Hit List

 I am a member of Kindle Unlimited. That's the Amazon program that lets you download ten free books if you pay an monthly fee. It is a pretty good feature since you can change the books as much as you want. I read many more that ten books a month so I get my monies worth. I simply read something than delete it when I find a new book that interests me.

The books on the feature are of two varieties. One is new books by unknown authors. You can sample someones work without investing too much money into it. The other books are the earlier or more obscure work of established authors. This is what I usually download

Lawrence Block is one of my favorite authors. In fact I have to say "When the Sacred Gin-mill" closes is just about my favorite book. Block's hero Matthew Scudder writes about the drinking life. In that book he discusses the type of people you meet hanging out in a bar. It is scary how on the money he is as I recognize myself in one of his characters.

Another of his series revolves around Keller. He is a hit man and a stamp collector.. I know it seems crazy but it all seems to work. I ended up reading about eight of his novels or novellas that were on Kindle unlimited. I guess it is the Netflix effect. You just binge on something ready or watching five or six in a row. After all who wants to wait?

These books are excellent. A quick easy enjoyable read. A good introduction to Block. When I was reading it I wondered who I would get to play Keller. I do that all the time with characters. For example I always saw Paul Newman as Travis Mcgee. Tom Selleck as Spencer. Sam Elliot as Tell Sacket. Sometimes they are cast that way. Often they are not.

For Keller I see the guy who plays Pope on "Animal Kingdom." He is pretty ordinary looking and very calm with a distinct lack of effect. But I can see him being a hitman. 

Check out the Keller books if you can. Or the Scudder series. It will be a great way to spend some time if you are stuck inside because of our new communist overlords.

"The owner at my workplace banned books during my lunch "break""

r/books post...

I've been reading books during my lunch breaks at work and today they decided to ban "reading material" as it "takes me too long to eat". I've been reading reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. I prefer to read it in small bursts, it's a ton of material which leads me thought provoking ideas while I a delivery drive. I couldn't ever understand it reading it all in a week. Every few pages gives me enough to think about.

I explained to them that cellphones and social media and the like also contain letters and that this constitutes "reading material". The owners response was "I don't want to ban cellphones" and the General Manager added "it is against corporate rules". As in, cellphones are also banned. So to them cellphones are OK but a book is not.

I attempted to explain I'm missing the fillings out of some of my teeth due to root canals and me not having the money to replace them. I have to chew with my front teeth (mostly) and I can use my normal masticating teeth very carefully and deliberately. It takes me a lot longer (relatively) to chew food than most people. They decided that the "book" was why I was so slow. I've complained about toothaches before and for a good portion of my earlier work career, I could hardly eat at work at all.

So as my little fuck you to them, I'll be reading my books in ebook format.

I'm literally the only individual this applies too, and I just wanted to share my sticking it to the man.

I found it quite telling that phone games, social media, texting and the like are all "Ok". But when I try and better myself and "read a book" I'm singled out for it. Tells a lot about American culture nowadays.

/rant

"Dad Accused of Raping Daughter Saved by Mention of 50 Shades"

"[A] father charged with eight counts of incestuous rape that allegedly occurred over a six-year period; he "had absolutely no real defense other than 'I did not do it.'" His daughter, on the other hand, had given a "compelling interview" to police, explaining in detail what had allegedly occurred. There was just one thing that nagged at McCulloch: "the use of certain words, phrases, and descriptions of how she felt which seemed beyond her years." Then her client mentioned his daughter's favorite book (which he was unfamiliar with): Fifty Shades of Grey."

An instructing solicitor on the case who also had not previously read it picked up a copy and uncovered "too many striking similarities" between the girl's statement and the novel. In all, the team discovered 17 examples that "appeared to have been lifted from the book," per a more technical description of the case. McCulloch analyzed the passages and the girl's interview as part of her cross-examination preparations. On the trial's third day, the girl took the stand, and McCulloch began "gently." Just seven minutes later—during which McCulloch brought up those striking similarities—"we were finished." The girl admitted she had made up the allegations to teach her "strict" father a lesson. The prosecutor re-examined the girl and she confirmed that it had all been a lie. An immediate acquittal followed.

Fathers don't let your daughters read 50 Shades....
  

"As Far As Your Brain Is Concerned, Audiobooks Are Not ‘Cheating’"

The Science of Us:  This question — whether or not listening to an audiobook is “cheating” — is one University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham gets fairly often, especially ever since he published a book, in 2015, on the science of reading. (That one was about teaching children to read; he’s got another book out next spring about adults and reading.) He is very tired of this question, and so, recently, he wrote a blog post addressing it. (His opening line: “I’ve been asked this question a lot and I hate it.”) If, he argues, you take the question from the perspective of cognitive psychology — that is, the mental processes involved — there is no real difference between listening to a book and reading it. So, according to that understanding of the question: No, audiobooks are not cheating.

His reasoning reveals some fascinating insights about the way the brain makes sense of language, whether written or spoken. But first, consider what that assertion — that listening is cheating — is saying: It suggests that the listener got some reward without putting in the work. Because that does seem to be the typical argument, Willingham said. “It’s not that you’re missing out on something, or it’s not that this experience could be better for you,” he told Science of Us. “It’s that you’re cheating. And so they think you’re getting the rewarding part of it … and it’s the difficult part that you’ve somehow gotten out of.” So that implies, Willingham argues, that to your brain, listening is less “work” than reading. And that is true, sort of — but it stops being true somewhere around the fifth grade. (read the whole thing)

"How Would Our Ancestors View the 21st Century?"

What is the worst thing about living near an open sewer? It is not that you sicken at the stench of it every time you leave your front door. It is that the noisome vapors are so pervasive, and you have lived with them so long, you no longer notice it. What is the worst thing about living in the rubble of a civilization? It is not that you shed a tear for the noble churches and courts and town halls you once knew, as you recall years filled with religious services, parades, block parties, and all the bumptious folderol of an ordinary civic life. It is that you do not even suspect that such things existed.

But how would it be if a time traveler were to go back behind the upheaval and let the people glance into the future? It’s a feature of the American narrative that in all respects things improve over time, so that you can point to vaccines that have eliminated such dreaded diseases as polio and tuberculosis, or to ribbons of highways that bind up the country, or to the machine on which I am writing this essay now—the computer that puts in my grasp a vast library of human knowledge.

Our time traveler reveals these things, and the eyes of his audience grow glassy with wonder. Imagine—the poems of Tennyson, a few seconds away! The Dorsey band in person, Van Cliburn on the piano, Paderewski on the violin, Rembrandt in bold color, great things for everyone and not only for the rich who can travel. But then you will have to explain. No, a thousand to one, ten thousand to one, the people who use the instrument will be gazing at pornography rather than at the Masters. Then you will have to explain the term “pornography:” smut. And say that most high school students will never have heard of Tennyson, much less read his poems, but that almost all of them will have gazed at smut, some of them day after day.

The faces of the audience darken. Then, one among them, wiser than the rest, asks the obvious question: “How then shall we live?”

There is a country road that straggles its way over a mountain nearby. Lovers go there and pull over at a lookout, where they listen to music and engage in what’s called “necking.” It never goes beyond that because most of them are pretty good kids and understand that bearing children is for marriage and so is the child-making thing. That understanding allows them to be there in the first place. Innocence—even such compromised and sometimes failing innocence as we possess in a healthy culture—makes for freedom. You will have to tell the audience that there is no necking anymore. You will tell them that, as a rule, it is either sex or nothing. For the worst or the weakest among us, then, there is danger and heartbreak and, eventually, the protective callus of nihilism—even the shedding of blood. For the purest among us, and the most responsible, there is loneliness.

They have dances all the time, don’t they? Merry things that bring out young people in flocks, chaperoned by their elders, who usually partake in the dancing too, since music and dance are shared by all. Hardly a week goes by without a big dance somewhere. You will tell them that that’s all gone. You will tell them that the older generation feels absolutely no duty to bring young people together in a healthy and decent way. They are too busy engaging in their own debauches or they are simply alienated. They wouldn’t know where to begin.

“Where is the sweetness of young love?” they ask you. “Don’t people get married anymore?” You point their attention to their streets. There are families in every house. Sometimes it’s a grandmother and grandfather whose children have moved “away,” to the next block over, or across town, or, since this is America, to the neighboring county. Otherwise, it’s a mother and father with children, and the children are everywhere. If the weather is fair, you can hear the music of their games. A boy covers his eyes with his hands and leans against a telephone pole, counting down from 100 by fives, till he cries out, “Ready or not, here I come!” Or is that a ball that’s scooting through the “outfield,” down the pavement, while the kids cry, “Go, go, go”? What crime can such a place fear, when the streets and alleyways and backyards and porches are governed by spies more restless than any the CIA have ever trained, not to mention their grandmothers rocking on their porches and chatting with one another? Tell them that that is gone. (read the rest)

The perfect branch goes w/o a swing because the perfect couple inside goes w/o children

"Romanian city offers free rides to people reading on the bus"

"The initiative, which ran for a week in June, was proposed by Victor Miron, a book-lover and resident of Cluj-Napoca in north-western Romania."

Miron said that he wanted to “encourage more people to read on public transportation”.

He proposed his idea to the city’s mayor, Emil Boc, who then posted it to his followers on Facebook.

The idea received such an overwhelmingly warm response that a year later it was put into action.

“I believe that it’s better to promote reading by rewarding those who read, instead of criticising the ones who don’t,” said Miron on arts website Bored Panda this week.

"Can Reading Make You Happier?"

"We draw on the same brain networks when we’re reading stories and when we’re trying to guess at another person’s feelings."

Bibliotherapy is a very broad term for the ancient practice of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. The first use of the term is usually dated to a jaunty 1916 article in The Atlantic Monthly, “A Literary Clinic.” In it, the author describes stumbling upon a “bibliopathic institute” run by an acquaintance, Bagster, in the basement of his church, from where he dispenses reading recommendations with healing value. “Bibliotherapy is…a new science,” Bagster explains. “A book may be a stimulant or a sedative or an irritant or a soporific. The point is that it must do something to you, and you ought to know what it is. A book may be of the nature of a soothing syrup or it may be of the nature of a mustard plaster.” To a middle-aged client with “opinions partially ossified,” Bagster gives the following prescription: “You must read more novels. Not pleasant stories that make you forget yourself. They must be searching, drastic, stinging, relentless novels.” (George Bernard Shaw is at the top of the list.) Bagster is finally called away to deal with a patient who has “taken an overdose of war literature,” leaving the author to think about the books that “put new life into us and then set the life pulse strong but slow.”

Today, bibliotherapy takes many different forms, from literature courses run for prison inmates to reading circles for elderly people suffering from dementia. Sometimes it can simply mean one-on-one or group sessions for “lapsed” readers who want to find their way back to an enjoyment of books. Berthoud and her longtime friend and fellow bibliotherapist Susan Elderkin mostly practice “affective” bibliotherapy, advocating the restorative power of reading fiction. The two met at Cambridge University as undergraduates, more than twenty years ago, and bonded immediately over the shared contents of their bookshelves, in particular Italo Calvino’s novel “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller,” which is itself about the nature of reading. As their friendship developed, they began prescribing novels to cure each other’s ailments, such as a broken heart or career uncertainty. “When Suse was having a crisis about her profession—she wanted to be a writer, but was wondering if she could cope with the inevitable rejection—I gave her Don Marquis’s ‘Archy and Mehitabel’ poems,” Berthoud told me. “If Archy the cockroach could be so dedicated to his art as to jump on the typewriter keys in order to write his free-verse poems every night in the New York offices of the Evening Sun, then surely she should be prepared to suffer for her art, too.” Years later, Elderkin gave Berthoud,who wanted to figure out how to balance being a painter and a mother, Patrick Gale’s novel “Notes from an Exhibition,” about a successful but troubled female artist. (read the whole thing)

"The Code of Federal Regulations: The Ultimate Longread"

"Regulations have piled up and piled up to the point where no individual can make sense of them all."

The average adult reads prose text at a rate of 250 to 300 words per minute. If you read the Code of Federal Regulations at 300 words per minute on a full-time basis, it would take you nearly three years to get through just the version of the CFR published in 2012. That’s about 58 times longer than it would take to read through the five volumes currently published in George R. R. Martin’s fantasy saga, A Song of Ice and Fire. Or 220 times longer than it would take to read through The Lord of the Rings from the original R. R. of fantasy—J. R. R. Tolkien.

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"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." -- To Kill a Mockingbird

"Anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for." -- Catch 22

“All grown-ups were once children...but only few of them remember it.” -- The Little Prince

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." -- Frank Herbert's "Dune"

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." -- Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

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