Rapunzel (hi, welcome back) said that Dune by Frank Herbert is (my favorite SF book).
It used to be my favourite when I was in my early twenties (come back Time, all is forgiven, we found the money on the mantelpiece). I found Children of Dune and the subsequent books less interesting - I felt FH had rather lost his way. However, I found the new novel by Frank Herbert's son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson, House Atreides, to be surprisingly good and every bit as well-written as FH's great first and second books. It's the pre-Dune history of some of the Great Houses and how Duke Leto came to leave Caladan for Arrakis. I see that a second prior history book, House Harkonnen, is out, but I'll wait until the normal-format paperback hits the shelves for that. I expect it to be good, too.
However, the real point to this post was if you like imaginative alternative or future reality books such as Dune which wander down labyrinthine and unexpected paths and byways, then you may want to have a look at the Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. Like Herbert, he's written quite a lot of fairly mediocre stuff, but this trilogy, beginning with The Reality Dysfunction, is exceptional.
Wow, you posted: If anyone has a copy ... or knows where one may be obtained ... of an old book, green cover, called "The Life And Struggles Of An Irish Boy In America" by Lawlor ....PLEASE contact me.
I was wondering if you might try E-bay. I've never gone there, I'm too scared, but I'm told you can find just about anything there. I don't know if they have a way you can post what you're looking for, but if they do, you just might turn one up.
A word of warning on this one - the first book is, in my view, a bit too focused on the sex lives of the characters and overly loaded with fairly graphic violence. However, once Hamilton gets that out of his system, the remaining books are really full of some very clever ideas and exciting storytelling.
Well, yeah. I don't know those people. How do I know they won't send me a piece of junk, and then won't give me my money back? Nuh uh, I'm stayin' away--there's too much junk around here anyway.
Has anyone mentioned ABE (www.abe.com)? It is a large consortium of independent second-hand book dealers. You can find almost anything there. Often, a number of dealers will have what you're looking for and you can choose among various prices, conditions, editions. The only difficulty I've ever had is establishing a correspondence with dealer once you've found them. This should not ordinarily be a problem, though.
How do I know they won't send me a piece of junk, and then won't give me my money back? Nuh uh, I'm stayin' away--there's too much junk around here anyway.
Hmmm, so that's what KFC stands for - Kentuckienne Fulner's Chicken! If you're careful, it is quite possible to deal with reputable vendors at eBay - I have not yet had one bad transaction, and have got great deals in the process. ["He needed killin'"emoticon?]
On another board I sometimes frequent, someone was asking about Azeis II. The poster had bought on e-bay a coin which was said to have been issued by this monarch, who was also alleged to have been one of the three kings who visited the baby Jesus. I had never heard of Azeis II and was unable to find any mention of him anywhere on the Internet except on e-bay auctions. Granted I'm not an expert on monarchies of that period, but I suspect that if he really was issuing coins and was supposed to be one of the three kings, I wouldn't need to be.
The poster had bought on e-bay a coin which was said to have been issued by this monarch, who was also alleged to have been one of the three kings who visited the baby Jesus.
Ah, but my suspicions would have been raised by the mention of the three kings. The Bible record calls them magoi, which is nearer "astrologer" than "king", and nowhere in the Bible account does it say there were three of them, or give any number at all. So, if someone tried to sell me something belonging to one of the "three kings", I would ask them if they were also selling Brooklyn Bridge first.
My fault. The post I was referring to did actually say that he was alleged to be one of the Magi, rather than one of the three kings. So he is alleged to have been a magus and a king. Put it down to the stress of a bad connection: I had to try three or four times to get most AWAD pages at lunch time.
Caspar,Balthazar, and Melchior are names given the Three Kings aka The Magi, in my Catholic School ... although I found no listing for Caspar in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Or for Iz-whatsis for that matter. http://newadvent.org/cathen/a.htm for anyone interested. wow
Caspar,Balthazar, and Melchior are names given the Three Kings aka The Magi, in my Catholic School
Does anybody know where these names comes from? Since the Magi in the Gospel are both numberless and nameless, who decided that there were three of them, and that they were called C(G)aspar, Balthazar, and Melchior? Is this just a case of some ancient reading his kid a story , and being pestered,"But Dad, what were their names?"
Tsuwm recommended John McPhee in a post some time ago, and the only book of his my local branch of the library had was something called "The Pine Barrens". Now, if this were the title of a novel, I might have at least picked it up to read the summary, but never in all my born days would I have just wandered by and picked out a book about a tract of land. But it's good! Mr. McPhee has clearly done firsthand investigation into his subject area, and has a writing style that will keep your interest. Ex.: "In the vernacular of the pines, huckleberries are blueberries, wild or cultivated. Huckleberries are also huckleberries, and this confuses outsiders but not pineys. Fred explained to me, when I pressed him, that "hog huckleberries" are huckleberries and "sugar huckleberries" are blueberries."
There are some words in here that I'd never heard of, too, such as 'fykes' that are used to trap snapping turtles. I learned that relatives of one of our members live there, a rare tree frog, Hyla andersoni.
I wrote to tsuwm that I'd finished this book, and he informed that his favorite is "Coming out of the Country", a story of Alaska and Alaskans. Sounds intriguing.
if my amazon order ever shows up (supposedly it has already shipped), it will include McPhee's "Annals of a Former World", which is a compendium of four of his previously published works: Basin and Range, a study of the mountainous lands between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas; In Suspect Terrain, a grand overview of the Appalachian mountain system; Rising from the Plains, a history of the Rocky Mountains set largely in Wyoming; and Assembling California, a survey of the ongoing volcanic and tectonic processes; plus a fifth unpublished book, Crossing the Craton, which introduces the continent's ancient core, underlying what is now Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. Reader reviews indicate that there is a bit of repetition, and a lack of clear diagrams to explain some of the more technically challenging processes, but overall it has received stellar feedback.
The 3 Kings It's verifiable by checking the N.T. text that they were called "wise men", not kings, and no number is specified. Apparently there was, early on in the history of Christianity, the assumption that there were three of them because three gifts are mentioned. Also, there seems to have been the assumption that they were kings because the gifts were extraordinarly costly (and the journey would have been a huge expense). I'm not sure when/where the names were made up; Google might help.
Balthazar comes Bal=lord or owner and X. (as in Balzebub, from Bal and Zvuv -- Lord of the Fly; or the common BalHaBait: head of or owner of the house (homeowner, head of household)). The odd thing here is the t, since there is no "th" in Hebrew. If it were BalHaHazar, it would be lord of swine--but it isn't, so the question is what is "zar" (Ha being the prefixed article (whatever that's called).)
Melchior is likely M'El Ki Or = from God as (like) light. The prefix mem (M) has a grammatical function turning a into an action upon something, as I remember.
Caspar would be "like" (C again) X.
My guess would be that the three wisemen weren't wisemen at all but an angels (M'luchim -- messengers or agents of God), that is, that they were themselves the gifts.
McPhee also has a book. Travels with the Archdruid, which is about several trips he made with David Brower, one of the progenitors of today's environmental movement, who died last year. It's a very enjoyable book, and offers some really interesting insight into a great person.
Have thought about it for a while and decided my favourite 'comfort' books (the ones I return to again and again) are:
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery - for children, and everybody's read it, but hey, surely that's still allowed)
Leave it to Psmith (P G Wodehouse - where the urbanity of Psmith is the perfect foil for the madness of Blandings Castle)
Feet of clay (Terry Pratchett - funny, touching - a detective fantasy that's a plea for humanity)
Death in the afternoon (Ernest Hemingway - not fiction, and full of bllodlust, but gripping, and endlessly fascinating)
Kim (Rudyard Kipling - which I never get bored of recommending - for me the ending is like Eliot's shantih - the peace that passeth all understanding, and always makes my day happier)
Kim (Rudyard Kipling - which I never get bored of recommending - for me the ending is like Eliot's shantih - the peace that passeth all understanding, and always makes my day happier)
I have just this minute finished reading Deric Longden's _The Cat Who Came in from the Cold_, and at the risk of sounding like my teenage daughter, it is adorable! I read it straight through--wonderful!
I suppose if I had to say that any one book is my favorite, I would have to say _Daddy_, by Loup Durand. I like my books and movies with a lot of action, and this has some heart-stopping suspense, as well as teaching me some things about WWII that I had not realized.
One a couple of us like and more others don't is "Do the Windows Open," by Ann[e] Hecht. It is a collection of short stories originally published in the New Yorker and published sequentially as something vaguely similar to a novel. It is , to my mind, a hilariously--and sensitive--trip through the racing thoughts of a Neurotic CT housewife.
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If you're careful, it is quite possible to deal with reputable vendors at eBay - I have not yet had one bad transaction, and have got great deals in the process. ["He needed killin'"emoticon?]
