Sunday Morning Book Thread 11-22-2020

Connemara Public Library, Chennai, India

Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes, wine moms, frat bros, crétins sans pantalon (who are technically breaking the rules). Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, a weekly compendium of reviews, observations, snark, witty repartee, hilarious bon mots, and a continuing conversation on books, reading, spending way too much money on books, writing books, and publishing books by escaped oafs and oafettes who follow words with their fingers and whose lips move as they read. Unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these pants, which have been rejected by the entire Bulwark staff because they thought they were "too manly."

It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®

We'll probably be using this word a lot in the weeks ahead.

Thanks to Novelicious for the pic.

Post-Election Reading

Here's a couple of short books you can use to while away the time while the election gets sorted out. The first is Don't Give Money to People Who Hate You by Brian Niemeier, which gives advice on how to do what we should probably be doing, anyway:

You know that the big movie studios, comic book companies, and video game publishers push an agenda. What you don’t know is that the corporations in control of your entertainment aren’t grifters or ideologues. They’re evangelists of a fanatical anti-religion.

Movie producers don’t ruin beloved film franchises for profit. Comic book writers don’t warp iconic superheroes into self-parodies to sway voters. They hate their audiences with zealous fervor. They want you demoralized, they want your kids propagandized, and they want you to pay for the privilege.

Nostalgia-fueled habit keeps many of these cultists’ victims coming back for more abuse. But you can escape the cycle. In this book you’ll see how the corrupt entertainment industry hooks its customers, and you’ll gain the tools to reclaim your dignity from the Pop Cult.

Learn to stop paying people who hate you, take back your life, and have fun while you’re at it! Read on!

The book is subtitled 'Break free from the pop cult, reclaim your dignity, and have fun while you're at it!'

Also, did you know that Congressman Devin Nunes has also written a short book? It's called Countdown to Socialism and it just came out a couple of months ago:

This pamphlet [it's about 100 pages] exposes how the Democratic Party has changed beyond recognition. Once the party of anti-communism and tax-cutting under President Kennedy, it is now dominated by a surging socialist movement and led by a presidential candidate who vows to “transform” America.

On a near-daily basis, the Democrats are issuing radical proposals to socialize medicine, industry, and higher education. So how can the Democrats win elections when their agenda is so far to the left of the American people?

That’s easy―it’s because the means of public debate are being manipulated.

...Congressman Devin Nunes exposes the nexus between the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and the social media corporations. These three entities cooperate to blast out the Democrats’ message and downplay their extremism while suppressing and censoring conservative points of view.

Tens of millions of Americans are only seeing one side of the debate. The information they get from newspapers and social media is not “news”―it’s contrived content designed to help one political party and punish its opponents.

In the run-up to the most consequential election of our lifetime, read this book to learn how your information is being skewed and regulated to force America onto the path to socialism.

It's really quite funny to listen to progressives holler and shriek about the GOP's "dangerous slide to the extreme right", when the truth is that it is their party that's tilting the ship of state so far left that it's about ready to capsize. Look at what's in the Democrat Party now: open, not even disguised, socialism, hatred of America and calls to "fundamentally transform" her, which I guess they're now calling "The Great Reset". Compare this with some of the old school Democrats. For example, Jimmy Carter. Now, Carter was a bumbling idiot who was way out of his depth as president, but he did love America, I can say that much for him. And what about JFK? With his muscular, anti-communist, interventionist foreign policy and program of tax cuts, I would argue that the modern politician he most resembles is George W. Bush. Fight me. Seriously, if I could exhume JFK and reanimate his corpse, and could show him videos of the Folsom Street Fair, a transgendered 8 year old, Kamala Harris praising violence in the streets, the Boy Scouts getting booed at a Democratic National Convention, I think he'd beg me to turn the juice off. Which I'd gladly do, because if he stayed alive, he would be run out of his party for being a white supremacist.

Who Dis:

(Last week's 'who dis' was Gilligan's co-star Dawn Wells, and in the actual, unedited photo provided by President Eris, Benevolent Dictatoress, over on the right you can see a young Harvey Weinstein trying to get a peek up her dress.

___________

Moron Recommendations

This past week I enjoyed two books - both new to me. First, on a serious note: Save, Send, Delete by Danusha V. Goska. (I think I found it through the book thread, but I'm not sure.) This is the story of a poor Catholic adjunct professor's efforts to share her faith with a celebrity atheist (think Dawkins.) Mira, the professor, watches him one night on PBS, sneering at faith in a Bill Moyers inteview. Mira is so upset she sends a detailed email immediately to the atheist, and is shocked when he replies. The book is told through the emails she sends - the author demands you infer his replies from her responses. The writing is magical - you suffer with Mira through her telling of her story in letters. I had to track this book down through eBay - but it is so worth the wait.

Posted by: CarolinaGirl at November 15, 2020 09:04 AM (Kh9rg)

I was intrigued by the description in the Amazon blurb:

Save Send Delete is a debate about God between polar opposites: Mira, a poor, Catholic professor and Rand, an atheist author and celebrity. It’s based on a true story. Mira reveals gut-level emotions and her inner struggles to live fully and honestly – and to laugh – in the face of extraordinary ordeals. She shares experiences so profound, so holy, they force us to confront our beliefs in what is true and possible. Rand hears her; he understands her; he challenges her ideas; he makes her more of herself. The book is in essence a love story.

Dead tree editions of Save Send Delete may be hard to come by, but the Kindle version is available for $7.49.

___________

19 I’m a few chapters into “Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents” by Rod Dreher (he of The Benedict Option). I'm not a particularly religious person, but it is a fascinating read if you are disturbed by what is going on in These Difficult Times.

Dreher interviewed many people who had lived under communism and asked if they noticed a drift toward totalitarianism in the United States. Every one of them emphatically said yes. One old émigré professor noticed, starting about a decade ago, that friends would lower their voices and look over their shoulders when expressing conservative views. This self-censorship is an unsettling development in America and sadly familiar to people who lived under totalitarian systems.

This is a difference between Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism. Authoritarianism is when the state monopolizes top-down political control, like a dictatorship. It's a means of controlling people and their actions. In Totalitarianism, an ideology seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions, with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology. It's thought control.

A Totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality.

Posted by: All Hail President Eris, Benevolent Dictatoress at November 15, 2020 09:12 AM (Dc2NZ)

I know Dreher from two other books he's written, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, which I think is wrong-headed, and Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots, which was so silly that even NRO laughed at it. I know Dreher is a serious Christian, but for some reason, something about the way he writes has always rubbed me the wrong way. Even so, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents sounds like it is worth looking at.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.

Also, I would point out that the distinction between Authoritarian and Totalitarian regimes was first made by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her classic essay Dictatorships and Double-Standards which was published in Commentary back in 1979. It's well worth reading, even today. Kirkpatrick was picked by Ronald Reagan to serve as Ambassador to the U.N.

___________

211 Have been rereading parts of Clive James' "Cultural Amnesia" a fascinating, rather eccentric collection of essays about cultural figures ranging from Albert Camus to Miles Davis. James can be exasperating because some of his essays go very afar afield. The essay on Sophie Scholl turns into a paean to Natalie Portman, for instance. And James is (or rather, was) decidedly secular, so he has his own blind spots. He praises Chesterton without talking about Chesterton's religious faith and doesn't mention that the Christianity of Sophie Scholl and her brother led them to care about the fate of the Jews.

But his take on the intellectuals and artists who supported totalitarianism, in the forms of both Nazism and Communism, is devastating. His critique of the vile Jean-Paul Sartre is merciless and he has great admiration for Raymond Aron, who was Sartre's great conservative critic.

James himself was a secular liberal who nonetheless found himself reluctantly on the side of Thostaer (when it came to foreign policy, at least) and other conservatives because he was so vehemently anti-Communism.

So - a highly recommended book. It's quirky and if you are a religious conservative you will find much to disagree with, but I don't care to read only people I always agree with. His insights on authoritarianism and art and pretty sound.

Posted by: Donna&&&&&V at November 15, 2020 10:23 AM (HabA/)

Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts is a monster of a book, nearly 900 pages, which is described as

...an encyclopedic A-Z masterpiece—the perfect introduction to the very core of Western humanism. Clive James rescues, or occasionally destroys, the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. Soaring to Montaigne-like heights, Cultural Amnesia is precisely the book to burnish these memories of a Western civilization that James fears is nearly lost.

It's one big database of 20th century European culture figures right at your fingertips! I'd guess this book might work best as a reference manual or encyclopedia, where you just pick it up and read the small piece you're looking for, rather than just reading it straight through. Of course, some people like to read dictionaries and encyclopedias straight through, in which case Cultural Amnesia is just perfect.

___________

Books By Morons

From an e-mail I received this week:

Longtime lurker and drift compatible listener. Relative wrote a book and I want to get the word out.

Right. Here's the book, Ancora: The Fog Banshee's Curse by Miriam Pittman, and the plot goes something like this:

Kat Harper has not had a real adventure since she jumped off the roof of her house on her tenth birthday. But when Kat and her sisters, Lulabelle and Rosie, stumble into a magical land called Ancora, all kinds of adventures await them.

The Harpers quickly learn, however, that this new world holds many dangers. A demon monster, the Fog Banshee, is terrorizing one of Ancora’s eight provinces, while a dark sorcerer known as a Spellbinder watches from the shadows. What’s more, Kat and her sisters may be the only ones who can stop them.

...[T]he Harpers must rely on wits, courage, and a great deal of rule breaking to unmask the Spellbinder and free the province from the Fog Banshee’s lethal clutches.

Skimming through the Amazon sample text, it looks like this is a YA novel about the level of CS Lewis' Narnia books. So for you morons and 'ettes who are looking for books for younger readers, this one might be worth looking into. The Kindle edition is $4.99.

___________

I have been tasking with making you all aware of a new anthology, Tales Around the Supper Table: -An Anthology of Texas Writers by a variety of authors.

This collection is from ten different Texas authors. There was no 'world' or set up for the stories. It was up to the individual authors to write their stories, so you get a wide variety! Vampires, dragons, werewolves, enchanted swords, runaways, SciFi, and cowboys... Stories for everyone in this collection of Texas authors!

The Kindle edition is $4.99.

(h/t 'ette commenter "Not From Around Here", who is one of the Texas writers featured in this anthology.)

___________

Moron author Paul Clayton tells me that the time is ripe for his short (174 pp.) 2CW novel, Crossing Over:

Published in 2018, the book is proving to be somewhat prophetic on the macro level (contested election, two presidents claiming victory, street violence), and on the micro, the story of an ordinary American family, is intimate and riveting, in my biased opinion. Some of the readers of the first edition wanted a more conclusive ending so I did a revision, just published ten days or so ago, and added another last chapter, chapter X, about 24 pages. The ending is shocking, but realistic.

According to an Amazon review, the book "does not focus on the politics, but instead focuses on regular Americans who not long before led totally normal lives, and who are quickly turned into refugees as they try to escape the crime and violence taking over the country."

The Kindle edition is $2.99.

___________

So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, insults, threats, ugly pants pics and moron library submissions may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.

What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.

Posted by: OregonMuse at 09:00 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1
g'mornin, book-ish 'rons

Posted by: AltonJackson at November 22, 2020 09:01 AM (O4Sq8)

2 Nice Lieberry!

Those pants......my Gaydar busted a spring.

The Who Dis is I do not know but sure would. Very nice work on that there pencil.

Posted by: Hairyback Guy at November 22, 2020 09:04 AM (R/m4+)

3 I rather have defrontal lobotomy than debacle in front of me.

Posted by: f'd at November 22, 2020 09:04 AM (0D3xw)

4 booken morgen horden

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:04 AM (nUhF0)

5 Hello everyone! I just finished Antiquities by Francis W. Poretto, the novelist and proprietor of the blog Liberty's Torch. Antiquities is a charming, fast-paced novel which opens with a fading singer at a forgotten club in the middle of nowhere - central New York. A venture capitalist hears her sing, and yes, of course they wind up together. Though the next few days seem far-fetched, every step makes sense as it unfolds. Poretto brings in many well-known characters from his Onteora County series. If you've never read any of his work, this is a lovely introduction. It's a quick read -only 153 pages- and is only $2.99 on Kindle. Get this and then dive into his other works - I'm sure he's well-known to the morons here.

Posted by: CarolinaGirl at November 22, 2020 09:05 AM (Kh9rg)

6 Who dis : Bette Davis !

Posted by: runner at November 22, 2020 09:05 AM (zr5Kq)

7 Mornin', all,

I'm gonna take a WILD guess and say the Who Dis is Joan Crawford.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:05 AM (rpbg1)

8 Good Morning, fellow illiterate mouth breathers.

The first is Don't Give Money to People Who Hate You by Brian Niemeier, which gives advice on how to do what we should probably be doing, anyway:
_________

One word on that: Amazon.

They seem to be immune among most on the right, to the general "Boycott all the bastards" line. Well, the Hell with that. Both my wife and I closed our accounts years ago.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:05 AM (7X3UV)

9 Good morning all ... I confess right away that I cannot resist temptation. I broke my own rule about spending more for a Kindle book than a cup of coffee. I straight-up bought Kurt Schlicter's latest, "Crisis" last night, and am already a couple of chapters in.
The Daughter Unit was away all yesterday on a veteran-event hike through downtown San Antonio, so I wanged out another half-chapter of the WWII novel w-i-p. I'm up to mid-1944, and so only another couple of chapters to go, and wrap up the fate of several characters who have been in peril...

Posted by: Sgt. Mom at November 22, 2020 09:08 AM (xnmPy)

10 Cannot get into reading lately. My brain doesnt want to engage. I think it is my anti anxiety meds.

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 09:09 AM (JFO2v)

11 My local library is shutting down indoor access for 2 months starting Friday due to the scamdemic. We can still have curbside pickup for reserved tomes, and there is limited internet access allowed by reservation only.

Posted by: Fortcoins at November 22, 2020 09:09 AM (nV60k)

12 With that out of the way: I'm reading The End of October, a 2020 SF/thriller by one Lawrence Wright. It's the kind of story that reviews will call "eerily prophetic," as it deals with, guess what, a pandemic. This one is real, more like the 1918 flu.

Most modern thrillers focus too much on politics and maneuvering for power in Washington and other capitals for my taste. While this one has some of that, there are also stories of people devastated by this superflu or by loss it causes. I'm about 3/4 through and will report on the whole book later.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:10 AM (rpbg1)

13 I have some should be great books in my pile but can't seem to get started

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:10 AM (nUhF0)

14 1876, by Gore Vidal.

Posted by: occam's brassiere at November 22, 2020 09:10 AM (evxBY)

15 What I remember most fondly about crusty Jeane Kirkpatrick was her passionate affair with Bill the Cat, who called her his "Mujahideen Mama".

Posted by: All Hail President Eris, Iron Fist in Velvet Glove in Iron Gauntlet at November 22, 2020 09:11 AM (Dc2NZ)

16 11 My local library is shutting down indoor access for 2 months starting Friday due to the scamdemic. We can still have curbside pickup for reserved tomes, and there is limited internet access allowed by reservation only.
Posted by: Fortcoins at November 22, 2020 09:09 AM (nV60k)
---

Mine too. Drive-through only.

Posted by: All Hail President Eris, Iron Fist in Velvet Glove in Iron Gauntlet at November 22, 2020 09:12 AM (Dc2NZ)

17 One of the features of this virus is to shut down small businesses while the large corporations prosper or at least survive. Boycotting is easier when you have viable alternatives available or you can do without those products and services. It's getting more difficult to do that completely with each passing Chyna Virus edict.

Posted by: Fortcoins at November 22, 2020 09:13 AM (nV60k)

18 is that a doggie napping on the books

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:13 AM (nUhF0)

19 I finally decided to bail on a book that I haven't enjoyed since I started. I never do that. Once I start, I feel a moral obligation to finish. But Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe "Fer-De-Lance" was just awful. I could barely make myself pick it up. So I ditched it. My brain doesn't need exercise that badly.

Posted by: grammie winger at November 22, 2020 09:13 AM (gm3d+)

20 So I picked up about 8 Elmore Leonard paperbacks which I was hoping would last a little while. I'm burning through them rather quickly. Good, fun, read it and forget it escapism. I wonder if he has any books on election fraud...

Posted by: Bilwis Devourer of Innocent Souls, I'm starvin' over here at November 22, 2020 09:13 AM (Wm5SB)

21
Mine too. Drive-through only.
Posted by: All Hail President Eris, Iron Fist in Velvet Glove in Iron Gauntlet at November 22, 2020 09:12 AM (Dc2NZ)

I hear the book burnings under Biden will only be allowed by licensed firemen!

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 09:14 AM (JFO2v)

22 20 So I picked up about 8 Elmore Leonard paperbacks which I was hoping would last a little while. I'm burning through them rather quickly. Good, fun, read it and forget it escapism. I wonder if he has any books on election fraud...
Posted by: Bilwis Devourer of Innocent Souls, I'm starvin' over here at November 22, 2020 09:13 AM (Wm5SB)

Get Shorty was one his books. But that was not the name!

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 09:14 AM (JFO2v)

23 I hear the book burnings under Biden will only be allowed by licensed firemen!

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 09:14 AM

that gives me an idea...

Posted by: Zombie Ray Bradbury at November 22, 2020 09:15 AM (O4Sq8)

24
Yikes, that pants video is teh gheyest thing since-

Gaylord Pansyton-Von Gayenstein took the gay bus to Gaytown, which ran over a gay cat when the gay bus driver lost control while looking at a gay underwear ad in his Gay Playboy, and crashed into the gay gas station, which spray gay gasoline all over everyone and caught on gay fire, and everyone burned to gay death and subsequently went to Gay Heaven.

Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020 09:16 AM (dWwl8)

25 The library provided a Frank Miller bounty. First were the first two trade collections of his Daredevil run, most of which I own in single issues. However, I don't have the first two issues he wrote, including the first appearance of Elektra, which is expensive and hard to find.

I don't need to own a first printing; I just wanted to read the story. And now I have. One more off the book bucket list.

After that I have "Ronin," a collection of the miniseries that lured Miller away from Daredevil -- way too soon for my liking. Now I'll see whether this was worth it to fandom.

Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 09:16 AM (83ScS)

26 our local library hasn't allowed browsing since March
reserve books, pick them up
they've also let go of a lot of their part time staff I think, since PA cut off funding mid year

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:17 AM (nUhF0)

27 Morning! Is this early?

Posted by: Chi-Town Jerry at November 22, 2020 09:17 AM (CjFDo)

28 Narnia is now considered "YA"? Really. It's for kids, though of course the sort that you can still read as an adult. That was, after all, CSL's standard for whether a book was actually good. One I embrace (see my sig.)

And it seems it works. Back when I worked for a newspaper, I was talking to one of the saner writers. He was Jewish, and said that he loved them as a kid, but the Christian messages simply went over his head. Which is how it works. The Alice's are the most obvious case, but for any really good kids' book, there will be stuff you missed, even though at six you were clever as clever.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:17 AM (7X3UV)

29 Cannot get into reading lately. My brain doesnt want to engage. I think it is my anti anxiety meds.

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 09:09 AM (JFO2v)

Same here.

Posted by: grammie winger at November 22, 2020 09:17 AM (gm3d+)

30 Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe "Fer-De-Lance" was just awful. I could barely make myself pick it up. So I ditched it. My brain doesn't need exercise that badly.
Posted by: grammie winger at November 22, 2020

*
*

Grammie, it's not the best in the series by any means. Stout was still feeling his way into the mystery field and learning about his characters Wolfe and Archie. I know Wolfe talks too much in this one, and Archie seems too much like a dockworker who wears a suit and tie and can write well. Try some of the novels from the early to mid-1950s.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:19 AM (rpbg1)

31 I have over 100 books on my audible wish list. Today I bought another sci-fi anthology.

Posted by: BourbonChicken at November 22, 2020 09:19 AM (LxTcq)

32 Those pants......my Gaydar busted a spring.

The "guys" are each thinking "my parents must be so proud".
I read Samurai Revolution, by the delightfully named Romulus Hillsborough. It's a history of the Meiji Restoration, in which the Shogun (a warlord who ruled Japan) was brought down, and the Emperor was restored as the supreme power. It's meticulously told through the writings and memoirs of the men who fought it. It may be more information than most are looking for, but it's still very interesting. The main impetus for the revolution was that the more prescient among the elites knew that Japan couldn't maintain it's isolation, because to do so guaranteed economic backwardness, and eventual takeover by the West, as had already happened to varying degrees in India, China, and other smaller countries. However, the diehards wanted to maintain the status quo, mostly because it made them rich and powerful, and they got all the best women.

A couple of observations:
1) The Japanese are thought to be a very disciplined people, which they usually are, but it's astonishing how often they go off the reservation and try to make things go their way by slaughtering each other. This was the case in the WWII era as well.

2) The events in 1) usually end in seppuku. They almost seemed to look forward to it.
3) The Restoration was the beginning of the overboard Emperor worship that ultimately led to WWII.
4) As seems to happen more and more frequently in my history reading, I find uncanny parallels to our current situation.
The book is long, and probably isn't for everyone, but it's a real gem if you're interested in this era.

Posted by: pep at November 22, 2020 09:20 AM (v16oJ)

33 Rereading the Crawford of Lymond series by Dorothy Dunnett.

The (multi-volume) story is a wonder. I discover new, hidden facets of the story every time I reread the series. Latin quotes, French quotes, obscure literary references that I can only occasionally identify, it is all in there.

Posted by: squeakywheel at November 22, 2020 09:22 AM (WrOrt)

34 Same here.
Posted by: grammie winger

thirded
I've been drowning my anxiety in brain candy kdramas

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:22 AM (nUhF0)

35 Is that Mary Astor?

Posted by: Lady in Black at November 22, 2020 09:22 AM (O+I8R)

36 So I picked up about 8 Elmore Leonard paperbacks which I was hoping would last a little while. I'm burning through them rather quickly. Good, fun, read it and forget it escapism. I wonder if he has any books on election fraud...
Posted by: Bilwis Devourer of Innocent Souls, I'm starvin' over here at November 22, 2020

*
*

His Westerns -- Hombre, Forty Lashes Less One, Last Stand at Saber River, and Valdez Is Coming, for example -- are superb reads. The Western and the hard-boiled crime story are very closely allied, and you see it in his novels if you try a few of his Westerns and then compare his crime novels like Mr. Majestyk and Fifty-Two Pick-Up.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:23 AM (rpbg1)

37 Cannot get into reading lately. My brain doesnt want to engage. I think it is my anti anxiety meds.

--

I'm not on anti-anxiety meds, but I've been very unsettled mentally and haven't read a book in about 3 weeks. I don't even have the desire to pick one up at the moment. Just too on edge, anxious, angry...

Posted by: Lady in Black at November 22, 2020 09:24 AM (O+I8R)

38 For some reason I can't access last Sunday's Book thread, so this is from memory. When I came back to read the rest from after I left, someone criticized Bill James's Man on the Train, for one thing, as the writing was disjoined, IIRC.

I haven't read it - the only book of his I haven', I think - but my wife has, and she agrees.

Well, that got me thinking. The Mrs thought it might be because it was a joint effort with his daughter. But I think it may be something else. James doesn't normally do sustained narrative. It's not his style at all. Even in his actual books (as opposed to the Abstracts, Gold Mines, and Baseball Books) he is always writing small sections.

The closest thing to an exception I can think of is in his Hall of Fame book. In that, if you wished, you could just read the Institutional History sections without the rest. That would sort of fit, though not book-length.

But his usual style is fairly short essays on various subjects, often written to fit a format he's come up with for the topic, like the "managers' boxes."

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:25 AM (7X3UV)

39 Kurt Schlichter's fifth Kelly Turnbull book is out.

Can't wait.

Posted by: Mr. Trashbag, Shoggoth and Eater Of Toes at November 22, 2020 09:25 AM (fBtlL)

40 I'm watching and listening to Khatia Buniatishvili perform Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 on YouTube (on my TV -- wow!). Not only great music for a Sunday morning, but Miss Khatia is a goddess.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:25 AM (rpbg1)

41 Have to admit, my household supports Amazon. I'm the only conservative in it.

I figure that as long as we're paying for it, I might as well use it, so I'm watching old TV shows on Amazon Prime. Same for Netflix and Hulu.

Yes, I'm weak; it's in the name.

I still resist buying gifts through Amazon -- but that's where my wife has her Christmas list. *whimper*

Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 09:26 AM (83ScS)

42 Duncanthrax's "Share a foxhole" (SAF) rating for any of the participants in the 'pants' video = 0.

Posted by: Duncanthrax at November 22, 2020 09:26 AM (DMUuz)

43 18 is that a doggie napping on the books

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:13 AM (nUhF0)

Cat.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 09:27 AM (lkGaW)

44 I discovered a marvellous author - Norman Collins, an Englishman who not only wrote novels beginning in the 1930s and continuing to the 70s, but also worked for the BBC and went on to help establish the rival network, ITV. He was very popular in his day, and is now nearly forgotten, but unjustly so.

He most popular book was 'London Belongs to Me', and I discovered it because I watched the movie made of it in 1948, starring David Attenborough and Alastair Sim. You can see the whole thing on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DDUWWLsOpQ

If you like the movie, the book is even better. It's the story about a diverse group of lower middle class people in a rooming house in south London a year before WWII breaks out. Collins has a Dickensian way of writing these people withe real affection. There's Percy, a young garage mechanic who's not a bad guy, but you can see he's already on the wrong path, getting mixed up in shady stuff. The landlady is into spiritualism and takes in a new lodger, Mr. Squales, who's a fake medium who sees her as his meal ticket. (Alastair Sim plays Squales and is a hoot in the role.) The heart of the group is the Josser family, Mr. Josser who's just retired from a lifetime as bookkeeper to a financial house, his irritable wife, and their daughter Doris, who wants to strike out on her own.

The book is part comedy, part drama, and really enjoyable. I'm sorry I read it so fast, and am just waiting for some time to go by before I read it again. Meanwhile, I've ordered another Collins book from AbeBooks, and hope it's as good as this one.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 09:27 AM (NPokB)

45 Finished a section in Landscape and Memory devoted to mountains, particularly the Alps, and how Euro attitudes shifted from them being pain in the ass obstacles to be worked around, to romantic summits that begged to be climbed, to early enviros freaking out that they were becoming granite amusement parks. One of the bigger nuts was John Ruskin; while he accurately saw that the jagged peaks were really more rounded and curved because of what glaciers did he then lost his shit by thinking of them as living entities. He'd probably be leading the Greenpeace asylum today.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 09:27 AM (y7DUB)

46 6 Who dis : Bette Davis !
Posted by: runner at November 22, 2020 09:05 AM (zr5Kq)

No.

35 Is that Mary Astor?

Posted by: Lady in Black at November 22, 2020 09:22 AM (O+I8R)

No, sorry, not Ms. Astor.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 09:28 AM (lkGaW)

47 is that a doggie napping on the books

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:13 AM (nUhF0)

Cat.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020

*
*

One of them darn tortoiseshells. If there's one coat pattern among cats that I dislike, it's tortie. The cats look like black cats that got spattered with tan paint . . . or they look like they're wearing camo and spying on us.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:29 AM (rpbg1)

48
Posted by: Donna&&&&&V at November 15, 2020 10:23 AM (HabA/)

-----------

Have we heard from her this week? I saw on the Prayer List that she was very deeply depressed. I'm concerned for her.

Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at November 22, 2020 09:29 AM (mht8P)

49 Good morning - I too have been struggling with reading. So, I've gone back to the basics - dug my my ancient copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

When I can I just crack it open to wherever it falls read a few pages. I've seen it all before but still there is something new in there for me.

And God knows I need it.

Posted by: Tonypete at November 22, 2020 09:30 AM (Rvt88)

50 Good morning. Post card pretty snow going on here in NW WI. I just finished Ian Toll's Pacific war trilogy. Absolutely magnificent, and a surprise since I would have believed everything had already been written about that. I have you folks to thank for the recommendation. Yay book thread!

Posted by: Muad'dib at November 22, 2020 09:30 AM (mPPdp)

51 You don't know me.
I have never commented here but I totally love your blog/website and share many interests in common with all of your wonderful regulars.
Speaking of which, my cousin's wife's college roommate wrote and self-published a book, I think you would be very happy to buy it because it totally resonates with everything you typically discuss in the lively comments here at your blog/website. It's about a magical land and a guy who has to deal with an ogre and stuff. Thank you for buying my cousin's wife's college roommate's book. I will now return to never commenting or interacting with the wonderful regulars at this amazing blog/website.

P.S. Am I doing this right?

Posted by: Guy whose cousin's wife's roommate wrote a book at November 22, 2020 09:31 AM (m45I2)

52 Have we heard from her this week? I saw on the Prayer List that she was very deeply depressed. I'm concerned for her.

Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at November 22, 2020 09:29 AM (mht8P)

To whom are your referring, Hadrian? The reference to Donna's comment is in the wayback machine.

Posted by: grammie winger at November 22, 2020 09:31 AM (gm3d+)

53 Zombie Ray Bradbury

I've been reading through some of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents -" short story collections and came across an excellent Ray Bradbury story that was not science fiction

It's titled "The Whole Town's Sleeping",

and concerns three youngish spinsters going to a late movie showing in a town, where there's been rumors of a serial strangler called "The Lonely One".

Bradbury describes everything so well and the people are so well observed that it's easy for the story to play like a movie or actually an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" in your head.

The plot builds casually but methodically until it's time for terror and boy, does it deliver.

Very nicely done. Check it out.

Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020 09:31 AM (dWwl8)

54 I've been reading books instead of blogs, except this one. I really have been trying to disengage from the news. Reading Larry Correia's Target Rich Environment.
I also dropped NextDoor.

Posted by: lin-duh at November 22, 2020 09:32 AM (UUBmN)

55 Hello Horde-lings!

Posted by: Brave Sir Robin Super Spreader of Bullshit at November 22, 2020 09:34 AM (7Fj9P)

56 This week I read Love Warrior. I actually got through most of it in one sleepless night although I had no experiences growing up with which to relate to the author save a "good family."

IMO, It's a testament to the writing ability of Glennon Doyle Melton that she could so captivate a reader from the get-go about her experience of bulimia, alcoholism, abortion and marital betrayal when said reader would be uninterested (to put it mildly) in a depressing story like that. The author was also brought up in church and remains a Christian throughout the whole debacle (DYSWIDT).

It gets libtarded about the last 25 pages or so, but the writing was so outstanding that I let it go, which I rarely do. YMMV

Posted by: SandyCheeks at November 22, 2020 09:34 AM (u1+n/)

57 Started reading Nabokov's autobiography, Speak, Memory, which he'd worked on for a while when first living in the US and finished when he was teaching at Cornell. Suffice it to say it's better written than anything Gaylord had Bill Ayers scribble and far more interesting.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 09:36 AM (y7DUB)

58 22 20 So I picked up about 8 Elmore Leonard paperbacks which I was hoping would last a little while. I'm burning through them rather quickly. Good, fun, read it and forget it escapism. I wonder if he has any books on election fraud...
Posted by: Bilwis Devourer of Innocent Souls, I'm starvin' over here at November 22, 2020 09:13 AM (Wm5SB)

Get Shorty was one his books. But that was not the name!
Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 09:14 AM (JFO2v)

Get Shorty and Be Cool are 2 of the books I got and are titled that way. I'm not sure if these books were printed before or after the Travolta movies or if the titles were altered.

Posted by: Bilwis Devourer of Innocent Souls, I'm starvin' over here at November 22, 2020 09:36 AM (Wm5SB)

59 P.S. Am I doing this right?
Posted by: Guy whose cousin's wife's roommate wrote a book
----
No. You didn't blow the margins by insert a link...

Posted by: lin-duh at November 22, 2020 09:37 AM (UUBmN)

60 48
Posted by: Donna&&&&&V at November 15, 2020 10:23 AM (HabA/)

-----------

Have we heard from her this week? I saw on the Prayer List that she was very deeply depressed. I'm concerned for her.
Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at November 22, 2020 09:29 AM (mht8P)

She was on the Movie Thread last night.

Posted by: Bete at November 22, 2020 09:37 AM (Ojki1)

61 I continue with the unpacking, which is not close to half done. But I made a YUGE advance this week, in that I've cleared a lot of space for shelves. Really, in one day, when I had help, got further than in over a month. So that looks good.

While looking for some Bill James, I didn't find much. But I did pick up, and have been rereading Stan Musial's auto (Bob Broeg.) Now, one of James's rules is that nice happy guys make for dull autobiographies. I've found that true. (Durocher's is excellent.)

But IMO Musial's is the best of the "good guy" ones. For one thing, the mandatory chapter on other players is far the largest I've seen. It's a bunch of comments by Musial of very many contemporaries. Some are conventional enough, but many have comments that shed light on things I'd never seen elsewhere.

He really admires Warren Spahn, BTW. It occurred to me that they may have the most matchups in NL history. Them or Wagner/Mathewson. The AL - and therefore all-time - most common matchup has to be Cobb against Johnson. (Lajoie/Young might be pretty high. They jumped to the AL in the same year.)

Interestingly, the superstars of my childhood aren't in the running there. There was not a single pitcher of the Aaron generation who lasted that long. And after that, you start getting into such increased mobility that it's not really possible. I know that superstars switching leagues in their prime was so rare, it was a big story when Frank Robinson was traded from Cincinnati to Baltimore, in my teens.

I have given up on today's game. But I still read the history.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:37 AM (7X3UV)

62 My local library is shutting down indoor access for 2 months starting Friday due to the scamdemic.�

-
There are a lot of dangerous ideas in a library.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks at November 22, 2020 09:39 AM (+y/Ru)

63 I've been reading through some of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents -"
short story collections and came across an excellent Ray Bradbury story that was not science fiction

It's titled "The Whole Town's Sleeping",

I think I've read that! Does it end with one of the ladies having to go the last part of the way home by herself, filled with terror, and arriving home at last, telling herself that there was nothing to fear after all, only to discover... Bradbury did write a number of horror stories, not exclusively sci-fi. There's one called 'The Playground' where a man feels so sorry for his young son having to go through the pain of growing up as a sensitive child that he agrees to change places with him, and realizes that life as a child is sheer horror, and he's going to have to do it all over again.

Then there was one about a family of vampires, with one child who's 'different' - he's normal, and can't participate in their festivities. Blood makes him sick, he can't fly, he isn't immortal, and he's miserable, but his mom tells him she loves him just the same. The story ends with all the family going to sleep as dawn breaks, and he's alone, crying.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 09:40 AM (NPokB)

64

Is an English Tooter anything like English Tudor?

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 09:41 AM (f95ay)

65 One word on that: Amazon.

They seem to be immune among most on the right, to the general
"Boycott all the bastards" line. Well, the Hell with that. Both my wife
and I closed our accounts years ago.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:05 AM (7X3UV)

---
It's hard to boycott monopolies. If I want to self-publish, they're it.

I find my local (municipally-owned, Democrat run) utility to be a obnoxious in the extreme, but I do need electric power from somewhere and thanks to the way Michigan is set up, I can't be switched.

And yes, a lot of customers asked to do that after a badly-fumbled ice storm. I got to personally yell at the CEO at a town hall, but guess what? Nothing really changed.

Bringing this to books, this is what Sohrab Ahmari was talking about regarding "David Frenchism," and how Libertarians refuse to use government power to restrain monopolistic tactics. It's self-defeating.

I'm pleased to see so many on the right waking up to this, but it may be too little, too late.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:41 AM (cfSRQ)

66 I've been reading through some of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents -" short story collections and came across an excellent Ray Bradbury story that was not science fiction

It's titled "The Whole Town's Sleeping",

and concerns three youngish spinsters going to a late movie showing in a town, where there's been rumors of a serial strangler called "The Lonely One".

Bradbury describes everything so well and the people are so well observed that it's easy for the story to play like a movie or actually an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" in your head.

The plot builds casually but methodically until it's time for terror and boy, does it deliver.

Very nicely done. Check it out.
Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020

*
*

I have that collection, NF. My favorite, and one of the creepiest short stories ever, is John B.L. Goodwin's "The Cocoon." I first read it at age 11, and it gave me the shivers . . . and I'm not sure I understand it completely to this day, but I love it.

Bradbury started off writing horror stories, I believe. His "The October Country" is like the one you mention. It's in one of the other AH collections -- 13 More Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV, I think.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:41 AM (rpbg1)

67 Willowed from the EMT

If anyone has a spare prayer in their back pocket, my brother in law Carter is in the ICU after a heart valve replacement and isn't doing well.

As of 10 pm last night he is not breathing on his own and can't move his arms or legs, possibly from a small stroke.

Thank you. God Bless The Horde.

Birk

Posted by: Birkenstock Cowboy at November 22, 2020 09:42 AM (WG2XP)

68 Good Sunday morning, horde!

"Don't Give Money to People Who Hate You"

Yeah...in a drunken, post-election tantrum, my spouse cancelled everything he had with amazon. I have mixed feelings about this. I know they hate us, but I also rely frequently on amazon for products that are hard to get in my area. My amazon account is tied to his prime.

I am struggling with the dilemma of getting prime myself, or standing with him and finding other sources for the things I need and want. And what sources would be friendly to us?

Sigh.

Posted by: April at November 22, 2020 09:42 AM (OX9vb)

69 57
Started reading Nabokov's autobiography, Speak, Memory, which
he'd worked on for a while when first living in the US and finished when
he was teaching at Cornell. Suffice it to say it's better written than
anything Gaylord had Bill Ayers scribble and far more interesting.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 09:36 AM (y7DUB)

---
I need to read more of his work. My father is a huge fan and it would give us something to talk about. I borrowed a copy of Lolita from him and it was a hoot - not at all what I was expecting based on popular culture.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:43 AM (cfSRQ)

70 40 I'm watching and listening to Khatia Buniatishvili perform Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 on YouTube (on my TV -- wow!). Not only great music for a Sunday morning, but Miss Khatia is a goddess.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:25 AM (rpbg1)

Great recommendation. She's both lovely and talented.

For classical eye candy I turn to Lola and Hauser. I don't know how great they are musically but they certainly are eye candy for both 'rons and 'ettes.

Posted by: Northernlurker, still lurking after all these years at November 22, 2020 09:43 AM (lgiXo)

71 His Westerns -- Hombre, Forty Lashes Less One, Last Stand at Saber River, and Valdez Is Coming, for example -- are superb reads. The Western and the hard-boiled crime story are very closely allied, and you see it in his novels if you try a few of his Westerns and then compare his crime novels like Mr. Majestyk and Fifty-Two Pick-Up.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:23 AM (rpbg1)

I have a handful of Elmore Leonard books under my belt but none of the Westerns. It's not a genre I generally go for. However, I will put those in the green light column for my future purchases and give them a chance based on what you said.

I read True Grit many years ago because it was there and I had read everything else on the shelf at home, but that's about the extent of my Western dabblings as a reader.

Posted by: Bilwis Devourer of Innocent Souls, I'm starvin' over here at November 22, 2020 09:44 AM (Wm5SB)

72 10 Cannot get into reading lately. My brain doesnt want to engage. I think it is my anti anxiety meds.
Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 09:09 AM (JFO2v)

Same here, but I'm not on a-i meds. I think it's my anxiety.

Posted by: April at November 22, 2020 09:44 AM (OX9vb)

73 (AP) - Election officials in Wisconsin's largest county accused
observers for President Donald Trump on Saturday of seeking to obstruct a
recount of the presidential results, in some instances by objecting to
every ballot tabulators pulled to count.

A steady stream of Republican complaints in Milwaukee was putting the
recount far behind schedule, county clerk George Christenson said. He
said many Trump observers were breaking rules by constantly interrupting
vote counters with questions and comments.

How dare they!!!!! Who do they think they are to interrupt the cheating?

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 09:45 AM (f95ay)

74 19 I finally decided to bail on a book that I haven't enjoyed since I started. I never do that. Once I start, I feel a moral obligation to finish. But Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe "Fer-De-Lance" was just awful. I could barely make myself pick it up. So I ditched it. My brain doesn't need exercise that badly.
Posted by: grammie winger at November 22, 2020 09:13 AM (gm3d+)
_________

I liked it, but there is no doubt that Stout hadn't quite hit his stride with that one.

In general, I am firmly of the opinion that the "obligation to finish" is just a mistake. Why go on if you are neither enjoying or learning something (itself a kind of enjoyment)?

I have a friend who is compulsive, not only in that, but in reading straight through. He is convinced that is necessary because the author compiled it in that order for a reason. (He is a classical music freak, which I think affects that.)

But of course, it's unlikely that most authors - and he includes non-fiction - are even trying, and that those who are, are doing so particularly well. Add in the low likelihood that you'd get much on a first reading, and I am massively skeptical.

I certainly know that many historians are strong on some features, and weak on others. So I'll stick to what they are good at.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:45 AM (7X3UV)

75 I think "Get Shorty" was the original title. If you know otherwise, commenter, please give the title. Why hoard it?

The book is enjoyable, and the movie was one of those I would gladly ride through no matter at what point I would come across it. This was in the cable days. With streaming, I no longer have surprises in the schedule.

I can't say the same for the second Chili Palmer book -- and I guess Leonard thought so, too, because as far as I know, he never revisited the character.

Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 09:45 AM (83ScS)

76 I've basically limited my movie viewing to Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson movies and they're getting iffy too.

Posted by: Mr Meeseeks, Look at me at November 22, 2020 09:46 AM (2DOZq)

77 English Tooter ate Mexican Beandip first?

Posted by: cccp3o at November 22, 2020 09:46 AM (TQ2jO)

78 oh the napping cat's paw next to hius fave made it look like a doggie
man my vision

went to the eye dr for my annual recently
he told me I've been using my right eye for distance and my left eye for reading which apparently is known as monovision

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:46 AM (nUhF0)

79 Back in August, I bought a copy of "Golden Isis" because it had been written by one of the denizens here and I wanted to support her. I finally got around to reading it. It's a novella set in the 1930's. It has some fantastic elements in it, but it's your basic noir story with murder and mayhem set in pre-WW2 New York City.

Recommended.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 09:46 AM (qDSku)

80 24
everyone burned to gay death and subsequently went to Gay Heaven.

Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020 09:16 AM (dWwl

______

That's the place the rest of us call "Hell", right?

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:47 AM (7X3UV)

81 One of them darn tortoiseshells. If there's one
coat pattern among cats that I dislike, it's tortie. The cats look like
black cats that got spattered with tan paint . . . or they look like
they're wearing camo and spying on us.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:29 AM (rpbg1)

A black cat you can see at night in the yard, but a tortie like that is completely invisible, and if you see it, she blends right into whatever as a shapeless lump.

I adore torties.

Am re-reading Clocks and Culture by Carlo Cipolla, it is matching nicely with Culture of Change by Joel Mokyr which I am also working through. Cipolla is pointing out what is happening, Mokyr is trying to get grips on why it was happening.

there are so many things I can't do right now because of the things gnawing on me. At least I can read books on culture and modernity.

Posted by: Kindltot at November 22, 2020 09:47 AM (WyVLE)

82 New Centuty Pratinum Market. Love Thai-Engrish.

Posted by: Banned at November 22, 2020 09:47 AM (RZS4L)

83 The Tudor tutor is a tooter.

Posted by: Mr Aspirin Factory at November 22, 2020 09:47 AM (BZ9bN)

84 For some reason I can't access last Sunday's Book thread, so this is from memory. When I came back to read the rest from after I left, someone criticized Bill James's Man on the Train, for one thing, as the writing was disjoined, IIRC.

I haven't read it - the only book of his I haven', I think - but my wife has, and she agrees.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:25 AM (7X3UV)

'Twas I...finished it last night. He may have just needed a better editor. I saw Spieberg's Munich last week and am starting on the source book Vengance by George Jonas.

Posted by: BignJames at November 22, 2020 09:48 AM (AwYPR)

85 This week I dove deeper into Conrad's Lord Jim. I read it 20+ years ago and wanted to see how it aged.

It's kind of a mixed bag. Conrad is very much like Ford - he has great moments but seems fixated on endless internal deliberations. It really bogs down the narrative.

My copy is heavily annotated. I think I picked it up at one of the student book stores. I've gotten a number of books that way - seeing what's required reading and buying what looks interesting. This one looks like it - very academic-oriented.

I saw some selections in the notes from Conrad's Eastern World, which takes a look at the Far East when he was a sailor and the source material for his writings. It's out of print, but the copy I found is in good condition.

I find that kind of thing fascinating, so that's next on my list after I finish Lord Jim.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:48 AM (cfSRQ)

86 Also, that Engrish Tooter in in Austin, Tx by the area code....

I saw that pants link...it took my brain a minute to figure out what I was seeing. Gender bending indeed! From the waist down I was seeing female but then realized, no breast...

Posted by: lin-duh at November 22, 2020 09:48 AM (UUBmN)

87 Tortie cats. Almost always females with tortitude. I have two specimens at home, and though loving to humans, they do have an attitude towards other felines.

Posted by: FloridachickTrump WON at November 22, 2020 09:48 AM (w1Pq2)

88 heh...FaceBook changed JoeyB from "President Elect" to "Politician". I don't know the details, but apparently a lower court ruling in PA got turned aside, and some ballots are being thrown out.
Hope?

Posted by: Brave Sir Robin Super Spreader of Bullshit at November 22, 2020 09:49 AM (7Fj9P)

89 I know that superstars switching leagues in their prime was so rare, it was a big story when Frank Robinson was traded from Cincinnati to Baltimore, in my teens.

I was a teen in Maryland when that happened and it completely transformed the Os, who'd always been pitching rich from their farm system but were oddly unable to develop lethal hitters. Frank Robby brought a whole new attitude to the dugout and they just started mashing other teams right out of the gate. It was so major that Father Hate and I, Washington Senators fans, jumped on the Oriole bandwagon without a hint of shame.

After they won the AL, all the "experts" who jerked off to Sandy Koufax predicted an easy Dodger win. It was the first time I was sure the experts didn't know dick which was confirmed by a sweep.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 09:49 AM (y7DUB)

90 Who dis? Lana Turner. Ted's wife.

Posted by: Biden's dog at November 22, 2020 09:49 AM (vpgHG)

91 Prayers for Carter Birk.

Posted by: Tonypete at November 22, 2020 09:49 AM (Rvt88)

92 76
I've basically limited my movie viewing to Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson movies and they're getting iffy too.

Posted by: Mr Meeseeks, Look at me at November 22, 2020 09:46 AM (2DOZq)

---
A few weeks back a friend got me into Tom Selleck's Jesse Stone movies. They're quite good. Addictive, even.

Now I'm going through Selleck's other stuff. Mostly made for TV, but good stories.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:50 AM (cfSRQ)

93 I have a handful of Elmore Leonard books under my belt but none of the Westerns. It's not a genre I generally go for. However, I will put those in the green light column for my future purchases and give them a chance based on what you said.

I read True Grit many years ago because it was there and I had read everything else on the shelf at home, but that's about the extent of my Western dabblings as a reader.
Posted by: Bilwis Devourer of Innocent Souls, I'm starvin' over here at November 22, 2020

8
*

True Grit is in another category entirely from Leonard: not really "hard-boiled" at all. I love it too and have a copy on my shelves. But Leonard's Hombre, which became the film with Paul Newman, and Valdez, also a movie with Burt Lancaster, are tougher and yet focus on heroes.

Another crime writer, Loren D. Estelman of Michigan, has a series of first-person Westerns about a deputy marshal who gets sent on law-enforcement by an irascible judge all over the 1880s West, and in one novel (White Desert) up into Canada. That one is my favorite of his, but there are more in that series.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:51 AM (rpbg1)

94 Birkenstock, prayers for your brother's healing

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:51 AM (nUhF0)

95
Who Dis:

A 16 year old Lana Turner in the movie They Won't Forget - 1937

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 09:51 AM (f95ay)

96 I still have the hard cover Steven Pressfield book , 36 Righteous Men that I haven't cracked the cover since someone told me it embraces man made climate change in its story. The summary doesn't mention it. Anyone else familiar with the book?

Posted by: Mr Meeseeks, Look at me at November 22, 2020 09:51 AM (2DOZq)

97 Started reading Nabokov's autobiography, Speak, Memory, which
he'd worked on for a while when first living in the US and finished when
he was teaching at Cornell. Suffice it to say it's better written than
anything Gaylord had Bill Ayers scribble and far more interesting.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 09:36 AM (y7DUB)

---
I need to read more of his work. My father is a huge fan and it would give us something to talk about. I borrowed a copy of Lolita from him and it was a hoot - not at all what I was expecting based on popular culture.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:43 AM (cfSRQ)
I've read Lolita and Pale Fire. The latter is less well known but I like it more. Pale Fire is a poem written within the novel. The book is funny and a little disturbing as the poet descends into obsession and insanity.

Posted by: Northernlurker, still lurking after all these years at November 22, 2020 09:51 AM (lgiXo)

98 32
Posted by: pep at November 22, 2020 09:20 AM (v16oJ)
_________

Sounds interesting. One thing which seems implicit is one of the very few "lessons of history" I actually believe in. There is no such thing as a "Restoration". What follows will always be very different than the thing it seeks to restore. And that is true even if those doing it are sincerely trying to achieve that end.

The relevance of that to today should be obvious.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:51 AM (7X3UV)

99 A few weeks back a friend got me into Tom Selleck's Jesse Stone movies. They're quite good. Addictive, even.

Now I'm going through Selleck's other stuff. Mostly made for TV, but good stories.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020

*
*

Robert B. Parker (the creator of "Spenser") wrote Jesse as a 30-year-old ex-cop and ex-baseball player to start, though he ages during the books. But Selleck's portrayal of Jesse as a middle-aged man is exactly on the money for the character somehow -- in some of the films I believe he narrates in a voice-over (though the books are 3rd person), and his voice is perfect. Parker was alive then; I wonder if he saw the adaptations, and if he liked them.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:53 AM (rpbg1)

100 Those pants -- why would someone put that odd patchwork long underwear on those poor spastic gentlemen and parade them? Cruel in so many ways.

The WhoDis gal is marking changes to Feminize the book she's reading. Wait 'til she tries to make an erasure after having that end in her mouth!

Posted by: mindful webworker
When is a book not a book?
at November 22, 2020 09:53 AM (NJ+n1)

101 Also, I would point out that the distinction between Authoritarian and Totalitarian regimes was first made by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her classic essay Dictatorships and Double-Standards which was published in Commentary back in 1979.

***********

OM-

Your mention of this prompted me to dig up my copy of Hannah Arendt's Totalitarianism (1951), which was assigned reading when I was a plebe at West Point. I think a re-read might be in order. The closing chapter discusses how totalitarianism relies on instilling loneliness and isolation on men to create a dependency on the totalitarian philosophy. Might have relevance in the world of lockdowns, banning church services, cancellation of family holiday gatherings and mandatory face masks.

Posted by: Guy whose cousin's wife's roommate wrote a book at November 22, 2020 09:53 AM (m45I2)

102 Good Morning, fellow illiterate mouth breathers.

The first is Don't Give Money to People Who Hate You by Brian Niemeier, which gives advice on how to do what we should probably be doing, anyway:
_________

One word on that: Amazon.

They seem to be immune among most on the right, to the general "Boycott all the bastards" line. Well, the Hell with that. Both my wife and I closed our accounts years ago.
Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:05 AM

The difference is that Amazon doesn't want to demoralize anyone, they just want to sell some stuff.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 09:54 AM (qDSku)

103 I've read Lolita and Pale Fire. The latter is less
well known but I like it more. Pale Fire is a poem written within the
novel. The book is funny and a little disturbing as the poet descends
into obsession and insanity.

Posted by: Northernlurker, still lurking after all these years at November 22, 2020 09:51 AM (lgiXo)

---
My father's Nabakov collection could give Captain Hate's a run for his money.

He's getting on in years, and his policy now is I can borrow his books freely and not worry about returning them since I'm the Heir Apparent anyway.

Of course with COVID, he's completely shut in. Thanksgiving Dinner will be via facetime this year. I started to argue with him, but there was no point.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:54 AM (cfSRQ)

104 nothing to see here move along sailor

The report found that yes, he was a jihadi, but also there was a toxic microclimate at Naval Air Station Pensacola due to the unprofessional behavior of one of Alshamranis instructors.

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 09:54 AM (JFO2v)

105 33 Rereading the Crawford of Lymond series by Dorothy Dunnett.

The (multi-volume) story is a wonder. I discover new, hidden facets of the story every time I reread the series. Latin quotes, French quotes, obscure literary references that I can only occasionally identify, it is all in there.
Posted by: squeakywheel at November 22, 2020 09:22 AM (WrOrt)
________

Looked her up, and I see she's dead. So I might give it a whirl. One of my fundamental rules: no fiction by living authors. Patrick O'Brian and Michael Gilbert were the last.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:54 AM (7X3UV)

106 Cripes. Lose the bleg sock!!

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 09:54 AM (m45I2)

107 But Selleck's portrayal of Jesse as a middle-aged man is exactly on the money for the character somehow -- in some of the films I believe he narrates in a voice-over (though the books are 3rd person), and his voice is perfect. . . .

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020

*
*

I correct myself. There is no VO narration in the Stone TV movies with Selleck. It's merely that the teleplays use dialog direct from the novels, and Selleck embodies Jesse perfectly.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:55 AM (rpbg1)

108 The difference is that Amazon doesn't want to demoralize anyone, they just want to sell some stuff.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 09:54 AM (qDSku)

Amazon funds the Bezo's Post. And hasn't Amazon pulled books that had wrongthink in them?

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 09:56 AM (f95ay)

109 ManhattanBeach by Jennifer Egan. Amazingly written novel about a girl born in NY during the depression and taking her up to WW2 when she becomes a diver. Her family is mixed up in the Irish and Italian mob. I cant do justice to the plot; , it is unusual ibut compelling and detailed in a good way. after the first few chapters, I was hooked.

Posted by: President-elect LASue at November 22, 2020 09:56 AM (wc6R6)

110 Amazon's book publishing should be spun off from Amazon the online seller

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:57 AM (nUhF0)

111 Robert B. Parker (the creator of "Spenser") wrote
Jesse as a 30-year-old ex-cop and ex-baseball player to start, though he
ages during the books. But Selleck's portrayal of Jesse as a
middle-aged man is exactly on the money for the character somehow -- in
some of the films I believe he narrates in a voice-over (though the
books are 3rd person), and his voice is perfect. Parker was alive then;
I wonder if he saw the adaptations, and if he liked them.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:53 AM (rpbg1)

---
My friend got the movies because he liked the books. He says the movies are in fact better. After Parker died, Selleck continued the series using original scripts and they are excellent.

Highly recommend. They are only 90 minutes so a great way to escape from the world and suitable for week-night viewing.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:57 AM (cfSRQ)

112 Bezos uses WaPo to buy indulgences for Amazon's horrific labor practices. The ones you never hear about.

Posted by: Ignoramus at November 22, 2020 09:58 AM (9TdxA)

113 In a rare show of foresight, I downloaded an audio book for my 600 mile round trip drive yesterday. It was "With the Old Breed" by E.B. Sledge. If you've seen the HBO series "The Pacific," then you're familiar with the material (I have seen snippets, but not the whole thing). I have trouble focusing on audio books - especially while driving - but this one kept my attention. Recommended for a read or listen, depending on your preferences. I assume most Morons know that war is terrible, but some of Sledge's stories are stomach-turning. Just a word of caution for the more sensitive Hordelings.

Posted by: PabloD isn't in a reconciliatory mood at November 22, 2020 09:59 AM (5Iv9v)

114 onnmy to read pile is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (authoenof Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

csn't evn open it yet
paralyzed by current events

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:59 AM (nUhF0)

115 I'm here.

Good morning.
It is the horde's fault that I haven't read more this week. If I go on the ONT, I don't get much reading done.

I did finally get a copy of the Landrigan book Crossings that someone here had recommended a while back. I have just barely started it but there are two different ways to read the book. I have just come to the first inflection point. If you have read the book, can you give me some advice on the best way to proceed.
The writing is so interesting. Just finished a scene where the main character goes off on the guests at a dinner party with some of the best insults I have ever read. Truly marvelous. So, excited to get more into the book.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at November 22, 2020 10:00 AM (sd8p8)

116 My friend got the movies because he liked the books. He says the movies are in fact better. After Parker died, Selleck continued the series using original scripts and they are excellent.

Highly recommend. They are only 90 minutes so a great way to escape from the world and suitable for week-night viewing.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020

*
*

In the adapted ones, you can go back and re-read the novels and hear Selleck's voice speaking as Jesse. If Selleck had been 30 when the first adaptation was done, or if Parker had written the first ones in 1980 or so, Selleck could have played him as written. But he wears that role like it was tailored for him.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:00 AM (rpbg1)

117 Tolle Lege
Still slowly getting to end of Peter Wilson's The Thirty Years War, haven't read much about major loss of life in the war be he alludes it's coming.
For Christmas got my grand-neice the Rush Revere box set, she is just 7 but hopefully many years of reading. Thought anything to off set a life of Leftist Seminary school.

Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 10:00 AM (9sWOw)

118 And that library would be nice at Hogwarts

Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 10:01 AM (9sWOw)

119 Picked up Kurt Schlichter's Crisis yesterday on Kindle and read the whole thing. Fast read, obviously.

Imma say "ehh" to it. It is full of conservaporn and gunporn, as to be expected. But honestly, seemed kind of slapdash, and it was poorly edited. Several common grammatical errors made it through to the published edition.

Throughout the series I thought Schlicter's writing had been improving. This one throws back to the original. A wild ride, fun to see Lefties get goofed on, but their cameos are there just to briefly get goofed on, and then they are gone. Sometimes the goof is oblique, like you have to know a lot about the leftie to get the goof.

The part that bothered me the most, though, is that Kelly Turnbull, the main character, leaves Iraq to go to pre-Civil War 2.0 USA, and declaims any knowledge or interest in politics or the news, so does not know that certain things have happened. But later, he just knows these things - no explanation to him or learning on his part, just he knows these things. They are the kinds of things that are knowing nods to the readers, yes, we already know these things so we don't need exposition, but it is enough to notice.

Only 5.99 on Kindle, worth a few hours of your time for the fun.

Posted by: blaster at November 22, 2020 10:02 AM (ZfRYq)

120 110 Amazon's book publishing should be spun off from Amazon the online seller
Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 09:57 AM (nUhF0)

I'm going to start praying for the Trump family to get into publishing.

Posted by: April at November 22, 2020 10:02 AM (OX9vb)

121 Amazon is a puzzle, because they could easily use their power for the forces of evil instead of the forces of good, but I don't think they do (in general)
Like someone said, they just want to sell stuff.
Compare to facebook and twitter, who are openly trying to punish wrongthink.
And we have to admit, the book publishing operation has changed a lot of lives for the better

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 10:02 AM (AwPyG)

122 This week I read Love Warrior.

-
Totally unrelated but but Tuck and Patty's album Love Warriors is quite good in a guitarist and vocalist jazzy sort of way. Several songs are informed by religion.

https://amzn.to/3flsr7X

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Tyrannosaur Wrangler at November 22, 2020 10:02 AM (+y/Ru)

123 In the adapted ones, you can go back and re-read the
novels and hear Selleck's voice speaking as Jesse. If Selleck had been
30 when the first adaptation was done, or if Parker had written the
first ones in 1980 or so, Selleck could have played him as written. But
he wears that role like it was tailored for him.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:00 AM (rpbg1)

---
He really seems to inhabit the role, that's for sure.

I will add that the rest of the cast is also excellent. For short, made for DV films, they really draw you right in. Tight, compelling storytelling.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 10:03 AM (cfSRQ)

124 12 With that out of the way: I'm reading The End of October, a 2020 SF/thriller by one Lawrence Wright. It's the kind of story that reviews will call "eerily prophetic," as it deals with, guess what, a pandemic. This one is real, more like the 1918 flu.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:10 AM (rpbg1)

Purchased, as the author is the Lawrence Wright of 'The Looming Tower', and I can't give him money often enough.

Posted by: motionview (I also want desperately to believe) at November 22, 2020 10:04 AM (pYQR/)

125 think "Get Shorty" was the original title. If you know otherwise, commenter, please give the title. Why hoard it?

The book is enjoyable, and the movie was one of those I would gladly ride through no matter at what point I would come across it. This was in the cable days. With streaming, I no longer have surprises in the schedule.

I can't say the same for the second Chili Palmer book -- and I guess Leonard thought so, too, because as far as I know, he never revisited the character.
Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 09:45 AM (83ScS)

The Get Shorty series on netflix( maybe Amazon?) is great. Tweaked from the movie but in a good way. Dont let the fact that Ray Romano stars put you off. But its violent

Posted by: President-elect LASue at November 22, 2020 10:04 AM (wc6R6)

126 I've ordered the full three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago. I've read parts of it, but it feels like I should read the whole thing now since the jackals have stormed the palace.

Could become a 'hard to find' item, who knows.

Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at November 22, 2020 10:04 AM (oAY8z)

127 Selleck is one of those actors, like Paul Newman, who seems genuine. You'd be very surprised to find out he's got shady doings going on, like so many of them nowadays

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 10:05 AM (AwPyG)

128 I've read Lolita and Pale Fire. The latter is less
well known but I like it more. Pale Fire is a poem written within the
novel. The book is funny and a little disturbing as the poet descends
into obsession and insanity.

Posted by: Northernlurker, still lurking after all these years at November 22, 2020 09:51 AM (lgiXo)

---
My father's Nabakov collection could give Captain Hate's a run for his money.

He's getting on in years, and his policy now is I can borrow his books freely and not worry about returning them since I'm the Heir Apparent anyway.

Of course with COVID, he's completely shut in. Thanksgiving Dinner will be via facetime this year. I started to argue with him, but there was no point.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:54 AM (cfSRQ)

I agree on Pale Fire although some of his early books are small masterpieces. Has your father read the two part biography?

Nabokov had some odd dislikes regarding other authors, specifically Dostoyevsky and Conrad. I'm positive Dostoyevsky was class based because Fyodor was a lowlife who literally starved his children while gambling anything his wife had away. Some of his books, The Idiot for sure, were written hastily to make money to ward off the arm breakers. I can't figure out his aversion to Conrad other than rooski aversion of Poles.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 10:05 AM (y7DUB)

129 84 For some reason I can't access last Sunday's Book thread, so this is from memory. When I came back to read the rest from after I left, someone criticized Bill James's Man on the Train, for one thing, as the writing was disjoined, IIRC.

I haven't read it - the only book of his I haven', I think - but my wife has, and she agrees.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 09:25 AM (7X3UV)

'Twas I...finished it last night. He may have just needed a better editor. I saw Spieberg's Munich last week and am starting on the source book Vengance by George Jonas.
Posted by: BignJames at November 22, 2020 09:48 AM (AwYPR)
__________

I hope I got the gist right. Anyway, that was my reaction. Again, Mrs Eeyore said you are right.

I'm just not into true crimes stories. I'd rather have them make sense. (Nor sci-fi, with a few exceptions. That leaves me outside very many discussions. It's popular on the right.)

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 10:05 AM (7X3UV)

130 I fart in French so I don't need no English tooter.

Posted by: Williechokertoobin at November 22, 2020 10:05 AM (49IcX)

131 114
onnmy to read pile is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (authoenof Jonathan Strange Mr Norrell)

Shucks, I had hoped this was a compendium of his works. I really love his drawings, especially those of ruin and decay.

Posted by: pep at November 22, 2020 10:05 AM (v16oJ)

132 Amazon is a puzzle, because they could easily use their power for the forces of evil instead of the forces of good

-
I remember Glenn Beck saying that Obozo and Mooch's greatest sin was squandering the opportunity they had for racial healing and generally for doing good.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Tyrannosaur Wrangler at November 22, 2020 10:06 AM (+y/Ru)

133 Remember back before email, when people would send chain letters in the mail?

My son put me on an electronic one for books. You send a book to the next person on the list, etc. Harmless enough, I think I'll do it and see if I get anything interesting.

Or anything at all.

Posted by: April at November 22, 2020 10:06 AM (OX9vb)

134 ...My favorite, and one of the creepiest short stories ever, is John B.L. Goodwin's "The Cocoon." I first read it at age 11, and it gave me the shivers . . . and I'm not sure I understand it completely to this day, but I love it....

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 09:41 AM (rpbg1)

Yes. You recommended "The Cocoon" around Halloween so I sought it out.

The story is an odd one.

At first, I thought it was a variation on the "naughty children get punished" genre like

Hilaire Belloc"s "Cautionary Tales for Children"

or the German "Struwwelpeter".

But, the story seems to have more on it's mind than that.

I feel like I'm missing one crucial piece of information, but Goodwin probably left that out on purpose.

As a result, yes, "The Cocoon" is very creepy and sticks in your mind afterward.

Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020 10:06 AM (dWwl8)

135
Highly recommend. They are only 90 minutes so a great way to escape from the world and suitable for week-night viewing.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:57 AM (cfSRQ)

Where can I find the movies? I loved Robert Parker's books--particularly the Spensers--but I really want to see the Jesse movies.

Posted by: Ladyl at November 22, 2020 10:07 AM (TdMsT)

136 126 I've ordered the full three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago. I've read parts of it, but it feels like I should read the whole thing now since the jackals have stormed the palace.

Could become a 'hard to find' item, who knows.
Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at November 22, 2020 10:04 AM (oAY8z)

In the late 70's this book set transformed me from a long-haired dope smoking typical hippie to a long-haired dope-smoking anti-communist revolutionary. Still try to re-read the set every ten years or so.

Posted by: motionview (I also want desperately to believe) at November 22, 2020 10:08 AM (pYQR/)

137 Need some writerly advice, folk. I have two completed mystery novels about an amateur detective brother-sister team. Originally I wrote and set the first one in the 1998-1999 period. A few years later I rewrote it as in 2004, and set its sequel in the same year.

It occurs to me, though, that 1998 is far enough back in history now -- more than 20 years -- that I could recast it as a "vintage" mystery. In fact if I shifted it to a few years earlier, there would be no cell phones everywhere, the Internet would only be getting started, and it would be much easier to have a criminal conceal what he is up to. The plots would not need much if any alterations. Would a 1996 or 1999 mystery novel be considered "vintage" enough for modern readers (especially those who would like to flee what we've sunk into now)?

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:08 AM (rpbg1)

138 A Hottentot tutor taught a Hottentot tot to toot a tune on a tooter.

Posted by: Kindltot at November 22, 2020 10:09 AM (WyVLE)

139 CDC holiday gathering guidelines (in limerick form) at the link in my nick.

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 10:09 AM (m45I2)

140 I once drove a Tudor sedan down a Tulane highway.

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 10:10 AM (m45I2)

141 Took me easily a half hour ordering that box set as I didn't go through my Kindle App as I wanted the hard back versions. It was pass codes, messages back, redoing pass codes, verification codes what a hassle.

Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 10:11 AM (9sWOw)

142 @112
I'm always a little skeptical when I hear this--are they violating the US Labor Code? unlikely. And if a whistleblower was going to blow the lid off, there would be thousands available.
So whenever I hear this I think it may be union people, agitating.

And when Amazon opens one of those massive distribution centers, suddenly 5000 low skilled people have a job, and the local economy (which was in a poorer location) has a ton of infrastructure money coming in.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 10:11 AM (AwPyG)

143 I once drove a Tudor sedan down a Tulane highway.

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 10:10 AM (m45I2)

I was waiting on that.

Posted by: BignJames at November 22, 2020 10:11 AM (AwYPR)

144 85 This week I dove deeper into Conrad's Lord Jim. I read it 20+ years ago and wanted to see how it aged.

It's kind of a mixed bag. Conrad is very much like Ford - he has great moments but seems fixated on endless internal deliberations. It really bogs down the narrative.

My copy is heavily annotated. I think I picked it up at one of the student book stores. I've gotten a number of books that way - seeing what's required reading and buying what looks interesting. This one looks like it - very academic-oriented.

I saw some selections in the notes from Conrad's Eastern World, which takes a look at the Far East when he was a sailor and the source material for his writings. It's out of print, but the copy I found is in good condition.

I find that kind of thing fascinating, so that's next on my list after I finish Lord Jim.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 09:48 AM (cfSRQ)
__________

Annotations iffy. Most are weak. But the best one I have is an original Fowler's Modern English Usage. The annotator was obviously far more educated than I, and his notes are terrific. Unfortunately, over time, some are illegible.

C S Lewis tells of getting a book formerly owned by a famed scholar. He at first thought he had a treasure. The early pages were heavily annotated. Then the notes got fewer and fewer, and after the first section, nothing.

A cautionary tale about scholarship.

It's interesting, BTW. Those Brits of the first half of the 20th C, including so many of my heroes, all knew of one another quite well, and usually personally.

But of two, there is very little interaction. Lewis reviewed two of Waugh's books, briefly. To the best of my knowledge, Waugh never mentions Lewis at all.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 10:11 AM (7X3UV)

145 125 think "Get Shorty" was the original title. If you know otherwise, commenter, please give the title. Why hoard it?

The book is enjoyable, and the movie was one of those I would gladly ride through no matter at what point I would come across it. This was in the cable days. With streaming, I no longer have surprises in the schedule.

I can't say the same for the second Chili Palmer book -- and I guess Leonard thought so, too, because as far as I know, he never revisited the character.
Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 09:45 AM (83ScS)

The Get Shorty series on netflix( maybe Amazon?) is great. Tweaked from the movie but in a good way. Dont let the fact that Ray Romano stars put you off. But its violent
Posted by: President-elect LASue at November 22, 2020 10:04 AM (wc6R6)

ok Ill DDG it

ok Ima wrong

Jackie Brown was a book called Rum Punch!

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:11 AM (JFO2v)

146 Ghost - you may find yourself bogged down with the detail of the full three volume set, but in the end it's worth it. I bought the physical copies of the books for the same reason you're thinking.

Posted by: PabloD isn't in a reconciliatory mood at November 22, 2020 10:11 AM (5Iv9v)

147 He really seems to inhabit the role, that's for sure.

I will add that the rest of the cast is also excellent. For short, made for DV films, they really draw you right in. Tight, compelling storytelling.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020

*
*

The only problem is that they can never do an adaptation of the Sunny Randall novel (she's Parker's female private eye in her own series) in which Sunny meets and has an affair with Jesse. Unless they rewrite Sunny to be closer to his age.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:12 AM (rpbg1)

148 143 I once drove a Tudor sedan down a Tulane highway.

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 10:10 AM (m45I2)

I was waiting on that.
Posted by: BignJames at November 22, 2020 10:11 AM (AwYPR)

I once drove a barracuda to a kingfish mackerel tournament

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:13 AM (JFO2v)

149 "There's only two things you can start without a plan: a riot and a family. For everything else, you need a plan."

Groucho Marx - organizist

Posted by: BackwardsBoy - #FightBack at November 22, 2020 10:13 AM (HaL55)

150 ]i]I've ordered the full three volumes of The Gulag
Archipelago. I've read parts of it, but it feels like I should read the
whole thing now since the jackals have stormed the palace.

Could become a 'hard to find' item, who knows.
Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at November 22, 2020 10:04 AM (oAY8z)

Jordan Peterson has written the forward to the newest edition. He reads it on his website as a podcast episode.

He also discusses Gulag and other prisoners' experience in a subsequent podcast. I would not listen to this on those "awake at 3 AM because of anxiety insomnia due to current politics" mornings. You will not be less anxious or upset.

If you do listen to it, make sure you listen to the end, because the only shred of hope is at the end of the podcast.

Posted by: Kindltot at November 22, 2020 10:13 AM (WyVLE)

151 Well, got's to go for a bit. Maybe I'll be back while it's still running.

Good hunting all who keep the Jungle Law.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 10:13 AM (7X3UV)

152 138 A Hottentot tutor taught a Hottentot tot to toot a tune on a tooter.
Posted by: Kindltot at November 22, 2020 10:09 AM (WyVLE)

Hottentot sounds like dressing up your toddler in hooker clothes.

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:14 AM (JFO2v)

153 "Pale Fire" is a wonderful comedy. Maybe Nabokov's best book.

It does everything he does well without getting too tangled up in the little puzzling labyrinths he likes to construct in his later books.

Ack! I keep telling myself that I have to reread him.

Maybe I'll start on his short stories.

Maybe start with his ghost story, which is pretty good.

Now if I could only remember the title of it...

Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020 10:14 AM (dWwl8)

154 Agree that Selleck is perfect for Jesse Stone. I do like the movies. Just as Avery Brooks was perfect for Hawk in Spenser for Hire. Even though the TV shows rarely (I only saw one that did) captured the moral ambiguity and the conflict in Spenser of the novels.

Posted by: yara at November 22, 2020 10:15 AM (rde8g)

155 English Two-door = British Leyland...stay away.

Posted by: BignJames at November 22, 2020 10:15 AM (AwYPR)

156 149 "There's only two things you can start without a plan: a riot and a family. For everything else, you need a plan."

Groucho Marx - organizist
Posted by: BackwardsBoy - #FightBack at November 22, 2020 10:13 AM (HaL55)

Seems like unplanned parenthood is a more correcter name.

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:15 AM (JFO2v)

157 119
Picked up Kurt Schlichter's Crisis yesterday on Kindle and read the whole thing. Fast read, obviously.

Imma say "ehh" to it. It is full of conservaporn and gunporn, as to
be expected. But honestly, seemed kind of slapdash, and it was poorly
edited. Several common grammatical errors made it through to the
published edition.

Posted by: blaster at November 22, 2020 10:02 AM (ZfRYq)

---
I like Schlichter's columns but he's sort of a one-note kind of guy and I've avoided his books because of what you say there: it seems like he's mostly doing "fan service," not quality storytelling.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 10:16 AM (cfSRQ)

158 Picked up Kurt Schlichter's Crisis yesterday on Kindle and read the whole thing. Fast read, obviously.

Imma say "ehh" to it. It is full of conservaporn and gunporn, as to
be expected. But honestly, seemed kind of slapdash, and it was poorly
edited.

Actually, that was my reaction to the third one. The description of the guns went on and on and ON. I just became bored in the end. And Schlichter, for all his insight, just omits any consideration of the race aspect to a collapse of the US. You can read between the lines in some places - the jungle-like community living in the ruins of the Pentagon were clearly black - but he won't SAY it, and that gives everything a bit of a shifty aspect. I'm not sure if I even read the 4th book now; I was just a bit turned off by volume 3.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:16 AM (NPokB)

159 I read Long Live Death by our own A.H.Lloyd (self-published via Amazon 2020). A very good introduction to the military aspects of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). The author compares how the Republican and Nationalist factions attempted to meet their goals and utilized their forces; he does a great job of piercing the propaganda. There's plenty of little-known facts and he makes a convincing argument that it was a good thing that the Republic lost since they were rapidly turning into a client state for Stalin. I would have liked a little bit more discussion of the "May Days" purge of the POUM. Unfortunately, the book is marred by several weird formatting errors in which the obviously wrong word is printed (such as "Community" rather than "Communist") and section headers were at the bottom of the page with the text on the following page -- I assume the auto-correct function went crazy. Rating = 4.0/5 (due to format errors, I would have given a 4.5 rating otherwise).

Hopefully, A.H.Lloyd can check on the version that Amazon is currently releasing because it is detracting from his hard work in researching the book.

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at November 22, 2020 10:16 AM (pJWtt)

160 149 "There's only two things you can start without a plan: a riot and a family. For everything else, you need a plan."

Groucho Marx - organizist
Posted by: BackwardsBoy - #FightBack at November 22, 2020 10:13 AM (HaL55)

That's more profound than funny.

Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020 10:16 AM (dWwl8)

161 I once drove a Tudor sedan down a Tulane highway.

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 10:10 AM (m45I2)

I was waiting on that.
Posted by: BignJames at November 22, 2020

*
*

There is a point in this city where Airline Hwy., US 61, turns into 4-lane Tulane Avenue. When a buddy of mine first moved to NO, he was advised on how to get to apoint on that avenue: "Just follow Airline until it becomes Tulane."

People here pronounce the name of the university, and the street, as "two-lane." So he thought his advisor meant "until the road turns into a 2-lane road." He was horribly confused to see that Tulane Avenue has 4 lanes all the way downtown; when it becomes a 2-lane, it's got a different name.

He bought a map the next day.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:17 AM (rpbg1)

162 @137
I think "vintage" is the same rule of thumb as "antiques" in that it has to be 50 years old.
I know Louise Penny puts her contemporary novels in a village that has no cell phone service, for the reasons you cite.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 10:17 AM (AwPyG)

163 I've read Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis several. The first was for a university literature course.
I'm now listening to it on Audible which brings new life to the book.
Out of the Silent Planet led me to George Macdonald and Lilith which was part of my path back to faith.

Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:18 AM (6Groa)

164 CS almost 70 years ago:

I dread the government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They cash in. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science.

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:18 AM (JFO2v)

165 C S Lewis tells of getting a book formerly owned by a famed scholar. He
at first thought he had a treasure. The early pages were heavily
annotated. Then the notes got fewer and fewer, and after the first
section, nothing.

He said the same thing about looking at used copies of 'Paradise Lost'. Lots of underlining early on, then nothing. It was because the reader didn't understand how an epic is supposed to be read. It doesn't have "memorable lines", it's a sweeping whole, like a glacier, and it has to be read as a whole. That was in Lewis's 'An Introduction to Paradise Lost', which is a great read all on its own.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:19 AM (NPokB)

166 163 164 2 CS comments back to back ha!

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:20 AM (JFO2v)

167 He said the same thing about looking at used copies of 'Paradise Lost'. Lots of underlining early on, then nothing. It was because the reader didn't understand how an epic is supposed to be read. It doesn't have "memorable lines", it's a sweeping whole, like a glacier, and it has to be read as a whole. That was in Lewis's 'An Introduction to Paradise Lost', which is a great read all on its own.
Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:19 AM (NPokB)

Maybe an idiot owned the books!

Posted by: Back to school at November 22, 2020 10:21 AM (JFO2v)

168 163 164 2 CS comments back to back ha!

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:20 AM (JFO2v)

Add mine to make it 3!

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:21 AM (NPokB)

169 Re; These pants. Is it really the pants...or the mincing? Just asking.

Posted by: BignJames at November 22, 2020 10:23 AM (AwYPR)

170 Seems like unplanned parenthood is a more correcter name.

Accidents cause people.

Posted by: BackwardsBoy - #FightBack at November 22, 2020 10:23 AM (HaL55)

171 I think "vintage" is the same rule of thumb as "antiques" in that it has to be 50 years old.
I know Louise Penny puts her contemporary novels in a village that has no cell phone service, for the reasons you cite.
Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020

*
*

Right, and I've done that on occasion, but I'm a city creature and my stories are set in cities.

Maybe "vintage" is the wrong word. I recently read a mainstream novel called Kept Animals which is set partly in 1993 and partly in 2015, the '93 part being in California at the time of one of the great canyon fires. The word "vintage" was not used. The blurb simply begins, "In 1993 . . ." and goes on from there.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:23 AM (rpbg1)

172 Something to watch

CNN lists the current configuration of the House at 222 Ds to 207 Rs with 6 undecided races. In all 6 races, the Rs lead.

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:24 AM (JFO2v)

173 Is that Mary Astor?
Posted by: Lady in Black

If somebody doesn't get her a sammich soon, she'll be Mary Asslesstor.

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 10:24 AM (arJlL)

174 I've been reading through some of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents -" short story collections

-
I read a bunch of those when I was a kid. My mother read one story and was horrified by what I had been reading.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Tyrannosaur Wrangler at November 22, 2020 10:24 AM (+y/Ru)

175 Hiya Bookies !

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 10:24 AM (arJlL)

176 Annotations iffy. Most are weak. But the best one I
have is an original Fowler's Modern English Usage. The annotator was
obviously far more educated than I, and his notes are terrific.
Unfortunately, over time, some are illegible.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 10:11 AM (7X3UV)

---
The ones in this edition are something of a mixed bag. Some useful, some pedantic explanations of words and British usages of the day.

The essays at the back are likewise varied. The one that had selections from Conrad's Eastern World was really good, though, so I bought the book to go through all of it.

I find it fascinating to see what an author experienced and how they incorporated that into their work. It inspires and informs my own writings.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 10:24 AM (cfSRQ)

177 There's a magpie screaming in a neighbor's yard, which has my dog on full alert.
The Screaming of the Magpies would make a good book title.

Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:25 AM (6Groa)

178 What do you get if you throw an organ down a mine shaft?

A flat miner.

What do you get if you airdrop an organ on an army base?

A flat major.

-- AoSHQ Community Organist

Posted by: Duncanthrax at November 22, 2020 10:25 AM (DMUuz)

179 Flipping channels this am landed on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Wow. They went bad fast. Wallace kept talking about the President Elect, had a panel of liberals on to talk about how terrible it was and how hopeless and psychotic the challenges were.

Wow.

Posted by: blaster at November 22, 2020 10:26 AM (ZfRYq)

180 I'm currently reading Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton and its VERY good.

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 10:26 AM (arJlL)

181 You can pay a vendor at fiverr.com to format your self-published book for kindle and print. It costs around $35, and so, depending on your computer skills, it could be well worth it.
If you have a Mac there's a program called "Vellum" that is easy and you can do it yourself--you push a button, and the book is beautifully formatted for all platforms and for print. (You start with a Word docx document.)
I think Vellum costs $250. They don't have it for a PC though (they're very snobby, that way) but you can ask a fiverr vendor to use Vellum, and problem solved.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 10:27 AM (AwPyG)

182 The Babylon Bee
@TheBabylonBee
Newsom Announces Curfew So He Won't Have To Wait In Long Line At Fancy Restaurants

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:27 AM (JFO2v)

183 I recently bough The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (paperback) to give to my nephews. But, since this is the only way I'll ever see Attack of the Deranged Killer Mutant Monster Snow Goons in color, I wanted to read through it myself before handing it off to them at Thanksgiving. Alas, I won't be meeting them for Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll see them in person at Christmas, or maybe I'll just have to ship it to them....

I gave them the Treasuries a few years ago (The Essential, The Authoritative, and The Indispensable) and word is they read the books so much they started falling apart. I figured that (on sale) the Complete Collection wouldn't cost much more than just replacing the old books. Plus, you know, it's complete.

Posted by: Castle Guy at November 22, 2020 10:27 AM (Lhaco)

184 177 There's a magpie screaming in a neighbor's yard, which has my dog on full alert.
The Screaming of the Magpies would make a good book title.
Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:25 AM (6Groa)

I saw Screaming Magpies open for The Byrds at Wembly Stadium.

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:29 AM (JFO2v)

185
Hopefully, A.H.Lloyd can check on the version
that Amazon is currently releasing because it is detracting from his
hard work in researching the book.

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at November 22, 2020 10:16 AM (pJWtt)

---
Is this in the paperback or Kindle?

I'm aware of some additional issues with the text and will be updating both formats this week.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 10:29 AM (cfSRQ)

186 Actually, that was my reaction to the third one. The description of the guns went on and on and ON. I just became bored in the end. And Schlichter, for all his insight, just omits any consideration of the race aspect to a collapse of the US. You can read between the lines in some places - the jungle-like community living in the ruins of the Pentagon were clearly black - but he won't SAY it, and that gives everything a bit of a shifty aspect. I'm not sure if I even read the 4th book now; I was just a bit turned off by volume 3.
Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:16 AM (NPokB)

I think that maybe that criticism got through to him - the gun porn in Crisis is kind of soft porn - lots of namechecks of cool guns, but not in depth descriptions of them and how they operate.

I think that part of the slapdashedness of this volume is that he is writing to catch up to 2022 while everything is happening here in 2020 - you could see where things got dropped in because it just happened, or other backports of reality into the story. He admits to that a bit in the foreword, that events were going faster than he could write.

Posted by: blaster at November 22, 2020 10:29 AM (ZfRYq)

187 What do you get if you throw an organ down a mine shaft?

A flat miner.
-----
Clever, but, unfortunately, there is no such key.

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 10:29 AM (Uhu8A)

188 177 There's a magpie screaming in a neighbor's yard, which has my dog on full alert.
The Screaming of the Magpies would make a good book title.
Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:25 AM (6Groa)

Latitudes do change attitudes.

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:30 AM (JFO2v)

189 187 What do you get if you throw an organ down a mine shaft?

A flat miner.
-----
Clever, but, unfortunately, there is no such key.
Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 10:29 AM (Uhu8A)

hey pipes down please!

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:31 AM (JFO2v)

190 Muldoon your a riot

Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 10:31 AM (9sWOw)

191 Would a 1996 or 1999 mystery novel be considered "vintage" enough for modern readers (especially those who would like to flee what we've sunk into now)?
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:08 AM (rpbg1)

dunno about vintage bit it could absolutely be considered period / historical

you should bring the era to life in a way that someone who never lived through it would enjoy, with some ironic foreshadowing in jokes for those who did live through it

(for example, in the movie The Wedding Singer, set in the 80s, the jerk boyfriend bragging about junk bonds being a sure thing)

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 10:32 AM (nUhF0)

192 Clever, but, unfortunately, there is no such key.

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 10:29 AM (Uhu8A)

redundant, actually.

Posted by: BignJames at November 22, 2020 10:32 AM (AwYPR)

193 s this in the paperback or Kindle?

I'm aware of some additional issues with the text and will be updating both formats this week.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at November 22, 2020 10:29 AM (cfSRQ)

It was the paperback. Look for the review from "Donny Two Scoops": I compiled an errata in the review.

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at November 22, 2020 10:32 AM (pJWtt)

194 I am waitlisted for Judith Flanders's "A Place for Everything," which was previously recommended on the book thread. While I'm waiting, I read one of her other books, "Christmas: A Biography."

It's pretty good, particularly when it gets into the 18th century forward where I have more context. Main thesis of the book is that almost all of what we think of as "an old-fashioned Christmas" is merely made to seem old. Most of our traditions are less that 200 years old (e.g. trees, carols, home-centric celebration). In many cases, traditions are less than 100 years old.

Even when they were all conceived, the rituals were presented as harking back to the past--even though they didn't. Some of it was done by design, but most of it was that people WANTED Christmas to be warmer, fuzzier, kinder, gentler, and just better than it really was.

Can't argue at all with that in 2020.

My biggest criticism of the book is that, while it's organized into chapters chronologically, the earlier chapters would have been easier to follow if they'd had subheadings by country or region. The first few chapters came across as really choppy and disorganized to me.

Posted by: Art Rondelet of Malmsey at November 22, 2020 10:32 AM (fTtFy)

195 Good morning fellow Book Threadists. I hope everyone had a great week of reading.

Looks like somebody overslept. I think it was me.

Posted by: JTB at November 22, 2020 10:32 AM (7EjX1)

196 Wash State has 1 and only 1 positive case of flu for this season (starts first full week of Oct).

Posted by: rhennigantx at November 22, 2020 10:33 AM (JFO2v)

197 Sorta serious question. Several of the books on today's Kindle Daily Deals follow the title with "absolutely heartbreaking novel of .... " It's always female authors.

Who wants to read about heartbreaking anything? Just watch the news. Is this an hormonal thing? Sheeesh!

Posted by: JTB at November 22, 2020 10:35 AM (7EjX1)

198 One thing reading about the 30 Years War which is slightly over a hundred years earlier of my usual reading, names are constantly popping up that recurring later. Assume with nobility they are related by a couple generations.

Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 10:36 AM (9sWOw)

199 That looks more like Jerry Orbach than Harvey Weinstein playing with Dawn Wells skirt. What's your provenance for the picture?

Posted by: Marooned at November 22, 2020 10:36 AM (yYptV)

200 P.S. Am I doing this right?

Posted by: Guy whose cousin's wife's roommate wrote a book at November 22, 2020 09:31 AM

Well, that depends. Are you wearing pants?

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 10:36 AM (qDSku)

201 For Thanksgiving week. Psalm 92 starts out

It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High:

To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night,

Upon an instrument of ten strings, and upon the psaltery; upon the harp with a solemn sound.

For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work: I will triumph in the works of thy hands.

___

According to Bible Gateway, the word "thanks" or some variant thereof appears 134 times in the KJV.

"Thanksgiving" appears 29 times.

Posted by: mindful webworker
When is a book not a book?
at November 22, 2020 10:37 AM (NJ+n1)

202 One thing reading about the 30 Years War which is slightly over a hundred years earlier of my usual reading, names are constantly popping up that recurring later. Assume with nobility they are related by a couple generations.
Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 10:36 AM (9sWOw)
-----
More than likely.

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 10:37 AM (Uhu8A)

203 Would a 1996 or 1999 mystery novel be considered "vintage" enough for modern readers (especially those who would like to flee what we've sunk into now)?
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:08 AM (rpbg1)

dunno about vintage bit it could absolutely be considered period / historical

you should bring the era to life in a way that someone who never lived through it would enjoy, with some ironic foreshadowing in jokes for those who did live through it

(for example, in the movie The Wedding Singer, set in the 80s, the jerk boyfriend bragging about junk bonds being a sure thing)
Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020

*
*

Ah, yes -- that's the word I was looking for, "period" or "historical." Yes, details about movies and songs of the time; yet it's not so far back (like the 1920s) that a great deal of explanation would be needed.

I planned to have some fun in exactly that way . . . make some veiled remarks about the Clintons' future, for instance (that's just off the top of my head, though).

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:37 AM (rpbg1)

204 magpie screaming in the neighbor's yard
take these ringing ears and shut your beak
or on alert
doggie will be barking until you fly away

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 10:37 AM (nUhF0)

205 I upgraded to a new phone and lost the dolphin browser. Giving duck duck go a shot.

Posted by: Cat Ass Trophy at November 22, 2020 10:37 AM (dNzKv)

206 126 I've ordered the full three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago. I've read parts of it, but it feels like I should read the whole thing now since the jackals have stormed the palace.

Could become a 'hard to find' item, who knows.
Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at November 22, 2020 10:04 AM (oAY8z)

30 years ago, I picked up Vol. 1 to read for a class I was taking at the time. After a few chapters, I became convinced that I owed it to Solzhenitsyn to read all 3 volumes. And I did.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:38 AM (lkGaW)

207 >>> He said the same thing about looking at used copies of 'Paradise Lost'. Lots of underlining early on, then nothing. It was because the reader didn't understand how an epic is supposed to be read. It doesn't have "memorable lines", it's a sweeping whole, like a glacier, and it has to be read as a whole. That was in Lewis's 'An Introduction to Paradise Lost', which is a great read all on its own.
Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:19 AM (NPokB)

Writing notes in Paradise Lost would be futile. It's more of a giant literary hub for a host of other works not the least of which is the Bible. Better to just read through. Then familiarize yourself with the referenced subjects and read through again. Milton was kind of a hippie.

Posted by: banana Dream at November 22, 2020 10:38 AM (l6b3d)

208 Sorta serious question. Several of the books on today's Kindle Daily Deals follow the title with "absolutely heartbreaking novel of .... " It's always female authors.

Who wants to read about heartbreaking anything? Just watch the news. Is this an hormonal thing? Sheeesh!
Posted by: JTB at November 22, 2020 10:35 AM (7EjX1)

Whenever a dust jacket blurb makes reference to the author's courage I know the book is leftwing crap.

Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:38 AM (6Groa)

209 The 'these pants' selection is disturbing/disgusting to say the least. Could they at least leave their hormone patches at home for a day.

I half expected Pajama Boy or Obama to come out to take applause for their designs.

Posted by: JTB at November 22, 2020 10:38 AM (7EjX1)

210 I read one of [Judith Flanders'] other books, "Christmas: A Biography."

It's pretty good, particularly when it gets into the 18th century forward where I have more context. Main thesis of the book is that almost all of what we think of as "an old-fashioned Christmas" is merely made to seem old. Most of our traditions are less that 200 years old (e.g. trees, carols, home-centric celebration). ... but most of it was that people WANTED Christmas to be warmer, fuzzier, kinder, gentler, and just better than it really was.

...
Posted by: Art Rondelet of Malmsey at November 22, 2020 10:32 AM (fTtFy)

Yes, the Christmas season used to be pretty much continual debauchery. Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery mentioned that the slave owners used give their slaves whiskey during Christmas time and encouraged them "to have a frolic" (if I remember the phrase correctly).

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at November 22, 2020 10:39 AM (pJWtt)

211 @197
There's a genre called "women's fiction" that is popular with the publishing industry nowadays (note the word "women")

It's usually a "journey" story, about a woman's "journey" through difficulties, and very rarely does it have a happy ending.
As a huge surprise, this genre doesn't tend to sell very well. (with some exceptions, of course; Gone With the Wind is one)

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 10:39 AM (AwPyG)

212 Willowed from the EMT

If anyone has a spare prayer in their back pocket, my brother in law Carter is in the ICU after a heart valve replacement and isn't doing well.

As of 10 pm last night he is not breathing on his own and can't move his arms or legs, possibly from a small stroke.

Thank you. God Bless The Horde.

Birk
Posted by: Birkenstock Cowboy

You got it.

A buddy of mine had the same thing happen recently.

WTF ?

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 10:39 AM (arJlL)

213 199 That looks more like Jerry Orbach than Harvey Weinstein playing with Dawn Wells skirt. What's your provenance for the picture?

Posted by: Marooned at November 22, 2020 10:36 AM (yYptV)

Listal.com, I think. And I was just goofing on it being Weinstein. I actually have no idea who the guy is. But it looks like something Weinstein would do.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:40 AM (lkGaW)

214 Posted by: mindful webworker
When is a book not a book?
at November 22, 2020 10:37 AM (NJ+n1)
------
Exultate justi in Domino, rectos decet collaudatio

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 10:40 AM (Uhu8A)

215 Who wants to read about heartbreaking anything? Just watch the news. Is this an hormonal thing? Sheeesh!

Posted by: JTB at November 22, 2020 10:35 AM (7EjX1)

Whenever a dust jacket blurb makes reference to the author's courage I know the book is leftwing crap.

"Passionate" is another lefty tell word.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:40 AM (NPokB)

216 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.

The bigger mistake is welcoming totalitarianism assuming the tyrant will be friendly to the causes you believe in, and will make life better for everyone.

Posted by: Cat Ass Trophy at November 22, 2020 10:41 AM (dNzKv)

217 I read Gathering of Sisters by Dawn Weaver. This is non fiction, about a family of old order Mennonites. Every Tuesday, the sisters get together at their parents home. It's about the sisters and their children. The husbands don't come into it much. It's very pleasant, no politics and very little modern culture.

Posted by: Notsothoreau - look forward at November 22, 2020 10:42 AM (YynYJ)

218 @197 --

"Dick Van Dyke Show" episode in which Rob is trying to figure out why Laura is angry with him during their drive home from a night out:

"The play! You didn't like the play!

"No, you loved the play -- you cried through the whole third act."

(Reason for anger: Rob picked up the check for Buddy's dinner party.)

Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 10:43 AM (83ScS)

219 Passionate" is another lefty tell word.
Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:40 AM (NPokB)

If a book is passionate and courageous watch out.

Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:43 AM (6Groa)

220 magpie screaming in the neighbor's yard
take these ringing ears and shut your beak
or on alert
doggie will be barking until you fly away
Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 10:37 AM (nUhF0)
------
Ha! I also caught the scansion to the same song, but couldn't do anything clever with it.

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 10:44 AM (Uhu8A)

221 Listal.com, I think. And I was just goofing on it being Weinstein. I actually have no idea who the guy is. But it looks like something Weinstein would do.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:40 AM (lkGaW)

The photo is amusing because the guy has taken off one of her shoes and is lifting the hem of her skirt, while Dawn Wells is yawning in boredom while reading her book. Definitely shows a side of her personality you didn't see on Gilligan's Island!

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at November 22, 2020 10:44 AM (pJWtt)

222 Debacle is not the word for the current situation in the United States. Degringolade is the word.

Duh-GRAN-guh-lod.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at November 22, 2020 10:44 AM (Zm/Ey)

223 'These pants' are designed by, worn by, and sold to worthless samples of society.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at November 22, 2020 10:44 AM (oVJmc)

224 Exultate justi in Domino, rectos decet collaudatio
Posted by: Captain Obvious

Alleluia, Alleluia!
Salvator Dominus, Salvator mundi

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 10:45 AM (nUhF0)

225 Who wants to read about heartbreaking anything? Just watch the news. Is this an hormonal thing? Sheeesh!

Posted by: JTB at November 22, 2020 10:35 AM (7EjX1)

Isn't the horror genre the same way? I mean, who wants to read about humans shrieking in agony as their eyeballs are being eaten by worms summoned from the depths of the earth?

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:45 AM (lkGaW)

226 "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

Star Trek TOS Space Seed

Posted by: Ignoramus at November 22, 2020 10:45 AM (9TdxA)

227 Ha! I also caught the scansion to the same song, but couldn't do anything clever with it.
Posted by: Captain Obvious

if only we had Muldoon's rhyming gene

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 10:46 AM (nUhF0)

228 219 Passionate" is another lefty tell word.
Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:40 AM (NPokB)

If a book is passionate and courageous watch out.
Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:43 AM (6Groa)

Of course, there's "stunning" and "brave".

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:46 AM (lkGaW)

229 "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

Star Trek TOS Space Seed
Posted by: Ignoramus at November 22, 2020 10:45 AM (9TdxA)

I thought that was the motto of the Democrat Party.

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at November 22, 2020 10:46 AM (pJWtt)

230
226 "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

Star Trek TOS Space Seed

No, that's Milton.

You know, the guy from Office Space.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at November 22, 2020 10:47 AM (oVJmc)

231 Isn't the horror genre the same way? I mean, who wants to read about humans shrieking in agony as their eyeballs are being eaten by worms summoned from the depths of the earth?
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse,

*shifty eyes*

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 10:47 AM (nUhF0)

232 Debacle is not the word for the current situation in the United States. Degringolade is the word.

Duh-GRAN-guh-lod.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at November 22, 2020 10:44 AM (Zm/Ey)

An excellent word. The dictionary says it means a RAPID downward tumble. As a sports writer put it, 'All downhill on a bad knee.'

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:47 AM (NPokB)

233 I looked up the Dawn Wells photo, and the site I found said the skirt-lifter was Anthony Perkins.

Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 10:48 AM (83ScS)

234 Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

Star Trek TOS Space Seed
Posted by: Ignoramus at November 22, 2020 10:45 AM (9TdxA)

I thought that was the motto of the Democrat Party.
Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at November 22, 2020 10:46 AM (pJWtt)
-------
Alng with, "He would burn down Westeros, so long as he could be King of the ashes."

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 10:48 AM (Uhu8A)

235 Yes, the Christmas season used to be pretty much continual debauchery. Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery mentioned that the slave owners used give their slaves whiskey during Christmas time and encouraged them "to have a frolic" (if I remember the phrase correctly).
Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at November 22, 2020 10:39 AM (pJWtt)

What we think of as a traditional Christmas was mostly invented in 1840's and 1850's London. First, Dickens popularized the ideas with his stories, and then Victoria instituted the German traditions of Albert, such as a Christmas tree and a great show of formal gifts. All wrapped up in the new Victorian ideals of public morality. Once Victoria was seen to be doing this, all of proper English society jumped on board.

Posted by: Tom Servo at November 22, 2020 10:48 AM (V2Yro)

236 "Yes, the Christmas season used to be pretty much continual debauchery."

That's precisely Flanders's point. Much of the sanitizing of Christmas was done in the 1800s by the growing middle class to tone down the excesses of the holiday's first thousand or so years.

Posted by: Art Rondelet of Malmsey at November 22, 2020 10:49 AM (fTtFy)

237 Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

Star Trek TOS Space Seed

No, that's Milton.

I vaguely recall that line being used in one the Khan episodes.

Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:49 AM (6Groa)

238 An excellent word. The dictionary says it means a RAPID downward tumble. As a sports writer put it, 'All downhill on a bad knee.'
Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:47 AM (NPokB)

------

And it connotes a total downfall.

Example of usage:

"The American Degringolade can only be reversed by the final debellation of the American Left."

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at November 22, 2020 10:50 AM (Zm/Ey)

239 219 Passionate" is another lefty tell word.
Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:40 AM (NPokB)

If a book is passionate and courageous watch out.
Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:43 AM (6Groa)

Of course, there's "stunning" and "brave".
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:46 AM (lkGaW)

Fierce.

Posted by: DR.WTF at November 22, 2020 10:50 AM (AiZBA)

240 Much of the sanitizing of Christmas was done in the 1800s by the growing
middle class to tone down the excesses of the holiday's first thousand
or so years.

Maybe that's why the Puritans in England tried to suppress it? We think of them cracking down on OUR style of Christmas, which is pretty antiseptic, but maybe in their day it was an occasion for lots of immorality.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:51 AM (NPokB)

241 >>> 15 What I remember most fondly about crusty Jeane Kirkpatrick was her passionate affair with Bill the Cat, who called her his "Mujahideen Mama".
Posted by: All Hail President Eris, Iron Fist in Velvet Glove in Iron Gauntlet at November 22, 2020 09:11 AM (Dc2NZ)

ACK.

OOP.

Posted by: Bill the Cat at November 22, 2020 10:51 AM (02b6n)

242 "Yes, the Christmas season used to be pretty much continual debauchery."

That's precisely Flanders's point. Much of the sanitizing of Christmas was done in the 1800s by the growing middle class to tone down the excesses of the holiday's first thousand or so years.
Posted by: Art Rondelet of Malmsey at November 22, 2020 10:49 AM (fTtFy)
------
"The World Turned Upside Down" is a satiric song about the Cromwellian Commonwealth's attempt to abolish Christmas celebrations.

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 10:51 AM (Uhu8A)

243 239 219 Passionate" is another lefty tell word.
Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 10:40 AM (NPokB)

If a book is passionate and courageous watch out.
Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:43 AM (6Groa)

Of course, there's "stunning" and "brave".
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:46 AM (lkGaW)

Fierce.
Posted by: DR.WTF at November 22, 2020 10:50 AM (AiZBA)

We need a compendium of left wing 'tell' words:

stunning
brave
fierce
courageous
passionate

I would add 'subversive'

there has to be others.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:54 AM (lkGaW)

244 We need a compendium of left wing 'tell' words:

stunning
brave
fierce
courageous
passionate

I would add 'subversive'

there has to be others.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:54 AM (lkGaW)

Ferociously intelligent

Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:56 AM (6Groa)

245 Been busy reading my dialog as an extra for a local SF movie. 0530 was the call time, and I am on a short break until I get back. I got to change some awful dialog to what I wanted to say.

TL : DR. Stood around for 4.5 hours. No bathroom breaks. In the cold.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at November 22, 2020 10:56 AM (u82oZ)

246 "Fierce" to me is the worst, since it's always applied to a female, which seems like such an affectation.
Usually females who are "fierce" are to be avoided, as opposed to females who are "brave."

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 10:57 AM (AwPyG)

247 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country.

It seems the totalitarians have learned quite a bit since the 60's. Instead of 'two steps forward, one step back', it is 'advance by inches'. We the frog have been in the warming pot for decades and could never quite put our finger on which step brought us past the boiling point.

Posted by: motionview (I also want desperately to believe) at November 22, 2020 10:57 AM (pYQR/)

248 202 One thing reading about the 30 Years War which is slightly over a hundred years earlier of my usual reading, names are constantly popping up that recurring later. Assume with nobility they are related by a couple generations.
Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 10:36 AM (9sWOw)
-----
More than likely.
Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 10:37 AM (Uhu8A)

If you read through a lot of medieval English history, you realize that about 10 - 20 families, all of whom came over with the Normans, ran everything for about 600 years.

Posted by: Tom Servo at November 22, 2020 10:58 AM (V2Yro)

249 Robert Parker was alive during a few of the Jesse Stone series.
He would take a very minor part, not even speaking just to be there.
One i recall especially was in a police station. Parker was a cop, sleeping at a desk.
It was fun to try and spot him.

Posted by: Winston dreg of society at November 22, 2020 10:58 AM (Drr5h)

250 I love that picture of the library at the top of the post. It does make me want to try singing a solo Gregorian Chant. The echoes could be interesting.

Posted by: JTB at November 22, 2020 11:00 AM (7EjX1)

251 I upgraded to a new phone and lost the dolphin browser. Giving duck duck go a shot.
Posted by: Cat Ass Trophy

Hopefully, its all its quacked up to be.

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:00 AM (arJlL)

252 Mein Kampf was pretty passionate, IIRC.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at November 22, 2020 11:00 AM (oVJmc)

253 @247
You have to admit there's no need to boil the frog at all if you can fix elections.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:01 AM (AwPyG)

254 These words like "stunning' "fierce" "brave" are often padded out with the word "amazingly" and it really bugs me. I hate the assumption that I should be standing with my mouth hanging open in shock and wonder at the sight of some tatty leftist.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 11:01 AM (NPokB)

255 Just started Ted Cruz' new book "One Vote Away".
Seems pretty good.

Posted by: attila the unwilling at November 22, 2020 11:01 AM (w7KSn)

256 237 Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

Star Trek TOS Space Seed

No, that's Milton.

I vaguely recall that line being used in one the Khan episodes.
Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:49 AM (6Groa)

and the title of the Khan episode is....

but it is a piece of pure genius on Milton's part. In 9 short word he captured how Pride is the root of all great Evil.

Posted by: Tom Servo at November 22, 2020 11:01 AM (V2Yro)

257 I've got a book coming up in my Audible listening called The Creature From Jekyll Island. It's about the Fed.
A reviewer said it touches all the right-wing points. That gives me hope it might be good.

Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 11:02 AM (6Groa)

258 @249
I think Lee Child was a police officer at the jail for one of the Jack Reacher stories.
He said you can't say dialog unless you are in the union

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:02 AM (AwPyG)

259 Crunchy Cons..."which was so silly that even NRO laughed at it."

Seriously, is that supposed to be a negative? NRO doesn't like it, so that means it MUST be bad?

I read the blurb about the book, and I'll probably not read it because I think he's probably too narrowly focused, but he's right about something.

And that something is "traditional conservatism," which is just what those clowns at National Review have DECIDED is orthodoxy, presumably in part because their god Bill Buckley told them so, is out of touch with reality.

People looking for anchors in their lives, and NRO doesn't have them. So if those guys are laughing, keep pursuing what you are. You're probably moving in the right direction.

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:03 AM (hku12)

260 I've bern thinking the Great Reset is about turnung us into the Brave New World
they wanna be alphas and betas
we are gammas and deltas

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 11:03 AM (nUhF0)

261 I think Lee Child was a police officer at the jail for one of the Jack Reacher stories.
He said you can't say dialog unless you are in the union
Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:02 AM (AwPyG)
-----
Depends on the production. There's a lot of non-union stuff out there.

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 11:04 AM (Uhu8A)

262 It seems the totalitarians have learned quite a bit since the 60's. Instead of 'two steps forward, one step back', it is 'advance by inches'. We the frog have been in the warming pot for decades and could never quite put our finger on which step brought us past the boiling point.
Posted by: motionview (I also want desperately to believe) at November 22, 2020 10:57 AM (pYQR/)

Well, it's much older than the totalitarians. Rome went through the same thing 2,000 years ago, Oswald Spengler pointed out how this is the path all great cultures take as they head into their terminal phase. It's a weakness of human nature, and of human society.

Specifically, Spengler predicted that after a period of extended civil war, an Imperial government will take power and be widely acclaimed for the peace it will bring.

Posted by: Tom Servo at November 22, 2020 11:05 AM (V2Yro)

263 Sorta serious question. Several of the books on today's Kindle Daily Deals follow the title with "absolutely heartbreaking novel of .... " It's always female authors.

Who wants to read about heartbreaking anything? Just watch the news. Is this an hormonal thing? Sheeesh!
Posted by: JTB

Somebody loaded up my Little Free Library of Death with that crap.

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:05 AM (arJlL)

264 Still in the Library of America Crime Novels. Finished Nightmare Alley last night. Another great noir novel. I saw a comment somewhere where a reader said he couldn't get into a couple of the novels. I don't get it. I've only got one more to go and, so far, every one has sucked me right in and made me want to neglect my other reading.

Posted by: Who knew at November 22, 2020 11:05 AM (SfO/T)

265 I think Leftists like the word "dialogue" because it reminds them of "dialectics," defined as "yammering objective reality into a shallow grave and replacing it with one's fondest fantasies."

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at November 22, 2020 11:06 AM (7JNlp)

266 Rod Dreher is...a conundrum. On the one hand I think his books are thought-provoking without being overly preachy. I don't agree with everything he says but it's presented in a manner that engages both the mind and heart. His books are so much better than his blogging because he has an editor to help him, which brings me to his blogging and some issues.
His blogging though!!! OH. MY. GOSH! He is an avowed Never-Trumper despite his protestations otherwise. Even when acknowledging something in Trump's favor he simply cannot resist "The Dig" to prove his NT bona fides.
He frequently posts blogs about current events and then has to walk back his judgements when the full story comes out. The Covington School story is one. And I've seen a few more. He never really apologizes for these and then moves on to do it again.
I want to like him, I really do. I recently engaged in a comment conversation with him and his final line was to the effect, "Stop reading then" To which I responded that I will choose when to stop reading and commenting when I'm good and ready.
I believe Rod is a sincere Christian. He was badly shaken in his faith as a practicing conservative Roman Catholic with all the child-abuse that came out. He is now within the Orthodox tradition. My understanding of this is a very strict observance that, to put it simply, "If you're not Orthodox, you're likely not a Christian."
I think "Being Right" and "Being Right about Everything at ALL Times" is very important for him. From what he has posted about himself, he had/has some real "Daddy Issues" and also I think he was bullied/abused as a young boy/young man. Maybe this is the reason for "Being Right"; I don't know but honestly I think his books are well worth buying and reading. Take your heart meds for his blog.

Posted by: Arizona Mike at November 22, 2020 11:06 AM (aZZ80)

267 I like CS Lewis -- his comments, essays, thoughts. But his books, I have difficulty staying engaged. Likewise Ayn Rand.

Posted by: Ordinary American at November 22, 2020 11:06 AM (H8QX8)

268 @259
What's interesting is how the left perceives the right. "The right reads NRO and Drudge, therefore if we insert leftists at those places, the right will follow along without realizing they've been duped to think exactly the opposite of their core beliefs".
Church and sports, too.

It isn't working, but that it was an idea shows the contempt

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:07 AM (AwPyG)

269 I bet there's not a weedwhacker within a hundred miles of where they filmed the pants vid.

(if you catch my drift.)

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:08 AM (arJlL)

270 I looked up the Dawn Wells photo, and the site I found said the skirt-lifter was Anthony Perkins.
Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 10:48 AM (83ScS)

Which would mean it's staged.

He wasn't into her type of skirts.

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:09 AM (hku12)

271 The CO gov, a known sodomite, just sent out an emergency phone alert warning me I am at Double Secret Severe Risk of catching the kung flu and dropping stone dead.

Posted by: DB- just DB. at November 22, 2020 11:09 AM (iTXRQ)

272 I like CS Lewis -- his comments, essays, thoughts. But his books, I have difficulty staying engaged. Likewise Ayn Rand.
Posted by: Ordinary American at November 22, 2020 11:06 AM (H8QX

------

I read the Screwtape Letters in my early twenties... It shook me to the core of my psyche, and permanently, drastically altered my worldview in a matter of hours.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at November 22, 2020 11:10 AM (7JNlp)

273 For Pacific War buffs, unless you're looking for mental exercise of the sort involved in trying to absorb nearly unintelligibly convoluted writing, do not rush to read The Battle of Leyte Gulf by H.P. Willmott.

It's impossible to believe even one person edited the thing for even one hour. "Reads" like the turgid mess of an academic who can't write, awful.

But I guess I gained some more info or understanding, on the margins, here and there. The incoherence and lack of realism in the Japanese plan. The variety of factors that might have played into Kurita's famous "turn-away" decision. Though he doesn't say it, he lays the foundation for the observation that leaving the San Bernardino Strait completely unguarded - not even watched - was incredibly incompetent. Related, didn't know that the Bungo Strait in Japan - main exit for the IJN from the Inland Sea and thus the key early warning choke-point - was also left unmonitored just at the time Ozawa's decoy force was coming out.

And a frequent whine - poor maps. This deficiency afflicts about 90% of WWII histories where maps are appropriate. But that's a minor quibble compared to having to drag yourself through the thick mud of his writing to find his points.

Posted by: rhomboid at November 22, 2020 11:11 AM (OTzUX)

274 I've bern thinking the Great Reset is about turnung us into the Brave New World
they wanna be alphas and betas
we are gammas and deltas
Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 11:03 AM (nUhF0)

I always thought that "Brave New World" was the more likely path versus "1984".

Posted by: DR.WTF at November 22, 2020 11:11 AM (AiZBA)

275 Bezos uses WaPo to buy indulgences for Amazon's horrific labor practices. The ones you never hear about.

Posted by: Ignoramus at November 22, 2020 09:58 AM (9TdxA)

IIRC (this was before the Supreme Court decision) the left was about to go after Bozos for his sweat shop conditions and he made donation of a couple of million dollars to some gay marriage group and just like that the left didn't have any problems with the Amazon working conditions any more.

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 11:12 AM (3Gu0g)

276 267 I like CS Lewis -- his comments, essays, thoughts. But his books, I have difficulty staying engaged. Likewise Ayn Rand.
Posted by: Ordinary American at November 22, 2020 11:06 AM (H8QX

Lewis writes at a high intellectual level, like the University lecturer that he was, but he can be followed with work, and almost all of his points are quite profound. Ayn Rand desperately needed an editor who could stop her (and her characters) from taking off on interminably long political and ideological rants every few pages.

Posted by: Tom Servo at November 22, 2020 11:12 AM (V2Yro)

277 I looked up the Dawn Wells photo, and the site I found said the skirt-lifter was Anthony Perkins.
Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 10:48 AM (83ScS)

Which would mean it's staged.

He wasn't into her type of skirts.
Posted by: BurtTC

So, he wasn't looking for a weedwhacker ?

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:13 AM (arJlL)

278 268
@259
What's interesting is how the left perceives the right. "The
right reads NRO and Drudge, therefore if we insert leftists at those
places, the right will follow along without realizing they've been duped
to think exactly the opposite of their core beliefs".
Church and sports, too.

It isn't working, but that it was an idea shows the contempt

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:07 AM (AwPyG)

But you know, I always thought that Conservative Inc. shared that attitude too. They always wanted to hide the "tough stuff" of conservatism, especially the social issues. Their attitude seemed to be that they could fool the mushy middle people with their focus on jobs and money, and they wouldn't realize that they were coming on board with the *real* conservatism, that they simply weren't ready for. I never approved of trying to trick people into voting for my issues. If they genuinely LIKE abortion and other leftist issues, then that's who they are and we have to accept that.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at November 22, 2020 11:13 AM (NPokB)

279 Oh !

The Kraken makes an appearance in Pirate Latitudes.

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:13 AM (arJlL)

280 So, he wasn't looking for a weedwhacker ?
Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:13 AM (arJlL)
-----
Well, not *that* kind of weedwhacker...

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 11:15 AM (Uhu8A)

281 >>> 277 I looked up the Dawn Wells photo, and the site I found said the skirt-lifter was Anthony Perkins.
Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 10:48 AM (83ScS)

Which would mean it's staged.

He wasn't into her type of skirts.
Posted by: BurtTC

So, he wasn't looking for a weedwhacker ?
Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:13 AM (arJlL)

It doesn't look anything like Anthony.

Posted by: banana Dream at November 22, 2020 11:15 AM (l6b3d)

282 So, I've been having trouble getting into books, recently, though, normally, I'm an avid reader.

However, recently, I picked up a book, "The Long Walk" about a group of men who escape Siberia by walking to British India.

Almost half way through, but, pretty much a page turner.

As an aside, the book give independent confirmation to the book, "The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia," as one of the escapees was an American who was imprisoned while working for Stalin in Russia, as is detailed in "The Forsaken."

Great read and it was nice to find something I was interested in reading.

Oh, as an aside, I loathe FDR for letting Americans disappear in Russia and not lifting a finger to do anything about it, though, if I understand correctly, a lot of the American working in Stalinist Russia went there with the blessings for the FDR administration.

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:16 AM (WEBkv)

283 I read the Screwtape Letters in my early twenties... It shook me to the core of my psyche, and permanently, drastically altered my worldview in a matter of hours.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at November 22, 2020 11:10 AM (7JNlp)

I would hear more of this.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:17 AM (lkGaW)

284 I would point out that the distinction between Authoritarian and Totalitarian regimes was first made by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her classic essay Dictatorships and Double-Standards which was published in Commentary back in 1979.

*********

Hannah Arendt predated Kirkpatrick in the post WWII years. She (Arendt) makes a distinction between totalitarianism and other forms of tyranny including authoritarian. Authoritarian govts mandate what beliefs you must hold.

Whereas

"...the aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions, but to destroy the capacity to form any."

Her premise includes the notion that the terror of a totalitarian government is inflicted on men not as individuals, but by encircling all men with an "iron band" of conformity ("all men have become One Man") that constricts the individual so much that he loses his individuality. Loneliness and isolation exacerbated by being rendered indistinguishable from all others (wear the damn mask!!). This isolation then renders the individual dependent on the philosophy of the totalitarian.

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 11:17 AM (m45I2)

285 Bezos uses WaPo to buy indulgences for Amazon's horrific labor practices. The ones you never hear about.

Posted by: Ignoramus at November 22, 2020 09:58 AM (9TdxA)

IIRC (this was before the Supreme Court decision) the left was about to go after Bozos for his sweat shop conditions and he made donation of a couple of million dollars to some gay marriage group and just like that the left didn't have any problems with the Amazon working conditions any more.
Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 11:12 AM (3Gu0g)

Someone who does lots of business through Amazon told me they are scum- they track best sellers and then steal their IP/design or go straight to the Chinese or Ukrainian manufacturer and pay them to make the product directly for them.

Posted by: President-elect LASue at November 22, 2020 11:18 AM (Ed8Zd)

286 I think "Being Right" and "Being Right about Everything at ALL Times" is very important for him. From what he has posted about himself, he had/has some real "Daddy Issues" and also I think he was bullied/abused as a young boy/young man. Maybe this is the reason for "Being Right"; I don't know but honestly I think his books are well worth buying and reading. Take your heart meds for his blog.
Posted by: Arizona Mike at November 22, 2020 11:06 AM (aZZ80)

I think you're onto something here.

It's one of those things in life, where we go along and discover on our course, where we have been wrong, where we've had incomplete answers, where we were naive and ignorant.

And some people have a difficult relationship with that process. Which probably comes for a lot of people from being abused for being wrong, when they were kids.

So while this journey, the one we're ALL on, is a profoundly painful one for some, and incredibly joyful for others, precisely due to the differences in our relationships with a growth in knowledge.

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:18 AM (hku12)

287 Oh, on to other reading: My wife got me a subscription, which I advised her to let lapse, to Nat Geo history.

When did Nat Geo become so Gynocentric?

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:19 AM (WEBkv)

288 @278
Or it may be that "Conservative Inc" was doing the exact same thing. "We are your leaders, conservatives. Don't notice that we are denigrating your core values--you are too stupid to realize we are decepticons"

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:19 AM (AwPyG)

289 I want to thank you all for keeping my spirits up. I am happy knowing that you are out there.

Posted by: Gilded at November 22, 2020 11:20 AM (P2T3F)

290 Up thread there have been some mentions of Joseph Conrad. Years ago I read his The Mirror of the Sea and it was fantastic. A memoir not a novel. And you can get it free on Kindle.

Posted by: Who knew at November 22, 2020 11:20 AM (SfO/T)

291 259 Crunchy Cons..."which was so silly that even NRO laughed at it."

Seriously, is that supposed to be a negative? NRO doesn't like it, so that means it MUST be bad?

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:03 AM (hku12)

"Crunchy Cons" is not a new book. This was back in the day when NRO had some credibility and I still valued their opinions on things.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:20 AM (lkGaW)

292 Don't forget "Transgressive" used as a compliment.

Posted by: Trimegistus at November 22, 2020 11:21 AM (QZxDR)

293 Screwtape Letters and Mere Chrustianity are sold in Hobby Lobby fyi, along with other books

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 11:21 AM (nUhF0)

294 Would a 1996 or 1999 mystery novel be considered "vintage" enough for modern readers (especially those who would like to flee what we've sunk into now)?
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at November 22, 2020 10:08 AM (rpbg1)

Someone mentioned Michael Chriton upthread. His book "Rising Sun" written in 1992 might be considered vintage since it is framed in the time when the Japanese management style was at its zenith. I imagine that a 20 something reader would be somewhat confused. It is a very good read.

Posted by: DR.WTF at November 22, 2020 11:21 AM (AiZBA)

295 Anybody remember that JFK stated in one of his speeches that there was a plot to enslave EVERY person in the U.S. and that he intended to smash the plot and imprison those conspiring ?

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (arJlL)

296 Anyone get today's Who Dis? Besides generic 1940's actress?

Posted by: lowandslow at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (4thlk)

297 We need to add: Anyone who reveals their pronouns

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (AwPyG)

298 295 Anybody remember that JFK stated in one of his speeches that there was a plot to enslave EVERY person in the U.S. and that he intended to smash the plot and imprison those conspiring ?
Posted by: JT

and then he was shot

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (nUhF0)

299 Screwtape Letters and Mere Chrustianity are sold in Hobby Lobby fyi, along with other books
Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 11:21 AM (nUhF0)
------
John Cleese did a very good audiobook of "Sxrewtape".

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (Uhu8A)

300 We need a compendium of left wing 'tell' words:

stunning
brave
fierce
courageous
passionate

I would add 'subversive'

there has to be others.

**********

game-changing

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 11:23 AM (m45I2)

301 stunning
brave
fierce
courageous
passionate

I would add 'subversive'

there has to be others.

**********

game-changing
Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 11:23 AM (m45I2)

----------------

Biggest "tell" word is: "fair."

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:24 AM (WEBkv)

302 295 Anybody remember that JFK stated in one of his speeches that there was a plot to enslave EVERY person in the U.S. and that he intended to smash the plot and imprison those conspiring ?
Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (arJlL)

I'd love to know the details. I have a collection of his speeches but do not recall that.

Posted by: Ordinary American at November 22, 2020 11:24 AM (H8QX8)

303 However, recently, I picked up a book, "The Long Walk" about a group of men who escape Siberia by walking to British India.

Almost half way through, but, pretty much a page turner.

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:16 AM (WEBkv)

I hate to be a turd in the punch bowl, but there have been doubts raised about whether this story actually happened. Certain geographical and cultural details he got wrong that an eyewitness wouldn't have missed. And this is not including the part where he claims he saw a yeti.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:24 AM (lkGaW)

304 >>> 298 295 Anybody remember that JFK stated in one of his speeches that there was a plot to enslave EVERY person in the U.S. and that he intended to smash the plot and imprison those conspiring ?
Posted by: JT

and then he was shot
Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (nUhF0)

Learn how this is all crazy talk, and you should do everything Your Betters tell you what to do.

Posted by: Twatter at November 22, 2020 11:25 AM (02b6n)

305 transformative

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 11:25 AM (m45I2)

306 Ahoy, bookfagz!

Posted by: Insomniac at November 22, 2020 11:25 AM (nakwk)

307 Oh, as an aside, I loathe FDR for letting Americans disappear in Russia and not lifting a finger to do anything about it, though, if I understand correctly, a lot of the American working in Stalinist Russia went there with the blessings for the FDR administration.
Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:16 AM (WEBkv)

His successor, Give em Hell Harry, was a real piece of shit in terms of handing rooski POWs back to Stalin where they faced torture and death for allowing themselves to be captured. Some even committed suicide rather than be returned.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 11:25 AM (y7DUB)

308 The difference is that Amazon doesn't want to demoralize anyone, they just want to sell some stuff.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 09:54 AM

Amazon funds the Bezo's Post. And hasn't Amazon pulled books that had wrongthink in them?

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 09:56 AM

I've never heard of Bezo's Post. Is it funded by Amazon, or by Jeff Bezos? There's a difference. It's leftists that won't do business with a company because one of their officers puts his own personal money into causes he believes in.

Has Amazon pulled books? Maybe. I don't know. The details are far more important than broad characterizations. I know I have not had trouble buying books from Andrew Brietbart and Sara Hoyt and Larry Correia and Kurt Schlicter from Amazon. Heck, they'll sell me copies of The Bell Curve for delivery tomorrow and that's about as full of "wrongthink" as it gets.

I don't want the act of buying a drill press (to pick an item not at random) to be a political act. That means I'm willing to cut people some slack about their personal beliefs. If you've got specific examples of stuff they won't sell me for political reason, we can talk about it and see if that's reasonable. However, if you want to convince me you're going to need to better than what I've heard so far.

An example of what I mean. I was looking for an amplifier to attach to this ham radio that I have. The wiki for the radio has a link to various projects including a likely amplifier. I go to the link provided and it's to the front page of this guy's ham radio blog, not to an amplifier project. The first thing I see on that blog is an anti-Trump screed. Now, I don't mind at all what he thinks about American politics, but it's a freakin' ham radio blog. I don't think it's too much to ask that he not put politics into that.

Another example: YouTube makes a point of telling me that Biden won the election even though it's not related to what I'm looking at, but Amazon doesn't do that. Instead Amazon recommends to me books full of that "wrongthink" and written by wrongly-thinking authors because I have bought from similar writers in the past.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (qDSku)

309 I hate to be a turd in the punch bowl, but there have been doubts raised about whether this story actually happened. Certain geographical and cultural details he got wrong that an eyewitness wouldn't have missed. And this is not including the part where he claims he saw a yeti.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:24 AM (lkGaW)
---------------

I'm fine with that. At least it's an engaging read, which I've had trouble finding these days.

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (WEBkv)

310 Bezos uses WaPo to buy indulgences for Amazon's horrific labor practices. The ones you never hear about.
Posted by: Ignoramus

My son worked at an Amazon distribution center for a while this year. He is very fit and strong, not some soy-boy. He is really cut, and lifts a lot.
It wore him down, just working long weekend shifts.

They do have horrific labor practices, and he has been sort of "red-pilled" by observing that Bezos does not tolerate any criticism of Amazon in WaPo.
He sees the inherent hypocrisy and cover up going on.

Posted by: Bozo Conservative....unfrozen caveman moron at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (ZCiJZ)

311 298 295 Anybody remember that JFK stated in one of his speeches that there was a plot to enslave EVERY person in the U.S. and that he intended to smash the plot and imprison those conspiring ?
Posted by: JT

and then he was shot
Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (nUhF0)

Right off the bat, this sounds like an urban myth. The events surrounding the JFK assassination are full of them. I need to see the exact quote, source, and context.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:27 AM (lkGaW)

312 "On this day..." by the way... and kinda off-t

My favorite theory is that Oswald was actually aiming at Connolly. (The Gov's office had turned down Oswald's application to go to Russia or Cuba or something.)

Oops.

Posted by: mindful webworker
When is a book not a book?
at November 22, 2020 11:27 AM (NJ+n1)

313 I think the same thing happened when Marco Polo wrote about his travels. some of it didn't add up, and he spoke of seeing unicorns, or something.
A little fictitious license.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:28 AM (AwPyG)

314 nyone get today's Who Dis? Besides generic 1940's actress?

Posted by: lowandslow at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (4thlk)

Lana Turner

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 11:28 AM (3Gu0g)

315 I'm fine with that. At least it's an engaging read, which I've had trouble finding these days.

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (WEBkv)

I'm glad I didn't spoil it for you. Perhaps I just should've kept my yap shut. It *is* a fun read, though. We read it as a family when my kids were middle-school aged.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:29 AM (lkGaW)

316 Equitable/Equality

Posted by: lin-duh at November 22, 2020 11:29 AM (UUBmN)

317 314 nyone get today's Who Dis? Besides generic 1940's actress?

Posted by: lowandslow at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (4thlk)

Lana Turner
Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 11:28 AM (3Gu0g)

You are correct, sir!

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:29 AM (lkGaW)

318 The CO gov, a known sodomite, just sent out an emergency phone alert warning me I am at Double Secret Severe Risk of catching the kung flu and dropping stone dead.
Posted by: DB- just DB. at November 22, 2020 11:09 AM (iTXRQ)

Funny thing is, I get these alerts on my cell, which still has a Missouri area code. Must be due to me giving the number to the DMV, but now apparently the whole of the state apparatus, including the FEMA camp nazis, has me in their database.

Missouri got in trouble a few years back, when the DMV (who was processing concealed carry licenses) gave that info to other entities in the state government.

Apparently Colorado believes you are a subject, once you accept one state privilege, you're theirs.

Other funny thing, my work cell, which DOES have a local area code, NEVER gets registered with any state entities, because why would it.

I get the alerts on that phone too. Things that make you go "hmmmm....."

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:30 AM (hku12)

319 309 I hate to be a turd in the punch bowl, but there have been doubts raised about whether this story actually happened. Certain geographical and cultural details he got wrong that an eyewitness wouldn't have missed. And this is not including the part where he claims he saw a yeti.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:24 AM (lkGaW

Several years ago someone at Reason Magazine did a forensic breakdown of Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" and concluded it was largely bullshit. That is, Steinbeck traveled mostly first-class from point to point and stayed in wealthy patrons' homes.

Posted by: Ordinary American at November 22, 2020 11:30 AM (H8QX8)

320 @308
Yeah, amazon doesn't seem to be as invested in "die for the cause, comrades" as the other big tech
for the time being, anyway.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:31 AM (AwPyG)

321 They do have horrific labor practices, and he has been sort of "red-pilled" by observing that Bezos does not tolerate any criticism of Amazon in WaPo.
He sees the inherent hypocrisy and cover up going on.
Posted by: Bozo Conservative....unfrozen caveman moron at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (ZCiJZ)

Tucker Carlson has pointed out that in the old days, this would be the kind of sweat-shop environment that the Democrats would be shrieking about. But now...? Crickets.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:32 AM (lkGaW)

322 Lana Turner

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

Wouldn't a more fitting Book Thread entry have been Paige Turner?

Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 11:32 AM (m45I2)

323 The more you buy from Amaz*n the sooner you will not be able to buy from anywhere else.
As proven in the 30s, takeover/control of business is much easier when there are monopolies.

Posted by: db at November 22, 2020 11:32 AM (E0PSG)

324 "prebacle"

White House 2008-2016

Posted by: deplorable unperson - refuse to accept the Mask of the Beast at November 22, 2020 11:33 AM (3P/5p)

325 @311
There are a lot of debunked "conspiracy theories" coming true right before our very eyes, though.
Just sayin'.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:33 AM (AwPyG)

326 Several years ago someone at Reason Magazine did a forensic breakdown of Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" and concluded it was largely bullshit. That is, Steinbeck traveled mostly first-class from point to point and stayed in wealthy patrons' homes.
Posted by: Ordinary American at November 22, 2020 11:30 AM (H8QX8

I think this fact was well-known before Reason discovered it.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:33 AM (lkGaW)

327
I am currently reading "REAMDE", by Neil Stephenson and I am enjoying it immensely. It ranks up there with his "Snow Crash" for keeping the pacing and story moving briskly. I had avoided his works after having read "Cryptonomicon" and "Anathem" (in that order). The former I enjoyed very much, the latter I found ponderous, plodding and dull. I deliberately avoided taking on his three "Baroque Cycle" novels that continued (or prequeled, if you will) the stories of the families of prominent characters in "Cryptonomicon" because, in my experience, whenever authors get lazy and attempt to extend or meld together storylines of their earlier and usual quite good works, what results is derivative and contrived trash. (I'm calling you out, Isaac Asimov.)

Anyway, "Reamde" brings together computer gamers, western and Chinese, Russian mobsters and Islamic terrorists in a quasi credible tale of cyber extortion and sleuthing to find the culprits. I am about one third of the way into the work and I regularly consume it in chunks numbering hundreds of pages at a time. Recommended.

Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM) at November 22, 2020 11:33 AM (pNxlR)

328 The difference is that Amazon doesn't want to demoralize anyone, they just want to sell some stuff.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 09:54 AM

Amazon funds the Bezo's Post. And hasn't Amazon pulled books that had wrongthink in them?

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 09:56 AM

I've never heard of Bezo's Post. Is it funded by Amazon, or by Jeff Bezos? There's a difference. It's leftists that won't do business with a company because one of their officers puts his own personal money into causes he believes in.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (qDSku)

Bezo's Post = Washington Post.

And yes, they've pulled books.

Mark Dice's book was pulled, due to a bullshit copyright issue with the font he used for the word "Hollywood."

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:33 AM (hku12)

329 @274
The future will a mixture of Brave New World, 1984 and The Gulag Archipelago.

The precise ratio is unknown but the ingredients and conditions are all there to make a horrific totalitarian stew.

Also Scribd is the bomb.

Posted by: Thomas Bender at November 22, 2020 11:33 AM (qEjZn)

330 Coracle > debacle

Posted by: Captain Obvious, Laird o' the Sea at November 22, 2020 11:34 AM (Uhu8A)

331 Another example: YouTube makes a point of telling me that Biden won the election even though it's not related to what I'm looking at, but Amazon doesn't do that. Instead Amazon recommends to me books full of that "wrongthink" and written by wrongly-thinking authors because I have bought from similar writers in the past.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (qDSku)

YouTube must be really frightened Trump is going to pull this one out.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:34 AM (lkGaW)

332 @321
Again, there are federal laws about working conditions, as well as state laws on top of that.
So--unlikely any big outfit is just ignoring them. If the employees want better conditions than the minimum, that's a different issue.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:35 AM (AwPyG)

333
Does the "English Tooter" charge extra for lighting his or her farts?

Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM) at November 22, 2020 11:35 AM (pNxlR)

334 325 @311
There are a lot of debunked "conspiracy theories" coming true right before our very eyes, though.
Just sayin'.
Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:33 AM (AwPyG)

Worth repeating, perhaps daily, the phrase "conspiracy theory" is a conspiracy concocted by the usual suspects... CIA, FBI, other parts of the Deep State, to convince the squares that they are fools for looking into conspiracies.

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:35 AM (hku12)

335 Yeah, amazon doesn't seem to be as invested in "die for the cause, comrades" as the other big tech
for the time being, anyway.
Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:31 AM (AwPyG)
--------------

I freely admit I have trouble with Amazon being as big as it is, but, on the other hand, I also know Amazon gives a store front and reach to businesses that would otherwise not have that kind of market.

Plus, Amazons search algorithms are some of the best I've ever seen.

I can't tell you how many times I've needed some odd part and was only able to find exactly what I needed on Amazon. Heck, I've used Amazon to find the part number for something so I could order what I needed elsewhere.

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:35 AM (WEBkv)

336 Several years ago someone at Reason Magazine did a forensic breakdown of Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" and concluded it was largely bullshit. That is, Steinbeck traveled mostly first-class from point to point and stayed in wealthy patrons' homes.
Posted by: Ordinary American at November 22, 2020 11:30 AM (H8QX

Anything that pops the Steinbeck bubble gets a huge thumbs up from me.

Someone informed me of a person debunking some of Ryszard Kapuscinski's claims in Travels With Herodotus. It only diminished my enjoyment of the book a little.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 11:36 AM (y7DUB)

337 I'm fine with that. At least it's an engaging read, which I've had trouble finding these days.
Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (WEBkv)

I like "The Long Walk" a lot, and decided that even if it wasn't technically all true, it should have been. And that was good enough for me.

Posted by: Tom Servo at November 22, 2020 11:36 AM (V2Yro)

338 Youtube is Google, in case a few don't already know.

Posted by: Gilded at November 22, 2020 11:36 AM (R4T27)

339 Reminds me of a friend who was a professor at Stanford. The school was going to change its policy from matching any 401k contribution 100% to matching only 50%, and the professors were hunting for a lawyer to sue the school for this outrage.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:37 AM (AwPyG)

340 Has Amazon pulled books? Maybe. I don't know.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (qDSku)

Yes, they have. Vox Day. They've banished him from their platform. And his entire publishing company that he runs. Persona non grata at Amazon.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:37 AM (lkGaW)

341
Yes, they have. Vox Day. They've banished him from their platform. And his entire publishing company that he runs. Persona non grata at Amazon.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:37 AM (lkGaW)
------------------------

"If only Comrade Bezos knew....."

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:38 AM (WEBkv)

342 YouTube must be really frightened Trump is going to pull this one out.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:34 AM (lkGaW)

I've been using Rumble more. The Hodge Twins started to put their videos there about a week ago. It really needs more content though.

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 11:38 AM (3Gu0g)

343 I worked at a Wal-Mart distribution center after I got out of the Army in 1999 (while going to college). Let me tell you that it was hard. I unloaded trucks coming in. There was an hourly piece-rate attached to the position that I had real difficulty meeting for somewhat more than living wage. My ingrained perfectionism made it difficult to move super quickly. My nostrils and lungs were always black from cardboard dust. I ended up leaving, but it was a good job for many. I'm sure Amazon is similar. It motivated me to want to do more... and I did.

Posted by: Rob at November 22, 2020 11:39 AM (4eRys)

344 295 Anybody remember that JFK stated in one of his speeches that there was a plot to enslave EVERY person in the U.S. and that he intended to smash the plot and imprison those conspiring ?
Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (arJlL)

Ummmmmmmmm.......No.

Posted by: Hairyback Guy at November 22, 2020 11:39 AM (R/m4+)

345 >Youtube is Google, in case a few don't already know.

Google is SkyNet

Posted by: DB- just DB. at November 22, 2020 11:39 AM (iTXRQ)

346 Anybody remember that JFK stated in one of his speeches that there was a plot to enslave EVERY person in the U.S. and that he intended to smash the plot and imprison those conspiring ?
Posted by: JT

and then he was shot
Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 11:22 AM (nUhF0)

Right off the bat, this sounds like an urban myth. The events surrounding the JFK assassination are full of them. I need to see the exact quote, source, and context.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:27 AM (lkGaW)

Regardless of what he might have or might not have said, the easiest thing to believe is that John Kennedy was killed because he didn't seem to be on board with the whole pesky Vietnam thing.

Whereas his brother was killed for.... well, probably for not being on board with the whole Vietnam thing.

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:40 AM (hku12)

347 Keywords: lawsuit; pattern; "masturbation attacks"

https://preview.tinyurl.com/y62pykcm

Posted by: Methos at November 22, 2020 11:40 AM (kOpft)

348 Plus, Amazons search algorithms are some of the best I've ever seen.

Yep, just like Google. Still using them?

Posted by: db at November 22, 2020 11:40 AM (E0PSG)

349 284 Leftism in a nutshell

My mother as a birthday present every year from my teenage years renewed my Nat Geo, if went out and looked could tell you exactly when but at least 5 years ago told her to stop it. Got tired of being preached to about global warming for instance in the beginning editorial then a artical of the ice age later. Leftism was being preached in every article on no matter the subject and had enough.

Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 11:40 AM (9sWOw)

350
Yep, just like Google. Still using them?
Posted by: db at November 22, 2020 11:40 AM (E0PSG)
----------------

Yep.

However, that's because Google also owns the smart phone search engine market.

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:41 AM (WEBkv)

351 So some Holocaust museum in FL adds George Floyd to an exhibit. Just a taste of what's coming. Enjoy.

Posted by: rhomboid at November 22, 2020 11:42 AM (OTzUX)

352 @335
I'll agree with that.and if you like to read the books in a series in order, Amazon is a godsend.
I don't understand "Amazon essentials" thought--for example, if you want to buy a sweater you can buy one from AE. It seems to be competing with their own vendors, which is a head-scratcher.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:42 AM (AwPyG)

353 Heh - funny to see my "off/topic" JFK comment preceded by all the other JFK comments, which weren't there before I started typing mine...

*falls through time warp*

I seem to recall we'd just got back from lunch when a younger brother of a classmate told me he'd heard that the President had been shot. I didn't entirely believe him.

That was a helluva couple of days. Whattaya mean the assassin's been assassinated?!?!

How many books about the assassination have there been, d'ya s'pose? I've read a few, although long ago.

Up and to the left,...

Posted by: mindful webworker
When is a book not a book?
at November 22, 2020 11:42 AM (NJ+n1)

354 Anything that pops the Steinbeck bubble gets a huge thumbs up from me.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 11:36 AM (y7DUB)

Steinbeck's short works are gems. His long works and his political subtexts are often ...um...shit.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at November 22, 2020 11:42 AM (xT2tT)

355 I freely admit I have trouble with Amazon being as big as it is, but, on the other hand, I also know Amazon gives a store front and reach to businesses that would otherwise not have that kind of market.

Plus, Amazons search algorithms are some of the best I've ever seen.

I can't tell you how many times I've needed some odd part and was only able to find exactly what I needed on Amazon. Heck, I've used Amazon to find the part number for something so I could order what I needed elsewhere.
Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:35 AM (WEBkv)

Jet doesn't appear to exist anymore. If you try to go to their website, you get redirected to Walmart.

Yay.

We have two online retailers now. And a bunch of hangers on, that better latch onto Amazon or risk being drowned in their wake.

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:42 AM (hku12)

356 Lana Turner

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

Wouldn't a more fitting Book Thread entry have been Paige Turner?
Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 11:32

***

I. R. Reading?

Posted by: Diogenes at November 22, 2020 11:43 AM (axyOa)

357
So some Holocaust museum in FL adds George Floyd to an exhibit. Just a taste of what's coming. Enjoy.

Posted by: rhomboid at November 22, 2020 11:42 AM (OTzUX)

I....what?

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 11:43 AM (3Gu0g)

358 Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM) at November 22, 2020 11:33 AM (pNxlR)

I used to think Stephenson was a modern day Dickens - his early stuff is excellent. Then last year he released The Fall, which has a Red-Blue split, with an idyllic Blue and the Red a gun-toting wasteland with the religioners crucifying heretics, and literally I threw it away about 1/3rd through.

Posted by: motionview (I also want desperately to believe) at November 22, 2020 11:44 AM (pYQR/)

359 @346
Not to mention abolishing the fed.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:44 AM (AwPyG)

360
So some Holocaust museum in FL adds George Floyd to an exhibit. Just a taste of what's coming. Enjoy.
Posted by: rhomboid

=========

Can't wait until we change Memorial Day to George Floyd Day.

Posted by: Blonde Morticia, now 90% news-free! at November 22, 2020 11:44 AM (G51Gf)

361 I'm sure Amazon is similar. It motivated me to want to do more... and I did.
Posted by: Rob

Exactly right. It motivated my son to get back into special needs kids (autism) teaching, which he was good at.
But doing that burns you out after a while, psychologically. Working with those kinds of kids can be pretty wearing.

Posted by: Bozo Conservative....unfrozen caveman moron at November 22, 2020 11:44 AM (ZCiJZ)

362 Or is she a model "cut" to look like Lana Turner?

Posted by: Ignoramus at November 22, 2020 11:45 AM (9TdxA)

363 BTW, reading new Brandon Sanderson book. I can't believe he can pop out huge books every 9-12 months.

Posted by: Rob at November 22, 2020 11:45 AM (4eRys)

364 Skip, have a friend who manages to be nearly clueless about some things even though he lives in and is engaged in the Big Debates in the Beltway. He recently said how shocked he was that Nat Geo had gone stoopid (climastrology). As always I was gentle, but pointed out how this went back decades, to when I was friends with one of the insiders, who was already sharing concerns about the trend.

Posted by: rhomboid at November 22, 2020 11:46 AM (OTzUX)

365 Can't wait until we change Memorial Day to George Floyd Day.
Posted by: Blonde Morticia, now 90% news-free! at November 22, 2020 11:44 AM (G51Gf)
----------------

On the up side, it would mean the funeral for John McCain is finally over.

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:46 AM (WEBkv)

366 >So some Holocaust museum in FL adds George Floyd to an exhibit.

in what context?

Posted by: DB- just DB. at November 22, 2020 11:46 AM (iTXRQ)

367 I can't tell you how many times I've needed some odd part and was only able to find exactly what I needed on Amazon.

Small supplies are unable afford their own online retail sites and compete with Amazon prices. They have been forced to sell through Amazon to survive. But they will eventually be assimilated into nonexistence anyway.

Posted by: db at November 22, 2020 11:46 AM (E0PSG)

368 I used to work in a shipping department, and I loved that kind of work for some reason. Too bad it doesn't pay well.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:48 AM (AwPyG)

369
Every now and then I re-visit books read (now multiple times) and renew the relationship for no other reason than it's very enjoyable--plus there's inevitably something new to be found.

Currently Stephen King is featured. I've always enjoyed how he fleshes out a character, the man DOES have a knack.

Posted by: irongrampa at November 22, 2020 11:49 AM (KATBx)

370 359 @346
Not to mention abolishing the fed.
Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:44 AM (AwPyG)

Yes, I think we can summarize it as "Deep State" wanted these boys dead. So they got deaded.

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:49 AM (hku12)

371 Blonde M., first things first. Need to have Indigenous People's Oppression Day, er, "Columbus Day", replaced by Juneteenth - or was that just more failure theater by *GOP* !!!! senators???

Posted by: rhomboid at November 22, 2020 11:50 AM (OTzUX)

372 Seriously - WTF are there not any more conservative newspapers than there are.

I have done more than a casual back-of-the envelope calculation on a monthly pubication and there is money to be made.

Why are conservatives not getting into this venue?

Posted by: Cicero Kaboom! Kid, Bowling champion at November 22, 2020 11:52 AM (n/szn)

373 On topic/off topic.
The language of the coup.

Look for "overturn" as in "overturn an election."
As in today's NY Post headline on a Michael Goodwin piece: "Time is not on Trump's Side to Overturn 2020 Election."

THIS will be the entire frame of CNN, MSNBC, Disney-ESPN etc etc. Whether "Trump will overturn the election." Even indisputable proof a manipulated election will be whether "Trump has enough proof to overturn the election."

The entirely, maliciously false premise of course is that Biden "won" the election in any sense, i.e. that there is any Biden victory to "overturn." Not only is it of course legally correct that there is no President-elect until the electors are certified, but even the non-legal thrust of the word "overturn" is entirely false if one understands that the actual votes cast, and victory, and for whom is (at least) in genuine doubt, to give even the most charitable cast to the facts.

The WH should meet this head on with the counter-narrative: We are not seeking to "overturn" an election, but to have the true results reported.

Related point in the Infowars: the MSM relentlessly pushes every lying headline as "Trump seeks..." "Trump's litigation..." etc.

Again, the WH needs careful messaging here. It should always be said in every press conference that this is not "Trump's case" but a case for every American voter whose vote has been stolen by fraud.

Yes we will litigate. But courts are notoriously chicken shit to go counter to public opinion: particularly when in "political" matters and particularly when one side threatens to burn down cities, and call you a "racist" while it's burning shit down if it doesn't get it's way.

There needs to be enough political space created to accommodate the facts; and language frame in which the public relations/political battles are fought will be huge.

Posted by: Zek at November 22, 2020 11:52 AM (w/5KC)

374 @367
But think about it; instead of trying to create a "presence" to sell your wares, you have the biggest site in the world, and it costs almost nothing.
And there's a self-correcting aspect, too. If people start to buy your stuff because its good quality, amazon will start to advertise your stuff, because they get a cut of your sales.
Free advertising, when advertising is usually 50% of a retailer's budget.

And in the end, the consumers ultimately get to choose.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:53 AM (AwPyG)

375 For Floyd idiocy, see @ezralevant (Canadian wrongthinker).

Didn't dig into it. Too perfectly nauseating. And probably coming to a school curriculum near you (actually BLM poison garbage is already in schools, but I'm sure that won't last if Trump is gone).

Posted by: rhomboid at November 22, 2020 11:54 AM (OTzUX)

376 Right off the bat, this sounds like an urban myth. The events surrounding the JFK assassination are full of them. I need to see the exact quote, source, and context.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:27 AM (lkGaW)

I dunno about the quote, but probably referring to his Jan 1961 address to National.Press Corp about secret socueties and global conspiracy

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 11:54 AM (nUhF0)

377
327
Krebs

My calling out of Asimov (not that he cares) is for his attempt to meld his "I, Robot" series with his "Foundation Trilogy" in his latter years. (While I once was enthralled by "Foundation Trilogy", a deeper grounding in science, math, and life now leaves me dismissing it as complete hogwash insofar as Hari Seldon's "science" being able to predict the future.)

Anyway, I was working in our basement last week when I came across a carved wooden model of a Great Lakes ore carrier that family history says was made by my grand uncle on my father's side. It is suggestive, rather that faithful to the last detail, and it has served as a catchall tray for keys, change and the like during the years. It needs some TLC to restore some broken pieces and a new paint job. This will be one of my winter projects. It's clearly "organic" and genuine.

One of my brothers has one of these, too. Whether he made it himself or it was one made by our granduncle, I cannot recall. But it looked similar to the one that I possess.

Several decades ago, Great Lakes freighters began to be built or retrofitted with booms that enabled them to unload their cargo while docked without requiring the use of crane and bucket machinery installed on the dock. This is now pretty much the standard configuration for newly constructed Lakes' freighters.

My brother decided to turn his freighter model into a "self-unloader", so he took parts from and Erector set to construct the boom and then mounted it on his boat. The result was an organic, wooden carving outfitted with a boxy, metallic boom. It looks, to my cynical eye, contrived, wrong, and completely out of place. A frankenfreighter, if you will. But its his, not mine, so to each his own.

All this is by way of saying, by attempting to meld the storylines of "Foundation Trilogy" with "I, Robot", Asimov created his very own literary frankenfreighter and, in so doing, ruined the lines of both original trilogies.

Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM) at November 22, 2020 11:54 AM (pNxlR)

378 Kevin Williamson's hot and explosive* new book is doing gangbusters on Amazon:

Best Sellers Rank: #5,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#14 in Sociology of Class
#43 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism
#62 in Political Commentary & Opinion

Customer Reviews: 4.4 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

*like runny diarrhea.

Posted by: GnuBreed at November 22, 2020 11:54 AM (F0YaR)

379 In this situation, Trump won in an unprecedented landslide. He knows it, and we know it (at least 75 million of us, that the left will admit to, so there's probably more)
so all the "language" in the world isn't going to change that fact. The left can try to sell whatever they want, but the majority of the country won't be buying it.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:55 AM (AwPyG)

380 I looked up the Dawn Wells photo, and the site I found said the skirt-lifter was Anthony Perkins.
Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 10:48 AM (83ScS)

He was looking for her dick

Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at November 22, 2020 11:55 AM (oAY8z)

381 Epoch Times is a conservative newspaper.

Posted by: attila the unwilling at November 22, 2020 11:55 AM (w7KSn)

382 Reminder that if you eat a large pizza with extra jalapenos what goes in must come out.

Posted by: Ring of Fire at November 22, 2020 11:56 AM (wOimJ)

383 We need a compendium of left wing 'tell' words:

stunning
brave
fierce
courageous
passionate

I would add 'subversive'

there has to be others.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:54 AM (lkGaW)

Ferociously intelligent
Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:56 AM (6Groa)

'Authentic' - if you work in education, the use of this word will make you vomit and shit yourself simultaneously

Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at November 22, 2020 11:57 AM (oAY8z)

384 Still have 200 pages to go in the 30 Years War, will be hard pressed to finish by Thanksgiving as I had for a goal.

Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 11:57 AM (9sWOw)

385
Wouldn't a more fitting Book Thread entry have been Paige Turner?
Posted by: Muldoon at November 22, 2020 11:32

You are a naughty, naughty boy Muldoon!

Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM) at November 22, 2020 11:58 AM (pNxlR)

386 Since the Liberals love everything European,

May this election be the Democrats' Dien Bien Phu.

Posted by: Anna Puma at November 22, 2020 11:58 AM (k1FRS)

387
I used to think Stephenson was a modern day Dickens - his early stuff is excellent. Then last year he released The Fall, which has a Red-Blue split, with an idyllic Blue and the Red a gun-toting wasteland with the religioners crucifying heretics, and literally I threw it away about 1/3rd through.

Posted by: motionview (I also want desperately to believe) at November 22, 2020 11:44 AM (pYQR/)

Good to know. Thanks!

Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM) at November 22, 2020 11:59 AM (pNxlR)

388 @372
I think its because the cutting edge of conservative thinking is now on conservative twitter (like it or not)

The Epoch Times does a good job as a newspaper, but there's so much breaking news nowadays that they can't keep up, even with their on line stuff

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:59 AM (AwPyG)

389 >I would add 'subversive'

there has to be others.

'transformative'

Posted by: DB- just DB. at November 22, 2020 12:00 PM (iTXRQ)

390 Plus, Amazons search algorithms are some of the best I've ever seen.

I can't tell you how many times I've needed some odd part and was only able to find exactly what I needed on Amazon. Heck, I've used Amazon to find the part number for something so I could order what I needed elsewhere.
Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing at November 22, 2020 11:35 AM (WEBkv)
---

Me too. This was and still is true for the most part, but with significant exceptions now. I can't tell you how many times I have searched for a book with precise information only to find that Amazon had suppressed = censored the book. So far, in such a case, it works to use the same information in a search engine to find the isbn, and then to enter the isbn in Amazon. But many older books don't have an isbn. I gave a number of specific examples in a post about 3 months ago.

Some of the cases seem to involve Amazon's profit arrangements. Many apparently the verboten. And often times (particularly with out of print books) a combo. I still use it often because it is good and quick and I the wishlist list feature is convenient.

What I also hate is how they change my search to kindle against my will repeatedly, and fill my results with irrelevant books that they are pushing. It's become corrupt as hell.

There also a good search called addall dot com that helps, in case you gaven't already found it.,

Posted by: Gilded at November 22, 2020 12:00 PM (R4T27)

391 On the writing front, can I sling 24,999+ words by end of month?

Posted by: Anna Puma at November 22, 2020 12:02 PM (k1FRS)

392 NOOD

Posted by: Skip, the guy who says NOOD at November 22, 2020 12:02 PM (9sWOw)

393 Left-wing tell words?

"access"

Hobby Lobby denies women access to ~~baby-murder~~ health-care

~~Immigrants~~ Refugees who need access to food

etc etc

They need access man!

(It sounds so much nicer than slavery)

Posted by: Helena Handbasket at November 22, 2020 12:02 PM (02b6n)

394 391 On the writing front, can I sling 24,999+ words by end of month?
Posted by: Anna Puma

Sleep is for the weak!!!

Posted by: vmom Trump Won! at November 22, 2020 12:03 PM (nUhF0)

395 BRCC says they don't support Kyle Rittenhouse.

Just fyi

Posted by: Hmmm at November 22, 2020 12:03 PM (wOimJ)

396 @390
don't forget that kindle=amazon.
there's a reason they're suggesting kindle to you.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 12:03 PM (AwPyG)

397
Still have 200 pages to go in the 30 Years War, will be hard pressed to finish by Thanksgiving as I had for a goal.
Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 11:57 AM (9sWOw)

What is that in dog years?

Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM) at November 22, 2020 12:03 PM (pNxlR)

398 So, now, there is CBD NOODness.

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=391386

BTW, anyone who caught my "Cookie is dying" comment on the Pet Thread, the dear old cat passed about an hour ago. Mercifully, at home, with family.

___

With our host's indulgence, another self-plugola for my one and only short SF/fantasy story (linked in nic). A kid with a contagious 'super-power,' and its consequences for downtrodden Chicago street people and extraterrestrials. If you get past the first few sketchy comic bookish pages, there's text. I keep meaning to upgrade the illustrations, but... haven't.

You won't find it in bookstores or on Amazo; not on digital book readers; no online reviews (one could leave a comment on the Table of Contents page, theoretically; nobody ever has). Available only on the website, for the low, low price of whatever you feel like donating.

Posted by: mindful webworker
When is a book not a book?
at November 22, 2020 12:06 PM (NJ+n1)

399 Have we heard from her this week? I saw on the Prayer List that she was very deeply depressed. I'm concerned for her.
Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at November 22, 2020 09:29 AM (mht8P)

She was on the ONT last night, and seemingly in better spirits.

Posted by: Alberta Oil Peon at November 22, 2020 12:06 PM (qliXA)

400 I had the pleasure of reading some good pulp fiction.

Casca vol 1, by Barry Sadler (Ballad of the Green Berets singer). It really wasn't bad, better written than many of his peers. If you like soldiers and ancient Rome, you might like it.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards, buy ammo at November 22, 2020 12:08 PM (d1uFV)

401 Anything that pops the Steinbeck bubble gets a huge thumbs up from me.

Posted by: Captain Hate at November 22, 2020 11:36 AM (y7DUB)

Steinbeck's short works are gems. His long works and his political subtexts are often ...um...shit.
Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at November 22, 2020 11:42 AM (xT2tT)

Last week, I mentioned Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locust" and "Miss Lonelyhearts".

He came out at the same general timeframe as Steinbeck, and wrote about similar themes, but -

one thing that I really like about West is that he didn't slather a big thick layer of socialism all over his stories.

There really isn't any politics at all.

The stories are all at a personal level and that's what makes them enjoyable as a read instead of a lecture.

And keeps them relevant even today.

Somewhat like Waugh in that regard.

Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020 12:09 PM (dWwl8)

402 "Vintage"
My favorite used bookstore, gone for 20 years now, had the full Mack Bolan's Executioner series. It started out with Deathwish style murder-porn revenge, but ran out of family members after the first dozen books and became Mafia-Rambo, where it stayed for many many years. It was funny to watch him get the newest cutting edge technology of the time, decades after that time. Answering machines. Brick phones. VCRs. Home computers. A lot of time to read, but I had 90 minutes on the interstate drive each way for 5 months. I think the cops call that distracted driving nowadays.

Posted by: Downcast at November 22, 2020 12:09 PM (dBngc)

403 The Epoch Times does a good job as a newspaper, but there's so much breaking news nowadays that they can't keep up, even with their on line stuff
Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:59 AM (AwPyG)

Interested to know that because I received an unsolicited sample yesterday. I am wondering who sold me name and address.

Anyway, I am also seriously wondering in general whether it matters if news is a day or two old as long as it is accurate. Something to think about. Are the tech oligarchs convincing people without an explicit argument people to trade truth for speed?

Posted by: Gilded at November 22, 2020 12:09 PM (R4T27)

404 No idea what BRCC stands for. I guess I'm not plugged into today's online culture of using acronyms as if everyone knows what it means.

Posted by: fly at November 22, 2020 12:10 PM (RbGtT)

405 The Epoch Times does a good job as a newspaper, but there's so much
breaking news nowadays that they can't keep up, even with their on line
stuff

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 11:59 AM (AwPyG)

My local grocery store carries it. I was surprised. Their newspaper section is a wash in leftist crap like the Chicago Tribune/Scum Times and in the middle of it is The Epoch Times.

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 22, 2020 12:11 PM (3Gu0g)

406 Last week, I mentioned Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locust" and "Miss Lonelyhearts".

one thing that I really like about West is that he didn't slather a big thick layer of socialism all over his stories.

There really isn't any politics at all.

The stories are all at a personal level and that's what makes them enjoyable as a read instead of a lecture.
Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020 12:09 PM (dWwl

I agree. Lovely writer.

Posted by: Ordinary American at November 22, 2020 12:12 PM (H8QX8)

407 402 "Vintage"
My favorite used bookstore, gone for 20 years now, had the full Mack Bolan's Executioner series. It started out with Deathwish style murder-porn revenge, but ran out of family members after the first dozen books and became Mafia-Rambo, where it stayed for many many years. It was funny to watch him get the newest cutting edge technology of the time, decades after that time. Answering machines. Brick phones. VCRs. Home computers. A lot of time to read, but I had 90 minutes on the interstate drive each way for 5 months. I think the cops call that distracted driving nowadays.
Posted by: Downcast at November 22, 2020 12:09 PM (dBngc)

Mack Bolan was my spirit animal before the Punisher was.

They also have some good writing in it, but also some god-awful stuff. Mack Bolan also has a very functional moral compass and compasssion...and a working dick.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards, buy ammo at November 22, 2020 12:13 PM (d1uFV)

408 No idea what BRCC stands for. I guess I'm not plugged into today's online culture of using acronyms as if everyone knows what it means.
Posted by: fly at November 22, 2020 12:10 PM (RbGtT)

British Romanian Chamber of Commerce.

They sell mediocre coffee in cardboard containers that look like ammo boxes.

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 12:14 PM (hku12)

409 BRCC
Black rifle coffee club. Veteran owned, operated.
Kyle was wearing one of their shirts in his bailed out of jail photos.

Posted by: Downcast at November 22, 2020 12:15 PM (dBngc)

410
Marc Bolan's "Bang a Gong" > Mack Bolan's "Executioner"

Posted by: naturalfake at November 22, 2020 12:15 PM (dWwl8)

411 409
BRCC

Black rifle coffee club. Veteran owned, operated.

Kyle was wearing one of their shirts in his bailed out of jail photos.

+++

Thank you. I didn't see that photo.

Posted by: fly at November 22, 2020 12:16 PM (RbGtT)

412 Here at Chez Boots we've been attempting to purge some belongings in order to make room for more stuff, particularly books.

I found a copy of the Stanley McChrystal book, which I'd bought a couple of years ago back when he'd been fired by Barky and I thought he was a good guy. Forgot I even had it, never did get around to reading it.

Tossed that garbage right in the trash. It was even signed by the author (I bought it at a rummage sale for probably $0.50 and hadn't realized it was signed).

Posted by: President-Elect Boots at November 22, 2020 12:19 PM (oGBso)

413 As an indie author, the last thing I want is the effective monopoly we've got: I really, really want there to be four or five really good places out there for the public to get books, and for them to constantly be competing to get better.

Monopolies aren't evil in and of themselves; it's that they're an easy target for getting coopted by the power-hungry who want to skin-suit them and demand the money and respect, and worse yet, that the Peter principle makes sure they get sloppy and stupid even if they did manage to fend off the power-hungry.

I cheerfully look forward to the day I can pull everything out of Kindle Unlimited, because there will be a better option elsewhere. That day is not yet, but when it comes, I'll be waiting.

Posted by: Not From Around Here at November 22, 2020 12:20 PM (wrzAm)

414 391 On the writing front, can I sling 24,999+ words by end of month?
Posted by: Anna Puma at November 22, 2020 12:02 PM (k1FRS)

You can do it!

Sling 50k and cut half

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards, buy ammo at November 22, 2020 12:20 PM (d1uFV)

415 And when Amazon opens one of those massive distribution centers, suddenly 5000 low skilled people have a job, and the local economy (which was in a poorer location) has a ton of infrastructure money coming in.

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 10:11 AM (AwPyG)

I have seen reports that it is basically a sweatshop. Friend of mine works for a service company, and did an install at an Amazon facility in Alberta. They had a "minder" watch over him the entire time he was there.

Posted by: Alberta Oil Peon at November 22, 2020 12:23 PM (yuA3x)

416 I have seen reports that it is basically a sweatshop. Friend of mine works for a service company, and did an install at an Amazon facility in Alberta. They had a "minder" watch over him the entire time he was there.

Posted by: Alberta Oil Peon at November 22, 2020 12:23 PM (yuA3x)
---------------------------

Couple of years ago now, a MSM reporter got a job at an Amazon facility in order to "fact check" the "lies" that Amazon was a totalitarian place to work. He found it to be worse than he could imagine, so of course that reporting was sent down the memory hole.

Posted by: President-Elect Boots at November 22, 2020 12:25 PM (oGBso)

417 Can anyone recommend a good resource for building your own resistance cell?

Posted by: Diogenes at November 22, 2020 12:26 PM (axyOa)

418 Just finished Righteous Indignation by Andrew Brettbart and just started The New Right by Michael Malice.

Posted by: Rainier at November 22, 2020 12:28 PM (tIuH3)

419 A favorite Elmore Leonard is "Maximum Bob". Very funny. It was even tried as a tv series starring Beau Bridges if I remember correctly. Pretty good but, as usual, it was cancelled.

Posted by: Tuna at November 22, 2020 12:28 PM (gLRfa)

420 Diogenes try short wave radio, all the social media channels are being watched

Posted by: Skip at November 22, 2020 12:28 PM (9sWOw)

421 @402 --

I remember Bolan talking about the Warwagon's ability to store video images.

Loved The Executioner series, at least the 37 original Pendleton books. Own 'em all.

Technological advances have overcome so many then-contempoary books.

Posted by: Weak Geek at November 22, 2020 12:29 PM (83ScS)

422 As I said last week about Dreher, he completely lost me when he voted for the Governor that drove my only source of employment out of this state, his reason being, Orange Man Bad...

I'm tired of all the people who can be holier-than-thou supporters of the leftist anti-industrial/anti-capitalist revolution one minute, and staunch bourgeoisie the next, enjoying their property and their claims of being the True Traditional Christianity (and not like all of us out here trying to make a living in a world ruled by the Red-and-Black Machine), I think he has become the people he was disturbed by in the Catholic Church.

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain, Cryptid Anarchist Doge at November 22, 2020 12:31 PM (Clxcy)

423 383 We need a compendium of left wing 'tell' words:
stunning
brave
fierce
courageous
passionate
I would add 'subversive'

there has to be others.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 10:54 AM (lkGaW)

Ferociously intelligent
Posted by: Brother Northernlurker just another guy at November 22, 2020 10:56 AM (6Groa)

'Authentic' - if you work in education, the use of this word will make you vomit and shit yourself simultaneously

Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at November 22, 2020 11:57 AM (oAY8z)

defies stereotypes
ambitious
A New York Times and Washington Post Notable BookHugo-Winning (in the last 20 years)pivotalspeaking their truth

Posted by: Not From Around Here at November 22, 2020 12:31 PM (wrzAm)

424 ed by: Zek at November 22, 2020 11:52 AM (w/5KC)

Excellent point.

Also could say True facts overturn FRAUD, restore election integrity.

Posted by: Iris at November 22, 2020 12:35 PM (6lKe4)

425 a plug for alibris dot com...

I find all my books there.

The Send Delete book is there.

https://m.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=Save+send+delete&mtype=B&hs=Search

Posted by: scottst at November 22, 2020 12:42 PM (/QQch)

426 Right off the bat, this sounds like an urban myth. The events surrounding the JFK assassination are full of them. I need to see the exact quote, source, and context.
Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional

Right now, I'm enjoying Bacon, eggs biscuits and OJ ( the beverage, not the murderer); then there are several tasks that I must attend to.

But, I'll look it up and get back to ya.

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 12:48 PM (arJlL)

427 "debacle" is the FIRST word I've ever seen in the "build your vocabulary" feature that someone might actually USE in real life.

Posted by: mnw at November 22, 2020 12:48 PM (Cssks)

428 On the writing front, can I sling 24,999+ words by end of month?
Posted by: Anna Puma at November 22, 2020 12:02 PM (k1FRS)

Give it hell, Anna !

Yes, I am a fanna of Anna !

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 12:52 PM (arJlL)

429 Anna- did you write Golden Isis ?

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 12:53 PM (arJlL)

430 THAT'S Lana Turner ?

Johnny Stompanatto musta ate all her food !

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 12:54 PM (arJlL)

431 Seeing as you all are still here, I'll ask again. Has anyone read Crossings by Alex Landrigan? If so, any advice on the best way to read it. If you have read the book, you undertand the question. It is quite intriguing.

Posted by: sharon(willow's apprentice) at November 22, 2020 12:57 PM (sd8p8)

432 Has anyone read Crossings by Alex Landrigan?

Nope.

If so, any advice on the best way to read it

Lights on, eyes open ?

Posted by: JT at November 22, 2020 01:00 PM (arJlL)

433 Actually, book is on my kindle so I can read in the dark. Have to admit though, that eyes have to be open.

Posted by: sharon(willow's apprentice) at November 22, 2020 01:08 PM (sd8p8)

434 Picked up a used book and was pleasantly surprised- Matt Goldman's Broken Ice. Lead character is a private investigator (and his partner plays a pretty good role as well) who is working on the case of a missing girl. Then there are drugs and murders (with an arrow- not something you see everyday). Kind of convoluted plot to wrap things up, but solid read.

Posted by: Charlotte at November 22, 2020 01:08 PM (6Lsms)

435 259 Crunchy Cons..."which was so silly that even NRO laughed at it."

Seriously, is that supposed to be a negative? NRO doesn't like it, so that means it MUST be bad?

I read the blurb about the book, and I'll probably not read it because I think he's probably too narrowly focused, but he's right about something.

And that something is "traditional conservatism," which is just what those clowns at National Review have DECIDED is orthodoxy, presumably in part because their god Bill Buckley told them so, is out of touch with reality.

People looking for anchors in their lives, and NRO doesn't have them. So if those guys are laughing, keep pursuing what you are. You're probably moving in the right direction.
Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:03 AM (hku12)
_________

That's not right about Buckley. He knew there was no single conservative orthodoxy, and was quite explicit about it. And he certainly never tried to impose the pseudo-"fusionist" version that became their one true faith in the Lowry era.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 01:18 PM (7X3UV)

436 Bezos uses WaPo to buy indulgences for Amazon's horrific labor practices. The ones you never hear about.

So he's every asshole thing everyone believes about Capitalism combined with all the asshole things Western Communism inflicts upon us. He funds preaching communism to everyone else and then goes home to count his bourgeoisie billions.

A proud Bourgeoisieshevik, that one.

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain, Cryptid Anarchist Doge at November 22, 2020 01:20 PM (Clxcy)

437 Sorta serious question. Several of the books on today's Kindle Daily Deals follow the title with "absolutely heartbreaking novel of .... " It's always female authors.

Who wants to read about heartbreaking anything? Just watch the news. Is this an hormonal thing? Sheeesh!
Posted by: JTB
________

My wife would disagree. Her first choice for "stunningly heartbreaking is Trollope's The Warden. And it is very good, IMO. And very conservative.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 01:20 PM (7X3UV)

438 Bezo's Post = Washington Post.

Ah, I see. I'm clueless sometimes. The question remains: Does Jeff Bezos own it, or does Amazon?

And yes, they've pulled books.

Mark Dice's book was pulled, due to a bullshit copyright issue with the font he used for the word "Hollywood."

Posted by: BurtTC at November 22, 2020 11:33 AM (hku12)

Did it resemble the famous southern-California sign whose trademark owners are famously litigious? While I think the copyright and patent laws in the USA have their flaws, mostly because they're grant too much protection, Intellectual Property is a real thing in this country. That isn't about wrong-think.

Now, do I think Amazon could one day soon start to punish wrong think using mechanisms like shadow-banning? Of course, but if you look at it from a business perspective, Amazon's "moat" is more like a "gutter."

Anyone can get set up to compete with them selling in the Internet marketplace. To be sure, they can offer things like next-day delivery, but if you can't buy what you want from Amazon at all, why would you not be willing to wait a few days to buy it somewhere else?

In fact, Amazon's position is not completely secure, with anyone being able to get into the business of selling over the Internet, and being at the mercy of the producers who can decide to jerk them around at a moment's notice. Not that being a 500-pound gorilla is a horrible position to be in, but it is not all sunshine and roses for them.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 01:23 PM (qDSku)

439 Has Amazon pulled books? Maybe. I don't know.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 11:26 AM (qDSku)

Yes, they have. Vox Day. They've banished him from their platform. And his entire publishing company that he runs. Persona non grata at Amazon.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 11:37 AM

Okay. Why? Vox Day is, um, not the easiest person to deal with. Could it be that it's not about the wrongthink in his books but about something else?

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 01:24 PM (qDSku)

440 Current bedtime read is 'The Old Contemptibles', Grimes. Must have acquired it in an auction lot, as I've never heard of the author or book. Light, entertaining Brit mystery.

It was published 1991, by Little Brown, so, a real publisher. I have noted a couple of contradictions in the text, which an editor should have caught. I'm always a little surprised by that, and such things are not too unusual.

Still working on 'Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field' It too has some glaring errors in the text presentation that should have been caught by an editor. I sometimes wonder if the hired editors even read the things.

Richard Feynman famously pointed out that a science book, submitted to the School Board for approval, received that approval, even though the sample was nothing but totally blank pages. Apparently no one, aside from himself, even bothered to look at it.

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at November 22, 2020 01:26 PM (GBHAb)

441 273 For Pacific War buffs, unless you're looking for mental exercise of the sort involved in trying to absorb nearly unintelligibly convoluted writing, do not rush to read The Battle of Leyte Gulf by H.P. Willmott.

It's impossible to believe even one person edited the thing for even one hour. "Reads" like the turgid mess of an academic who can't write, awful.

But I guess I gained some more info or understanding, on the margins, here and there. The incoherence and lack of realism in the Japanese plan. The variety of factors that might have played into Kurita's famous "turn-away" decision. Though he doesn't say it, he lays the foundation for the observation that leaving the San Bernardino Strait completely unguarded - not even watched - was incredibly incompetent. Related, didn't know that the Bungo Strait in Japan - main exit for the IJN from the Inland Sea and thus the key early warning choke-point - was also left unmonitored just at the time Ozawa's decoy force was coming out.

And a frequent whine - poor maps. This deficiency afflicts about 90% of WWII histories where maps are appropriate. But that's a minor quibble compared to having to drag yourself through the thick mud of his writing to find his points.

Posted by: rhomboid at November 22, 2020 11:11 AM (OTzUX)
___________

I suspect Willmott had a stroke or something, sometime this century. Some of his early stuff is decent, e.g., Empires in the Balance. But his Last Century of Seapower is that bad. I have the first two volumes. I've read some pretty bad naval history over the years. This is the absolute worst.

But he never wrote all that well. But he wasn't the worst, by any means. Wasn't. Is now.

Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 01:27 PM (7X3UV)

442 JTB - yeah, it can totally be a hormonal thing. When we really need to get all the emotional backlog out with a good cathartic crying session... but we want to do it with a story that has a emotionally fufilling resolution, makes sense, and leaves us feeling that either justice was done to the world, or things will turn out okay in the end.

Neither of which the 6 o'clock news is good at fulfilling.

I mean, there's a reason Hallmark movies exist, and that ladies curling up on the couch with a big fluffy blanket, a pet, and a gallon of ice cream for a movie and a hard cry is a stereotype.

Me, I prefer shooting things at the range, blowing stuff up (very cathartic), and breaking the airplane out of the hangar and flying, but to each their own.

Posted by: Not From Around Here at November 22, 2020 01:30 PM (wrzAm)

443 My wife would disagree. Her first choice for "stunningly heartbreaking is Trollope's The Warden. And it is very good, IMO. And very conservative.
Posted by: Eeyore at November 22, 2020 01:20 PM (7X3UV)
---

I've got Miss Mackinzie picked out as my first Trollope. From what I've heard it's very interesting per eros, and also there's said to be a hilarious takedown of non-profit posturing. Easy to find a cheap used oxford classics edition or was when I scooped mine up.

Posted by: Gilded at November 22, 2020 01:30 PM (BvEiv)

444 My wife would disagree. Her first choice for "stunningly heartbreaking is Trollope's The Warden. And it is very good, IMO. And very conservative.
Posted by: Eeyore
-------

Ah. I have, and have read Trollope's 'Barchester Tower' series. Entertaining Victorian reading. As I have mentioned before, my family has a history with Trollope, my G-g-grandfather having been engaged in a vote-buying scheme to defeat Trollope when he was running for Parliamentary office. It's all right there in the Parliamentary Record recorded during a post-election investigation.

The essence:

"Running as a moderate Liberal, Trollope spent roughly the equivalent of $43,000 in today’s money to campaign in a borough of Yorkshire that was notorious for corrupt elections. In his autobiography, he reflected that the local Liberal officials had only endorsed him because he was willing to pay for the race out of pocket. Despite his investment he finished last, and the seat went to a Conservative candidate. A subsequent voter fraud investigation found corruption so extensive that the borough was disenfranchised. "

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at November 22, 2020 01:36 PM (bPH26)

445 Matt Goldman's books are set in Minnesota, which is interesting.
I think he's another former screen writer, and it seems to me that they are always pretty good at telling the story without wandering around too much

Posted by: artemis at November 22, 2020 01:41 PM (AwPyG)

446 When we really need to get all the emotional backlog out with a good cathartic crying session...
-------

I occasionally have coffee with a 93 year-old fellow. He's looking rather fragile, but is still driving, and is perfectly cogent. He was raised under the poorest Appalachian circumstances that you can imagine

He has a fascinating history. As young man he was a lightweight boxer and pool-hustler, did a stint in the Army , later joined the Navy. After that, used GI bill to obtain a degree in education, and was a part of the County school system for the rest of his life. He's just one of those fine people.

He is always clean shaven, and nicely dressed. No tennis shoes for him. He's lost two wives. Once a week he goes to the grocery store, and picks up groceries that he delivers to elderly people who can't get out.

The other day we were just having light conversation, about his old times. Without any particular prelude, he looked down and said, 'Mike...about twice a year, at home alone, I just break down and cry...'

That was it. I had no idea what to say. I just assured him that it happens to most of us. But, it was damned humbling when I considered that this guy was not some weak simpering old person. On the contrary, he's tough, and probably known times that the rest of us can't imagine.

Life can be hard.

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at November 22, 2020 01:53 PM (GBHAb)

447 445
Matt Goldman's books are set in Minnesota, which is interesting.
I
think he's another former screen writer, and it seems to me that they
are always pretty good at telling the story without wandering around too
much
Artemis,
Liked it enough to look for another of his books to read. Be interesting if it was set in Minnesota as well.

Posted by: Charlotte at November 22, 2020 03:15 PM (6Lsms)

448 Okay. Why? Vox Day is, um, not the easiest person to deal with. Could it be that it's not about the wrongthink in his books but about something else?

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 01:24 PM (qDSku)

I don't know the reason why, exactly. But I think of Vox Day as the fringe outlier, the guy they go after first who few are going to complain about not being around. But it won't end there. You know, "first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out...", etc.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 03:33 PM (lkGaW)

449 I don't know the reason why, exactly. But I think of Vox Day as the fringe outlier, the guy they go after first who few are going to complain about not being around. But it won't end there. You know, "first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out...", etc.

Posted by: President-Elect OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader, Pants Monitor & Social Distancing Professional at November 22, 2020 03:33 PM

Okay, fair enough. There's an old saying to the effect that the problem with defending free speech is you often find yourself defending scoundrels, for it is against scoundrels that laws limiting speech are first enacted. I've often found that old saying to be true.

Besides, I think I've whipped this poor horse carcass sufficiently for even the most strident among us.

None of this should imply that I know what the hell any of us should do.

Posted by: Cybersmythe at November 22, 2020 04:05 PM (qDSku)

450 Was a big fan of Michael Connelly ... Purchased all his books either paper or Kindle... Got his latest, "The Law of Innocence," and Connelly, who has been trending Left, uses the book to attack Trump supporters as biased, etc. Enough is enough. Went to Amazon's customer service, complained and demanded my money back. They refunded it without a whimper which tells me they have had other complaints. But they had the last word... deleted by review on their website.

Posted by: James Lewis at November 23, 2020 10:01 AM (YIiS5)

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