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What are you reading?

Discussion in 'Your Front Porch' started by Autumninthefall, Sep 26, 2017.

  1. Autumninthefall

    Autumninthefall Active Member

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    I'm late to the party, as usual. I bet you'd like:
    Winter's Tale~Mark Helprin
     
  2. Autumninthefall

    Autumninthefall Active Member

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    Call The Midwife~Jennifer Worth

    As usual, if you like the television show, the books are better and offer much more insight.
     
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  3. Nathan

    Nathan Well-Known Member

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    Subsurface ocean, Europa
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  4. Marta

    Marta Active Member

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    George Orwell 1984
     
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  5. Nathan

    Nathan Well-Known Member

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    Subsurface ocean, Europa
    Good choice. Great novel.

    Strangely, I wasn't introduced to Orwell, neither Animal Farm nor 1984, via high school curriculum. It wasn't until my early 20's that I happened to discover both by happenstance.

    After having read the two, I told many of my friends how insightful I found them to be—as though my discovery would be news to them—only to receive responses summarised as 'well of course, Nathan, what distant planet have you been living on!?'.
     
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  6. Autumninthefall

    Autumninthefall Active Member

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    Psst! Nathan, there's this really depressing, yet insightful book, A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Did you miss out on this gem?
     
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  7. Nathan

    Nathan Well-Known Member

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    Subsurface ocean, Europa
    Yeah, I missed out on this gem too *sniffs

    Insightful and depressing? I'll love it! *is laughing
     
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  8. Nathan

    Nathan Well-Known Member

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    Subsurface ocean, Europa
    The Destructors by Graham Greene

    "There would be headlines in the papers. Even the grown-up gangs who ran the betting at the all-in wrestling & the barrow-boys would hear with respect how Old Misery's house had been destroyed. It was as though his plan had been with him all his life, pondered through the seasons, now in his fifteenth year crystallised with the pain of puberty."

    A short story that could not be more apt, considering our current sociopolitical climate.

    Thank you, Miss Pomeroy—the english teacher I never had—for everything you do.
     
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  9. Nathan

    Nathan Well-Known Member

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    Subsurface ocean, Europa
    Julia Galef's 'The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't'.

    I'm so happy Julia has published her first book. I've been hoping she would for almost a decade *chuckles

    It is interesting to read a book by someone you've been listening to for many years, because the voice you hear as you read isn't your own, but rather effortlessly their own, much like an audiobook read by the author.
     
  10. TexOkie

    TexOkie Member

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    I have been unable to read a book for several years. I can only read from my phone or iPad. Anything that causes back and forth eye movements set my eyes off on uncontrollable oscillations. I can’t stop it unless I close my eyes for several seconds. It’s very unnerving. I’m not sure why the iPad doesn’t cause it to happen. Perhaps the larger font?
     
  11. Nathan

    Nathan Well-Known Member

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    Mm, I'm not sure.

    To both think aloud & risk defining what you mean by "perhaps the larger font?", is it possible that it may not be the larger font, per se, but rather the effect larger font has on the distance scanned?

    For instance, have you tried reading while maintaining larger font size though increasing text line distance, such as reading in a landscape view?

    How do you feel when reading smaller text in narrower columns?

    I say this because an increase in text size, generally speaking, decreases the average number of words per line, too.

    The combination of increased text size & decreased number of words per line doesn't decrease the length of the line, however it may allow your peripheral vision to decode symbols (words) left & right of your central focus, in turn decreasing the distance in which your eyes sweep "back & forth" while you read.

    Welcome to the forum, TexOkie.
     
  12. TexOkie

    TexOkie Member

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    I think that you are tight. The larger the font allows me to see better with my peripheral vision and reduce the amount of eye movement. I have tried reading in landscape, but I didn’t reduce the font size. So my eyes while moving further, they didn’t move enough to set off an attack.

    When I went to the ENT, she had me look at a row of LEDs that scanned back and forth. It reminded me of the Cylons in Battlestar Gallactica. I was only able to follow a few scans back and forth before my eyes took off on their own.
     
  13. Nathan

    Nathan Well-Known Member

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    *smiles… My massage therapist agrees with you.

    Although he would add "& ever so slightly twisted", which a) prompts my laughter & b) is a difficult assertion to rebut, because even if he were wrong, he would remain nonetheless & to some degree correct.
     
  14. Nathan

    Nathan Well-Known Member

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    Subsurface ocean, Europa
    In Order to Live, by Yeonmi Park.

    A heart-wrenching autobiography.
     
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  15. Marta

    Marta Active Member

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    Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese . Just finished and still cannot forget it. Highly recommended
     
  16. Hickspanic

    Hickspanic Member

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    Ed Rosenthal's Marijuana Growers Handbook.
     
  17. Hickspanic

    Hickspanic Member

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    Ive read it three times as well as other survivor stories from the camps. Highly recommend it.
     
  18. Marta

    Marta Active Member

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    Nathan, have you read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley? Worth reading.
     
  19. AnneT

    AnneT Well-Known Member

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    I just joined a neighbourhood book club, with some trepidation - will these ladies be too controlling? Will I hear ok? Will I have enough evening energy? (Yes, I think too much.)

    Our first book will be Where the Crawdads Sing. Anyone read it?
     
  20. Marta

    Marta Active Member

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    Three Sisters- Heather Morris
    An incredible true story of the Meller sisters reunited in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
     

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