So, What Are You Reading?

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Ted Heiks, Jul 27, 2013.

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  1. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

  2. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Read Procopius' The Secret History.
     
  3. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    For 90 cents at the Thrift Shop, I got Zen Guitar by Philip Toshio Sudo. Didn't care for it. Rather than make me a better guitarist - it might make me a monk. But I suck at monkhood, so . . .
     
  4. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Read Harry A. Miskimin's The Economy of Early Renaissnce Europe, 1300-1460.
     
  5. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Read Mark R. Levin's The Liberty Amenndments.
     
  6. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    I'm reading The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I've been meaning to read it for a long, long time. The humor is right up my alley.

    Also, I started reading Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Boom! Studios) comics. I have a lot of nostalgia for the Power Rangers, unfortunately, the shows just don't hold up well for a now-adult and some of the dialogue is too unbearable to even be awesomely bad. On the other hand, the comics take all the elements that I still think are awesome about the series and adds dialogue that is not cringy and awkward.
     
  7. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Dirty South - by Ace Atkins. A blues researcher, who teaches in New Orleans (Tulane) and has a girlfriend in Mississippi, gets drawn into the world of Rap - Bling, Cristal, Bentleys and Beats - to investigate his friend's murder and the theft of $500,000 from his friend's client - a 15-year-old rising Rap star. If I could write this kind of excitement -- I would!

    Note: "Dirty South" can refer to a place, an album (by the Drive-by Truckers, 2004), a musician ("Dirty South" - Dragan Roganovic - a Serbian-Australian DJ) or Southern regional hip-hop, as I am using it in this post. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_hip_hop
     
    Maniac Craniac likes this.
  8. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Then simply refuse to grow up! You've made a good start! There are already a couple of "awesomes" in that post; they help the juvenile image ... um, awesomely! Any more would be overkill.
     
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  9. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    A lot of the original series episodes are not just silly and campy (I love silly and campy!!!) but awkward and tiresome. There were even times when multiple episodes seemed to be almost shot-by-shot remakes of previous episodes. It was really hurt by the drive to continue to pump out 5 shows per week and to try to milk as much as they could from the limited source material of the first 3 seasons (Long story to explain this, but Power Rangers is based on Super Sentai, a Japanese show.). Still, there is a lot of fun to be had from watching Power Rangers, flaws and all.

    As of now, I'm on issue 4 of the comics and I still think it's blowing the tv show out of the water. There are things that illustrated books can do that live action can't do, and vice versa, and the concept of the Power Rangers is translating impressively well to comic books.
     
    Johann likes this.
  10. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    My own refusal to grow up has shown itself in (yet) another way. Rabbits have been special creatures to me since I was very small and I recently bought about 15 of the small Peter Rabbit story-books in a thrift-shop - new condition, 25 cents each. I've loved the stories and the illustrations since I was about four (1947). I also bought "Little Grey Rabbit's Country Book" from the same source. I remember Little Grey Rabbit books from my early childhood, and how I laughed when I first heard the hedgehog's name - Fuzzipeg. Strange how things stick with one ...
     
  11. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    So do I. I also love rabbits - in any form. When I had my heart op. about three years back, my granddaughter bought me a Build-a-Bunny with a battery-powered beating heart. I named him Benjamin Brownears and soon got him a sister, Belinda. I must say, they've got some pretty nice toys, for stuffed animals. Among his other treasures, Benjamin has a Kawasaki Ninja - his favourite motorcycle. Just his size! And you should see Belinda's Victorian Dollhouse (another thrift-shop find.) She also has a family of small, knitted rabbit dolls and a wagon for them (bought separately) that says "I love dolls." I bought the whole set of dolls from the elderly lady who knitted them -- I didn't want to split up a family.

    When they were little, I wrote my grandchildren a whole bunch of stories about a family of rabbits -and the kids themselves, of course. Young adults now, they still like it, when they get the occasional letter and small present at Christmas from the now-grown rabbit-children. I still have all of those stories - they were based on some I made up for my sons (45 and 48 now) when they were small. Family tradition . . .
     
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  12. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Have you considered publishing them, or otherwise sharing them?
     
  13. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Considered, yes - not done anything about it so far. Too busy working on a psychological thriller for pre-schoolers. :) I'm kind of reluctant, actually. If I ever do share them, I see the rabbit stories as a possible "your name here" vehicle - where the child(ren) get(s) their own names in the story, as my sons and grandchildren did. I certainly have enough characters. I counted once and there were around 30 names (mostly rabbits - the odd fieldmouse, raccoon, turtle, squirrel, friendly dragon etc.)

    Funny thing happened about 15 years back. I opened a book, after moving, and out popped a sheet of paper with a rabbit story - my same rabbits - written by my elder son 25 years previously, when he was about 7. (A couple of years earlier, at 5, he had taught himself to read and write. His school report says he taught himself, so it's official.) I framed the story and gave it to him for - I think - his 33rd birthday. It hangs in his home office today. My son (as I've said before) is a high-school teacher who has also developed an excellent writing business, via the Internet. I sort of knew we might have a writer in the family when he was about four. He was telling us a story he'd made up - "... And the animals all got frightened, so they had to go to a bar..." :)
     
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  14. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    That's wonderful. :-D
     
  15. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Read David Willis McCullough's Chronicles of the Barbarians.
     
  16. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Reread Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card. The ending is a bit tidy in that OSC way, but his characters are usually the more interesting aspects of his books anyway and Columbus is a major character in the story.
     
  17. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Read W. Fletcher Johnson's Life of William Tecumseh Sherman.
     
  18. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Read nine books in the past week. Another nine the week before. Thought maybe I was turning into Ted Heiks! :)

    Reason: I have kicked TV. Disconnected it and put my tiny 13" flat-screen in a dark closet, weeks ago. At some point, it may serve as another computer monitor.

    Why?

    (1) In 40 years of living on my own (again) I have always refused to pay for cable or any other TV reception system. I will pay for it - but only if I move somewhere else. Don't want to get comfortable here. I had over-the-air reception of 6 channels when I got here, 14 years ago. They built a football stadium and that decreased viewing to 4 channels. Then they built a Community Sports Centre and that reduced it to 3. Now a new high school has gone up directly across the street, blocking all except one channel. The one channel I can't stand. TV is a waste of time, now. (Correction: It always was.)

    (2) Ontario recently elected a new premier, Doug Ford. He's the brother of the late Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. You might remember the crack-smoking stories and his late-night American TV appearances. I was, of course, sorry to see Rob Ford become gravely ill and die at a young age. Nobody deserves that - and certainly Rob's family did not deserve to lose him as they did. Now, as for Rob's brother, Doug -- I have no use for him, period. So, I determined it would be a good thing not to watch a TV newscast of any kind while Doug Ford is Premier of Ontario. So, for four years - no TV, no sight of Premier Doug Ford.

    Here's a little bit on Doug. It came out quite a while (years) before he was elected as premier. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/globe-investigation-the-ford-familys-history-with-drug-dealing/article12153014/

    I've managed to get quite a lot done with no TV. There are all those books - and I've completed a few jigsaw puzzles (mostly Native themes) that I bought 20 years ago. All nicely sealed on plaques, by a shop nearby that specializes in it. I have half a dozen still to go and I have a bunch that I completed the same way years ago. I also have many small woodwork projects to get done (small ones are all you can do in an apartment) and that's just a start. I still have four guitars and numerous other instruments - and a couple of computers. I don't lack for stuff to do . . . or books to read.

    I don't see TV coming back into my life - at least not very much of it - ever. In fact, I may have to reduce my Internet footprint, to get more done . . .
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2018
    SteveFoerster likes this.
  19. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Just so long as you keep us around!
     
  20. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    I've just started reading "The Industries of the Future" by Alec Ross.
    No opinion of the book yet but I believe it is important for everyone to consider the changes that will take place over the coming decades and plan ahead for these changes.
     

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