[phredmojo]

MtGrizzly, on Jul 1 2010, 05:11 PM, said:

"To Hell on a Fast Horse", by Mark Lee Gardner. Interesting historical look at Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett.

"Appaloosa", "Resolution" and "Brimstone" by Robert B Parker. Solid western series that gets a bit repetitive by the third book. The fourth one in the series "Blue Eyed Devil" is out now and loaded into the Kindle.

"The Blade Itself", "Before they are Hanged" and "The Last Argument of Kings" by Joe Abercrombie. Excellent fantasy series.

The "Lost Fleet" series by Jack Campbell. Good old fashioned space opera.

last week the nymphos of rocky flats, x-rated bloodsuckers. this week the undead kama sutra, jailbait zombie. by mario acevedo. fast read, very similar to the harry dresden books by jim butcher

"

Quote

The Blade Itself", "Before they are Hanged" and "The Last Argument of Kings" by Joe Abercrombie. Excellent fantasy series. & best served cold

possabilty for next week oor 2. will have to look through my library. quick read? medium read? slow read?

[MtGrizzly]

phredmojo, on Jul 1 2010, 08:48 PM, said:

last week the nymphos of rocky flats, x-rated bloodsuckers. this week the undead kama sutra, jailbait zombie. by mario acevedo. fast read, very similar to the harry dresden books by jim butcher

" possabilty for next week oor 2. will have to look through my library. quick read? medium read? slow read?

I would say medium read. A little like the Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin. Lots of characters, parallel plot lines, gritty battles that maim and occasionally kill off the characters. It does require some attention to keep track of everything.

[muddyfrogwater]

Base Ball For Dummies

[Sancho Panza]

senior octobre, on Jun 21 2010, 09:35 AM, said:

Just picked up, "The Gospel according to Casey; Casey Stengel's inimitable, instructional, historical baseball book," by Ira Berkow & Jim Kaplan, (St. Martin's Press, New York, March 1992).

Quote

Open up to any page and you'll find gems.

Give us a few when you get the time!

[senior octobre]

Sancho Panza, on Jul 19 2010, 05:09 AM, said:

Give us a few when you get the time!

The chapters all have titles and subtitles:

1) A DISCOURSE ON STENGELESE, or "Now Wait a Minute," by the Professor Himself

2) CASEY ON MANAGING, or "I've been Doing Things that Were a Little Out of the Way for Most of My Life in Baseball."

3) CASEY ON PITCHING, or "Throw the Ball as Far From the Bat and as Close to the Plate as Possible."

4) CASEY ON FIELDING, or "You Got to Get Twenty-seven Outs to Win"

5) CASEY ON BATTING, or "Not Too Hard, Not Too Easy, Just Tra-La-La"

6) CASEY ON SPEED AND BASERUNNING, or "They Ain't Moved Second Base, Have They ?"

7) CASEY ON ATTITUDE AND EGO, or I Couldna Done It Without the Players"

8) CASEY ON RACE, or Give Me an All-Star Team of Them and Let Me Manage"

9) CASEY FAVORITE PLAYERS

10) MR. STENGEL GOES TO WASHINGTON

[Sancho Panza]

Great, for starters. Now all you have to do is open to any page and jot down one of the gems for us, but condense to max 2 paragraphs.

[senior octobre]

Casey on Managing:

"It's like I used to tell my barber. Shave and a haircut but don't cut my throat. I may want to do that myself."

when a scout told Stengel about a young pitcher who allowed a single foul ball while pitching a no hitter.

"Get that guy who got the foul. It's hitters we need, not pitchers."

When Don Larsen was doing when he wrapped his car around a telephone pole.

"He was out pretty late or up pretty early. The only thing Larsen fears is sleep."

After trying the aging centerfielder Joe DiMaggio at first base.

"You're gonna make mistakes. You can't worry about them second guessers."

"Take these guys over to the other field. I want to see if they can play on the road."

When Tug McGraw told him, "I can get this guy out, I did the last time I faced him."

Yeah, I know, but it was in the same inning."

On Don Zimmer, who was 0-for-34 at the time of the trade.

"He's the perdotious quotient of the qualificatilus. He's the lower intestine."

"When you're losing, everyone commences to play stupid."

"Whenever I decided to release a guy, I always had his room searched first for a gun. You couldn't take any chances with some of these birds."

"There comes a time in every man's life, and I've had plenty of them."

This post has been edited by senior octobre: 19 July 2010 - 08:56 AM

[senior octobre]

Sancho Panza, on Jul 19 2010, 08:18 AM, said:

Great, for starters. Now all you have to do is open to any page and jot down one of the gems for us, but condense to max 2 paragraphs.

road apples - bad players
clerks - mediocre players
sugar plums, green peas - rookies

The secret of managing a club is to keep the five guys who hate you from the five guys who are undecided.

[senior octobre]

From an Orphan to a King: how Eddie Feigner of the King and His Court became softball's greatest icon and the amazing odyssey of his 4-man team barnstorming around the world, by Eddie Feigner, Anne Marie Feigner, (2004, Sheridan Books, Immortal Investments Publishing, Wayne Michigan, 48184).

[Shaggy]

Schuxu, on Feb 18 2010, 09:25 AM, said:

Where men win glory - The odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer.

Shuxu what did you think of the book? It is on my reading list.

[MtGrizzly]

I forgot to pack my Kindle on the latest business trip and am hating it.

[wufners]

I just finished The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Good book. Certainly has its own unique rhythm to it. It didn't capture me in the way I thought it would, though. I assumed I'd get caught up in the characters and their tragedies, none of which really resonated with me (although the grandfather's story was chilling.) Instead it was the history of the Dominican Republic and its culture that really wrapped me into the book. Fascinating, engrossing, and terrible. I had never heard of Rafael Trujillo before. What a dickhead. He deserves a place amongst the monsters of the world.

Hopefully moving on to something a little more amusing now.
Mort by Terry Pratchett.
This one is bit of a shot in the dark. Anyone ever given any of his Discworld books a spin?

[phredmojo]

wufners, on Jul 27 2010, 10:36 AM, said:

I just finished The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Good book. Certainly has its own unique rhythm to it. It didn't capture me in the way I thought it would, though. I assumed I'd get caught up in the characters and their tragedies, none of which really resonated with me (although the grandfather's story was chilling.) Instead it was the history of the Dominican Republic and its culture that really wrapped me into the book. Fascinating, engrossing, and terrible. I had never heard of Rafael Trujillo before. What a dickhead. He deserves a place amongst the monsters of the world.

Hopefully moving on to something a little more amusing now.
Mort by Terry Pratchett.
This one is bit of a shot in the dark. Anyone ever given any of his Discworld books a spin?

discworlds are good all 32 and counting of them. as long as you are looking for humor and not serious fantasy. unfortuantely the series will probably end soon as pratchett has alzeimers

[Sancho Panza]

At the Spot, Iggy Reilly recommended A Confederacy of Dunces by John Toole that got it's title from a Jonathan Swift quote: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Iggy Reilly took his name from the book's main character, Ignatius Reilly, described by one reviewer as follows:

At the center of A Confederacy of Dunces is that contemptuous hypochondriac, that deadbeat ideologue, that gluttonous moocher Ignatius Reilly. A mountainous college graduate living off his mother's welfare check in her home on one of New Orleans seedy back streets. He spends most of his time waxing melodramatically philosophic, hiding out in the squalor of his bedroom, penning incendiary letters to his sex-crazed ex-college-girlfriend Myrna Minkoff. Ignatius gets hauled off from a street corner by a cop who thinks the mustachioed mountain in tweed trousers, plaid flannel shirt and trademark green hunting cap looks suspicious. ( Ignatius had been doing nothing more harmful than disdainfully observing the lack of taste of passers-by. )… You feel sorry for the guy, but it's so damn funny! The black vagrant Jones is the only character in the whole bunch of idiots who can really see clearly, nevermind that he's forever looking out at the world through dark glasses and a cloud of his own cigarette smoke. A Confederacy of Dunces is simply and insistently a great, perfect comedy of errors and airs, a farce of Olympic proportions.

Well, I finally got a copy. Sweetheart, the ultimate authority on all things cultural at Casa Panza, got her hands on it first. Trash, she said. Shortly thereafter the book disappeared.

[Sancho Panza]

Sweetheart: Try elavating your reading quality with this.

Sancho: Yeah? Too Late the Phalarope. What means phalarope?

What followed were the usual references to my lack of knowledge and other failings, so finally
I had to look it up. It's a bird! According to Wiki:

Females are larger and more brightly colored than males. The females pursue males, compete for nesting territory, and will aggressively defend their nests and chosen mates. Once the females lay their eggs, they begin their southward migration, leaving the males to incubate the eggs and care for the young.

Sounds like things around Casa Panza. Except for aggressive defense of chosen mate.

Sancho: Ok, some bird doesn't migrate on time, so what?

Sweetheart: That's just figurative, dummy. It's a tragedy.

Well what the hell. Something tells me that Ignatius Reilly might show up if I wade through her tragedy. Not to worry though, I'll not bore y'all with a summary if the thing bores me.

[Sancho Panza]

This just in from a highly reputable source:

The African Ground Squirrel Females do all the work - food gathering, caring for young, ect. The Males lay around in groups of other Males. The Males play but do not fight and do not fight over the Females and when one of the Males want some quality time with a Female, they just get some and then they return to the other Males...

Sweetheart: Ridiculous.

Sancho:

[JOlderdude]

Sancho Panza, on Jul 29 2010, 02:13 AM, said:

This just in from a highly reputable source:

The African Ground Squirrel Females do all the work - food gathering, caring for young, ect. The Males lay around in groups of other Males. The Males play but do not fight and do not fight over the Females and when one of the Males want some quality time with a Female, they just get some and then they return to the other Males...

Sweetheart: Ridiculous.

Sancho:

So, does that work for the really old African Ground Squirrel males as well?

[Sancho Panza]

JOlderdude, on Jul 29 2010, 08:46 AM, said:

So, does that work for the really old African Ground Squirrel males as well?

If they can get themselves African Ground Squirrel females, then I'd say .

[Shaggy]

muddyfrogwater, on Jul 18 2010, 09:08 PM, said:

Base Ball For Dummies

When you are finished, would you please send your copy to the Mariners FO? I think they need to read it more than you do.

[senior octobre]

Sancho Panza, on Jul 29 2010, 09:29 AM, said:

If they can get themselves African Ground Squirrel females, then I'd say .