Interesting. Ripperologists are a thing (people very interested in Jack the Ripper). Any particular reason for the Bundy interest? I mean, serial killers are fascinating at face value, of course. Just wondering why Bundy in particular.

cooper wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2023 1:56 pm Interesting. Ripperologists are a thing (people very interested in Jack the Ripper). Any particular reason for the Bundy interest? I mean, serial killers are fascinating at face value, of course. Just wondering why Bundy in particular.

His victim class, the number of the killings, the rate at which they were killed, his ability to blend in, lack of any real identifiable triggers aside from wild speculation. I've also lived in both Washington in Utah where many of the murders took place, and a former roommate of mine is related to the boyfriend of victim Georgann Hawkins.

Yeah. He's fascinating. I watched something on him once. Didn't he have a couple of escapes too?

So I'm currently reading a biography on Peter the Great. Needed another history book and randomly found this one in a used bookstore. Read the first few pages, found it readable, so risked the $4.00. It's a good read. But it's very long, so I read it in sections, and read something else in between sections. It's so thick that my bag had to be searched by TSA because they couldn't see through it. Yeah, I'll probably be reading this for awhile.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/130363

I busted out Frankenstein in between sections recently. Fun to re-read books that I read as a kid and probably understood about 10% of it. Better than I remember. Lot's of magical plot mechanisms (but it's about a human made in a lab, so you let it roll) and the prose is very cumbersome. But still, glad I re-read it.

I did the same with Gatsby a few years ago (re-reading books from my youth). I also re-read Catcher in the Rye when Salinger died in 2010. I think that's what got me to pick up some books from childhood. As a kid, I remember thinking Holden was pretty cool because he was living this outrageous life I couldn't even imagine in my Midwestern town. As an adult, I'm thinking, holy shit, this poor kid is losing his fucking mind.

cooper wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2023 2:14 pm Yeah. He's fascinating. I watched something on him once. Didn't he have a couple of escapes too?

Indeed. Once from a Colorado courthouse and then again from a Colorado jail. Despite jailers knowing of his previous escape and contemporary efforts to ensure completion of his second. Thus allowing him passage to Florida where he continued his rampage before being caught, convicted, and executed.

Just adopted a new dog so I bought a copy of "Family Dog" by Richard A. Wolters as I am attempting to train him myself ( which may or may not work out). My brother used his book "Game Dog" to train his Lab to retrieve multiple ducks.

RICHARD A. WOLTERS was a leader in applying the scientific discoveries of animal behaviorists to dog training. His books on training—Game Dog, Water Dog, Gun Dog, Family Dog, and Home Dog—are recognized as classics in their fields. His historical book, The Labrador Retriever: The History...The People, was chosen as Best Dog Book of the Year by the Dog Writers Association of America. In 1984 the DWAA honored Mr. Wolters as both Writer of the Year for Game Dog and Columnist of the Year for his popular column “Gun Dog” in Gun Dog magazine. Well-known for his lectures and seminars on retriever training, Mr. Wolters also was a president of the Westchester, New York, Retriever Club, as well as a vice president and director of the North American Hunting Retriever Association, which he was influential in founding.

A veritable Renaissance man, Mr. Wolters worked as an atomic scientist, fine-arts teacher, photographer, and as picture editor at Sports Illustrated. His sporting interests included hunting, angling, bobsledding, ballooning, and soaring in sailplanes, in which he held the highest rating.

Hopi by Suzanne and Jake Page.

The oldest of the people.

Got this monster hard cover gently used for 13 bucks,

Earlier today, I read the final chapters of White Robes and Broken Badges, by Joe Moore.

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/ ... 8224641058

His narrative is at times harrowing, at times dismal, and constantly amazing. The final chapters talk about the peril the nation faces as a function of how the Invisible Empire (y'all know it as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan) has infiltrated much of society, including the military, the police departments, and political officeholders at local, state, and federal levels.

Reading the last couple of chapters, I kept thinking to myself, "but what about how far to the right the mainstream Democrats have gone, and how much of that is due to the KKK?"

Much of the book details his two insertions as a mole in the KKK, what he brought back to the FBI, his successes and failures in getting horrible people out of circulation, at least for a while. He claims (and I haven't verified, but it seems true) to have thwarted a plan to assassinate Obama that was to take place in October of 2008.

In any event, it's worth a read.

I am currently reading "Love You Enemies" by Arthur Brooks. I expected it to be something that I would get bored and not finish. However, it is surprisingly good. Here is the jacket blurb:

Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an "outrage industrial complex" that prospers by setting American against American.

Meanwhile, one in six Americans have stopped talking to close friends and family members over politics. Millions are organizing their social lives and curating their news and information to avoid hearing viewpoints differing from their own. Ideological polarization is at higher levels than at any time since the Civil War.
America has developed a "culture of contempt"—a habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect or misguided, but as worthless. Maybe you dislike it—more than nine out of ten Americans say they are tired of how divided we have become as a country. But hey, either you play along, or you'll be left behind, right?
Wrong.