183 I think of Mig Pilot every time that I walk into the coffee aisle in the supermarket. Then I thank God that I wasn't born in some communist shithole.

184 I read "Survive the Savage Sea" in jr high. It's about a family that survived some 40 days or so in a liferaft. It taught me that no matter how shitty my situation, it could be worse ... a LOT worse.

185 @174 -- Thanks, Anna. I was curious because I have a friend who recently posted an e-book with Amazon with a $5 price tag. I thought that was very high for a 1st time author, so I wanted to know if she chose that price point, or if Amazon did.

186 Hell in a Very Small Place is a very good book. His "Street without Joy" is another book about Vietnam early on.

187 I have a Life magazine from 1938 that has a photo essay about "The Jews of Europe". Found it at a yard sale.

188 I'm still slogging through "the Communist".  I just got to the part where Axelrod's parents are communists.  Looks like the whole Chicago crowd is, 0 & Valjar's grandparents for starters.  Lots of direct ties to USSR Stalinists from the 30's.

189 188, From commies to petulant whining crybabies:  that pretty much covers the modern left.

190

Anna,

Its going to be a best seller.  Because America doesn't suck.  And I think most Americans are tired of hearing that it does.  We are the kindest, most generous people on the planet, even in warfare.  I have stories that prove it.  And as an added bonus, I can tell you that the Iraqis thought so too.  Every single person who has heard any of the things that I was talking about says OMG, you need to put that in a book.  
I was at dinner with some "wargamers"  with my job in the USAF (trying to balance required capabilities in light of budget "help" from our betters) and telling some of those stories when a guy whips out a card..Larry Bond, bestselling author and creator of "Harpoon" computer games.

Also, co-writer of Red Storm Rising and Hunt for Red October.

He said: "You have GOT to write a book".

And thats why this election is going to be a blowout.

People are sick of being told they suck. And theres only one side that keeps saying it.

I'll put a double expresso on it....

191

I'm just about done with Michael Lewis' __The Big Short__. So far, so good. __Moneyball__ was better.

Second the endorsement of Barron's __Mig Pilot__.  

192 MikeB, don't get me wrong.  I hope it does sell like a blockbuster because that will mean there is hope for unknowns like me.  But there is something called fatigue factor also.  A lot of people will go "Great another Iraq story" and not give it another thought.  That is something you will have to break through to get it read.

That is nice Larry Bond is saying write it.  But so what?  It may sound harsh but its also true.  I know an author who's work I adore.  Even Charles deLint loves this author and has endorsed her books.  But she remains pretty much word of mouth to this day after 30+ years of writing and seven published books.  She has never had the PR machine behind her.

Even this new era of digital publishing is not without pitfalls.  There are circles of people who will give each other glowing reviews without reading the book.  Their sole objective is to create a buzz so their friend will get more sales.  Then their author friend will do the same for them.  Its an easy way to put out shoddy work and still take money to the bank.

And even after I know this ugliness that is called writing and publishing.  I am still writing stories.  Still working towards the breakthrough the likes of Rowlings has enjoyed.  Good luck with your work.

193

Bel Kaufman, is the grandaughter of Sholom Aleichem.

The musical 'Fiddler on the Roof' is based on his stories.

194 "I have to warn that, much like Christianity, the variants in the text don't usually change the text's message. At least, in the currently-discovered manuscripts. In Islamic oral tradition, there are hints at much more drastic alterations to the text."
supposedly while Muhammad was alive there were several different conflicting versions of the Koran around, which he hand waved by basically saying "God changed his mind, he's God, who are you to complain?"

195 23 I was about halfway through a rather long book called "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" when circumstances separated me from it. It's really good and I want to finish it, but it is also 3000 miles away. Posted by: eman at August 19, 2012 11:30 AM (u3Rkr) You haven't even gotten to the best stuff yet. Great fantasy novel!

196 In defense of James Lee Burke, his first half-dozen 'Dave Robichaud' novels were pretty good. But he has gotten a bit fond of conveying All That Is Good and Decent to us lesser types.

My suggestion to those who haven't read him is to read his books in order, and when they begin to leave you with a need to burp, quit.

197 192 I know an author who's work I adore. Even Charles deLint loves this author and has endorsed her books. But she remains pretty much word of mouth to this day after 30+ years of writing and seven published books. She has never had the PR machine behind her. Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at August 19, 2012 06:09 PM (STjp1) What's her name?

198 BornLib.

P.C. Hodgell.  Her Jame of the Kencyrath books.  Can be found at Baen now.

199 #72 Pecos, and all other Heyer-reading 'rons and 'ronettes: Hurry up and do this Right Now : get on your computer, go to bn.com or Amazon, and download Heyer ebooks. They are ALL 2.99 right now, because the publisher has them on sale through tomorrow. Apologies if some other moron posted this ahead of me, it's close to bedtime here, and I couldn't take time to read the while thread.

200 Even this new era of digital publishing is not without pitfalls. There are circles of people who will give each other glowing reviews without reading the book. Their sole objective is to create a buzz so their friend will get more sales. Then their author friend will do the same for them. Its an easy way to put out shoddy work and still take money to the bank.

Too ladylike to use the term "circle jerk"? Come on! You're at the HQ. :^)

Seriously, I've seen this happen a LOT with conservative and "counter jihad" material - sadly. It is true that a lot of these people know one another. It is also true that much of this material can stand on its own merits. But, unfortunately, the editorial process suffers when the authors know that they've got a captive audience and a bunch of buddies ready to give reciprocal back-pats.

201 Yeah that's how the latest conservative-themed book from x author gets huge sales for a week or two then disappears: big time buzz from Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, etc. People get a copy go "meh" and then it vanishes. Remember when Conservative Manifesto was the best book ever? Not so much now. I appreciate helping a friend but its kind of silly.
That said, if you have read a book someone wrote, please, please do review it on Amazon. Even if you didn't care for it, review it.

202 OMG, you guys have inspired me to read an actual book again. My mom gave me some yard sale book finds during my last visit. Just finished 'The Relic" by Preston & Child. It was OK and made the trans Pacific flight to China a bit more bearable. Getting ready to delve into 'Timeline" by Mikey Crichton. Who said "print was dead"? They were wrong, print is alive and doing well at yard sales.

203 201 Yeah that's how the latest conservative-themed book from x author gets huge sales for a week or two then disappears: big time buzz from Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, etc. People get a copy go "meh" and then it vanishes.

************************

You're full of shite.  Limbaugh's first book was on the NY Times list for more than a year. Mark Levin's last book sold more than a million copies.  At one point Beck had four books in four different categories.

In March of last year 3 conservative books were on the list.  The Times has fiddled with categories, (putting them in "How-to" and self-help) in order to push off as many as they can.

Huffington Post, Chris Matthews and other libs, embarrassed by conservative publishing success, have called for "conservative" books to be put in an entirely different category.  Lib books would, of course, remain on the non-fiction list.

If what you say were remotely true they wouldn't have be seeking a "fairness doctrine" for books.

http://tinyurl.com/4no7c68

http://tinyurl.com/yzxmcyu

204 #171 - Amazon seemingly wants to price your eBook between $2.99 and $9.99, because they almost double the royalty if you price in that range. You can join up as an author (or musician or filmmaker -- Amazon also distributes music and films) at Amazon's Createspace at https://www.createspace.com/

205 Just read The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis, the second book in an alt-history/science fiction epic that's sort of a mix between the X-Men, Lovecraft, and le Carré. Nazi mutants fighting British warlocks across the 20th Century. Good stuff.

206 I only know Tregillis from his work on Wild Cards, starting with "Tin Man's Lament" which is about a good man who was smeared by a race-baiter.