Whatcha Reading?

I saw the bbc tv version last year or the year before. It was better than the movie. Also read The Salmon of Doubt by Adams a long time ago.

Ziryab, have you read much Bukowski before? I ask because I really have enjoyed reading Bukowski, but I strongly suspect that these " new " collections of poetry are a lot of his reject poems, maybe they were found crumpled up in the waste basket after his death, with a small sprinkling of good, previously publshed pieces.

I don't know if that's true of your collection, I haven't read it, but I would recommend reading the Bukowski books published during his lifetime. His first novel, Post Office is amazing. I've had coworkers who had never finished a book before, get hooked by its first paragraph, then go on to read all of it. His poetry can be pretty uneven, I get the impression he banged them out, one after the other, but there's a lot of good stuff there.

Currently I am reading Stephen King's book, Misery. My mom recommended it to me as a good introduction to King's work.

As far as chess-related books go, I've been reading Calculation by Jacob Aagaard. It's probably a bit above my level considering the fact that I get almost all of the puzzles wrong, but I still think it's helpful to my calculation skills, nonetheless.

Your advice seems sound. The book store I’m now frequenting is owned by a guy who cherishes the beats. It’s a fun store with macabre art, clever classification schemes (“Christianity and other cults” next to a larger section on witchcraft). I sold them a bag full of classic science fiction paperbacks and bought five books with the credit, including the Bukowski and Kerouac. Also Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America. I’ve bought two Hunter S. Thompson collections there, too. One a collection of essays, one a collection of letters.

It the first book of his that I’ve started reading. It appears that most of the poems are previously published.

Richard Brautigan - One of my favorites . . .

"I feel horrible. She doesn't

love me and I wander around

the house like a sewing machine

that's just finished sewing

a turd to a garbage can lid.

uog

Who is moncan23?

Loved Kurt Vonnegut's stuff. My favorite of his books is "God Bless you Mr. Rosewater." I so love telling annoying people (paraphrased) - Take a flying leap at a rolling donut.

I think I'm gonna sue chess.com for deleting the long message I just typed, presumably because I mentioned the name of a popular science-fiction writer. Let me laboriously try to recreate it for you, appropriately edited.

Kurt Vonnegut is a legend. I have the Library of America edition of his collected novels (and also their edition of Kerouac's road novels). I like their editions of different authors a lot. I read their edition of Melville's Omoo and Typee, which was good, and 4 Novels from the 1960's by Philip K. D*ck, which was also pretty good.

That why bots are the wrong approach to content moderation. BTW, there were several old paperbacks from the 1960s in the bag that I sold to Giant Nerd Books two weeks ago.

Sorry I don’t recall which ones.

We should not play, nor support others who play their bots either.

I read this book a few years ago.

Amazon gives me tons of postmodernist and occult recommendations.

Giant Nerd Books has a good selection on the occult.

https://www.giantnerdbooks.com

I like Amazon. Their recommendations have been pretty influential on the books I read. Of course, I feel like I had pretty strong individual preferences before I started shopping there, so mostly I use it to get books that I've heard of somewhere else, but sometimes I use it to research new titles that might interest me.

Also I browse the shelves at my local library.

For instance, my library had an older edition of Chess Fundamentals by Senor Capablanca. I decided to buy a copy on Amazon. Then I found a copy at Goodwill, that I bought as a present for someone.

I have five or six copies of this book.

I learned checkmate with rook and king from that book. It's a technical skill that a lot of lower-rated players don't have.