It is apparent that there are many lovers of books among Grex users.
There are items scattered throughout many conferences that concern
books recently read (or recently written), or about special subjects
of books. This conference is to bring many interests in books into
one location, but it is not meant to detract from any ongoing
book discussions elsewhere - therefore we will gladly link to those
Items.

This Item, "Why Books?", is suggested as a place for proposing new
Items in the conference, if you would like any discussion before
entering such, or for presenting and dicussing any other aspects of
the organization of this conference. 

And now, a word from our sponsor:

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't
read them.
- Mark Twain

207 responses total.

Well, I'm glad this conference is now a reality.
Hopefully we will get some interesting discussions going.
I will enter my 'Discoveries' item as soon as I can compose it.

Should we link either/or Item 70 in writing (books), or Item 8 in
arts (The Grex Book Item), here? The former was the seed for this
conference. The latter has been longer established, and has been
used primarily for people to mention and discuss books they have
read.

Linking both would probably draw people to this conference.

They are now linked.

Wow! This is great!! I would like to propse an item about Fantasy books,
and will gladly enter it, if people are interested.

Enter it!   Enter it!!!.

Do we need permission to enter items?  So long as it's relevant, go to it.

No, I don't think Rane meant asking for permission.

(Aside on linking etiquette:  Perhaps it was done in this case, but
normally it's a good idea to ask an item's author for permission to
link.)

ok.

#0 suggested proposing new items here "if you would like any discussion".
"Permission" is not an issue. I put it this way because I have observed
that many (most) conferences would benefit by a little prior discussion
by participants of proposed new Items (except, classified!). Items
might be consolidated, or split, or referred to a different conference,
to good effect. 

Yes.

I was just seeing if there was any interest, I wouldn't want to creat an
item that no one wanted to read!

If there's interest in discussing the issue of "acid-free paper"
issue, I'll enter an item on it.  (But if anyone *else* enters
the item, they're DEAD MEAT!  :)

Smells OK to me - I mean, acid-free paper, not DEAD MEAT.

Well, I wouldn't eat any dead meat if it DIDN'T smell Ok to me.

Please enter your item on acid-free paper.  I'm a collector of antique books
(and many, many future antique books as well), so I'm definitely interested.
Let's have it.

There is a related topic of *deacidifying* books printed on non-acid-
free-paper. Might be worth bringing these together into one item.

An itme on Stephen King would be great! :)
    ^oops!

Go ahead and enter one!

OK. I'll get to it right now!

How would one go about entering an item?

One enters an Item in a conference with the command    enter    (and
then follow the responses - it asks for the text content of the
item first, and then the title). Its a good idea, though, to first
use the command     scan      to look at all existing Items, to be
sure you aren't duplicating one. I try, generally, to use an existing
Item for a question or thought, but of course some questions or thoughts
are new enough to merit their own Item.

I'd recommend BROWSE before SCAN.  BROWSE will scan through the item
headers (or display all of them, if you don't provide a scan string).
SCAN (or FIND) looks through the item texts for a scan string which
you *must* provide.

I thought that BROWSE and SCAN were synonyms and FIND was the one
that required a search string.

John is correct. Scan *accepts* search strings for headers.

(And so does browse - just checked - so it is just a synonym.)

Oops.  I thought it was find & scan.  My mistake, apparently.

I'm not sure this is the exact place to ask this as I'm a new user on the syste
I am looking for any people who belong to book discussion groups.  Can you send
me a message if you do.  I would like to ask about your group and what they are
reading.

I'd say this is a good place to ask; hope you get some responses.
(BTW, this conferencing system doesn't do an automatic word wrap,
so it's helpful for the people reading your responses to put a
Return/Enter every 70-odd characters.)

There are book discussion groups *here*, Irma. Enter the command browse at
an Ok: prompt, and see the titles of Items that could be considered book
discussion items. Join in. I would agree, however, that in the absence of
"moderators", the discussion can become somewhat (say) unfocused. I went
to a book discussion group once, but didn't like it. They were discussing
Aristophenes' _The Birds_ (or something like that), and the moderator was
trying to direct the discussion to current relevance. (I heard about its
relevance to the Stalinist purges, as a result.) I thought the discussion
should first consider its relevance to Greek society of the fifth century
BC, but no one was interested in that! 

 FYI... I am reading: The Last Picture Show By Larry McMurtry
                      The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger
                      The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
                      To A God Unknown By John Steinbeck
                      The Pastures of Heaven By John Steinbeck
                      Very Good, Jeeves By P.G. Wodehouse
                      Right Ho, Jeeves By P.G. Wodehouse.

  My primary book is TLPS, because I am reading thaone the most, the
others I have begun, and I am reading at slower paces.

There's an "Ann Arbor" branch of the Mythopoeic Society, which
may be more what af296 has in mind -- we're supposed to be reading  
_To Green Angel Tower_ at the moment.  (August meeting to be in Flint)
For further details e-mail me &/or davel.

Thanks for your responses. I will continue to look here and in other
conferences for book groups..

re #32:  TLPS is one of my faves in McMurtry's catalog.  Have you read any
of his other stuff?  I really liked Lonesome Dove, Moving On, and Texasville
(the "sequel") to the TLPS.  

FYI, for fans, the new John Irving novel, "Son of the Circus" should be at
bookstores soon.  Word is it's peopled with typical Irving characters.  Paul
Auster also has a new one out, called "Mr. Vertigo."  I know what I'll be
reeading for the next few weeks.  

 I read both Texasville and The Last Picture Show, and they were excellent.
I will look for Moving On, later on, after I finish Lonesome Dove.
I also have my eye on Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King. Can anyone
recommen   this one? I waited until for the paperback, but I don't feel
like throwing away 6.99 on trash.

(Moving On is part of the "Houston trilogy" which consists of Terms of
Endearment and All my Friends are going to be Strangers, and I guess
Evening Star, too.  They all revolve around a handful of people -- Emma
Horton, her husband and her mom, Patsy Carpenter (Emma's best friend),
Danny Deck (writer/screenwriter), Sonny Shanks (aging rodeo star).)

 Danny Deck was mentioned in Texasville. 

 So which one of these is first? All My friends- then Terms, then Evening Star.
I would really hate to read them out of order, like I did for Texasville
and TLPS

Moving On, Terms, All my Friends, then Evening Star  (i might have terms
and all my friends transposed, but the others are right.)  I read Texasville
first, too.  In fact, it was the first McMurtry I read.  I actually liked
reading them out of order -- if I had read TLPS first, I think I would
have been disappointed with TXville.  Don't get me wrong, it's one of the
funniest books I've read, but by the same token, is nothing like TLPS.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss