Each Chapter in TTOTC

[Hammertime]

Ive only read TTOTC. I have not picked up any other book. I feel like everything is in that book. Its a tool.

One theme I noticed, is that each chapter, has a meaningless quote in it.

I dont have any verbatim quotes in my head, but one that sticks out, is the chapter about the bull. The end of the chapter there was a little script about the bull being gone. Eaten yada yada. Maybe its a riddle. NoBULL..

Noble. The first chapter is about a bookstore called borders. There is also a book store called Barnes and Noble. (Barn Owl?)

Nobelium is on the periodic table (atomic #) 102. The clues are 5000 and 10200 ft.

10 and 2 are related to the steering wheel, while driving.

These are just little things I pull out from the stories, and doing research on what they might mean..

[nkown]

Jump Starting the Learning Curve....

is that the youthful fenn's learning curve... or the treasure seeker's? Perhaps we are to learn how to decode the puzzle poem and this is where that gets going.

[Hammertime]

Jump Starting the Learning Curve....

is that the youthful fenn's learning curve... or the treasure seeker's? Perhaps we are to learn how to decode the puzzle poem and this is where that gets going.

Yeah! I cant remember the story in that chapter. But I did tie the chapter title to the movie "Wanted"

There is a part in that movie where Wesley Gibson, googles himself and nothing comes up. Kind of the same thing about Fenn father.
Some more popular pieces of that movie, is curving a bullet, when firing a gun, and hitting your target, by making the bullet go around obstructions. It is a MArvel movie about assassins. The movie came out in 2008.

I know Im all over the place, but I have tried most everything, and this stuff sticks out so much more, and it uncovers some definitions too. Just my own way of thinking.

Edit: Morgan Freeman is in the Movie, and his characters name is Sloan.

[boomergirl]

IMO The research required to get even close to Indulgence is a tough study program.

[Hammertime]

IMO The research required to get even close to Indulgence is a tough study program.

For sure. Research Research and more research!

[Nasty Canasta]

IMO The research required to get even close to Indulgence is a tough study program.

tough course indeed

[John Brown]

I still think about education sometimes, especially now that it's
too late to get any. But with all of my days now, in the fullness
of time, it seems prudent to do a little investigating about higher
things. Because I wasn't in college I didn't get to read any of the
great books that were written by really important writers, those guys
like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, whom everyone looked up to. Maybe
it's a respect thing, like the sheriff who told the outlaw he was going
to hang him with a new rope because he respected him so much.
So one day when it was raining, I went to

Border's to see about those books. I just wanted to look at one and hold it for a while. That's how old guys are you know. Maybe I should've stayed in
school and studied more. History doesn't reveal the alternatives so
I might've been a great writer for all I know, or even a great something
better than that. Just as I was about to ask the little girl at the computer about those authors, she raised her coffee cup to take a sip. And I swear
that cup all but covered her whole face. I thought maybe she was
trying to hide. Anyway, when she finished sipping she

gave me a nice smile that made me feel better, and asked me to please follow her as she regaled me with the reasons why we are so lucky to have
great books in our lives. I already knew that no salesperson has ever been accused of understatement so there was no reason for me to listen to her - but I did anyway. That little lady probably knew where every book was in that whole store, and when we arrived at the exact spot she pulled down
two books and just handed them to me and walked away, tossing
her thick braids back and forth like they had

purpose. She didn't even say goodbye or anything. But I noticed that she really felt proud because I could see it in her strut, and it was obvious that
she'd graduated from a good school somewhere. So now I'm holding copies of For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Great Gatsby and standing right in the middle of the entire book store with people all around. I didn't dare look to see who was staring, but finally, when I sneaked a peek, no one was watching. They were all just holding books and reading for free. To be a little candid, I thought it was rude of them to

read with no thought of
buying or anything. Stores have to make a living too.
The two books I held, that had such big reputations, were about
six inches tall and four inches wide and really thin. I was so amazed
that they were paperbacks. I didn't understand how two guys who
were big shots could get by with writing such little books. I'd written
eight books and all of them were much larger and cost a lot more
money, and nobody has ever heard of me. If it hadn't been for the
honor of the thing I'd have probably just put the books right back
on the shelf

and walked out. But everyone would have noticed, so
I had to stand in the checkout line behind a bunch of middle-agedlooking
people. Most of them were women because I suppose all
the middle-aged-looking guys were at work someplace, or doing
something else. I don't think they go to bookstores much.
Well, you could almost guess how slow the dumb line was moving.
The only register guy in the place was showing more patience than
I felt at that moment, while two borderline biddies were preoccupied
with some kind of breathtaking nonsense at the expense of my time
and patience. Finally they selected a couple of impulse oddments
and

the line started moving again. It was hard not to think of what
people have to go through when they get old. It doesn't matter that
teenagers have to stand in line for hours because they have so much
time left, but for old guys who are pretty much covered up with their
lives already, it's a different story. Life can be so rude that way.
When I got around to reading that bell tolls book I thought it
was just plain. The story was about this guy who was an ambulance
driver in World War I and he was in love with a nurse. There was
lots of



killing and mud and bombs and dead horses. I read about a
third of that thing and couldn't force myself any longer. Who did
this Hemingway guy think he was anyway? I didn't think his book
was even sort of good. And what made it worse was that the Gatsby
thing wasn't much better. Those two writers were so overrated I
couldn't believe it. I could've been embarrassed for both of them
if I'd thought it'd help. But the college professors always assigned
these books - so there certainly was that to think about.
Finally, I just tossed those beauties in the trash basket under my
desk and looked

away.
If Robert Redford had ever written anything he probably could have done it better than the guy who wrote that Gatsby book. Not having gone to college began to take on a whole new meaning to me now and I was reinforced.. in the belief that I had hardly missed anything. Besides, some of the things I do pretty good I'm better at than some of those college guys are at what they do pretty good. Well, as fate would make it happen, the very next morning all the news was about this guy J.D. Salinger who had just died.
Everyone on the TV was talking about how

he had revolutionized writing novels in his day, and so on. The news said he was very secretive about what he did, and even Diane Sawyer mentioned that he'd written a lot of books and had hidden some in a vault
so no one could read them. He seemed like my kind of guy but I couldn't figure out how he could be such an important writer when I'd never even heard of him. At Borders the next day it was still raining so I just wandered
around the store. I didn't spend much time in the children's section
or cooking or travel. Finally, I found the area
I







was looking for and pulled out Catcher in the Rye. It was an average looking book about the size of the two I'd thrown in the trash, but it seemed better to me because I didn't expect much from it. So I strolled over to the check-out guy who probably remembered me from the day before. When I handed him the book and my credit card he said in a loud voice, "Catcher in the Rye." That idiot! So now everyone in the whole dumb store started staring at me and not at him. He's the one that said it, not me, but that didn't make any difference.
Some

women were sniffering and others were just grinning. It was all so rude that I just looked away. That taught them. The loudmouth check-out guy thought what he'd done was real clever. He probably was on something and I don't think it was Ovaltine. He just stood there making his six-bucks-fifty an hour
and picking on elderly gentlemen such as mysel£ Don't you just hate guys like that? I've never been able to find a place where I couldn't embarrass myself and this store was now number one on the list. Well, the first sentence read "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably


want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it if you want to know the truth." I thought what a great way to start a book- just get right
down into the fling of it. So I read some more and then some more,
and then I read the whole book. The story was about this guy who
wandered around the streets in Manhattan a lot, had been thrown
out of a few schools, and thought


HA HA.

I Border's gave purpose read and the killing away he was women want

WOWSWERS. I'm gonna go rent me a 4WD and head out into the wild blue yonder!!!

EDIT TO EXPLAIN. Someone had written that the solution to the mystery was to read every 109th word of the book. Each of the chunks of text above has 109 words if I didn't screw up. After I posted the person deleted their post. I've forgotten the guy's name but it's the guy who tortures 109's out of the poem and books. Sometimes his things are correct but he is error prone. That's why I "showed my work." It's easier to check it than to produce it. The line following "HA HA." is the first word of each of these chunks of text. To check it copy the text into M$ Word or a surrogate and then use word count on each block of text. If I didn't screw up each block will contain 109 words.