What are we reading?

[MetalDog]

Never heard of it, Gus.  I'll give it a look though.

[Gusington]

Love that book. If you would like, I can ship you my hard copy. Also just found this, you may like it:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0300194099/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

[MetalDog]

Appreciate the offer.  Might even take you up on it.  But let me finish Fleming's book first.  How I pick what I read from the public library really has no rhyme or reason beyond, "It looked interesting at the time."  Could be I don't even finish it.

[Gusington]

Just started Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1942 - Schwerpunkt - by Robert Forczyk.

[BanzaiCat]

Started reading "A History of Scotland" a month or so ago, and boy the author wasn't kidding. He starts about a billion years ago and goes into plate tetonics and landform and glaciers carving out the land and eventually into early people/animal migration.  ;D

[Emeraldlis]

^^^ hahahahaha  ;D and the thing is , Scotland probably doesn't even look like that anymore , and the Scottish people of that time are more than likely Irish now !!!!! But hey , you could maybe lecture as a sideline about all things Scottish , new string to your bow   :bd:

[JasonPratt]

Just finished Kershaw's Brief History of the Roman Empire, recommended by someone upthread, which focuses on the Emperors (and so is really more their history with contextual events), and stops with the final Western Emperor. I've mentioned before upthread how much I liked it ("delightful" is not a word I throw around lightly), but it turns into quite a chaotic slog in the final chapters. To be fair, this could be expected! I have a couple of unread books on the Byzantines I can segue into from there, not counting a few unread medieval series which pick up from around this point.


Also a few days ago I finished Volume 6 of Paulides' Missing 411 series. This one, on "Hunters", is I think the shortest book so far, and is also the first book to feature more than three or four case repeats from earlier books. I haven't personally counted them (and he doesn't mark them consistently or easily make a way to tally them), but basically he has picked up many (maybe not all) hunting cases from prior volumes (up through number 4, since vol 5 was really about a related but distinctly separate phenomenon) to flesh out this entry. My loose impression is that more than two thirds, maybe more than three quarters, are still new entries, but I might be off, could be less than two thirds. Surely not half.

He also mentions briefly late in the book, in his entry on Texas, that while he originally thought he had so many Texas and Florida entries that they would constitute a book or two on their own (thus leaving them out of the first double-volume), he has eventually decided that most of those don't fit his criteria after all, and indeed that Texas and Florida feature far fewer events than he was expecting given their rural areas.

This suggests he's running short on new material, as would of course be expected eventually as he catches up on researching things. That doesn't bother me, but I'll repeat what I've said for the past two or three volumes: he should dedicate a volume to providing a context of normal and counterfactual examples. If kids less than 4 years old will be found less than 2 miles from their disappearance in mountainous terrain 95% of the time, what does the other 5% look like? (Are his entries the other 5%?!) If kids are found uphill sometimes in normal situations, what do those situations look like? If people are found from normal disappearances when dogs couldn't find them, what are those explanations and how do his cases differ? I know for a fact there are murder and abduction cases which seem like his collection at first but then turn out to be human-caused or mundane accidents: a discussion of that type of false positive case would be helpful.

Mom read part of the first book (and dropped it because it was too repetitive to be entertaining and was giving her nightmares!), and we've discussed our reservations about his approach. I'm fairly sure he's over-reaching at times about connections in various ways, such as when he talks about a few disastrous aircraft accidents during the searches: he acts like these are common and uncanny, but they're OBVIOUSLY quite rare considering how many aircraft of different kinds he reports helping with the searches, and they're OBVIOUSLY caused by bad weather during the searches. It's almost a miracle there aren't far more such accidents, really! Or again, from Vol 1 onward, he'll talk about how it seems like certain types of people disproportionately disappear like they're being selected. But in some cases their characteristics would help account for disappearance, and to me there seems to be a normal statistical spread. The only truly abnormal statistic is that almost all the missing are white, with a smattering of Mexicans and Asians, and even fewer black people and native tribals. But considering how many of those who disappear are involved in hobbies that require a larger than normal cash flow (in modern day examples), or in pioneering (in 19th century examples), that could be a normal side effect of social conditions in North America.

You can keep up with current events as he hears about them here: http://www.canammissing.com/current_events.html  Note that this ongoing list is not exclusive -- I know of at least two maybe three more cases (maybe more) that might qualify that Mom and I have heard about in the news since I started reading (and at least one, here in West TN, from Jan last year that definitely qualifies), and none are on this page.

[bob48]

Just finishing off 'A Brief History of the War of Austrian Succession' before starting 'A Collision of Giants - The British Army During the War of Austrian Succession & Seven Years War in Europe 1740-1763'

[Gusington]

Just started Hitler's Jet Plane - The Me262 Story by Mano Ziegler.

[bob48]

..my title is longer than your title.....

[mirth]

And you personally experienced the events you are now reading about.

[bob48]

But I'd forgotten such a lot of the details.

[Gusington]

Weren't you just beginning your life of retirement and doddering around the house at the beginning of the War of the Austrian Succession, Sir?

[Sir Slash]

I am retired and I can relate that 'doddering' is not an easy thing. First, there's a fine line between 'puttering', 'doddering', and just plain 'lazy-as-shit'. So you have to know where you're at with that. And then doddering involves less active involvement than true puttering, and more un-even wandering and aimless searching for things that you can't find, but are usually in plain sight in front of you. Doddering is also less socially accepted than 'puttering' but more so than 'lazy-as-shit'. And when people ask, you never admit to doddering, you say, "No, I was just 'puttering' around". Most people don't know the difference anyway. Hope this helps.  :nerd:

[bob48]

Not to be confused with 'pootling' or plain old ' just farting about'.