I’m Reading… (book, web articles, manuals, etc)

[Offshore Angler]

Sugarcane, I guess you know which one of the characters in On The Road is actually based upon one of the Pranksters - there's a song about him.

"I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream." Gosh that alliteration can give you chills.

[S. Cane]

ah, I remember the days I would devour entire books in a day. Laundry, hygiene, cooking all took secondary roles. Many late night meals because I've spent all day in a book. Needless to say this could not happen during work but the times between. Sadly those times were few and far between.

Eyesight problems make reading an arduous chore at best these days. I've been trying to slog through things like Mathematica Principa and The Art of War. They have been in my iBook for years

I can read my iPhone, more or less. I'm propping my glasses up a lot to use the bifocal. They just don't sit in a natural position, no matter how the optician tries to fit them. A bigger phone with a larger screen would probably benefit me, if it can fit in my pockets.

Reading from cell phones is AWFUL. I try not to. Kindle and actual books for me!

Sugarcane, I guess you know which one of the characters in On The Road is actually based upon one of the Pranksters - there's a song about him.

"I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream." Gosh that alliteration can give you chills.

Of course! The Neal Cassady references are one of the things that make me enjoy this read!

[S. Cane]

P.S. I changed my username for privacy reasons but you guys can call me Sergio or Serge as always, lol.

[Cogs]

I've been recently reading J.A. Wylie's Illustrated History of the Waldenses, which is a reprint of a part of a larger work of his, History of Protestantism. It's a record of an early "proto-reformation" community of Christians that lived in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy. One of the first groups to translate the Bible into the common language, they lived in peace & did their thing until near the end of 1000 AD when the Church of Rome began to make incursions into the region. The friars & monks that arrived in the area weren't too pleased that the Waldensians didn't follow Romish doctines such as the veneration of the saints & respect of holy relics, to name just a couple. They didn't put a lot of stock in the pope, either. They were declared heretics & suffered terrible persecution.
Although they are often thought to have been founded by a merchant by the name of Peter Waldo, they predate him & their name comes from an anglicization of the term "Vaudois" or "Vallenses", which I understand to mean "valley dwellers"

[S. Cane]

Agatha Christie
Craig Johnson
Tony Hillerman
Carl Hiaasen
Levon Helm
Bernie Marsden

Bernie Marsden the guitarist from Whitesnake?

[ch willie]

Btw as I dig into On the road for like the 7th or 8th time, I'm thinking about my own love for paperback editions. There's something about these cheap, pocket friendly books that were made for being... read. Not collected, not aesthetically admired or anything. Paperbacks are books, not decoration items or rarities. They're meant to be thrown in backpacks, carried in dufflebags, pockets, back seats... You just pick them up and read them. No fancy covers, no fine paper... You can even use them as toilet paper, if you're on the road and find yoursef in need. Real readers will love them, nonetheless.

They're like lovers. One day you might lose them or they might fall apart on you, but that's life.

Met a man who read mysteries and thrillers, five a week--they were such junk. He'd sit with a box full of them, read one, and toss it in a garbage can.

I'm glad my Dad didn't throw away his Western novels--they helped him learn to read when he was already a man in his 20s. I have a shelf full. So many Louis L'Amours. We loved the Lonesome Dove books and could talk about them.

My love of reading, studying, and teaching lit has left me with walls of books, and I can't bear to get rid of even useless ones that I hated. I've only ever thrown away one book, stupid book by the screenplay writer for Rainman. Color of Light or some idiotic copy of Updike. A 70s novel. Sex scenes that read like a cross between Penthouse Forum letter and instructions on pipe fitting at a plumbery.