Just received 'The Story of Wine' by Hugh Johnson, will start reading it tonight along with my Wilbur Smith book.
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Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?
- Thread starter Huntn
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Ah, enjoy.
I think you are in for a treat - and it is one of those books written with love and a passionate enthusiasm which the author delights in sharing with the reader. And, what a beautifully produced book, it is, too.
I'm enjoying a read through a collection of comedic plays by Molière including Tartuffe and The Misanthrope.
The Plague by Albert Camus
I've read The Stranger so far, and I liked it (for how minimalist and bizarre it was) and now I'm intending to read the rest of his fictional oeuvre.
I've read The Stranger so far, and I liked it (for how minimalist and bizarre it was) and now I'm intending to read the rest of his fictional oeuvre.
The Plague was the first of his works that I read, too. French friends had recommended it to me, and I bought a copy in Paris.
Other works (of his) that are well worth a look are 'The Fall', and 'The Stranger'.
A really amazing milestone just passed for me: The time when an event actually passes down from one generation to another.
My son, in kindergarten, just picked up and is reading (obviously with my help) is first, very own Choose Your Own Adventure book.
The series now has books based by age/reading level, so obviously with him being in kindergarten, he picked out the one he wanted to start with:
I have roughly 70 of the 184 books in the classic series, so if he really gets into this, he's going to love what's coming to him and his sister.
BTW: Choose Your Own Adventure is still in production.
BL.
My son, in kindergarten, just picked up and is reading (obviously with my help) is first, very own Choose Your Own Adventure book.
The series now has books based by age/reading level, so obviously with him being in kindergarten, he picked out the one he wanted to start with:
I have roughly 70 of the 184 books in the classic series, so if he really gets into this, he's going to love what's coming to him and his sister.
BTW: Choose Your Own Adventure is still in production.
BL.
A really amazing milestone just passed for me: The time when an event actually passes down from one generation to another.
My son, in kindergarten, just picked up and is reading (obviously with my help) is first, very own Choose Your Own Adventure book.
The series now has books based by age/reading level, so obviously with him being in kindergarten, he picked out the one he wanted to start with:
I have roughly 70 of the 184 books in the classic series, so if he really gets into this, he's going to love what's coming to him and his sister.
BTW: Choose Your Own Adventure is still in production.
BL.
Actually, I stumbled across these books as an undergrad, and have to say that I found some of them very enjoyable, and the idea behind the structure of the books fascinating.
Hope you have lots of fun introducing your son to this world, and I can well imagine that you'll enjoy sharing it with him.
I remember an early program I wrote was a "Choose Your Adventure" type computer game. After it was working, I modified it to be reusable. Well, as reusable as an early BASIC program with DATA and READ statements could be.A really amazing milestone just passed for me: The time when an event actually passes down from one generation to another.
My son, in kindergarten, just picked up and is reading (obviously with my help) is first, very own Choose Your Own Adventure book.
The series now has books based by age/reading level, so obviously with him being in kindergarten, he picked out the one he wanted to start with:
I have roughly 70 of the 184 books in the classic series, so if he really gets into this, he's going to love what's coming to him and his sister.
BTW: Choose Your Own Adventure is still in production.
BL.
I haven't seen the punched tape for it in years. If I found it and it hasn't turned to paper dust, I'd be hard pressed to find a computer and teletype to read it with.
Heck, if I had a listing of it, it'd probably be easier to type it in and run it on a Raspberry Pi. Which when I think about it, is probably 50 times cheaper yet many thousands of times more capable than the IMSAI 8080 it first ran on, with its large-for-the-time 32KB of RAM.
Is this where I doze off in my rocking chair? Or should I start yelling, "You kids git off my lawn!"?
I still have a copy of "Return to Brookmere" a TSR Dungeons and Dragons ENDLESS QUEST(TM) BOOK. It still hurts that reading the last page leads you to ruin.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189X
http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189X
Just got around to reading this and really enjoyed it. Very short read and delivers a fun time travel experience, albeit without great predictions of future technology. If Steven Spielberg was inspired by this book, that would make sense.Edit: I went with this.
I figure Back to the Future II was my favourite of that trilogy so I guess I prefer going forward than back.
re-read recently Asimov's Foundation Trilogy (Foundation, foundation and empire, Second Foundation).
not as good as i remembered, but still a great read, even half a century after they were written. ****
speaking of classic series, i finished to a NPR radio-treatment/dramatization of the Hobbit and The Lord of The Ring.
i was mildly disappointed, since it is a highly touted production. i thought it was a bit chaotic and some of the voice talent was (IMO) miscast and/or subpar; **1/2 (one extra 1/2 star because the story is still great)
much, much better was another classsic re-read:
Three men in a boat, by JK Jerome.
Probably enjoyed more now in my old(ish) age than when i read it as a youngster.
Brilliant, and the proof that good humor still works even 120 years later. ****
different kind of humor, but also good,
Unseen Academical, by Terry Pratchett.
this one i had not read before, and while not as good as some of the earlier Disc World books, it was still very enjoyable.
Academia and football make an interesting mix.
it helped that i was reading it while witnessing the last act of Leicester's unlikely push to their first title. ****
finally, a non-classic book which could and should become one:
The Tsar of Love and Techno, by A. Marra.
i loved his previous work, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (a borderline masterpiece, IMO), so i had great expectations for this one.
i wasn't disappointed.
A remarkable collection of interwoven short stories that temporally and spatially criss-cross modern Russia and the USSR, form Kirovsk to Grozny. a gem. *****
not as good as i remembered, but still a great read, even half a century after they were written. ****
speaking of classic series, i finished to a NPR radio-treatment/dramatization of the Hobbit and The Lord of The Ring.
i was mildly disappointed, since it is a highly touted production. i thought it was a bit chaotic and some of the voice talent was (IMO) miscast and/or subpar; **1/2 (one extra 1/2 star because the story is still great)
much, much better was another classsic re-read:
Three men in a boat, by JK Jerome.
Probably enjoyed more now in my old(ish) age than when i read it as a youngster.
Brilliant, and the proof that good humor still works even 120 years later. ****
different kind of humor, but also good,
Unseen Academical, by Terry Pratchett.
this one i had not read before, and while not as good as some of the earlier Disc World books, it was still very enjoyable.
Academia and football make an interesting mix.
it helped that i was reading it while witnessing the last act of Leicester's unlikely push to their first title. ****
finally, a non-classic book which could and should become one:
The Tsar of Love and Techno, by A. Marra.
i loved his previous work, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (a borderline masterpiece, IMO), so i had great expectations for this one.
i wasn't disappointed.
A remarkable collection of interwoven short stories that temporally and spatially criss-cross modern Russia and the USSR, form Kirovsk to Grozny. a gem. *****
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I have started 'Three men in a boat about four times. I need to give it another go.re-read recently Asimov's Foundation Trilogy (Foundation, foundation and empire, Second Foundation).
not as good as i remembered, but still a great read, even half a century after they were written. ****
speaking of classic series, i finished to a NPR radio-treatment/dramatization of the Hobbit and The Lord of The Ring.
i was mildly disappointed, since it is a highly touted production. i thought it was a bit chaotic and some of the voice talent was (IMO) miscast and/or subpar; **1/2 (one extra 1/2 star because the story is still great)
much, much better was another classsic re-read:
Three men in a boat, by JK Jerome.
Probably enjoyed more now in my old(ish) age than when i read it as a youngster.
Brilliant, and the proof that good humor still works even 120 years later. ****
different kind of humor, but also good,
Unseen Academical, by Terry Pratchett.
this one i had not read before, and while not as good as some of the earlier Disc World books, it was still very enjoyable.
Academia and football make an interesting mix.
it helped that i was reading it while witnessing the last act of Leicester's unlikely push to their first title. ****
finally, a non-classic book which could and should become one:
The Tsar of Love and Techno, by A. Marra.
i loved his previous work, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (a borderline masterpiece, IMO), so i had great expectations for this one.
i wasn't disappointed.
A remarkable collection of interwoven short stories that temporally and spatially criss-cross modern Russia and the USSR, form Kirovsk to Grozny. a gem. *****
Just started this. I'm embarrassed at how little I know of this period of my home country.
Who Goes There? 1938 Excellent short story/novella by John Campbell used as the basis for 4 sci-fI horror movies, including 1982, The Thing.
The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, by Leslie Klinger. 22 of his best stories, illustrated and with insightful commentary. It is a delight.
just finished The Games, by Ted Kosmata
Bleh. I picked it up because it apparently won some awards and had quite positive reviews both on amazon and goodreads.
They must have switched the book since then, because the one i read was terrible.
it is pitched as a mix of Jurassic Park and Hunger Games, with (supposedly) a heavy component of genetics (which is what attracted me most).
the book is highly predictable, with very undeveloped and unlikeable characters, living in a mildly dystopic near-future world (it is set around the 2050s), which looks very much like the current one, except much of the 'day-to day' technology is described as futuristic but in fact it is a little less advanced then it is now. very perplexing. at one point i double checked on when this book was published, because it would make sense if this was written in the 80s. but no, it was published in 2012.
my biggest beef is with the science part, which is just plain crap.
it has pretenses of being 'hard science', accurate stuff, with the author supposedly having biology background and worked in research labs (i seriously doubt this can be true). it is a mix of ludicrously improbable 'science' and of molecular biology techniques which have been obsolete for decades. maybe he took an undergraduate lab class in the 80s and goes off memories from there, without having bothered to verify if anything has changed since, but some of the stuff he describes as being cutting edge in the 2050s -in a universe where genetic engineering is a major aspect of society- are already run of the mill, or obsolete, today.
the treatment of computers/VR is equally bad, and show he knows very little about this field as well, except the spelling of some big words.
i can go on and on, but i will stop the rant here. very disappointing. *
Bleh. I picked it up because it apparently won some awards and had quite positive reviews both on amazon and goodreads.
They must have switched the book since then, because the one i read was terrible.
it is pitched as a mix of Jurassic Park and Hunger Games, with (supposedly) a heavy component of genetics (which is what attracted me most).
the book is highly predictable, with very undeveloped and unlikeable characters, living in a mildly dystopic near-future world (it is set around the 2050s), which looks very much like the current one, except much of the 'day-to day' technology is described as futuristic but in fact it is a little less advanced then it is now. very perplexing. at one point i double checked on when this book was published, because it would make sense if this was written in the 80s. but no, it was published in 2012.
my biggest beef is with the science part, which is just plain crap.
it has pretenses of being 'hard science', accurate stuff, with the author supposedly having biology background and worked in research labs (i seriously doubt this can be true). it is a mix of ludicrously improbable 'science' and of molecular biology techniques which have been obsolete for decades. maybe he took an undergraduate lab class in the 80s and goes off memories from there, without having bothered to verify if anything has changed since, but some of the stuff he describes as being cutting edge in the 2050s -in a universe where genetic engineering is a major aspect of society- are already run of the mill, or obsolete, today.
the treatment of computers/VR is equally bad, and show he knows very little about this field as well, except the spelling of some big words.
i can go on and on, but i will stop the rant here. very disappointing. *
Reading One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon by Tim Weiner.
Very interesting to finally read about this paranoid and corrupt president's reign.
Very interesting to finally read about this paranoid and corrupt president's reign.