Thread: Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?
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Old 08-15-2010, 09:53 PM   #5993
WT Sharpe
Bah, humbug!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jgaiser View Post
I've mentioned I'm on a Civil War thing right now.

It started with a chance find of Confederates in the Attic, a non-fiction book on the modern South's obsession with the American Civil War. Not yet finished, but this is an interesting book and I'll comment more when I'm finished.

The author interviewed Shelby Foote on one of his visits south, which led me to Foote's "Shiloh" and "The Civil War: A Narrative". Neither are available, legally, in ebook format, so I picked up both in paper. Neither started yet.

Also mentioned in a chapter titled "Civil Wargasm" (I love some of Tony's chapter titles) was Ambrose Bierce, who served with Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment. Project Gutenberg has a couple collected works including " In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians" which includes the short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". How have I missed this author? Managed to read the first two stories (including Owl Creek Bridge) this afternoon and they are amazing. Can't wait to finish the book.

Highly recommended.
I loved the short-story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." I can think of nothing to say that wouldn't be a bit of a spoiler, except that I saw it done as a short play on a PBS program once. Even to say
Spoiler:
it's twist ending was reminiscent of The Twilight Zone
would be to give something away, so let me just say I highly recommend it. I also liked Bierce's book, The Devil's Dictionary (1906), although some parts offended my modern sensibilities. His definition of "Labor" is a classic.

Here are a few of my favorite entries from The Devil's Dictionary:

ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.

ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.

CLAIRVOYANT, n. A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a blockhead.

CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.

LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.
Last edited by WT Sharpe; 08-15-2010 at 10:03 PM.
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