Re: What are you reading lately?
Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:50 am
Curious who's read Gloryland: A Novel by Shelton Johnson, an NPS ranger featured on the Ken Burns' series.
Falsehoods Unchallenged Only Fester and Grow
https://thefogbow.com/forum/
I know that feeling too well...Tiredretiredlawyer wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 9:46 am I can read a 400 page book in a day, so I don't need Foggy's speed reading course. I get frustrated trying to find another author with a series I would enjoy. Then I find one and consume the series in days. Otherwise, life is good.
The Secret History Behind Paris’ Neighborhoods, as Told by a Bestseller Mystery Writer
Cara Black is the New York Times bestselling author of 20 mysteries set in Paris, France, featuring the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc. I first met Cara Black in Paris when she was guiding a tour of readers through the city, taking them to spots they would recognize from the novels, enjoying an insight into the research, inspiration, and love for a city–all of which goes into her books.
Black, from a Francophile family, says she fell in love with Paris on her first visit, and the city, coupled with her desire to write about a friend’s Jewish mother’s experience during World War II lead her to her first book–and Aimée Leduc.
Black says, “Aimée Leduc is my alter ego. She’s taller, thinner, more fashion-conscious, and smarter with computers than I am. She also has a great 17th-century apartment in a townhouse on Ile Saint Louis.”
Twenty books later, Aimée’s life has changed over the years, but her fans still love her and the journey through Paris she takes them on.
Foggy wrote: ↑Mon Oct 10, 2022 7:40 am Here's a gift article from the failing NY Times about Colleen Hoover and the CoHorts.
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/10-a ... ss-the-u-s12 Famous Illustrators & Cartoonists and the Places That Stirred Their Creativity
Charles Addams: "The Addams Family"
They’re creepy, they’re kooky, and they hail from Westfield, New Jersey. This Garden State town, about 16 miles southwest of New York City, is where Addams Family creator Charles Addams and his “altogether spooky” cast of characters, including Gomez, Morticia, googly-eyed Uncle Fester, and children Wednesday and Pugsley, were born. Although Addams eventually moved to New York, his Jersey hometown continues to celebrate their favorite dark cartoonist with AddamsFest, an annual festival featuring everything from “wicked” window displays to a “Haunt Your House” challenge. The home that’s said to have influenced the Addams Family’s own Gothic mansion stands at the intersection of Westfield’s Elm Street and Dudley Avenue, and there’s also the town’s Presbyterian Cemetery on Mountain Avenue, where Addams was often seen drawing inspiration.
Westfield is also where The Watcher house is.Tiredretiredlawyer wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 11:47 am I like Fodor's articles. They are wide ranging.
Here are recent ones.
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/12-f ... creativity
12 Famous Illustrators & Cartoonists and the Places That Stirred Their Creativity
Charles Addams: "The Addams Family"
They’re creepy, they’re kooky, and they hail from Westfield, New Jersey. This Garden State town, about 16 miles southwest of New York City, is where Addams Family creator Charles Addams and his “altogether spooky” cast of characters, including Gomez, Morticia, googly-eyed Uncle Fester, and children Wednesday and Pugsley, were born. Although Addams eventually moved to New York, his Jersey hometown continues to celebrate their favorite dark cartoonist with AddamsFest, an annual festival featuring everything from “wicked” window displays to a “Haunt Your House” challenge. The home that’s said to have influenced the Addams Family’s own Gothic mansion stands at the intersection of Westfield’s Elm Street and Dudley Avenue, and there’s also the town’s Presbyterian Cemetery on Mountain Avenue, where Addams was often seen drawing inspiration.
Where to Get Books for Free
The organization names are hyperlinked in the article.
Classics
Project Gutenberg (Orlylicious mentioned this several months ago.)
This nonprofit library digitizes books out of copyright and now in the public domain. On the website, scroll down to Find Free eBooks. For suggestions, click Frequently Downloaded, then Top 100 eBooks Yesterday. Pick one, then click Download This eBook. To read on a computer, tablet or phone, click Read This Book Online: HTML, and the pages will pop up on your screen. For Kindle download instructions, do an online search.
History
Library of Congress
Without traveling to Washington, D.C., you can read many rare and important works, such as a Chinese history collection or a Babe Ruth biography written by one of his Yankees teammates. You can also browse old playbills, judicial opinions, newspapers and more.
Romance Novels
Harlequin Online Reads
Every week, this publisher of bodice rippers posts chapters of new books written by its authors. Not sure where to start? The site makes it easy with a list of moods: Do you want to fall in love? Take a walk on the dark side? To get started, create a free account, then click on the book you want to read. It will open on your computer, or you can download the free Book Breaks app to read it on your tablet or phone.
New Titles
Amazon Prime Reads
If you are an Amazon Prime member who loves trying new authors but doesn’t have the patience to browse, sign up for Amazon Prime Reads and you’ll get a steady supply of books. Each month, you’ll receive an email with a selection of free options. You can download one or two of them straight to your Kindle or Kindle app. It’s a nice perk of your Prime membership, currently $139 per year.
These 10 UNESCO European Cities of Literature Are a Bibliophile’s Wonderland
Reykjavík
WHERE: Iceland
Included in the list in 2011, Reykjavík was the first non-native English-speaking country to be given this recognition. The country’s medieval literature is preserved in the capital city. Narrating the heroic tales of the Vikings families in the 9th to 11th centuries, The Icelandic Sagas are popular around the world. The Poetic Edda introduces readers to Norse mythology. The most important collection of manuscripts from Scandinavia—dating back to the 12th century—is also preserved in Reykjavik. The Arnemagnean Manuscript Collection is a part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
Contemporary writers are also following in the footsteps of this legacy. Halldór Laxness was awarded a Nobel for his writings in 1955, and many others have been honored with the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. Icelandic authors like Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Arnaldur Indriðason, and Lilja Sigurðardóttir have amassed a global audience with their crime fiction. (Excellent writing)
When in Reykjavík, visit the Culture House and the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. Visit in the month preceding Christmas, and you’ll be able to participate in the Book-Flood-Before-Christmas (or jólabókaflóð). It’s a tradition where the city celebrates freshly-published books with events and readings, and you see them everywhere you go. Books are also the top Christmas gift in Iceland. There are also plenty of other literary events that happen in the city, including the bi-annual Reykjavík International Literary Festival.
And, if you’re a published writer from any of the other 41 Cities of Literature, you can apply for a free one-month residency and stay in the city free of cost.
I've been reading several at archive.org. If it's not digitized yet, I've ordered some from Better World Books.Tiredretiredlawyer wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 9:17 am https://www.aarp.org/money/budgeting-sa ... -free.html
Where to Get Books for Free
IIRC many (most?) insects have scolopidial sense organs - whose function is to detect sounds/vibrations - on their legs. It may not be "hearing" in the same manner as vertebrate ears, but it may play a similar role.Phoenix520 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 23, 2022 8:09 pm Bugs don’t have ears, for example, so no hearing for them.
Feline Detectives
9 Purrfect Mystery Series for International Cat Day
The Cat Who
First published in 1966, Lilian Jackson Braun's beloved series may be the original Cat Cozy. Brilliant Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum help humble millionaire reporter Jim Qwilleran solve dozens of small-town mysteries over the course of twenty-nine bestselling books.
A Sassy Cat Mystery
From Jennifer J. Chow, comes the story of Mimi Lee who runs Hollywoof, an LA pet-grooming business. Mimi, who seems to attract trouble in the form of mysterious murders, relies on help from her cat, Marshmallow. By the way, he talks—but she's the only one who can hear him.
Mrs. Murphy Mysteries
Author Rita Mae Brown coauthors this fun series with her own cat, Sneaky Pie. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountain town filled with eccentric characters, including three four-legged sleuths—felines Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, along with Tee Tucker, a corgi—who help their human solve a string of murders.
Catchy title: Probable Claws
Mystic Notch
Set in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the paranormal world created by Leighann Dobbs revolves around the Last Chance Book Store. Owner Wilhelmina Chance can see ghosts and they often want her to solve their murders. Luckily she has help from a quirky cast of characters, including her talking cat, Pandora.
Catchy title: A Mew to a Kill
Zora Neale Hurston, In Her Element
When the famed writer went to Florida to capture the sounds of the South.
This article is the second in a series called A Thousand Words, where we feature an interesting image from one of our films alongside an essay about why that picture is worth, well, a thousand words.
She is nattily attired in a plaid dress, short-sleeved to breathe in the humid Florida heat. She might be on her way to church, or perhaps shopping—but what looks at first glance like a pocketbook tucked under one arm is actually a journal, pen wedged in its pages and ready for her to go to work. Her assignment is to document the assembled children: the games they play, jokes they tell, songs they sing. The boy in the foreground knows that both the notebook and the camera whose lens he looks into are there to record him—but his expression suggests he trusts both, because of her. He can trust her, because she is home.
When the acclaimed Harlem Renaissance author went to Eatonville, Florida in June 1935, she went as a native—Eatonville, Hurston says plainly and proudly in the opening lines of her 1942 autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, is “where I came from.” But she also returned as the lauded writer and professional ethnographer she had become since leaving. As an undergraduate at Barnard College and doctoral student at Columbia University, Hurston had trained with the foremost experts in the field of anthropology. Now, with this homecoming, she meant to capture her own community’s culture for posterity; to document, as she would call it in Dust Tracks, “our own unbelievable originality.”
Hurston was serving as guide to two researchers who sought her out for a collecting expedition of African American folklore. Alan Lomax was assistant-in-charge of the Archive of American Folk-Song at the Library of Congress, and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle was a New York University professor; both were white. Lomax had read Hurston’s writing in a 1931 article, “Hoodoo in America,” in the Journal of American Folklore. “Dazzled” by her work, Lomax understood that he and Barnicle would never have the kind of access to southern Black life Hurston could provide.
Indeed, Hurston set their entire research itinerary. The trio first drove to St. Simon’s Island in Georgia where, Lomax wrote in a letter back to his boss in D.C., “we were soon living in an isolated community…on such friendly terms with the Negroes as I had never experienced before.” St. Simon’s residents, he said, “have been perfectly natural and easy from the first on account of Zora who talks their language.” By the time he, Hurston and Barnicle departed St. Simon’s for their next destination, they had already pressed dozens of records of authentic folk music—work songs, spirituals, “jook joint” medleys—as well as the first recorded audio interview of a formerly enslaved person.
Hurston next steered their roadtrip to her hometown. Eatonville was one of the first all-Black incorporated, self-governing towns in the United States—“charter, mayor, council, town marshal and all,” as she describes it at the outset of her memoir. The town was immortalized in Hurston’s first novel; Jonah’s Gourd Vine unfolds among the town’s orange groves and fragrant gardenia blossoms, which residents called Cape Jasmine.
In the summer of 1935, though, Hurston was in folklore-gathering mode. While touring with Lomax and Barnicle, she was also putting the finishing touches on her next book. Mules and Men, a landmark study of Black southern folkways, was published several months later. “It was only when I was off in college, away from my native surroundings,” she noted in the book’s introduction, “that I could see myself like somebody else…I had to have the spy-glass of Anthropology to look through.