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olderthanIusedtobe Member
Joined: 05 Sep 2011 Posts: 7687 | TRs | Pics Location: Shoreline |
Toni wrote: | Just finished this Jack Reacher novel, enjoyed it, as you mentioned, "always entertanining" |
Yeah I cruised through it in a few days, definitely enjoyed it.
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Michael Lewis Taking a nap
Joined: 27 Apr 2009 Posts: 629 | TRs | Pics Location: Lynnwood, WA (for now) |
I tried to read "Moby Dick" in 7th grade and gave up when I realized that, like Hawthorne, he incessantly described all minutiae until I had forgotten where we were in the story.
Last week a friend lent me an old copy of Moby Dick. I must end it. It must be the prophesy.
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olderthanIusedtobe Member
Joined: 05 Sep 2011 Posts: 7687 | TRs | Pics Location: Shoreline |
Got another book in a long running series from the library, Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series. A National Park LEO who goes undercover at various Federal lands all over the country. I think this is one of the earliest ones. "Firestorm," on a fire fighting crew around Lassen NP. I've read several before.
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olderthanIusedtobe Member
Joined: 05 Sep 2011 Posts: 7687 | TRs | Pics Location: Shoreline |
Michael Lewis wrote: | I tried to read "Moby Dick" in 7th grade and gave up when I realized that, like Hawthorne, he incessantly described all minutiae until I had forgotten where we were in the story.
Last week a friend lent me an old copy of Moby Dick. I must end it. It must be the prophesy. |
I picked up a cheap paperback copy of Moby Dick, must've been on my to do list for at least a decade. I finally figured out I was never going to read it and got rid of it.
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zephyr aka friendly hiker
Joined: 21 Jun 2009 Posts: 3361 | TRs | Pics Location: West Seattle |
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zephyr
aka friendly hiker
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Thu Mar 08, 2018 5:06 pm
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The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston, Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, 2017. Douglas Preston, a writer for The New Yorker, Natural History, Harper’s, Smithsonian, National Geographic and The Atlantic was asked to accompany an expedition into the remote rain forest in Honduras and write about it for National Geographic. This was a team effort to explore and document a long-buried Pre-Columbian city from a culture neighboring and contemporary with the ancient Maya. Here’s a review of the book from the Los Angeles Review of Books. And here’s a quick article with excellent photographs from the National Geographic. More information here in Wikipedia on La Ciudad Blanca--the lost city and its history and myth in popular culture over the years.
I must say the most riveting part of the book is the encounter with a fer-de-lance on his first night at the jungle encampment when he got lost in the nighttime rainforest. ~z
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gb Member
Joined: 01 Jul 2010 Posts: 6303 | TRs | Pics
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gb
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Sun Mar 18, 2018 5:37 pm
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I recently finished Helen MacDonald's H is for Hawk which I found to be both very well written and that it provided great insight into the personality and depth of a Goshawk.
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olderthanIusedtobe Member
Joined: 05 Sep 2011 Posts: 7687 | TRs | Pics Location: Shoreline |
I haven't read any Agatha Christie, never gave much thought to it. After watching the new version of "Murder on the Orient Express" I was curious to give it a try. Figured I should start at the beginning, so I got the first novel featuring Hercule Poirot--"The Mysterious Affair at Styles."
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Toni Member
Joined: 17 Sep 2007 Posts: 829 | TRs | Pics Location: Issaquah |
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Toni
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Mon Mar 19, 2018 2:05 pm
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Out on a limb here,
"Russian Roulette"
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olderthanIusedtobe Member
Joined: 05 Sep 2011 Posts: 7687 | TRs | Pics Location: Shoreline |
olderthanIusedtobe wrote: | I haven't read any Agatha Christie, never gave much thought to it. After watching the new version of "Murder on the Orient Express" I was curious to give it a try. Figured I should start at the beginning, so I got the first novel featuring Hercule Poirot--"The Mysterious Affair at Styles." |
Wasn't overly enamored w/ Agatha Christie or Poirot. Came off as Sherlock Holmes lite. Maybe she developed the character better in subsequent novels, but I'm not likely to delve deeper into it.
Now I've got an anthology edited by John Joseph Adams that is dystopian short stories, titled "Brave New Worlds." Includes writings by Ursula K. Le Guin, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Phillip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Orson Scott Card among many others.
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Mike Collins Member
Joined: 18 Dec 2001 Posts: 3086 | TRs | Pics
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The Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda are glaciated peaks that provide one of the sources of the Nile. In The Way to the Mountains of the Moon Rennie Bere provides a naturalist's account to travel and climbing in that area of central Africa. He describes not only the ascents, but the animals, plants, and ethnicity of that remote region.
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grannyhiker Member
Joined: 29 Jul 2006 Posts: 3516 | TRs | Pics Location: Gateway to the Columbia Gorge |
Fascinating history with a bit of a twist: Gary Gallagher, ed., Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander. University of North Carolina Press, 1989. After a short stint as signal corps officer, including the Confederacy's only attempt at balloon reconnaissance, Alexander became Longstreet's chief of artillery throughout most of the war. He wrote up his recollections years after the war for his grown children, who had been nagging him for the story of his war adventures. Since they were never intended for publication, the appraisals of even Robert E. Lee (considered a saint by most Confederates) are unusually candid. While I don't agree with his attitude towards the war or, for that matter, some of his conclusions about Gettysburg (that's as far as I've gotten), I find his recollections fascinating and often amusing.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.--E.Abbey
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.--E.Abbey
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trestle Member
Joined: 17 Aug 2008 Posts: 2093 | TRs | Pics Location: the Oly Pen |
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trestle
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Wed Apr 04, 2018 9:46 am
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olderthanIusedtobe wrote: | Now I've got an anthology edited by John Joseph Adams that is dystopian short stories, titled "Brave New Worlds." Includes writings by Ursula K. Le Guin, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Phillip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Orson Scott Card among many others. |
Interesting set of writers in that anthology, might look for that one myself.
"Life favors the prepared." - Edna Mode
"Life favors the prepared." - Edna Mode
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olderthanIusedtobe Member
Joined: 05 Sep 2011 Posts: 7687 | TRs | Pics Location: Shoreline |
trestle wrote: | Interesting set of writers in that anthology, might look for that one myself. |
Making slow progress. I've been a fan of short stories at times, but it can be a limiting genre. Not a whole lot you can do w/ only 5 or 6 pages. Some are longer, 15-30 range. I'm starting to skip ahead to read the pieces by authors I'm familiar with. Not sure I'm going to finish reading all of the selections.
It's a bit of "duh," but a collection about dystopian societies is kind of a downer.
edited--I set this aside for several days but came back to it. Now I'm skipping around rather than reading in sequential order. That is working better. Can either go w/ authors I'm familiar with, or just pick based on title of the story. Last several entries I read were intriguing.
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Mike Collins Member
Joined: 18 Dec 2001 Posts: 3086 | TRs | Pics
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Last Sunday provided me with the opportunity to be in the audience to hear James Comey speak on his book promotion tour. A copy of A Higher Loyalty-Truth, Lies, and Leadership was provided to each person at the entrance. The book doesn't reveal any information that hasn't been already said by him on The View, or when interviewed by Colbert. The thrust of his words is that the FBI should remain an apolitical entity within the landscape of our democracy. The vibrancy of spoken words can facilitate the depth of meaning and I felt privileged to have heard him speak.
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Malachai Constant Member
Joined: 13 Jan 2002 Posts: 16088 | TRs | Pics Location: Back Again Like A Bad Penny |
Turn right at Machu Picchu
"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
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