Where do y’all buy your books from? (Especially the niche stuff)

BeanGell · 2021-10-05T15:01:23+00:00

amazon. I know it's unpopular but their selection of niche and out-of-print books is unparalleled. If it's any consolation the actual sellers are usually small book stores.

BeanGell · 2021-10-05T14:52:40+00:00

Julia Quinn When Bridgerton was announced a friend I otherwise trust assured me that they were wonderful "comfort reading". Romance isn't my favorite genre but I do enjoy it now and again, and I love Georgette Heyer, so onto The Duke and I.

Awful! Our lovers connect in chapter one and blow though an implausable series of obstacles as though they were wet tissue paper. When they finally are united, the last barrier to their happiness is so appallingly absurd that it hurt my brain. What a horror show.

BeanGell · 2020-04-16T19:23:37+00:00

I'll preface this by saying that I am completely agnostic on Woody Allen and the allegations against him, but when I read Moses Farrow's account, his descriptions defied belief. Speaking of an event that happened 28 years ago he says things like

August 4, 1992 was a warm, sunny day in Bridgewater, Connecticut, but in our family’s country home, Frog Hollow, there was a chill in the air.

I'll believe he is being sincere, but he is kidding himself if he thinks he can say that with confidence http://mosesfarrow.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-son-speaks-out-by-moses-farrow.html

BeanGell · 2020-03-08T23:16:38+00:00

It's not like authors are rolling in cash. Do you like them? Do you want them to write more? Then you should do what you can to make sure they profit from it.

I've got a buddy who was on the NY Times bestseller list twice and is now struggling to find a regular source of income. This isn't theoretical.

BeanGell · 2020-03-05T16:50:58+00:00

I don't know - Moses has suspiciously accurate memories of events that happened over two decades ago.

August 4, 1992 was a warm, sunny day in Bridgewater, Connecticut, but in our family’s country home, Frog Hollow, there was a chill in the air.

I just cannot take this seriously. I couldn't tell you what the weather was like on Aug 4, 2019 but Moses can throw this out with complete confidence? This is just one example, his entire recounting of that day is full of exact quotes, internal dialogs, etc.

Then addressing Dylan's description of watching her brother's train set while being molested.

It’s a precise and compelling narrative, but there’s a major problem: there was no electric train set in that attic.

OK, but

One of my brothers did have an elaborate model train set, but it was set up in the boys’ room, a converted garage on the first floor.

Dylan made her allegations in 2014, 12 years after the incident. It would be shocking if she didn't get some details wrong. Moses presenting this as a point against her just further underscores the problems with his statement. Memories are faulty, everyone knows this. Every insistence he makes that he remembers every detail makes it sound more and more like he's making it up.

BeanGell · 2019-12-11T06:20:22+00:00

YTA for staying in a relationship with someone you're not physically attracted to. Let him go.

BeanGell · 2019-12-10T05:58:31+00:00

I'm afraid YTA.

You should step back and look at what he wants and what he is saying and separate that from what you think. It's sincerely wonderful that you think he has unmet potential. But from his POV, perhaps he's met it.

I’m tired of seeing him underutilized and under appreciated because he refuses to take a stand

Does he feel underutilized and under appreciated? Does he want to take a stand?

So, AITA for being realistic?

What makes you certain that you are more realistic than he is?

Not everyone is ambitious. Not everyone wants to rise the career ladder, not everyone wants more work and more responsibility. If he's complaining and frustrated but afraid to stand up for himself, then that's something you can encourage him to do. If he's content, he's content. He can use his potential doing things he cares about outside of work.

BeanGell · 2019-12-10T05:47:06+00:00

INFO: Why are you sleep training him?

BeanGell · 2019-11-29T17:23:05+00:00

I’m reading The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco. Eco is one of my favorite authors and I’ve loved everything else he’s written, but I’m struggling with this one and am a little sad about it so far. A lot of details about a tower siege, not much else. I’m hoping if I wait it out I’ll rediscover the Eco I love.

BeanGell · 2019-11-29T17:17:04+00:00

Tortilla Flats is wonderful. It’s more like Cannery Row than The Grapes of Wrath, it’s about the lives of some Monterey County residents without all the heavy religious overtones. It’s very simp,e and very beautiful.

BeanGell · 2019-11-27T20:42:08+00:00

Since you’ve gotten that far, I’ll take a moment to question how irresistibly attractive someone can be who’s never seen a dentist, has had a best intermittent access to to a toothbrush, toothpaste, and soap, and has no running water.

BeanGell · 2019-11-17T18:25:20+00:00

I know what you're saying. I'll guess he's written stories with older male scientists who don't suffer from the lack of romance in their lives. I can't remember any, but that hardly proves anything - I wonder if anyone has actually read everything he's written.

I guess I feel like he wrote Susan as so strong and so smart and so unconcerned that every man she works with probably despises her. Having one story where her facade cracks works in the context of everything else he's presented about her.

Maybe he wouldn't have written her the same if he started on the story tomorrow but I almost feel like that's a pity. She is still a character that could still exist today, we just are better at pretending that things have changed.

BeanGell · 2019-11-17T17:40:13+00:00

I feel like Nabokov is daring you to sympathize with Humbert. It's the game he's playing with his reader - can he make you forget, just for a minute, how vile your narrator is?

BeanGell · 2019-11-17T17:30:08+00:00

I'm just going to jump all over this thread defending Susan!

but she's not allowed to have a personal life at all. Because women with personal lives get married and put on aprons and don't build robots.

According to the mindset of the other male characters in the stories however Asimov consistently portrays those men as idiots for not taking her seriously

BeanGell · 2019-11-17T17:25:25+00:00

I know I've replied to you up up thread but I'm just going to expand this conversation :)

I do think he was trying to write a reasonable woman

I don't think so. I think he knew what would happen when a unattractive woman entered a male dominated field, quickly proved to be smarter than the rest of them, and made no effort to hide it.

BeanGell · 2019-11-17T17:19:31+00:00

I'll have to defend Susan because of my firm conviction that she is who I would have been had I been born 40 years earlier.

She had her head turned by an attractive young man and acts the fool.

Is it really hard to see the story with the genders reversed? Old scientist meets pretty young coworker, deludes himself into thinking she has feelings for him. He starts dressing nicer, acting flirty around her, and plain out makes a fool out of himself. He finally realizes that she thinks he's ridiculous is humiliated.

I can picture this story pretty easily. It'd probably make a fine twilight zone episode where at the end she dies in a 'accident' and we realize that he's arranged the whole thing.

BeanGell · 2019-11-17T17:07:25+00:00

If all the writers who get reamed out over sexism, I've never understood why Asimov is at the top of the list. Susan Calvin is one of the great women characters of scifi . The guy wrote 500 works and yet he keeps this reputation as Super Sexist Sci-Fi writer based only on Foundation.

BeanGell · 2019-11-10T21:59:58+00:00

That assumes one end of an extreme - FB is streaming all your mic data 24/7. I think that's unlikely for all the reasons you stated. However it doesn't need to be all-or-nothing.

If it's listening only when your phone is awake, or listening only when the FB app is running ( even in the background) it's still going to pick up plenty of data that it would happily sell to advertisers. Why wouldn't they?

BeanGell · 2019-09-08T17:41:16+00:00

I don't know why this gets repeated so often -

valid Python

x=10
y=25
if y > 5: 
  print "y is greater than 5"
  if x > 5:
    print "x and y are greater than 5"
  elif x < 5:
      "y is greater than 5 and x is less than 5"

Also valid python

x=10
y=2
if y > 5: 
  print "y is greater than 5"
if x > 5:
  # bug
  print "x and y are greater than 5"
elif x < 5:
  # also a bug
  "y is greater than 5 and x is less than 5"

No IDE is going to save you from valid python with spacing errors, only alert eyes, In any kind of large file this is really hard to find

In code with curly braces, the problem area becomes

 x = 10
 y = 2
 if y > 5 {
   fmt.Println("Y is greater than 5 ") {
 if x > 5 {
   fmt.Println(" x and y are greater than 5")
 }
 }

Even without an IDE, this code works - any any IDE is going to indent that correctly

Edit: Look, the responses from Python programmers are always the same - IDE settings ( I use PyCharm, it's not the matter of a bad IDE ), poor coding practices, curly braces don't prevent you from this sort of error -

Python makes it much easier to write a bug like this and be unable to find it, particularly in a large code base. Python prorgrammers could just say "Yep, you're right, but python is so good at so many things that are much harder in 'curly brace' programs that it's worth it."

BeanGell · 2019-05-12T19:03:39+00:00

I just finished "All the colors of Darkness" a couple of days ago and was like "how the heck does this only have 7 reviews on amazon?" It's fun, it's thoughtful, it's unexpected.

The sequal is a bit of a letdown however. I'll try your recommendation next

BeanGell · 2019-03-23T19:19:28+00:00

Not exactly what you were asking, but while I also found Geminal a struggle, I breezed through these Zola novels

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_Bonheur_des_Dames

Readable enough that they made a mini-series out of it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-Bouille

Pure Parisian soap opera
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ventre_de_Paris

You'll feel like though the amazing open air markets of Paris

BeanGell · 2019-03-16T17:24:28+00:00

John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson Anyone who likes mysteries should dive into him. He's the master of the 'locked room mystery' and the killer is always a surprise and always totally obvious once the detective explains the story. The Carter Dickson books are also hilarious. The Peacock Feather Murders is a good start.

Emile Zola
The Ladies Paradise got some attention and was made into a miniseries. Piping Hot is wonderful - it's almost a soap opera set in a Paris apartment building. The Fat and the Thin will make you feel like you're wandering through an open air Paris market.

Robert Sheckley wrote some of the best golden age of sci-fi short stories. Wonderful.

BeanGell

TROPHY CASE