I also listen to audiobooks while exercising. The story distracts me from my internal voice that says... "That's enough for today".

It's too bad that I don't read more fiction. It wasn't always that way. But I picked up again Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It's such an entertaining set-up right off, as we see old, besotted Durbeyfield informed by a parson that he is the degenerated descendant of a noble family, the D'Urbervilles. Then there's no limit to his new self-esteem and strutting. Hardy shows such intimate and realistic detail of the lives and livelihoods of the country folk he writes about. All over the book there are passages this good: "The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them but not enough to wash them away. Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there--the vastest things in the universe imagined in things so mean."

Harry Marks wrote:Louise Penny's celebrated "Inspector Gamache" series . . .

I heard about this series and recommended it to my wife, who reads mysteries all the time. She loves the series.

I'm currently reading The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. It was written more than ten years ago, but remains relevant today with the Black Lives Matter movement. She discusses the so-called "War on Drugs" which created a whole new undercaste in America, basically serving the same purpose that Jim Crow laws used to, even if that wasn't exactly the intent. It's a real eye-opener of a book.

I'm also reading The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. I'll be reading more by this author.

I have been reading Erich Fromm: ‘The Art of Loving’ It had me from the opening line: ‘Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort,or is love a pleasant sensation,...’

For years I was drifting into misanthropy and it began to scare me. Disdain for people is an easy road to travel ‘all against all’ it’s horrible, but it seems this is the road too many would like to travel. It’s not for me. Hobbesian therapeutics seems to be the proscription of the day. I have recognized it in myself but moreover I see it in people everywhere.

We are not in a good place. I know that Pinker tells us that we are doing really well, Haidt tells us we have these impulses...

Phone call...later...

this book is beyond phenomnal

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085C ... 7cf27381ca

I am currently reading two novels, "The Lost and Found Bookshop" by Susan Wiggs, and "Special Circumstances" by Sheldon Siegel. I am also listening to "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" by Dennis E. Taylor. All are neatly packaged in my Kindle Fire, and please don't start ranting about 'real' books. I know.

The Bobiverse series are great.

As anyone who has seen my posts here knows, i read a lot. Since my last post, I have read JoJo Moyes trilogy, "Me Before You." Yes, all 3 books. Also, via audio book, I 'read" Dan Crenshaws "Fortitude." I am currently reading three books (not unusal for me). Brian W. Aldiss's HARM (science fiction), Michael Connelly's "Night Fires" (via audio book) and most recently, Dr. Katie Mack's "The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)." This last is non-fiction, and discusses various ways in which the universe might end. I found this book after hearing Dr. Mack being interviewed on NPR. Hoping these will help me survice Winter and COVIZD19.

I don't know how you do that! You must have good focus.

Cattleman wrote: Since my last post, I have read JoJo Moyes trilogy, "Me Before You." Yes, all 3 books.

I am very curious how you come out on "Me Before You." My wife and I saw the movie, and we have a deep disagreement about the choice of the rich, crippled protaganist.

(Spoiler alert). I found the man's despair to be a kind of sellout of the romantic appeal of the book. Sure, it would be too Hollywood for her actually to convince him that life is worth living despite everything he has lost, but then, the premise of his charmed interest in bringing wider horizons to her is already too Hollywood for following through with "realism". Faux realism, it seemed to me. Why not explore the possibilities available for redemption by relationship? My wife, on the other hand, sees his depression as inevitable given the gusto with which he had lived his life. We did not actually discuss it at any length - I tried to make my case in about 3 sentences, and she was so offended by my view that we never got into any kind of back and forth.

Also, I had no idea that it was a trilogy! The movie is all we know of it.

Very interested in your views.