New! Reading Anything Thread 2.0

[ER]

Since you read about that era I just thought you might think the archaeology was interesting.

[ER]

A Haunting on the Hill, by Elizabeth Hand.

This authorized (yeah, by whom?) so-called return to Shirley Jackson's Hill House is a mess! It reminds me its author took a pre-existing manuscript about a writer and her friends and stuck it into the setting of her idea of a version of Hill House, because it reads like two entirely different books, neither good, neither connected.

This isn't Hill House by any stretch of the imagination!

[Rev. Powell]

Written about 1000 AD, it's sometimes called the first novel (though it wasn't).

I've only read a few books this year, but in my defense one was 600 pages of difficult Ovid, and one was 600 pages on "Robot Monster." This one is 1000 pages (!)

[ER]

^ If you can finish it, you've bested my efforts. I finally finished The Aeneid after twenty-some years.

[Rev. Powell]

^ If you can finish it, you've bested my efforts. I finally finished The Aeneid after twenty-some years.

I read about half the Aeneid in college (assigned) and came back and finished it a couple of years ago, so I'm in a similar boat. I'm working my way chronologically through one of those "greatest works of world literature" lists. Completing it is a bucket list item. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokklubben_World_Library

[lester1/2jr]

I finished "How Jesus Became God" it was incredible. I've never understood how Jesus became God but now I sort of do.

[Sitting Duck]

So the other day I was at the public library's used bookstore and spotted a horror anthology on display. I picked it up and glanced through the table of contents, which listed a bunch of the usual suspects. Robert Bloch, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson, and so on. But one startling inclusion was Damon Runyon. In this case, it was an early short story entitled "The Informal Execution of Soupbone Pew". It features some petty hoods with colorful sobriquets as you might expect from Runyon. But something which might shock and terrify regular Runyon readers is the slew of contractions.

[Rev. Powell]

Also rereading "The Psychotronic Video Guide"

[ER]

I finished "How Jesus Became God" it was incredible. I've never understood how Jesus became God but now I sort of do.

lester, you're a well-read fellow with an admirably questioning mind, though why you habitually place greater stock in someone telling what he thinks he knows about the source material than the source material itself has never made sense to me.

Besides, a miracle by its nature does not lend itself to explanation. A miracle defies explanation by simply being what it is. You're not going to ever find someone who can supply a rational formula to an irrational occurrence.

The strongest evidence suggests Jesus did not become God, Jesus was God. People did not need to deify Jesus in later ages since from the 30s AD Jesus was already known as what he was.

I still say if you're not going to go straight to the source and avail yourself of the testimony of actual eyewitnesses, you should take time to read from the other direction and see what some writers outside your comfort zone have to say. It might defy your expectations.

Though....

[lester1/2jr]

"A miracle defies explanation by simply being what it is" that is entirely his point. It's a matter of faith, not logic.

Rev- I liked Psychotronic but man it had a lot of spoilers. I would have to weirdly skim each issue

[ER]

Cahokia: America's Ancient Megacity

[lester1/2jr]

https://www.amazon.com/Tsarina-Ellen-Alpsten/dp/1250214432


it's good

[Alex]

Brave New World by Huxley.

[ER]

https://www.amazon.com/Tsarina-Ellen-Alpsten/dp/1250214432


it's good

Ever read her autobiography?

[ER]

The Book of Job

(Thank you, Good Omens 2...)