>>>>>>Seems like today is the "final" day?? Hopefully all the FLDS members won't do some stupid mass suicide.
>>>>>
>>>>>I think they already thought it ended months ago ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>>I do wonder what happened to his most faithful. I think in the 19th century the Millerites became 7th Day Adventists ...
>>>>
>>>>I'm pretty sure I mentioned this once before and I think I recall your having said you read it, but for everyone else, please run out and get Robert Coover's "The Origin of the Brunists". It's brilliant and I think it's back in print.
>>>
>>>Read it many years ago and still have a copy around hear somewhere. Yes, highly recommended. ( right up there with "Canticle for Leibowitz")
>>
>>Oh, yeah! I'd completely forgotten Canticle. Great book. The last and best thing he ever wrote. Typing of Coover, did you ever read his "The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Proprietor"? I seem to recall you aren't a baseball fan, but this book is amazing and... well... different.
>>
>>I also assume you've read Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, but just in case you haven't, please do. A truly remarkable work.
>
>I passed on that Coover book as I fell asleep while reading the title as soon as I hit the word "baseball" :"-)
>
>Riddley Walker has been recommended to me often and I did start it once. I must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time as I remember giving up on it quickly.but I think I may give it another go since so many people I know who actually read book actually like it.
>
>Just finished Joseph Kanon's ( "the Good German" ) Istanbul Passage. Really good. Istanbul in the immediate post WWII period., I was fascinated as something I am writing right now starts in Istanbul in 1969 and makes reference to the period in 1947 when Kim Philby was posted as SIS head of station in Istanbul. ( a woman I knew in Istanbul had been OSS and knew Philby both in London early in the war and during the period in Istanbul.) Kanon has a feel for period that is rivaled only by the amazing Alan Furst.

Did you mean "... the amazing Alan first"? ;)

The Coover book is only nominally about baseball. It's the vehicle that makes Waugh's world stop making sense. The baseball game is his own invention played with dice, and after one of his pitchers throws a perfect game and then is killed in a freak accident, his world begins to spiral out of control. It's interesting that his "players", of course have no free will, but his rules are so strict that neither does he. Liking baseball probably helps, but I don't think it's mandatory.

You really should take another shot at Riddley Walker. I know Hoban didn't make any attempt to make it easy, but in very little time at all, the uphill grade begins to even out. Not because the book becomes easy (it never really does), but because it starts to make sense on a linguistic and even cultural level. I found it uplifting, and my sister found it depressing. We're probably both right.