HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: chucks@uars2.acd.ucar.edu (Chuck Smythe)
Subject: Re: Reading as an addiction (Was: 92 in rabreview)
Organization: Ntl Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Chemistry
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 21:44:23 GMT

>1. When you go to a bookstore with a friend, are you usually carrying
>more books when you leave than your friend is?

Yes

>2. Do you wake up the morning after, unable to remember how many books
>you bought or how much you spent on them?

Yes

>6. At Christmastime, do you buy your loved ones books that you want to read?

yes

>7. Have you ever given up on a book before you started it?
 
yes

>8. Are you unable to walk through a mall without stopping at a bookstore?

yes

>10. Do you ever buy books simply because they were on sale?

yes

>12. When at a garage sale, is the first thing you look at the books?

yes

>13. Have you ever been fired from a job, or reprimanded, for reading?

yes

>14. Have you and your immediate family ever "discussed" your
>book-buying and reading habits?

yes

>15. When you watch TV, do you always have a book in your lap for slow
>parts and commercials?

always.

>16. Do you "watch" television sports with the sound off?

Again, always

>17. Does panic set in when you find yourself in a barber's chair or
>under a hairdryer with nothing to read?

As nothing to the panic when I head for the bathroom empty-handed.

>18. Have you ever become suddenly deeply interested in an obscure
>topic and immediately bought six or more books on that topic?

several times.

>19. Do you ever lie about how many books you've bought?

Quiet!  My wife thinks I'm spending the money on dope.

>20. Do you devise grand and devious strategies for getting your books
>into the house to avoid your spouse's or family's scrutiny?

Not at all.  I have concealed pockets in my coat liner.

>24. Do you have at least six books next to your bed?

Who doesn't?

>[Janice's note: I scored 17. Can anyone beat me?]

......only 16.  Thank God.  I have it under control.  I can take it or leave
it......

			And a shining new year to you all

			Chuck Smythe
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 12:42:52 CST
From: Cole Kendall <U48073@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Reading as an addiction (Was: 92 in rabreview)
 <1992Dec31.050130.24366@sophia.smith.edu>
 <1992Dec31.161524.545@speedy.aero.org> <1hvaggINNqob@shelley.u.washington.edu>

Is there a term for the disease described in these posts?
Bibliomania appears to refer to "an extreme preoccupation with
*collecting* books, and that is not what we suffer from.

I have been an addicted reader since childhood (reading the proverbial
backs and bottoms of cereal boxes at breakfast) and whatever my
mother or father left lying around (this partially explains why
my mother got tickets for me to see _We Have Always Lived in a Castle_
on Broadway for my 9th or 10th birthday...unfortunately it closed).

While I read a fair number of books per year (probably less than
the 200 to 1776 I have seen mentioned by others), I am always
reading: magazines, the net, a few newspapers per day.  I have three
parallel to read piles at home: unread newspapers, magazines and
books.  Of course good housekeeping forces the first two to turn
over more quickly than the third, sometimes departing unread or only
partially read.

But this brings up another point: what nonbooks (e.g. magazines and
newspapers) do you find the best source of book recommendations?

The New York Times Book Review often has interesting reviews, but
rarely convinces me to run out and buy a book.  (Although Santa
was convinced that she ought to run out and get two Maria Callas
biographies for me)

The Spectator (UK magazine) often informs me of books not available
in the US that I might like to read.

In contrast, r.a.b. has provided me with quite a few recommendations
this year that led me to buy books: Peacock, Benson's _Lucia_ series,
_Halo_, _Neuromancer_, _The Difference Engine_ (the first ``science
fiction'' I have read in several years...while each has its own merits
I will probably not read as much next year) and probably a few others.

Cole Kendall
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Non-rabelaisian farts
Date: 27 Dec 1992 01:54:03 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Barclay Elizabeth Blanchard writes:

	Mike Godwin asks:

		I'm trying to think of some non-Rabelaisian pieces 
 		about farting. Are there any?

	Has anyone mentioned The Miller's Tale?  (I haven't been 
	reading rab much lately.)

Yes indeed. No less than your humble scribe. However, MG disallowed
it as being non-non-Rabelaisian, and I think we are still scratching
our heads -- woops! sorry!! our balls, trying to work out just what
Mike meant. For those not inclined to read Chaucer because of difficulties
with the language, let me recommend that very excellent recording by
Caedmon of two of the Tales. Stanley Holloway reads *The Miller's Tale*
and Michael MacLiammoir *The Pardoner's Tale*. They represent The Olde
Barde at his satiric (satyric?) best, and they both employ voices that
are happy fakes of how we in Merrie Englande used to speak.

							RABworm

>
>-- 
>Barclay Elizabeth Blanchard    barclay@rail9000.gatech.edu
>"I've been laughed at by some of the funniest people."
>--Lissie, Alice Walker's _The Temple of My Familiar_
From: kasprj@operators.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Mangled Text (Was Re: Mangled Song Lyrics)
Date: 3 Jan 93 17:54:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: rpi.x562ngl
Reply-To: kasprj@rpi.edu
Organization: The Big Wedge

In article <1i57moINNnhh@morrow.stanford.edu>, GE.SPM@forsythe.stanford.edu (Suzanne Mills) writes:
|> Mis-hearing words being sung is one thing, but mis-reading words on
|> the page is another.  I have found myself doing the latter for at
|> least a couple of years now.  It doesn't seem to happen with books,
|> by the way, but only with newspaper or magazine text.
|> 
|> I would be very interested to know if anyone else out
|> there has had similar experiences.
 
 You're not alone. In my case it seems to happen more often with signs
and other large outdoor letterings. Just as is the case with people who
mis-hear song lyrics, I often like my version better. Such as the 
restaurant in Philadelphia called Appleby's which I misread as Apathy's.
("What are today's specials?" "Who cares?") Or the supermarket aisle 
where I read "Imported Beer" as "Improved Beer". And one evening while
riding a bus out of Springfield, Massachusetts, I noticed out of the 
corner of my eye a store off to the side of the highway which spelled
out its name in enormous orange letters: THE BOMB DEPOT. I did a double-
take, and by the time I'd looked again, I realized that it was actually 
THE HOME DEPOT. 
 
 Then there was the time when I was looking through my list of newsgroups
and, with alt.folklore.urban right above alt.war, my brain combined the 
two and I found myself wondering when I'd subscribed to alt.urban.warfare.
------------------------------------------------------------------
     __  Live from Capitaland, heart of the Empire State...
 ___/  | Jim Kasprzak, computer operator @ RPI, Troy, NY, USA
/____ *|          he who refuses to do nonsense  
     \_|          is doomed to talk arithmetic.
      ====  e-mail: kasprj@rpi.edu or kasprzak@mts.rpi.edu 

 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: rod@unislc.uucp (Robert Despain)
Subject: Confirmed Biblioholics
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Organization: Unisys Corporation SLC
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 00:55:31 GMT


Amplifications to Ken Meltsner's (meltsner@crd.ge.com) quiz:

> 4. Have you ever bought the same book twice without knowing it?

Yes, and bought the same book twice and more *with* knowing.
There are many titles that the confirmed biblioholic is unable to
pass by if the price is under a buck (bought about six copies of
J.D. Salinger's _Nine Stories_, gave away five)>

> 6. At Christmastime, do you buy your loved ones books that you want to read?

Confirmed bilioholics (hereafter CBs) never buy gift books that
they don't want to read.

> 10. Do you ever buy books simply because they were on sale?

See amplification to 4.

> 13. Have you ever been fired from a job, or reprimanded, for reading?

CBs wiggle their ways into jobs (e.g.: grad student in Lit.,
teacher of Lit., book reviewer) where they get *paid* to read.

> 15. When you watch TV, do you always have a book in your lap for slow
> parts and commercials?

CBs always have a book someplace; they are very clever about
concealing them if need be.  (When I was in OCS, I used to hide
pages from a poetry anthology in the lining of my cap.)

> 24. Do you have at least six books next to your bed?

CBs have headboards that are bookcases.  (Went into the bedroom
and counted: 6 on the floor next to the bed, 28 on the bed, 40 in
the headboard bookcase.)

25. When a bookstore clerk has been unable to locate a certain book in
the stacks, have you ever been able to find that book?

CBs rarely consult with bookstore clerks.   (When I go to the
local B&N, I sneak back to where they have their inventory stored
on a PC and look up what I'm after.  Not about to ask the clerks
if that's OK; they might say no.)

Cheers,
R.O.
-- 
R.O. Despain                  |
Mature Products Group         |  Internet: rod@unislc.slc.unisys.com
(801) 594-4633                |      UUCP: ...!{sun, uunet}!unislc!rod
From: mls@panix.com (Michael Siemon)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Shouting at robots
Summary: ahem?
Date: 3 Jan 93 05:21:34 GMT
Organization: Panix Public Access Internet & Unix, NYC

In article <JMC.93Jan2141039@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:

>I hear my 7 year old son shouting "Stop! Stop!" at his robot.
...
>A $25 prize is offered for the best posting in the next week viewing
>this development with alarm, i.e. children shouting at robots.

Well, I certainly don't view-with-alarm the shouting-at-robots of
children (whatever are robots FOR, if not to be shouted at?)  But
two, possibly minor, thoughts intrude:

	o what DOES one do about robots that do NOT stop when told to?

	o what DOES Prof. McCarthy intend in the "home education" of
	  his son, that a raised voice is (apparently) NOT to be heard? 
-- 
Michael L. Siemon	"We honour founders of these starving cities
mls@panix.com		 Whose honour is the image of our sorrow ...
			 They built by rivers and at night the water
			 Running past the windows comforted their sorrow."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jw2b@galen.med.Virginia.EDU (Sara J. Wagner)
Subject: Re: Van de Wetering (was: Sjowall & Wahloo and other series)
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 13:13:39 GMT


Speaking of van de Wetering, did he ever write more Amsterdam cop
books after Hard Rain?  I've never seen any later ones, and judging by
the ending of Hard Rain, it would require a major shift in plots and
characters to continue the series.

--
Jane Wagner, Computer Systems and Publications Assistant
The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library| INTERNET: jw2b@virginia.edu
Box 234, UVA Health Sciences Center	| PHONE:    804-924-0188
Charlottesville, VA  22908 		| BITNET:   jw2b@virginia.bitnet
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Good Westerns
Date: 28 Dec 1992 22:43:08 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

William R. Smith writes:

	Sandra Loosemore writes:

		"Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey is probably 
		*the* classic western novel.  It's a rather serious 
		book with strong philosophical overtones.

	After hearing "Riders ..." recommended for years, I tried to 
	read it a couple of months back.  I gave up after about 15 page.  
	In the first page or two Grey used the word "purple" eight or 
	nine times while describing a sunset.  I think it was a sunset, 
	I was so distracted by all that purple I can't remember.

	The book was published in the early 1900's and maybe the style 
	got in my way.  

Can one read too much Horace? ZG may have. This snippet from the OED
which has 297 pages on purple.
 
        Purple patch, passage, piece, a brilliant or ornate passage
        in a literary composition (after L. purpureus pannus, Hor.
        De Arte Poet. 15).

Yes, yes. The OED folk will have their little joke.

							RABworm
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Subject: Judith Martin is too (was: Wits and Half-Wits)
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1992 02:47:38 GMT

In article <Bzs03t.KKH@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk> jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:
>hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu quoted Tom Maddox:
>> I'm much more concerned with whether people are being interesting, witty,
>> enlightening, provocative.  In short, when it comes to public exchanges of
>> the written word, I would hold up Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker as exemplars
>> rather than Miss Manners.  
Am I reading a different Miss Manners than everyone else? I
regard her as with O. Wilde and D. Parker, not against.
Maybe *that*'s the fundamental r.a.b. problem:  the nasty
posters here have forgotten that great wit needs constraints--
for example, those of grammatical elegance, superficial
courtesy, objective correlatives, and so on--to be at its best.
>
>I'd hold them up as exemplars, too.  People who produced a small output
>with every superfluous word excised.  I suspect that Parker's collected
>short stories amount to fewer words than some posters put out here in a
>year.
Seconded.
			.
			.
			.
-- 

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
From: ah@dunaad.co.uk (Alan Hunter)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: JAZ lodges a complaint. Was non-rabelaisian farts
Date: 29 Dec 92 09:49:46 GMT
Organization: Johnson Hunter Limited

Joann Zimmerman writes:
>
>Lodge is funny and Catholic (or at least ex-). I have no idea whether he
>be gay, straight or in a Mobius loop.

He's got a wife and (at the last count) 3 kids, so I doubt if he fits in
with anyone's normal image of a gay writer.

Alan







-- 
Alan Hunter
Johnson Hunter Ltd
Isle of Islay, Scotland
A.Hunter@dunaad.co.uk          fax: +44-496-2336         voice: +44-496-2286
From: hoosiers@carson.u.washington.edu (Mary Loveless)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Changing Subject Lines (Was Re: Is the discussion over?, Nee
Date: 29 Dec 1992 19:57:41 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

In article <1992Dec29.153326.14511@clpd.kodak.com>
staffan@ca.serum.kodak.com (Kenneth Staffan (x37507)) writes: 

>It's a high-volume newsgroup, and
>people are just looking for ways to filter out what they do and don't
>want to follow.  Not everybody has hours to weed through tons of messages.
>Kill files are only of marginal use - subject lines continually change,
>and the kill parsing itself takes time, which is one of the problems in
>the first place.
>
>Don't pay any attention to these tangential arguments.  Does anyone
>else have constructive suggestions for organizing the group?
>
>Ken
>---
>staffan@serum.kodak.com

I am against any split.  I like the diversity, even though I have
reluctantly started to use the Kill file, sometimes because I object to
the subject matter, more often because the topic does not appeal to me,
but usually simply to weed.  I think it is more than of just marginal use,
in spite of the changing subject line.  It takes seconds, not hours, to
identify an evolved subject line and to add that to the already existing
lines to be killed.  It is also great fun to see the liveliness of a
"killed" file and to take note of its many incarnations:  i.e.,
*Non-rabelaisian farts we/;Farting (Re: Photo CD)/;Flatulence (WAS Ngaio
Marsh/;Rabelaisian pieces about/; *Maddoxian flatus; Chaucer\. Was
non-Rab/; Re JAZ lodges a complaint.  Was......  Like swamp gas, it keeps
bubbling to the surface--good going, folks, and I can't wait to see the
next eruption....so to speak. 

Mary Loveless  hoosiers@carson.u.washington.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of my opinions are self-righteously my own and **certainly** have
nothing to do with the University of Washington.

"Too much of a good thing can be *wonderful*."  Mae West

"I wonder how I'd look in *Madonna's* underwear."  Zippy the Pinhead
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: Wanted: decent one-volume Churchill bio
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 02:19:03 GMT

Alison Chaiken writes:

>Today I went to the library with the intention of checking out, among
>other things, William Manchester's highly praised Churchill biography.
>Then I saw it sitting there on the shelf in two mammoth volumes,
>whispering, "You can't finish me.  You can't even carry me."  In fear
>I examined the dozen other Churchill books, but they were either very
>specialized (Churchill's speeches), covered only a short period of his
>life, or were old.  Somehow I can't imagine getting a biography of
>someone who's now dead that was written during their lifetime; I
>imagine that it would lack the perspective of a post mortem.

	First of all you might want to consider that Churchill was his
own best biographer - opinionated, yes, always right, surely, but he
was perhaps the last of his kind - the statesman/historian/politician/writer/
And his command of the language was so marvelous that there is really
no substitute for reading his own words. I suppose that it depends
what you what to read about Churchill for. All of his works, including
the speeches, are worthwhile investments for your time. For example,
his brief autobiography of 1930 *My Early Life* is witty and
prophetic, the collection of essays *Thoughts and Adventures*
entertaining - see "Fifty Years Hence" and "Painting As A Pastime". Then,
the collection of character sketches in *Great Contemporaries* gives
Churchill's assessments of many of the great personalities of his
time. All three of these books couldn't be more than 600 pages. 

	This is not to deny the worth of the Manchester volumes. I've
read both and am eagerly awaiting volume 3. Martin Gilbert, the
official historian, has condensed his multi-volume set into one very
large volume and I've heard good things about it. The young Churchill
has been written about in Ted Morgan's *Winston Churchill: Young Man
in a Hurry* and Gilbert's companion to the BBC documentary: *Winston
Churchill: the Wilderness Years*. These are OK as well. Still, I
sincerely recommend Churchill in his own words - he had such a way
with them and reading him gives the reader lessons in history,
rhetoric, prudence, and language.

Keith
--

Keith Morgan kamorgan@athena.mit.edu
In the end nothing could be said of his work except that it was
preposterous and true and totally unacceptable. Edward Whittemore
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu
Subject: RE: Homeschooling (was  Re: Education and the Environment by Gregory A. Smith)
Organization: Clark University
Date: 31 DEC 92 20:05:40 GMT


Steve Pope writes: 

>I do not feel "threatened" by homeschooling, or by voucher systems, 
>or by any other like-minded trend, and I have no problem with 
>"power" being given to the "individual". 

That's admirable of you.  There are a good many people who do feel
threatened, though.  

>What I do have a problem with is the large fraction of Americans 
>who are willing to throw in the towel and say the public 
>education will never work, either for their own kids or 
>for kids in general.  

Who's saying that "the public education will never work"?

>I think they are way, way off base on 
>this; and as this trend continues, education in this country will 
>continue to deteriorate. 
> 
>And what really bugs me is that the people who are killing 
>public education by pulling their kids out of public 
>schools 

Exaggeration and scapegoating.  Give me your proof that homeschooling is
"killing public education".

In any case, if people pulling their kids out of public schools are indeed
responsible for the sorry state of American public education, then you have
to blame those parents who send their children to private and parochial
schools as well as those who homeschool.

>have the audacity to blame the problem on 
>"liberal educators with their social agendas" and 
>other imagined demons. 

I never said anything about liberal educators or social agendas in my post.

Heather
HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jdnicoll@prism.ccs.uwo.ca (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Non-fiction (was Re: _Dog Soldiers_ by R. Stone, a wild ride!)
Organization: University of Western Ontario, London
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 18:27:09 GMT

In article <BzL9xt.6Gt@wsrcc.com>, alison@wsrcc.com (Alison Chaiken) writes:
>
>By the way, does anyone on this group ever read NON-fiction?   I read
>non-fiction about 50% of the time, but I would guess that I am in the
>minority here.

	I  try  to pick up at least one nonfiction book on something
I  know nothing about every foraging trip  to  the local library. This
has sometimes  paid  off  in interesting  books  (I ransacked  the  
primatology section after  encountering 'Chimpanzee  Politics') and
less often resulted in  becoming aware of knowledge I didn't particularly
value  (A book on retirement   behavior  of   dancers comes  to  mind).

							James Nicoll
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: elle@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Ellen Keyne Seebacher)
Subject: Re: Abulafia
Reply-To: elle@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:03:24 GMT

>[Sean Philip Engelson posts for a friend, 
>  on the Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia]

I am deeply humbled.  I thought Abulafia was one of Michener's
invented characters in _The Source_; I should go back and see which
of the other characters I thought fictional actually existed.

Those I knew were real include Kings David and Herod; General/Emperor
Vespasian; Flavius Josephus; Queen/Saint Helena.  Those are just from
memory -- I'm probably missing a couple.

Anyone else here as devout admirer of _The Source_ as I?  I first read
it at age ten (both the book and I, as it happens), while laid up for
a week with a severe allergic reaction.  I've been rereading chapters
from it ever since, and I'm sure I'd put it near the top of any Top Ten
(or Five) list I might construct.

--                    __
Ellen Keyne Seebacher \/             elle@midway.uchicago.edu
  "A word of warning:  believe none of what you read, but devise -- 
   as you must -- your own life."  --Jess Anderson
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books