Also a nicely done limited series starring Amanda Seyfried on Peacock.
For total escapist comfort I’m reading a collection of issues I enjoyed way back when when I first started reading comics. After the first year or so the stores that used to carry these stopped and I didn’t get around to experiencing them. Manning’s art was intriguing because it was both realistic and fantastic, and boy could he draw beautiful women (and I was just starting to notice that I was into girls and women at that time!)
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I enjoy Penquin Classics. Always such a great thrift store buy.
From my “collection” of his paperbacks.
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I just dug out my unopened copy of John Irving’s “The Last Chairlift” when I got a notice that my number had come up on the library waiting list for this:
So I guess Irving can wait a little longer…
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The first one in the series (A Hero Born) read almost like a novelized screenplay for a kung fu movie. I’ll see if this second one in the series continues in the same vein.
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I’ve been putting off starting John Irving’s The Last Chairlift just because of its length. In the meantime, I was toying with rereading Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, a female-centric retelling of the Arthurian legends, which I enjoyed a lot many years ago. Then I saw she’d written a prequel, so I thought I’d give that a try. So far the story is keeping my attention, but the prose is occasionally a bit precious, something I’ve seen in other fantasy novels, and one reason it’s not among my favorite genres. But I’ll finish this one and see if my opinion of Mists has changed over the years. I did the same thing several years ago with Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex and was a bit disappointed.
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In case you didn’t find it yet; @Paul also makes some of the Audiophile’s Guide content available on a new series of podcasts. On Apple devices you can find it here: The Audiophile’s Guide. If you’re not using Apple stuff, then just search 
Well done Paul!
and there’s this access mentioned by Paul in his video today
Thanks, guys. It’s a noble experiment using technology to connect my addled brain stuffed full of something (I am euphemistically calling it knowledge) for a daily podcast. I just figured that after spending nearly a year writing all 4,000 plus pages of The Audiophile’s Guide, there’s no way anyone’s going to just sit down and read it from end to end without killing themselves.
How to connect what’s in my head and on those pages, in small daily doses, with our community? A podcast where technology and I can collaborate without chewing up more hours of my busy day. Let me know what you think!
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there’s no way anyone’s going to just sit down and read it from end to end without killing themselves
I don’t think many of us will read The Audiophile’s Guide end to end. However, I started in book 1, The Stereo, and like that it’s more story telling than a setup guide or text book. So far the interesting content and your writing style makes me keeping on reading… but I think that at some point I’ll start cherrypicking the parts that interest me most at that moment.
Personally I think it’s a good idea to make the podcasts the way you do. It adds a very convenient way to get to know parts of the guide and it’s free and without advertisements! I think this is a good example of using AI in a very positive way.
Thanks! One of the more fascinating aspects of this work with this new AI engine is its ability/requirement that its knowledge is 100% mine. In other words, when building this engine, I didn’t structure it to search the web or rely upon its own information resources. Instead, I limited it to the 10 books I wrote and this is its entire world. All it knows. All it can say.
By extension, that means it is ”me”. I just find this fascinating and will continue to work with the technology to refine it and make it even more interesting.
Thanks for the kind words.
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Interesting reading for insight into the way conductors view recorded vs. live music, effect of recording history on younger conductor’s interpretations, and other aspects of recording classical music.
