What are you currently reading?

[Henk]

A book by Dutch philosopher and scientist Frits Staal. Title: "Three mountains and seven rivers". I only read the essay Postrelativism so far. Staal gives a critique on relativism. Though philosophy isn't universal, and religion doesn't know common ground as well, science is universal and progressive.

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

I'm taking a well-deserved break from the Gesualdo book for this, a visually astounding history in comic form (Disney influence readily apparent) of WWII in which the French are rabbits, frogs & squirrels, the Germans wolves, the British dogs, and Americans are bison.

[asin]2070590739[/asin]

[Ten thumbs]

Have you come across this one?

CHAPTER I.

    I.    No, I am willing as usual to testify that you are a charming woman, but this I will not do, though a sweeter creature never sat on a donkey which was rather small for her weight, or wore a blue veil twisted round her neck, where it was of no use in the world. — You are looking rather well to-day.

    She.    I am glad you think so.  I like you to appreciate me.

    I.    Of course you do.  We all like to be appreciated.  I consider it probable that even an oyster, a good oyster, if he could know that he was to be eaten, would wish that it should be by one who could appreciate him.  I am quite capable of sympathizing with him so far as to be certain that he would feel hurt if, when he was swallowed, it was said that he was stale.  I lately read some acrostics of yours so neat and regular that I thought they must have been "machine made."  Now will that compliment satisfy you, and induce you to leave me alone?

    She.    Certainly not.  You ought to do something for the world.  It has always been agreed among us that you were far the cleverest member of our family.

    I.    You will allow that that is not saying much!  Why do you laugh?  This I assure you is a very serious matter.

    She.    I told you it was: then will you write me this book?

    I.    A minute ago it was a book, now it is this book.

    She.    Yes, I see it already.  I think it has a blue cover.

    I.    You shall repent this!  Well, if I do, as I never could write a formal opening, may I begin in the middle?

    She [after a pause].  You may if you can.

    I.    Of course I can.

    She.    I should have said not.  I should have said that, wherever you commenced, there would be the beginning, and that you would not attain to the middle till afterwards.

    I.    We shall see.

    She.    O, "we shall see."  Now you have promised, and you know we must not disappoint expectations which we have raised ourselves.

    I.    No, it would be a cruel thing to promise a hungry man a dinner, and then set before him a lump of raw blubber.

    She [with gravity].  It would indeed.

    I.    Unless he was a Greenlander.  No man could have been more energetic, more industrious (with a butterfly net) than I.  And now I have promised to idle away my time in writing a book.  I fear that, when I have once joined the dangerous classes, I shall often look back with regret on these unpublished days of comparative innocence.

    She.    The dangerous classes?

    I.    The dangerous classes!  So surely as the race invents a new sort of villany, the authors hasten (by way of warning) to spread it abroad, and all our most ridiculous mistakes they first make and then disseminate.  Dangerous?  Yes indeed, I wonder, author as you are, that I ever ventured to sit in-doors with you.  It must be use.

    She.    Why do you call me an author?  Ridiculous!

    I.    Because you copied the manuscript of your grandmother's little book for her, and put mottoes to all the chapters.  Yes, it must be use.  I have become callous.  Indeed, it has long been well known that you may dare the most dangerous things, such as London crossings, and tough pie-crust, if you are but used to them, and yet you may be startled out of all propriety if a few Gatling guns go off when you think you are standing in their way.

    Observing that I was roused, she said no more, but turned her donkey's head and proceeded up the lane, while I took up my butterfly net and went on.  "It will have to be done!" I thought, and as I walked I cogitated as follows.

    I was told a strange legend lately which bore upon this point.  A certain angel was sent to collect stones in the moon and distribute them down here where fords were going to be wanted over the rivers.  A sufficiently difficult enterprise; but he went on with it well, till, drawing near the earth, he saw, as I understood, a lot of pterodactyls fluttering about in a bog, and was so much startled and astonished that he accidently upset the bag containing the stones, and they came clattering down all over New England.

    He was accustomed, no doubt, to get out of the way of a speeding planet as she came rolling up in her oval; a volcano seen below spreading mushroom-shaped smoke over its mouth did not put him out; but pterodactyls heaving their long necks out of the swamp he had not been used to, he could not stand.

    It was a Yankee who told me this story.

    I wish to state, without any mental reservation, that I do not believe it.  It does not appear to me to account in a satisfactory manner for the stones which plague the New England farmer.

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

Have you come across this one?

Yes!  John Jerome : His thoughts and ways from the 1880s!

[Karl Henning]

Started re-reading this, this morning:

[asin]1595943587[/asin]

When I was younger than a young adult (and arguably precocious as a reader), I read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.  That book and its sequels are generally regarded as YA books which even unqualified adults (so to speak) may enjoy, and that is an evaluation I endorse.  However, I think that the author of The Time Capsule Murders does the talented Madame L'Engle even one better.

[Karl Henning]

Hey, it's a while since I visited that Amazon page, and it is worth noting that all seven reviewers give this book five stars! Huzzah!

[Cato]

Started re-reading this, this morning:

[asin]1595943587[/asin]

When I was younger than a young adult (and arguably precocious as a reader), I read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.  That book and its sequels are generally regarded as YA books which even unqualified adults (so to speak) may enjoy, and that is an evaluation I endorse.  However, I think that the author of The Time Capsule Murders does the talented Madame L'Engle even one better.

Hey, it's a while since I visited that Amazon page, and it is worth noting that all seven reviewers give this book five stars! Huzzah!

Many thanks for the high praise!  I am hoping to get a few more reviews for the other parts of the trilogy, again preferably 5-star!   0:)

[SimonNZ]

Some recent bookchat from Clive James:



...and still have his Dante translations to get to at some point

[Drasko]

[stingo]

Two books started:

War of the Whales by Joshua Horvitz

Oz Complete by L. Frank Baum

One soon to start:

Sanctuary by William Faulkner

[Bogey]

Oz Complete by L. Frank Baum

Excellent!!!!!!

Oh, does it have the original illustrations?

[stingo]

Excellent!!!!!!

Oh, does it have the original illustrations?

For the first book, The Wizard of Oz, it certainly does. I picked up the Kindle edition of the complete set for $0.99.

[asin]B00C448DL8[/asin]

[Karl Henning]

You will then be the second person of my acquaintance who will have read the whole of the Oz canon (unless our Bill is #2, in which case you must be third) 

[stingo]

You will then be the second person of my acquaintance who will have read the whole of the Oz canon (unless our Bill is #2, in which case you must be third) 

Well, I'm two books in so far - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz. 12 more to go. I intend to spread them out though because I think they'd suffer same-iness from binge reading.

[Karl Henning]

Well, I'm two books in so far - The Wizard of Oz and the The Wonderful Land of Oz. 12 more to go. I intend to spread them out though because I think they'd suffer same-iness from binge reading.

By all means, pace yourself! 

[stingo]

By all means, pace yourself! 

I shall. I also updated my original post with the correct book names. (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz)

[Ken B]

Thieves Like Us
Bill and Hillary Clinton Edward Anderson

[Bogey]

You will then be the second person of my acquaintance who will have read the whole of the Oz canon (unless our Bill is #2, in which case you must be third) 

Yup. Read all the Baum stuff and even dabbled in the Ruth Plumly Thompson run.   My favorite illustrator for the run was John R. Neill.  Always was bummed that he did not do the first book.



One of my favorites was this of Dorothy and the Shaggy Man in The Road to Oz.

[Ken B]

Yup. Read all the Baum stuff and even dabbled in the Ruth Plumly Thompson run.   My favorite illustrator for the run was John R. Neill.  Always was bummed that he did not do the first book.



One of my favorites was this of Dorothy and the Shaggy Man in The Road to Oz.

Dear gawd. All of them?
My son loved them when he was very young, so we tag-teamed through about four of them. Then we decided an illiterate child isn't so bad after all.

[aligreto]

Dear gawd. All of them?
My son loved them when he was very young, so we tag-teamed through about four of them. Then we decided an illiterate child isn't so bad after all.

I think that statement will strike a chord with a lot of parents with regard to their offspring's various reading choices.