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Tim O Neill
Byrne Robotics Security
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10943
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| Posted: 20 March 2011 at 8:48am | IP Logged | 1
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Matt R: "For me, even The Hobbit, Paulo. "
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"The Hobbit" was my way in - I loved that book when I read it. And at the time I had no desire at the time to read "Lord of the Rings" nor did I know that it was the more popular work. I just got hungry for more of that world after reading "The Hobbit" twice.
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Robert Cosgrove
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 January 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 1710
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| Posted: 20 March 2011 at 9:23am | IP Logged | 2
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More serious reading: Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution; Book on Tape for automobile driving: Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell (recently finished his King Arthur trilogy);Light reading: bogging down in The Sherlockian; next up: either After America, by John Birmingham, or Death of a Red Heroine, by Qui Xiaolong, whose work I haven't sampled before. Also dipping into the short story collection, Sympathy for the Devil.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133694
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| Posted: 20 March 2011 at 9:49am | IP Logged | 3
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I'll be very impressed if you finish, Ryan! Aside from the crawling-down-the-wall scene, which I found one of the creepiest I had ever read, I found DRACULA an enormous snooze-fest!*** That's come up several times here in the years I've been on the forum and it seems to be the one big exception to the fact that I usually seem to have the same taste in things as you, JB. I tend to agree with you on comics, definitely on everything Star Trek related, and on most books that we've both read (Fleming, Tolkein, Zelazny, to name a few), but with DRACULA, complete opposite opinions. It's one of my favorite novels. I always thought the pace of it was perfect for the atmosphere that Stoker was building. •• And that's what makes America great! :-)
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Aaron Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 10461
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| Posted: 20 March 2011 at 11:21am | IP Logged | 4
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Absolutely.
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Chris Cottrill
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 September 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 375
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| Posted: 21 March 2011 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | 5
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I just started reading "Emerald Hell" by Tom Piccirilli.The synopsis or
vignette on the back describes it as being like the Mike Mignola story
"The Crooked Man".By the way it's a Hellboy novel.
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Carmen Bernardo
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 August 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 3666
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| Posted: 22 March 2011 at 6:18am | IP Logged | 6
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Currently in the process of re-reading The Ottoman Centuries, by Lord Kinross. This book chronicles the dynasties of the Sultans of Ottoman Turkey, from their establisment on the shrinking frontiers of the old Byzantine Empire, through their zenith as an Islamic empire capable of taking out anything that Christian Europe could fling at them, to its decline and collapse from the Renaissance era onwards. Quite a few lessons can be taken from this, to the effect of George Santayana's well-known proverb about learning from History.
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Tom French
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 January 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4154
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| Posted: 22 March 2011 at 6:31am | IP Logged | 7
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I just read my very first book on iPhone -- well, the iBooks app, actually. I'd loaned away my hard copy of this book and after recommending it to a friend, decided I wanted to read it again. Anyway, can't recommend Matt Ruff's BAD MONKEYS enough! A great page-turner that tricks the reader into believing an unreliable narrator -- is she a fratricidal drug-addicted homeless woman, or does she really work for a secret governmental agency? Good stuff.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133694
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| Posted: 22 March 2011 at 6:41am | IP Logged | 8
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Did I mention CITY AT WORLD'S END is on my bedside table the past few nights? Not quite an annual read, but just about that often.This is a kind of "special" reading, tho. It was my father who introduced me to the book when I was around 13 years old, and a few years back I found for him an autographed copy. That copy has since come back to me. It's fun to read the book, knowing that, at some point, Edmond Hamilton himself actually held it in his hands!
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Mike O'Brien
Byrne Robotics Member
Official JB Historian
Joined: 18 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10934
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| Posted: 22 March 2011 at 7:22am | IP Logged | 9
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That's how I feel about stuff I own that you've autographed, JB.In other news - I just finished reading a book that blew my mind - could be my all-new favorite - it's called The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale - about a chimp who learns to talk - brilliant. A must-read.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133694
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| Posted: 22 March 2011 at 8:06am | IP Logged | 10
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… about a chimp who learns to talk …•• Reminding me immediately of a "bit" in Clifford Simak's CITY. Set in the distant future, when humans have long since left Earth and moved on to worlds around other stars, the principle characters are the robots and genetically altered dogs who were left behind. The "bit" derives from the fact that long ago humans engineered dogs so they could stand on their hind legs and talk -- and one of the first things we learned when dogs became able to speak was that when a dog stares off into the distance and growls at what appears to be nothing, the dog is actually seeing something!
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Scott Silverstein
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 October 2007
Posts: 198
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| Posted: 22 March 2011 at 9:10am | IP Logged | 11
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ROLE MODELS by John Waters This book is a laugh riot!! ...Its nice to laugh these days..... A fascinating chapter is devoted to John Water's close friendship with LESILE VAN HOUTEN .... better know as one of the Manson's girls....it is creepy yet insightful.....
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Marc Foxx
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5587
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| Posted: 22 March 2011 at 11:27am | IP Logged | 12
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Just finished "City At World's End" (a couple of years back, someone here had provided a link to a free pdf copy that I downloaded and promptly forgot about).Just picked up Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" from the library.
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