pontalba

First...I hit a wrong button above somewhere quite by accident...the report button....SORRY!!! Please disregard!!! Ok, we've merged our books pretty throughly.....partly because we've doubled our collection in the last five years. We "merged" our almost 4,000 original books, to a present number of a little north of 8,300. Bookcases literally everywhere, to bisecting rooms, stacked up and down the steps......they're everywhere. We love it. I can't imagine keeping them separate. Our tastes are very similar, his veering off to scientific books, me diverging to history, fiction and non fiction.

Oh! I didn't mean that to persuade you to read it.....I totally understand. I'm sorry if I came across like that. P.S. Don't read the spoiler.......! Yup, that is the one. And, yes...it was the close attention to realistic details that intrigued me so. Detective work is fascinating to me.

Thanks! Yes, it did start out that way, true dat. But the whole thing is not in that vein....there are about five graphic scenes in The Pilgrim. The plot is so, very, intricate. Those scenes are really not out of place or context. IOW, the author didn't put them in to titillate, or "score", they are integral to the motivations and thought processes of the protagonists. But I certainly can understand and sympathize with your point! One of the scenes made me a bit queasy. I glossed.......

^^^^^^^^^^^what she said!^^^^^^^^^^^^

. And the subtitles help when the actors mumble. Heh.

The two black teas we like are both by Taylors of Harrowgate. Scottish Breakfast and Yorkshire Gold, the tea leaves. For green tea, it's by Frontier, the plain green. Straight up.

Gad Zooks!!!! I am, like, totally impressed!

emelee, y'all are just beating your heads against a brick wall.....OP likes to stir the pot. Doesn't matter what you say, they will argue against it. Just for fun.

Nabokov once said something along the lines of.....once the manuscript is published and out there, it's whatever the public thinks up. Way paraphrasing, but that's the jist.

Interestingly enough Lord claims, with backup, that some of Nivens stories are rather exaggerated, and change over time. Doesn't stop them from being very entertaining.

Agree with your take on it. I believe Murakami is an author the reader has to be in the mood for, not just a "pick-up".

Exactly! Sometimes I really wonder what has happened to good conversation! I like subtitles too, sometimes I miss a crucial word, and they help.

WOWEE!!! Amazing, Gaia, congratulations!

You've made both sound like Must Reads! Onto my Amazon wish list. Thanks. Edit: Daddy Long Legs was free on kindle, have downloaded. Thanks, again.

I'm reading several books atm. I'm about 60% through Niv: The Authorized Biography of David Niven by Graham Lord. Quite enjoyable.

Lucky you! . I wish our library system was up to par.

It really is a great review, you have captured it well!

. Look forward to it!

We love discussing the motivations of the characters, the who knew what when, and why they took the actions they did. Symbolism fits right in, hand and glove with those motivations. It's also important to remember that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I love the cross referencing, and analyzing involved. Some of our books are quite marked up with definitions, and referencing page numbers. . It usually takes an initial read through to get the jist of the story, then another go-through for analysis. And sometimes, another. That's the fun of it! I think it is important to do the initial read-through without too much "interference", just so your own impressions are really your own. That's not saying you won't change your mind. That is part of the fun.

Muggle, I'd love to see ratings on your lists. .

good grief. snow?! /shiver/ It is about as perfect here as it gets. About 80F in the day, and low to mid 50'sF at night. Lovely bright sunshine and clear blue skies. Probably for at least the next week or two. Maybe more.

I don't like "horror" books at any time. I've tried some over the years, but for the most part can't read them. Scary isn't exactly the same though I think. I could read Stephen King's Thinner.....no problem. For me that was more a suspenseful sort of book. Alfred Hitchcock, or Twilight Zone sort of stuff. I didn't find Dracula scary at all, in fact, I really didn't much care for it. I felt rather let down actually.

I have a couple of her other books on the shelf, I ought to pull one, just for comparison's sake.

LOL The only sports that would interest me is soccer. So, it's not worth it for me. As far as 90% of the programs you've listed, I'm not interested, or I've seen enough of them to last me a lifetime. There are some new shows in the last few years that we've liked a lot, and have streamed them from Amazon...Person of Interest and Blacklist to name two off the top of my head. We are rural, and there isn't "regular cable" out here. I had a satellite dish when we had cable, when a cloud passed over the area, it cut out. As I mentioned above, we wouldn't have fast DSL internet if we hadn't experienced Hurricane Katrina. It seems that no matter where one goes, there are televisions blaring, mostly several at the time. Any lunch sort of restaurant seems to have at least two. And some have 6 and 7. Even McDonalds has two televisions going all the time. What is the reason we have to be entertained 24/7/365? Why do we have to have constant input. I guess that is my real question. When did we stop resting and thinking, contemplating?

Oh, just posted about this over on your other thread. I don't bother with any of it, so no muss, no fuss for me.