What are you reading? Topic

i finally switched to amazon after lifetime of barnes and noble.
long live the bookseller.
11/19/2019 10:32 PM
Posted by crazystengel on 11/19/2019 1:29:00 AM (view original):
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators (2019) by Ronan Farrow. Odd book, in that I was impressed with the reporting and the constant twists and turns in the story (involving some legitimately crazy spy stuff) but turned off by Farrow’s writing, in which he comes across as an Encyclopedia Brown in the age of selfies. Funny passage near the end of the book, when The New Yorker is set to publish Farrow’s first big Harvey Weinstein article online, and Farrow moves to take a photograph of everyone in the room -- until editor David Remnick (who’s one of the heroes of the book) tells him no photographs, kid, that’s not our style here. Farrow sheepishly writes that he wanted the photo in the spirit of "unsmiling documentation, not triumphalism," but I think Remnick had him figured out.

The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life (2019) edited by Andrew Blauner. Anthology with 33 contributors (mostly with essays, but also a couple poems and comic strips) on Charles Schulz’s life and work. Quite a range in quality, from excellent (Gerald Early, Kevin Powell, Chris Ware) to bad (Jonathan Franzen, predictably insufferable). Worth it if you’re a fan of Peanuts.

By the way, over the past few years I read (or re-read, in the main) the entire strip in volumes that contain two years’ worth of strips each. The books begin in 1950 and end in 2000 – that’s right, Schultz drew Peanuts for exactly half a century, with the last strip published the day after he died. Peanuts was genuinely brilliant for maybe 15 years, from about 1959 to 1974. There are still good individual comics in the ‘80s and beyond, but unfortunately a lot of sentimental fluff too, as Schultz moved away from the earlier irony and cruelty and brought the strip more in line with the cutesy “Happiness is a Warm Puppy” merchandising. Anyway, great to read these right before bedtime, especially if you've had a rough day...
I totally agree with your analysis of Peanuts - brilliant for a long time, readable for a while longer, then lost steam. How weird - I still remember that day Schultz had died and we had all already known that his last strip was coming out. Sad really. And not.

Read this article a few years ago and it seems right: https://kotaku.com/how-snoopy-killed-peanuts-1724269473

As to the other book you mention, "Encyclopedia Brown in the age of selfies" should be the name of a movie, or a band or a cool website, something. It's a great line.
11/20/2019 4:56 PM
italyprof, "Snoopy Killed Peanuts" was a common refrain in the book. Two different writers compared Snoopy's effect on the strip to Fonzie's on Happy Days -- a minor character who caught fire and sucked all the attention away from the main characters, to the detriment of the entire enterprise.

Oh, well. The Rolling Stones also had about 15 brilliant years in a half century career, and I don't begrudge them the mediocre years: I still tip my cap to them for the great ones.
11/20/2019 5:21 PM
Posted by italyprof on 11/19/2019 6:26:00 PM (view original):
Posted by boogerlips on 10/22/2019 9:31:00 AM (view original):
I just finished the Gospel According to Mark. I liked it a whole lot!
boogerlips, me too.

Have you seen my take on Mark 2:27-28?

Here it is:
https://stevencolatrella.wixsite.com/justice-and-shame/post/the-sabbath-was-made-for-human-beings-means-all-of-this-is-yours

I would be interested to know what you think of it.
more great words by great men

ET - " be good "
11/22/2019 5:42 PM
Posted by soxyanks12 on 11/19/2019 1:38:00 AM (view original):
I work third shift driving so as much as I love a good physical book (I have a robust library and I love the smell of old books!) Audible has become a necessity for me! I've gone back to restart Terry Goodkind's Legend of the Seeker with and excellent narrator.
Nothing can beat a hardcover. God bless the people who can use a kindle-type device but I must have paper in my hands to fully enjoy the act of reading.
11/22/2019 8:32 PM
Abstract Submitted for the DFD19 Meeting of The American Physical Society
The Baseball Seam: Clever and Capable Passive Flow Control BARTON SMITH1, ANDREW SMITH2, Utah State University — It is obvious to any observer of baseball that the aerodynamics of the ball are important, both for pitched and batted balls. Much has been written about the well-known Magnus E?ect, or the force on a moving ball due to its rotation. Less is known about forces due to the wake of the ball. Baseball seams make baseballs very interesting when compared to other sports balls. They play two roles: As many have speculated, when located in the favorable pressure gradient on the front of the ball, they can cause laminar ?ow to become turbulent, which subsequently modi?es the wake of the ball. More surprisingly, when located in the adverse gradient on the back of the ball, they can also modify the location of boundary layer separation and can make the wake (and thus the force on the ball) asymmetric, leading to movement. In this talk, we will discuss these e?ects and the possibility of the existence of the “laminar express” 2-seam fastball that moves due an asymmetric wake rather than by Magnus e?ect.
1Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering 2Graduate Student, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Barton Smith Utah State University
Date submitted: 01 Aug 2019 Electronic form version 1.4
11/24/2019 10:06 PM
11/25/2019 3:42 AM
My daughter bought this for me from her school book club.

11/25/2019 9:36 AM
The Innocents Abroad. Fascinating non-fiction as Mark Twain travels through Europe, Africa, and the "Holy Land."

Published in 1869, a real precursor to modern American literature and a departure from Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. A really enjoyable read and reinforces what a great writer he was.
11/26/2019 3:17 PM
Posted by marcstuart on 11/26/2019 3:17:00 PM (view original):
The Innocents Abroad. Fascinating non-fiction as Mark Twain travels through Europe, Africa, and the "Holy Land."

Published in 1869, a real precursor to modern American literature and a departure from Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. A really enjoyable read and reinforces what a great writer he was.
Thanks marcstuart. I've never read it. Sounds like fun. I will put in on my list.
11/28/2019 5:28 PM
Posted by contrarian23 on 11/5/2019 8:48:00 AM (view original):
Currently reading "It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country" by David Shulkin, former head of the VA. (In hardcover btw, purchased from Amazon, where I pre-ordered the book and they later discounted the price to me...)

I've met Dr. Shulkin a couple of times, though I certainly don't know him well. It's a decent book, not great, but informative and generally well written. At this point, there has been enough written about the failures and general incompetence of the Trump administration that almost nothing can surprise me any more. But...Shulkin's narrative of the meeting in which Trump "interviewed" him for the job is practically an SNL skit writing itself (a fact that Shulkin himself noticed at the time.) It would be hard to imagine more of a buffoon holding the nation's highest office. While not the primary focus of the book, just about every scene in which he describes an interaction with Trump reinforces this perspective.

The real merits of the book though are the details into which Shulkin takes the reader in describing the VA health system. For non-US readers, the Veterans Administration is the federal agency that pays for and delivers health care, and some other services, for veterans of the US armed forces. It is an extensive network of hospitals and other care providers located (largely in major cities) across the US, and it has come under fire in recent years - sometimes for valid reasons and sometimes not - for its overall performance. Shulkin pulls few punches in talking about the shortcomings and failures of the system, and gives his perspective on what can be done to improve it. But he also shines a bright light on many of the success stories. The VA is far far far from the nightmare that many - especially on the political right - make it out to be. And in fact the VA pioneered (and remains ahead of most of American health care) in several areas: telemedicine, integrating behavioral health, team-based care, addressing social determinants in addition to clinical issues, etc.

Worth reading if you want to be just a little better informed on the issues facing the health of American vets.
Update...saw Shulkin give a talk this evening, and he was able to expound on a number of areas touched on in the book. Well worth listening to if he comes to a city near you.
12/9/2019 9:35 PM
Haven't read it yet but

Ballpark: Baseball in the American City by Paul Goldberger

just out this year. Looks like required reading for this bunch. It's on deck for me. Probably make a great Xmas present for the fan in your life.
12/16/2019 2:09 PM
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The Blue Room (1964) by George Simenon. Nifty little crime novel about an adulterous affair that goes south. Not an ounce of fat on Simenon’s writing, which manages to be both fast-paced and elegant. 150 page book that you can read in one evening.
12/18/2019 2:49 AM
simenon is a great writer....his stories have a lot of psychological comment.
he is spare and to the point with style.....like a wise man.
12/18/2019 3:23 AM
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