What non-Go book are you reading right now?

:trident:

So you just let others read them for you??

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No, all the go books I recently opened were written in Japanese. And my love for go has not stimulated me to start learning Japanese :grin:

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To get this topic back on track.

Seriously thinking of rereading a book that fascinated me when I was 40 years younger. Wonder if I still love it or if I have changed so much over the years that I read a few pages and put it back in my bookcase never to be opened again.
One way or another; I think I am in for a surprise, be it pleasant or unpleasant.

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EDIT/UPDATE: didn’t finish it. Can still see why I was fascinated almost 40 years ago. So not too much disappointment.

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A few days ago I finished Hodgson’s The Night Land and found that my friend was right (see post 193), the mock archaic style is not a fatal impediment to reading. More serious is the repetitiousness in the narrative (a quarter could be cut with no loss). Nevertheless, its evocative imagery and audacious vision of Earth at the end of time is very special. As the progenitor of the whole “dying Earth” sub-genre, it is a landmark.

Now I have started Dark Melody of Madness, a modern collection of four macabre novelettes by Cornell Woolrich. Praised by writers as different as Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison, Woolrich is said to have had more stories adapted to movies and television than any other writer (supposedly 96, including Hitchcock’s famous Rear Window). For my nonfiction book, I have started The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia by Wilcomb E. Washburn, one my late father’s books.

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Arthur C. Clarke–TALES FROM PLANET EARTH

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In the mini library opposite the building where I live, I scored two books by Agatha Christie. Easy digestible and fun.

The “minibieb” (mini library) is a little cabinet with free books in it.
Everyone can start one and place it in the garden or some other place that is freely accessible. You can leave your second hand books there and pick up some interesting ones. They are open 24 hours a day. You don’t have to be a member or have to pay for borrowing a book.
In the following picture you see an example of a mini library.

Is this a typical Dutch thing or can the mini library also be found in other countries?

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In Italy there was some time ago a thing called “book crossing”. I don’t know if the name is used also in other countries.
There was a bunch of people very passionate about it: they were exchanging messages with hints on where to find such “released” books, which were usually abandoned in public places.

There were also small cabinets like yours, not very common though, usually in malls or big stores, and usually with just a couple books in them (probably the last survivors).
They were meant to share one’s books: you pick one, you leave one. But I think people were mostly taking rather than giving.
I don’t know if such things still exist.
Italian people usually aren’t very respectful toward free things.

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My dad says that the Agatha Christie mysterious are absolutely fantastic and he has quite a few of them. I will have to give one of them a try sometime.

I just finished The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder and it was not too bad.

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Next time I visit the country, I will bring a crate of books, if those are around :slight_smile:

Same here … what is more annoying is that if I were to put all my books out, they would be picked up immediately by people who wouldn’t really bother reading them anyway. I wouldn’t have minded if they just took it, without putting anything back. The really annoying thing to me is the certainty that they are just taking stuff out of habit, without any will to read things.

To stay on topic, I re-read all the previous three books of the stormlight archive ( around 3700 pages :stuck_out_tongue: ) , in order to read the next one brick sized volume that was recently published. So far sooooo good :smiley:

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I’ve been in neighborhoods that have those! (USA) not totally widespread though

To answer the thread question, I’m reading Player Piano by Vonnegut (xmas gift from my brother). A wonderful tale the struggles surrounding the machine takeover!

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In New Hampshire, where my best friend lives, the exchange point is the town dump, where unwanted books are put in an enclosed trailer and sold for 10 cents. At another dump we visited, the books were in a bookcase under a corrugated awning and were free. NH also has the most wonderful yard-sale culture I have ever seen, which is probably the primary means of book exchanges there. Locally and in many other states, libraries typically have a sale room or racks in the lobby with library discards and donated books sold at nominal prices (here, 50 cents for paperbacks and $1 for hardbacks or quality paperbacks). Of course, libraries are still closed here.

I love that book. Friends had urged me to read it my whole life and I finally got to it about 8 or 9 years ago. My daughter also loved it, which was very gratifying.

I finished the Cornell Woolrich collection mentioned in my last post as well as another with 15 of his crimes stories (including the original of Rear Window). When our weather clears up, I am going to go to Barnes & Noble and order whatever else of his is in print. He was a tremendous storyteller, endlessly clever, and a master of atmosphere.

Currently reading Ray Bradbury’s mystery, A Graveyard for Lunatics, which is great fun for old movie aficionados. Haven’t yet decided on a new nonfiction book.

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Here in Germany we have also some of those. Often in form of old phone booths, and apparently, they are much more common than I thought - there are lists on the German Wikipedia with over 3000 entries for Germany. The official German term seems to be “Bücherschrank” - also didn’t know that.

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Currently reading:

I can’t remember when last I read so many books of a series (excluding the “Little Noddy” and “Brer Rabbit” books when I was a child). Even LOTR I quit somewhere midgame in the 2nd book when I was 17 or so, and then I immediately had to immerse myself in some pop sci book to counter all the fantasy with some facts :smiley: Anyway, The Expanse is mindblowing. And I still recommend reading each book before you watch the corresponding movie season.
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@KAOSkonfused beat me to it … I’ve seen many of these, from smaller towns to big cities … sometimes even in entry halls of supermarkets, and not only phonebooths but often also scrapped grocery store fridges (those with glass doors).
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I know several zealous, if not militant, German followers of the bookcrossing sect … it is an international fundamentalist cult :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
https://www.bookcrossing.com

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In the USA, I often see things like this under the brand name Little Free Library

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Do people still do geocaching?

(heh, I said “geoguessing” there first)

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The Expanse series keeps coming to my attention, from when my best friend recommended it nearly 10 years ago. I need to get to it one of these days. Trouble is, I am not generally a fan of ongoing series. Three or four books is one thing, but beyond that it begins to pall for me. The one exception, the longest I have ever read, is the Dumarest series by the late E.C. Tubb. I have read, I think, 18 of the 32 volumes, mostly the early ones. The later volumes seem to be very rare.

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Finished the Bradbury, which got a bit too extravagant in the end, I think. I thought I would read a light nonfiction book next, maybe some essays by Stephen Leacock, but Ancilla to Classical Reading by Moses Hadas has been on my shelf for about 10 years, and I can no longer resist its Siren call. Although I have read a lot of classical literature, I have always felt unready for that book—a silly notion of mine, because I will never be “ready.” I must simply take the plunge and get the most I can out of it. Am also starting Space Apprentice by the Strugatsky brothers (who are among my favorite SF writers), apparently a Bildungsroman about an idealistic novice space traveler.

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Recently finished The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - Wikipedia. It’s a little gruesome at the start but if you push past that it becomes an interesting tale told during the time period when Japan was closed to most of Europe.

I asked my partner to grab something ‘more or less randomly’ from the large print shelves of our local library. She simply selected the largest book available and so the following came as a complete surprise to me…

Well into the book, Go appears in the background of a confrontation. The next section of the book was titled ‘The Master of Go’ (not to be confused with the book of that name) and later Go does feature somewhat more prominently (deliberately vague).

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We have those all over Chicago. I always enjoy stopping to take a quick look through the books whenever I pass one.

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Has anyone read the Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch? I just started The Lies of Locke Lamora a couple days ago.