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Post by Deleted on May 26, 2015 23:42:46 GMT
I cannot read a book that isn't about sports. I have the attention span of a carrot. Not proud of it, but so true. I'm going to change that this summer. It's my goal. Why change ? Stay with your passion and what interests you. If it's sports.......then sports books it is. Yours truly........fellow carrot.
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Post by Deleted on May 27, 2015 0:29:11 GMT
Yikes. Things have kicked a few notches out of my range now. I think Polybius...is Um. I like books. (running back to the Bruins Board) Yeah, I have a hard time reading books from pre-WWII.
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Post by UtahGetMeTwo on May 27, 2015 0:33:55 GMT
"It was the Elephants I tell yah, the Elephants!" Pretty much all Hannibal needed to say. PS. Seriously though over the Alps twice Hannibal ? Only someone from Africa would presume elephants would survive in the alps. I mean, have you ever seen them? Went Skiing on parts of the Alps. Oh seen an Elephant ? Poor guys don't have much grip on the pads of their feetsies. Heh imagine one getting out of control going down hill...Ahhh!!!!
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Post by jmwalters on May 27, 2015 13:04:44 GMT
Only someone from Africa would presume elephants would survive in the alps. I mean, have you ever seen them? Went Skiing on parts of the Alps. Oh seen an Elephant ? Poor guys don't have much grip on the pads of their feetsies. Heh imagine one getting out of control going down hill...Ahhh!!!!Funny you mention that, the book outlines several incidents of this, taking out rows of men with them. Like a giant snowball...or the big round rock in the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark
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Post by UtahGetMeTwo on May 27, 2015 14:33:53 GMT
I'm tempted to search for a gif of an Elephant sliding down an icy hill but i'm afraid I might find it.
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Post by jmwalters on May 27, 2015 16:27:24 GMT
I'm tempted to search for a gif of an Elephant sliding down an icy hill but i'm afraid I might find it. haha!! Well, you have to do it now!
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2015 13:10:32 GMT
I started reading "Redeployment" by Phil Klay, a short story collection about the Iraq War. Great sense of "realism" but the reviews saying it's another "Things They Carried" are premature imo. Great book so far, but I can't get past every story being in first person. A Clockwork Orange/Trainspotting glossary would be a huge help. There are a multitude of military abbreviations, and the book leaves the reader in the dark.
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Post by Fletcher on May 31, 2015 17:04:12 GMT
I started reading "Redeployment" by Phil Klay, a short story collection about the Iraq War. Great sense of "realism" but the reviews saying it's another "Things They Carried" are premature imo. Great book so far, but I can't get past every story being in first person. A Clockwork Orange/Trainspotting glossary would be a huge help. There are a multitude of military abbreviations, and the book leaves the reader in the dark. Bollocks!
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Post by MrHulot on May 31, 2015 17:32:59 GMT
LOL!
When you say books about sports does that include fiction like Shoeless Joe (aka Field of Dreams as a movie)?
I cannot read fiction. I cannot watch science fiction movies either. "Attention span of a carrot", doesn't that work against you as a goalie? Just asking... I don't like to read fiction either (although I have read some), while my wife loves them - and she hates sci fi movies, while I love (most of) them (don't like Star Wars, though). Maybe you should try "Shoeless Joe", or "Fever Pitch" (which is about an Englishman obsessed with soccer/football & Arsenal Football Club - the Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore Red Sox movie is only loosely based on this book). "The Damned United" is another good soccer/football book I have read, it's fiction, but about events that actually happened in English football in the 1970s (back then it was "the 1st division", not yet "the Premier League"). And no, I'm not a big soccer/football fan (anymore).
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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2015 0:22:42 GMT
I started reading "Redeployment" by Phil Klay, a short story collection about the Iraq War. Great sense of "realism" but the reviews saying it's another "Things They Carried" are premature imo. Great book so far, but I can't get past every story being in first person. A Clockwork Orange/Trainspotting glossary would be a huge help. There are a multitude of military abbreviations, and the book leaves the reader in the dark. Bollocks! They made a whole trilogy out of Trainspotting.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2015 0:28:34 GMT
I cannot read fiction. I cannot watch science fiction movies either. "Attention span of a carrot", doesn't that work against you as a goalie? Just asking... I don't like to read fiction either (although I have read some), while my wife loves them - and she hates sci fi movies, while I love (most of) them (don't like Star Wars, though). Maybe you should try "Shoeless Joe", or "Fever Pitch" (which is about an Englishman obsessed with soccer/football & Arsenal Football Club - the Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore Red Sox movie is only loosely based on this book). "The Damned United" is another good soccer/football book I have read, it's fiction, but about events that actually happened in English football in the 1970s (back then it was "the 1st division", not yet "the Premier League"). And no, I'm not a big soccer/football fan (anymore). The Damned United was a good movie, I didn't know it was a book.
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Post by MrHulot on Jun 3, 2015 2:39:48 GMT
"Attention span of a carrot", doesn't that work against you as a goalie? Just asking... I don't like to read fiction either (although I have read some), while my wife loves them - and she hates sci fi movies, while I love (most of) them (don't like Star Wars, though). Maybe you should try "Shoeless Joe", or "Fever Pitch" (which is about an Englishman obsessed with soccer/football & Arsenal Football Club - the Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore Red Sox movie is only loosely based on this book). "The Damned United" is another good soccer/football book I have read, it's fiction, but about events that actually happened in English football in the 1970s (back then it was "the 1st division", not yet "the Premier League"). And no, I'm not a big soccer/football fan (anymore). The Damned United was a good movie, I didn't know it was a book. The movie was good, too (amazing performance by Michael Sheen).
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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2015 20:54:53 GMT
I started reading "Pedro," by, guess who ? Anyway, Im 2/3 through from a couple short flights to Toronto. Its interesting.... he's very candid and doesnt hold back about people and teams he doesnt like. Makes a lot of steroid references, clear and vague.
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Post by UtahGetMeTwo on Jun 14, 2015 16:49:41 GMT
"My Turf: Horses, Boxers, Blood Money, And The Sporting Life by William Nack"
Since we we were on the subject horse racing I decided to order and read this great book again.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2015 1:37:42 GMT
Not much going on here lately...
I finished up TD Allman's revisionist history of the Sunshine State, "Finding Florida." On a scale from a liberal high school teacher to Howard Zinn, I'd give it two and a half stars.
"Drown" by Junot Diaz was a legitimate five star story collection, lots of literary cred, but up there in entertainment value with "Night Shift" by Stephen King and "The Acid House" by Irvine Welsh. I've got a decent how to on clicker training for our new Aussie, and I'm reading "A Fan's Notes" by Frederick Exley. Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter" is on deck for my "vacation" back home to Southern NH. I know I'll have plenty of free time up there.
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Post by bookboy007 on Jul 6, 2015 3:56:19 GMT
I love Ford. Just the language is so good. I've read the Bascombe trilogy, and I wouldn't recommend it to everybody because they're not page-turners, those books. But they're great writing and almost surreal. 'Canada' was just okay by comparison; still worth the read.
Reading 'The Interrogative Mood' by Pagett Powell and 'Heir to Forgotten Kingdoms' about some of the ancient religions that have survived in the Islamic world for a thousand years and more. Neither is knocking my socks off.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2015 15:49:08 GMT
I love Ford. Just the language is so good. I've read the Bascombe trilogy, and I wouldn't recommend it to everybody because they're not page-turners, those books. But they're great writing and almost surreal. 'Canada' was just okay by comparison; still worth the read. Reading 'The Interrogative Mood' by Pagett Powell and 'Heir to Forgotten Kingdoms' about some of the ancient religions that have survived in the Islamic world for a thousand years and more. Neither is knocking my socks off. To boot, I got "The Sportswriter" for fifty cents at the library. I've been having some good luck with those sales. It balances out the retail prices for some books at the bookstore. I didn't know that it was a trilogy, I knew that "Independence Day" was a sequel. Hopefully there's more plot there than "The Crossing" by Cormac McCarthy. That book really pissed me off. Speaking of language, he's not the easiest writer to follow, and I've never read a 400 page book where less happened. I wasn't expecting action on the level of James Patterson, either. Imo, that book would have been a disaster without the knowledge that there was a book following it. (Cities of the Plains)
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Post by bookboy007 on Jul 7, 2015 11:24:22 GMT
I have a lot of writer friends who love McCarthy. No idea why he's never landed with me. I keep thinking I should try again with The Road (baby-eating? I'm in!), but I get to the point of grabbing my wife's copy and I look at the big movie tie-in cover with Aragorn on the cover and think "maybe there's some experimental nonsense I could read instead."
There's no good reason for this.
Lay of the Land is the third book in the Bascombe trilogy. In some ways, it's my favorite.
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Post by kelvana33 on Jul 7, 2015 13:57:18 GMT
I started reading "Pedro," by, guess who ? Anyway, Im 2/3 through from a couple short flights to Toronto. Its interesting.... he's very candid and doesnt hold back about people and teams he doesnt like. Makes a lot of steroid references, clear and vague. Going to go and buy that today. Loved it when Pedro was here, like an event when he was on the mound.
Ahhh, the good ol days when the Red Sox were relevant.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2015 2:09:23 GMT
I have a lot of writer friends who love McCarthy. No idea why he's never landed with me. I keep thinking I should try again with The Road (baby-eating? I'm in!), but I get to the point of grabbing my wife's copy and I look at the big movie tie-in cover with Aragorn on the cover and think "maybe there's some experimental nonsense I could read instead." There's no good reason for this. Lay of the Land is the third book in the Bascombe trilogy. In some ways, it's my favorite. "The Road" as I'm sure you know, is a big time departure from his style. I really liked it, and "No Country for Old Men" but my favorites are "All the Pretty Horses" and "Blood Meridian." I still need to read his earlier work, his first three novels have been overlooked, if not forgotten. I like him because I'm a sucker for lyrical writing and description, and some of his passages are the height of what I call "male bad-assery." Like in Blood Meridian where the Apache warriors were wearing bloody clothes from a wedding party they slaughtered, or the knife fight in a Mexican prison during "All the Pretty Horses" or just about everything Anton Chiguhr did.
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Post by islamorada on Jul 9, 2015 13:16:17 GMT
It would be interesting to have some of you post your top ten books read, I would but they are all history (nonfiction).
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Post by jmwalters on Jul 9, 2015 16:32:09 GMT
It would be interesting to have some of you post your top ten books read, I would but they are all history (nonfiction). yeah I kind of have that problem too
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Post by bookboy007 on Jul 9, 2015 17:18:28 GMT
Why is it a problem? One of the two I mentioned above is history (nonfiction).
Now, if someone has an unrelenting passion for books on woodworking, that might be a problem....
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Post by walktheline on Jul 9, 2015 17:48:50 GMT
It would be interesting to have some of you post your top ten books read, I would but they are all history (nonfiction). I love history. I read lots of other stuff but a decent amount of my books are history and historical fiction. Here's a few I've read recently. Washington’s Spies by Alexander Rose The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan Dead Wake by Erik Larson Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick
I'm going up to Maine for a week soon and I have Monuments Men by Robert Edsel ( I think) and The Wright Brothers by David McCullough already packed. Anything by McCullough is anywhere from very good to great.
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Post by walktheline on Jul 9, 2015 17:51:31 GMT
Why is it a problem? One of the two I mentioned above is history (nonfiction). Now, if someone has an unrelenting passion for books on woodworking, that might be a problem.... I just buzzed through a History of Power Saws. I wouldn't recommend it, though. It was a complete hack job.
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