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Post by Wolfgang on Apr 5, 2019 16:31:11 GMT -5
He was born in Russia, so I'm assuming his daddy was born in Russia. Unless it was Germany.
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 5, 2019 16:39:34 GMT -5
Part of a series: Discount Armageddon Midnight Blue-light Special Half-Off Ragnarok Pocket Apocalypse Chaos Choreography Magic For Nothing Tricks For Freeand there is a side-series about the ghosts: Sparrow Hill Road The Girl In The Green Silk GownFelt like elaborating: Discount ArmageddonVerity Price is a ballroom dancer (named Valerie Pryor), a cocktail waitress in a strip club, and a cryptozoologist (someone who studies species not known to mainstream scientists). She's in New York to decide which of those professions she really wants to follow. She encounters Dominic de Luca, a member of the Covenant Of Saint George. The Covenant are sworn to purge the world of the species that Verity is trained to study and protect. Together they investigate why something in the sewers is abducting young virgin women (human and otherwise). Midnight Blue-light SpecialDominic has decided it's OK to share a planet with non-humans and a bed with Verity, but the Covenant sends a strike team to New York to conduct a purge. The only thing they would like to kill more than non-human monsters is a member of the Price family. Dominic has to decide which side he is on, and Verity has to stop the purge without letting the Covenant know that the Prices are still alive. Half-Off RagnarokAlex Price is doing a post-doc at a zoo in Ohio and trying to establish a secret captive breeding program for basilisks. However, something is turning animals and people into stone. And Alex might start dating a cute visiting Aussie zoologist. But petrification is a painful way to die. Pocket ApocalypseAlex visits Australia to meet his new girlfriend's family. And then gets bitten by a werewolf. Oops. Chaos ChoreographyValerie Pryor is invited back to an all-star version of the reality TV dancing program she almost won several seasons ago. But really she's Verity Price. Only this time, when the contestants are voted off the show, they are never making it out of the theater. (Also, her grandmother shows up, makes cookies, and brings the grenades.) Magic For NothingAfter Verity kind of blew their cover on live national TV, the Prices send their younger daughter Antimony over to England to infiltrate the Covenant. The Covenant then send her back to the US to infiltrate a traveling carnival. The shapechanging monkey-man who she befriends there is exactly the sort of monster the Covenant expects her to report so that they can kill him, but she'd rather kiss him on the Ferris wheel instead. Tricks For FreeNow on the run from the Covenant, Antimony takes a job doing retail at a Florida amusement park. She can't lead the Covenant back to her family. So when she runs into a cabal of magic users secretly controlling the park, she has only her roommates and her boyfriend from the carnival to help her out. And her dead Aunt Mary, of course. Sparrow Hill RoadThe story of Rose Marshall -- the phantom hitchhiker who was murdered on the way to her prom. But her killer didn't manage to feed her soul to his demon car, so he's still after her. (This book is a fixup: a collection of short stories rewritten as a single novel.) The Girl In The Green Silk GownRose Marshall is brought back to life, and she's not happy about it. She had gotten used to being a ghost. But returning to her ghostly afterlife is not as easy as just dying again. Just read the latest book: That Ain't WitchcraftAnnie and her friends end up in a spooky small town in Maine (cue lots of Steven King jokes). She meets a guy there who is trying to kill the evil "crossroads". Annie owes the crossroads a favor. Guess what the crossroads wants her to do? This is complicated by the fact that since she's no longer surrounded by all the people at Lowryland, the Covenant can track her down. And they do.
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Post by mln59 on Apr 5, 2019 18:00:10 GMT -5
next i'll start the church of the pilgrim fathers, edited by george n. marshall.
still need to read the forger but i'll get to that.
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Post by Wolfgang on Apr 5, 2019 18:01:17 GMT -5
next i'll start the church of the pilgrim fathers, edited by george n. marshall.
still need to read the forger but i'll get to that.
I think you like all the books you've read. I don't think you've made a negative comment about any book in this thread.
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Post by mln59 on Apr 6, 2019 7:30:33 GMT -5
next i'll start the church of the pilgrim fathers, edited by george n. marshall.
still need to read the forger but i'll get to that.
I think you like all the books you've read. I don't think you've made a negative comment about any book in this thread. very likely. when i reflect upon my reading life, i can recall 2 books i didn't finish (call of the wild and the once and future king) and one book i hated (surely you're joking mr. feynman).
everything else had, at the least, a modicum of enjoyment
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 6, 2019 13:12:21 GMT -5
Why did you hate Feynman?
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Post by mln59 on Apr 6, 2019 13:17:30 GMT -5
Why did you hate Feynman? didn't like much of what he did and, as a result, the book irritated the snarf out of me.
i was surprised i disliked it as much as i did. i didn't expect to have such a strong reaction
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 7, 2019 23:22:55 GMT -5
Why did you hate Feynman? didn't like much of what he did and, as a result, the book irritated the snarf out of me.
i was surprised i disliked it as much as i did. i didn't expect to have such a strong reaction
"Much of what he did"? Like study physics and stuff? Feynman was quite an interesting character. One of his little quirks was that he wrote no fewer than THREE autobiographies in which he constantly claimed he thought he was nobody special. I can certainly understand somebody thinking he was falsely humble, but I can't remember anything he *did* that would be likely to irritate people. Although it is true that one of his contemporaries, Murray Gell-Man, once complained that Feynman seemed to "spend a huge amount of time generating anecdotes about himself". It is true that Feynman seemed to see the world as somewhat absurd and went out of his way to contribute to the absurdity. ("Richard Feynman, sexism and changing perceptions of a scientific icon" -- an article that was removed from Scientific American "because it did not meet Scientific American's quality standards" but can be found at blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/richard-feynman-sexism-and-changing-perceptions-of-a-scientific-icon/ "in the name of transparency".)
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Post by Wolfgang on Apr 8, 2019 11:18:36 GMT -5
Feynman was big around campus. Even I heard of him even though I majored in EE, not physics. He was a very approachable guy so the eager wide-eyed students (from all disciplines) would flock to him whenever there were "Feynman sightings." But I was not a stargazer then so I was not so easily impressed with the celebrity status of people. (I'm still not today.) I crossed paths with Feynman only once during my entire time there and that was because he was walking around campus with a bunch of dignitaries. You could see the throng. It was like a school of anchovies. My house (it's like a fraternity in many many ways but they called it "house") invited Feynman for a dinner, but he declined. I imagine he was getting invitations all the time from people, companies, organizations, and the like. My friend once approached Feynman around campus and it must've been when he was in a bad mood because he told my friend, "Not now. I'm trying to make my way to the other side of campus and I'm late as it is." Words to that effect. My friend was crushed.
I didn't know much about Feynman at the time I was there when he was alive and kicking. I knew more later by reading about him after his death. I could've possibly had him as a professor in one of the graduate seminars if I had elected to stay and get my Master's at CalTech. That would've been something. But I really did NOT want to get my Master's at CalTech. (Long story: the EE program was a mess.) But this was in the mid- to late-1980s and I'm not sure he would've been teaching much (if at all) due to his health. I didn't even know he died until, like, 5 years after he actually died.
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Post by Wolfgang on Apr 8, 2019 18:22:00 GMT -5
The Year of the Flood
On p. 200. I'm a sucker for stories where kids/teens do something stupid and adults have to pay the price. In this case, a couple of teens think they made a major discovery of sorts (based on their limited view) and when they reveal this discovery to others, things go to shiite, regardless of whether this discovery is true or not. Same thing happened in Atonement (by Ian McEwan), where a child rats on some people even though she is (a) wrong, (b) acting out of selfish reasons, and (b) unaware of the enormous ramifications of such actions. She thinks she knows, but she really doesn't know.
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Post by Wolfgang on Apr 9, 2019 17:12:48 GMT -5
The Year of the Flood
I'm on p. 230.
This is the second book in the trilogy. At the halfway point, things are really coming together with the first book. In the first book (Oryx and Crake), we meet Jimmy (aka Snowman) and Glenn (aka Crake). Halfway into the second book, we meet Jimmy and Glenn again, but from the point of view of different characters. Getting interesting.
Actually, the book introduced Glenn earlier but I didn't make the connection because I had forgotten that Crake's name was "Glenn."
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Post by volleyguy on Apr 11, 2019 21:34:48 GMT -5
The Oryx and Crake trilogy Here's the basic structure and author's approach on the trilogy, which I'm now discovering because I'm near the end of the second book. (I'm not giving any spoilers, so don't worry.) ... I love this shiite. I've always loved stories, whether in novels, TV shows, or movies, where the same event is experienced and/or witnessed by different characters and told from their POV. I'm a sucker for those. In that case, I recommend Sybil.
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 11, 2019 22:38:51 GMT -5
I love this shiite. I've always loved stories, whether in novels, TV shows, or movies, where the same event is experienced and/or witnessed by different characters and told from their POV. I'm a sucker for those.
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Post by Wolfgang on Apr 11, 2019 22:40:02 GMT -5
I love this shiite. I've always loved stories, whether in novels, TV shows, or movies, where the same event is experienced and/or witnessed by different characters and told from their POV. I'm a sucker for those. If this is supposed to be Rashomon, yeah, I liked it but not the ghost shiite.
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 11, 2019 22:45:41 GMT -5
If this is supposed to be Rashomon, yeah, I liked it but not the ghost shiite. Yes, that's the gate from Rashomon. The only major set from the movie.
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