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What are you reading whilst smoking (other than This Pipe Life)

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  • Jeff20Jeff20 Connoisseur
    @Charles ,Frost is a great author, if you enjoy The Match, im now reading the Grand Slam, which is is a great biography of (as it implies)," Bobby Jones, America, and the story of golf". A great  insight of what was going on in America during the late 1900s to 1930 leading up to the Great Depression. ( It is also a 2nd read for me.)
  • @Jeff20, I just placed an order for that book.  Definitely interested in reading it, thanks! 
  • This may be an interesting read for the Sherlock Holmes fans out there. "The Fifth Heart" by Dan Simmons is a novel which features Sherlock Holmes and a number of historical people - Samuel Clems, John Hays, Henry Adams, President Garfield and Henry James - just to name a few. The setting is primarily in the United States in the years between Holmes at Reichenbach Falls and his reappearance in London.

    The central plot is Holmes working to prevent the assassination of President Garfield. There are also a peripheral case Holmes is presenting as the reason for him to be in America. The most interesting subplot though is Holmes seeking to answer the question of "Am I real or just a fictional character?" Henry James is the unwitting Dr. Watson in this novel but the narrator is a never identified. The book also has appearances and a interesting take on Professor Moriarty and Irene Adler.

    Over all, I found the 617 pages to be entertaining and a quick read. I read over the course of three days. On the negative, the writer at times gets lost in minutia on subjects which I feel where included to "grow" the word and page count. This is not the Sherlock Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Watson (they are both mentioned a number of times) but he does keep to many of the characteristics of the original Holmes.
  • Re-reading The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, (Book One of the Kingkiller Chronicles)

    He's my #1 Fantasy author, followed by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever, aka The Covenant Trilogy), followed by JRR Tolkien's Ring Trilogy.

    Beats watching the TV and throwing things at the screen.....


  • Hey @motie2, I read The Name of the Wind about a year ago but couldn't get into as much as I'd hoped. How do the following books compare? I may try out The Wise Man's Fear.

    By the way, @PappyJoe, I just downloaded audiobook of The Fifth Heart, and I'm on about Chapt. 4. Liking it so far.
  • motie2motie2 Master
    edited August 2018
    @jfreedy -- I enjoyed "Wind" more than "Fear."

    But the one to try - IMHO - is Lord Foul's Bane by Donaldson. Plot: Man with leprosy is confused with legendary hero, and is expected to defeat a bad guy with all the powers of the biblical Judeo-Christian God. The thing is, he can, but he doesn't believe he can, hence "Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant
  • Reading  To The End Of The War by James Jones.
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created two memorable characters which will outlive us all, his most famous creation – super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, and Professor George Edward Challenger - the intrepid explorer who discovered Doyle's "The Lost World".
    Many readers are aware of Challenger's adventures to the isolated prehistoric plateau inhabited by living dinosaurs and savage ape men, but did you know that the relationship between Doyle and Professor Challenger continued beyond the final page of "The Lost World"?
    Professor Challenger returned in four additional Doyle adventures, "The Poison Belt", "The Land Of Mist", "The Disintegration Machine", and "When The World Screamed".
    Many of these tales were quite difficult to come by – until 1989 when Chronicle Books paired "The Poison Belt" and "The Lost World" in a softbound collection, followed by "When The World Screamed & Other Stories: The Professor Challenger Adventures, Volume II".
    The first series in the Challenger Adventures was "The Poison Belt" in which the intrepid explorers gather for a reunion to celebrate their discovery of "The Lost World" – but trouble is brewing in the upper atmosphere. The solar system is passing through a lethal interstellar poisonous belt of ether, apparently killing all but the motley group gathered in Challenger's home: Mr. and Mrs. Summerly, Lord John Roxton, Edward Malone, and Challenger himself. Apparently, Challenger not only had the foresight to prepare for such an occasion – but anticipated it. Much like the aftermath of London in H.G. Wells "War Of The Worlds", Challenger and his cohorts scour the countryside for any sign of life, but find nothing but lifeless bodies strewn about the countryside. It appears all of London has succumbed to the poison belt. But in the end, London and mankind are not wiped-out, but only put into a comatose state, like the resident of Midwich England in John Wyndham's novel "The Midwich Cuckoos" – adapted to screen in 1960 as "Village Of The Damned". As they slowly emerge from their ether induced slumber only Challenger and his group are aware of the actual events, and realize how close mankind came to extinction.
    "The Land Of Mist" is a bit of an odd-ball Challenger adventure promoting Doyle's affinity with Spiritialism, in which the characters of Challenger and Malone are glaringly out of place. It's a gothic story involving mediums, haunted houses, and introduces Challenger's daughter Enid … who appears to have been created for the sole purpose of this story, as she was never mentioned before or in any preceeding tale. The story is filled with discrepencies and errors of continuity from earlier and later adventures. It is the least satisfying of the Challenger tales and as suggested by others, appears to be nothing more than Spiritualist propaganda at a time when Doyle himself had converted to Spiritulism after the death of his son.
    "The Disintegration Machine" is a very short story written in 1927 and centers on inventor Theodore Nemor and his machine capable of disintegrating objects and reforming them back into their original condition much like the telepods of "The Fly". Once again Challenger pairs with journalist Edward Malone to either prove or debunk this strange contraption. Nemor proceeds to disintegrate and restore both Malone and the skepticle Challenger, proving the device does work. But when asked what practical application such a device might be to modern science, Nemor suggests such a device could be used by the Soviets to destroy London. Challenger tricks Nemor into the machine and promptly disintegrate him without restoring him, for the good of mankind.
    In the final Challenger adventure"When The World Screamed" we discover that the Professor believes the very earth is a living creature similar to a sea urchin, and proposes to prove his theory by drilling through the crusty outer shell of the Earth to get at the flesh of the creature. Thus … "The World Screamed".
    Although none of Challenger's exploits matched the excitement of "The Lost World", Challenger himself was a brilliant larger than life figure – much like the writer who created him. And George Edward Challenger and Sherlock Holmes would have gotten along famously.
    How do I know?
    In 1975 Warner Books published a paperback novel by Manly W. Wellman and Wade Wellman entitled "Sherlock Holmes's War Of The Worlds",
    pairing Sir Arthur Conan `s characters in a battle against the Martian horde. Holmes and Challenger not only managed to survive the invading
    Martian horde, but predicted an attack was forth coming, captured a Martian warrior, deduced the origin of the alien invader as well as the reason for the attack, and the fatal flaw in their plan of conquest. If you can locate this in a Used Book store it is well worth the read. An entertaining piece of pulp fluff.



  • As a follow-up to the Challenger stories written by Doyle are a pair of books by Scottish writer William Meikle that chronicle the further exploits of Professor Challenger and William Malone. The first is the novel "The Island Of Terror" written well before the "Jurassic World" film in which the British government has a secret plan to use pre-historic raptors for military purposes, and the second "The Kew Growths & Other Stories" is a collection of 15 short stories pitting the Professor and his companion against everything from man-eating plants to ghostly apparitions, and Nessie herself. The books are great fun for lovers of pulp fiction. .    
  • @motie2 - I read the first 3 books in the Thomas Covenant series with pleasure and they held my attention when they first came out. For some reason though, Donaldson lost me after those three. I tried to read the next one but hardly made it through the fourth book. 
  • A study in scarlet
  • @motie2 I don't remember how many volumes there are in that Donaldson series, but I've probably read about 7 of them, but that was at least 2 decades ago now. I did enjoy them quite a bit. I'm probably mis-remembering how many of them he had in print, whenabouts they were released, etc, though.
  • @motie2 I don't remember how many volumes there are in that Donaldson series, but I've probably read about 7 of them, but that was at least 2 decades ago now. I did enjoy them quite a bit. I'm probably mis-remembering how many of them he had in print wh
  • @motie2 I don't remember how many volumes there are in that Donaldson series, but I've probably read about 7 of them, but that was at least 2 decades ago now. I did enjoy them quite a bit. I'm probably mis-remembering how many of them he had in print, whenabouts they were released, etc, though.
  • @motie2 I don't remember how many volumes there are in that Donaldson series, but I've probably read about 7 of them, but that was at least 2 decades ago now. I did enjoy them quite a bit. I'm probably mis-remembering how many of them he had in print wh
  • Parnassus on Wheels, and then, Haunted Bookshop :)
  • @PappyJoe -- Agreed. The first three are the only essential Covenant books.
  • Been reading through Christopher Morley's Haunted Bookshop these days... quite entertaining and an easy read.
  • Recent editions of the naspc newsletter
  • Talk about coincidence, PappyJoe mentioned Dan Simmons and I have just started to re-read what I consider to be the greatest sci-fi  series of all time which is written by Simmons.
    It is called the Hyperion Cantos (4 books) the characters  are are incredibly interesting and complex,
    The plot is incredible  and more than I would care to take on describing. Would love to see Peter Jackson try to make a move version of this. it is an epic of such grand scale it would have to be 8 to ten movies or more.
  • @mapletop -- I agree; the Hyperion Cantos is a great series.
  • edited September 2018
    Don't know about being made into a movie, but one book I'd like to see made into a 3 or 4 season series would be Poul Anderson's sci-fi novel "The High Crusade."

    Another of his, a novella really, would make for a good movie for the right crowd, "The Makeshift Rocket."
  • I believe The High Crusade was made into a movie back in 1994, did not see it myself though they did cast one of my favorite actors John Rhys Davies as the lead.
  • @mapletop I looked up that film on IMDB, and from the description there, and the reviews on the DVD page on Amazon, it sounds like a real hack job of an "adaptation" in title only. Guess I won't be seeing this story done right in video during this lifetime.
  • Reading The Merry Month Of May by James Jones, take place in France in 1968, during the demonstrations and protests that were pretty much world wide.
  • Relativity by Albert Einstein
  • Also (I forgot) Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertand Russel
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