What are you reading? Options

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

Also forgot to mention. It is the Ides of March. So RIP Caesar and HP Lovecraft.

In his house at R'lyeh
dead Lovecraft waits dreaming

RIP Mr. Lovecraft. As for Caesar, f* that guy. He got what he deserved, especially after what he had done to Vercingetorix. Bad form that (and I doubt that was the worst thing he did).

This post has been edited by TheCheshireKhajiit: Mar 16 2020, 04:24 AM

[SubRosa]

Also forgot to mention. It is the Ides of March. So RIP Caesar and HP Lovecraft.

In his house at R'lyeh
dead Lovecraft waits dreaming

RIP Mr. Lovecraft. As for Caesar, f* that guy. He got what he deserved, especially after what he had done to Vercingetorix. Bad form that (and I doubt that was the worst thing he did).

I am a little befuddled. I was under the impression that Vercingetorix was strangled during Caesar's triumph, as per Roman custom? That's pretty tame. Way better than how William Wallace went out, or Crassus.

[Decrepit]

At 1311 this afternoon, Sunday, 5 April 2020, I concluded my fourth-plus read of Bruce Catton's Mr. Lincoln's Army, book one of his Army of the Potomac. I've owned the book since Mar 1976. It has been a favorite ever since. Catton remains my favorite writer US Civil War history. This series isn't a comprehensive overview of the War, but instead the War as experienced by the Union's premier army. (Catton wrote both a single-volume and three-volume comprehensive overview. I owned the three-volume overview years ago. I no longer do. Can't remember why or when it disappeared from my library.) The man knew how to write compelling narrative! Here's a sample drawn from the chapter Opportunity Knocks Three Times, its closing two paragraphs:

"They tramped for several miles and finally were halted on somebody's farm to the north and east of where Hooker's men were posted. General Mansfield spread a blanket for himself on the grass in a fence corner next to a field where the 10th Maine had turned in. The Maine boys were wakeful and did a lot of chattering - the march in the rain had roused them, and thought of what was coming in the morning made it hard to go back to sleep - and the old general got up once and went over to shush them. They recalled that he was nice about it and not at all like a major general: just told them that if they had to talk they might as well do it in a whisper so that their comrades could get a little rest. And at last, long after midnight, there was quiet and the army slept a little.

How far they had marched, those soldiers - down the lanes and cross-lots over the cornfields to get into position, and from the distant corners of the country before that; they were marching, really, out of one era and into another, leaving much behind them, going ahead to much that they did not know about. For some of them there were just a few steps left: from the rumpled grass of a bed in a pasture down to a fence or a thicket where there would be an appointment with a flying bullet of shell fragment, the miraculous and infinitely complicated trajectory of the man meeting the flat, whining trajectory of the bullet without fail. And while they slept the lazy, rainy breeze drifted through the East Wood and the West Wood and the cornfield, and riffled over the copings of the stone bridge to the south, touching them for the last time before dead men made them famous. The flags were all furled and the bugles stilled, and the hot metal of the guns on the ridges had cooled, and the army was asleep - tenting tonight on the old camp ground, with never a song to cheer because the voices that might sing it were all stilled on this most crowded and most lonely of fields. And whatever it may be that nerves men to die for a flag or a phrase or a man or an inexpressible dream was drowsing with them, ready to wake with the dawn."

(Needless to say, any and all errors in the above quote rest solely with my poor typing and proofing skills.)

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Apr 5 2020, 11:00 PM

[SubRosa]

That writing is pure gold.

[Renee]

Which is correct? Should 'ending' punctuation be placed inside of parenthesis? Or outside?

Reading books, growing up, I always saw punctuation placed outside (like this).

But more and more often, especially on the 'net, I often see it placed inside parenthesis (like this.)

To me, method 2 is wrong. I can't help thinking it's just people not really getting their grammar right on the internet.

But I also have noticed ending inside punctuation is becoming more popular in physical books. I first noticed it in a book I read about Enron a couple years ago called The Smartest Guys in the Room. In this book, I began to see punctuation placed inside of parenthesis, and at first I thought these were typos. All published material has typos. I've been in the habit all my life of noticing them, and even circling them (if it's my own book). In fact, the writer(s) of Smartest Guys in the Room seemed confused about which method is correct. Sometimes ending punctuation would get placed outside of parenthesis. Most of the time it was inside, though.

Maybe these were oversights in that Enron book. But then I recently read a sci-fi book called Dark Matter. Again, punctuation is always placed inside. Maybe I am wrong, but are there actual literary rules concerning where punctuation is to go nowadays? Those who have taken English courses in the last decade might have an answer.

This post has been edited by Renee: Apr 9 2020, 03:19 PM

[Decrepit]

Which is correct? Should 'ending' punctuation be placed inside of parenthesis? Or outside?

Reading books, growing up, I always saw punctuation placed outside (like this).

But more and more often, especially on the 'net, I often see it placed inside parenthesis (like this.)

To me, method 2 is wrong. I can't help thinking it's just people not really getting their grammar right on the internet.

But I also have noticed ending inside punctuation is becoming more popular in physical books. I first noticed it in a book I read about Enron a couple years ago called The Smartest Guys in the Room. In this book, I began to see punctuation placed inside of parenthesis, and at first I thought these were typos. All published material has typos. I've been in the habit all my life of noticing them, and even circling them (if it's my own book). In fact, the writer(s) of Smartest Guys in the Room seemed confused about which method is correct. Sometimes ending punctuation would get placed outside of parenthesis. Most of the time it was inside, though.

Maybe these were oversights in that Enron book. But then I recently read a sci-fi book called Dark Matter. Again, punctuation is always placed inside. Maybe I am wrong, but are there actual literary rules concerning where punctuation is to go nowadays? Those who have taken English courses in the last decade might have an answer.

So far as parenthesis is concerned, I'm with you. A sentence ending just doesn't look right with punctuation placed inside, unless the entire sentence is included within parenthesis of course. I have more trouble deciding where ending quotation marks go in like situations.

[treydog]

Per my go-to resource, The Chicago Manual of Style-

A period precedes the closing parenthesis if the entire sentence is in parentheses, otherwise it follows the closing parenthesis.

Trey approached silently. (He was a thief, after all.)

Trey's approach was silent (an important aspect of being a thief).

[Renee]

That's weird. I've never seen punctuation placed inside of quotes in older books. Or maybe I've never noticed it, but i think I would have. Anyway, thanks for answers!

I have more trouble deciding where ending quotation marks go in like situations.

This is something I've probably gotten wrong half the time when I was writing in my youth. Going into my 40s (and especially writing here at Chorrol) it is something I've been paying attention to. "I thought quotations always go outside of ending punctuation," is the way I've always noticed this, now that I am paying attention. "But in my past, I've sometimes put ending punctuation outside of quotes", "sometimes inside of quotes."

trey?

This post has been edited by Renee: Apr 9 2020, 07:13 PM

[treydog]

The preferred placement is as you suggest... comma or period inside the closing quotation mark.


Colon, semicolon, question mark, exclamation point- OUTSIDE the closing quotation mark, unless the question mark or exclamation point is part of the material being quoted. That seems strange to me- as example below

The district attorney asked,"And did you hear what the policeman said"?

He said, "Halt criminal scum!"

I would incline toward putting both of those inside....

[Renee]

Awesome, thanks trey.

[Decrepit]

Along with the movie 1917, yesterday's Amazon order-arrival contained the book Caesar by Colleen McCullough. It's the fifth(?) entry in her Masters of Rome series. I bought and read preceding entries as they appeared on Barnes & Noble shelves. For whatever reason Caesar, first published 1998, never showed up at my local B&N. Not long ago I gave up hope of ever seeing it there, so ordered it off Amazon. Just as well, as our B&N was, as I've mentioned before, wrecked by a tornado two weeks ago.

It joins an ever-growing stack of TBR titles. Recently acquired TBRs, aside from Caesar, are Oathbringer (Brandon Sanderson), Unworthy Republic - The Dispossession of Native Amercans and the Road to Indian Territories (Claudio Saunt), and The Sagas of Iclanders, a Penquin Classic. Sagas and Unworthy are acquisitions based on Steve Donoghue recommendations. (My hands-down favorite BookTuber.) I also began reading The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky) a while back and need to finish it. Last in the stack is Chariots of the Gods? (von Daniken) It's the only book in the stack I've read before, way back in the early 1970s. I found it fascinating 'food for thought' back then. I'm curious to see what I think of it now. Less, I suspect. But who's to say?

The problem with all this is that I've been in a reading slump for months. Try as I might, I rarely read more than 10-20 pages a day. Just can't maintain concentration. (The same goes for gaming. Don't let my weekly train-related YouTube video uploads fool you.)

At present, I am re-reading Bruce Catton's Glory Road, book two of his The Army of the Potomac series, a non-fiction history of the US Civil War's premier Union Army. Reading the series this time round puts me in mind of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time in the way Catton shifts the series' tone at the war progresses, much as Wheel shifts into the 'slump' - as some consider it - mid-series.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Apr 14 2020, 09:33 PM

[ghastley]

I thought Glory Road was a familiar title, but I didn't recall the author. It turns out that the one I read was by Robert Heinlein.

[Decrepit]

At 1340 this afternoon, 25 Apr 2020, I concluded a re-read of Bruce Catton's The Army of the Potomac: Glory Road. This series being a favorite of mine, I'll likely continue on with book three, A Stillness at Appomattox. That's not a given. As slow a reader as I've become, it can take so long to finish a book that by its end I'm ready to move on to something different, regardless of how much I like it.

[Decrepit]

At 2213 yesterday evening I finished Bruce Catton's A Stillness at Appomattox, bringing to a close another reading of his Army of the Potomac series chronicling the US Civil War's premier Union army. My one quibble with the series is that this final volume ends abruptly with Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at last brought to bay, trapped beyond redemption, the armies paused facing one another one final time, realizing that it's at last over. Catton chooses not to cover the actual surrender, the army's disbanding, or postwar lives of members of the Army. Still, it's a favorite US Civil War series, and an easy recommendation.

[Decrepit]

At 1401 this afternoon I concluded a fourth read of Jonathan Wylie's The Lightless Kingdom, book two of his three-book The Unbalanced Earth Trilogy. I read book one months ago but couldn't at that time locate books two and three. Chanced upon them soon after finishing A Stillness at Appomattox and decided to continue on.

I have acquired The Last Wish, introduction to The Witcher series by Andrej Sapkowski. It is added to an already too numerous pile of new TBR titles.

[Decrepit]

At 0334 this morning, 10 Jun 2020, I concluded my fourth read of Jonathon Wylie's The Age of Chaos, bringing to an end his The Unbalanced Earth Trilogy. While I don't consider these 'must reads', they are enjoyable and easy to keep focus on during these screwy, distracting times.

I've not decided on what to tackle next, but am mildly leaning toward an initial reading of the Witcher series introduction.

[Decrepit]

At 1303 this afternoon a concluded my initial read of The Last Wish, introduction to Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher[b] series. Having neither seen the Netflix series nor played the games, I didn't know what to expect from this book. I guessed that it was serious, dark, and violent. Instead, it's light, often witty, humorous, even whimsical. I like it no less for that. I'll go so far to say that during this bleak, ever screwier times, its light nature worked in its favor.

I intend to continue reading the series. Which means I need to place an order with Amazon, our one local bookstore having been demolished during a late April tornado. Come to think on it, there's a second book I want to order, plus one movie.

[Decrepit]

My Amazon order just arrived, containing three Witcher volumes: Sword of Destiny, Blood of Elves and Season of Storms. I originally planned to order only Season of Storms, having read on a website that Storms contains material that is a direct continuation of events in The Last Wish. Then, another website told me that, yes, Storms contains continuing material, but also contains spoilers for the rest of the series if read second. Not liking spoilers, I decided to order/read Sword of Destiny instead, and the next volume too. For some reason I decided to keep Storms in my cart, so it's here as well.

As for what I'm reading now, it's The First Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen. I read it twice before, most recently 1994. As you might imagine, I remember almost nothing about it. So little it all seems new and fresh.

[Decrepit]

At 0948 this morning I concluded my third read of Fred Saberhagen's The First Book of Swords. An OK fantasy (with sci-fi vibes thrown in) for and of its time (1983). I now debate whether to continue with the Swords Trilogy or return to The Witcher series.

[Jacki Dice]

I started reading Icebound by Dean Koontz. I've heard this is a unique story type for him. It's not supernatural or secret government doings/mind control. So far, it's more man vs nature.