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Post by Gandalf on Apr 2, 2022 17:45:23 GMT -5
I'd finally finished Neuromancer last week (once I actually picked it up, couldn't put it down and was finished in total in a couple hours a day over a couple days. It's those pesky weeks that get away from you where you don't read at all!) I'm starting Bruce Sterling's Pirate Utopia today. I picked up William Gibson's 2nd novel Count Zero to read after this as a follow up to Neuromancer, and his 3rd novel Mona Lisa Overdrive.
Scattered somewhere in between I'll read Gibson's Burning Chrome shorts, and finish Thus Spake Zarathustra from Nietzsche at some point as it's sat around for like 9 months unfinished.
I have most of those books. Sounds like I need to read the Neuromancer series.
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Zach
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Post by Zach on Apr 2, 2022 17:55:15 GMT -5
It's great if you like the cyberpunk theme and a fairly quick read. Don't know what I'll think after the next two books but they're pretty highly acclaimed and recommended so I'm going to knock out all of Gibson's books this year.
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Post by don on Apr 3, 2022 8:04:11 GMT -5
I expect a writer or a film-maker to know what he is doing. Intimately. If he shows he doesn’t he loses both my respect and my attention. I remember reading a book on Merrill’s Marauders. At least until I got to the part where a Marine flips the “switch” on his Garand from semi- to full-automatic. Trash can. Sooner or later most will write something silly concerning firearms. I have been collecting, shooting, reloading and gunsmithing my own firearms for 40 years now. Many/most authors will fail me in some way at some point concerning gun related esoterica.
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Post by Plainsman on Apr 3, 2022 8:33:45 GMT -5
To quote Harry, “A man should know his limitations.” If he isn’t expert in a subject he should avoid getting too specific about it. The punji sticks await!
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Post by toshtego on Apr 3, 2022 10:00:28 GMT -5
I expect a writer or a film-maker to know what he is doing. Intimately. If he shows he doesn’t he loses both my respect and my attention. I remember reading a book on Merrill’s Marauders. At least until I got to the part where a Marine flips the “switch” on his Garand from semi- to full-automatic. Trash can. That appears to be an error the editor should have caught. I assume the author meant BAR but the wrong name got in there. Yes, it is annoying. I had a friend here in northern NM who was one. Originally from Oklahoma. He hated to talk about those days but would sometimes bring it up around a campfire after supper. He was promoted to Glory some years ago.
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Post by Ronv69 on Apr 3, 2022 12:01:55 GMT -5
I expect a writer or a film-maker to know what he is doing. Intimately. If he shows he doesn’t he loses both my respect and my attention. I remember reading a book on Merrill’s Marauders. At least until I got to the part where a Marine flips the “switch” on his Garand from semi- to full-automatic. Trash can. Sooner or later most will write something silly concerning firearms. I have been collecting, shooting, reloading and gunsmithing my own firearms for 40 years now. Many/most authors will fail me in some way at some point concerning gun related esoterica. Patricia Cornwell is the worst about firearms, but it hasn't hurt her sales. Except for me. And I doubt that she cares.
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Post by toshtego on Apr 3, 2022 12:15:37 GMT -5
I expect a writer or a film-maker to know what he is doing. Intimately. If he shows he doesn’t he loses both my respect and my attention. I remember reading a book on Merrill’s Marauders. At least until I got to the part where a Marine flips the “switch” on his Garand from semi- to full-automatic. Trash can. Sooner or later most will write something silly concerning firearms. I have been collecting, shooting, reloading and gunsmithing my own firearms for 40 years now. Many/most authors will fail me in some way at some point concerning gun related esoterica. Then came Stephen Hunter.
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Post by don on Apr 3, 2022 16:48:25 GMT -5
True. About as accurate as it gets.
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rastewart
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Post by rastewart on Apr 4, 2022 13:41:39 GMT -5
Got mildly turned off of Hillerman when he had Chee “take the safety off his Ruger revolver.” I don't remember that detail; most likely it was in one of the books I didn't read. I think the possibility of making that kind of slip is a nagging worry to many if not most authors, and a cause of chagrin when one manages to get through all the rereads and edits and proofreads and make it into print; as it likely will eventually, if you write and publish enough.
Puts me in mind of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. I read through the first five about fifteen years ago and hope to get back to them at some point. They aren't Tolkien- or Rowling-level literature, but they are, to use an old Britishism that is most apt here, ripping yarns. But I had one of Those Moments in the first chapter of the first novel, Storm Front, in which Dresden introduces himself:
Grr. My hometown of half a century has a downtown, a.k.a. the Loop. We have a neighborhood called Uptown. But outside of the occasional real-estate ad, we don't have a Midtown. So from page two, I knew the author had never lived in Chicago, and it shows. To give Butcher his due, apparently he started the series as a 25-year-old student, and I do appreciate his taking my city as a setting. Still, at least in those first five books, Chicago and its suburbs are like a not very artfully painted stage set; the city never comes to life, the way it does in, say, Sara Paretsky's books.
Pardon the ramble. I'm not a gun guy, but I'm a Chicago guy, and I get how irritating it can be when an author gets it wrong about something you care about.
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rastewart
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Post by rastewart on Apr 4, 2022 13:46:36 GMT -5
I also read a lot of his books many years ago (don't know if it was all of them at the time). I'm not normally a mystery reader, but I found his portrayal of the Four Corners area and of the meeting of Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, and white cultures. You would probably like the Nora Kelly series then. Thanks for the tip; I didn't know about this series and will check it out.
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Post by Plainsman on Apr 4, 2022 13:54:22 GMT -5
Should be easy for an author, or an editor, to find a “gun guy” they could hit up for a quick check. Or any other expert for that matter. Fact-checkers do it all the time. I’m afraid too many go by the old “nobody will notice” rule so dear to film directors. Kinda like “I don’t know that so nobody else will either.”
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Post by instymp on Apr 5, 2022 8:01:22 GMT -5
Should be easy for an author, or an editor, to find a “gun guy” they could hit up for a quick check. Or any other expert for that matter. Fact-checkers do it all the time. I’m afraid too many go by the old “nobody will notice” rule so dear to film directors. Kinda like “I don’t know that so nobody else will either.” About as easy as finding one that tells them not to point guns at crew and pull the trigger.
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Post by toshtego on Apr 5, 2022 11:21:03 GMT -5
This mystery Spy WWII novel, The Unlikely Spy by Daniel Silva, undergoing reading now, features a beautiful German lady spy armed with a Mauser 6.35mm pistol with silencer. I neve knew such weapon existed. Had the chance to buy a .380 Mauser HSc pistol in the early 1990s but fell down on the job, once again. BTW, the 6.35 mm was plenty of gun for this one. She is an "eye shooter".
BTW, Churchill, Adolf, Ike, Himmler, von Rundstedt all make appearances. Interesting to read them as characters in a novel.
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exbenedict
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Post by exbenedict on Apr 5, 2022 20:55:07 GMT -5
Journal of Finance and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis
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Post by Darin on Apr 6, 2022 8:34:27 GMT -5
Lol ... sounds like my reading. Currently halfway through "An Algorithmic Approach to Hemostasis Testing". Invigorating! 😅
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Post by toshtego on Apr 6, 2022 8:39:25 GMT -5
Now rereading "Das Kapital" by Groucho Marx, in the original German. A copy of Langenscheidt at my side. "Ach, der erde!"
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Post by instymp on Apr 6, 2022 8:41:39 GMT -5
This mystery Spy WWII novel, The Unlikely Spy by Daniel Silva, undergoing reading now, features a beautiful German lady spy armed with a Mauser 6.35mm pistol with silencer. I neve knew such weapon existed. Had the chance to buy a .380 Mauser HSc pistol in the early 1990s but fell down on the job, once again. BTW, the 6.35 mm was plenty of gun for this one. She is an "eye shooter". BTW, Churchill, Adolf, Ike, Himmler, von Rundstedt all make appearances. Interesting to read them as characters in a novel. Good book, I liked all his.
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Post by oldcajun123 on Apr 6, 2022 9:19:26 GMT -5
 If you guys would like a good Western Yarn, try reading Paradise Sky by John Lansdale, I’m reading it now, Damn good!
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Post by don on Apr 6, 2022 16:58:49 GMT -5
This mystery Spy WWII novel, The Unlikely Spy by Daniel Silva, undergoing reading now, features a beautiful German lady spy armed with a Mauser 6.35mm pistol with silencer. I neve knew such weapon existed. Had the chance to buy a .380 Mauser HSc pistol in the early 1990s but fell down on the job, once again. BTW, the 6.35 mm was plenty of gun for this one. She is an "eye shooter". BTW, Churchill, Adolf, Ike, Himmler, von Rundstedt all make appearances. Interesting to read them as characters in a novel. 6.35mm is just the European way of referring to the .25acp. Silly Europeans….
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Post by don on Apr 6, 2022 17:04:25 GMT -5
Should be easy for an author, or an editor, to find a “gun guy” they could hit up for a quick check. Or any other expert for that matter. Fact-checkers do it all the time. I’m afraid too many go by the old “nobody will notice” rule so dear to film directors. Kinda like “I don’t know that so nobody else will either.” You will also hear bullshit on occasion from “gun guys”. No one is ever 100% accurate. Sometimes I think directors actually enjoy annoying firearms enthusiasts with blatant errors. Like in the movie “Posse” when Mario Van Peebles fires his Colt SAA, or maybe it was a Remington 1873 single action, and an entire 45acp cartridge comes out of the muzzle. So over the top ridiculous, that when I saw it, I think it may have caused blood to squirt from my eyes.
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Post by Ronv69 on Apr 6, 2022 20:55:02 GMT -5
Should be easy for an author, or an editor, to find a “gun guy” they could hit up for a quick check. Or any other expert for that matter. Fact-checkers do it all the time. I’m afraid too many go by the old “nobody will notice” rule so dear to film directors. Kinda like “I don’t know that so nobody else will either.” You will also hear bullshit on occasion from “gun guys”. No one is ever 100% accurate. Sometimes I think directors actually enjoy annoying firearms enthusiasts with blatant errors. Like in the movie “Posse” when Mario Van Peebles fires his Colt SAA, or maybe it was a Remington 1873 single action, and an entire 45acp cartridge comes out of the muzzle. So over the top ridiculous, that when I saw it, I think it may have caused blood to squirt from my eyes. That's hard to imagine, but I'll take your word for it instead of having to watch the movie. 😉🤠
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Post by don on Apr 7, 2022 17:23:58 GMT -5
You will be amazed. And bored. The movie sucks.
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Post by Ronv69 on Apr 7, 2022 19:12:27 GMT -5
You will be amazed. And bored. The movie sucks. I figured. 😉🤠
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Post by toshtego on Apr 9, 2022 20:31:25 GMT -5
Daniel Silva's The Unlikely Spy, peoples heads are exploding when shot with a Mauser 6.35mm. Sometimes shot through a car window and then, "blooey", there goes skull pieces. At least if he had armed his German spies with the old Model C-96 I could accept his writing.
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Post by Ronv69 on Apr 9, 2022 21:52:28 GMT -5
Daniel Silva's The Unlikely Spy, peoples heads are exploding when shot with a Mauser 6.35mm. Sometimes shot through a car window and then, "blooey", there goes skull pieces. At least if he had armed his German spies with the old Model C-96 I could accept his writing. I have some 7.62x25 Tokarev hollow points that I think I'm going to test on a melon. I expect it to be messy. I know that it's an order of magnitude more powerful than the Mauser round.
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Post by toshtego on Apr 10, 2022 11:25:34 GMT -5
Daniel Silva's The Unlikely Spy, peoples heads are exploding when shot with a Mauser 6.35mm. Sometimes shot through a car window and then, "blooey", there goes skull pieces. At least if he had armed his German spies with the old Model C-96 I could accept his writing. I have some 7.62x25 Tokarev hollow points that I think I'm going to test on a melon. I expect it to be messy. I know that it's an order of magnitude more powerful than the Mauser round. Always admired the Tokarev and wanted one. Then the prices rose.
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Post by Ronv69 on Apr 10, 2022 11:27:14 GMT -5
I have some 7.62x25 Tokarev hollow points that I think I'm going to test on a melon. I expect it to be messy. I know that it's an order of magnitude more powerful than the Mauser round. Always admired the Tokarev and wanted one. Then the prices rose. I gave $225 for mine. I carry it when we go to Shreveport. It fits a 1911 holster just fine. I wanted a Nagant revolver but then the prices went up and they became rare.
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Post by trailboss on Apr 10, 2022 15:13:17 GMT -5
"The Gift Of Fear" By Gavin DeBecker is a great book about situational awareness, and not ignoring the gift of fear that we are born with. It is not a gun book, quite the opposite, he thinks that only his executive detail security teams and cops should have them, but he refers to it occasionally. I told my family members to ignore that part. He gives anecdotal real life stories about how the con men/ criminals gain trust in their victims, quite subtly in a society where people are conditioned not to judge others or dismiss the gut feeling that is there for a reason. I discussed a lot of what was in the book with a homicide detective buddy and he confirmed how these things play out so often in crimes he investigated. He said he cannot recount the times he interviewed different parties where they admit "I thought something was funny about that guy", or something they had seen that was a huge clue that bad things are afoot. It will be grandpa and granddaughter time as the girls get older and we have some study sessions coupled with firearms training. But avoidance is worth gold. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_FearCopies are cheap. www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&tn=the%20gift%20of%20fear&an=De%20Becker
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Post by jeffd on Apr 11, 2022 10:34:22 GMT -5
I just started "Our Mutual Friend", Charles Dickens's last novel. Wonderful fun deeply harrowing book.
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msokeefe
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Post by msokeefe on Apr 12, 2022 18:47:44 GMT -5
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