I have shelves of books in my queue, but also put books on hold on Libby, then rad them as they drop. I have about four ebooks on my kindle waiting right now, as well as the non-fiction I’m reading bits of at work.

A theoretical physicist.

That’s usually the case with me. Sometimes, a theoretical mathematician.

As a political scientist, I see a lot of people say really ignorant things that make me want to smack them with an intro to comparative politics textbook.

Nothing really, but they’d be unlikely to do so given changing demographics and life expectancy. It’s not an irrational bill. If Macron is willing to take the hit to do, later presidents will just be grateful.

It seems like they tried to sell an extended warranty, but that was it. And they aren’t high pressure. You can look online to know exactly what their inventory is. And since they don’t negotiate prices, it’s pretty low key. I walked in, said, “you have x car on the lot; I’m going to test drive it, and buy it if I like it.” They were a bit taken aback by my bluntness, but perfectly happy to just go with it for obvious reasons.

Yes, and it’s the best car buying experience I’ve had, by far. I didn’t know until a friend told me about it. It’s pretty great.

This is a bad personal finance decision. Leasing is the most expensive way to get a car. You would be better off buying a lightly used car, then selling it (if you are foolish enough to upgrade in three years just for the sake of upgrading, which is another poor personal finance decision). You can get a 2020 Toyota for pretty much KBB from Hertz or Enterprise car sales, no haggling.

That’s what I thought…it’s been at least 20 years.

It took me years to read Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table. I knew I’d love it; he’s my favorite author. I knew that once I’d finished it, there wouldn’t be this treasure of an unread Ondaatje book out there.

No, I read for pleasure. I work for pay. I’m not going to turn my pleasurable hobbies into something that has to be counted and quantified to be “worth doing” like it’s my job. I grew up reading before neo-liberalism required everything to be bean counted.

It’s ridiculous.

A bad habit compared to what? Snorting lines of coke? It literally doesn’t matter.

I read the first fifty pages and found it a tiresome repetition of tradition realist international relation theory, which doesn’t hold up well under systematic hypothesis testing, so the “this is the profound nature of things” tone put me off. This is my academic specialty, so it just made me roll my eyes.

But I have certainly enjoyed others of his books.

I confess, this is one where I prefer the movie.

I would spend a few weeks watching a lot of tv/movies with the subtitles on. I was in Norway for a month once, watching American tv with Norwegian subtitles, and at the end of that month, I could sort of read Norwegian when I certainly hadn’t been able to when I started. Since you already have as good Grady of English, I think boosting your reading skill and speed with subtitles would cover a lot of ground fast.

I once went on vacation to Australia and took four physical books and bought another handful there. My kindle was a life saver.

It’s not just the period. If you read other Golden Age mysteries, she stands out as particularly racist and classist.

In her 20s books, she uses the n word and about half a dozen variations on anti-semitism. Not to mention the classism, or the fact that adoptive parents and children are almost invariably evil or insane. She’s pretty awful—and worse than a lot of her contemporaries were, in fact. But her books are so damned skillfully written that I still love them. I just don’t like HER much.

Not renewable, but highly efficient and much cleaner/safer than fossil fuels.

And competent centralized govt for a few millennia. Apparently more competent than right now…

Oh, then I take back a previous comment I made. Sounds like you might love Gillian Flynn if you haven’t read her.

It’s one of my favorite books. If you don’t like it, I would assume that you just won’t like Dickens.

And I hate Gillian Flynn’s novels. I’m a woman and don’t find her characters remotely relatable or even particularly interesting or realistic. They seem heavily stylized to me. So clearly it’s just a matter of taste. If OP doesn’t like this particular genre, it certainly isn’t representative of all female authors of characters. It’s a very specific genre.

I think that may be the problem…there’s a whole genre out there of women writing thrillers with pretty nasty female characters that a lot of people just love (Gone Girl and its followers). If you were fairly young and thought that was representative of women writers and women characters, you might get the wrong impression.

Sounds like you’ve got a really good deal. You might have a look to see what’s out there, but don’t rush. The childcare costs are only for another couple of years.

I tend to stand in the middle of Barnes and Noble looking up books on Libby!