“I think it was my love of wrestling that first took me to the dance hall.”
-from Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello
mmm
ETA: Requested forum change to Cafe Society
The primroses were over.
Watership Down, by Richard Adams. It was the one book I was forced to read in school that I liked, and after his death this year I wanted to read it again.
From the poem compilation “All of Us: The Collected Poems”.
“Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.”
Real Tigers, (Slough House) third book in the series.
Mick Heron
How did the Marquis de Lafayette win over the stingiest, crankiest tax protestors in the history of the world?
from* Lafayette in the somewhat United States* by Sarah Vowell
mc
“Quantitative Finance is a highly complex interdisciplinary field, which covers mathematics, finance, and information technology; navigating it successfully requires specialist knowledge from many sources, such as financial derivatives, stochastic calculus, and Monte Carlo simulation.”
- Advanced Quantitative Finance with C++ by Alonso Pena
I try to read a technical book ever quarter, and I choose this one because I was interested (and super ignorant) regarding the techniques behind high frequency trading. The programs which do HFT need to make predictions and arbitrages really, really fast, as billions of dollars are being moved around every minute.
It’s some of the most optimal code around. The fiber optic cables which they use to connect the servers in the NYSE are all measured to be the exact same length, as even a foot of difference adds an additional 1.5 microsecond delay, which could be the difference between making or losing money.
It’s like an enormously complex game of undeterminable size and dimension, with millions of moves made daily, all by highly efficient programs. It’s honestly kind of scary. I mean this is the backbone of the **world’s **economy we’re talking about here.
- All That is Bitter and Sweet: a Memoir, by Ashley Judd.
“A large, clear plastic ball rolled across the Atlantic Ocean off Miami Beach.”
Clownfish Blues, by Tim Dorsey.
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians by Mark Twain
“I’m not sure why I feel compelled to tell you this straightaway, for it was a plan I abandoned thoroughly long ago.”
–In Nevada by David Thomson
“To Athene then. Young Gnossos Pappadopoulis, furry Pooh Bear, keeper of the flame, voyaged back from the asphalt seas of the great wasted land: oh highways U.S. 40 and unyielding 66, I am home to the glacier-gnawed gorges, the fingers of lakes, the golden girls of Westchester and Shaker Heights.”
– Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, by Richard Farina
“When word got about that Richard Jewell had been found with the greater part of his head blown off and clutching a shotgun in his bloodless hands, few outside the family circle and few inside it, either, considered his demise a cause for sorrow.”
A Death in Summer by Benjamin Black.
“It has been said that every great man deserves a biographer.”
“Phule’s Company” by Robert Asprin.
I love reading Christmas stories, and this is a good time to do it. This is from Miracle and Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis.
There was a Christmas tree in the lobby when Lauren got to work, and the receptionist was sitting with her chin in her hand, watching the security monitor.
“The handsome dining room of the Hotel Wessex, with its gilded plaster shields and the mural depicting the Green Mountains, had been reserved for the Ladies’ Night Dinner of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club.”
It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis (First Edition)
& then the murders began
mmm, which first sentence?
[ul]
[li]Forward[/li][li]Introduction[/li][li]Chapter 1[/li][/ul]
“About five hundred years ago there was fighting in Kham, in eastern Tibet, and many refugees fled.”
- *Tigers of the Snow: How One Fateful Climb Made the Sherpas Mountaineering Legends * by Jonathan Neale
Chapter 1
“Myth is a notoriously slippery term.”
From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths
Tess sways with the night breeze, wet grass between her toes, remnants of old drinking songs at her back.
Tress - Larissa Brown