Author Topic: Book Thread  (Read 41556 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Book Thread
« Reply #90 on: November 26, 2010, 11:13:38 pm »
Cool! You may have noticed the drawbridge rising on the bridge...just as we arrived there, a three-masted schooner sailed through! I was told that rarely happens anymore.
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Re: Book Thread
« Reply #91 on: January 02, 2011, 08:44:30 pm »
Friend Chanterais and Henrypie, I miss you both so much! I just finished reading Alex M Smith's Friends, Lovers, Chocolate. I so enjoyed it and wish so much that I could talk to you about it! I also read all of Vol. I of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes this past year, and am quite deep into Vol. II.

Sorry I went awol for a while.  Had to kill an exam dead.  And now that I've slain the beast, I'm back to reveling in this thread.  I love the stories that come out when people talk about their favourite books.  Like pieces of music, I guess we all associate certain novels with certain places, or certain times in our lives, and the people who were with us then.  We talk about the books we love, and in doing so we are telling about ourselves.

...I ain't religious, but I am evangelical about the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books.  You can't tell me that Mma. Ramotswe doesn't exist.  Of course she does!  To anyone who hasn't read them, run, don't walk to the nearest shop and get the first in the series, the above mentioned Number One Ladies Detective Agency.  Your world will immediately become a cheerier, better place.  You will also develop an unhealthy addiction to redbush tea, but I can't be held responsible for that.

...Books:  to sedately celebrate having demolished my first exam, I am tucking myself up tonight with an old copy of The Sign of Four, a little Sherlock Holmes mystery courtesy of Herr Conan Doyle.  I anticipate fog, jangling carriages, ingenious solutions and dastardly villains.  Maybe a rabid dog in there somewhere.

Interesting facts: Sherlock Holmes never wore a deer-stalker hat, never smoked a pipe, and certainly never, ever uttered the immortal phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson."  Filthy lies.  It's all ornamentation by the movies.  Like cats, you just can't trust them.
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Re: Book Thread
« Reply #92 on: March 18, 2011, 09:36:32 pm »
Just started The Comforts of a Muddy Sunday by Alexander McCall Smith, yet another book in the Isabel Dalhousie series, and I've already found quotable passages. This from page 4:

"...although it would soon be eight o'clock, there was still a good deal of sunlight about--soft, slanting sunlight, with the quality that goes with light that has been about for the whole day and is now comfortable, used."

How well I remember that light. Even at 11 o'clock it was still twilight...and Kelda and I went to explore an ancient castle ruin south of Glasgow.Sigh...

Isabel, who is walking in a park in Edinburgh at the time, is a philosopher and editor of a journal of philosophy. When she was ousted from the editorship in a political coup, she simply has her lawyer (counselor) buy the magazine. I like that!!
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Re: Book Thread
« Reply #93 on: May 17, 2014, 05:21:52 pm »
I am listening to a series of lectures given by Robert Thurman for the second time. It is called "Liberation Upon Hearing In the Between." "In the Between" is his way of translating the title of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. THe latter title is wrong, he says, because there are no dead, there is no such thing. It is an immensely interesting and enlightening series of lectures, and I will write some highlights here. I don't know if the lectures exist as a book, but he has written many books on Tibetan Buddhism.

One last thing, Buddhism is not a religion. It is an educational system. THere are no gods to be worshipped in Buddhism, only ordinary people like you or I who have become enlightened.

Here's a 40-minute documentary about the Tibetan Book of the Dead that friend Rayn shared with me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ermcc6iDqQA&noredirect=1
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Re: Book Thread
« Reply #94 on: May 25, 2014, 06:36:22 pm »
I have finished Spirit of Steamboat by Craig Johnson, a Wyoming-based novel. I've now begun another Wyoming-based novel, Where Rivers Change Direction, by Mark Spragg. It is set at a dude ranch east of Yellowstone and west of Cody, so you can imagine my interest rising, since I've been to a dude ranch there (Goff Creek) three times.
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Re: Book Thread
« Reply #95 on: May 25, 2014, 09:01:34 pm »
And, I am going to start another book at the same time, If, by Rudyard Kipling.
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Re: Book Thread
« Reply #96 on: May 26, 2014, 08:58:23 pm »
I've now begun another Wyoming-based novel, Where Rivers Change Direction, by Mark Spragg. It is set at a dude ranch east of Yellowstone and west of Cody, so you can imagine my interest rising, since I've been to a dude ranch there (Goff Creek) three times.

A couple of things I've learned from the novel are that the word Absaroka (the name of the mountain range there) means raven, and that the full moon in late May/early June is called the full fatted moon.
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Book Thread
« Reply #97 on: July 30, 2014, 10:47:03 pm »
Good read: The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, by Nathaniel Philbrick (2010).

Since it appears I'm not getting to visit the battlefield this year, I decided to read about it. Philbrick tells a very clear story about what was a confused and confusing military action, and there are a lots of maps to help visualize the action. He extensively employs recorded reminiscences of individuals, both white and Indian, who were there that day.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.