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Lampsacus posted:This is good enough. Thanks AreYouStillThere! Actually, I might have the one that fit your description better. Check out Gossamer Obsessions
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# ? Aug 18, 2012 08:12 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:56 |
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Lobster Henry posted:There's a kind of creeping elasticity to time and space in Kafka, where the prose will convey a sense that a couple of minutes have passed, only for a character to subsequently declare that night has fallen. It's a revelation after the fact that plunges you into uncertainty. To me, Nately's whore is more abrupt - more of an evil punchline - but you're bang-on about the sense of doom without logic. Well, I'm sold. Now just to find a copy in this podunk little town...
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# ? Aug 23, 2012 10:49 |
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Kinda irrelevant but I've seen a few horse trailers from a company called "Pegasus Floats" and it bugged me for some reason but I couldn't quite work out why until just now. There's a big mural in Melbourne of Atlas holding the world and another of Archimedes with his stick and fulcrum and it hit me that I don't like the horse trailer company "Pegasus Floats" because I don't like the book "Atlas Shrugged". Or at least I think that's it. Or it could be the horse trailer I saw pull into a petrol station once with a horse squealing in it, floors so rotten it's powerful back legs had fallen through and had dragged into bloody stumps that left twin red stripes on the concrete next to the bowsers leading back to the road and further and further. EDIT: I'm like fairly sure it's the unconscious Ayn Rand reference though.
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# ? Aug 27, 2012 10:52 |
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What's the the goon negativity towards Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? I've 40-pages deep and it seems okay?
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# ? Aug 31, 2012 05:08 |
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Tab8715 posted:What's the the goon negativity towards Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? I was unaware of this negativity. I really enjoyed that book, but it might have had something to do with the time in my life when I read it (freshman year of college).
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# ? Aug 31, 2012 16:54 |
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I had the privilege of reading Zen in my Junior/Senior year of high school for my Theory of Knowledge class. It was quite interesting as an philosophical piece.
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# ? Sep 5, 2012 06:40 |
Because gateway philosophical novels aggravate elitist graduates. And thanks for the link to Gossamer Obsessions, above ^^ once again, it's not the blog I'm looking for. But it's closer..
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# ? Sep 10, 2012 03:40 |
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Since I'm reading Don Quixote right now I'm curious: are there other works by Cervantes that are worth reading? He seems remembered on the strength of the one work for the most part. I'm aware of the titles of some of his other works but little else.
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# ? Sep 13, 2012 15:58 |
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Falls Down Stairs posted:Since I'm reading Don Quixote right now I'm curious: are there other works by Cervantes that are worth reading? He seems remembered on the strength of the one work for the most part. I'm aware of the titles of some of his other works but little else. He actually didn't write that much. I've only read the Exemplary Stories that are translated into English and they were pretty entertaining, some of them are really weird.
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# ? Sep 13, 2012 16:43 |
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Falls Down Stairs posted:Since I'm reading Don Quixote right now I'm curious: are there other works by Cervantes that are worth reading? He seems remembered on the strength of the one work for the most part. I'm aware of the titles of some of his other works but little else. Everything he wrote is good, but if you must pick one follow-up, choose 'The Dialogue of the Dogs.' It's usually included with 'Exemplary Stories' but you can also buy it on its own if you'd like.
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# ? Sep 14, 2012 06:19 |
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Lobster Henry posted:Catch-22 is also one of my favourite novels, but I've never been able to make much headway into Heller's other works. I've never encountered anybody who has recommended them, and none of them seem to have received a fraction of the attention shown to Catch-22. I'd recommend "Something Happened", but with the caveat that my only attempt to read Catch 22 was an abortive one and that I can't read more than two or three pages at a time, partly because the book is emotionally painful and sometimes because of the prose. It's really good, but it's a real slog too.
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# ? Sep 26, 2012 18:59 |
Just so I can get some extra opinions (and because that thread is sparsely populated), could I possibly ask some of y'all experts to look at my post on page 3 in the Pynchon thread about an ostensible TRP signature? Thanks and sorry for adding this here too; I won't derail any further-
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# ? Oct 5, 2012 01:18 |
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I'm trying to find good authoritative books on organized crime. So far I've found Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld, David E Kaplan but not much luck finding anything similar on the mafia/mobs. Most searches return sensational tales but nothing comprehensive or authoritative. Everything is "one man's thrilling tale" and not really what I'm looking for.
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# ? Oct 15, 2012 08:39 |
edit: whoop wrong thread
Sears Poncho fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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# ? Oct 15, 2012 23:29 |
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drkhrs2020 posted:I'm trying to find good authoritative books on organized crime. So far I've found Just any organized crime? A few months ago, I read a book called The Outfit which is about the rise and control of the mob in Chicago. It's simply amazing the amount of control and extent of their power that they exerted over many industries. http://www.amazon.com/Outfit-Gus-Russo/dp/1582342792/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350343658&sr=1-1&keywords=the+outfit
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# ? Oct 16, 2012 00:28 |
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What's the best way to get smoke and cat smell out of a book? My Walking Dead Compendium just came back to me after a year with 3 smokers and 13 cats. At least they didn't pee ON the drat thing.
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# ? Oct 23, 2012 04:13 |
Quad posted:What's the best way to get smoke and cat smell out of a book? My Walking Dead Compendium just came back to me after a year with 3 smokers and 13 cats. At least they didn't pee ON the drat thing. You need to let it air out for a really long time. My parents were both smokers, so whey I finally got all my books form their place, every one of them reeked of smoke. It took the better part of three years for the smell to (mostly) go away, and at least a year of that time they sat in my garage, getting regular exposure to fresh air. Even with all that the smell isn't 100% gone, but you can only smell it if you put your nose right on the spine and breathe deep. I don't know if this will work for the cat piss smell, though; that's a tenacious odor.
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# ? Oct 23, 2012 04:56 |
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I'm hoping that since it's comic book paper, (glossy), maybe thats not as porous as normal paper, maybe the smell comes out easier? I dunno.
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# ? Oct 23, 2012 08:22 |
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I'm hoping that someone can help me find a short story that I read years ago in grade school. (Early 1990s) It would have either been in a school text book or one of those Weekly Reader mags. What I can vaguely remember about the story is that a boy found something, I think glasses, that slowed down time. When he used them other weird things would happen but he wanted to be awesome at baseball so he used it to be awesome at baseball. In the end I think the kid was eaten by monsters or something. Or maybe it is just some weird amalgam of Lord of the Rings, They Live, and my own shattered dreams.
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# ? Oct 24, 2012 05:20 |
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http://www.freefantasybook.com/free-horror/ 24 free horror books for the kindle! Yay!!!!
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# ? Oct 24, 2012 07:01 |
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Quad posted:I'm hoping that since it's comic book paper, (glossy), maybe thats not as porous as normal paper, maybe the smell comes out easier? I dunno.
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# ? Oct 24, 2012 10:38 |
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I wonder if this is the right thread to ask but... I have anxiety. Specifically, when it comes to ebooks and physical books. I bought a Kindle about a year ago and back then I loved the whole idea of eBooks and the immense convenience and having all sorts of books on one device or multiple devices with sync and blah blah blah. But now a year on I desperately miss holding a real physical book. I miss how each book had its own style and formatting, its own printing and smell, and actual covers and jackets. I love having my own book collection in a bookshelf and even when I grow tired of certain books I never plan on reading ever again I have the option of donating or selling them to bookstores. But, man, an entire library! On a single device! I click buy and bam the book is now instantly available to me! I'm torn between accessibility and physical ownership & reading experience. I suppose what I'm asking is if anyone else went through this utter ridiculousness and how they dealt with it?
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# ? Oct 27, 2012 14:33 |
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I think e-readers are okay for casual reading, but it's easy to start skimming and jumping past stuff you don't like, plus you're reduced to passive reading. Unless the Kindle/Kobo/etc have changed, you can't write notes in the margins and underline and dogear pages you want to refer back to. Footnotes are a hassle, too. Until they offer a different experience than reading a book, I'm not too interested.
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# ? Oct 27, 2012 18:29 |
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Wirth1000 posted:I wonder if this is the right thread to ask but... I have anxiety. Specifically, when it comes to ebooks and physical books. I bought a Kindle about a year ago and back then I loved the whole idea of eBooks and the immense convenience and having all sorts of books on one device or multiple devices with sync and blah blah blah. But now a year on I desperately miss holding a real physical book. I miss how each book had its own style and formatting, its own printing and smell, and actual covers and jackets. I love having my own book collection in a bookshelf and even when I grow tired of certain books I never plan on reading ever again I have the option of donating or selling them to bookstores. I have both, and I just don't view it as an either/or. My main divide is "serious" books get bought physically--non-fiction, literary fiction, etc--while genre trash gets bought on Kindle. Even then there are exceptions, though, as there are plenty of good books in the Kindle self-publishing market (once you learn to separate the wheat from the incredible amounts of chaff) and a Kindle Daily Deal can get you a good book for just a buck or two (I managed to get Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss for 99 cents, for example), and I still like to browse the aisles at physical bookstores and will usually grab a book or two while I'm there even if I could get it on Kindle. Just view it as two different ways of reading, each with their own pros and cons, not as something you have to throw your hat into one particular ring for.
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# ? Oct 27, 2012 21:38 |
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Has the Book Barn ever tried a book exchange kind of thing? I was thinking a stickied thread like the one on RPG.net would work well here - people post what they're willing to trade/sell, and what they have to trade/sell.
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# ? Oct 27, 2012 22:09 |
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Argali posted:Has the Book Barn ever tried a book exchange kind of thing? I was thinking a stickied thread like the one on RPG.net would work well here - people post what they're willing to trade/sell, and what they have to trade/sell. It's been talked about before, but I don't think it ever happened.
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# ? Oct 27, 2012 23:27 |
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Hey was there a thread for Scary Stoires to tell in the Dark? I read those books between sixth grade and middle school, and nothing has scared me as much as Stephen Gamel's illustrations coupled with Alvin Schwartz's stories. To wit, it's most famous image.
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# ? Oct 27, 2012 23:56 |
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Wirth1000 posted:I wonder if this is the right thread to ask but... I have anxiety. Specifically, when it comes to ebooks and physical books. I bought a Kindle about a year ago and back then I loved the whole idea of eBooks and the immense convenience and having all sorts of books on one device or multiple devices with sync and blah blah blah. But now a year on I desperately miss holding a real physical book. I miss how each book had its own style and formatting, its own printing and smell, and actual covers and jackets. I love having my own book collection in a bookshelf and even when I grow tired of certain books I never plan on reading ever again I have the option of donating or selling them to bookstores. If you have room for both, have both. My kindle is for travelling, for reading multiple books at one time*, and for finding 'new' and interesting stuff from places like the Gutenberg project that I'd never find in a bookstore. My 'real' books are for when I want to read a favorite or for a 'special' book (ie a new book by a favorite author). If you don't have room for both, then kindle, hands down, and use the library as a source of 'real' books a few at a time. *Side note ,wow, do I wish something like the Kindle had existed when I was a kid and reading choose your own adventure books. I liked to know every ending, but not just by flipping through and reading them. I'd take any scrap of paper I could find nearby at the time and tear it into tinier and tinier pieces, numbering each one, and bookmarking each 'choice' page as I went so I could backtrack any time I hit an end (good or bad) and see what happened with the other choices. Edit: barkingclam posted:I think e-readers are okay for casual reading, but it's easy to start skimming and jumping past stuff you don't like, plus you're reduced to passive reading. Unless the Kindle/Kobo/etc have changed, you can't write notes in the margins and underline and dogear pages you want to refer back to. Footnotes are a hassle, too. Until they offer a different experience than reading a book, I'm not too interested. I've only ever owned the one Kindle version (4 I think?). Not sure about footnotes as I'm using it for purely leisure reading - but it has the ability to bookmark, highlight and make notes. I make extensive use of the bookmarking feature and I love it - when I'm reading an author who uses words I don't use or references something I don't know (ie a piece of music or art), I can mark it to look at later, rather than stop reading and look now, or forget to later on. On the other hand I doubt I'd use it to make notes. The kindle system of typing is to have a single button bring up an on-screen keyboard, and use the arrow keys to select characters one at a time. Pretty excruciating. I believe there was a Kindle with a keyboard but I don't see it as a current version on Amazon's site. On another side note, the Kobo is a piece of poo poo, IMO. Our library has loaners and I had a three week period to try one out. It was slow as gently caress - there was a delay every time you wanted to turn a page, so quickly flipping through a book was impossible, and I read fast enough that it really killed the flow of the book. In short, a three-week trial of the Kobo ended in me heading straight to Staples and slapping down the extra $30 to get a Kindle instead of a Kobo. Addy fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Oct 29, 2012 |
# ? Oct 29, 2012 00:21 |
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Kobo truly is a poo poo ereader, however the app on iPad is not bad. I've used it for one book that was only available on their store for some reason, not on Amazon or iBooks.
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# ? Oct 29, 2012 01:02 |
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Addy posted:On the other hand I doubt I'd use it to make notes. The kindle system of typing is to have a single button bring up an on-screen keyboard, and use the arrow keys to select characters one at a time. Pretty excruciating. I believe there was a Kindle with a keyboard but I don't see it as a current version on Amazon's site. The Kindle touch has an on-screen keyboard that gets pulled up whenever you select a search bar or whatever, it's really convenient. Much better than I'd imagine using arrow keys would be.
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# ? Oct 29, 2012 02:37 |
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Woot has a bluetooth page scanner (wand style) on sale today at tech.woot. Might be worth grabbing if you are looking for a way to convert old paperbacks into ebooks that aren't available as ebooks. 59.99 and 5$ shipping.
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# ? Oct 29, 2012 06:57 |
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I'm trying to remember this book I read in middle school about a boy on a bike who was trying to find his father or something, but there are these interrogation scenes throughout the book and at the end it turns out he's being detained in a government facility or something and they're trying to find his parents' secrets. It's probably pretty widely read or something--it feels like something that may have been on a lot of reading lists for middle school students--but the title and author are completely eluding me at the moment. Help?
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# ? Oct 30, 2012 17:03 |
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I Am the Cheese, by Robert Cormier.
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# ? Oct 31, 2012 05:10 |
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Purchased a Kindle Paperwhite, and I'm in the process of winnowing my physical library to facilitate a move to a Manhattan apartment. With books I tend to revisit, I'm springing for the Kindle versions. The Lord of the Rings consumes a tremendous amount of precious shelf space, but the Kindle's e-ink still struggles to make maps and detailed illustrations legible. The reviews on Amazon for this title yielded little useful information regarding the quality of the experience. Does anybody have the Kindle version? Opinions? (And yes, I already know I'm a dork for asking.)
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# ? Nov 4, 2012 19:57 |
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I have a Kindle, but at the moment I'm really not going to buy any books for it since I need to save up for major Christmas purchases. But I'm aware of the fact that there are several free books. Now I'm trying to figure out if there are any free classic books, old sci-fi and that. I managed to get Journey to the Centre of the Earth and The Lost World on the kindle, but where else can I get more books that are legally free? And to just make it more complicated, I'm not American, so Amazon.com really closes the doors on that. Any directory of free classic literature open for Europeans somewhere?
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# ? Nov 8, 2012 21:02 |
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I think gutenberg.org is open internationally? I was able to use Canada's while in the US no problem, anyway. I'd give that a shot - they have every classic ever and you can just download the .mobi and use Calibre to shunt the files over. The e-reader thread in IYG or the e-reader thread in TBB are very helpful too. Edited for links
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# ? Nov 8, 2012 21:05 |
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Iced Cocoa posted:I have a Kindle, but at the moment I'm really not going to buy any books for it since I need to save up for major Christmas purchases. But I'm aware of the fact that there are several free books. Now I'm trying to figure out if there are any free classic books, old sci-fi and that. I managed to get Journey to the Centre of the Earth and The Lost World on the kindle, but where else can I get more books that are legally free? Baen free library offers decent sci-fi fare free od charge. Project Gutenberg has some classic sci-fi titles available. Download Calibre to convert other formats to Kindle compatible mobi. E:fb
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# ? Nov 8, 2012 21:07 |
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This is a pedantic point, but I was wondering if anyone could help me. In my 1980 Penguin copy of Lolita, page 33 or a bit into chapter 9, it reads "...the big men on our team, the real leaders we never saw, mere mainly engaged in checking the influence..." (emphasis mine). Is this a sincere misprint, substituting M for W, or Nabokovian tricksiness?
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# ? Nov 11, 2012 19:33 |
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Mr. Squishy posted:This is a pedantic point, but I was wondering if anyone could help me. In my 1980 Penguin copy of Lolita, page 33 or a bit into chapter 9, it reads "...the big men on our team, the real leaders we never saw, mere mainly engaged in checking the influence..." (emphasis mine). Is this a sincere misprint, substituting M for W, or Nabokovian tricksiness?
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# ? Nov 11, 2012 19:35 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:56 |
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AreYouStillThere posted:I think gutenberg.org is open internationally? I was able to use Canada's while in the US no problem, anyway. I'd give that a shot - they have every classic ever and you can just download the .mobi and use Calibre to shunt the files over. The e-reader thread in IYG or the e-reader thread in TBB are very helpful too. AFAIK, the various Gutenberg sites aren't restricted by region, but may contain different books based on local copyright periods. For instance, the US Gutenberg doesn't contain anything by George Orwell, the Australian site does. http://gutenberg.net.au/ They don't have as many formats as the US site, however.
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# ? Nov 16, 2012 16:55 |