Valves! Naturally occurring valves!
It IS possible. Really. All you have to do is make the cavern completely airtight, and the air inside it will be pressurized by the water. No biggie. Only... Do yourself a favour and do. Not. Open. That. Door.
Maybe the magma is really, really, viscous and there's more capillary action in the narrower tube, making the level appear higher...?
No. Magic is obviously impossible. :-)
Because of this thread, I got curious about P. G. Wodehouse, so I read 5 early "Jeeves and Wooster" stories, and then took "The Inimitable Jeeves" out of the library. I'm most of the way through it, and I'm not nearly as impressed as some other readers were. I will admit, though, that I laughed out loud at the pearl story, several times.
Part of the charm for me is that a lot of them were written between the World Wars, with a massive influenza epidemic having noticably diminished the population, the Great Depression looming in the U.S., the specter of totalitarianism on the rise in Europe. Wodehouse somehow manages to write as if the worst thing in the world is a missing shoe.
It is a deeply felt love letter to a time that never existed, at a time when levity was sorely needed. Respect.
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Wot, wot?
I made a conscious effort not to read too many of the short stories in a row. Seemed unfair, seeing as how (I think) they originally appeared in periodicals.
My plan to read Tolstoy in two weeks might need some, um, adjustment.
The Samurai is pretty neat--800 years of history in 130-something pages. Come to think of it, I should've held off until SCM. I'm only about half-way through it, but I think my original hunch that samurai was Japanese for "stooge of the plutocracy" was pretty on the money.
Vive le Bachuan!
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Willing stooges, Doodles, willing stooges.
In fact, Doodlebug-tono, I too am "one who serves."
Part of the charm for me is that a lot of were written between the World Wars, with a massive influenza epidemic having noticably diminished the population, the Great Depression looming in the U.S., the specter of totalitarianism on the rise in Europe. Wodehouse somehow manages to write as if the worst thing in the world is a missing shoe.
Yeah, and Wooster has no job, and spends his life bumming around in style, and spending his inherited wealth. Even today, the appeal is obvious. Halloa! Halloa! Halloa! What?
Mind you, Wooster's worst problems involve his dominating relatives and friends forcing him into difficult social situations, especially when trying to force him into marriage. But that's OK, as long as Jeeves is around to save him, so he's still to be envied. What ho! What ho! What ho!
I am getting a little tired of it, though.
I made a conscious effort not to read too many of the short stories in a row. Seemed unfair, seeing as how (I think) they originally appeared in periodicals.
Yes, they did. That's an idea. Maybe I should put the book down, read something else, and see if I get the inclination to pick Jeeves up again.
Yeah, one or two stories at a time is the way to go, not reading them all back-to-back. I learned that lesson with Saki's Chronicles of Clovis.
I had that problem with Fritz LYE-ber, the man himself. Tried to read Faf & GM all the way through, and by the time I got to the book with Hisvet, the rats, the time traveling zoologist and the two-headed, rat-eating sea monster, I was all, "Dude, I'm just over-saturated."
The absolute pinnacle of Wodehouse's achievements is the 'Gussie Presents the Prizes' section from Right Ho, Jeeves. If you haven't read that yet, Aaron, make haste to do so, eftsoon and right speedily (odd that you feel yourself slipping into that way of talking... Agh! Agh! Pass me the Selected Works of Lenin before I turn into my class enemy!)
I finished an interesting book about the Jacobites and Jason Goodwin's potted history of the Ottoman empire. Good, if a bit over written, and he was WRONG about Gavrilo Princip being in IMRO.
Now I've started the Citadel of Fear by Francis Stevens. I have never heard so much as a squeak about this author or this book, although H.P. Lovecraft praises it highly; not sure how it'll shape up, but will stick it out.
...Pass me the Selected Works of Lenin before I turn into my class enemy!)
How about something a lot more recent? (She's also got an affordable recipe for kale pesto - which apparently infuriated Richard Littlejohn, so I'm definitely going to be trying that out sometime soon.)
Willing stooges, Doodles, willing stooges.
In fact, Doodlebug-tono, I too am "one who serves."
Samurai is a volume in a series called "Pageant of History" that, as of 1970, included three other volumes. Interestingly, these other volumes are Bandits (by Eric Hobsbawm), Hitler's SS and, um, The Saints.
I must say, I was a little disappointed in P.G.'s research skills for "Comrade Bingo." No Bolshevist would ever name their daughter after Charlotte Corday.
Went to the Goodwill earlier today, hoping against hope that they might have some Jane Gaskell or Corum books.
Well, they didn't, but I still ended up spending forty bucks on books that were $2.99 a piece or cheaper. I might have a problem.
Anyway, I am fighting the urge to make a list of all the books that I bought, but I did have to call attention to a Fritz Leiber title I picked up that I'd never heard of.
Vive le Galt!
(Probably not.)
...Pass me the Selected Works of Lenin before I turn into my class enemy!)How about something a lot more recent? (She's also got an affordable recipe for kale pesto - which apparently infuriated Richard Littlejohn, so I'm definitely going to be trying that out sometime soon.)
First thought on reading that: "Why is Richard Littlejohn outraged by a recipe for Kale Pesto?"
Second thought: "Why am I surprised that Richard Littlejohn is outraged by a recipe for Kale Pesto?"
For anyone who doesn't know who he is, imagine a doughier Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh with the Half-Clarkson template.
Just finished The Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed.
Gonna start The Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence.
Just finished The Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed.
And? Thumbs up? Inquiring minds want to know!
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Well, I'm bored. Long list of Goodwill acquisitions. Titles marked with an * are hardcovers, yo.
Lin Carter--As the Green Star Rises
--Found Wanting
L. Sprague de Camp--The Hostage of Zir*
Philip Jose Farmer--The Classic Philip Jose Farmer, 1952-1964*
Stephen Jay Gould--Questioning the Millennium*
Sterling E. Lanier--Menace Under Marswood
Urusula K. Le Guin--Three Hainish Novels*
Fritz Leiber--A Specter Is Haunting Texas*
Michael Moorcock--The Nomad of Time*
Larry Niven--Ringworld
Charles Portis--True Grit
Joel Rosenberg--Guardians of the Flame: The Warriors* (I think I read these as a kid--a group of collegiate D&D players are transported to the world they're playing in; I don't expect much other than a nostalgia romp)
Philip Roth--Portnoy's Complaint*
Jeremy Scahill--Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army*
Neal Stephenson--Quicksilver
Jack Vance--The Five Gold Bands/The Dragon Masters
Roger Zelazny--To Die In Italbar*
--Changeling*
--Eye of Cat*
--Dilvish, the Damned*
There were also quite a few (like, 2 dozen each) hardcover titles by C.J Cherryh, Andre Norton and Janet Morris, but I gave up trying to figure out which titles went with which series, and put 'em back. If you're a fan of any of these ladies and live in southern NH, I recommend a visit to the Goodwill in Amherst, pronto!
I can't believe you would buy the first volume of The Baroque Cycle, and put C.J. Cherryh back on the shelf because you couldn't figure out which book went with which series. Badly done, Doodles. Badly done.
No, but seriously: have you read any Stephenson before? He's a really good writer, but you sort of have to go to that special Neal Stephenson place in your head to even understand what the hell he's describing. Don't get me wrong, The Baroque Cycle is totally worth reading, but you should be aware of what you're getting into.
Dude, the Goodwill in your town has an extensive book department. Nice!
EDIT: Omigod, omigod, omigod, wait! If you happen to find a copy of Cryptonomicon just lying around, read that before Quicksilver. Because, (spoiler alert) reasons.
Pure economics, I'm afraid.
All the Cherryh's were pink-stickered hardcovers at $2.99 and the Stephenson was a half-priced gray sticker at 99 cents. I see wicked cheap Cherryh paperbacks all over the place, but Stephenson's trade paperbacks are at least 5 bucks...and that's at the cheapo cheapo Annie's Book Stop. At the higher-priced Book Cellar (which also serves as the area's primary supplier of textbooks to Christian [and other, I suppose] homeschoolers in the region) they are never cheaper than $8.
I know, I know, you're thinking, if there's all this cheap Cherryh lying around for the grabbing, how comes you've only read that one about different cities with aristos being imprisoned in towers and striking municipal employees? 'Cuz there's a lot of books out there, I guess.
Dude, the Goodwill in your town has an extensive book department. Nice!
Well, they used to.
As for Stephenson, I've only ever read the one about the book and the girl and the fornicating mind-melding hippies and the meetings in the House of the Venerable Colonel.
As for Tolstoy, I am, so far, successfully fighting the urge to rewatch Love and Death.
Another Split Movie/Book Thread Post
As I said, I only went to the Goodwill to look for those Corum and Gaskell books, in preparation for a trip to Boston to scour through their used bookstores.
I am delighted to see that I can plan my trip around a screening of The Pervert's Guide to Ideology at Cambridge's shrine for filmsnobs the Brattle Theater. I'm not sure if I can get in a screening of The Glass Key which sucks because, in addition to being the movieization of Kirth's favorite novel and Akira Kurosawa's professed inspiration for Yojimbo is unavailable on Netflix (or, at least, it was the last time I looked). But maybe that'll change if there's a reel making the rounds...
Just finished The Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed.And? Thumbs up? Inquiring minds want to know!
It was pretty good. The five POV characters are pretty good.
But I can't believe you didn't grab those Cherryh novels!!!! She's the best! You can go to Wikipedia and look up her bibliography to see what goes where. She's only written about 70 novels. And you read a lot, so you could read it all in about a year or so. Some have economic theory.... ;-)
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Has anybody read any David Mitchell? I am thinking of starting Cloud Atlas and am not sure what to expect.
Nope. And I bet I'd be wrong in expecting something like this. Or this.
Has anybody read any David Mitchell? I am thinking of starting Cloud Atlas and am not sure what to expect.
I haven't. My hetero life partner started Cloud Atlas, but, seeing as it wasn't by Tolkien, he didn't finish it.
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Because of this thread, I got curious about P. G. Wodehouse, so I read 5 early "Jeeves and Wooster" stories, and then took "The Inimitable Jeeves" out of the library. I'm most of the way through it, and I'm not nearly as impressed as some other readers were. I will admit, though, that I laughed out loud at the pearl story, several times.
I really liked "The Code of the Woosters," but Wodehous's later stuff I find a bit of a rehash, wherein he relies less on madcap plotting and falls back on Wooster's verbal tics and gags that reference previous works.
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In other news, I'm onto Henry VI, Part II in Norwich's Shakespeare's Kings.
Oh, also, Henry VI has gone insane and then recovered.
Now the Lancasters and Yorks are gearing up for the War of the Roses. Stuff is getting confusing but I'm sticking with it.
In other news, I'm onto Henry VI, Part II in Norwich's Shakespeare's Kings.
** spoiler omitted **
Now the Lancasters and Yorks are gearing up for the War of the Roses. Stuff is getting confusing but I'm sticking with it.
Don't you mean Lannisters and Starks? ;-)
Kinda feel I should point out that up to the point in the late 1500s when Duke Karl becomes King Karl IX by ousting his nephew Sigismund (a.k.a. Sigismund III in Poland), Swedish history is basically 600+ years of War of the Roses style shenanigans.
Which is why I'm not reading a history book on medieval Swedish history right now, but instead is making my way through The Gambler's Fortune - part three in Juliet E MacKenna's Tales of Einarrin
That wasn't the break point, Kajehase. All of that internal strife ended with the Danish king executing every Swedish noble he could get his hands on - leaving an open field for Gustaf Vasa.
Yeah, but then his sons started up the whole taking the throne by force again. (With Karl IX in particular being good at getting rid of the privy council nobles that had a strong enough position to potentially challenge him.)
Semi-successful book hunting trip to Boston yesterday. Only found one of the fantasy novels on the list (the last Jane Gaskell book) but I also scored another Thongor book, some more Leigh Brackett, etc.
Non-fantasy I found a not-so-cheap Who Wrote the Bible? and I even splurged and bought a new copy of W.E.B. duBois' bio of John Brown although, alas, not the edition that the Communist Party used to publish.
I had one of those when I was younger, but I left it out in the rain. I tried drying it out in the oven and it just fell apart. Have been looking for another copy ever since. Huzzah!
Because of this thread, I got curious about P. G. Wodehouse, so I read 5 early "Jeeves and Wooster" stories, and then took "The Inimitable Jeeves" out of the library. I'm most of the way through it, and I'm not nearly as impressed as some other readers were. I will admit, though, that I laughed out loud at the pearl story, several times.I really liked "The Code of the Woosters," but Wodehous's later stuff I find a bit of a rehash, wherein he relies less on madcap plotting and falls back on Wooster's verbal tics and gags that reference previous works.
I don't care for Woosters stories much. I do like the Blandings Castle books, though.
Somewhat disconcerting article I ran into while reading about War and Peace (as opposed to reading War and Peace--I'm not very far along, I'm afraid, only up to where Count Bezuhov [f++@in' plutocrat] croaks) which is, indeed, translated by Mrs. Garnett.
I was thinkin' of breaking W&P down into its constituent 4 Books, but Mrs. Garnett's translation is instead organized into 14 Parts. It's very confusing, let me tell you.
Anyway, I'm going to soon, and very soon, put down Tolstoy to read my first ever Asimov, who, I never realized, had pretty awesome mutton chops.
EDIT: Bonus Russian Masters Musical Interlude
Well, I'm bored. Long list of Goodwill acquisitions. Titles marked with an * are hardcovers, yo.
** spoiler omitted **
There were also quite a few (like, 2 dozen each) hardcover titles by C.J Cherryh, Andre Norton and Janet Morris, but I gave up trying to figure out which titles went with which series, and put 'em back. If you're a fan of any of these ladies and live in southern NH, I recommend a visit to the Goodwill in Amherst, pronto!
Some good titles in your list there. As a Farmer aficionado, I can attest that The Classic Philip José Farmer, 1952-1964 is an excellent collection of his stories. I quite enjoyed the Le Guin omnibus as well.
I've been on a roll with Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's Pendergast books. Just finished The Wheel of Darkness, which was enjoyable for its supernatural elements but not quite as gripping the previous book in the series, The Book of the Dead. Now I'm on to Cemetery Dance. Only four more books to go in this series until I can read the new one that just came out, White Fire, which has some kind of backstory revolving around Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde. While the series is very "pop lit," now and then literary allusions pop up unexpectedly, and sometimes subtly, making for an enjoyable read.
Finished Seanan McGuire's serial Indexing, which reminded me of a grittier (Feed-esque) version of Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crimes books. Some messiness toward the end, but a fun/grim read with diverse characters (including trans!).
Now, in a it of a departure, reading Packing for Mars, which is making me eye friends and coworkers and consider who would make a good astronaut (not me... maybe John?). Very accessible and entertaining.
Just finished Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence.
Just started Elantris by Brandon Sanderson.
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My vacation hasn't been as conducive to reading a thousand pages of Tolstoy as I would've liked, so I switched over from W&P to The Kreutzer Sonata which at 70 pages is only something like one twentieth the size.
(Musical interlude included)
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Has anybody read any David Mitchell? I am thinking of starting Cloud Atlas and am not sure what to expect.
I'm a big fan of Mitchell's. Cloud Atlas is impressive on several levels - it's incredibly well written linguistically and structurally. If you're not sure whether you'll like him, you can start with Ghostwritten, which plays with structure in similar ways but which is shorter and not quite as dense, or Number 9 Dream, which is more of a standard novel but which has a lot of Mitchell-esque flair.
As for me, I'm slowly making my way through The Gulag Archipelago.
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I bought 'Throne of the Crescent Moon', after the slew of recommendations it's received on this thread, and it's more than living up to its billing so far. I'm also having a go at the Decameron, which is quite fun. Mine's an ex-library copy, and has a big sticker in the front saying
Presumably in case the mere sight of it sent the inhabitants of 1950s Darlington into some sort of slavering erotic frenzy.
I also found 'Thongor of Lemuria' when clearing out my bookshelves, which I don't think I've actually read before. Thrills.
I'm also having a go at the Decameron, which is quite fun.
Which translation do you have, and how do you like it? I started using my Norton copy as interstitial reading (since hey, short stories!), but it's only selected stories and skips most of the frame story, so I want to get another version. :(
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Has anybody read any David Mitchell? I am thinking of starting Cloud Atlas and am not sure what to expect.I'm a big fan of Mitchell's. Cloud Atlas is impressive on several levels - it's incredibly well written linguistically and structurally. If you're not sure whether you'll like him, you can start with Ghostwritten, which plays with structure in similar ways but which is shorter and not quite as dense, or Number 9 Dream, which is more of a standard novel but which has a lot of Mitchell-esque flair.
As for me, I'm slowly making my way through The Gulag Archipelago.
I dove straight into Cloud Atlas. So far so good!
I'm also having a go at the Decameron, which is quite fun.Which translation do you have, and how do you like it? I started using my Norton copy as interstitial reading (since hey, short stories!), but it's only selected stories and skips most of the frame story, so I want to get another version. :(
I like it a lot! My copy was bought from a second hand shop, was translated by Richard Aldington (?) and published in 1957. I'm no expert, so I don't know how good a translation it is, but it's very entertaining nonetheless. Penguin Classics have it, and it seems to be stupidly cheap if you get a Kindle copy...
I'm also having a go at the Decameron, which is quite fun. Mine's an ex-library copy, and has a big sticker in the front saying ** spoiler omitted **
Presumably in case the mere sight of it sent the inhabitants of 1950s Darlington into some sort of slavering erotic frenzy.
Darlington might've put a librarian in charge of it, but Boston banned it!