HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Damned lit yokels
Date: 11 Sep 92 14:11:48 GMT
Reply-To: nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall)
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

In article <1992Sep10.195556.20675@infonode.ingr.com> james@brock.b17b.ingr.com (James Brock) writes:
>
>Now, what I want to say is this: you people should quit trying to 
>sound so intelligent and really read something. All this talk about
>books to avoid and best editions of some encyclopaedia. For
>F*ck's sake, loosen up.

   Yes, indeed.  Discipline is sorely needed here.  Perhaps
   a few r.a.b.'ites stretched across a deck grating for a
   taste of the cat might improve things.
>
>How many of you really know how to read? Screw this Donna Tartt person,

  Don't know the person, personally, but my recollection is
  that various postings have referred to her as looking amazingly
  like a bulldog.  That is a turnoff for everyone except a very
  small population of the population.

>Speaking of which, did anyone see the article on Bakhtin in the 
>latest issue of "Praxis"?

   No.  Sounds fascinating.  There is also a really interesting
   article in "The Southern Farmer," which deals with the best
   way to rotate crops.  The interplay must be more than sheer
   coincidence, surely.  A global plot?

>Have any of you read my works? (Does Seymour Glass ring a bell?)

   No.  And no.  But wait - now that I think about it, I think
   that the author of "The Southern Farmer" article was Owen Plate.
   And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see through *that*!

>I must admit: I am a bit intrigued by this new technology. Imagine, I
>can communicate from my little shed, here in N.H., to the entire world!

   Imagine, indeed.  Boggles the mind.

>Keep reading,

   Oh, of course.  Keep trucking.  But *do* try and be a bit more
   imaginative in the future.  Flame enticement can be entertaining
   if done properly.  Unfortunately, it is usually a bore.  

John
--
John W. Nall              | Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
nall@mailer.scri.fsu.edu  | Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
   "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou....and perhaps some
	 munchies, couple of pillows, some music.." - Omar Khayyam (modern)
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: ... on Miss Manners (cough)
Date: 10 Sep 92 23:46:51 GMT
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org

In article <1992Sep10.160540@gorgo.gsfc.nasa.gov> sullivan@gorgo.gsfc.nasa.gov (Dan sullivan) writes:
>'Miss Manners' is an arrogant (with no justification) nasty bitch. 
>When people ask honest questions of her, she replies with sarcasm. 

This is the secret of her charm. Indeed, it's why I love her.


--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact 
mnemonic@eff.org| of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, 
(617) 864-0665  | both are transformed."
EFF, Cambridge  |                           --Carl Jung 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: marcy@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca (Marcy Thompson)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Surrey, British Columbia, CANADA
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:17:56 GMT

In a recent rec.arts.books article, nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall) wrote:
>
>  But the ones which are either (a) written *after* the movie, or (b) are
>  apparently written with the idea in mind that they will become a motion
>  picture, are almost invariably bad.  (I use the phrase "almost" only
>  because I feel sure that in an infinity of universes, there might be an
>  exception.  But I am not aware of any).

I read one such book (written under a pseudonym, and the first edition
announced that it was about to made into a movie, which in fact appeared
approximately five years after the original publication). I wouldn't
say it was a great work of literature, but I chuckled most of the way
through it, which isn't bad for a novel of 500 pages. And I remember it 
as an entertaining read six years after reading it, which is a grand
feat for a book I bought in O'Hare airport because I ran out of reading
material halfway through a flight home.

The movie was the pits, though.

Marcy

-- 

Marcy Thompson		
  SoftQuad (West)			
    marcy@sq.com
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The White Man's Burden of Proof
Date: 6 Sep 92 21:16:59 GMT


jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
 
> Let me spell out the part about bullying, so it will be the second
> time in Taranto's life that he has been accused of attempted bullying.
 
> As I understand what he said, he is telling Cramer and anyone else who
> reads him that it is insufficient to refrain from racism; it is
> necessary to be obsequious enough to the platitudes of the time so
> that no-one can even intentionally misinterpret what you say as
> racist.  Taranto is like one of those Ibsen characters who says that
> it is not enough to be moral; one must appear to be moral.
 
Professor McCarthy does not understand what I wrote, or what I intended.
He has already proven that he does not understand logic, now he shows that
he does not understand English.
 
> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
 
This may be true, but Professor McCarthy is living proof that one who
does arithmetic may still talk nonsense.

Mark

PS

Professor McCarthy might like to know that "Insidious intent" was a
literary allusion.  Someone might like to tell him what poem it is
from.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: more books to avoid
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 20:22:49 GMT

Thank you, Jack Campin, for lending support to my position of not
wishing to be called "Dr. Webster":

> [in reference to] ... a thread on rec.arts.books
>about things on book covers that set your crap alarm off ("in the gripping
>tradition of Jeffrey Archer"...).  This trips one of mine several times
>over: books with "M.D." after the author's name on the cover.
>
>It's an appeal to authority - "this guy is a REAL DOCTOR, just like in the
>Reader's Digest" - that I find about as inviting as a foreword from the
>Pope.  Usually the contents are sub-Christian inspirational pap or crass
>market-research-generated "product" aimed at middle-class hypochondriacs.
>I suspect that most of this genre is ghostwritten, though their blandly
>derivative smugness does fit their ostensible authorship.

Yeh, during my internsip we used to joke that even though we had our
"M.D." we didn't yet have our "R.D." (as in: "Are you a *real* doctor?).

Unfortunately, about the time a psychiatrist gets her R.D., she loses
it again: "No, I don't *want* to see a shrink.  I want to see a *real*
doctor, dammit!"

About the derivative smugness: what you said!  Never underestimate the
potential stupidity of a doctor.  You do so at your peril.  (I'm allowed
to say this because I'm insulting my own profession. (-:)

One more doctor joke:  When I was recently in a pricey boutique in
Waikiki, the sweet Asian-American proprietor regaled me with stories
about all the doctors' wives she met--most of whom, according to her,
were on holiday alone, living it up, and sharpening their nails for
taking hubby to divorce court.  I smiled for a while, but finally
began to chafe under her funny, but unflattering, descriptions of
A) women, and B) doctors.  So I said, "Uhh, I'm a doctor."

Her eyes went wide, and she exclaimed (I swear I'm not making this
up), "No!  You no doctor!  You friendly beautiful lady!"

							--Fiona
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: The White Man's Burden of Proof
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 12 Sep 92 18:15:35

In article <9209122222.AA03635@cfdev1.shearson.com> mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:

   jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU writes:

   > Now that I see the context of "insidious intent" in "The Lovesong
   > of J. Alfred Prufrock, I no longer have the remotest idea what
   > Mark Taranto meant in suspecting Clayton Cramer of it. 

   I'm going to try to make this simple, so that even Professor McCarthy
   can understand it.

	   1.  I NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER accused or suspected
	       Clayton Cramer of insidious intent in this thread!

	   2.  What I DID say was that I suspected that OTHER people
	       (i.e., NOT ME) might suspect him because he used
	       language similar to some fringe groups.

	   3.  I NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER said that he therefore
	       ought to modify his language.

   Memorize these three points.  There WILL be a quiz, and one Stanford
   professor seems to be behind on his homework.

   Love and kisses,

   Mark

Well all right, but Taranto said that I was too uneducated to know
that "insidious intent" was a literary reference.  However, now that
the reference has been revealed to me, I am puzzled about how what the
OTHER people might suspect Cramer of is elucidated by Eliot's poem, in
lieu of or in addition to the dictionary meaning.  I mean, like, would
a literary education help a us Valley girls understand better what
Cramer has to fear from those OTHER people.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Date: 7 Sep 1992 12:21:20 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc5.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox) says:

>In article <1992Sep7.013810.13862@micor.ocunix.on.ca> ve3pak@micor.ocunix.on.ca (Alayne McGregor and Brett Delmage) writes:
>>In article <18den8INN1hg@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col) writes:
>>>>   What other phrases
>>>>   get up your nose or otherwise serve to prevent you, like Socrates'
>>>>   divine sign, from making sorry mistakes?
>>
>>Any title with "Loving" or "Love" or "Wicked" in it
>
>	This would remove both _Love in the Time of Cholera_ and _Love
>Among the Ruins_, both grievous losses.  And while I would object to the
>loss of _Something Wicked This Way Comes_, others would.
>
>	With regard to the more general topic: 
>
>	Actually, I have trouble believing that any of the distinguished
>r.a.b.ble are foolish enough to judge books by their covers.  Do remember
>that writers have *no* say 99.n% of the time about what does and doesn't go
>on the cover--whether idiotic words or phrases or pink & heaving bosoms.
>-- 


Well, gosh. Thanks Tom.  What would we do without your sage presence?  It's
also fair to say that most readers of this group are astute enough to know when,
as Mark Twain put it, "taffy is being passed" in cover blurbs.

J. Del Col
-- 
Jeff Del Col      *    "Reader, be tolerant of me. And of yourself.      
A-B College       *     And of the singular aspirations of our     
Philippi, WV      *     human race." --Czeslaw Milosz-- The Land of Ulro      
                  *
From: proberts@informix.com (Paul Roberts)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: "The best lack all conviction..."
Date: 5 Sep 92 17:36:57 GMT
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.

In article <swmn6=_.dani@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:
>
>"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
> Are full of passionate intensity." -- W.B. Yeats

George Bush would seem to provide the perfect counter-example.
From: fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Editors other than Bowdler...
Date: 5 Sep 92 21:01:08 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

james@brock.b17b.ingr.com (James Brock) writes:

>Francis: You advise me to throw out my copy
>of *Sons and Lovers.* I consider this rash.
>Compare the two versions. It seems that 
>the editors (the couple, living I think
>in Provence) were too enthusiastic about 
>their edition. Of course they want everyone to rush
>out and buy the new $25 Cambridge edition.

     I recall when the uncut edition of _The Waste Land_ appeared, to much
fanfare.  After actually getting a look at the restored passages most of us
concluded that Eliot was a great poet, which we already knew, and also that
Pound (who did the original cutting) was an excellent editor.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: shafer@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer OFA)
Subject: Re: Identification of author of a quotation
Organization: NASA Ames Res. Ctr. Mtn Vw CA 94035
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 17:13:59 GMT

rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:

>In article <1992Sep15.022709.27349@riacs.edu> shafer@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer OFA) writes:
>>Can anyone tell me who said/wrote "Millions long for immortality who
>>don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon"?
>>

>	A screen capture from info.rutgers.edu:

>Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Copyright 1991 Oxford Univ. Press

Oh, great.  Now I've got _two_ superseded Oxford Dictionaries of
Quotations, and not just one.  How have they marked this one?  Its
predecessor was "The New Edition" (about 1985, or so).  Is this "The
Newer Edition"?

Thanks for the pointer to the online dictionary; it sounds like a
great service and I'm sure I'll use it, but it can never replace the
joys of browsing through the bound volume picking out serendipitious
nuggets.

Just to continue complaining about the Oxford Press, why didn't they
put a better index in the "Oxford Book of Aphorisms"?  (Yes, this is a
fairly minor complaint, but I expect more of them than I do of others.
It's sort of an inversion of "to those who hath shall be given".)

--
Mary Shafer  DoD #0362  NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA
         shafer@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov
                     Of course I don't speak for NASA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: ve3pak@micor.ocunix.on.ca (Alayne McGregor and Brett Delmage)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Organization: M.B. Cormier INC., Orleans (Ont)
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 01:38:10 GMT

In article <18den8INN1hg@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col) writes:
>
>In a previous article, loosemore-sandra@CS.YALE.EDU (Sandra Loosemore) says:
>
>>mworley@mathcs.emory.edu (Meg Worley) writes:
>>
>>   [Avoid books described as "wickedly funny", etc., on the cover.]
>>
>>   What other phrases
>>   get up your nose or otherwise serve to prevent you, like Socrates'
>>   divine sign, from making sorry mistakes?

Any title with "Loving" or "Love" or "Wicked" in it: for example,
_Wicked Loving Lies_ or _Wicked Lord Wraybourne_. It is the curse of my
long-ago employment as a library page that I still remember that former title --
an actual book I shelved but never read, by Rosemary Rogers.

Any Regency romance that takes itself seriously (this leaves out almost
everything after Jane Austen). Actually any post-teenage romance novel that
takes itself seriously. (Unless the blurb hints at satire, one is reasonably
safe here). I exempt here all novels that are about more than romance.

"Space opera". "Based on the characters from". "Shared-world series" (one-of
shared world books usually are quite good).

Authors completing unfinished manuscripts or writing new books based on
famous characters. For example, Robert Parker mangling Raymond Chandler,
or the dreadful quality of most Sherlock Holmes continuations, particuarly
those by L.B. Greenwood.

Any book where the cover blurb is by Barbara Cartland or writers of that ilk.

Any paperback that's more than two inches thick, unless I know the author.

Any fiction by Jilly Cooper. (Her non-fiction's silly but delightful; her
fiction's silly and sexist).

Alayne McGregor
alayne@ve3pak.ocunix.on.ca
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Title of poem from scanty fragment?
Date: 5 Sep 92 04:26:38 GMT


I wrote:
 
> Luke (wagner@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu) writes:
 
>> I'd like to find the poem which contains (I'm sure I've mangled the lines,
>> so I know this is a tall order)
 
>>         Things fall apart, the center doesn't hold
 
>>                     ...
 
>>       The best are gnawed by withering doubts
>>       The worst are full of headstrong certainty...
 
 
> The poet is W. B. Yeats.
 
> I double checked this with a friend (because I couldn't remember
> which poems).
 
> She thought that they were from different poems (and agreed that the
> lines are mangled).  She thought that the latter were from EASTER 1916,
> and former from one of his more mystical poems -- perhaps BYSANTIUM.
> EASTER 1916 sounded right to me.
 
The last two lines are similar to some found in EASTER 1916 -- but are not.
 
As others have already pointed out, the poem is THE SECOND COMING
 
 
        Turning and turning in the widening gyre
        The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
        Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
        Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
        The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
        The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
        The best lack all conviction, while the worst
        are full of passionate intensity.

        Surely some revelation is at hand;
        Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
        The Second Coming!  Hardly are those words out
        When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
        Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
        A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
        A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
        Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
        Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
        The darkness drops again; but now I know
        that twenty centuries of stony sleep
        Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
        And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
        Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.
 
                1920
 
 
 
Mark


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Subject: Ken Kesey's latest
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 04:03:22 GMT

Any early returns on Mr. Kesey's first novel in decades?
I don't know the title, but I've seen a physical instance
of it from afar.  The few words I've heard about the plot
make it sound as though it was synthesized for the satis-
faction of r.a.b readers (dystopias, "Northern Exposure"
biomes, mildly technologized, ...), but I'm willing to
risk a lot for an author who wrote the Dostoevskyan *Some-
times A Great Notion*.  Is his latest production worth it?
-- 

Cameron Laird
claird@Neosoft.com (claird%Neosoft.com@uunet.uu.net)	+1 713 267 7966
claird@litwin.com (claird%litwin.com@uunet.uu.net)  	+1 713 996 8546
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mlkenned@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Melita L Kennedy)
Subject: Marcia Muller's books
Followup-To: rec.arts.books  
Summary: chronology  
Keywords: Muller, McCone, mystery  
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 02:41:43 GMT

I just started reading Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone series.
I was wondering if someone could give me the internal chronology
and/or the publishing chronology.  I've managed to read the
first three in order because the publishing/internal chronology
are the same, but the book I just started, while the next one
in publishing order that I've found, doesn't seem to be the next
internally.  Here's what I have so far:

	Edwin of the Iron Shoes
	Ask the Cards a Question
	The Cheshire Cat's Eye
	??
	There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of

If you want to e-mail, that's fine.  I'll post to the net if there's
interest.

Thanks in advance.

Melita Kennedy
mlkenned@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
From: br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Date: 6 Sep 1992 17:21:44 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc5.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, loosemore-sandra@CS.YALE.EDU (Sandra Loosemore) says:

>mworley@mathcs.emory.edu (Meg Worley) writes:
>
>   [Avoid books described as "wickedly funny", etc., on the cover.]
>
>   What other phrases
>   get up your nose or otherwise serve to prevent you, like Socrates'
>   divine sign, from making sorry mistakes?
>
>I view anything described as a "saga" with extreme suspicion.  A
>"passionate saga" is even worse. 

(text deleted)

The word "epic" does it for me ever since I read an interview in 
American Poetry Review in which one pretentious poetaster described
her work in progress as an "epic," a response that caused me to mutter, "How
the hell do you know?"

J. Del Col
-- 
Jeff Del Col      *    "Reader, be tolerant of me. And of yourself.      
A-B College       *     And of the singular aspirations of our     
Philippi, WV      *     human race." --Czeslaw Milosz-- The Land of Ulro      
                  *         
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:25:41 GMT

Mark Taranto writes:
>All the talk of differences between self & persona make me miss Joe Green,
>who is very different from his net presence.

Ooh, how so?  Do tell.  Wikiwiki!  Before he comes back, we should
gossip...

							--Fiona

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: speterse%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (soren--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty)
Subject: Very Wonderful Life/Darwin Biography
Date: 15 Sep 92 12:41:21 MDT
Organization: The Erland Cult


Inspired by the r.a.babble, I just finished *Wonderful Life* last night,
and I find myself motivated to do some further reading. 

Specifically, I'm looking for non-specialist works on 

   -- Chordate evolution.

   -- dinosaurs and their extinction (something current--I haven't
	done any reading on dinosaurs since I was Calvin's and Hobbes' 
	age).


Secondly, there's a new biography, *Darwin* by Adrian Desmond and James
Moore, just out, which purports to be the first major biography to consider 
Darwin in his political and social context.  According to the introduction, 
a huge amount of primary material (letters and diaries) has just been made 
public within the last few years in which Darwin struggled with the moral
and philosophical implications of evolution.  Apparently, this is the first
time that this side of Darwin has come to light.

So:  has anyone read it?  Are there reviews?  Does it live up to my summary
of the introduction?  Am I really descended from an ape?

--
    "From your signature it is obvious that you are a homosexual"
soren f petersen           :        i AM NOT          :    --Doc
speterse@peruvian.utah.edu :  THE university OF utah  :
"How could I dance with another/When I saw him standing there"  --Tiffany
From: kabir@kabir.Eng.Sun.COM (Ihtisham Kabir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Back to Books
Date: 4 Sep 92 22:02:02 GMT
Reply-To: kabir@kabir.Eng.Sun.COM
Organization: Sun Microsystems
NNTP-Posting-Host: kabir

In article 2aa75b34@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu, wagner@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu () writes:
>> I am reading nonfiction books on parenting, spirituality, religion and
>> such, but I cannot seem to find a book of fiction that interests me.
>> This is surprising, as I usually thrive on a diet of novels only.
>> Can anyone recommend a book that will knock my socks off? I'm looking
>> for something entertaining but not empty. Nothing that might dampen
>> the spirit, please. I could use a change of scenery, so something
>> set in a country other than the U.S. might be nice.
[...]

I had a similar situation a few weeks ago and Naguib Mahfuz's Cairo
Trilogy (well, the first two volumes - I'm still waiting for the 3rd
one to be returned to the library) helped me out of it. These are
_Palace Walk_, _Palace of Desire_ and _Sugar Street_.

Talking about books set in foreign lands, what did people think of 
Ben Okri's _Famished Road_?

- Ihtisham Kabir
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books