A Sea Of Red

Added Queen Noor's biography, Leap of Faith, to my list

Thin Places. Bob Laurent. You won't put it down

Books have gotten too expensive. almost every book is now 29.99. Thus I just read Baseball America every 2 weeks.

ballcoach15 wrote:Books have gotten too expensive. almost every book is now 29.99. Thus I just read Baseball America every 2 weeks.

Didn't you say you get 3-4 newspapers every day?

Yes:

Lynchburg
Danville
Richmond
USA Today
Roanoke (couple days a week)
Washington Post on Sundays

ballcoach15 wrote:Yes:

Lynchburg
Danville
Richmond
USA Today
Roanoke (couple days a week)
Washington Post on Sundays

How much does that run a month?

Class of 20Something wrote:

ballcoach15 wrote:Yes:

Lynchburg
Danville
Richmond
USA Today
Roanoke (couple days a week)
Washington Post on Sundays

How much does that run a month?

Rough estimate (I don't know newsstand prices of all the locals):

Lynchburg $1 x 30
Danville $1 x 30
Richmond $1.50 x 30
USA Today $2 x 30
Roanoke $1 x 8
Washington Post $2.50 x 4

Total = $183/month

This doesn't count Baseball America which is $6.99 every two weeks, assuming it's purchased at the store and not via subscription.

ballcoach15 wrote:Books have gotten too expensive. almost every book is now 29.99. Thus I just read Baseball America every 2 weeks.

Did you ever read books to begin with?

ATrain wrote:

ballcoach15 wrote:Books have gotten too expensive. almost every book is now 29.99. Thus I just read Baseball America every 2 weeks.

Did you ever read books to begin with?

That's kinda what I was thinking.
Also, I've never paid 29.99 for a book.
You'd think he'd got to Bookstore on the Avenue and pick up used best sellers for a fraction of the cost. Plus, there's a BK just down the street

adam42381 wrote:Lynchburg $1 x 30

The local Lynchburg paper is now up to $1.50.

"Locked In" by John Huddle

An insightful, and bit creepy, look into the Word of Faith Fellowship cult in Spindale, N.C. It's been in the news off and on since Bill O'Reilly did an expose on it in the '80s as part of Inside Edition. The author got sucked into it, clawed his way out and tells a compelling story. He makes it understandable how good, "normal," smart people get lured in and can't get out. Very interesting read.

I love reading books, mainly books by Dr. Falwell and military history, along with autobiographies. I don't read nothing fiction related. It had to have haappenedbefore I read about it.

ALUmnus wrote:

phoenix wrote:I just finished Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-year Battle between Marvel and DC. VERY interesting, no-punches-pulled account of the rivalry between the two companies. Didn't take long to read it, either (especially since I've been flat on my back with a partially herniated disc). If you are language-sensitive, don't read it, because there''s a lot of unnecessary profanity, but you really understand how passionate people are about this stuff.

Who's (whose? from whom's?) perspective was it written from?

The author claims to have no dog in the fight, but it's pretty Marvel-centric. DC is portrayed as the traditional, conservative company that got comfortable with their market share back in the Golden Age, and Marvel is the up and coming, young, modern company that pushes the limits and steals the market from the stodgy old guys.

phoenix wrote:

ALUmnus wrote:

phoenix wrote:I just finished Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-year Battle between Marvel and DC. VERY interesting, no-punches-pulled account of the rivalry between the two companies. Didn't take long to read it, either (especially since I've been flat on my back with a partially herniated disc). If you are language-sensitive, don't read it, because there''s a lot of unnecessary profanity, but you really understand how passionate people are about this stuff.

Who's (whose? from whom's?) perspective was it written from?

The author claims to have no dog in the fight, but it's pretty Marvel-centric. DC is portrayed as the traditional, conservative company that got comfortable with their market share back in the Golden Age, and Marvel is the up and coming, young, modern company that pushes the limits and steals the market from the stodgy old guys.

In a lot of ways, that sounds like an accurate portrayal of the history of comic books as they align to the changing culture. They each pushed limits in their own way but Marvel definitely did some revolutionary things with the format more recently than DC (who revolutionized the format years before). I haven't read the book though, so I'm just speaking out my butt. LOL.

When I was a teen, it was Image who was the innovative comic book publisher. But that may have been a small window, I would have no idea about the last 20 years.

ALUmnus wrote:When I was a teen, it was Image who was the innovative comic book publisher. But that may have been a small window, I would have no idea about the last 20 years.

Yeah, I'm guessing they're referring to much earlier than the 80's and early 90's.

In the last 20 years I think both of the major comic houses have gotten comfortable for the most part.

image formed in the early 90's from a bunch of marvel guys wanting to step out on their own and they killed it initially. at one time they were even more popular than DC comics. MAXX, Spawn, Witchblade, wildcats etc etc.

todd mcfarlane became an icon. interesting that there is no discussion of that. at one point marvel had almost 70% of the comic market.

then DC killed off superman and had bane break batmans back to try and help but it didn't do much until like the late 90's when dc went darker and got better artists.

Finally picked American Sniper back up. It reads like a veteran telling all his stories with his buddies. Not high literature or anything, but I could really relate to the "embrace the suck" mentality and how he and his unit laughed, hazed, and grew.