Robert Strupp > Recent Status Updates

I'm trying to read one book (chapter) a day. There's a whole lot of unnecessary words, but that's the way they wrote 3,000 years ago. I just completed the book where Ulysses poked the Cyclop's single eye out. Apparently the Cyclop race was descended from the god Poseidon. I had forgot that they were so huge that they could easily pick up two human warriors and eat them for breakfast and again, for dinner. Yum.

Can't tell much. The book was written almost 70 years ago, so the 'language' is quite dated. So far, so good.

Another just good read (no pun intended) from Patricia Cornwell. Her epilogues are short and satisfying. This is why I always keep several, I think 4 or 5 right now, Scarpetta/Cornwell unread titles in my library. For if I, for some crazy reason, can't select a book out of the 100s I own, I know I can chose any Cornwell Scarpetta series title and feel good, knowing I'm going to have another enjoyable read.

Coming up on the end on a plot that's so complicated I doubt I'll be able to enjoy the unraveling of. Oh well, Cornwell always provides an enjoyable bedtime read.

Slow going, but once one becomes accustomed to the language, it's quite readable. For whatever the reason it seems to take a lot more words to tell a story than it would, in English, nowadays. Still enjoyable. Learning a lot of facts I otherwise was not aware of. There is no way the 2026 Nolan movie The Odyssey is going to use language like this.

Patricia Cornwell simply provides pretty much guaranteed interesting and addicting writing, which is why I'm reading this 17th title in the Scarpetta series as a bedtime book. She provides plenty of conflict among the characters who have depth and history, mystery and often gives the reader 'food for thought.' A person just can't go wrong, even neurotypicals.

Reading 'The Odyssey,,' translated by T.E. Lawrence, so that I may laff even harder at the Emily Wilson sourced, Christopher Nolan directed 'The Odyssey.' Immediately seeing that the 2026 wordage uttered in the movie does not begin to do justice to the original, granted, translated into English. Like using 1950's 'Leave it to Beaver' verbiage in '3rd Rock from the Sun.' It'd sound as stupid as Damon's "Let's Go!'

Cover shown is wrong for the isbn. There are only 239 pages in my copy. Slow going and using A.I. to look up terms and individuals.

Back to the Female Favoring Patricia Cornwell, knowing I'll get some good writing, plots and surprises. This will be the 17th book of her's I've read.

I just read, sans trying to understand, how they use the single cell Astrophage to power the space ship. After all it's just made up anyway. For much of the scientific stuff I do the same. I'm in the chapters where Ryland Grace is chatting with Rocky, which is boring. I imagine it'll be pretty much left out of the movie. Other than that, I look forward to reading the book and its hinted at optimistic conclusion.

I was laffing, tears trickling down my face when "the government" kidnapped him after they deduced his year's ago scientific paper was indeed correct. Ryan Gosling is perfect casting for the movie. Re: movies, in the book, communist China plays a pivotal part in the world's effort to save Earth dot dot dot. Sadly, in the real world there in not a chance IN HELL that China would be trusted, even to save the planet...

The Project Hail Mary movie was just released, so I figured I better read the 2021. Very readable. Can't wait to read more.

After struggling thru 'Frankenstein' 1818 Text' I wasn't certain I would ever read again. But, Alison Stine's 2020, 'Road Out of Winter,' unmentioned by any of my YouTube reviewers has turned out to be a real can't put downer. Being the protagonist is a female, I'm always stressed that 'something' is going to happen to her. But she goes from one scary, never-get-out of situation to another, and I love it.

Very readable, Was on page 72 (I read 300+ words a minute) before I knew it. Dunno how Stine does it, but you're mesmerized to keep reading to see what happens next. As my 32,621 Followers here know, I demand my female protagonists be penned by a . . . woman. I'm so scared that something fearful will happen to Wylodine, (don't ask me to pronounce it), that I grit my teeth when circumstances may allow injury to her.

My son, 40, attended a private K-12 Chri$tian academy He recalled he was forced several times to read Frankenstein. Poor guy. I could only manage 2 or 3 pages in the 109-paged 6" X 9" paperback novella before I again rued the day I decided I must read it. As soon as I finished Frankenstink, I picked up the 202 years newer 'Road Out of Winter' by Alison Stine and found myself on page 72 before I set it down.

This is a bedtime book, so completing even its 105 pages will still take some time. The 130 years old English is cumbersome, slows my already limpid reading speed to a crawl. As it is a visual sleeping pill I try to read a chapter a night before drooling and passing out. If not a 'required' classic I would not be reading. Hell! Actor Sterling Hayden's 1963 autobiography 'Wanderer' is many times better than this.

The book, using 100 years old English, begins with 3 or 4 letters from a man to a woman. Using search I discovered who wrote those letters and why. The book is nothing like what the movies we've seen are. Had I not been 'forced' to read this title, I would not have chosen to read it. The old, old fashioned wording is killing me.

Still good. Interesting how he tells us about an imaginary game without putting us to sleep. I still look forward to reading every night. It's good that there is a lot more going on then playing games.

I just don't have any desire to read, even though many folks have it as a "must" read. I struggled with it, but it's just too much. In what? thousands of books read, I've never had to read a commentary in the back before reading the next chapter. The book's about 100 years old and centered in Moscow, Russia, USSR.

A book I'm consuming bc others, much wiser than I (both of them), say that I must read it. I attempt to read at least a chapter a night, which means another 14 days. Since it was penned almost 100 years ago & then, in 1996, translated into English, I'm reading it as if it were a textbook, very slowly & deliberately. Before each chapter, in order to comprehend the story I must 1st read the commentary notes in back.

This is a book I read at bedtime, oddly enuf, in my bed, which means, I'll have my nose stuck in it a long time. I'm reading TPOG bc it is the 2nd book in Iain Banks 'Culture' series. At this page count, I don't have a lot of interest in a gent who plays games and, apparently that is all he does. I'm sure the story will spice up...soon? I am so sad that the author known as Iain M. Banks and Iain Banks died young.

This is the 2nd book in the 'Culture' series. I enjoyed the first one. This is a book I'm reading at bed time, so it'll be on my page for a long time. It's about, surprisingly enough, about a gent, way, way in the future, far, far away who, plays games.

Slow. Esp. w/having to turn to the back, read the "Commentary," then page to the front while trying to recall what was written in the commentary. It IS interesting reading the tidbits revealed about 1930's USSR. (Facts NYC voters should've been aware of prior to making Zohran Mamdani mayor Nov. 4th, 2025.) Fantastical things happen which require the reader to just hang in there sans any explanation.

A book I read in bed, so going is slow and this title, written almost 100 years ago in the U.S.S.R. with its commentary in the back that must be read prior to each chapter makes the going even slower. So many people have read it and rated it 4 or more I've got to find out why. So I keep reading.

Seems I already had on my book shelves the 2nd title in the 'Culture' series, so I ordered 'Consider Phlebas, Culture #1' from Better World Books. BTW: by page 379, I've read zero about the eponymous Phlebas. Author Banks (1954–2013), writes with such fluidity, clarity and purpose his books are simply delightful. His imaginings of how life might be millennia from now and galaxies away are ingenious.

Earlier this year, or was it last year, I found 'M&M' incomprehensible, ceased reading and donated it to library. Later, I was reading article in 'Touchstone' that delved deeply into 'The Master & The Margarita,' explaining its subject. I bought the book back for 75-cents, and began re-reading. NOTE: One MUST read, alongside each chapter, the chapter-by-chapter' COMMENTARY in the back of the book. This is mandatory.

Most of the cartoons are smilers. Some of them are Laugh Out Louders. Fun book!

The last corpse in Cool Dead People is FM2030 a futurist who died in 2000, whose 'body' is frozen, hard as a carp, at Alcor in Scottsdale, Arizona.