Books

[xoxoxoBruce]

Great way to pass the frigid winter curled up with a book by the fire.
If you're like most of us with no chance of writing a best selling novel, the next best thing is reading someone else's novel.

Here is some...

[Diaphone Jim]

Because I just finished "Decider", I'll mention the novels (and non-fiction) of Dick Francis.
The appeal of these horse-racing based adventures is hard to pin down, but I have read them all twice and some more.
There are about 40 and make the best long airplane flight, and just plain enjoyable, books ever.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim

...make the best long airplane flight, and just plane enjoyable...

Sorry, the devil made me do it.

[Griff]

Reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. He mixes terrible and beautiful perfectly.

[Luce]

How is Moby Dick on the bad list?

I mean, yeah, dude spends like 15 pages describing a cloud, but the story is about monomaniacal revenge, and who doesn't like THAT?

[Griff]

Agreed.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I loved it but half my class, mostly the girls, thought it was long and dull.

[Carruthers]

I look at my shelves and see books on the following:

Aviation

The Apollo Project

Local History

The Cold War

Modern History

Art

Birds and other wildlife

Railway Atlases

Railway History

... and many other individual titles outside the above categories but not a single example of fiction.

I hesitate to admit it, in the polite and august company that is the Cellar, but I couldn't read fiction even if my life depended on it.

Sorry about that!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Different strokes for... hey, you didn't mention your porn collection.

[Undertoad]

A lot of people think that the novel is going away as an art form, partly due to the short attention spans of modern people. We got stuff to do, ain't nobody got time to digest the entire life and motivations of Gatsby.

[Griff]

Okay then, show your shelves. Here are 3 of mine.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

A lot of people think that the novel is going away as an art form, partly due to the short attention spans of modern people. We got stuff to do, ain't nobody got time to digest the entire life and motivations of Gatsby.

Thinking about all the people who don't actually do anything, I find this ridiculous, true, but ridiculous.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'd refute that but it's time for Wheel of Fortune, gotta go.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

A lot of people think that the novel is going away as an art form, partly due to the short attention spans of modern people. We got stuff to do, ain't nobody got time to digest the entire life and motivations of Gatsby.

I don't buy it, or at least not the reasoning. If we have the time and attention span to binge 8 hours of Breaking Bad, we have the same capacity to read a novel. As for whether people who like fiction are shifting to other forms of media, vs. people like Carruthers who prefer nonfiction and thus the printed word feels more reliable than a dramatization of facts by an actor, that's certainly possible.

[Clodfobble]

Oh, and our main pair of bookshelves. This has been static for at least a decade now; nearly everything since then has been ebooks and audio books.