Also hoping for updates. I hope everything is working out.

:seeya: I'm still catching up after being gone from the boards, more or less, for more than a week. I'll probably find some time to update my (scant) reading tomorrow. Ah, a good spy novel. By mentioning Le Carre, you reminded me I still have a copy of A Most Wanted Man, which I picked up from the Little Library down the street. Not a spy novel, but similar. I rarely go see a movie before reading the book, but I went when it came out because it was Philip Seymour Hoffman's last work. Excellent film. It is daunting, which is why I let DH read it and I just asked him questions every couple of days! Ohhh, I would love to hear more about this, it sounds wonderful! Like you've I've given up on the audiobook of The Swerve. I should have listened to you before spending the time. I can't put my finger on why, but I just start tuning out. Maybe I'll try reading it instead at some point. Yes, DH is into all things maritime and the first time we left the kids with my parents for a long weekend, we went to SD and did all the "seafaring" things. He also loves the Master and Commander series. I don't know how many times he has read all 20 books. Maybe 7 or 8? I assume there will be a limo so we can all stick our heads out the sunroof, like in a 1980s movie?

I did read this when I was around 20 and enjoyed it, and have zero desire to read it again now that I'm in my 40s.

Yes, I agree the return to a more village-style medicine away from his British-run practice was symbolic. Probably entire dissertations have been written about "God si love" and I should leave it alone. :D I am enjoying your thoughts about the caves, and you've shed some light on the "echo" situation, which has also left me puzzled. A more prosaic explanation was some sort of mild PTSD, but I like a more superstitious explanation as it fits better with the feel of the novel.

A few mysteries for me from A Passage to India: What do you make of the "God is love" vs. "God si love" issue? Did you find any significance in the misspelling? I really couldn't figure out why it was there, to why the Indians would write it in English at all. Also, why do you think Aziz lets his practice decline so much until he's more of a village healer? Do you think it's just moving out to a more rural area, or some kind of depression, or something else? I was thinking maybe his original version of medicine was more Westernized, and this is more Indian, after he stood motionless in the rain and said, "I am Indian at last." This was after he got the letter from Fielding and started "hating" the British. Thoughts? Do you think there's anything weird about the caves, some sort of power or mystical experience? Or when the British women have their experiences in the caves with the echoes, etc. is it just their own disorientation?

Thanks for sharing your trip and the photo. I'm looking forward to seeing more! No more missions, then, eh? :lol: I read that last year and it's still with me. I really felt like I knew the people, like I was included in their friendship. They had a certain humanity about them. Honestly, if you'd told me the plot of the book before I had read it, I would have been quite doubtful about reading it. I hope you feel better and can get back to reading soon. :grouphug: I'm glad what I said resonated with you. I thought of what you had said while writing it. For myself, that feeling didn't really come out until the temple section.

:laugh: The other way is to use the "Go to first unread post" link next to the "Reply to this topic" button. Ooooohh. This could be good!

I loved Cate Blanchett's dress.

There you go!

I finally got bingo. (Yes, I'm just here watching alone, but I thought it would be fun to see how long it took.) When the guy from Amy pulled out his notes, I got a complete row! I guess boutonnieres are out of fashion. Been waiting for that square the entire night. Stacia, I agree about Sicario. And the clip they shows for cinematography was not even the most compellign of the film. To me those were the overhead shots of the border, by far.

Thanks. I'm going to skip watching at the movie theatre now that I found I can stream it at home. Printed out my bingo card!

I grew up in a Muslim household with parents from a very conservative country, and one would think maybe that would mean I didn't get much sex education. (I know my parents did not, as they were raised in a place where everyone simply kept the sexes apart until they were married, and arranged their marriages for them.) I was saved from a lack of education, though, because both my parents worked in the medical field and had many books, mostly about diseases, and my dad had that matter-of-fact way people have when they deal with medicine as a profession. My father was heavily involved with giving presentations on AIDS before it was even called AIDS, which was even before anyone had named HIV. I remember hearing him talking on the phone about a new disease among gay men, and I had to ask him what "gay" and "anal sex" were, along with" IV drug injection" and other things. He was very straightforward with me. My mom was a little more embarrassed, which she tells me now was related to her "classier" upbringing. :lol: Also my parents always gave permission for me to attend the sex ed at our school, although it made their fellow immigrant friends apoplectic. And they left a copy of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask where I would find it. It took me years to realize I was not as sneaky as I had thought!

A friend of mine had this situation and passed away about 10 years after his diagnosis, in his late 40s. He seemed fine, except for low physical stamina, until a couple of weeks before he passed. Those were spent in the hospital, but even there he was lucid and social until a couple of days before his death. He tried a couple of treatments (can't remember what they were) but they didn't change anything so after that he just lived with it.

I went back through my notes and tagged items from A Passage to India and I think I’ll just share some of my disparate thoughts over a few posts this week and see if anyone has any thoughts or comments about them. In a book full of enchanting quotes, my best-loved was in Part III (Temple) during the time of the birth of Krishna: I think this encapsulates a large part of the ephemeral and ecstatic experiences humans can have within religion and spirituality, and also the reason these experiences are easily dismissed. And are these experiences really hid from the unbeliever? What of all the believers who do not experience anything like this, or the unbelievers who do? Do some religions lend themselves more to these types of experiences by providing better opportunities to reach heights of ecstasy through rituals? Religions may be human constructs in order to provide for certain behavior, or agreement of soldiers, or to build powerful nations, but perhaps there are experiences outside the bounds of time and space and religion, and when one tries to place these into boxes, they are changed or dissipated. There’s almost a bit of the observer effect (from physics) in what Forster is saying: how can we seize the experience when the act of seizing changes the thing itself? Are our conscious minds blunt tools that cannot precisely measure an experience such as this, and the more precise we try to be, the more it changes and eludes us? And by placing these experiences outside of space and time, do we make them very vulnerable to being mocked? People have enough trouble with the question of what existed before time and space from both religious and cosmological persectives ("If God created everything, who created God?" and "What was before the Big Bang, if the Big Bang created time?"), so pulling a new experience out of time and space when time and space already exist, and are described by elegant equations, is something entirely different and easy to dismiss in a mechanistic age. Forster provided a nice distinction between the Indians, who are more comfortable with these ways of thinking, and the British, with their increasingly time-oriented and scientific view. I enjoyed how Forster pointed out that for the birth of Krishna the Indians were for once on time precisely at midnight, and contrasted that with the "out of the bounds of time" experiences for the attendees.

Stacia, thanks for the heads-up on the OUP sale. I'm on their mailing lists but didn't receive anything, oddly. I've added the items I've had in my Amazon list to the OUP cart and will check prices tonight. Hopefully they're not on the exclusions list!

Thanks, Robin, for the new thread! I finished A Passage to India and I have some thoughts on it. I'm still trying to decide whether to just write a few things that stood out or a more encompassing post. I'm leaning towards the former in the the interest of time. Carrying forward some items from last week and one comment from this morning: Thank you so much Jane, for leading this discussion. The writing was beautiful and vibrant, and the story as well. I think these lines do sum up the clash of cultures. Also, I don't know how representative of the British these particular characters were, but I not only saw a contrast between the religions, but the religiosity itself. These British really didn't seem like particularly religious people. They were never seen attending services, talking about Jesus, etc. It felt as if their state religion(?) was something that held them together as a people, but was not integrated into their daily lives. I'm quite ignorant about what denomination these people would have been, so I'm sort of assuming Church of England.The story went through enough seasons that it must have at last passed through Easter. I think excluding Christian rituals may have been a deliberate decision by Forster. We are doing geology in the spring and summer and I'm prepping now, so maybe you're thinking of me? Thank you for the link! How'd it go? :D "I wanted a mission movie, and for my sins, they BaW gave me one. It was a real choice mission movie, and when I was done, I never wanted another." DS got this as a Christmas gift. I've been meaning to grab it from his room and read it. This is our current read aloud. It really is lovely, but it's taking forever because it's generating so much discussion about friendship, loyalty, bravery, good vs. evil, power, doing what we must when difficulty is put upon us, etc.

Yes, it's definitely "of the era." :laugh: I don't like war movies that much either, except maybe this one and Platoon. I think my favorite aspect of this movie is in the performances and not in the plot, although it was the first time I saw an adaptation of a novel so it was eye-opening for me as a young 'un, as far as how to re-adapt an old novel into something very modern (at the time.) How fun! I used to listen to Wait, Wait while paying bills and doing paperwork, but I've gotten out of the habit. I'll make sure to listen to this one. Thank you, I'll try and give them a listen.

Yeah, I don't know. I guess Bastard Out of Carolina is a contrast in that way, since the protagonist is white. I don't have a copy of the book anymore, but I remember Allison writing about the myth of the noble, working poor, they were "poor, but they were clean." When I read that, many years ago I remember I started crying.

I'm sorry. This is why I think you should stay away from calling the woman's parents. I mentioned upthread if they are in the loop, they might send the money to her and this would go on longer. It's legal everywhere I've heard. It's usually called "cash for keys" and OP can google that plus her state to see her options, perhaps.

They have trouble competing for low- and mid-level IT people, certainly. If someone were talented enough to break this sort of encryption, they would absolutely find the money, I have no doubt.

I absolutely side with Apple on this one, but I think in this particular case the phone didn't back up to the cloud. Actually, I think it was backing up to the cloud, but then the county investigators changed the password and it stopped backing up. And phone company records give you numbers and durations, but not content. Of course, the NSA may have that. :glare: Honestly, I don't back up my phone to the cloud at all. I copy stuff to my laptop and then back it up physically. I don't like sharing all my info with Apple.

Here's an updated article from the San Jose Mercury News. So, the opt-out is not really an opt-out, just an objection that one may file with the court.

I always err on the side of privacy. This case reminds me of how libraries can protect their users by simply not keeping their check-out history so it's not even a question of accessing it and it removes them from the equation. Apple has followed the same path and currently does not have access to the customer's data. Here's a good article from Wired. Morningstar writes about how the request is bigger than most people think, and exceeds terrorism cases. From a technical point of view, there is no option to only download parts of it the data, the entire phone will be dumped. We already know that police officers (in the U.S.) are allowed to blatantly lie to people who are being interrogated. I spoke with an officer I know and he said they would absolutely use the idea that they could get all the data off someone's phone to go after them, even if they had not done it. I find the idea that a suspect may be worried the police know about his affair, or nude photos, or his kids' birthdays and an upcoming trip, to be too much of an imbalance in power. I would err on the side of privacy anyway, but in a country in which the police can lie to you about anything while questioning you, I would be much more certain it's a terrible idea.

That would be great fun! I did pick up the Harry Potter USPS stamps today, although the images are from the movies. I would not have asked about them if you hadn't put Harry Potter into my mind today! The kids love them.

You're welcome. :) As you know, I haven't yet read the book so I apologize if I repeated stories in it. I forgot to add that he recommended his volume Solar Poems if people want to read more about the monarchs and the sea turtles. The linked one has both Spanish and English, it seems. And apologies to all for the grammatical mistakes I made. I had time to get it all out but not to edit it!