Yes - and then I have to pull myself up and say "slow down!"

Pretty much the same as the map on wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_East

You are in very good company at feeling let-down by the ending.

https://www.englishliterature.info/2022/01/controversial-ending-huckleberry-finn.html

Yup. Looking at you, Elvish tunes in LOTR

Yeah, my comment was poorly worded; I didn't mean to be so didactic.

Yes, you may be right about the wording. I was trying to convey my belief, built up over decades of reading and talking to other people, that folks who think it's "wrong" in some sense to ever skim or skip, and thus who haven't built up any experience at judging when and how to do it, enjoy reading a lot less and do less of it.

Her later books aren't as good - but that's the case with Christie, too.

other ideas:

Josephine Tey (don't start with "Daughter of Time" despite its reputation - and get a little familiar with Shakespeare's Richard III before you do read it)

Dorothy L Sayers is great - but her early stuff is borderline silly, later stuff is borderline academic so she's not to everybody's taste

Agreed. Because they're usually boring. I'll skim to the end of it in case something happened that affects later scenes but otherwise, no.

And dream sequences.

There are times when I have to mentally grab myself and make myself slow down and focus - I find I've skimmed so much I've lost the thread of the story or the tone of the work.

I think that's part of the concern that people have when they say you shouldn't skim - the worry that they'll start doing it too much and ruin the experience of reading.

Some old mystery novels had a cast of characters list in front. I scorned that silly idea ... until I started using them to keep track of colonel this and major that and which was the vicar's wife and the vicar's sister ...

I responded above to a similar comment: skipping and skimming is definitely part of being a good reader. No need to slog through every word if parts of a book don't resonate for whatever reason - you're the reader, you're in control.

I disagree - the ability to skip and skim is an important part of being a reader. I'd call it one of the most important skills that makes reading fun and useful.

There are parts of any work, fiction or nonfiction, that may not resonate with you or might be redundant to something you already read. There's no need to slog through them; skim over it and get to the parts that are good for you. It's not all-or-nothing!

If it's noise you're wondering about, shooting ranges rather than hunting are the issue. Bangety-bangety-bangety-bang all day long when it's nice weather.

It does work, you're right - maintenance is the issue. That's the cost problem.

Tidal / wave power is the renewable equivalent of small modular nuclear reactors - perfectly good idea that has never worked in practice and probably never will because of cost (maintaining equipment in moving salt water is beyond a nightmare)

Excellent point and you are correct, it does not appear to be illegal. I did the common but flawed online thing of repeating something I had heard as if it was established fact. Shame on me!

Looking at NH Dept. of Agriculture rules I can find nothing that says it is illegal to move, only that it is a really bad idea.

It's always Christmas somewhere in the multiverse

Thanks for the paper. Interesting!

I'm sure you know this but it's illegal in most states (all states? federal law?) to move knotweed because it replants itself from broken stems. It takes special licenses so it seems harvesting it would be tricky.

You're talking about pellets for burning, right? Isn't the moisture content of knotweed so high that turning them into pellets would be really expensive? That's what has thwarted all the great plans for switchgrass-biomass.

It would be great if something could be done with that *&^%$!!! plant, which is a global invasive nightmare.

I do wonder whether it invented every teenage boy's favorite fantasy - "I scorn all society and therefore women want to fuck me" - or whether that was already a thing.

Never. Give up and read something else.

I think this is a case of a book that hit the culture very hard at the time but its attitude has become so integrated that it is now a tired cliche.

This is pretty common: a work (fiction, painting, dance, music etc) takes the world by storm which changes the world so that it comes to seem obvious and predictable. Who is shocked by Stavinsky's Rite of Spring any more?

Interesting to study in terms of cultural trends at the time in central Europe, perhaps - not interesting to read.

Wood burning power - electricity only, sending the waste heat into the atmosphere - hasn't worked in NH; it costs a fortune and the environmental benefits are surprisingly limited.

Combined heat and power, when you burn wood for electricity and also make use of the heat for bldgs, etc., makes a lot of sense. The drawback is that it's more location-specific, since it's hard to move heat.

Article says it has been logged in the past. Not some pristine forest.

Yes they should - I hope you're badgering your town and state officials to get them to support this! If voters don't demand it, it will be much slower to happen.