Category Archives: General

Top Ten Tuesday & Teaser

Posted on May 9, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by the Artsy Reader Girl, is “Top Ten Books You Recommend the Most”. But first, a Tuesday Tease! In his informal report to the President, Tom Ochiltree, aide to General Sibley, called accurately the losses … Continue reading →

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Missing that divine spark; plus, having Bing analyze me

Posted on May 5, 2023 by smellincoffee

Recently an article at Crisis magazine included an excerpt from the author’s attempt to get an AI to read all of his published articles and reproduce an essay in his style. He was pleased, and I was surprised, but not … Continue reading →

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Ten Books Bing and Bard Randomly Chose from my TBR

Posted on May 2, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today’s TTT is “ten books I randomly grabbed from my shelf”, but I wanted to see if the chatGPT version of Bing could choose ten random items from a list, so I gave it my 70+ strong TBR list. Then … Continue reading →

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April 2023 in Review

Posted on May 1, 2023 by smellincoffee

Well, welcome to May! I think Read of England was a tolerable success, though there were a lot of books I’d planned to read that I didn’t*, and since I did some book-buying to synch RoE with my other challenges … Continue reading →

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Ten Films to Watch on a Bad Day

Posted on April 26, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today’s blogging prompt from Long and Short Reviews is….”Films to Watch on a Bad Day“. I have an album of “movies I’d save in a fire’, and these all live there! Groundhog Day.  I have watched this movie dozens of … Continue reading →

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Tuesday memes: narrators and fun-sized Messiahs

Posted on April 25, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is favorite audio book narrators, which is a bit of problem because I haven’t listened to that many. Listening to a book takes a lot more time than reading it, so I tend to only listen … Continue reading →

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Tuesday teases and lists

Posted on April 18, 2023 by smellincoffee

This is from Will Durant’s intro to his The Story of Philosophy. I’ve wanted to read this for ages, since finishing his Story of Civilization, and saw it on sale a couple of weeks ago. I won’t be reading it … Continue reading →

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Tuesday teases and lists

Posted on April 11, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today’s Tuesday Tease comes from Falling into Battle, a novel following four young men (three midshipmen and one ex-midshipman-turned-Territorial) in the first year of the war. Today’s top Ten Tuesday is about books with animals on the cover or in … Continue reading →

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Blogging prompt: Sports

Posted on April 5, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today’s blogging prompt is sports we’ve played and what we thought of them. Although spectator sports is not my bag, and I’ve always been more of a reader than an athlete, I did enjoy playing pick-up games as a kid … Continue reading →

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Note to revolutionaries: Bard is more cooperative than Bing

Posted on April 4, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today while reading a history of attempts to invade England, I was using Bard as a running cross-reference thing — asking what the Palantine was, for instance, or what a tercio was. (The Palantine is a bit of the old … Continue reading →

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