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OK Thanks. Bujold is one of my fav. (and still alive) trashy novel writers.

George H.

If I did that, I would lose 80,618 E-books, or 317 GB (341,400,413,682 bytes) of files. That would just leave me a couple thousand printed books.

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Grin, back in my youth we went on camping vacations. We were all voracious readers, and would take along a box or two of books from the library. By the end of two weeks we were reading what the other family members bought along.

George H.

Those darn orchids!

The Rabbi series (Friday the Rabbi...) was great.

The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, Oliver Twist are a few classics that can be found on line.

Drifting back to Science Fiction - there is John Scalzi and Jack McDevitt.

Older Sci-Fi - Beyond the Blue Event Horizon has a memorable ending.

Most of H. Beam Piper can be downloaded from Archive.org

John

Michael Terrell wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

One throws one's computer away for a newer, faster one, but NOT the hard drive within it. D'oh!

We have the Nero Wolfe Cookbook.

Lord Peter, and Miss Marple, and good time killers too.

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe barely-mysteries are totally different from the elegant British puzzles. They are gritty and thuggish and really good.

Oh, read Cadfael too. There is a similar time-and-place series, but a nun detective instead of a monk detective, by Margaret Frazer. Pretty good.

Of course, everyone should read the entire RadLab series, and AoE, and Phil's electro-optics book, and the two Jim Williams analog design books.

Wolfe Pack...

John ;-#)#

Clarke is very good indeed. Asimov is probably the greatest ever, his "Foundation" series is just superb. Lem has written at least one masterpiece, "Solaris". I say that from the viewpoint of the Bulgarian translation, not sure how it comes across in English (I bought it in English many years ago but never got to it).

The brothers Strugatski have also written quite some great novels, particularly the series about Maxim Camerer, others as well.

But these are well known and probably not a good suggestion, everybody has read them long since. Somewhat like promoting Heller's "Catch 22", LOL. (BTW the Bulgarian translation was very good, I enjoyed it even more than the original text - probably because I read the English version after I had read and re-read lots of times the Bulgarian translation.) And of course Vonnegut, he had a few very good novels - but I am not sure I would enjoy them now that I am no longer in my 20-s.

A few years ago I stumbled across some newer sci-fi which was quite readable - not in the Asimov/Clarke etc. class but I enjoyed it and read it, "The Sky Lords" by John Brosnan.

Perhaps the worst thing of the time passing by is the fact one has read all written books one could have enjoyed... I also liked quite a lot Chandler and Hammet, but well - how many times can one reread "The Long Goodbye" (I have surely lost the count and have not reread it last 10 if not 20 years).

Dimiter

====================================================== Dimiter Popoff, TGI

There are some very serious Sherlock Holmes societies, too.

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Thanks. If you like hard SF have you read any Charles Sheffield? I reread "Player Piano" and "God Bless You Mr. Rosewater" recently... still good IMHO.

George H.

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Said relative was going to stop buying books on the principle that his stack of unread books was so large he was not going to be able to read them all in his lifetime.

Following up on that, one of the good things is that it is easy to get hold of many of the books we read as kids, and put then on a Kindle or whatever for reading when stuck on a train/plane etc (remember those?).

One of the bad things is that some of them are, with hindsight, true dreadful. Two that spring to mind are "The Prisoner of Zenda" and "The 39 Steps". And "Lost Horizon" is only marginally better than those modern "miracles", the Dan Brown books.

"Why Nations Fail"

As academic emigrees, their detailed understanding of the United States' 'secret recipe' is lacking, but their overarching mechanics are solid. (Minerals didn't make America, nor did geography. Our customs, our distributed design, and ideas did.) They're more objective w.r.t. other countries.

(Warning: Its Wikipedia article is a fathead's monument to Vogonery.)

Cheers, James

Glad some people went to writing/film/music school so there'd be something to do or a month indoors would get pretty boring fast, eh? GET A REAL JOB

Did you ever read Around the World in 80 Days? Lots of fun. The Mormon lecture on the train through Utah Territory is LOL funny.

"Tom Del Rosso" wrote in news:r5eau3$7cg$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Well Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

Naah... I want the "air boat" in "The Mummy Returns"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! She's faster than she looks... And she's quiet. Real quiet. Perfect for sneaking up on people, which is a very good thing." -Izzy

I've been binge-reading WW-II submarine (pacific theater). Several are nothing more than gussy-up'd patrol reports, while others are mere testaments to some senior officer's ego.

A few however, seem to capture the true spirit and agony of those times.

There is a 15 volume set of books by Samuel Elliot Morison on the naval history of WWII Highly recommended

Dan

Yes, I have the full set. I read it maybe every 10 years.