msokeefe
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Post by msokeefe on Apr 12, 2022 18:50:54 GMT -5
A year before Major Winters passed, he gave a lecture at the township public library. I found out a week later. My wife and I were so upset.
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Post by toshtego on Apr 13, 2022 18:45:20 GMT -5
Robert Harris novel, Enigma. A mystery befalls Bletchley Park as the British attempt to break the German "Shark" code used by U-boats. A huge convoy is approaching a Wolf Pack of 43 submarines. Will the Brits break the code in time to avoid the Wolf Pack? Learning a bit about ciphers and bombes.
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Post by terrapinflyer on Apr 14, 2022 11:48:02 GMT -5
The Case of the Murderous Dr Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Serial Killer, by Dean Job. This one's right up my street. Sort of novelized non-fiction a la Philbrick.
I'm also reading, in Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, "Fossilized Jews and Witnessing Dinosaurs at the Creation Museum: Public Remembering and Forgetting at a Young Earth Creationist 'Memory Place,'" just for giggles. It's a look Ken Ham's Kentucky Creation Museum.
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Post by william on Apr 14, 2022 15:06:00 GMT -5
Robert Harris novel, Enigma. A mystery befalls Bletchley Park as the British attempt to break the German "Shark" code used by U-boats. A huge convoy is approaching a Wolf Pack of 43 submarines. Will the Brits break the code in time to avoid the Wolf Pack? Learning a bit about ciphers and bombes. I just watched an older (2014) movie on Netflix--"The Imitation Game"-- about breaking the German "enigma" code. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the role of the guy (Turing?) who broke the code. I found him to be an adequate Sherlock Holmes (I think he took the "quirky" part of the Holmes character to unnecessary heights), but he was impressive in this role. |
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Post by william on Apr 14, 2022 15:08:24 GMT -5
Apologies for posting in the "What are you reading thread" something that properly belongs in the "What movies have you watched" thread.
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Post by Ronv69 on Apr 14, 2022 16:53:25 GMT -5
Apologies for posting in the "What are you reading thread" something that properly belongs in the "What movies have you watched" thread. 3 wet noodle slashes and try to do better. Or not. It's only a forum. |
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Post by mgtarheel on Apr 14, 2022 18:18:58 GMT -5
The Moth Saga by Daniel Arenson
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Post by toshtego on Apr 14, 2022 21:34:07 GMT -5
Robert Harris novel, Enigma. A mystery befalls Bletchley Park as the British attempt to break the German "Shark" code used by U-boats. A huge convoy is approaching a Wolf Pack of 43 submarines. Will the Brits break the code in time to avoid the Wolf Pack? Learning a bit about ciphers and bombes. I just watched an older (2014) movie on Netflix--"The Imitation Game"-- about breaking the German "enigma" code. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the role of the guy (Turing?) who broke the code. I found him to be an adequate Sherlock Holmes (I think he took the "quirky" part of the Holmes character to unnecessary heights), but he was impressive in this role. I saw that movie when it was released into theaters. Very well done. Benedict CucumberPatch plays a sympathetic Alan Turing. Not the easiest guy to like from what I have read but very smart, as in dimensional differences. |
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Post by exbenedict on Apr 19, 2022 13:28:59 GMT -5
Biography of Sir Ernest Shackleton
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rastewart
Junior Member
Posts: 360
First Name: Rich
Favorite Pipe: Freehands, bent bulldogs, and the incomparable Peterson 303
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Post by rastewart on Apr 21, 2022 17:08:13 GMT -5
Puts me in mind of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. ... |
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Post by toshtego on Apr 22, 2022 12:25:19 GMT -5
Reading Robert Harris novel V-2.
Everything I wanted to know about early ballistic rocketry, Werner von Braun, Peenemunde and Holland, London destruction, and secret agents. My kind of story.
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Post by terrapinflyer on Apr 22, 2022 17:28:37 GMT -5
Reading Robert Harris novel V-2. Everything I wanted to know about early ballistic rocketry, Werner von Braun, Peenemunde and Holland, London destruction, and secret agents. My kind of story. So, like Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon? That had way more than I wanted to know about V-2 and a lot of other things! I'm kidding. |
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Post by sperrytops on Apr 22, 2022 18:21:31 GMT -5
Puts me in mind of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. ...Sounds interesting. I'll check it out. |
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Post by jeffd on Apr 28, 2022 16:01:03 GMT -5
Shirley Jackson novel: We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Shirley manages, IMO, to write perfect horror stories. Stories more ookie and spookie than gross, placed in a normal world where some or all the people are normal. Where the eventual horror is slow and subtle. Crackly.
Check this out: "It was a fine April morning; the sun was shining and the false glorious promises of spring were everywhere, showing oddly through the village grime."
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Post by william on Apr 28, 2022 17:14:54 GMT -5
The only work by Shirley Jackson I have read is a short story--"The Lottery." But "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" was made into a movie (Netflix). I enjoyed it, although since I have not read the novel I can offer no commentary beyond that.
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Post by toshtego on Apr 28, 2022 23:46:09 GMT -5
Reading Robert Harris novel V-2. Everything I wanted to know about early ballistic rocketry, Werner von Braun, Peenemunde and Holland, London destruction, and secret agents. My kind of story. So, like Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon? That had way more than I wanted to know about V-2 and a lot of other things! I'm kidding. Pynchon, now you are truly dating yourself! LOL. Other than circumstantial stuff, no. Not much similarity. |
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Post by terrapinflyer on Apr 29, 2022 10:31:39 GMT -5
So, like Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon? That had way more than I wanted to know about V-2 and a lot of other things! I'm kidding. Pynchon, now you are truly dating yourself! LOL. Other than circumstantial stuff, no. Not much similarity. I like some of his stuff, but that one was a slog I didn't appreciate until I was done. I like writing that takes some work to "get," but I had to put down Gravity's a few times! |
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Post by terrapinflyer on Apr 29, 2022 10:35:42 GMT -5
The only work by Shirley Jackson I have read is a short story--"The Lottery." But "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" was made into a movie (Netflix). I enjoyed it, although since I have not read the novel I can offer no commentary beyond that. I believe "Lottery" was made into a movie as well. She had a way with subtle, believable psychological horror. I still have yet to see "Castle." Maybe we'll get to it this weekend. |
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Post by jeffd on Apr 29, 2022 11:15:27 GMT -5
The only work by Shirley Jackson I have read is a short story--"The Lottery." But "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" was made into a movie (Netflix). I enjoyed it, although since I have not read the novel I can offer no commentary beyond that. I believe "Lottery" was made into a movie as well. She had a way with subtle, believable psychological horror. I still have yet to see "Castle." Maybe we'll get to it this weekend. Soon enough I will breading Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House", with such a description: "Stephen King, in his book Danse Macabre (1981), a non-fiction review of the horror genre, lists The Haunting of Hill House as one of the finest horror novels of the late 20th century and provides a lengthy review.[9] According to The Wall Street Journal, the book is "now widely regarded as the greatest haunted-house story ever written." In his review column for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Damon Knight selected the novel as one of the 10 best genre books of 1959, declaring it "in a class by itself." It seems to me these are among the kinds of books for which good tobacco and good coffee were invented. |
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Post by william on Apr 29, 2022 13:25:55 GMT -5
The only work by Shirley Jackson I have read is a short story--"The Lottery." But "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" was made into a movie (Netflix). I enjoyed it, although since I have not read the novel I can offer no commentary beyond that. I believe "Lottery" was made into a movie as well. She had a way with subtle, believable psychological horror. I still have yet to see "Castle." Maybe we'll get to it this weekend. There is some speculation among literary scholars that the gothic (as a genre) is (was) a way of probing psychological issues before Freud gave us a vocabulary to do so in the mid-nineteenth century. I wrote a book many years ago exploring the influence of the gothic on more "mainstream" literature (which sold--to steal and paraphrase a comment from a character in a Dan Brown novel--literally tens of copies in the university bookstore).  In The Gothic Tradition in Fiction, Elizabeth MacAndrews states that "Gothic novels occupy a middle ground where concepts of general human psychology can be portrayed." And Devandra Varma, in The Gothic Flame, suggests the difference between "terror" and "horror" is "the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse." I think the "psychological horror" you mention (although "terror" might be a more appropriate term here) is superior to the graphic "stumbling against a corpse." I you haven't already, try Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. OK--I will quietly go back to the WAYS thread now. Back to your regularly scheduled programming..... |
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Post by toshtego on Apr 29, 2022 18:52:44 GMT -5
Pynchon, now you are truly dating yourself! LOL. Other than circumstantial stuff, no. Not much similarity. I like some of his stuff, but that one was a slog I didn't appreciate until I was done. I like writing that takes some work to "get," but I had to put down Gravity's a few times! Naturally, I read V. in school. Never finished Gravity's Rainbow but am thinking of giving it another read this Winter when the days are spent inside by the stove. |
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Post by urbino on Apr 29, 2022 20:46:02 GMT -5
I like some of his stuff, but that one was a slog I didn't appreciate until I was done. I like writing that takes some work to "get," but I had to put down Gravity's a few times! Naturally, I read V. in school. Never finished Gravity's Rainbow but am thinking of giving it another read this Winter when the days are spent inside by the stove. If nothing else, you'll have plentiful tinder. Read it somewhere around 20 years ago. Imipolex-G is all I remember. |
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Post by toshtego on Apr 30, 2022 7:37:58 GMT -5
Naturally, I read V. in school. Never finished Gravity's Rainbow but am thinking of giving it another read this Winter when the days are spent inside by the stove. If nothing else, you'll have plentiful tinder. Read it somewhere around 20 years ago. Imipolex-G is all I remember. Is that the aromatic heterocyclic polymer, developed in 1939 by I.B. Farben for use as insulation? |
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Post by terrapinflyer on May 2, 2022 5:09:37 GMT -5
I believe "Lottery" was made into a movie as well. She had a way with subtle, believable psychological horror. I still have yet to see "Castle." Maybe we'll get to it this weekend. There is some speculation among literary scholars that the gothic (as a genre) is (was) a way of probing psychological issues before Freud gave us a vocabulary to do so in the mid-nineteenth century. I wrote a book many years ago exploring the influence of the gothic on more "mainstream" literature (which sold--to steal and paraphrase a comment from a character in a Dan Brown novel--literally tens of copies in the university bookstore). In The Gothic Tradition in Fiction, Elizabeth MacAndrews states that "Gothic novels occupy a middle ground where concepts of general human psychology can be portrayed." And Devandra Varma, in The Gothic Flame, suggests the difference between "terror" and "horror" is "the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse." I think the "psychological horror" you mention (although "terror" might be a more appropriate term here) is superior to the graphic "stumbling against a corpse." I you haven't already, try Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. OK--I will quietly go back to the WAYS thread now. Back to your regularly scheduled programming..... Do tell! I find that very interesting, actually. I'm not really into modern horror, though I must admit Stephen King is a guilty pleasure: he will sometimes use the the smell of death, but just as often will stick a maggot-filled corpse right in your mouth. Carol Goodman falls more in the "chick lit" cubby, but I find her novels very gothic: the creepy slithers below the surface with taboo relationships, illegitimate offspring, and similar conventions--very atmospheric and never attempting real horror. James is probably due for a reread. _____ In real-world horror, I'm pretty deep into Wendy Lowers' non-fiction Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. It's nightmare fuel, but it's also a worthwhile read. I'm excited to finally start The Employees by Olga Ravn. I was advised to read it before looking at any synopsis/review, so that's what I'm doing. Thirty pages in, I'm hooked. |
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Post by exbenedict on May 2, 2022 7:05:04 GMT -5
Currently reading a historical analysis of the Jack the Ripper killings.
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Post by sperrytops on May 2, 2022 11:44:58 GMT -5
Dylan Thomas's poetry (not all of it), Arthur Machen's Occult Catalog, some of H.P. Lovecraft's stories and one of Andrea Camilleri's mystery novels. It appears I have some time on my hands.
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Post by exbenedict on May 3, 2022 11:13:33 GMT -5
A current treatise on the doctrine of Right to Privacy specifically focusing on Lawrence v. Texas, Griswold v. Connecticut, Loving v. Virginia, and Obergefell v. Hodges. Interesting information.
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Zach
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Post by Zach on May 3, 2022 11:53:06 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.
After reading Neuromancer, Pirate Utopia, and Count Zero, I've now moved on to Gibson's 3rd novel, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Planning to get through Burning Chrome (His short stories, including Johnny Mnemonic) as well over the next week or so. |
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Post by exbenedict on May 3, 2022 15:28:13 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.
After reading Neuromancer, Pirate Utopia, and Count Zero, I've now moved on to Gibson's 3rd novel, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Planning to get through Burning Chrome (His short stories, including Johnny Mnemonic) as well over the next week or so. Love William Gibson. I'm pretty sure I've read all of his stuff. I should go back and check... |
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Post by don on May 4, 2022 0:19:30 GMT -5
Musashi - Book 3 - The Way of the Sword
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