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Post by Duragizer on Aug 8, 2021 23:59:54 GMT -5
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 9, 2021 3:10:50 GMT -5
One of these days I plan to explore the whole sub-genre to which this book sounds like it belongs: I'm thinking of American, sort of trashy, best-selling (or would-be) fiction, or however you want to describe it - writers like Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susann, Grace Metalious (Peyton Place)... not sure who else - maybe Danielle Steele, Sidney Sheldon? (...) I may yet get around to reading more Robbins, as his entire ouevre sits on a shelf in our house - my partner really likes his books. So far, I've only read one: Never Leave Me, one of his lesser-known earlier novels from the 1950s, because I wanted to sample his work and that one is pretty short. It's pretty much a straight-up romance novel, but with lots of tragedy thrown in and no happy end (sorry if that's a spoiler...). However, based on that I can see why Robbins became such a popular writer, i.e., his prose is solidly composed, his characters are believable and he had an ear for realistic dialogue. |
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Post by berkley on Aug 9, 2021 11:33:52 GMT -5
One of these days I plan to explore the whole sub-genre to which this book sounds like it belongs: I'm thinking of American, sort of trashy, best-selling (or would-be) fiction, or however you want to describe it - writers like Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susann, Grace Metalious (Peyton Place)... not sure who else - maybe Danielle Steele, Sidney Sheldon? (...) I may yet get around to reading more Robbins, as his entire ouevre sits on a shelf in our house - my partner really likes his books. So far, I've only read one: Never Leave Me, one of his lesser-known earlier novels from the 1950s, because I wanted to sample his work and that one is pretty short. It's pretty much a straight-up romance novel, but with lots of tragedy thrown in and no happy end (sorry if that's a spoiler...). However, based on that I can see why Robbins became such a popular writer, i.e., his prose is solidly composed, his characters are believable and he had an ear for realistic dialogue.
No, I wasn't planning to read that one anyway, so no spoilers for me. According to the wiki article, Robbins once had three books on the best-seller list at the same time, so those are probably the ones I'll look for - The Carpetbaggers, and two others I forget. And apparently Jacqueline Susann duplicated this feat, so I'll look for those three of hers as well - unless of course I fend up not liking the first one I try of either author.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,143 
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Post by Confessor on Aug 9, 2021 17:57:46 GMT -5
I reorganized my bookshelf last night. Thought I'd share some photos of my collection. Great photos...makes me want to browse. I also see some paperbacks that I used to own, but got rid of when I purged a third of my collection about 6 years back, which made me a little sad. Dunno if you do Reddit, but they'd love these photos over on the bookporn sub-reddit. Also, I spy some Tintin albums. Nice.  Tell me about it. I'm planning to put up four new shelves in our house in the coming weeks specifically for my wife and I's growing book collection. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 10, 2021 7:36:16 GMT -5
I reorganized my bookshelf last night. Thought I'd share some photos of my collection. Great photos...makes me want to browse. I also see some paperbacks that I used to own, but got rid of when I purged a third of my collection about 6 years back, which made me a little sad. Dunno if you do Reddit, but they'd love these photos over on the bookporn sub-reddit. Also, I spy some Tintin albums. Nice. Tell me about it. I'm planning to put up four new shelves in our house in the coming weeks specifically for my wife and I's growing book collection. I always need more shelves... my daughter is going back to college in a couple weeks, so when she clears out of the attic there will probably be a bit of a purge/reorganization... but there's never enough space |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 10, 2021 10:19:10 GMT -5
 Fletch by Gregory McDonaldI had never read this book, though I knew it was kind of a big thing when it came out in 1974 (Poe Award for Best First Novel). And, as I recall, I had only seen the Chevy Chase movie once shortly after it was released. So I only had vague memories of the film. Posing as a down-and-out drug addict, Irwin "Fletch" Fletcher is investigating drug trafficking on a beach in Southern California. He's waiting to find the mystery supplier before he breaks the story and getting heat from his editor for the delay. While there, he's approached by millionaire businessman Alan Stanwyk who offers Fletch $50,000 to kill him and make it look like a burglary gone bad. Stanwyk, says he's suffering from bone cancer and wants to save himself the pain and ensure his family gets a big insurance policy. Fletch starts investigating Stanwyk while continuing his drug investigation, fighting with his editor and dodging the lawyers his various ex-wives have sent after him seeking alimony payments. This is a fun book. There are two mysteries here and, unlike the movie, they're only very vaguely connected. Fletch is a funny, cynical character with a wry wit. And that's a difference between the book and the film. This isn't Chevy Chase. The humor is less broad and decidedly understated. No tongue-in-cheek off-the-cuff name changes. And I'm fine with that. A fun book that's a nice mid-way between the hardboiled investigator and the everyman noir with enough humor to set it apart. I'll be reading the second book in a bit. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,143
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Post by Confessor on Aug 12, 2021 9:41:51 GMT -5
In the Wings: My Life with Roger McGuinn and The Byrds by Ianthe McGuinn.  To be honest, I really wasn't expecting much from this memoir from head-Byrd Roger McGuinn's first wife and had pretty much written it off as a bit of a cash-in of dubious reliability before I'd even cracked it open. Surprisingly, it's actually a rather engaging and interesting read. Inathe met Roger (or Jim, as he was then known) before the Byrds became famous and was with him through until the early 70s. So, she was there for the band's meteoric rise on the back of hits like "Mr. Tambourine Man", "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and "Eight Miles High" and their groundbreaking psychedelic rock and country-rock albums in the mid-to-late 60s, as well as the band's commercial decline in the latter half of the decade and early 70s. Ianthe is no great writer, you understand, but her ability to recollect elements of the Byrds' career which can be verified – even fairly obscure ones – is very good. This, in turn, lends credence to her reminiscences about aspects of their career and her private life with Roger that were previously unknown. I'd read in reviews that Roger doesn't come out of the book looking too good, but I think that's unfair. The McGuinns married very young and as the years wore on, its clear that Roger simply fell out of love with his wife and began a series of extra-marital affairs. At no time in the book do Roger's actions seem overly cruel or unthinking: in fact, he repeatedly goes out of his way to protect his wife and family from his romantic indulgences and the excesses of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. At least, that was my reading of the events. One aspect of the book which I found quite interesting was Ianthe's Mexican-American upbringing and her experiences of being a Latina woman in the 1960s. I wasn't expecting that aspect of the book to be as interesting as it was. Ultimately she and Roger separate and divorce, as he marries one of his lovers, and Ianthe forges a new path as a single mother and nurse. This is definitely a book for Byrd nuts like me and not something that I would recommend to a casual fan of the band. It's also written in a rather amateurish way – although Ianthe's unaffected prose style certainly has its charm. But that said, her story of a young Mexican-American girl in the eye-of-the-storm of the '60s rock revolution and how that lifestyle crashed and burned in the early 70s is both fascinating and rather poignant at times.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2021 11:24:04 GMT -5
"Read" through the two art books I picked up this weekend at the con over the last 2 days. There's actually some text putting each picture in context or offering some anecdote about the book or the issue in the Savage Sword art book, but aside form the intro and the afterword, the Mignola book is all artwork, so read is a strong word for these. Peruse might be better. But they were worth the look as there is some amazing art in both, and some interesting tidbits in the SSOC write up. And in the Mignola book, I don't think I would have ever seen his version of the Flintstones or Frankenstein Jr. anywhere else.   -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 12, 2021 13:53:10 GMT -5
 The Horror on the Links (The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin #1) by Seabury QuinnThe history of Weird Tales is incredibly interesting and not at all what you'd expect given the out-sized influence the pulp has had on the history of fantasy and horror literature and pop culture in general. And within Weird Tales there are things that, looking backward nearly a century, are incredibly surprising. Seabury Quinn was a name I knew...but that was pretty much it. He barely registered in the company of the "leading lights" of Weird Tales authors; Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, etc. So to find out that Seabury Quinn was not just the most prolific contributor to Weird Tales, but that he usually topped their polls of favorite authors during the time the pulp was being published was eye-opening. This is the first of four tomes that reprint the complete tales of supernatural detective Jules de Grandin. De Grandin was not the first occult detective. He followed Blackwood's John Silence and Hodgson's Thomas Carnaki among others and was roughly contemporaneous to both John Thunstone and Judge Pursuivant (both by Manly Wade Wellman). But he was probably the most successful at least through the first half of the Twentieth Century. It was a fairly simple formula. Think Sherlock Holmes pursuing vampires, werewolves, mummies and other ghosties and ghoulies. He even had his own assistant, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, who never quite figured out that the occult exists even though he was faced with it several times a year. I read this one at the rate of about one story a week. Generally I'd break it out and read a story when I'd finish a novel or on a set day of the week. I think this is the right way to read a book like this. These stories originally appeared at a rate of about seven or so a year in a monthly magazine. Spaced out, they're a fun reasonably quick read but I have no doubt they'd be incredibly same-y if read in bulk. Ultimately Quinn's work is solid pulp. No, he's not as good a writer as Howard. He's not remotely as inventive as Lovecraft (though I find him easier to read). And I probably prefer Wellman's occult detective work. It's been so long since I've read Smith or August Derleth that I just can't render an opinion. But I will say that I think Quinn has been unfairly marginalized. These are solid pulp stories that, while not ground-breaking, are fun to read. |
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Post by berkley on Aug 12, 2021 15:40:58 GMT -5
Nice-looking cover painting for that Seabury Quinn book. I feel like I must have come across some of the de Grandin stories in one of the many pulp-horror anthologies I read as a kid but the only Seabury Quinn story I can recall off the top of my head is "Roads", which I believe won some awards or perhaps it was a readers' poll, but at any rate was not a Jules de Grandin tale. But regardless, I've always liked the idea of the occult detective as a sub-genre, so I look forward to exploring this one along with any others I can find. Good to see these stories are available in a new edition.
Is there a good overall history of Weird Tales anyone would recommend?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2021 15:54:24 GMT -5
It's not a history of Weird Tales, but the Marvin Kaye edited anthology: Weird Tales-The Magazine the Never Dies is a very good representative sampler of the types of stories that ran in the pulp through its history. It's a collection of stories from the mag through it's history with an overview of the mag as part of the introduction.  -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 12, 2021 15:55:04 GMT -5
Is there a good overall history of Weird Tales anyone would recommend? There are a couple that I'm aware of, but I couldn't recommend them because I've not read them. There's The Weird Tales Story by Robert Weinberg and The Thing's Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales by John Locke (not that John Locke). The former is a small-press publication (Wildside) the latter is either small-press or self-published. My knowledge (such as it is) is pieced together from prefaces, articles, websites, etc. from decades of reading. Given the importance of Weird Tales it feels like there should have been an academic tome devoted to it by now. |
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Post by berkley on Aug 12, 2021 19:27:17 GMT -5
Definitely intend to read the Marvin Kaye anthology and I might have a look for an actual history one of these days.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 12, 2021 22:03:38 GMT -5
That sounds like interesting stuff! It always amazes me how many authors/properties of the past get left behind... there's just so much stuff out there!
Blood of Elves
Andrzej Sapkowski
This 'first' book definitely feels different that the short stories that precede it... definitely feels more like epic fantasy (which is clearly is).
The plot is nothing too Earth shattering, there is a 'good' kingdom and a 'bad' kingdom, though the good guys definitely aren't THAT good, and not particularly unified. Everyone is focused on Ciri, who, due to her lineage, seems to be the most important person in the world.
Unlike maybe books that have a most important person in the world... Ciri is much more down to earth and likeable as a character. She's the focus of about 1/2 the book, where we get a pretty standard training montage. It'll be interesting how she turns out... it's not too often characters are both Warrior and Mage. The relationship between Yennifer and Geralt continues to be infinitely interesting and strange, so that you just want to see something happen, even as both do their own thing.
I haven't quite figured out where the video game fits in (I'm not very far into the 1st one), but the characters there are pretty true to the book too, almost like it's another short story or two.
For whatever reason, this book feels different to me that your run of the mill epic fantasy, which is excellent. It's much more than just a big guy slaying monsters.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 14, 2021 7:19:09 GMT -5
The Lubetkin LegacyMarina Lewycka, 2016  Lewycka is one of my favorite contemporary authors, and I thoroughly enjoyed her four preceding novels. However, I was a bit disappointed with this one. The book's structure is divided between the two primary POV characters: the first is Berthold ('Bertie') Sidebottom, an out-of-work actor in his early fifties who lives in a Council flat (public housing unit) on the top floor of a residential building in London. Initially, he's living with his mother, Lily, in whose name the tenancy of their apartment is registered. She's an old-style, public-minded socialist type who refused the option to buy the place during the various waves of public housing privatization that began in the 1980s. In fact, she named her son after Berthold Lubetkin, a renowned 20th century modernist architect who designed many public buildings in the UK, including the building they live in (and with whom she claimed to have a brief affair back in the late 1940s). She dies early on in the book, and her dying words to her son are "Don't let them get the flat!" And Bertie spends much of the rest of the book finding ways to retain tenancy over the large two-bedroom unit, going so far as to move in an elderly Ukrainian woman who was hospitalized in the same room as his mother to pretend to be her (all of this to circumvent various regulations applied to public housing in the UK). The other main character is Violet, a fresh-out-of-college biracial woman who came to England as a young girl when her family immigrated from Kenya. She's starting her first job in a global insurance and investment company in the City, and she moves into the apartment next door to Bertie's. For a while, their stories become intertwined, as initially Bertie develops sort of a (creepy) crush on Violet, and both become involved in efforts to prevent the construction of a new apartment building in the lot immediately adjacent to their building, which is currently a small park with a grove of cherry trees. Violet also quickly becomes disillusioned with her job because she's upset by all of her company's questionable practices in developing countries like Kenya. Like all of Lewycka's books, this one has a very light, humorous tone, even as she deals with a number of very real and serious sociopolitical issues. I found it particularly interesting that this book was published the same year as the Brexit vote, since she also touches on some of the issues around immigration that drove that campaign. In all, this isn't necessarily a bad book, but the story is kind of uneven. This is particularly true of the sections involving Violet, which kind of take an odd turn when she quits her job and starts working for an NGO based in Nairobi. So she's taken her far away from what was until then the main story, and her own sub-plot takes an oddly dark turn near the end of the book. I'd recommend reading Lewycka's earlier books, esp. her debut novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, before picking this one up.
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