What Are You Reading

[Harp]

Revisiting T.D. Thornton's Not By A Long Shot, a chronicle of Suffolk Downs which closed its final race card last Saturday.
A jem in the canon of turf literature, NBALS captures the world of thoroughbred racing with an insider account of an aging
track caught on the ropes with Runyonesque characters, fabled steeds, and hard bitten betting folk who faithfully supported
Suffolk Downs through thick and thin. If you love thoroughbreds and the sport, Thornton's tale is a must read.
Suffolk Downs' closing is tragic, but its magical tale lives on.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The mo-o-o-st act-ion two dol-lars can buy -- at Suffolk Downs!"

 

[cw3pa]

Just finished "The River War" (An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan) the 1902 edition on Kindle by Winston S. Churchill. Churchill stresses the importance of logistics, after all an army marches on its stomach. Lacking are maps tracking the route of march which would have been helpful. I found it an insightful account of east meets west.

 

[Fading Fast]

Revisiting T.D. Thornton's Not By A Long Shot, a chronicle of Suffolk Downs which closed its final race card last Saturday.
A jem in the canon of turf literature, NBALS captures the world of thoroughbred racing with an insider account of an aging
track caught on the ropes with Runyonesque characters, fabled steeds, and hard bitten betting folk who faithfully supported
Suffolk Downs through thick and thin. If you love thoroughbreds and the sport, Thornton's tale is a must read.
Suffolk Downs' closing is tragic, but its magical tale lives on.

My girlfriend and I get out to Belmont at least once a season and up to Saratoga for a long weekend every racing season as we enjoy the races, but also, there is something time-travel like to the event. You know the heyday of thoroughbred racing is past, but both of the these historic venues can, on the right day, catch a bit of their former glory. Also, the settings, the (as you said) Runyonesque characters in the crowd and even the rituals all harken back to the Golden Era. For Fedora Lounge members, it is one way to step back in time. I will add the book to my list - thank you.

 

[Harp]

Chesterton; The Poet who dances with a hundred legs, Simon Leys

Leys and Chesterton, two gentlemen who dance with Philosophy.

 

[1mach1]

Wuthering Heights, again.

 

[jamespowers]

Wuthering Heights, again.

Forsooth Heathcliff.

 

[HadleyH]

I am reading still about the Tzar....from my last book I posted...what a book!

not the silly ebola Tzar of nowadays ....no......the real Tzar from Russia back in the day...

It's so amazing to me that the Tzar word comes up today...after 100 years and counting....

great book I recommend again "The flight of the Romanovs " by John Curtis Perry


to think that there are tzars and emperors today....wow

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Crack In The Picture Window," by journalist John Keats.

What Keats did to the chrome-crusted turquoise dinosaurs of the postwar auto industry in "The Insolent Chariots" he does here to the grid-streeted, pool-table-lawned housing developments of postwar suburbia, going after not just their stultifying sameness and the relentless way in which they were marketed, but also after their corrosive effect on the American soul. From the introduction:

"Even while you read this, whole square miles of identical boxes are spreading like gangrene throughout New England, across the Denver prairie, around Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, New York, Miami—everywhere. In any one of these new neighborhoods, be it in Hartford or Philadelphia, you can be certain all other houses will be precisely like yours, inhabited by people whose age, income, number of children, problems, habits, conversation, dress, possessions and perhaps even blood type are also precisely like yours. In any one of these neighborhoods it is possible to make enemies of the folks next door with unbelievable speed. If you buy a small house, you are assured your children will leave you perhaps even sooner than they should, for at once they will learn never to associate home with pleasure. We offer here for your inspection facts relative to today's housing developments—developments conceived in error, nurtured by greed, corroding everything they touch. They destroy established cities and trade patterns, pose dangerous problems for the areas they invade, and actually drive mad myriads of housewives shut up in them."

Preach on, brother.

 

[Harp]

Yukio Mishima, The Temple of The Golden Pavilion

 

[Derek Cavin]

Since it is close to Halloween, I am starting Alfred Hitchcock Tales of Terror

 

[1mach1]

Oliver Twist

 

[jamespowers]

Oliver Twist

You wanted more didn't you?

 

[1mach1]

You wanted more didn't you?

I kept waiting for the plot "twist".

 

[jamespowers]

I kept waiting for the plot "twist".

With a game of Twister afterward.

 

[1mach1]

With a game of Twister afterward.

Only if several females are involved.

 

[DharmaBum]

Henri Jomini.......while different it is easier for me to digest than Clausewitz

 

[Harp]

Henri Jomini.......while different it is easier for me to digest than Clausewitz

Try Col. John Boyd's Clausewitzian triad elude Observe; Orient; Decide; Act Loop doctrine.[angel]

 

[jamespowers]

Only if several females are involved.

Now we are talking.

 

[Mystic]

Since it is close to Halloween, I am starting Alfred Hitchcock Tales of Terror

Kinda along the same lines of a scary book for Halloween...

I'm starting book three of Robert A. Caro's The years of Lyndon Johnson series "Master of the Senate."

Should be really scary. :scared: