Bred Any Good Rooks Lately?

Kurben

Reading, again, Watership Down by Richard Adams. This is one of the books i return to most often. I consider it a masterpiece! I even understand rabbit language. 

FlakeNoir

Hedda Gabler said:

A Very Private School — Charles Spencer

I have always found the practice of sending small kids to boarding school neglectful and selfish.  

Flake , Notaro, Kurben — is this your schooling experience? Was your education boarding schools? 

Not my schooling experience at all. There are boarding schools here, usually secondary (high) school and most often used by farming families that live a long distance from school. But most of these tend to be mixed, so are also attended by day students as well. Often some of the boarders would go home for weekends and most/or all would during the school holidays. 

Hedda Gabler

Kurben said:

Reading, again, Watership Down by Richard Adams. This is one of the books i return to most often. I consider it a masterpiece! I even understand rabbit language. 

I’ve never been able to read this. 

Hedda Gabler

El Árbol Generoso
Si Le Das Un Panqueque A Una Cerdita
Óscar y el dragón hambriento 
Se Venden Gorras
Si Un Ratón A La Escuela
Si Le Das Un Panecillo A Un Alce

and my personal favorite:

La Casa Adormecida

GNTLGNT

Kurben said:

Reading, again, Watership Down by Richard Adams. This is one of the books i return to most often. I consider it a masterpiece! I even understand rabbit language. 

...one of the classics I've never picked up....

not_nadine

I love love watership down. GNT you must. I picked it up when I first read the stand and Stu was reading it in the book.
I'm very glad I did and I learned how to speak rabbit too, Kurb.  I didn't know until I got to the end of the book that there was a glossary!
 
 So self taught.  My personal favorite line was:
'Silflay Hraka' spoken by Hazel I believe. 

GNTLGNT

....nah, the whole plot leaves me cold....just my stance-not attempting to bugger it for anyone else.....

Hedda Gabler

Stephen mentions The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and poked my teenage memory. 

My English teacher who just died and why I’m using “Hedda Gabler” recommended this book to me after i asked him to do so. 

I remember liking the story but really can’t remember any detail about it. 

What a sad thing to lose — sweeping memories, yes. But the fading details of those memories are even more tragic. 

GNTLGNT

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lonelyhunter/summary/

Hedda Gabler

  

Kurben

Reading Sherlock: The Case of The Empty Tomb. Here Sherlock Holmes takes on the big mystery: Where did Jesus body go? Why was the tomb Empty? Did the resurrection really happen? Or is there another explanation? This is a fun story written by religious scholar Per Ewert. The author obviously has a great love for both the main persons, Sherlock and Jesus. From what i read so far, just in the beginning but from reading footnotes and stuff it seems he is more leaning towards the believing kind of scholar, like Wright who basically says the miracles and resurrection as described in the gospels really happened, than Ehrman who is very sceptic but admits Jesus existence (there are those that says he did not exist at all) and that he was executed by the romans and buried. My favourites on the subject are somewhere inbetween like Vermes and Crossan. We will see what conclusion Sherlock comes too. 

GNTLGNT

Kurben said:

Reading Sherlock: The Case of The Empty Tomb. Here Sherlock Holmes takes on the big mystery: Where did Jesus body go? Why was the tomb Empty? Did the resurrection really happen? Or is there another explanation? This is a fun story written by religious scholar Per Ewert. The author obviously has a great love for both the main persons, Sherlock and Jesus. From what i read so far, just in the beginning but from reading footnotes and stuff it seems he is more leaning towards the believing kind of scholar, like Wright who basically says the miracles and resurrection as described in the gospels really happened, than Ehrman who is very sceptic but admits Jesus existence (there are those that says he did not exist at all) and that he was executed by the romans and buried. My favourites on the subject are somewhere inbetween like Vermes and Crossan. We will see what conclusion Sherlock comes too. 

....I'm sure it will be elementary my dear Kurben.....

Kurben

Started a reread of Carrie. Part as a tribute to Stephen and part as check to see if it was as powerful as i remembered. It was. It is not perhaps his most stylistically accomplished book but the story is just as powerful today.

Hedda Gabler

Working on Charles Spencer’s book 
A Very Private School

SusanNorton

Hedda Gabler said:

Hopefully ALL of you are aware of Caitlin Doughty from her Ask A Mortician youtube channel. She is smart and hilarious. Demystifying death with such interesting topics with respect to all aspects and the people she learned from — the dead. Okay, some living people taught her stuff too. 
Anyway, she is an author and I am just finishing up — Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big questions from tiny mortals about death. 

Yes. She is answering questions she has gotten from children, but in no way does she talk down to her target audience with the answers. And kids questions are honest with no shame or embarrassment in asking. I have seriously enjoyed this book. 

Did you know, when Paris was under siege in the late 16th century everyone was starving. After all the animals were gone, including cats, dogs, rats, birds etc. , they dug up bodies from the mass graves, took the bones and ground into flour to make Madame de Montpensier’s bread. As Caitlin says, “bone appetit!” This was in the chapter— Why Don’t Bugs Eat People’s Bones?

Quick read with other great resources listed in the back. 

I'm sitting behind the circ desk at the library, and I just ordered it!

Hedda Gabler

Hey there! Hope all is good your way. And the book is interesting.  

Kurben

Reading Medieval Russia: 980-1584 by Janet Martin. Quite good. It deals with a time not to often handled in russian history. The early Tsars and the time before tsars are mostly to find in higly specialized books. Glad that i found a book written mainly for history students and history interested idiots like me. One thing i wonder though is why she choose the 980 to start the book. It is the Year of Vladimir I (The Saint) coronation. But what about his father and the unrest that followed his death in 972? Or for that matter why not start with the founder of the Rurikid dynasty in Russia , the Scandinavian viking Rurik. I'm not sure but Vladimir should have been the great grandson of Rurik. (i think there was one Igor ,one jaroslav and one sviatoslav between rurik and vladimir. Rurik became ruler about 860 so why not start there? Since they had the practice of marrying with neighboring tribes for political gains the viking blood was rather mixed by this time. But it is a fact that Ruriks bloodline went on, from father to son, until at least 1598 when the last Rurikid tsar, Fjodor I, son of Ivan IV (The Terrible), died. With over 700 years as rulers they probably hold the record for the longest ruling dynasty. But other than that i have no objections. Interesting, a lot of new info and you can follow without knowing a lot beforehand.

Kurben

Made a break from Medieval Russia and read The White Plague by Frank Herbert. It is a thriller about a microbiologist whose wife and children gets killed in a carbomb by the IRA (it is written early 80,s) and thinks the rest of the world should feel as miserable as he does so he develops The White Plague as his tool. So-so. Not even close to The Stand. Sometimes i find it hard to recognice the guy that wrote Dune in this book. But you read on so it isn't bad.