[speaker002:] well what books do you like
[speaker001:] um a broad spectrum my tastes seem to change over the years um I like uh uh mysteries adventure some science fiction I like uh Sagan I read I read just about everything that he puts out
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] um Robert Ludlum
[speaker002:] great
[speaker001:] and I've just started uh I got a whole set of books on uh Sherlock Holmes
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] so I'm just getting into that uh that's kind of uh interesting it's unique
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] how about yourself
[speaker002:] yeah those are great uh I've been a Sherlock Holmes fan for years and I think I've read most of his stuff multiple numbers of times
[speaker001:] oh you have
[speaker002:] uh I just find it very relaxing and very enjoyable and I always hope for my memory to to fail me so after a couple of years I can pick up a story and read it again
[speaker001:] uh oh okay uh I got a whole set I got a set for Christmas
[speaker002:] that's great
[speaker001:] so I've just started into some in to him I haven't uh I've uh I think uh they had uh uh Sherlock Holmes uh miniseries on uh on educational TV
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] uh channel two up here I'm not sure what it is down there and they had uh uh some of his I I started watching that and I got interested in it so that's why I got the gift
[speaker002:] yeah yeah
[speaker001:] so you've been doing it for a long time
[speaker002:] yeah I started reading them years and years ago and I it's and I I'm not really much of a mystery reader although I've always liked Sherlock Holmes and then somebody turned me on to a guy named Dick Frances um and he's uh a former jockey and he writes mystery stories and they always involve horse racing in one form or another he's very very good if uh you've never read him that would be a great opportunity
[speaker001:] no I mean is Dick Frances
[speaker002:] his name is Dick Frances and any book store owner will know who Dick Frances is
[speaker001:] um yeah
[speaker002:] and you can pick up any of his stuff and you can just sort of try it and if you like his style well he's written I'd say twenty or twenty five
[speaker001:] oh okay yeah um
[speaker002:] novels you know he's quite quite clever
[speaker001:] my taste runs runs to uh Ludlum you know that type of
[speaker002:] uh the adventure stuff
[speaker001:] yeah adventure yeah uh some of that gets I don't know I think they've got ghost writers now on a lot of them and uh they just put their name to it because years ago either that or my tastes are changing um
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] they just don't have the same depth that they seem to have before
[speaker002:] huh yeah you know I always suspected uh uh uh Michener of doing that you know I read some of his early stuff and then it seemed like his later stuff they would be these long long long passages that were just of inferior quality it
[speaker001:] it was yeah it was uh just to fill a page
[speaker002:] yeah I mean I just got the feeling that he sort of has a coterie of of students and he says okay go write three chapters on this and he and he kind of he might write some stuff I don't think he writes all his stuff every word I may be wrong
[speaker001:] yeah you're probably right um uh I'm trying to think of that uh Stephen King
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] have you read any of his
[speaker002:] I've read a couple of his things I I just wasn't that crazy about him which really puts me in the I know in the vast minority
[speaker001:] no no no no I've I've read a couple of them that weren't too bad um my oldest boy is into him so he's oh you've got to read this dad you've got to read that dad but I'm not that's not really not my uh cup of tea
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] except the the latest one he's got out uh it's uh fourteen hundred or fifteen hundred page he had he had published it about ten years ago
[speaker002:] huh
[speaker001:] and he's got it out now with the with the the full text no cuts and no he he explains that when he did it the first time because of publishing costs they asked they asked him to cut it back a third
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] so that's what he did now he's got it out and I can't even think of the name of it but it's starting out pretty good um it's something that's not
[speaker002:] huh
[speaker001:] like his present style
[speaker002:] yeah yeah
[speaker001:] um but other than that um I've read Dune I don't know if you've read Dune
[speaker002:] I read Dune years ago and I again you you I uh I just did not care for Dune I read through it all it was laborious I I
[speaker001:] uh
[speaker002:] felt I had to get through it and when I put it down I never wanted to read another thing by that guy again
[speaker001:] to read it again yeah I've read uh I like the original Dune and then they had he's had two others after that which I didn't care for at all so I kind of fell off
[speaker002:] yeah yeah yeah
[speaker001:] um
[speaker002:] but again I realize I mean I all my friends were saying how great Dune was and I just could not could not get into it I read the whole thing but I didn't enjoy didn't enjoy it that much
[speaker001:] have you read any science fiction at all
[speaker002:] I really read a lot of science fiction and Asimov is one of my favorite authors
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] I think his stuff is is great just going back to his very early works and almost anything he writes I try to read
[speaker001:] uh even I haven't read any of his recent but I've read some of his old uh uh things and in yeah I I like him he's he's not too bad some of it's uh not him but some of the other science fiction I mean it's just so uh uh like uh Tolkien
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] I never could get into him
[speaker002:] interesting and I was just crazy about Tolkien I read his stuff and I reread it and I read the whole twelve hundred pages aloud to my son when he was uh a young boy when he was about eight or nine we would just read ten pages every night and I just did that you know for a half a year until I'd read the whole thing out loud
[speaker001:] huh that's interesting
[speaker002:] and uh
[speaker001:] yeah my um both my boys are into him but I don't know it's just something I I don't know if I had the time or put myself in the frame of mind for it
[speaker002:] yeah yeah
[speaker001:] what do you do what do you do for um educational anything
[speaker002:] well uh uh being a college professor there's just a certain amount of academic reading I do as a matter of course
[speaker001:] oh so you have to you're forced into it no matter what
[speaker002:] well well well yeah forced is probably not too strong a word but
[speaker001:] yeah yeah
[speaker002:] to keep up in your field you usually have to do some uh some technical reading but uh I actually like um for technical reading I like to read what I call uh soft core science like uh Discovery Magazine
[speaker001:] that's I get that
[speaker002:] which I like very much and uh and then uh National Science Foundation puts out an excellent publication called Mosaic with uh the and they get some of the best scholars scholars and scientists in the country to write articles that can be understood they're not highly technical but they're not probably not as simplified as in Discovery
[speaker001:] huh
[speaker002:] but they're very good except I couldn't I just got on their list somehow because at one time I did some research for them and I'm not really sure how one would go about getting this but it's it's excellent uh for finding out what's going on in fields other than your own
[speaker001:] yeah have have you ever heard of the Source Book Project
[speaker002:] I don't believe so Source Book Project
[speaker001:] uh it deals with anomalies um whether it's uh animal vegetable or mineral or or geologic anomalies
[speaker002:] oh no no
[speaker001:] you know like uh uh rain fish you know that type of thing
[speaker002:] oh that would be fascinating
[speaker001:] or the uh the uh is it the Mima mounds in um Kentucky I think or Tennessee
[speaker002:] I don't know what what about them
[speaker001:] well it's just the Source Book Project um it gives you a short uh synopsis of of whatever they're talking about and then it gives you all the sources that you can look up
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] if you're interested in it
[speaker002:] I see okay that would be a very interesting thing
[speaker001:] and they they tried to uh uh throw out the uh sensationalism you know like flying saucers and all that kind of stuff
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] the things that they that they publish are documented sightings you know and an or digs or whatever
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] um I'm kind of in to that I'm uh uh I belong to the Narragansett Archeology Society so I like going back and you know digging up things it gives me you know uh it's kind of a a thrill to see something that nobody's looked at for two or three thousand years
[speaker002:] yeah do you have any interest in Stonehenge or did you ever have any
[speaker001:] uh as far as being uh yes that type of thing yeah that's what these Mima mounds were supposedly like early Stonehenge in America um yeah I'm fascinated with that kind of stuff in fact just recently uh a few days ago they discovered a cave