Hmmm. Well, what does it mean in context, then?
A dumb substitute for “fucking”.
In the sense of “that guy is a smucking idiot!” not "So the other day, I was smucking this dude … "
It was dumb after one page … and it’s a long book.
I’m liking it so far. I’m only on page 60 or thereabouts. I’m away from home and decided not to bring it on the trip and I regret that a little.
My boyfriend got me all of the MM Kaye mysteries for Christmas, so they will probably take precedence over everything else for a while. 
Also just finished book 1 of the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. Love her.
Ooookay. Yet another reason not to read that book. Thanks.
Finished the Bryson book. Now reading a trash novel called “Brimstone”. Not bad so far, but it was tough getting started, and some of the writing is a bit juvenile.
Just read JFK Day by Day by Terry Golway and Les Krantz, a well-illustrated chronological history of the Kennedy Administration. A bit superficial, a few minor factual errors, but pretty interesting overall.
I had to ditch this, as I am drowning in overdue books. So I’m plunging into Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness, the juiciest thing in my TBR pile.
My very first Kindle purchase: What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng by Dave Eggers. It is the very touching, funny, horrific story of one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan.
My first Kindle purchase is Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese. I’m almost finished with it. My favorite Kindle feature so far is the ability to bookmark passages and make notes. You can publish those quoted passages to Twitter or Facebook, which I don’t want to do, but I would like to figure out how to post them to Goodreads.
Passages like: “I am convinced that one can buy in Harrods of London a kit that allows an enterprising Englishman to create a British school anywhere in the third world. It comes with black robes, preprinted report cards for Michaelmas, Lent, and Easter terms, as well as hymnals, Prefect Badges, and a syllabus. Assembly required.”
It’s a really fascinating book about a half Indian, half British boy who is born under dramatic circumstances in Ethiopia and is raised by a couple of doctors at a missionary hospital. He grows up in Ethiopia and becomes a surgeon himself, and eventually ends up practicing at a hospital in a poor neighborhood in New York. There’s a lot of melodrama, but the writing is excellent and the medical stuff is very interesting.
Thoughts on Kindles: I’m on a train in central Vietnam this past April. Young British couple across the aisle to my right. I’m reading a standard book. They’re each reading their own Kindle. We pass through tunnels at intervals. I have to stop reaing because it’s friggin’ dark. They keep reading. Hmmm.
Do Kindles automatically get brighter or darker depending on ambient light?
Their’s did.
I think it’s probably a standard backlight that’s not noticeable in regular light.
Kindles aren’t backlit, but you can buy covers with lights in them.
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang, a Chinese-born American scholar who attended graduate school in Alabama and earned his Ph.D. at SUNY-Buffalo, taught American literature at Harvard and now is a professor of English at UC-Santa Barbara. It’s a fascinating perspective and very well written. I really like this guy.
I heard his interview on NPR - it was very interesting.
That must be what they had. Because there were only their two rectangles of light until we emerged from the tunnels.
This was a favorite of mine this year too. It would have made the top ten, but Sister Mary Joseph Praise left too soon – I wanted more about her. The characters were all so richly detailed – I didn’t want to leave any of their stories.
I’m re-reading The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies. It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten everything. One of the benefits of a poor memory, I guess.
I’d love to hear it. Maybe I can find it on NPR.org.
A link to Jan’s thread.