Yeah, they were good for a long time. It was around 7/8/9 for me... "Holy cow, just get on with it!" If Nynaeve pulled on her braid one more time, I swear I was going to snap...Quote:
Originally Posted by Ride On
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Yeah, they were good for a long time. It was around 7/8/9 for me... "Holy cow, just get on with it!" If Nynaeve pulled on her braid one more time, I swear I was going to snap...Quote:
Originally Posted by Ride On
Interesting books y'all have been reading - I read 95% non-fiction, and some of these I'll put on my list for the next library visit.
I'm currently reading Landscape of Desire: Identity & Nature in Utah's Canyon Country, by Greg Gordon. He took a group of college students on an extended backpacking trip down Muddy Creek & Dirty Devil to where it drains into the Colorado, so the book is about that and is infused with geology, natural history and human impacts on the San Rafael Swell/Reef area. I totally geek out over CP geology, so I'm loving it!
I just finished Ellen Meloy's Last Cheater's Waltz, maybe one of the last books she wrote before her death. For those that like southwestern travel and natural history anthologies, Ellen's books are a must-read. Her book about boating the Green River for a season was outstanding.
And, the book I finished before that was Douglas Preston's Cities of Gold, which details his trip to replicate the Coronado expedition, starting from the Mexican border and going to Cibola/seven cities of gold (aka the Zuni Pueblo) and eventually ending at the Pecos Pueblo. Fascinating, as he infuses his trip with natural and human history of the area as he travels.
Another outstanding book I finished recently was How Men Win Glory: the Pat Tillman story, by Jon Krakauer. He's an exceptional writer.
"Everybody hated him. When he come out of his mother, the doctor slapped her."
Clete Boyer talking about NYY manager Casey Stengel as quoted in Jane Leavy's The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle And The End Of America's Childhood. Lots of antedotes in this well researched biography.
The Pueblo Revolt - David Roberts
Yah, that one's a great book. Way more meaty than I had expected. Good as an audiobook.Quote:
Originally Posted by canyonphile
Tom :moses:
DEATH TO THE BCS
Getting ready to read this over the holidays. I hear it is a really good read (for CFB fans): www.deathtothebcs.com
That book would just piss me off more.... most CFB fans already know the BCS is a sham.... The BCS is nothing but discrimination.... the rich schools taking advantage of the poor schools... the BCS is one of the things we will look back on in 50 years and roll our eyes at for being so stupid to allow it to exist, just like we do now at the old school "colored" leagues..Quote:
Originally Posted by accadacca
Don Quixote.
I started it maybe 2 weeks ago, and am perhaps 1/8 of the way through it - not exactly light reading :haha:.
That's what I found. I wasn't exactly expecting something heavier than Great Expectations at the time. I have yet to get back to it.
Ugh. I tried 2x to read Great Expectations, and just couldn't get into it. Same with Jane Eyre, The Brothers Karamazov and a few others regarded as "classic literature".Quote:
Originally Posted by cachehiker
I think the thing that keeps me reading Don Quixote is that it's an epic travel and adventure tale. The assorted ass-kickings and other smackdowns the Don receives as a result of his delusional mental state is rather amusing. If written in current days, the book would be a short story: he and Sancho would have been arrested for defacing property (the windmills), and he'd be locked up in a mental institution for insisting they were monsters :lol8:. The End.
Reaching Keet Seel: Ruin's Echo and the Anasazi.
My favorite quote thus far "Citizen of a nation where, for all too many of us, no lake, plain, plateau, river or forest is more precious than what can be done to them or made out of them; born into a culture where all too often the only sacrament is money, I had come to this canyon to visit a people among whom the earth was never for sale."
I got a kick out of Miss Havisham and all the other characters in Great Expectations. I started Don Quixote at the beginning of the fall semester after having been given the impression that despite being rather lengthy, it was an otherwise easy read. Words to live by: don't take reading advice from honors students. I can normally plow through just about anything but Advanced Calculus proved rather arduous and I found myself averaging too few pages in a day.Quote:
Originally Posted by canyonphile
I haven't taken on Jane Eyre yet but loved Wuthering Heights. The Bronte sisters could write.
When I personally think of heavy, I think of Moby Dick, Le Morte d'Arthur, and The Iliad.
I can't remember if I read Wuthering Heights or not. I always do make a point of seeing the movie versions of all these classics, though, and have really enjoyed them as such.Quote:
Originally Posted by cachehiker
The topic of "how well-read are you?" came up on an art forum I read, and several people commented that they couldn't handle Moby Dick, either :haha:. I've never tried to read it. As far as The Iliad goes....I personally can't stand reading poetry, or anything written in that verse form that all translations of this novel are that I've come across. Haven't read any Dante for the same reason. The prose version of The Odyssey that we read in high school was wonderful, though. So, until that changes, I won't be reading them. A bummer, because I love travel and adventure stories.
I always find it odd that Ayn Rand doesn't seem to make it onto any of these lists of "classics". I've read all of her fiction, and Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead remain two of my favorite novels of all time. It's probably time to re-read those, in fact.
Moby Dick would be one of my favorite books if the author had focused on Ahab trying to catch the d@mned white whale. Instead he wrote hundreds of pages about knots, ships, etc. By the end I almost considered myself an expert on the intricacies of whaling.
Oh I handled Moby Dick, Atlas Shrugged, The Iliad, Le Morte d'Arthur, The Old Testament, Lenk's Video Handbook, LabWindows/CVI Programming, etc. 10 pages at a time. Take about 150 carefully selected pages out of Moby Dick and I probably would've liked it but when the action gets unbearably slow my usual 75-ish pages per week turns into 50, then 25, and then I stall. Those 150 most onerous pages were probably responsible for my stalling and having to summon the determination to forge ahead at least a half-dozen times. I'm currently stalled in Windows 7 Inside Out.
I'm about done with Myths America Lives By and looking for the next book. I've had enough theology and history for now. I'm thinking of Dostoevsky, maybe Hugo, or possibly Hardy. After Kerouac, Bukowski, Camus, and Hesse, I need to go back to something old.
The Three Musketeers - read it years ago, picked it up on a whim and read it again. I may have to re-read all the sequels too.
Also just finished A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, a Christmas present from my son. Really enjoyed it.
I enjoyed Don Quixote quite a lot - started it about 12 years ago, but never finished and mislaid the book. Bought a new copy 3 years ago, and plowed through - quite good. The books I find tough to get through are the Russians - Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, etc.
Been reading a lot lately, and discovered a great website - goodreads.com - where I've been keeping track of my books and getting lots of ideas for upcoming choices. My daughter introduced me to it, and I've discovered that Tom is there, too...
Recent reads of mine:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson.
I loved all three.
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein
These two were amazing. Eye opening. Ire-raising.
Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things, by Richard Wiseman
The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman
The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending
Just finished Things the Grandchildren Should Know, by Mark Oliver Everett (AKA "E", lead singer of "EELS"), which was a really neat memoir of a tortured artist who's had a pretty lousy life in some ways, and some really great experiences, too.
Currently reading Aron Ralston's Between a Rock and a Hard Place.
Under the Christmas tree:
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach.
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas Friedman
To pick up soon:
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, by Naomi Klein
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, by Carol Tavris
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan
And oh, so many more to read!
Still on my Roman History Kick. Just finished Augustus by Allan Massie - historical fiction memoire from Rome's first Emperor. I know, sounds nerdy, but it was really well written and highly readable, and far less confusing than the more elaborate First Men of Rome books. He's got quite a few others in the same area I'll be checking out, then I think I deserve to read I, Claudius again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus2000
Tom
If you haven't read War and Peace, it is really, really good. More soap opera than dense Russian novel. I know it has a rep as being tedious and huge, but I did not find it so. Yes, quite a long book, but it was good all the way through.Quote:
Originally Posted by cachehiker
Tom
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratagonia
I loved I Claudius, both books. I haven't re-read them for a while, but I did just finish re-watching the Masterpiece Theater adaptation, with Derek Jacobi. Wonderful.