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BS: Book snobs

Dave Hanson 24 Oct 05 - 05:39 AM
Pied Piper 24 Oct 05 - 06:04 AM
gnomad 24 Oct 05 - 06:29 AM
Liz the Squeak 24 Oct 05 - 07:03 AM
GUEST,Dáithí Ó Geanainn 24 Oct 05 - 07:06 AM
Le Scaramouche 24 Oct 05 - 07:49 AM
jacqui.c 24 Oct 05 - 07:55 AM
GUEST,Janine 24 Oct 05 - 07:57 AM
GUEST 24 Oct 05 - 08:06 AM
jacqui.c 24 Oct 05 - 08:13 AM
kendall 24 Oct 05 - 08:15 AM
Big Al Whittle 24 Oct 05 - 08:16 AM
Amos 24 Oct 05 - 08:20 AM
Rapparee 24 Oct 05 - 08:42 AM
jonm 24 Oct 05 - 08:44 AM
GUEST,DB 24 Oct 05 - 09:08 AM
My guru always said 24 Oct 05 - 09:15 AM
Janie 24 Oct 05 - 09:33 AM
Bunnahabhain 24 Oct 05 - 09:38 AM
Dave Hanson 24 Oct 05 - 10:30 AM
Rapparee 24 Oct 05 - 11:02 AM
Bill D 24 Oct 05 - 11:11 AM
Morticia 24 Oct 05 - 11:25 AM
number 6 24 Oct 05 - 11:37 AM
Stilly River Sage 24 Oct 05 - 11:41 AM
Pied Piper 24 Oct 05 - 12:46 PM
fat B****rd 24 Oct 05 - 01:50 PM
GUEST 24 Oct 05 - 02:14 PM
fat B****rd 24 Oct 05 - 02:15 PM
Elmer Fudd 24 Oct 05 - 02:31 PM
John Hardly 24 Oct 05 - 02:31 PM
number 6 24 Oct 05 - 02:55 PM
Morticia 24 Oct 05 - 03:00 PM
Thomas the Rhymer 24 Oct 05 - 03:06 PM
TheBigPinkLad 24 Oct 05 - 03:07 PM
Stilly River Sage 24 Oct 05 - 03:52 PM
Liz the Squeak 24 Oct 05 - 03:54 PM
number 6 24 Oct 05 - 04:03 PM
Morticia 24 Oct 05 - 04:51 PM
kendall 24 Oct 05 - 04:55 PM
wysiwyg 24 Oct 05 - 06:12 PM
Emma B 24 Oct 05 - 06:27 PM
Le Scaramouche 24 Oct 05 - 07:04 PM
jets 24 Oct 05 - 07:55 PM
Bill D 24 Oct 05 - 08:03 PM
Joe Offer 24 Oct 05 - 08:20 PM
Amos 24 Oct 05 - 08:39 PM
wysiwyg 24 Oct 05 - 10:06 PM
Bill D 24 Oct 05 - 10:27 PM
Stilly River Sage 24 Oct 05 - 10:29 PM
Peace 24 Oct 05 - 10:46 PM
GUEST,Boab 24 Oct 05 - 11:47 PM
Q (Frank Staplin) 25 Oct 05 - 01:34 AM
jonm 25 Oct 05 - 02:59 AM
Dave Hanson 25 Oct 05 - 07:03 AM
Le Scaramouche 25 Oct 05 - 07:23 AM
Rapparee 25 Oct 05 - 09:20 AM
Le Scaramouche 25 Oct 05 - 09:47 AM
Stilly River Sage 25 Oct 05 - 10:02 AM
frogprince 25 Oct 05 - 11:43 AM
Stilly River Sage 25 Oct 05 - 12:11 PM
GUEST,Uncle_DaveO 22 Jun 15 - 06:13 PM
Bonnie Shaljean 22 Jun 15 - 06:37 PM
Jim Carroll 22 Jun 15 - 07:40 PM
Bonnie Shaljean 23 Jun 15 - 06:53 AM
GUEST,CS 23 Jun 15 - 07:27 AM
Bonnie Shaljean 23 Jun 15 - 07:44 AM
Joe Offer 23 Jun 15 - 08:05 AM
Bonnie Shaljean 23 Jun 15 - 08:11 AM
Dave the Gnome 23 Jun 15 - 09:32 AM
Nigel Parsons 23 Jun 15 - 10:07 AM
Nigel Parsons 23 Jun 15 - 10:30 AM
SINSULL 24 Jun 15 - 09:18 AM
GUEST,HiLo 24 Jun 15 - 09:51 AM
Bonnie Shaljean 24 Jun 15 - 10:02 AM
Joe_F 24 Jun 15 - 08:50 PM
Jim Carroll 25 Jun 15 - 03:53 AM
GUEST,Pete from seven stars link 25 Jun 15 - 11:30 AM
Lighter 25 Jun 15 - 03:29 PM
EBarnacle 25 Jun 15 - 11:29 PM
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Subject: BS: Book snobs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 05:39 AM

From a report in the Yorkshire Post today, a survey for travel company Expedia and BAA has found that many people buy books not to read but to impress others, this was particularly prevalent in southern England.

Is this because we northeners have more sense ?

eric


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Pied Piper
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 06:04 AM

A pox on you Eric I had to put down my copy of War and Piece to reply.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: gnomad
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 06:29 AM

Let's stir this one a bit:

More sense, less surplus cash, enough self-worth not to need to impress others, oh and more of us can read.



There, that should raise a hackle or two 8-]


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:03 AM

Consider them raised. I've never read the books I'm 'supposed' to read... how many people who read 'the DaVinci Code' did so because it was a good story? How many people actually FINISHED the damn thing? I know I didn't.

And with libraries you don't need money to read books.

LTS


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,Dáithí Ó Geanainn
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:06 AM

And there's none so provincial as those who live in the capital...just a bit more seasoning for your pot, gnomad!

(Although I live in Lincolnshire,I was once working as a consultant at an organisation in London and the chance of a full time staff job came up. Colleagues there asked if I would be applying and were dumfounded when the reason I gave for not doing so was that I didn't want the drop in my standard of living that it would entail.)
D


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:49 AM

I hated the Da Vinci Code, an extremely lazily writtten book. Offended my sensibilities as a writer more than the rubbish history could.
Tolstoy is an author I don't really care for, but have read. Personally, I prefer his Caucasian and Crimean stories. Oh, and the one about the talking horse. Prisoner of the Caucasus is a very beatiful little story.
I'd much rather read Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and that.
Haven't yet gotten round to Ulysses and won't claim I've read it, apart from excerpts. I understand it's the #1 most lied about book.
Have hundreds of books, it's a favourite pastime, and have read nearly all of them.
OTOH, there are books I know I've read, but can't recall anything about them, beyond a phrase or two. EE Nesbitt, for example.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: jacqui.c
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:55 AM

I'm London born and bred and I read mainly for pleasure. I'm trying to catch up with reading the so called classics but if it bores me it don't get finished. I've never seen the sense in spending money and wasting space on books I don't intend to read. Maybe there are some who do this but the majority of those I know don't have that sort of need.

I did read the Da Vinci Code - I enjoyed the book and it made me think hard about my take on religion. For that it was worth its weight in gold.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,Janine
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:57 AM

Yes true. A few years ago people carried around 'A Brief History of Time', then it was 'Foucauld's Pendulum', then 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin'. A top physicist, whose name I forget, wrote to Prof Hawkin to say there was a section he couldn't understand and he couldn't understand the reply either. All difficult to read but, my, did they look good in bag or pocket!

Janine


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:06 AM

Please remember that the Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction and sould be read for it's entertainment value.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: jacqui.c
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:13 AM

Even works of fiction can make one stop and think about one's own views and outlook. All it needs is one phrase or sentence that pushes a button.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: kendall
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:15 AM

I also finished the DaVinci Code. It's hard for me to not finish a book.
The Celistine Prophesy, and the Beans of Egypt Maine were two that I found hard going. Poorly written but interesting.

I briefly dated a woman who said she had read all the classics, but after a few well placed questions it became clear that she hadn't read any of them!
I didn't mind the fact that she wasn't a reader, but the pretense turned me off.

Lately I've been reading SARUM a novel of England, and I find it hard going, may not finish it.

I'll probably get murdered for this, but I sometimes wonder about people who learn 85 verse ballads. Are they showing off? They go on and on unaccompanied with such repetion.....what will you leave to your brother John? what will you leave to your second cousin on the side of your babysitters step friend?
Maybe I just don't get it.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:16 AM

its an odd business reading when you think about it. hearing someones words in your head that's not there. almost sleight of hand. you get a feeling for the personality of the writer.

when I was a kid I was a bit of a smart arse, read all sorts of clever books. somewhere along the line I realised I was probably a bit dim, and I stick to stuff I can understand and enjoy.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Amos
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:20 AM

I think carrying a book around to show off without reading it is almost sacreligious, and certainly asinine egoism. The LEAST you could do is try to understand it! I agree whole heartedly that Hawkins is hard to understand, and sometimes so is Dawkins and Einstein too. But ya gotta give it yer best shot. Otherwise, why on earth would you bother?


A


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:42 AM

There are books I'm still reading, after 10 or more years. Godel Escher Bach is one of them.

When I read something, I want to understand it, at least as far as I can. I haven't had too much trouble with Hawking.

I buy, and have always bought, books to read. It annoyed me when in college and during work on a second grad degree (in English lit) I was forced to buy books that I otherwise wouldn't have touched (e.g., "Tropic of Cancer"). Fortunately, some of them I loved and those I "had" to read I gave away when I was finished.

If you see me carrying a book (and I'm not at work), the chances are 100 to 1 that I'm actually reading it.

Places with bookcases full of carefully matched bindings and all of the books in perfect alignment are a red flag to me. All too often I find that they're either Reader's Digest Condensed Books or law sets purchased as decorator volumes.

If you don't want to read, it's your aching void, not mine.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: jonm
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:44 AM

I read books I believe I will enjoy. I reread ones I actually have enjoyed, though infrequently, since I do acquire an awful lot of books.

I have read and enjoyed a wide variety, some of which I would not have tried but for good reviews or the recommendation of (book snob?) friends, among them the Da Vinci Code (cr@p writing, a good thriller though), most of Umberto Eco's books and the Steven Hawking.

I don't show off about what I am reading, the "posh" books and "proper literature" are scattered all over the house among the detective fiction, fantasy and sci-fi, humour etc.

On the other hand, I approach every book with an open mind. I refused to criticise Jeffrey Archer without reading one. Now, I'm on the bandwagon!

There will always be those who wish to suggest their intellectual superiority by their choice of literature (true of music, too). Books as accessories, anyone? I find that having actually read, understood and enjoyed some of these books that I am sufficiently informed to manage a put-down should I choose to do so. Normally I satisfy myself with smug self-satisfaction.

It can be the same with cars - the bloke over the road cannot understand, as he explains the merits of a new BMW every year, why I would not have one even if it were free. He also does not understand that showing off how much the "extras" cost in addition to the list price is pointless when all the extras I would actually have wanted came as standard on my non-prestige car.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 09:08 AM

I am always puzzled by people who are motivated by fashion - fancy having no taste of your own - weird, or what?
A lot of my tastes are deeply unfashionable. Things that I have loved for most of my life are English Traditional Song and Science Fiction and Fantasy (nerd stuff, I suppose, to fashion victims). Even then, in order to impress, me a song or a book has to expand my horizons in some way - it has to show me things I didn't know or force me to look at familiar things in a new way - quite a tall order. The revered SF author, Theodore Sturgeon, once said that "90% of everything is crap" - how true!
Anyway, I have read the 'Da Vinci Code' - I got to the end always hoping that it would get better - it didn't and I have filed it with the 90%.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: My guru always said
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 09:15 AM

Having read the Da Vinci Code & enjoyed it as an entertainment, I read all his other books & enjoyed them too.

I've never heard of this snob bookery before, it's just crazy!!!


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Janie
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 09:33 AM

For authors like Hawkings and Armstrong ("A History of God" & "The Battle for God") I find I can get more out of them (and finish them) if I get an audiobook and listen. The really tough parts I can replay over and over again--or if I am just am not "grokking" let go of and move on more easily than with a book in print.

Fiction doesn't hold my attention as well as it used to. I don't know if I am losing brain cells or if life is just so full and busy that it is more interesting than fiction. I finally realized I was indeed buying a lot of books I was not finishing, or even really getting started. That wasn't about snobbery. It was about lack of concentration and/or interest. Once I saw the pattern I stopped buying as many books for myself. My 11 year old loves books, reads at an advanced level, and also still enjoys having me read to him. I find I still buy a bunch of books that both he and I will enjoy, and I get great pleasure out of reading aloud to him.

Janie


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 09:38 AM

Places with bookcases full of carefully matched bindings and all of the books in perfect alignment are a red flag to me. All too often I find that they're either Reader's Digest Condensed Books or law sets purchased as decorator volumes.

    I have the exception that proves the rule. A couple of shelves worth of matched, in order, maps. There's only one publisher that prints walkers scale maps, so they do all have the same bindings etc. And having them in order is just sensible.
They are imcomplete, written on, and often quite battered, so probably don't count...

I've decided I need to re-learn my German. I tried to read various Thomas Mann books in translation, and could not get on with them. Must go back to the originals to see if that's better.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:30 AM

I must confess I once bought the Alezander Solzeyntsin [ I can't even spell his name now ]novel One Day In The life Of Ivan Denisovitch because he was a fashionable author, but I did read it.

Mostly my reading is about folk music and similar subjects, I have a friend who runs a market stall and he looks out for books for me, I have just got the Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger book about the Stewarts of Blairgowrie ' Till Domesday in the Afternoon ' for a quid.

eric


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:02 AM

I didn't say that matched bindings were wrong, just a red flag warning. You can have matched bindings -- I've got some -- and if they show signs of use, GREAT! It's those matched, untouched, ones arrayed in perfect rows....


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:11 AM

Rapaire..."Godel Escher Bach" haunts me....I keep opening it and seeing little trails of connections which seem like they OUGHT to click....but....

and then he has another one, if you get thru that one. "Metamagical Themas"


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Morticia
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:25 AM

I'm facinated by the idea that some books are 'better' than other books.....surely a good book is one you've enjoyed? Our shelves have comedy, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austin and other 'classics',Keats, detective novels, sci fi and Harry Potters all mixed up together....so what? Anyone wanting to make an analysis of our intellect from looking at our bookshelves is almost certainly going to think we are schizophrenic........again, so what?

I liked the Da Vinci code,and all the others. The characterisations and dialogue are pants but the storylines are exciting and there are all sorts of things I didn't know in them but then I've met very few books I couldn't get on with.....except for Jeffrey Archer and the Barbara Carthorse school of writing.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: number 6
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:37 AM

There's book snobs, music snobs, university snobs, career snobs, house snobs, car snobs, guitar snobs, pretty peeple snobs, movie snobs, internet snobs, dog snobs, food snobs, cultural snobs, demographic snobs, decorating snobs, motorcycle snobs, resteraunt snobs, shoe snobs, political snobs, philosophical snobs, water snobs, hair cut snobs, coffee snobs, physics snobs, magazine snobs, gardening snobs ...

Snobbery ... a frailty of the human condition ... which one are you?

sIx


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:41 AM

Ah, books! Such wonderful capsules of words on paper, such wealth when we find one we can't put down, or one that engages or challenges us to think, to learn. And we learn in so many ways if along the way we learn to be critical readers.

I used to have more time to read more than I do now, and now I tend towards unabridged audio books. I have stacks of books waiting to be read and I hope I'll make it to them one day. I also have books because they are resources and I was able to get them at a good price (every so often Half-Price Books puts their excess Norton and Heath, etc., anthologies on sale for a buck or two a piece). I've put copies of those in each kids' room. More times than I can say my daughter (now a high school senior) has come asking me if we can find a particular book or essay and more often than not we've had it here. That is satisfactory for all of us. I can't and won't begin to duplicate the holdings of a library, but I have a core set of books that are very useful.

I believe that title above should be Foucault's Pendulum. I have some Foucault here, from a class I began in graduate school, the only one I ever had to drop (the now-ex decided to start disappearing on weekends and I couldn't manage child care and this much reading at the same time. At least he had the grace to show some chagrin when he realized I had to drop the class). I'd like to read more of it. As difficult as it is, I think he has some really good ideas in there.

I decided, many years ago, to read the novels of Thomas Hardy. My reasons weren't pure curiosity--more of a challenge from a friend's bragging about his girlfriend's reading--to see what all of the fuss was about. I quickly grew to love these novels, and am pleased to see that more of them have been published in the U.S. than were available at that time.

I did a master's degree in English and waded into a great number of books. It was a chance to wallow in stories and I loved having that opportunity. It was also a chance to read criticism and see what other people were getting out of these books. As a postmodernist, it didn't mean I needed to get the same meaning as they, and if I found what appeared to be flawed logic in criticism it made for a good paper because I had to back up my position with solid illustration of my own close readings and scholarship. All the while, continuing to read on the side and amazed at how ideas can form when you pass one book over another.

There may be book snobs around, but I don't know any of them. I know people who, as I do, slip the dust jacket off of a new hardcover before reading the book, then put it neatly in place afterward, because I have a growing collection of valuable first editions and perhaps this book will become one of those. I'm sitting looking at a copy of a first edition Sinclair Lewis It Can't Happen Here that I haven't read yet, but will, because I think this book's time has come again. Has anyone else read Babbitt? You should--it's funny and engaging and frustrating and a real eye-opener to how we live, still, in the U.S.

Steinbeck, Hemingway, Cather, there are so many solid American story tellers. And there are the essays. Baily White's Mama Makes Up Her Mind is a little-known (except among listeners of All Things Considered) is one that I've again pulled off of my shelf to reread. Linda Hasselstrom, a friend from years of attending literary conferences, has wonderful collections of women's essays. Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West is back on my bedside after a hiatus when I was reading other things.

I have boxes of books, novels and mysteries, I packed up at my Dad's house after he died, and I have shelves of books that he mailed to me after he finished reading them, because he thought I'd enjoy them. I've hesitated to take any of the boxed books to the used book place because I haven't had a chance to read them and I want to see what he was enjoying. He read fast, and he read every evening in his favorite chair in the corner of the living room over by the window. The next door neighbor finally decided something must be wrong when on a Tuesday evening he hadn't seen my Dad's light on since before the weekend. Dad often times went away for the weekend, but he was never away from his reading for that long. (Tom had been ill himself or he might have realized something was wrong sooner. He was still wheeling an IV around when I next saw him. We think Dad died a week earlier, based on phone and email records).

Dad was a retired reference librarian. He read all of the time. He collected music for 40 years. You can bet that some of the stuff he read fed into his knowledge of the songs he loved.

Not a bad way to spend your life, reading and singing, eh?


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Pied Piper
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 12:46 PM

http://www.onintelligence.org/excerpt.php
I've just finished reading On Inteligence and it's a great read.

PP


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: fat B****rd
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 01:50 PM

I like a good slasher book, mesen like. But I have read "The Name Of The Rose" a couple of Steinbecks, a Doestoevsky, a Solzenitsin (?) and Treasure Island. I don't give a F*** what other people think of my reading and nor should anybody else.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:14 PM

You F****ng snob.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: fat B****rd
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:15 PM

Yeah, right.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:31 PM

If people buy books for any reason at all, other than to throw at somebody, more power to 'em.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: John Hardly
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:31 PM

If you can't be a snob about the books you don't read, the music to which you don't listen, and your shits that don't smell......what's left to lord over people?


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: number 6
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:55 PM

Yer so right John!!

We must be perceived as being a snob about something .. if not, then we would be perceived as being quite simple (aghast!)

sIx


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Morticia
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:00 PM

tis a gift to be simple........( wicked laugh)


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:06 PM

Books books and more books... Nice post! You write beautifully, and your thoughts are smooth and well expressd... with compassion and insight!

Though it's usually non-fiction for me, Allegory and myth are often truer than life.

ttr


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:07 PM

Books I have had a go at at least three times but failed to complete include War and Peace, Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, The Winter of Our Discontent, Exodus, The Trumpet Major, The Affluent Society and the Pickwick Papers. The few books I have read at least three times include The Wind in the Willows, The Little Gray Men, The Major of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd, Lord of the Rings, Lark Rise to Candleford and the Fat of the Land.

I was cured of pretention when I used The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test as a prop to impress a girl in the 60s but she went and asked me a question about it ...


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:52 PM

One of the reasons I'm glad we're into fall now is that when it gets cooler I spend less time out in the yard and have more chance to sit and read. I set up a chair with an over-the-shoulder reading lamp that are perfect for me, and I have to keep evicting the kids' backpacks from the footstool that goes with them. When I first set them up I thought I'd "give it a test" and next thing I knew 30 minutes had passed.

SRS


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:54 PM

Oh 'Mein Kampf' is the most boring book I ever read - I don't remember a word of it now except that it was the most self serving tripe I ever read before 'Angela's Ashes'....

LTS


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: number 6
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 04:03 PM

Beautifully put Liz !! LOL

Good one, very good.

sIx


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Morticia
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 04:51 PM

Anyone who can be that dismissive of Angela's Ashes hasn't a damn clue what deprivation means.......sorry Liz, but this is my history you are writing off.....


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: kendall
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 04:55 PM

I only have two with matching binders, the Odyssey and the Illiad. Both great books. The Illiad was good for one read, but I've read the Odyssey three times.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 06:12 PM

I just can't help it-- EVERY time I see this thread title I misread it as BOOB SNOGS.

~S~


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Emma B
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 06:27 PM

In the survey - discussed today on Radio 4 - apparently 10% of people interviewed admitted to taking a book "to be seen with" on their tube commute and reading something very different in their home at night - sad.........
So - ok I took "How to write Chinese characters" to a folk Festival but I never got time to read it :>)


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:04 PM

Ghastly book, Mein Kampf, but I'm glad I read it. Wouldn't care to repeat the experience, though.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: jets
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:55 PM

Kendall is a history major. In other words he claims to be a historion of some worth. I am primming to do battle with him.
By reading the history of New York by Washington Irving.Which, by the way , is a fun read, which rather suprised me. And yes I do have a matched set.Leather and marbled edges.All 16 volumes and I hope to live long enough to read them all.Why ? Because he too points out :
" What fools we mortals be". A chuckle on every page.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:03 PM

"boob snogs"? *grin*....I'll BET you do!


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:20 PM

I guess I should be embarrassed by some of the stuff I read. I like trash - good trash, but still trash. Uris and Michener were my favorites, but I haven't read much fiction since I started doing music and church stuff. Most of the significant literature puts me to sleep. Oh, and did I tell you I really like songbooks?

-Joe Offer, not qualified for snobbery-


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Amos
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:39 PM

Hey I like good trash too! Clive Cussler is an old favorite of mine, and I love the occasional Stephen King marathon piece. The man manages his subject well, despite his occasional lapses. I mis-spent my youth on Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov, with SImak sauce and van Vogt trimmings. Never regretted a minute of it, because it taught me to believe the Big Lesson that JFK spoke of -- look at what has yet to be, and ask "Why Not?".

A


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:06 PM

(*hi Bill*)

Toldja to visit us, din't I?

~S~


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:27 PM

(yep)

small delays in the process of becoming a book snob


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:29 PM

Recreational reading in the authors you've named isn't "trash." It's what keeps people sane and entertained. You can't (well, most people can't) read the heavy stuff all of the time. It's good, but it can be a lot of work, and you need to refresh your palette, so to speak. I love mysteries. I'm reading a Nevada Barr Park Ranger Anna Pigeon murder mystery right now.

The stuff I consider "trash" a lot of people like. As long as they're reading SOMETHING, it can't be all bad. (I detest Danielle Steele and a couple of other local romance writers whose formulas are so hackneyed that after one or two are pushed on you you can easily refuse them and wonder how anyone can keep reading the things).

I love Faulkner, and though I haven't read it exhaustively by any means, what I have read has been marvelous. I learned to read it by listening to in on audio books and getting the pace of the performer who was reading the work. That makes all of the difference.

Steinbeck's stories are just about perfect. Hemingway grates on me some, but his stories are still riveting. Mark Twain--if I had only one author whose books I could take with me to a desert island, it would be a tough call, but I'd probably end up with Twain. I like Willa Cather, but with the way she ended O, Pioneers! I could kick the idiot down the stairs! A modern novelist, probably one of our best living writers, with a remarkable facility for story telling and clever turns of phrase is Louise Erdrich. Her prose (and poetry) is magical. She also reads her own work very well on the audio tapes (I've read more than I've listened to, but I was very pleased with her author's reading of her work. Some authors would do well to leave the reading-out-loud to the professionals).

Ooops. A kid wants money. It begins. My future liberal arts major needs the registration fee for a college application. . .


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Peace
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:46 PM

Mysteries: Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe
Sci-fi: Heinlein, Asimov, some Blish, Bradbury
Novels a la more serious: Steinbeck, Twain, Mowat, Berton
Short stories: The one and only Alice Munro, Cather, Valgardson
'Historical' fiction: Uris, Michener
Escape: Clancy, used to like MacLean but stopped liking his stuff after "Puppet on a Chain". (His book "HMS Ulysses" is a great novel by anyone's standards. Hope to read it at least once more before I die.)
I like non-fiction, too.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:47 PM

Stopped reading Alastair Maclean when it dawned on me he was a fascist.Like Joe and others, I have enjoyed Uris and Mitchener. My other fav. American writers are --hold your breath --Louis Lamour [I even read most of his "Sackett' novels] and a much neglected author , McKinlay Kantor ["Spirit Lake" and "Andersonville"]. Tolkein is on my list,as is Stephen King--I would recommend "Hearts in Atlantis". My younger days were lightened by home grown stuff from Gibbon, Dickens and Scott.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 01:34 AM

Our house is one where you trip over books. No period, no genre omitted, but nothing like an orderly collection. There is a lot of western and Canadian history, a lot of books on music, a lot of mysteries, a lot of botany and zoology, a lot on American Indians and their cultures, a lot of children'a books, a lot on art, a lot of novels, a lot of references- OK, a lot of everything but nothing ever collected to cover any one subject comprehensively.
I am re-reading Conrad, Twain, Charles Russell along with current novels.

One 'novel' which sticks in my mind is The Leopard, by Guiseppe de Lampedusa. Like some of the Victorian novels, it is a capsule of a particular time, transcending place, much more accurate than any social history could be. Perhaps that is one of the criteria for a fine novel.

I wish I could devote more time to a set I have in matched bindings- durable plain blue cloth- once printed by Xerox and University Microfilms, "March of America Facsimile Series"- A set of hardbound historical, exploration and travel books covering the Americas, both North and South- the writings of the early explorers to the exploration and settlement of the continents, all in facsimile, filling one bookcase and part of another. I read a bit here, a bit there and occasionally read a whole volume. Pulling a couple off the shelf- No. 38 of the set, History of California, 2 vol., by Miguel Venegas (a keen observer), a translation printed in London in 1759; No. 98, Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army Life by Charles King (the annihilation of Indian life on the plains), 1890; No. 70, Visit to Texas, by Anon. (purchased 20,000 acres and was swindled, so decided to see the country), 1834, and all the others.

Yes, I read the Da Vinci Code. Like mysteries, a restful read before putting out the light.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: jonm
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 02:59 AM

'Tis true in other walks of life, too.

In surveys in the UK, if you ask in the street about what newspapers people buy, apparently 40% buy broadsheets and 10% The Sun. Sales are about the other way around!

The UK TV viewer preference surveys have struggled for years to get an accurate picture (pun not intended) becuase so many people will tell you they watch worthy TV when they really watch soaps - some have even ben found to wtch the worthy stuff for a couple of weeks because there is a set-top box recording what they watch...


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 07:03 AM

Another news item from a month or so ago quoted Victoria Beckham [ posh spice ] as never having read a book in her life, because she couldn't see the point. How sad.

I also like Stephen King and Spike Milligan.

eric


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 07:23 AM

Hadn't realised Maclean was a facist, but the latter books were tedious. I also heard many were ghostwritten. The early ones are mostly terrific light reads.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 09:20 AM

Just for the record, somewhere around here I have a copy of The Duke of Bedford's Book of Snobs.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 09:47 AM

Also Thackeray's.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 10:02 AM

OOps. I was distracted before I made my point--that Steinbeck and Twain and Faulkner and others were POPULAR authors before they were classic authors. There are some writers who always aim high in their readership, and these folks weren't aiming at a lowest common denominator, by any means. But they made their livings as writers and spoke to a large audience in their days.

I also tended to contradict myself. That while we call someone else's reading "trash," it's best to not be too loud about it, because all that happens is hurt feelings and possibly discouraging a reader who might move on to better stuff eventually. (I once called Harlequin's books "trash" at a writer's conference and was jumped all over by the romance writers at the table. Wooosh! They don't even take particularly kindly to their kind of novel being called "guilty pleasures," or something along those lines.)


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: frogprince
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 11:43 AM

I've heard a number of times over the years of people who bought classics by the foot, or the yard, to fill their library shelves. It's never crossed my mind to buy a book other than to read it. I finish almost anything I start, if only from compulsive habit; there might be one book in fifty that I start and drop.
I buy mostly from an exchange store, and often look for at least one book by an author I haven't read, or even heard of.

I've read "Huckleberry Finn" at least four times.
I've read at least three Mickey Spillaine "Mike Hammer" books, at   least one of which was so bad I wished I had tossed it.
I read "The Sun Also Rises" and it left me so cold I haven't read any more Hemingway. Had the same reaction, maybe more so, to French existentialism.
All-time favorites include Heinlein and John D. McDonald; they both died within a few months, and I about went into grief.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 12:11 PM

The Sun Also Rises is a deceptively simple book. And quite marvelous as far as many English majors are concerned.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Jun 15 - 06:13 PM

Someone, above, said in part:

The revered SF author, Theodore Sturgeon, once said that "90% of everything is crap"

That quote is correct so far as it goes, but is more meaningful in context.What Sturgeon said before that bit was that some people thought that science fiction was 90% crap. Then he continued (approximately) "But then 90% of everything is crap. This is known as Sturgeon's 90% Law."

Dave Oesterreich


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 22 Jun 15 - 06:37 PM

There's also the matter of differentiating which is the 10% and which is the 90%. YMMV.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Jun 15 - 07:40 PM

Missed this first time around
I was a self employed electrician in London for over twenty years and a series of chance encounters got me work in some of the wealthiest houses in the country - a couple of Lords (I taught the Marquis of Drogheda's children to pronounce their inheritance correctly instead of Drog-he-da), film stars and directors, (Nicholas Roeg and Theresa Russell), Shirley Bassey, Ruby Wax... all needing their lights fixed.
I lusted over some of the most valuable book collections, yet. whenever you tried to talk about them, all they could tell you was how much they were worth (Nicholas Roeg had an incredible collection of Myths and Legends which he had (I assume) acquired for a film he was researching - knew almost nothing about the subject.
It used to tickle me when, after drooling over some priceless first editions, you would go upstaird to the bedrooms and invariable find Geoffrey Archer on one side o the bed and Jilly Cooper on the other.
(PM me Bonnie - the postage goes up in Ireland shortly)
Jim Carroll


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 23 Jun 15 - 06:53 AM

YIKES, that's right... on 4th July, I think. Thanks for the heads-up - been away in England and only just returned, to a mountain of paperwork. Your cheque, as they say, is in the post (just as soon as I find my chequebook: been so long since I wrote out a paper cheque I'm not sure if I remember how).

To get this thread back on topic: I suppose with the advent of e-readers, the whole concept of book snobbery is taking something of a hit. You can't flash your intellectual titles around, nor display them on your bookshelves. But one of the delights of reading classics is that you find out just how interesting and enjoyable they actually are, and why they have survived. (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, anyone? But guess what: it really is a stonking good read. And no, I have not read all of it, just bits, so put those rotten eggs down, you guys...)


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 23 Jun 15 - 07:27 AM

Wow, buying books to impress, who would've thunk it? Well at least that doesn't happen with houses, cars, boats, bathrooms, holidays, kitchens, phones, furniture, computers and pretty much everything else in our capitalist status driven society.. The somewhat ironic thing about buying classics, is that they're available to anyone with a library card, or indeed anyone (for a few pence anyway) who goes to jumble sales and charity shops.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 23 Jun 15 - 07:44 AM

Most of them are available free from sites like archive.org, gutenberg.org, bartleby.com and various others. Even good old Amazon does a fair number of free or incredibly cheap editions as Kindle downloads.

Friend of mine - no lover of snobs - once accused a mutual acquaintance of buying books by the metre to fill up his showoffy shelves.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Jun 15 - 08:05 AM

I kinda don't believe that buying things to impress others, is a primary motivator for most human beings. For some people, I guess it might be the case, but not for most of us.

I buy books because I fully intend to read them. I sure have accumulated a lot of unread books over the years, but my intentions are still good.

-Joe-


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 23 Jun 15 - 08:11 AM

Most of us feel as you do, Joe - but pretentious twits who are only concerned with appearances do exist, and always have in the human race. Hence the thread topic -


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Jun 15 - 09:32 AM

Books nobs?

I didn't know they had them...


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 23 Jun 15 - 10:07 AM

News in todays press that Amazon will restrict their royalties payments to authors (for ebooks) based on the percentage of the downloaded book which their customer reads. Here

I wonder if they'll discount the charges to the readers on the same basis!


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 23 Jun 15 - 10:30 AM

Okay,
I've read a little deeper. This only applies to books "borrowed" under the "Kindle Unlimited" system. So there is no payment 'per book' as such, just a monthly sub.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: SINSULL
Date: 24 Jun 15 - 09:18 AM

I worked with a guy who bragged all the time about his collection of signed first editions. Turned out he belonged to the Book of the Month club. Every month a book arrived and HE SIGNED IT. It was then put on a shelf and remained untouched. The rest of us sat in stunned silence until someone finally broke the news to him that the books had to be real first editions and signed by the author. All those years of collecting wasted.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 24 Jun 15 - 09:51 AM

I can totally understand that people collect certain books because they are beautiful objects in and of themselves. I have a few, very few, of that type. I don't handle them much but I do take them down occasionally and admire them. I have read them in other, less delicate editions. I don't think that makes me a book snob, does it ?


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 24 Jun 15 - 10:02 AM

Nope, course not. You appreciate them for their intrinsic beauty - that comes from a different set of values altogether.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Joe_F
Date: 24 Jun 15 - 08:50 PM

William Bradford Huie's _The Revolt of Mamie Stover_ (1951; first read, ca. 1959) is one of the great books of my life. I recently discovered that he had written two sequels, so I ordered them from Amazon. One of them, _The Americanization of Emily_ (1959), has just arrived.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jun 15 - 03:53 AM

"I worked with a guy who bragged all the time about his collection of signed first editions. "
We don't 'collect' first editions, though down the years we've acquired several of them simply because they were the only ones on our 'wants' list that we could lay hands on.
In fact, if you constantly use books as references, valuable old ones can be a bit of a pain in the bum.
Doesn't mean we don't enjoy having some of them - we have some we wouldn't part wih - signed copies of ballad collections by Robert Chambers and his son, Robert Jnr, a copy of Borrows 'Lavengro' that a former owner 'corrected' by visiting one of the author's Gypsy sites and a set of Ford's 'Vagabond Songs' annotated in pencil throughout by Peter Buchan's supporter, William Walker - wouldn't part with them for the world.
One of our jewels in the crown is a slim, rather tatty soft bound book entitled 'Jacobite Minstrelsy'
We found it in a rather cold book warehouse in S.E. London one freezing winter day.
We took it off the rusty Dexion shelf, and when we examined it, it turned out to be a lined notebook containing around 160 songs, all in beautiful copper-plate and writing, with all of tunes carefully hand-written in tonic-sol-fa - you can see the handwriting getting 'old' as you progress through the book.
There is no indication of who wrote it and the only clue to its age is small leaflet advertising a lantern-slide lecture given in 1909, somewhere in the Scottish Highlands in 1909.
It cost us seven shillings and sixpence.
Beginning to sound like a book snob.....!!
Jim Carroll


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 25 Jun 15 - 11:30 AM

Well, I see Dawk and hawk got a few mentions. I recently read, evolutions Achilles heels by nine PhDs scientists. A bit of balance , I say .


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Lighter
Date: 25 Jun 15 - 03:29 PM

Some time in the 1940s (as I recall reading) an evil researcher set up a book table outside    the New York Public Library. There were perhaps a dozen titles on it, including heavyweights like "War and Peace," "Ulysses," and "Remembrance of Things Past."

Passersby were asked which books they would most like to read. Naturally, they chose books like"War and Peace", "Ulysses," and "Remembrance of Things Past."

Then they were told that they could take any book they wanted, free of charge, to keep and read.

The vast majority of them chose "Death of a Stripper," by Gypsy Rose Lee.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: EBarnacle
Date: 25 Jun 15 - 11:29 PM

I'm never going to die because I'll never catch up with my "to read" pile. It is totally eclectic.
Ask me sometime how science fiction helped me save a mountain.


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Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 26 Jun 15 - 01:23 PM

I did buy and read war and peace, and a bunch of other classics some years past. I hope it left me half way cultured !.


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