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

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

One day I'll read the "Tao of Physics"...

I've read The Tao of Pooh and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (three times, and I think I'm done), and I have Zen and the Brain in my TBR. Perhaps The Tao of Physics might have to go on my list.

Queen Zee, Basqueman, I did enjoy The Elegant Universe very much. I won't say it's easy, but Greene made understanding such convoluted and "unnatural" concepts as easy as I've ever read, and the lead-up from early classic physics definitely helps with the later ideas.

Cheers,
Marc

[Elsi]

Since my last post, I've finished reading Mrs. Fytton's Country Life by Mavis Cheek. I'm currently 1/2 way through Emily Climbs by L M Montgomery, downloaded from here.

I'm also about 1/3 way through The Right Hand of Amon by Lauren Haney. This mystery is set in Egypt during the reign of Hapshepsut and the main character is a policeman stationed up the Nile (actually south of the capital city) in a neighboring province. A good murder mystery with an intriguing setting.

[nekokami]

Got two CDs into Melting Stones by Tamora Pierce (audio version). I have trouble following audio books, and more trouble making time to listen to them. Tomorrow this one goes back to the library and I think I'll wait for the print version to come out this fall.

Elegant Universe sounds good. I read Feynman's Six Easy Pieces a while back, but only got about halfway through Six Not So Easy Pieces. (Then I had kids.)

For those who care, Brisingr, the third book in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance trilogy (i.e. Eragon et al) has been announced and will be out this fall.

[GeoffC]

Last few pages to go on "The Cloister and the Hearth", gah...not an easy book to read, but surprisingly un-put-me-downable...
Now I need a more relaxing on to chose...

[DixieGal]

Halfway through Four & Twenty - It's good, hard to put down. Lots of spooky goings-on in Chattanooga!

Bought Joe Swope's Need for Magic yesterday (on sale at Fictionwise), so it's queued up to be my next one.

[DonRobodroid]

Tired of gnawing my way through Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars, I bought Hominids by R.J. Sawyer from Mobipocket today...

Cheers,
- Don [:-], who also has Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey E.F. Friedl in the queue...

[kilohertz53]

In honor of the looming economic recession, I'm re-reading Joan Ramson Shortney's How to Live on Nothing, first published in 1961. I have a battered paperback Pocket Books edition from 1971 with a retail price of $0.95.

Ah! The good old days!

[Kingston]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Halfway through Four & Twenty - It's good, hard to put down. Lots of spooky goings-on in Chattanooga!

Bought Joe Swope's Need for Magic yesterday (on sale at Fictionwise), so it's queued up to be my next one.

I was born & raised in Chattanooga and nothing ever happened there!!

Who is the author of Four & Twenty?

[DonRobodroid]

Originally Posted by Kingston

I was born & raised in Chattanooga and nothing ever happened there!!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that one of those notorious Choo Choos was roaming around right there...

Cheers,
- Don [:-]

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by Kingston

I was born & raised in Chattanooga and nothing ever happened there!!

Who is the author of Four & Twenty?

It's also the title of a Crosby Stills Nash & Young song.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

i LOVE the Philo Vance books. i was so happy to discover them in ebook form, since i have read them previously in french, and they are soooo much funnier (and better overall) in english.

I've read them all (and was delighted when "The Greene Murder Case" finally arrived to complete the set.)

They're an acquired taste -- period pieces don't work for everyone. Vance reminds me a bit of Sherlock Holmes though with a different skill set and a broader range, and the narrator is his Watson. Vance prevails because he knows everything (or at least, a great deal more than those around him.) His omniscience can be a bit wearing (Let's see: he speaks, reads and write how many languages? He's expert in how many topics? Oh, he's skilled in Jiu Jitsu? What doesn't he do?), but overall, they are classic mysteries and well worth the read.
______
Dennis

[Mindy]

...which reminds me, can highly recommend 'Glass Books of the Dream Eaters' by GW Dahlquist. Very strange and random book at times, but highly compelling. Kind of Robert Rankin meets Sherlock Holmes.
Want to read the 'No1 Ladies Detective Agency' books (Alexander McCall Smith?) after seeing the recent BBC adaptation of the first one.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I've read them all (and was delighted when "The Greene Murder Case" finally arrived to complete the set.)

They're an acquired taste -- period pieces don't work for everyone. Vance reminds me a bit of Sherlock Holmes though with a different skill set and a broader range, and the narrator is his Watson. Vance prevails because he knows everything (or at least, a great deal more than those around him.) His omniscience can be a bit wearing (Let's see: he speaks, reads and write how many languages? He's expert in how many topics? Oh, he's skilled in Jiu Jitsu? What doesn't he do?), but overall, they are classic mysteries and well worth the read.
______
Dennis

oh, i agree, he's completely over the top. in some ways i find the Philo Vance books (and Vance himself even more so) to be like a very well done parody of "classic" detective novels in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes (with Van Dine of course being his Watson). that is part of where the humour comes from. i mean, even leaving aside the personality and diverse talents and expertise of Vance, what about those outrageous footnotes !! some of them are several paragraphs long, and half of them are only tangentially relevant to the story, if that much. this one is from the Scarab Murder Case :

* The daughter of this particular Pharaoh--Nefra--incidentally is the titular heroine of H. Rider Haggard's romance, "Queen of the Dawn." Haggard, following the chronology of H. R. Hall, placed Intef in the Fourteenth Dynasty instead of the Seventeenth, making him a contemporary of the great Hyksos Pharaoh, Apopi, whose son Khyan--the hero of the book--marries Nefra. The researches of Bliss and Weigall seem to have demonstrated that this relationship is an anachronism.

it's completely gratuitous ! no bearing on the story whatsoever !!! but Van Dine loves his footnotes... it reminds me of that sketch "would you like to hear an interesting fact ?"

i'm trying to remember what i read in a preface to one of the books (a long time ago...) i beleive he began writing them almost as an exercise of style, to prove that detective novels were a legitimate form of litterature (which was emphatically not the opinion of the literati of the day). he considered that there were strict rules which all detective stories should follow, and in a way he was writing archetypes more than he was writing stories.

[nekokami]

Sherlock Holmes fans (particularly those who like "A Scandal in Bohemia") might also like to check out Carole Nelson Douglas' Irene Adler books, which feature the woman who actually outsmarted Holmes in the above story. (In fact, much of the first book revolves around what led to the events covered in that story.)

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Sherlock Holmes fans (particularly those who like "A Scandal in Bohemia") might also like to check out Carole Nelson Douglas' Irene Adler books, which feature the woman who actually outsmarted Holmes in the above story. (In fact, much of the first book revolves around what led to the events covered in that story.)

hmm... sounds quite interesting. have you read any of them ? can you comment on the style and the quality of the plot ? i'm intrigued, however in the past i've been very disappointed by books which picked up series whose original author was dead... most recently Thrones, Dominations which is a book which actually was begun by Dorothy Sayers but completed by Jill Paton Walsh. she made a valiant effort, but i still found it a pale fascimile. i think she spent too much time explaining things which Sayers would have taken for granted, so it wouldn't have occurred to her to mention them. the effect is that rather than immersing yourself in a story, you feel as if you are reading about a story, but you stay on the outside of it. it's like only reading the footnotes, or the commentary, never the actual text. i think it's probably a lot more difficult to try to write as someone else than as yourself. but i would be quite interested to know what other adventurous dealings Irene Adler was involved in so if you say they're well written i might try one out.