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  1. #701
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Cincinnati, Ohio
    Quote Originally Posted by luburch View Post
    Finished The Three-Body problem a while back. The plot and problems presented were intriguing, but the characters were a bit flat. Not sure I'll finish out the series.

    Also knocked out A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. Schwab built a world that I'm interested in learning more of. Hope the next few books answer some of the minor questions posed in the first.


    Currently reading: Elantris.
    I felt the same way about The Three Body Problem. I read it principally due to my curiosity about how all this was going to work out. But I sort of had to push myself to make it to the end. And then when I finished it, I felt like that was enough. So far I haven't been tempted to go further in the series.

  2. #702
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Chesapeake, VA.
    Reading Wuthering Heights aloud with my wife, and reading 11.22.63 on my own.

  3. #703
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Northwest NC
    Quote Originally Posted by rsvman View Post
    Reading Wuthering Heights aloud with my wife, and reading 11.22.63 on my own.
    I personally think 11.22.63 is one of King's all time best. Great book.

  4. #704
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Norfolk, VA
    Quote Originally Posted by Tappan Zee Devil View Post
    I read "Bully Pulpit" about a year ago and was fascinated by that group of imvestigative reporters at McClure's. Will certainly look into “Citizen Reporters”.
    Thanks, Bob
    I’m halfway through Citizen Reporters and can report it is thoroughly enjoyable. I definitely recommend this book for anyone seeking knowledge of American social history of the late 19th Century.
    Bob Green

  5. #705
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Undisclosed
    Forgot to mention that I finished our own Joseph Reid’s “Takeoff” and greatly enjoyed it.

    Presently, listening to Homer’s Odyssey on audiobook (what a great story), and re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which is an all-time favorite.

  6. #706
    Join Date
    Apr 2020
    Location
    San Diego, CA

    Thank you!

    Quote Originally Posted by OldPhiKap View Post
    Forgot to mention that I finished our own Joseph Reid’s “Takeoff” and greatly enjoyed it.
    Thanks so much, OPK! I'm glad--and relieved!--to hear that you liked TAKEOFF. While it's true that your books are like your kids and it's hard to pick between them, that one will always be special because it came first.

    If you're at all interested in trying the rest of the series, I know the e-book versions of FALSE HORIZON and DEPARTURE are both on sale at Amazon through the end of the month (tomorrow) if that helps. If you're ever inclined to share your thoughts on the book, I'd be more than happy to hear anything you've got, good, bad, or ugly. I'm always trying to get better, and eager to hear what readers think.

    Thanks again!

  7. #707
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, D.C.

    Three Body Problem

    Quote Originally Posted by Ggallagher View Post
    I felt the same way about The Three Body Problem. I read it principally due to my curiosity about how all this was going to work out. But I sort of had to push myself to make it to the end. And then when I finished it, I felt like that was enough. So far I haven't been tempted to go further in the series.
    I did finish the series, but it was work. Some interesting ideas, but not compelling.

  8. #708
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Seattle
    Managed to knock out three books in fairly quick succession.

    Elantris - Brandon Sanderson - You can tell this is from Sanderson's early work, but delightful to read another story in the Cosmere. An intriguing magical system as always.

    Piranesi - Susanna Clarke - It's difficult to discuss this book in too much detail without giving away pieces of the story. Always interesting to read a story with an unreliable narrator.

    Recursion - Blake Crouch - I was hesitant to give this book a try, despite all of the glowing reviews, because I did not enjoy Crouch's other novel, Dark Matter. I'm happy I decided to pick it up. An interesting perspective on what constitutes time, memories, and consciousness.

    Currently reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

  9. #709
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Northwest NC
    Just finished A Knock at Midnight by Brittany Barnett. If you have read the book or seen the movie Just Mercy and enjoyed it you need to read A Knock at Midnight.

    It is unfathomable to me what we as a country have done in the past 30 years in locking up people for the rest of their lives for low level, non-violent and maybe even their first offense drug crimes. Our prisons are full of these people, good people, who have no chance of ever being free again without a miracle. The way prosecutors are allowed to operate to get people to plead to deals and punish those who wish to try and clear their name via a jury of their peers is absolutely appalling. You are basically forced to plead to a lesser sentence, which could still be years behind bars, or take your chances with the possibility of life imprisonment. The disparity of sentencing laws between those caught with crack vs cocaine is beyond unethical and unfair. I could go on and on.

    This book is basically the real world reality of everything discussed in The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, another excellent book on the subject.
    "The future ain't what it used to be."

  10. #710
    Quote Originally Posted by Ggallagher View Post
    I felt the same way about The Three Body Problem. I read it principally due to my curiosity about how all this was going to work out. But I sort of had to push myself to make it to the end. And then when I finished it, I felt like that was enough. So far I haven't been tempted to go further in the series.
    Just downloaded 3 body problem at the recommendation of a friend. Haven't started yet as Perdido Street Station came off hold on my Libby app. Haven't gotten far enough in to that one to say anything about the author's ability to develop character or plot but so far the descriptive sections are pretty impressive and the diversity of language is refreshing.

    Elantris was great. A little icky at first but then great. I intend to go back and re-read it to see if there are any spillovers into the Stormlight series.

  11. #711
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Seattle
    Quote Originally Posted by mpj96 View Post
    Elantris was great. A little icky at first but then great. I intend to go back and re-read it to see if there are any spillovers into the Stormlight series.
    You'll notice a familiar character near the end.

    The 10th anniversary edition also included some text that didn't make the final cut and an additional "after-credits" passage. The text that was cut contains a reference to Warbreaker. The end passage has Stormlight overlap.

  12. #712
    @-jk

    Running low on phone battery but reading The Unwilling(on tablet). If this power outage lasts much longer I’ll be talking to myself.

    Just a note, 99.9% certain no leather seats in ‘66 Mustang. Those were the good old days where vinyl was it.

  13. #713
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Cincinnati, Ohio
    Quote Originally Posted by luburch View Post
    Managed to knock out three books in fairly quick succession.

    Elantris - Brandon Sanderson - You can tell this is from Sanderson's early work, but delightful to read another story in the Cosmere. An intriguing magical system as always.

    Piranesi - Susanna Clarke - It's difficult to discuss this book in too much detail without giving away pieces of the story. Always interesting to read a story with an unreliable narrator.

    Recursion - Blake Crouch - I was hesitant to give this book a try, despite all of the glowing reviews, because I did not enjoy Crouch's other novel, Dark Matter. I'm happy I decided to pick it up. An interesting perspective on what constitutes time, memories, and consciousness.

    Currently reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
    Based on your comment, I decided to give "Recursion" a try too. I felt the same way. A neat way to think about time, memories and consciousness. The ending was a little bit too much "pull a rabbit out of hat" for my liking, but it was fun to consider time and memories so differently.

    Thanks for pointing it out.

  14. #714
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Bethesda, MD
    Quote Originally Posted by DUKIECB View Post
    Just finished A Knock at Midnight by Brittany Barnett. If you have read the book or seen the movie Just Mercy and enjoyed it you need to read A Knock at Midnight.

    It is unfathomable to me what we as a country have done in the past 30 years in locking up people for the rest of their lives for low level, non-violent and maybe even their first offense drug crimes. Our prisons are full of these people, good people, who have no chance of ever being free again without a miracle. The way prosecutors are allowed to operate to get people to plead to deals and punish those who wish to try and clear their name via a jury of their peers is absolutely appalling. You are basically forced to plead to a lesser sentence, which could still be years behind bars, or take your chances with the possibility of life imprisonment. The disparity of sentencing laws between those caught with crack vs cocaine is beyond unethical and unfair. I could go on and on.

    This book is basically the real world reality of everything discussed in The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, another excellent book on the subject.
    Just to signal boost this a bit:

    Incarceration rates basically tripled between 1985 and 2000...have tailed off only slightly since then.
    We have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
    Feds account for only about ten percent of imprisoned population, mostly for crimes related to immigration, financial fraud, and certain types of drug crimes.
    State prisons and local jails account for the balance, roughly evenly, so the incarceration boom is mostly a local/state problem.
    The system was arguably too lenient in the early 1980s...crime rates were very high.
    We wildly over-corrected.
    Aggregate crime rates are much lower now than they were in the 1970s and 1980s, but that's mostly not due to the increase in incarceration.
    There is no single cause of the increase in incarceration - "War on Drugs," "Three Strikes" and other policies all played a role. As DukeCB implies, strict sentencing guidelines, enacted in many jurisdictions and designed to limit judicial discretion, have tied judges hands (which was the intent) and overly empowered prosecutors (which was not the intent). Now that judicial discretion has been taken out of many sentencing processes, prosecutors can now credibly say to defendants "Plead to lesser crime A and we'll give you X years or we'll charge you with more severe crime B and you'll get 2X years." Many defendants plead guilty, sometimes to crimes that they did not commit.
    Incarceration rates have increased across virtually all states since 1980, but southern states lead the pack. To take an example, Louisiana has, per capita, roughly three times the prisoners as New York.
    About 90 percent of prisoners are men.
    Black and, to a much lesser extent, hispanics, are also highly overrepresented, though the interracial/interethnic differences are much smaller than the gender differences.
    Incarceration is also closely tied to education. High school dropouts and, to a much lesser extent, those with no college are much more likely to be incarcerated than are those with some higher education.
    As of 2015, the share of black men without a high school degree and between the ages of 20 and 40 who were in jail/prison on a given day was....about 30 percent.
    While the impact has been much stronger for the kind of people who don't or didn't go to Duke, I have a Duke friend who recently got out of Federal prison after serving all of a ten year term. He was a successful lawyer in his 40s with no criminal history, but he showed up at a scheduled-on-line meeting, with pornography in his trunk, to meet a "15-year old girl" who turned out to be an FBI agent. He obviously had problems that needed to be dealt with, but I think ten years was wildly over-harsh. My wife disagrees with me.

  15. #715
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Durham, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by WillJ View Post
    but I think ten years was wildly over-harsh. My wife disagrees with me.
    I agree with your wife.

  16. #716
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Bethesda, MD
    Quote Originally Posted by aimo View Post
    I agree with your wife.
    Fair enough, but I'll also note that I have an acquaintance who murdered his wife and was also out after ten years. What kind of sentence do you think my acquaintance should have received?

  17. #717
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Durham, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by WillJ View Post
    Fair enough, but I'll also note that I have an acquaintance who murdered his wife and was also out after ten years. What kind of sentence do you think my acquaintance should have received?
    Depends on the circumstances, but I would generally say much, much harsher. I just believe that those who are child predators are not going to change their ways. This may be getting a little too public policy, especially for the What are you reading? thread.

  18. #718
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Atlanta, GA
    Quote Originally Posted by WillJ View Post
    Fair enough, but I'll also note that I have an acquaintance who murdered his wife and was also out after ten years. What kind of sentence do you think my acquaintance should have received?
    Dude...do you need some new friends? I'll be your friend. I have no murders or nefarious sexual exploits anywhere in my past or present.

  19. #719
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Arlington, VA
    Just finished Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Finally starting The Alienist by Caleb Carr.

  20. #720
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Whoa. I should check in on this thread more frequently.

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