What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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Default User BR
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Default User BR »

Valuethinker wrote:Before it was fashionable so to do, Schmitz wrote strong, believable female characters in Science Fiction.
At one point many of Schmitz's works were available in the Baen Free Library in electronic form. Unfortunately, not so at this time. There's a message about reconstructing it and that some titles being temporarily unavailable. It's not clear which ones might return.


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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

Default User BR wrote:
Valuethinker wrote:Before it was fashionable so to do, Schmitz wrote strong, believable female characters in Science Fiction.
At one point many of Schmitz's works were available in the Baen Free Library in electronic form. Unfortunately, not so at this time. There's a message about reconstructing it and that some titles being temporarily unavailable. It's not clear which ones might return.


Brian
Thank you!
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by MP173 »

"My Life" by Bill Clinton. Picked it up for $2.

Been away from reading for awhile...busy planting garden.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by FabLab »

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo.
The fundamental things apply as time goes by -- Herman Hupfeld
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Fallible »

nisiprius wrote:"Our American Cousin" (play) by Tom Taylor, and if anyone knows what stage directions like "Exit Binny, L. 3 E." please let me know. I assume L means stage left; I think 1, 2, and 3 might mean downstage, in between, and upstage???? But what does "E" mean?
...
I'm sure you've already googled for this, but I remember when working in theatre productions many years ago the directions included Enter, like enter stage right, stage left, or Exit stage right, etc.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

"The First Rule" by Robert Crais.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Default User BR »

Valuethinker wrote:
Default User BR wrote:At one point many of Schmitz's works were available in the Baen Free Library in electronic form. Unfortunately, not so at this time.
Thank you!
It's too bad the Schmitz works are off. I had planned to recommend that people go there to try them. I went to get links, and found that they weren't available.


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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by ruralavalon »

I am re-reading The Four Pillars of Investing, by William Bernstein.

Also reading High Sierra, by W. R. Burnett. Ageing gangster gets involved with neophytes in a robbery scheme.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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ruralavalon wrote:I am re-reading The Four Pillars of Investing, by William Bernstein.

Also reading High Sierra, by W. R. Burnett. Ageing gangster gets involved with neophytes in a robbery scheme.
"The Four Pillars of Investing" by William Bernstein is a terrific book!
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by dianna »

I have been away from reading for awhile due to crazy-busy work commitments; now finding myself this holiday weekend immersed in 3 books I started awhile ago:

"This Will Make You Smarter" by John Brockman - a compilation of short essays by thought leaders of various disciplines. Good for picking up when you only have a few moments but need some intellectual prodding.

"Becoming Attached" by Robert Karen, PhD - a phenomenal tome on the history and developmental progressions and findings related to attachment theory.

"Still Alice" by Lisa Genova - a novel written by a neuroscientist who has a solid scientific understanding of the science behind Alzheimer's disease, who then transforms her knowledge into a fictional story about Alice.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

"The Boomerang Clue" by Agatha Christie.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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I am re-reading Your Money and Your Brain, by Jason Zweig.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield by Jeremy Scahill
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

Hard Time, by Sara Paretsky. Rereading it. Started it without realizing I'd already read it, but it's good enough and forgotten enough to read again. It's one of her V. I. Washawski novels.

I only just noticed it but I do detect some similarities between V. I. Washawski and Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone novels (alphabetically named, V is for Vengeance being the latest)--other than the obvious similarities of their being about female private detectives.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by gkaplan »

I read all the Sara Paretsky V. I. Washawski mysteries when they came out in the eighties, primarily because of the Chicago background – I'm from Chicago. For some reason, she stopped writing them for awhile. When she picked them up again, I never got around to resuming reading them.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

gkaplan wrote:I read all the Sara Paretsky V. I. Washawski mysteries when they came out in the eighties, primarily because of the Chicago background – I'm from Chicago. For some reason, she stopped writing them for awhile. When she picked them up again, I never got around to resuming reading them.
Ghost Country, which is set in Chicago but isn't in the V. I. Washarski series, is... strange. Some unforgettable things in it, but also weird, since there is a supernatural element. One imagines that "Mara" must have some resemblance to Sara...
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

"Obsession" by Jonathan Kellerman.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by MktGoddess »

Just finished reading the 10-book Martin Beck detective procedural series (translated from the Swedish)! All ten of them. Written in the 1960s by the husband-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, the books provide a fascinating glimpse of society and politics at the time and are engaging character studies and tales of crimes and their solutions. They are considered by many to be precursors to the Stieg Larsson books. Highly recommended! Read them in order if you can. I got most of them from my public library and purchased 3 which I am donating, to complete the library's collection.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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Recently finished Atonement by Ian McEwan and started Fifth Business by Robertson Davies.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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MktGoddess wrote:Just finished reading the 10-book Martin Beck detective procedural series (translated from the Swedish)! All ten of them. Written in the 1960s by the husband-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, the books provide a fascinating glimpse of society and politics at the time and are engaging character studies and tales of crimes and their solutions. They are considered by many to be precursors to the Stieg Larsson books. Highly recommended! Read them in order if you can. I got most of them from my public library and purchased 3 which I am donating, to complete the library's collection.
I'm halfway through but I usually put a book or two in between selections so as not to burn out on the series.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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Currently reading The Black Swan by Taleb, Nassim
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

MktGoddess wrote:Just finished reading the 10-book Martin Beck detective procedural series (translated from the Swedish)! All ten of them. Written in the 1960s by the husband-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, the books provide a fascinating glimpse of society and politics at the time and are engaging character studies and tales of crimes and their solutions. They are considered by many to be precursors to the Stieg Larsson books. Highly recommended! Read them in order if you can. I got most of them from my public library and purchased 3 which I am donating, to complete the library's collection.
Wow! Are there ten? I don't think I've read more than four or five... and most of them long enough ago that I could probably reread them.
Last edited by nisiprius on Fri May 31, 2013 1:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Fallible »

MktGoddess wrote:Just finished reading the 10-book Martin Beck detective procedural series (translated from the Swedish)! All ten of them. Written in the 1960s by the husband-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, the books provide a fascinating glimpse of society and politics at the time and are engaging character studies and tales of crimes and their solutions. They are considered by many to be precursors to the Stieg Larsson books. Highly recommended! Read them in order if you can. I got most of them from my public library and purchased 3 which I am donating, to complete the library's collection.
Just wanted to compliment you on the book donations to your library. I've occasionally donated DVDs to replace damaged or lost DVDs in a series I especially liked. One can either complain about a library's shortcomings or one can do something about it. Simple as that.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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Insane City, by Dave Barry. Very funny. Two days before his wedding in Miami, the groom rescues some Haitian boat people and goes on a crime spree with an orangutan.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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John Huston: Courage and Art. A biography of the great movie director.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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Pretty good if you like action.

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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by ruralavalon »

Not a Suicide Pact:The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, by Richard Posner. The author is Judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, in Chicago.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by VictoriaF »

For those looking for reading ideas, here are reviews of Science fiction novels for economists and More science fiction for economists.

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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Igglesman »

Gulp by Mary Roach. If you like Mary, this is one of her best. Very funny and extensive research.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

Igglesman wrote:Gulp by Mary Roach. If you like Mary, this is one of her best. Very funny and extensive research.
I like Mary. Thanks for the alert.

I am about four pages from the end of The World of Null-A, by A. E. Van Vogt. Every bit as bad as I remembered, though with great narrative drive. This is probably the last rereading, as the paperback is now so brittle that each page detaches as I turn it. The very first time I read it, I was so young that I sort of assumed the "science" in it must be real.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Fallible »

Rereading Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, but probably will stop after Childhood, which was the most memorable from my first reading of the entire book. It was Tolstoy’s first effort at fiction (but based on real life) and he was just in his early 20s when he started it.

A curious aside (at least to me, this being one of the world's greatest writers) is an unlikely sequence that doesn't seem to be explained by any shift in narrative viewpoint: T writes that his teacher left the classroom, went into another room and “slammed the door.” He then writes that he “went to the door to listen.” But he then goes on to describe actions he can't possibly see, i.e., what the teacher and another man inside the room are doing: “sitting by the window mending a boot,” and “nodding affirmatively,” and “laying his awl down and pulling the waxed thread through with both hands,” and “lifting his eyes and his snuff box toward the ceiling,” etc. I’m probably just missing something but if not, I wonder why the translator or an editor didn't catch this. Then again, maybe somebody did later on, as I’m referring to a 1964 edition of a Penguin paperback.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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Fallible wrote:Rereading Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, but probably will stop after Childhood, which was the most memorable from my first reading of the entire book. It was Tolstoy’s first effort at fiction (but based on real life) and he was just in his early 20s when he started it.

A curious aside (at least to me, this being one of the world's greatest writers) is an unlikely sequence that doesn't seem to be explained by any shift in narrative viewpoint: T writes that his teacher left the classroom, went into another room and “slammed the door.” He then writes that he “went to the door to listen.” But he then goes on to describe actions he can't possibly see, i.e., what the teacher and another man inside the room are doing: “sitting by the window mending a boot,” and “nodding affirmatively,” and “laying his awl down and pulling the waxed thread through with both hands,” and “lifting his eyes and his snuff box toward the ceiling,” etc. I’m probably just missing something but if not, I wonder why the translator or an editor didn't catch this. Then again, maybe somebody did later on, as I’m referring to a 1964 edition of a Penguin paperback.
Maybe there was a window in the door.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

"The Lovers" by John Connolly.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by denismurf »

Thanks for the reminder that Richard Posner is still around and writing. One of the few books I read twice was his Sex and Reason.

Right now I'm halfway through The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels. I've always found her easy to read and her topics interesting even for someone with no religious affiliation.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by gkaplan »

I am just starting The Family Stalker: a Suburban Detective Mystery, the second of the Jon Katz Kit Deleeuw mysteries. Actually, I am rereading the book, which I first read when it came out in the mid nineties. Katz would go on to write about five more of the Kit Deleeuw mysteries before he abandoned them to write dog stories.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by abuss368 »

Finished Steve Jobs. Incredible story.

Starting The Snowball - Warren Buffett. About 900 pages so that might take awhile.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Phineas J. Whoopee »

nisiprius wrote:"Our American Cousin" (play) by Tom Taylor, and if anyone knows what stage directions like "Exit Binny, L. 3 E." please let me know. I assume L means stage left; I think 1, 2, and 3 might mean downstage, in between, and upstage???? But what does "E" mean?
...
Hi nisi,

Ask and you shall receive.

I'll say it simply, then I'll give a fuller explanation in case anybody is still interested, or even awake. :happy

Before everybody falls asleep:

Yes, L and R mean stage left and stage right. You'll notice in the script you've quoted it's really L. and R. - the periods mean they're abbreviations, and are from a more pedantic era (Our American Cousin was first produced in New York, at Laura Keene's Theatre, in 1858).

1, 2, and 3 do roughly correspond to down-, center-, and up-stage in this and many cases, but that will not be true for every play in all of time and space. In the details I'll explain.

E also has a period because it's an abbreviation: E. means "entrance," through which one may enter or exit.

After many have already fallen asleep:

1, 2, and 3 refer to "ins," that is, the plural of the word "in." In theatre jargon, an in is a horizontal slice of the stage running the entire width. The term is most frequently used with respect to technically-capable proscenium theatres. They are the areas where scenery can be "flown in," that is, moved down into audience view on ropes or cables, usually with some sort of counterweights, suspended from a space high above the stage; and which later can be "flown out." In old black-and-white farces the weights are immortalized as sandbags which invariably hit characters in the head leading to much slapstickistic hilarity.

For everybody's convenience, and also to hide all the stage machinery thereby preserving the illusion, the ins are delineated by curtains above and to the sides of the stage, respectively called the border and legs. The border serves to hide any hardware above the flown-in piece; and the legs hide the sandbags and help create more backstage space outside the audience's sight line.

In the 1800s, and even the 1900s and the 2000s, most theatres so equipped have hardware to support three ins. A few have more and can therefore run still more effects. If for example there are 5 ins, which is not unknown, in 3 is the center horizontal slice, 1 would be down, 2 down center, 4 up center, and 5 up.

Tom Taylor, the playwright, was writing for the most common theatre layout in his day. How can I say that for certain?

Because the very first words in the very first stage direction for the very first scene are:
"Drawing room in 3."

Taylor is saying that all the rest of his stage directions refer to a theatre with three ins. {Yes, one can also use that terminology differently, but in 3 would only be different if the theatre had > 3 ins, and I've never known a playwright (or director) to use less capability than was available.}

The L. 3 E. notation is not in use any longer. Today we would say something like "Exit Binny UL."

In case anybody is still with me at all:

Skimming through the play I see the stage directions for Act 1 scene 2 refer to the 0 in. That's the space between the back of the proscenium and the first border / legs defining the front of the first in. Often, not absolutely always, right behind the arch are located the teaser and tormentors. Those are solid scene pieces, not curtains, which both hide stage machinery and change the size of the opening in the so-called picture frame. In 0 is behind where the main and fire curtains can be flown in, but in front of where the closest-to-the-audience other scenery can be flown.

And now for a perfectly safe personal revelation because nobody could possibly quote it because that would mean admitting they'd read all the way through the teaser and tormentors part:

I knew what L. and R., and 1, 2, and 3 meant, but I didn't recognize the suffix E. People just don't talk that way anymore. It took me quite some time this afternoon to work it out. I had a number of conjectures, including entrance, but it wasn't until I found this link from a 1915 publication that I knew for sure and was ready to post.

Any other questions?

PJW
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

Thank you very much, Phineas. I do have a question, but I'm taking it to PM.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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I just finished And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini and Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden.

Still reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

Since I liked The Atomic Times, by Michael Harris, a memoir of his year on Eniwetok Island during the H-bomb tests. Since I liked it, I have started his 1968 book, Always On Sunday: An Inside View of Ed Sullivan, the Beatles, Elvis, Sinatra & Ed's Other Guests, but am not so crazy about it. It is a little too much in the string-of-short-anecdotes category. Still, it is interesting to me, because of course I grew up watching the Ed Sullivan Show every Sunday--I even remember when the official credits called it "Toast of the Town," though nobody ever called it anything but "the Ed Sullivan show," and refreshes my memory of many moments from that time. I think this is going to be a skim-and-skip, nibble-here-and-there book.
Last edited by nisiprius on Sat Jun 08, 2013 7:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by MktGoddess »

Fallible wrote:
MktGoddess wrote:Just finished reading the 10-book Martin Beck detective procedural series (translated from the Swedish)! All ten of them. Written in the 1960s by the husband-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, the books provide a fascinating glimpse of society and politics at the time and are engaging character studies and tales of crimes and their solutions. They are considered by many to be precursors to the Stieg Larsson books. Highly recommended! Read them in order if you can. I got most of them from my public library and purchased 3 which I am donating, to complete the library's collection.
Just wanted to compliment you on the book donations to your library. I've occasionally donated DVDs to replace damaged or lost DVDs in a series I especially liked. One can either complain about a library's shortcomings or one can do something about it. Simple as that.
Thanks,Fallible. I'm fortunate to live in a community which values its public library and just completed an 83,000+ sq. ft. expansion. It is heavily used by the public.

It's where I used to go to research Value Line for my investment club!
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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"SS-GB" by Len Deighton. (Thanks to Valuethinker for the suggestion.)
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Robert C F »

Listening to audio of Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Lincoln and his cabinet, Team of Rivals, while I do my gym workouts.

Also, Solin's Smartest Portfolio You'll Ever Own.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by ruralavalon »

I am re-reading Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. I can't help it, I'm just a young lad at heart.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders - Bernard Bailyn
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

"Void Moon" by Michael Connelly.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by ENE703 »

Just finished rereading Civilization by Niall Ferguson and The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window by Jonas Jonasson
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by gkaplan »

I'm about a third of the way through Death and the Dancing Footman in my quest to read all the Ngaio Marsh mysteries in the order in which they were written.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Bungo »

I recently finished Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. It ends with a riddle which I thought I was too dense to fully understand, or perhaps I had not read closely enough. But after a bit of googling, it seems I will have to read the rest of the Deptford trilogy (The Manticore and World of Wonders) to get the whole story. This is no hardship as the first book was very well written and, at 250 pages, did not overstay its welcome. I expect more of the same from the remaining two.

But I like mixing in some variety, so I'm currently reading Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. Also still about midway through the first volume of Robert Caro's LBJ biography, which has been on ice for the past few weeks for no good reason. Time to pick that one up again soon.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

I love the Robertson Davies books--well, the three trilogies, anyway--Deptford, Salterton, Cornish--I never was able to wrap my head around Samuel Marchbanks. However I can't say I was ever able to make head or tail of the heavy and symbolically-freighted plots. They're not mysteries, and if you're talking about the one where the guy dies with the paperweight in his mouth, by the time I found out the answer it didn't make sense to me anyway. It's just a trip, people you meet, things you see. I confess that my favorite of all of them is the least serious of them, the one about the amateur theatrical production, which is it? Tempest-Tost.
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