Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[Ditchleyportrait]

moby-dick. great, great book. constantly astonished.

the adventures of pinocchio

[Crusader]

Just finished with Neal Asher's Polity Agent (review here) and now busy with Line War.

[caleb72]

Finally finished The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and I have two books on the go now:

Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand and Rocannon's World by Ursula Le Guin.

[captkjaneway]

Just fininshed a cheapo - 'Bone and Cane' by David Belbin which was ok for £1. The main charcter was ok I guess and the storyline, although not rivetting, has a decent twist at the end.

Now on to a freebie 'Bubba and the Dead Woman' by C L Bevill, about a fifth of the way in and intrigued enough to continue

[siraks]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Now on with Joseph Nassise's The Heretic (#1 The Templar Trilogy). Years ago I read Riverwatch and loved it, only to find out his book were only available in Geman in the Netherlands. I recently discovered his books are available at Amazon. I wrote about this in the lounge and a couple of days later I got a PM from Joseph Nassise offering to email me The Heretic! So the book jumped to the top of my TBR list.

after reading this it got me interested so i did a search and found out he sells his books on his website.

bought the trilogy for 7.95

thanks. will be reading this soon.

[maianhvk]

I'm waiting for July to come, then start Game of Thrones. From the voting, I think it would win... in the meantime, I'm into Water for Elephants, for a change. I've been reading all fantasy lately. I want to know why people keep talking about it, and even made a movie. I want to know if I'm the 'romance' type

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by maianhvk

I'm waiting for July to come, then start Game of Thrones. From the voting, I think it would win... in the meantime, I'm into Water for Elephants, for a change. I've been reading all fantasy lately. I want to know why people keep talking about it, and even made a movie. I want to know if I'm the 'romance' type

I've got Water for Elephants on my TBR list, please let me know what you think of it. We seem to like a lot of the same books
I've seen the movie, and while it wasn't the best movie I've seen it was enjoyable and I would love to give the book a try.

[Namekuseijin]

I'm zapping constantly, so let me update what I've finished in the last few days: "The Tomb" by H.P.Lovecraft, "The tower of the Elephant" by Robert E. Howard, "A descent into the Maëlstrom" by Edgar Alan Poe.

I'm also actively and alternately into other works by Lovecraft, "The adventures of Sherlock Holmes" by Conan-Doyle, "Arsène Lupin" by Maurice Leblanc and about chapter 4 into kindle-bought "Executive Lunch" by Maria E. Schneider. My scifi reading is mostly halted, even the 2 books by Stross, one of his bought on kindle. I'm into a horror and cozy mystery mood right now.

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by siraks

after reading this it got me interested so i did a search and found out he sells his books on his website.

bought the trilogy for 7.95

thanks. will be reading this soon.

I finished the first book in the series, The Heretic, last night. I really enjoyed it, it isn't like most Templar books that are released at the moment (those are more adventure books in the vein of The Da Vinci Code). I'm going to get the other two books in the series soon.

I've been reading quite a lot of fantasy and horror lately so I'm going to take a break from that. I'm currently reading The Duke and I by Julia Quinn and I'm thoroughly enjoying it, against my own expectations.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Ditchleyportrait

moby-dick. great, great book. constantly astonished.

Needs the Reader's Digest treatment, but has some great quotes. I got bored with all the descriptions of the various types of whales.

Originally Posted by Ditchleyportrait

the adventures of pinocchio

Moby & Pinocchio? Seems normal to me. Of course, I read everything from classics to comics.

[WT Sharpe]

I finally finished reading What the Face Reveals: Basic and Applied Studies of Spontaneous Expression Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) edited by Paul Ekman and Erika Rosenberg. I had bought the book over a year ago and read a small portion, then put it aside until recently. The book consists of 22 scientific papers from various researchers in the field and commentary. It is not written for laymen such as myself, but as it was the most expensive book I ever purchased ($41.72 from Amazon), I was determined to read it eventually come hell or high water. Paul Ekman has studied facial emotions for over 30 years, and it is his work that formed the backbone of the recently cancelled (and wonderful) TV series, Lie to Me (Booo, FOX!). He has written books for popular audiences, and after reading this book chock full of graphs, charts, statistics, and procedural methodologies, I somewhat wish I had started with one of those. That isn't to say that reading the book is an exercise in futility; far from it. There are quite a number of things to be considered within its pages. Here are a few tidbits:

From Chapter 12: "Differentiating Emotion Elicited and Deliberate Emotional Facial Expressions" by Ursula Hess and Robert E. Fleck:

Indicators of deception that have been reliably detected in the face are pupil dilation, the use of adaptors, and blinking. Gaze, head movements, and smiling, on the other hand, do not appear to distinguish between honest and deceptive messages.

(Yes, as Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong told us, Smiling Faces Sometimes tell lies, but a smiling face alone is no indicator of either lying or honesty.)

Also from Chapter 12:

Ekman and O'Sullivan (1991) assessed the ability to detect smiles that mask a negative expression in people from a variety of professions, such as judges, psychiatrists, and law enforcement personnel, as well as of students. Interestingly, only secret service agents exceeded decoding accuracy around chance level.

Interesting, especially as most lawyers and law enforcement personnel pride themselves on their ability to detect deception.

From Chapter 16: "Emotional experience and Expression in Schizophrenia and Depression by Howard Berenbaum and Thomas F. Oltmanns:

For example, the use of FACS enabled Berenbaum (1992) to find that depressives were less likely to exhibit facial expressions of happiness than nonpsychiatric controls even though they were equally likely to smile. Similarly, the use of FACS enabled Nisenson et al. (1991) to find that schizophrenic and depressed individuals differed from nonpsychiatric controls in the frequency with which they exhibited felt smiles, but not in how frequently they exhibited unfelt smiles.

In short; don't assume that because your depressed friend is smiling that things are necessarily better.

In speaking of the chances for successful treatment for schizophrenic and psychosomatic patients, Evelyne Steimer-Krause, Rainer Krause, and Gunter Wagner report in Chapter 17: "Interaction Regulations by Schizophrenic and Psychosomatic Patients":

The second result was that 50% of treatment outcome could be predicted from facial behavior in the first session, combining the affect distribution of therapist and patient to a measure that we called "dyadic lead affect."

One of the most interesting aspects of the book dealt briefly with micro-expressions. These are expressions of true emotion that occur involuntarily and are so fleeting that even trained investigators can miss them. From Chapter 19: "Depression and Suicide Faces" by Michael Heller and Veronique Haynal:

More recently, Ekman (1985) presented the case study of "Mary." Mary managed to obtain the approbation to leave the hospital by being quite convincing in her lying about her suicide intentions during the interview. This interview was filmed. Later on she admitted the deception. Ekman showed the interview to young psychiatrists and psychologists; most of them were deceived by Mary's behavior-even many of the more experienced clinicians were deceived. In order to evidence the lie, Ekman scanned the film

I could go on, but suffice it to say that the scope of these papers is very broad, covering such diverse topics as the difference between the way Japanese and American mothers interact with their infant children (using Baby FACS) to facial expressions that are likely to indicate individuals with Type A personalities.

This is a book for specialists. Enter at your own risk.

And by the way, there's been a slight price increase since I bought my copy. The ebook is currently selling at Amazon for $46.36.

[Ditchleyportrait]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Needs the Reader's Digest treatment, but has some great quote. I got bored with all the descriptions of the various types of whales.



Moby & Pinocchio? Seems normal to me. Of course, I read everything from classics to comics.

Interestingly enough, both books involve a giant fish.

And on that note, Trout Fishing in America is sooo good.

[MickeyC]

Just finished Time; The Curious Dimension by Dan Falk. Excellent non fiction physics. Very interesting.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Ditchleyportrait

Interestingly enough, both books involve a giant fish.

And on that note, Trout Fishing in America is sooo good.

Yes it is. I've loved the late great Brautigan ever since first hearing his poem, "Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt."

And I'd forgotten the whale in Pinocchinose until you mentioned it. I've never read the book, but I've seen the whale in film adaptations.

[Namekuseijin]

Facial expressions, huh? That's why I always wear my bad mojo mug. Can any Sherlock tell when I smile?