HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Sea stories...
Date: 31 Aug 92 17:37:16 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

In appreciation of the many suggestions I got on good sea stories, I'll do
a short review of one which I found in the library which was *not* one of
of those suggested.

DESPERATE VOYAGE by John Caldwell

Being the true story of a young American who was in the merchant marine
at the end of WW II, and was stranded in Panama when the war ended.  He
had married an Australian girl, who was in Sidney, and wanted to get back
to Australia to live happily ever after.  So he buys an old sailboat in
Panama for $1,000, and spends a couple hundred on supplies.  Spends a
few weeks puttering around the islands off the west coast of Panama, learning
how to handle his boat, and then sails down to the Galapagos Islands and
then westward toward Australia.

The story is told in a narrative style.  Very nice writing, and a very
interesting story.  He gets caught in a hurricane and has many adventures.

Now, let me climb up on the soapbox for a moment.  This book is quite
representative of what I would call the "I wrote this book because for
me it was one hell of an adventure, and there is no way you could not
enjoy reading it" style.  Trouble is, it is somewhat like watching slides
that someone took of their vacation.  When *they* see the slides, all of
the memories come flooding back, including the exotic smells, food they
ate, music they heard, etc.  Those of us who have to sit and watch the
slides do not have these memories, and they tend to be boring.

So therefore, I have a hunch that for those of us who like to "mess around
with boats," this book is probably very good.  For those who do not, it
really does not have a plot, and does not even qualify as much of a travel book.
So for sailors, it is a good book.  For non-sailors, who like the sea, it
is a fair book.  And I would assume, with intolerable arrogance, that
probably landlubbers will find it boring :-)

John
--
John W. Nall              | Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
nall@mailer.scri.fsu.edu  | Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306
  Actually, love means that you *do* have to say you're sorry, even
	 if you're really not in the least bit sorry. - (me)
From: dv52151@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Axly)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Glen Cook: Where's the book?
Date: 28 Aug 92 20:44:34 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana


I asked this in a followup to another post so ignore this if you 
saw it there.

Has anyone heard what Glen Cook is up to? I've been waiting entirely
too long for his sixth book in his Black Company Saga. Any word on
Mr. Cook out there?

Axly
From: asim@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Asim Rehman Khan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Fowles' `The Collector'
Date: 2 Sep 92 17:05:20 GMT
Article-I.D.: ut-emx.78942
Reply-To: asim@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Asim Rehman Khan)
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
Originator: asim@doc.cc.utexas.edu

Hi,
Recently, I read an interesting book and thought of sharing my impressions of it.  It was John Fowles' "The Collector" and is about a man who keeps a woman as his captive, just as he used to collect butterflies in his childhood. I don't want to make this a spoiler so let's get away from the plot.  The most interesting aspect of the book was its unique style of narration.  Fist, we are given the captor's perspective in the first person and then his captive's. The development of their relationship from these



 two angles enriches the grotesquity of the story.    
   
I would love to hear other comments on this work. Are there any other good books by Fowles?

Asim Khan
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Subject: Summer Fall (was: John McPhee
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 18:31:10 GMT
Organization: The Gizmonic Institute

Stephen C. Miller writes:
>How strange that you would post about McPhee today.
>
>His new series, on Californian Geology, starts in this months New
>Yorker.
>

A fine book of his titled (I think) _The Control of Nature_ was a
big favorite of mine a couple of years ago and played a part in an
almost tragedy of my family's this summer. The book is about
the rather whimsical way people react to geological inevitabilities:
in the San Gabriel Mountains for one, or along the Atchafalaya River for 
another. 

Briefly, the San Gabriel Mountains are among the newest, steepest
mountains on the planet, but they are almost useless for serious
climbers since the seismic activity in the area has shocked the
rock into flinders: no piton will hold long.

So this summer while hiking through the mountains with my family,
my nephew and son wanted to go up a particularly steep path
behind an outcropping which would have left them out of sight
and almost unreachable. (I was thinking about what McPhee 
wrote and was playing the heavy, killjoy role that I usually
shirk off on my wife -- indulgent Dad is a much nicer role to
remember me by, I hope, when the question of tubes and respirators
comes into play.) After some grumbling, I directed the pair up an 
alternate route which led them around the outcrop. Well, my heebie-jeebies
infected my sister-in-law so she tagged along with the kids, and
up they went, eventually disappearing into a stand of trees several
hundred yards ahead. After a bit, the rest of us followed to
a resting spot on one of the house sized boulders which litter the
hill side. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves when we heard
a scream and saw my nephew come bouncing down the route the three
went up, coming to rest about half a yard from a sheer drop of
over 100 ft. His appearance was simultaneous with horrible 
screams from my son and sister-in-law which were followed by 
a what seemed like hours of silence as I tried to churn my
way up through the pulverized muck on the mountain slope. It was like
running up a sand dune. When I got up there, it seems that my
nephew had been standing on a further-up rock ledge about 15 or
20 feet above my son and sister-in-law and it had collapsed on
them, sending him bouncing down the mountain and had dropped a 
shelf of rock and debris on Willie and Carol. Fortunately, after
all the limbs were totted up and wounds dressed and shoes cleaned
of muddy blood, everyone was ok. Even my nephew who survived the
fall and tumble w/o even a visible bruise. So, I didn't know
whether to say "I told you so" or wonder if my fidgets hadn't
egged them into something more dangerous than what they had 
originally intended. "Control of Nature" seemed a genuinely ironic
title.
-- 
Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu> Write when you get the chance.
From: mukai@ROS6.GSFC.NASA.GOV (Koji Mukai)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Sherlock Holmes Quote
Date: 2 Sep 92 16:06:53 GMT

I always thought that this Holmes quote was rather silly.  It's just
the definition of these words, and does not really describe what a great
detective does.

A great detective set himself (or, occasionaly, herself) apart by his
ability to tell the merely improbable from the truely impossible;
and by the ability of coming up with a completely new scenario which nobody
else can even think of, let alone judge the plausibility of.

...this is one reason why I like the following counter-quote (if there
is such a word);  it appears in Craig Rice's murder mystery, "The Corpse
Steps Out", and said by the great detective/always-drunk Chicago laywer
John J. Malone.

	"...it's been my experience that while impossible
	things happen frequently, improbable ones never do."
From: chrisc@sun.pcl.ac.uk (Chris Chamberlain)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Patrick O'Brien vs Horatio Hornblower...
Date: 27 Aug 92 10:46:35 GMT
Organization: Polytechnic of Central London


Well I'd just like to say that I didn't find Patrick O'Brien that bad. True
his style of writing is a little strange, but once I get into it I find it
quite good. In fact after finishing one of his books I usually want to go
straight on to the next. As for C.S.Forrester, when he's good he's very good,
but some of his Hornblower books are awful. Especially when Hornblower starts
to gain in rank. The Hornblower character becomes a real prat and I believe
even Forrester himself disliked the Hornblower character and only wrote the
later novels because people wanted him to.

Has any one any opinions on any of the other writers of historic naval fiction?
There's Alexander Kent (aka Douglas Reeman - I enjoyed his stuff as a kid, but
now I find it unreadable), Dudley Pope (the Ramage series - not very well
written) and Richard Woodman (the Nathaniel Drinkwater series - these are quite
good). Comments anyone?

Chris.
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:15326 soc.culture.british:12008 rec.mag:164
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,soc.culture.british,rec.mag
Subject: Re: Why I read the Economist
Date: 31 Aug 92 20:13:21 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Followup-To: rec.mag
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

FJM1@psuvm.psu.edu (Frank Mulhern) wrote:
[ comparing The Economist favourably with Time
  and Newsweek, which is not saying very much ]
> The Economist is considered to have the world's best reporting on third
> world countries.

Considered by who exactly?

Better than Le Monde Diplomatique, Liberation, Middle East Report, South,
2000'e Dogru, Searchlight South Africa, New Internationalist, Race and
Class, the Journal of Palestine Studies, Z, Al-Fajr, Covert Action
Information Bulletin, Amnesty, NACLA and the Times of India?  Geezabrek.


> It is nice to read something that does not have a politically oriented
> liberal or conservative ax to grind, although The Economist is very
> conservative economically with a relentless attitude that free markets
> will solve ALL the world's economic ills.

Which means that it *does* have a conservative axe to grind, doesn't it?

There are two classes of magazines out there: ones that state out front
that they've got a political agenda and those that lie about it.  Time,
Newsweek and the Economist are in the latter category.

Followups to rec.mag.

-- 
--  Jack Campin    room G092, Computing Science Department, Glasgow University,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland   TEL: 041 339 8855 x6854 (work)
INTERNET: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk or via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk    FAX: 041 330 4913
BANG!net: via mcsun and uknet     BITNET: via UKACRL    UUCP: jack@glasgow.uucp
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Books on Robin Hood
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 18:48:53 GMT

Cindy Tittle Moore writes:

	I'd like to build a reference list (like my Arthurian list) of books
	on Robin Hood.  Fiction, poetry, and research type books are all
	welcome.  Please email all references, I will eventually publish it as
	a reading list on this group.

Since you elected not to include Peacock's *The Misfortunes of Elphin* from
your Arthurian list, can we look forward to your not including the same
author's *Maid Marian* from your Robin Hood list?

								Fido
From: twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 29 Aug 92 03:10:03 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <28AUG199208263920@portal.lasc.lockheed.com> le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel (x2025)) writes:
>
>Boy, Cramer is so lucky to have a friend like you.  
>Yawn...

rec.arts.books is lucky to attract people like Mark Taranto.  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Why I read the Economist
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 23:35:04 GMT

In article <jyc.715293803@Leland> jyc@leo.Stanford.EDU (Jon Corelis) writes:

>The other was the habit of prefacing a proper name with a
>pair of descriptive adjectives:  "Folksy, affable Ronald Reagan," or
>"Square-jawed, brutal Saddam Hussein."  I term the latter trope the
>schema joyceanum, for reasons which will immediately be obvious to any
>educated reader.  

Stately, plump Barbara Bush? The mind boggles.

But to me a distinguishing characteristic for both TIME and NEWSWEEK
has been, not the use of preceding adjectives, but the use of 
preceding appositives, usually capitalized, as in "White House Chief of
Staff James Baker."


--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: wismith@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (William R. Smith)
Subject: Re: Sea stories - the Sequel...
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 15:08:26 GMT

John Nall writes:
	
	Of the (short) list I had with me, the computer said only one
	was on the shelf.  So I walked to that area (Soc G530 P32 etc)
	to find it.  Well, I found it.  But even better, it was right
	in the *middle* of a whole nest of them!  Lots of old books,
	with titles like "Storm Passage," and "Desperate Voyage" and
	"Around the World on the Kamchatka"!  



A clear case for open stacks.



William Sburgfort Smith
Intel, SSD
From: nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Travels through the Yucatan....
Date: 28 Aug 92 14:53:50 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

The thread regarding Theroux, and The Mosquito Coast, got
me to remembering a book that I read a long time ago, when
I first got the wanderlust fever and started to travel in
Central America.

This was called, if I remember correctly, "Travels in the
Yucatan," and was a non-fiction book, written in the mid or
late nineteenth century.  I come up with a total blank trying
to remember the author (my stupid mind, doing a table lookup,
keeps coming up with "Beowulf".  Well, I *know* that is not
it :-) but can't remember what it is).

Anyway, regardless of who the author might be (I can find out
pretty easily, just can't remember it right now), I wonder if
anyone else has read it?  And what they thought of it?  As I
recall, he pretty much is credited with the discovery of a major
portion of the Mayan ruins in Mexico.  I also read another book
by him, which involved travels in Guatemala.  

One thing sticks in my mind from the latter book.  This guy
was pretty enlightened for his day, and his books shows what
I would consider fairly liberal views.  Yet, he seems to think
nothing whatsoever about commanding local indians to stop whatever
they might be doing, taking care of their families for example,
to carry his stuff or, even, carry him.  Or his sick friend.  For
days on end.

John
(p.s.  Since my wife is chasing me out of the house at the end
of the semester, so she can study for finals, I'm going to fly
down to Equador, goggle at the Andes a bit, then find a little
hut on the beach and catch up on my reading.  So thanks to all
those who suggested good sea stories - I'm going to carry about
5 of them down there with me!)

--
John W. Nall              | Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
nall@mailer.scri.fsu.edu  | Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306
  "Older women, make beautiful lovers - older women, they understand..."
    (song heard on radio, driving, one rainy night in Mississippi)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel (x2025))
Subject: Re: Forster (was Re: MFK Fisher (Re: Bang, BANG, B-A-N-G!)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. - Rye Canyon
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 21:30:02 GMT

In article <9208301527.AA07929@cfdev1.shearson.com>, mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes...

> I believe that Forster's own sexual
>awakening occurred during his time in India.  Forster may well have
>agreed with Hemingway, though.  He stopped publishing after PASSAGE,
>because he wanted to write about homosexual themes, and felt that
>books on that subject would not be accepted.
> 
>Mark
> 
I have never read a biography on Forster, but I would not be surprised
to learn that your intuition is spot on.  This suggests some things to
me.  Perhaps Forster's sexual awakening theme (in this and other of his
novels) is more important than is generally credited.  It's quite a
thing to stop publishing altogether because one wants to write about
a highly sensitive theme.  It seems to invest that one theme with
tremendous personal importance for that person.  Not only does it
show integrity, perhaps, but it also shows what he really wanted to
write about.  So, from your statement above, it does not seem to me to
be a big jump to wonder if the discomfort (anxiety, even guilt?) attendant 
on the young woman's sexual awakening and her attraction to a person of 
the _wrong_ race are a parallel for Forster's sexual awakening and 
attraction to a person of the _wrong_ sex.  And if so, then perhaps in 
couching his sexual awakening theme within the framework of race relations,
he was able to deal, at least by analogy, with the subject more close to home,
and render it more acceptable as well.

Ron
From: saint@cats.ucsc.edu (Dan Bodenheimer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Bookstores in Santa Cruz
Keywords: monthly
Date: 26 Aug 92 20:16:51 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: si.ucsc.edu


One last bookshop in Santa Cruz worth mentioning... The Book Loft
locating next to the Rio Theatre on Soquel Drive. Used books only.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: Patrick O'Brien vs Horatio Hornblower...
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 21:22:41 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.104635.15475@sun.pcl.ac.uk> chrisc@sun.pcl.ac.uk 
(Chris Chamberlain) writes:

   >The Hornblower character becomes a real prat and I believe
   >even Forrester himself disliked the Hornblower character and only wrote the
   >later novels because people wanted him to.

  Not true. Read Forester's "Long Before Forty".
From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: James Joyce available online (sort of)
Date: 29 Aug 92 15:26:31 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <1992Aug27.175822.4133@informix.com> proberts@informix.com (Paul Roberts) writes:
>
>SINCE THE EXPIRY OF THE JAMES JOYCE COPYRIGHTS at the beginning
>of this year I have been putting Joyce's books onto computer
>disc. [...]
>
>It sounds as if David J. Wilson would have no objection to someone
>making the text available by FTP. Isn't there a project somewhere 
>to get all the world's literature available online, as the copyrights
>expire? Let's hope they are not double-keying the whole of Joyce!

	Yes!  It is Project Gutenberg, as I've mentioned over and
	over again on this newsgroup.  FTP to mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu.
	Surely there is someone in London who can call this guy up
	and clue him in.  I'll send Mr. Roberts' letter to the PG
	mailing list.
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: loose literary canons
Date: 2 Sep 92 19:59:31 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <95078@bu.edu>, manes@bass.bu.edu (Michelle Manes) writes:
> In article <12057@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
# #Yet I was responding to someone who felt that the race of the
# #Greeks was an important issue -- and who was wrong about it
# #anyway.
# 
# Funny, I thought you were responding to me.
# I was deliberately *excluding* the ancient Greeks from
# my category of nonwhite writers because they had nothing
# to do with the point I was trying to make (if in fact there
# was one):  the lack of minority representation in the
# "Great Books."  Had I considered them a nonwhite race, I
# would have instead written: 
# nonwhite writers: 8 (or some such number that would
# include the ancient Greek writers represented)

Ah, a simple misunderstanding?  But...

# On the other hand, I'm not
# entirely convinced that they qualify as "white" by modern
# standards (and have yet to be convinced of this despite
# Clayton's liberal-bashing), so I excluded them from that
# category as well.

No, I didn't misunderstand.  Ms. Manes isn't convinced that
they were "white."

# #But I do care when reality is twisted, bent, and then altered
# #to suit the needs of the moment -- especially by someone
# #who purports to be an "academic."
# 
# Did I do that?  Sorry, I never meant to mislead any of you.
# I'll solve this right now:
# Despite other definitions of academic for which I may
# qualify, there is one which reads, "conforing to the
# traditions or rules of a school or an official academy:
# CONVENTIONAL."  Well, I've never been accused of that before...
# 
# Michelle Manes		|	"What should I be when I grow up?"

No, I was referring to the buffoon at Occidental.



-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
Alcohol prohibition didn't work; drug prohibition doesn't work; gun
prohibition won't work.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: wwhitman@nevada.edu (MICHAEL WISE)
Subject: Re: Why I read the Economist
Organization: University of Nevada System Computing Services
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 08:26:21 GMT

In article <1992Aug30.190636.22132@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:

>I don't know that TIME's decline has been that recent, Crawford. My own 
>opinion is that the quality of writing and reporting in NEWSWEEK surpassed
>that of TIME in the early '70s (NEWSWEEK's Watergate reporting was
>superior, of course, since it had the advantage of being a Washington Post
>company). Nowadays, one sees very good stylists in NEWSWEEK, from Peter
>Goldman to Jonathan Alter to Eleanor Clift. The regular columnists--George
>Will, Meg Greenfield, Jane Bryant Quinn, Robert Samuelson--are all far
>more memorable and have more to say than old fuddy-duddies like TIME's
>Hugh Sidey and bland folks like Charles Krauthammer. The only weak point
>on NEWSWEEK's writing time is Jerry Adler, whose features are reliably
>shallow, sensationalistic, petty, and self-important. (He wrote the racist
>piece on the threat of rap music, for example, and his piece on the
>Allen/Farrow/Previn gossip was particularly silly.)
>

But you don't get it, Mike. Saying one American newmagazine is better 
than another is like saying Coke is better than Pepsi, when your original
subject was Chardonnay. On one hand, you have nothing but sugar, coloring,
and water; Timeweek & World Report, with their fluff articles, glitzy 
photos and complete disregard for what the reader knows (or would like to
know, even if he has to check an encyclopedia for it) sadly seem to be
regular fare for American readers, even though they are so unreliable
that high school debate teams are cautioned against using them as a source,
and undergraduates must search elsewhere for articles relevent to their
term papers. On the other hand, The Economist is well-written, well-reasoned,
and not reluctant to take a stand on issues. It lacks the American glitz:
most of its photos come out of the files, and all of them are in black and
white. But The Economist does not follow the credo that seeing is believing
rather that knowing comes from well informed thought, thought that is only
stimulated by reading. One only has to look at the number of pages (130 to
70), the amount of copy-space compared to picture and white space, to see
the difference. 
I have to recommend good newsmagazines to my undergraduates for their
term papers. As it stands, there is no American newsmagazine on that 
list. Quite a shame, I've always felt, that the best news about America
comes from London.
Michael Wise 
alias O Captain! My Captain!
UNLV English Dept.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books