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Started By
Message
The OT Book Club & Literary Society, week of 5-27
Posted on 5/27/14 at 2:07 pm
Posted on 5/27/14 at 2:07 pm
Feel free to discuss old books, new books, good books, bad books...
Short story of the week:
"Babylon Revisited" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Read it online, discuss it here, smoke if you got 'em
================
Being a lifelong bookworm may keep you sharp in old age
===============
The Quiet Greatness of Eudora Welty
===============
William Faulkner's Hollywood Odyssey
===============
THE END
Professor Jones had been working on time theory for many years.
"And I have found the key equation," he told his daughter one day. "Time is a field. This machine I have made can manipulate, even reverse that field."
Pushing a button as he spoke, he said, "This should make time run backward run time make should this," said he, spoke he as button a pushing.
"Field that, reverse even, manipulate can made have I machine this. Field a is time." Day one daughter his told he, "Equation key the found have I and."
Years many for theory time on working been had Jones Professor.
END THE
-- Fredric Brown
===============
Previous meetings of the society:
10-16
11-11
11-25
12-9
12-16
1-7
1-20
2-10
2-26 -- Special Mardi Gras edition
"There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag; and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty; and vice versa. Don't read a book out of its right time for you." -- Doris Lessing
London bookstore after an air raid, 1940:
===================
Short story of the week:
"Babylon Revisited" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Read it online, discuss it here, smoke if you got 'em
================
Being a lifelong bookworm may keep you sharp in old age
quote:
New research suggests that reading and writing can slow down cognitive decline
Smithsonian Magazine
To keep their bodies running at peak performance, people often hit the gym, pounding away at the treadmill to strengthen muscles and build endurance. This dedication has enormous benefits—being in shape now means warding off a host of diseases when you get older. But does the brain work in the same way? That is, can doing mental exercises help your mind stay just as sharp in old age?
Experts say it’s possible. As a corollary to working out, people have begun joining brain gyms to flex their mental muscles. For a monthly fee of around $15, websites like Lumosity.com and MyBrainTrainer.com promise to enhance memory, attention and other mental processes through a series of games and brain teasers. Such ready-made mind exercises are an alluring route for people who worry about their ticking clock. But there’s no need to slap down the money right away—new research suggests the secret to preserving mental agility may lie in simply cracking open a book.
The findings, published online today in Neurology, suggest that reading books, writing and engaging in other similar brain-stimulating activities slows down cognitive decline in old age, independent of common age-related neurodegenerative diseases. In particular, people who participated in mentally stimulating activities over their lifetimes, both in young, middle and old age, had a slower rate of decline in memory and other mental capacities than those who did not.
===============
The Quiet Greatness of Eudora Welty
quote:
Like Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, and a few others, Eudora Welty endures in national memory as the perpetual senior citizen, someone tenured for decades as a silver-haired elder of American letters. Her abiding maturity made her seem, perhaps long before her time, perfectly suited to the role of our favorite maiden aunt.
But when I visited Welty at her Jackson, Mississippi, home on a bright, hot July day in 1994, I got a glimpse of the girl she used to be. She was eighty-five by then, stooped by arthritis, and feeling the full weight of her years. As she slowly made her way into her living room, navigating the floor as if walking a tightrope, I could see that her clear, blue eyes retained the vigorous curiosity that had defined her career. She still wanted to know what would happen next.
quote:
Tellingly, One Writer’s Beginnings, Welty’s celebrated 1984 memoir, begins with a passage about timepieces:
In our house on North Congress Street in Jackson, Mississippi, where I was born, the oldest of three children, in 1909, we grew up to the striking of clocks. There was a mission-style oak grandfather clock standing in the hall, which sent its gong-like strokes through the living room, dining room, kitchen and pantry, and up the sounding board of the stairwell. Through the night, it could find its way into our ears; sometimes, even on the sleeping porch, midnight could wake us up. My parents had a smaller striking clock that answered it... This was good at least for a future fiction writer, being able to learn so penetratingly, and almost first of all, about chronology. It was one of a good many things I learned almost without knowing it; it would be there when I needed it.
===============
William Faulkner's Hollywood Odyssey
quote:
The biggest name in Southern lit didn’t spend his whole life in Mississippi
In 1932, a rising writer from Mississippi found himself amid the bright lights and dry heat of Tinseltown, at the start of what would become a lengthy dalliance with the screenwriting biz. In the wilds of L.A., Faulkner met movie stars, found a bourbon haunt, chased true love, and tried to stay sane in a place that often seemed very far from home.
===============
THE END
Professor Jones had been working on time theory for many years.
"And I have found the key equation," he told his daughter one day. "Time is a field. This machine I have made can manipulate, even reverse that field."
Pushing a button as he spoke, he said, "This should make time run backward run time make should this," said he, spoke he as button a pushing.
"Field that, reverse even, manipulate can made have I machine this. Field a is time." Day one daughter his told he, "Equation key the found have I and."
Years many for theory time on working been had Jones Professor.
END THE
-- Fredric Brown
===============
Previous meetings of the society:
10-16
11-11
11-25
12-9
12-16
1-7
1-20
2-10
2-26 -- Special Mardi Gras edition
"There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag; and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty; and vice versa. Don't read a book out of its right time for you." -- Doris Lessing
London bookstore after an air raid, 1940:
===================
Posted on 5/27/14 at 2:10 pm to Kafka
After a long hiatus due to a car wreck that nearly cost him his life, Greg Iles has got a new book out called Natchez Burning. I haven't read it yet, but I've been told that it is top notch. Thus ends my current contribution to this thread as all I have been reading lately are Jack Reacher books. But they are entertaining.
Posted on 5/27/14 at 2:11 pm to Kafka
I read the first 20 or so page of The Three or something similar yesterday and it seemed interesting
It was about 4 plane crashes all around the same time and 3 children survived
It was about 4 plane crashes all around the same time and 3 children survived
Posted on 5/27/14 at 2:17 pm to Kafka
I finally read Nabokov's Lolita after watching Kubrick's film adaptation and hearing so many good things about the book.
My reaction: From a story standpoint it is amazing, breathtaking, scary, funny, and adventurous. From a writing standpoint it is easily in the top 3 (for me) of best written books of all time.
My reaction: From a story standpoint it is amazing, breathtaking, scary, funny, and adventurous. From a writing standpoint it is easily in the top 3 (for me) of best written books of all time.
Posted on 5/27/14 at 2:18 pm to Kafka
I've been reading the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo for GD months and I'm so ready to be done already. I've got like 30 pages left, gonna knock it out tonight.
Does anyone know of any major differences between the unabridged and abridged?
Does anyone know of any major differences between the unabridged and abridged?
Posted on 5/27/14 at 2:22 pm to Kafka
The Bachelors' Ball: The Crisis of Peasant Society in Béarn
Over the past four decades, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died in 2002, he was considered to be the most influential sociologist in the world and a thinker on a par with Foucault and Lévi-Strauss—a public intellectual as important to his generation as Sartre was to his.
Bourdieu’s final book, The Bachelors’ Ball, sees him return to Béarn, the region where he grew up, to examine the gender dynamics of rural France. This personal connection adds poignancy to Bourdieu’s ethnographic account of the way the influence of urban values has precipitated a crisis for male peasants. Tied to the land through inheritance, these bachelors find themselves with little to offer the women of Béarn who, like the young Bourdieu himself, abandon the country for the city in droves.
Over the past four decades, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died in 2002, he was considered to be the most influential sociologist in the world and a thinker on a par with Foucault and Lévi-Strauss—a public intellectual as important to his generation as Sartre was to his.
Bourdieu’s final book, The Bachelors’ Ball, sees him return to Béarn, the region where he grew up, to examine the gender dynamics of rural France. This personal connection adds poignancy to Bourdieu’s ethnographic account of the way the influence of urban values has precipitated a crisis for male peasants. Tied to the land through inheritance, these bachelors find themselves with little to offer the women of Béarn who, like the young Bourdieu himself, abandon the country for the city in droves.
Posted on 5/27/14 at 2:40 pm to Kafka
I recently read muckraking Matt Taibbi's new book, The Divide.
Taibbi toned down a lot of his typically scathing prose and illustrated some fascinating components of domestic criminal justice, juxtaposing white collar crime with low level petty crime, as our system has evolved since Nixon's declaration of the war on drugs.
Quick read that should piss off any American, which is always Taibbi's goal as a muckraker.
Taibbi toned down a lot of his typically scathing prose and illustrated some fascinating components of domestic criminal justice, juxtaposing white collar crime with low level petty crime, as our system has evolved since Nixon's declaration of the war on drugs.
Quick read that should piss off any American, which is always Taibbi's goal as a muckraker.
Posted on 5/27/14 at 2:55 pm to Kafka
Just finished Folsom's FDR New Deal or Raw Deal which was a decent read. The author is probably overly biased and certainly guilty of cherry picking his supporting data. Anyhow, its interesting if for no other reason than it paints a different light on FDR as compared to most history texts..
This post was edited on 5/27/14 at 3:02 pm
Posted on 5/27/14 at 3:08 pm to Kafka
Just finished Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke. Excellent.
Posted on 5/27/14 at 3:10 pm to Kafka
I'm on book 6 of the outlander series by Diana gabaldon. It is a beautifully written series. Sci fy/historical fiction/romance? It's about a 1960s nurse who goes back in time to 1770s Scotland. All about the building up of the war. The books are long and WONDERFUL.
As a bonus, starz is turning it into a mini series this August.
Something for the ladies, and lots of blood and guts for the gentlemen.
Indians, treachery, medicine, war, travel, love...all kinda of stuff. The sci fi part is done so well that it's not completely far fetched.
Recommend!
As a bonus, starz is turning it into a mini series this August.
Something for the ladies, and lots of blood and guts for the gentlemen.
Indians, treachery, medicine, war, travel, love...all kinda of stuff. The sci fi part is done so well that it's not completely far fetched.
Recommend!
Posted on 5/27/14 at 5:51 pm to Kafka
If anyone enjoys reading short stories like I do. I beg you to read George Saunders' Tenth of December. The elegance and writing style of Saunders pours out of his stories, really great stuff.
Posted on 5/27/14 at 5:56 pm to Kafka
For those interested in the Mormon religion, I highly recommend "Under the Banner of Heaven". It details the founding of the religion and their move across the plains to Utah. It also chronicles a murder that took place years ago. Quite an interesting read.
Posted on 5/27/14 at 5:58 pm to Kafka
So many books in the world.. What's the point if I can't read them all.
Posted on 5/27/14 at 6:04 pm to Kafka
To draw on a thread from the weekend, a horrific one, let's go ahead and get this out.
Post here if you have NOT read Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.
Post here if you have NOT read Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.
Posted on 5/27/14 at 6:35 pm to Kafka
I'm almost finished with John Sandford's new Lucas Davenport book "Field Of Prey". If you like Sandford, you'll like this one. It's not groundbreaking, but I'm enjoying it.
Has anybody read The Goldfinch?
Has anybody read The Goldfinch?
Posted on 5/27/14 at 7:26 pm to Kafka
Anything written by Herman Wouk is worth the time. My favorite is the Caine Mutiny. The symbolism is anything but subtle.
His Don't Stop the Carnival was an inspiration to Jimmy Buffett.
His Don't Stop the Carnival was an inspiration to Jimmy Buffett.
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