Posted on 05/28/2016 6:09:42 AM PDT by vis a vis
Good bad or ugly----what are FReepers reading?
I always get a lot of good ideas from these threads.
“Transformed by Grace: Scripture, Sacraments and the Sonship of Christ” and “The Biblical Meaning Of Man” by Dom Wulstan Mork who was one of my high school teachers some 60+ years ago.
On the lighter side “A History of Private Life-Revelations of the Medieval World” by Georges Duby, Editor. (The study of Medieval History is an avocation in my retirement!)
Dear Jamestown,
I have not heard of that author, mainly because I read ‘classic noir’, except for the late Robert b. Parker’s man and woman detective novels.
(for those reading this later, classic noir pre-dates any mobile phone and any kind of computer smaller than a filled room, where the detective or P.I. had his notes, his memories, and his wits, and nothing else.)
Now, as to ‘crime in D.C.’, I think Mr. Clancy nailed the solution to that, in “Debt of honor”.
Dear 2 Kool,
Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books range from the ‘30’s, all the way up to the ‘70’s, with the authorial magic of Wolfe and Goodowin never aging.
Nero Wolfe had in his library over 1200 books, and read them all. I live in a small apartment, and have a slowly growing number of over 110.
Le Carre’s characters leave their humble abodes to do what they do.
Nero Wolfe, on the other hand, is THE ‘armchair detective’, (5’11”, 1/7th of a ton) with Goodwin, and sometimes others in Wolfe’s employ, doing all the out-of-house work.
If you have seem the movies, “The Glass Key”, “The Maltese Falcon”, any of “The Thin Man”, then I direct you to a man that ‘did work in his field’, Dashiel Hammett.
I suggest that you might try Mickey Spillane’s works.
I do suggest you try any of the classic detective/private investigator authors, but to do so, i suggest you forget about technology beyond a manual typewriter, real pay phones on the city blocks, no answering machines. A good place to start to sample all of that, is to visit the Hard Case Crime website, and then to find the books in your local bookshop. Michael Chriton, Stephen King, and others have had stories published by them.
BTTT
Family of Secrets
About the Bush dynasty. Just started. Apparently being upper class doesn’t stop a family from being thoroughly corrupt... It’s sad to read about it but I feel I must.
I hadn’t heard of Pelecanos either, probably because it’s not the kind of thing I usually read. But he is apparently well-known and much lauded: he has written for some TV series, including ‘The Wire’; but I don’t watch much TV, either.
You might like him:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pelecanos
-JT
Dear Jamestown,
thanks for the wiki link.
No wonder i have never heard from him, having been a screenwriter for HBO.
I already pay over $130.00 a month for my cable/internet, without any pay-to-watch-movie channels, as it is, and i am on a pensioner’s budget.
We got rid of everything except Internet, and use Roku for television. Saved us a lot of money, and there’s lots of educational stuff on YouTube. The only thing we really missed was Fox News - until August. Now we watch OAN; watch YouTube videos related to our hobbies and interests; and read books ;-)
There’s also a lot of interesting radio now.
-JT
Thanks.
I’ve read most of Chandler and Hammett. I’ve not read Spillane. Recently tried a Ross Macdonald. Chandler and Hammett are first rate. I’d put Stout below those two. Didn’t really go for Macdonald all that much.
But for me LeCarre is everything. I think it’s an odd thing - it’s not really about the plots, I’m sure of that. It’s the characterization, the dialogue, and the writing. But especially the dialogue - the man has an ear for how different people talk. When I read his bio recently I found out that he does impressions of people remarkably well which of course makes complete sense.
“Reading it, I was afraid it would become an instruction manual for terrorists.”
It was a hard read, I had to skip some sections. But they invented that stuff, the book’s not telling them anything they don’t already know.
I finished Labyrinth by Schellenberg, now I’ve started on Cally’s War (Posleen War #4), by John Ringo and Julie Cochrane. It’s from 2004 so I’m a bit behind on the series. Gotta love yellow reptilian-centaur aliens.
Dear 2 Kool,
For every ‘reader’, there is an author’s ‘voice’, that will ‘sing’ for that ‘reader’.
When I was in elementary and junior high school, the authors were E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith, Robert A. Heinlein, Dr. Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and then, Ian Fleming, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Shakespeare.
Different times, different events, do shape what we might read, too.
I was a G.I. brat, living on-base, when that damn Castro was installing missiles and pointing them at me.
dear jamestown,
re: radio .... Might i suggest, if you have not pondered it, obtainiing a multi-band radio, for the reception of shortwave radio, as well, as the usual AM/FM bands.
Envy: Helmut Schoeke
Distance Cycling: Hughes & Kehlenbach
Fiction tastes gravitate toward mysteries. Been going through Martin Walker’s “Bruno, Chief of Police” novels, made even more enjoyable by the author’s website where he posts recipes for the meals described in the book. Nice series from a center-right perspective on life in the Dordogne region.
You should start with the “Kill Artist”.
Apologist Frank Turek on Real Science Radio
Date: May 27, 2016 Length: 58:40
I got a shortwave about a year ago, but haven’t had a lot of time to play with it. The furthest place we’ve brought in so far was a station in England, and that was only our second or third try at turning it on and searching. Husband is going for his Extra license soon, so we’ve got a little HT, too.
Next on the list is an Internet radio ;-) There are lots of Internet stations running old-timey radio shows.
-JT
For every ‘reader’, there is an author’s ‘voice’, that will ‘sing’ for that ‘reader’.
Very true - Some of my favorites would be LeCarre, Flaubert, Dumas (pere), and a recent discovery Thomas Hardy. I also like Chandler very much. I’ve recently taken another whack at Salinger but reading him is a bit like watching a car wreck - equal bits of fascination and horror.
I was a G.I. brat, living on-base, when that damn Castro was installing missiles and pointing them at me.
I was 6 years old at the time and blissfully unaware I guess. I remember the JFK assassination very well the following year.
dear jamestown,
re: shortwave radio ... are you running an indoor shortwave antenna, or just the extendable rod mounted onto the radio? Also, do you have the ‘clip-ins’ on the back of the radio for an external antenna?
EBay, for what it is, does at times have some indoor shortwave antennae, for a good price, that are quite ingenuous.
Also, have you an external AM antenna? You might be surprised what you can find.
As to ‘internet radio’, I wish you well, and also with the HT.
I’m down in ‘the swamps of Montana’, and on my little Grundig and indoor antenna, i can pick up a pirate radio station form Ireland. Shortwave is an atmospheric bounce broadcast, and is dependent on how the Sun effects the upper atmosphere. There are a lot of Shortwave stations that transmit on ‘sidebands’ of the frequencies, which only the more costly SW radios can decipher properly. Oh, on AM, late at night, I can pick up Denver radio stations.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.