I'm reading/working on Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Kump.
Materials You Will Need for the First Week
1. A pencil or pen.
2. A timing device. Any one of the following will do: a watch or clock with a sweep second hand; a stop watch; a tape recorder; or any timer that will time a one-minute period. If you prefer, you can use the clock on your computer. Many feature both digital and the regular clock face screens.
3. A book for testing yourself. This should be a book that you haven’t read, preferably on a general subject or perhaps a biography. Try to avoid novels and how-to-do-it books; magazines are not usually satisfactory for testing since most articles are not long enough.
4. Another book of your choice.
OK, I need two more books. I shall practice an hour a day, and I have selected:
1. The Ghost Army of World War II, by Rick Bayer and Elizabeth Sayles, about the con artists who fooled Hitler into thinking D-Day was going to be a straight shot across the Channel to Calais. First chapter: The Cecil B. DeMille Warriors. So that oughta be good.
2. A Promised Land, by Barack Obama. I don't know why I haven't read it yet. But now I will.
Edit: Yeah well it turns out that Ghost Army is the WRONG BOOK, so I selected Tocqueville and the American Experiment, by William Cook.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2022 10:09 am
by Maybenaut
Atonement By Ian McEwan. My granddaughter is reading it in her college-level English class in high school, and said she liked it.
It is so, so good. It’s about a (probably*) false allegation made by an unreliable narrator, and how different people see the same events from different perspectives.
*I say probably because I haven’t finished it, but that’s clearly what the author wants you to think.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2022 6:48 pm
by Lani
It's an excellent movie as well. Have your tissues nearby.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2022 6:50 pm
by Gene Kooper
Just started reading "Good Friday on the Rez" by David Hugh Bunnell. Techies will recognize the name as the founder of several computer magazines such as PC World, PC Magazine and Macworld.
Bunnell was six years older than I so I didn't know him growing up in our home town of Alliance, NE. In 2016 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. With the limited time he had left he felt compelled to put to paper his experiences growing up in Alliance. The book documents his one-day trip from Alliance to the Pine Ridge Reservation and back to visit a friend who used to be a student when Bunnell taught on the reservation.
I just started the first chapter of Act 1, which is entitled, "ALLIANCE - No Dogs or Indians Allowed." It is a brutally frank account of what it was like growing up in Alliance in the 1950s. I remember those signs as described by Mr. Bunnell in the shop windows along Box Butte Ave. when I was a kid. I lived on the family cattle ranch south of town and the road to town passed through something euphemistically called "Indian Town." In reality it was a ghetto of shanties and shacks on the other side of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad tracks from the prim and proper white part of town. Just one road connected the two "towns" via a railroad underpass.
I am alternating between tears and rage as I recall an evil from my past. The shanties are gone (for the most part) now because the BNSF expanded their rail yard in the late 1970s.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2022 11:29 am
by Foggy
Think Again, by Adam Grant, who once received a rejection letter advising him to re-read the works of Adam Grant. Dude, I am Adam Grant - literal quote.
Here's his hierarchy of quality debate, which we mostly practice here. He says he stole it from computer scientist Paul Graham.
.
Screenshot_20220318-110331_Kindle.jpg
Very interesting.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2022 12:49 pm
by Tiredretiredlawyer
Any suggestions for reading something by this author?
Saved by the bell: Celebrating a Literary Light During Women’s History Month
Last year, we lost a literary luminary, who has meant so much to me as a professor of literature and as a woman. During Women’s History Month, I celebrate Dr. bell hooks (1952-2021) as an important scholar who pulled back the veil on so many unspoken cultural and gender-based biases, taboos and nuances. She mirrored both our significant strides and our as-yet-unaddressed faults. One of my sheroes, hooks gave me and other women a language to express our lives, our work and our feelings of love, despair and hope.
Among the many lessons that make up her legacy, here are some that have touched my life, love and work the most.
Lessons about language
and there we wept
“they that wasted us/ said sing us one of the songs of zion/ we answered/ how
can we sing a freedom song/ in a strange land” — “and there we wept”
In 1978, Gloria Watkins (who wrote under the name bell hooks) published a little-known collection of poems, and there we wept, a small, but powerful chapbook with only 250 copies in circulation. I’m lucky to own a copy of this slender, prophetic book because it set the precedent for the next 43 years of hooks’ searing, loving and penetrating gaze on race, feminism, sexism, love, compassion, scholarship, rage and everything between. In this book, her words were like copper bangles on the delicate wrists of a graceful dancer learning her craft — a harkening, teaching me that poets can become both fire and educator. We could equally adore and challenge social, cultural and historical paradigms in which we existed, that denied Black women their voice.
Lessons about learning
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
When I assigned the chapter in Teaching to Transgress, “Holding My Sister’s Hand: Solidarity in Feminism” to my senior seminar class, African American students at a historically Black college, they could have spit nails. At first, they didn’t want to hear what hooks had to say, that there was and will always be a semiotic, yet unequal relationship between Black and white women due to the hideous nature of enslavement and our binary roles as women in opposition to the white male slave master. Then, as I had, when they pulled the threads of this and other chapters in the book, gradually my students could see the argument that impacted me personally: The struggle, the tug-of-war between the persona of the “weak” white female and the perpetuated stereotype of the Black woman’s body as “property,” “sexualized,” “mysterious,” will continue to weigh down feminism and the fight against sexism, weakening us, unless we combine our struggles intellectually, spiritually and emotionally. This inequality can be seen still in the way murdered or missing white women earn an immediate bounty for the killers, and the media’s 24-hour attention, while murdered or missing Black women receive far, far less attention and notoriety. I took this to heart long before we started calling for allies, and I felt validated in hooks’ words.
Undermoney by Jay Newman. An international political thriller featuring the sloshing around of dark money. One VVPutin is a major player.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2022 12:42 am
by Phoenix520
Andy, I think, mentioned Carol Leonnig’s book on the Secret Service, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. I’ve just gotten through Kennedy’s assassination. I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that an informant had alerted them to a possible KKK plot because of his civil rights positions.
We’ll see how it goes, but I am not so admiring of the SS as I used to be.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2022 3:28 am
by PaulG
Change of tone, I'm starting Ben Aaronovitch's book "Amongst Our Weapons", the latest in his "Rivers of London" extended universe. Everything in the ROLEU is a combination British police procedural and urban fantasy. Briefly, the hero is a wizard working for the Met. This book is divided into eight sections, with titles "Surprise...", "Fear ...", "Ruthless efficiency ...", and well, you get the drift.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2022 6:42 am
by Foggy
!
Message from: Foggy
So we had an extended discussion on the Virtual Meetup this week about the failure of our third try at starting up a book club. I have some ideas for reviving it, but is there still any interest?
I will tell you, if we do this thing, we will not be reading non-fiction compilations of wrongdoing by Trump and his elk. I lived through the Trump administration, and I'm not interested in studying it like I was back in the classroom. I read the first (and only) book in our most recent attempt to make the book club viable, and I hated the book. I think most people did, because we had maybe three posts about it.
The fun of a book club is discussing the book. I have a Zoom account, we can set up a monthly meeting and discuss the hell out of a book or two, face to face. But I am not going to put in the time to do this unless there are going to be participants.
Please share your thoughts below.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2022 8:31 am
by Foggy
Yeah, two of my favorite SF writers are Ozzians, Joel Shepherd and Jenny Schwartz. And ... not that I'm claiming any kind of correlation ... both of them responded to friendly tweets from a poor ol' rooster who everybody loves to kick around whenever they're bored or havin' a bad day.
Shepherd has been writing the Spiral Wars series lately, but his six books about Cassandra Kresnov, written long ago, are incredible.
Crossover, Breakaway, Killswitch, 23 Years on Fire, Operation Shield, and Originator
And Schwartz is the author of Adventures of a Xeno-Archaeologist, none of which are named that. The Xeno-whatever lady is Nora Kimani (neé Devi), and I'm reading the fourth in the series (the fifth and final book is due in June). She is just a terrific writer.
Astray, Doubt, Rebel, Cajole, and coming in June, Resolve
I super-highly recommend both series.
Here's why that's bad news for Joe Biden:
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2022 4:46 pm
by Foggy
Amazon Kindle:
Good news! An author you like, Philip K. Dick, has a new release, which you can read for free!
Spooky, man. That mofo died forty years ago ...
Here's why that's bad news for Joe Biden:
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2022 5:13 pm
by qbawl
West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge.
A fictionalized account of a true event about transporting two giraffes, one of which was injured on board a ship caught in the 1938 hurricane, from NYC harbor to the San Diego Zoo. A light but interesting and fun read. 356 pages.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 11:16 am
by June bug
qbawl wrote: ↑Sat Apr 23, 2022 5:13 pmWest with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge.
A fictionalized account of a true event about transporting two giraffes, one of which was injured on board a ship caught in the 1938 hurricane, from NYC harbor to the San Diego Zoo. A light but interesting and fun read. 356 pages.
Terrific recommendation, qbawl. My local book club loved it!
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 3:58 pm
by Tiredretiredlawyer
I just finished John Sandford's The Investigator: A Letty Davenport Novel. This is a spinoff from Sandford's "Prey" series. I enjoyed Letty as much in this as when she was introduced in the "Prey" novels.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 4:24 pm
by MN-Skeptic
Tiredretiredlawyer wrote: ↑Sat Apr 30, 2022 3:58 pm
I just finished John Sandford's The Investigator: A Letty Davenport Novel. This is a spinoff from Sandford's "Prey" series. I enjoyed Letty as much in this as when she was introduced in the "Prey" novels.
Oh good! I’ve been a long time reader of Sandford’s books and I just checked out the Letty mystery.
The Decline and Fall of Lunar Royalty
In the summer of 1973 an anonymous band of women at NASA's Johnson Space Center made a mockery of the beauty contest planned by the agency for its Houston staff.
IT WASN’T EXACTLY ONE GIANT step for womankind, but from all reports this was one exploration NASA’s Director Christopher Columbus Kraft found not worth smiling about. Odds are that 1973’s Lunar Landing Festival Beauty Contest was not only the first such endeavor by NASA’s Employee Activity Association (EAA), but the very last.
It all started last summer when someone over in EAA got to thinking about what nice things all that money (namely, half the profits) from the vending machines and souvenir stands in the employees’ cafeterias could do for the hard-working NASA employees. They’d already subsidized the Christmas dance, the family picnic, the cheap Oiler tickets and NASA night at Dean Goss Dinner Theatre. What with the Lunar Landing Festival coming up in July, thought a young woman, why not a queen to reign over festival activities?
And so it came to pass that everyone who worked at NASA received via NASA’s efficient inter-office communication system, his opportunity to elect “a QUEEN and 5 girls in the COURT.” According to the ballot which listed the names of 48 women employees, “The girl will reign over the activities at the LUNAR LANDING FESTIVAL held in downtown Houston. She will be required to attend the public coronation ball, social teas, and private parties connected with this social function.”
That was just too much for local feminists who don’t like to be called “girls" and who had been claiming for some time that NASA discriminates against women in their employment practices.
► Show Spoiler
. Consequently, in the dead of night, or so these women tell it, a band of elves was spirited into the government buildings to fold, package, and subsequently slip into that same efficient inter-office mail system hundreds of alternative ballots which unsuspecting, but duty-bound, secretaries duly distributed to employees the following morning.
“The holder of this ballot may vote as many or as few times as possible from the list of lovelies below,” it announced. “From the names listed below [45 male NASA employees were listed, including Chris Kraft, Rusty Schweickart, Pete Conrad and Deke Slayton] there will be elected a KING (or QUEEN) and 5 boys in the COURT.”
“The boy will reign over the activities at the LUNAR LANDING FESTIVAL held in downtown Webster. He will be required to attend the public coronation ball, social teas, and private parties connected with this social function.
“Selection should not be based on merit. Vote for a pretty face & a good bod.”
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2022 6:53 am
by Foggy
So I'm reading Resolve, the latest in the Adventures of a Xeno-Archaeologist, by Jenny Schwartz. My god that woman has a deep lens into the human soul. I read a lot of sci-fi in recent years, and I have found some excellent, excellent writers. Jenny has made me cry on more than one occasion. I freakin' LOVE THIS BOOK and this writer.
And as I got to about 70% finished, I somehow messed up my Kindle and the book was suddenly not a book, it was a corrupted file upon which I could not employ my personal eyebones. I had to do a factory reset and then do all the little setup things to make a Kindle right.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2022 10:03 am
by Flatpoint High
Listening to Malcom Nance's THEY WANT TO KILL AMERICANS (audiobook)
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2022 10:39 am
by Phoenix520
Carol Leonnig’s Zero Fail, about the Secret Service.
Talk about your hide-bound bureaucracy and resistance to change! One agent surveyed his fellow agents about how things worked and how they might be improved. This poor agent was reprimanded and finally fired, even as they were implementing about 50% of the suggestions in his memo. They did not like to be criticized.
I’ve gone from having a positive opinion of the SS to a negative one. I’m not even up to the tfg years yet. I’m still fuming over the tale of the blooming paranoid schizophrenic kid who thought Obama was the anti-Christ and drove to DC to kill him.
He fired 5 shots at the White House, hitting the residence all 5 times, on the South side where THERE WERE NO SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS. The SS assumed that the shots they heard were 1) backfires from a big yellow construction vehicle; 2) a running neighborhood gang battle. They did nothing. Meanwhile, the shooter fled, crashed and abandoned his car on the GW Parkway, and was picked up by VA police but since the SS hadn’t bothered to notify any other agencies they let him go. It wasn’t until the next day when a housekeeper found a bullet and a broken antique window and notified them that they began to investigate. Duh. They found a tweet someone had tweeted in the moment about a guy shooting at the White House. They eventually got the job done.
You’d think the SS would want to do the best job possible under any circumstances, but they can’t seem to imagine even simple eventualities.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2022 10:45 am
by Tiredretiredlawyer
Malcolm Nance.
Re: Hijack This Thread
Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:10 am
by Maybenaut
Foggy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 7:01 am
That video about the depth of the ocean included a Navy destroyer, the USS Johnston. I wasn't familiar with it, so I did a dive and learned an awesome, awesome story.
<snip>
So I bought a book about it, "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors".
Late to this party, but that is my husband’s favorite book. He was a Hull Tech in the Navy and a Damage Controlman in the Coast Guard. He’s always amazed by the bravery and ingenuity of the guys who worked to (sometimes unsuccessfully) to keep those ships afloat.
Re: Hijack This Thread
Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:32 am
by Uninformed
Possibly superfluous but Drachinifel has a number of videos on YouTube about the Battle of Samar and two of the ships involved, the USS Johnston and USS Samuel B Roberts.
Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:45 am
by Foggy
Yeah, just to be precisely on topic, I'm currently reading The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, by James Hornfischer. I forgot how interesting WWII was (though best viewed from a safe distance).
Uninformed wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:32 am
Possibly superfluous but Drachinifel has a number of videos on YouTube about the Battle of Samar and two of the ships involved, the USS Johnston and USS Samuel B Roberts.
Not superfluous at all, after I finish the book I will look at those.
Hornfischer does a good job interviewing some of the surviving sailors, and brings a lot of detail to the reader. It's a fascinating story, and I am always interested in the way Earthlings lived back then.
If Trump gets re-elected, I'm gonna quit polly ticks and re-read my entire library. Starting with the history books - the first one is The Neanderthals. I'll move on from there.