The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Book Thread
Front-Ranger:
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.
Front-Ranger:
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.
--- Quote from: Chanterais on May 01, 2006, 10:58:47 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---
Front-Ranger:
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!!
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on November 03, 2006, 11:15:11 am ---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.
--- End quote ---
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
Front-Ranger:
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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