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The Man With The Getaway Face

Stark, Richard
Parker has just had plastic surgery. Joins in an armored car heist.

Read:

1/2013

A Wizard And A Warlord

Stasheff, Christopher
Gar and Alea stop off to check out a planet that doesn't seem to have a government, oppressive or otherwise. One weep, plus an ending I didn't see coming.

Read:

11/2017

Liar & Spy

Stead, Rebecca
Georges meets a couple of kids in the apartment building they live in that suspect a neighbor may be up to no good. Stead know how to up the ante, I missed all the clues.

Read:

6/2014

When You Reach Me

Stead, Rebecca
Sixth grade Miranda gets mysterious notes. One of the best books I have read lately, of its kind. I was so much in tears at the end I nearly choked.

Read:

5/2014

Coyote

Steel, Allen
Disgruntled astronauts steal intersteller spaceship and head to the possibly Earthlike planet named Coyote. Well, they wuz going there anyway, it is that they replaced the original colonists with other disgruntled citizens. I thought it was pretty good, but the reviews on Amazon.com say the science is erroneous. There are a couple sequels. We shall see...

Read:

2/2007

The Grapes Of Wrath And Other Writings 1936-1941

Steinbeck, John
Consists of The Long Valley, The Grapes Of Wrath, The Log From The Sea Of Cortez, and an appendix with The Harvest Gypsies and Starvation Under The Orange Trees. Lots of depressing stuff here. Some good chuckles in The Sea Of Cortez, but I skipped chapter fourteen, as it made my head hurt.

Words I Had To Look Up:

fumadiddles (pg. 94, The Long Valley) -- Variation of flumadiddle, a useless frill.
teleologies (pg. 820, Sea Of Cortez) -- Not sure of this, has to do with the study of the evidences of design or purpose in nature.
specimens of Phthirius pubis (pg. 854, Sea Of Cortez) -- Pubic lice.

Read:

7/2010

Running The Books

Steinberg, Avi
Thoughtful tale of a librarian in Boston prison.

Quote:

"That's a correction," he said. "This here is a damn prison." -- Page 98

Read:

4/2011

The Cairo Affair

Steinhauer, Olen
A spy novel. A guy gets assassinated in front of his wife at a cafe. Four hundred-some pages later we find out what the deal is. A VU reference, and I also learned that Bjork was in the band The Sugarcubes when researching the group.

Read:

12/2015

The Middleman

Steinhauer, Olen
F.B.I. agent Rachel investigates the possibly radical and possibly dangerous group The Massive Brigade and uncovers corruption and manipulation everywhere. Possibly first of a series this title is.

Read:

5/2020

The Emerald Atlas

Stephens, John
Bk. 1 in a series, three children find out they are part of a magic prophecy. Good story, needs more funny than it has, though.

Read:

5/2015

Anathem

Stephenson, Neal
Very long. Action picks up near the end, though. Lots of stuff I didn't understand, as usual!

Read:

3/2010

Cryptonomicon

Stephenson, Neal
A VERY long novel about cryptography, computers, WWII. Very good. 918 p. The paperback I read in 2015 is 1,152 pages.

Read:

8/2001

Read:

7/2015

Fall or Dodge In Hell

Stephenson, Neal
Almost 900 pages of confusing story, some of it great stuff. A weep at the closing paragraphs.

Read:

4/2020

Quote:

"Watch your step," she admonished him, which he found curiously touching given that he had legs and feet. -- pg. 142

In The Beginning...Was The Command Line

Stephenson, Neal
Why Islam hates us, and why you might want to switch to Linux. Very interesting.

Read:

5/2002

Quicksilver

Stephenson, Neal
Started 3/15/04. Looks long... UPDATE: Too long, stopped reading March 2004. 150 pages read, continue at a later date! Reading again 7/2008.

Words I Had To Look Up:

Shawm (pg 84) -- A medieval double-reed musical instrument.

Ricercar (pg. 144) -- A musical composition, instrumental, from the mostly Baroque era.

Zargon (pg. 342) -- Apparantly the argot of Vagabonds, according to the Urban Dictionary.

Qwghimian (pg. 370) -- Language of the fictional islands of Qwghlm.

Sabotage (pg. 444) -- I KNOW what it means, I was interested in the derivation of the word, related to "sabot', a wooden shoe.

Hexen (pg. 458) -- A German verb, "to practice sorcery". So I guess in this case, used as a noun, it practitioners of sorcery.

Obnubilated (pg. 480) -- Unclear, dim, less visible.

Whilom (pg. 562) -- Former; sometime, late, formerly.

Scudding (pg. 613) -- To run or skim along swiftly and easily.

Enconiums (pg. 623) -- Probably a mispeling of "Encomium", glowing and warmly enthusiastic praise.

Conventicles (pg. 629) -- An assembly for religious worship; especially : a secret meeting for worship not sanctioned by law.

Exaltation (pg. 669) -- An excessively intensified sense of well-being, power, or importance.

Exultation (pg. 669) -- The state of being exultant filled with or expressing great joy or triumph.

Antelier (pg. 683) -- A studio or workshop.

Extirpated (pg. 742) -- To destroy completely; to pull up by the root'; to cut out by surgery.

Discursive (pg. 742) -- Marked by analytical reasoning is the best defintion I could figure out here.

Ninehammers (pg. 745) -- Only 14 hits on Google for this word. Maybe a mispelling or "affection" of "ninnyhammers", which means "ninny", and that would seem to fit.

Spanish Netherlands -- Pretty much what is sounds like, now I know where it is.

Ganymede (]g. 826) -- Not just a moon, he was a Trojan prince kidnapped by Zeus to be his lover. Hera hated him.

Lambent sky (pg. 863) -- Softly bright or radiant.

Parlous (pg. 877) -- Full of danger or risk.

Enfeoffed (pg. 891) -- To invest with a fief or fee

Quote:

...Pepys core of librarian-mercenaries... (pg. 909)

Read:

8/2008

Reamde

Stephenson, Neal
Just over a thousand pages of thriller action!

Best Quote::

The GPS unit became almost equally obstreperous, though, over Richard’s unauthorized route change, until they finally passed over some invisible cybernetic watershed between two possible ways of getting to their destination, and it changed its fickle little mind and began calmly telling him which way to proceed as if this had been its idea all along.--I copied the quote from another source, so I don't have the page number. It's a VERY popular quote!

Read:

4/2012

SEVENEVES

Stephenson, Neal
Pretty, certainly easier to absorb than that darn Cryptonomicon that I finished a couple of weeks ago! I didn't get the title until the author hit me over the head with it, in the 600s, page-wise. I spilled coffee all over my borrowed copy and so bought a new copy to replace it. Thirty-five bucks hardcover! Yikes!

Read:

8/2015

Snow Crash

Stephenson, Neal
Virus crashes programmer's brains! Great story, loved Fido! I am so impressed by this guy's writing. He writes what I would if I had any brains and wasn't a lazy bum! 440 p.

Read:

9/2001

Read:

4/2011

The Diamond Age, Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Stephenson, Neal
An fascinating story of a little girl named Nell and her book. 455 p.

Read:

9/2001

Zodiac, The Eco-Thriller

Stephenson, Neal
Boston harbor is full of toxins and Sangamon Taylor is going after the culprits. Very good! 283 p.

QUOTE:

When I got back, bacon was smoldering on the range, filling the house with gas-phase polycyclic aromatics--my favorite carcinogen by a long shot.

Read:

9/2001
20 books displayed
[Saberhage - Scalzi] [Scalzi - Schonborg] [Schumacher - Scottoline] [Scottoline - Shames] [Shames - Sijie] [Silver - Smith] [Smith - Spencer] [Spiegelman - Stark] [Stark - Stephenson] [Stern - Stross] [Stross - Swanson] [Swee - Sweeney] 

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