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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2022 16:54:26 GMT -5
This is the first Gollancz UK edition I mentioned...  -M |
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Post by berkley on Jan 26, 2022 20:47:06 GMT -5
While we're talking recommendations, I've never read any of Robert E. Howard's Conan books. Which one is the best and most accessible; I don't want to necessarily start with the first, if there are better books later on...and assuming that I could jump in as a new reader with a later book. So, which book is most likely to make me fall in love with the series? since it is almost all short stories and not novels, I would say any of the three Del Rey collections is the best place to start. They go chronologically by release date I believe. Coming of Conan, Bloody Crown of Conan and The Conquering Sword of Conan are the three books in the series, but you can start with any one of them. These are form the Howard originals not the de Camp/Carter edits. If you can find them, Gollancz did a 2 volume set in the UK doing essentially the same thing (Howard edits not de Camp, chronological by release not in order they happened in Conan's life), the only difference is they use UK spellings not US so colour not color etc. These slightly predated the Del Rey version by a couple of years, so I have these as well as the Del Rey versions. They were later combined into a single volume. Whichever you choose, I suggest the Howard originals not the de Camp edits in the Ace/Lancer editions. If you read them in published order (not in order of where the occur in Conan's life) you get a better sense of the range of types of stories and various "careers" of Conan as an adventurer (king, thief, pirate, mercenary, etc.). If you are looking for which stories to start with, that's a different animal than which books to read. I'd say pick 3 one form the early oeuvre, one in the middle, and one near the end, say Tower of the Elephant (the 3rd published story) People of the Black Circle (the 11the published story) Red Nails (the last published story) to get a sense of writing at different stages. If you want a novel, Hour of the Dragon is the only novel-length adventure, and it comes near the end of the published stories. But again, find something that uses the Howard originals, not the deCamp/Carter edits to get the true flavor of Howard. -M (Slam posted essentially the same thing while I was typing)
Thanks for mentioning that Gollancz collection, which I hadn't known about till now. I'm missing one or more of the Del Rey/Ballantine Conan books and it looks like I can get the single-volume Gollancz edition for around the same price, so that gives me another option.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 27, 2022 4:10:50 GMT -5
since you're in the UK, the two Gollanz books might be your best bet - esp. if you decide to look for them online. Inexpensive used copies are pretty easy to find and - unlike me - you won't have to worry about postage doubling the price. Just in case, here's the isbns to make your searches easier: 9781857989960 (vol.1 ) and 9781857987478 (vol. 2). By the way, if the cover art is important to you, be aware that later editions/printings of the first volume look like this:  |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,222 
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Post by Confessor on Jan 27, 2022 18:28:58 GMT -5
Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Looks like the Del Ray collections would be my first choice (I like the interior artwork), but the Gollanz collections certainly look like a decent alternative. Pity the 70s Ace/Lancer paperbacks have edited text, because the Frank Frazetta cover art on those is great.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 27, 2022 22:23:18 GMT -5
The Ace/Lancer ones are the ones I have, (mostly for the covers). I can't say the non Howard stuff is worth it though.... I definitely need to get one of the others at some point.
Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief
by Maurice Le Blanc
This is another of those examples of us uncouth Americans ignoring the rest of the world. I had sort of heard of Lupin from the anime, but had no idea it was a turn of the century character that was a French response to Holmes until I looked up the details after watching the most excellent Netflix series of the same name.
This is a 'best of' collection of short stories, and took 5 months for me to get from the library (there are few copies and alot more interest due to the show, I'm sure). The early ones are quite fun, as Lupin the thief does miraculous things with his planning, knowledge of human nature, and mastery of disguise.. he even bests the visiting Sherlock Holmes in one story, which is quite fun.
Later stories (by public demand, accounting to the most excellent article in the forward), show Lupin drifting more toward the side of good, ending on a series of stories where he's a full blown detective saving the world to impress his female companion.
Those later stories feel like poor Holmes pastiches, but those early ones are great, plenty of adventure and satire to go around. I'll definitely check out one of the novels at some point
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Post by berkley on Jan 28, 2022 0:03:16 GMT -5
Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Looks like the Del Ray collections would be my first choice (I like the interior artwork), but the Gollanz collections certainly look like a decent alternative. Pity the 70s Ace/Lancer paperbacks have edited text, because the Frank Frazetta cover art on those is great. I have a few of them just because they look so nice, but yeah, next time I read REH it'll be the Del Reys or maybe the Gollancz Conan. I have a few of the Del Reys already: Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, a couple of the Conans, and a horror collection. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2022 0:28:41 GMT -5
I loved the Ace/Lancer stuff in high school. It was my first exposure to Howard's writing. The first Conan prose I read though was the Conan pastiche novels that were overseen by de Camp and Carter that followed the Lancer/Ace series (Conan the Swordsman, Conan the Liberator, Conan The Sword of Skelos, Conan the Rebel, Conan an the Spider-God, etc.) which featured writers like Karl Edward Wagner, Poul Anderson and Bjorn Nyberg along with de Camp and Carter, so I definitely have a soft spot for those because of nostalgia, but once I read the unexpurgated Howard in the Gollancz and Del Rey versions, it was essentially game over for me for those books. Every time I have read the Conan oeuvre since, it's pretty much been the Del Rey books. About 2 years ago, I decided to do a reread of the Lancer/Ace stuff, mostly to check out the non-Howard stories and the finished fragments. It's taken me 2 years and I am still only about halfway through. I sometimes have to force myself to get through some of the stuff. I have shelves of Conan pastiches, but most of it is still unread, but I do keep coming back to the Howard originals.
I have almost all of the Del Rey Howard volumes. I think I am missing the two best of anthologies they did, but I think I have all the rest. My favorite is still the Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard collection. I also have a large chunk of the two series that attempted to collect all of the Howard's Weird Tales stories in chronological order by release date, and a number of other volumes that collect his non-Weird Tales fiction. I don't think I have every story written by Howard, but I'm pretty damn close. He's one of the few authors that I have a large chunk of his stuff in several different editions, I am pretty sure that I have over 50 Howard paperbacks in addition to the Lancer 12 book series and the Del Rey Conan trio of books, and a couple of hardcovers thrown in. It got to the point where if I ran across a Howard paperback in a used bookstore or at a con, I was not sure if it was one I had or not without consulting a list, and way too often I didn't have the list so I ended up buying duplicates, so I stopped buying them. I know there are some I don't have, but I am not sure how many have stories I don't own in them, and I've not quite gotten to the point of creating a story checklist of REH stiff to see what I don't have.
-M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 28, 2022 13:29:23 GMT -5
 A Man Without Breath by Philip KerrBernie Gunther returns in his ninth outing, though certainly not that from internal chronology. Having returned from the Ukraine, Gunther is working for the Wermacht's War Crimes Bureau, which is largely directed by Prussian nobility. Gunther discovers the Katyn Forest Massacre and is manipulated by Propaganda Minister Goebbels in to administering the investigation. Of course he also gets drug in to another series of murders and a long-running conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. And being Bernie Gunther, he can't help but irritate most of those around him. This is a pretty strong entry, marred by a few items that just seemed tacked on for the sake of a novel. There's a love interest, because...there seems to have to be one. And the ending is pretty weak, with the Abwehr coming in to save the day at the last minute. Again, Kerr does his homework, and there's a lot of interesting history here, so have your preferred reference material available, because you're going to want to dig deeper on a lot of the characters. |
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Post by berkley on Jan 28, 2022 14:02:14 GMT -5
I have almost all of the Del Rey Howard volumes. I think I am missing the two best of anthologies they did, but I think I have all the rest. My favorite is still the Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard collection. I also have a large chunk of the two series that attempted to collect all of the Howard's Weird Tales stories in chronological order by release date, and a number of other volumes that collect his non-Weird Tales fiction. What were those two series with the WT stories in order called? Also the non-WT ones. Are all these by Del Rey too? |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2022 14:17:59 GMT -5
I have almost all of the Del Rey Howard volumes. I think I am missing the two best of anthologies they did, but I think I have all the rest. My favorite is still the Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard collection. I also have a large chunk of the two series that attempted to collect all of the Howard's Weird Tales stories in chronological order by release date, and a number of other volumes that collect his non-Weird Tales fiction. What were those two series with the WT stories in order called? Also the non-WT ones. Are all these by Del Rey too? No not by Del Rey. Let me go upstairs and snap a pic of those for you. I'll get it in a few minutes. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2022 14:44:26 GMT -5
So the two publishers involved with the stuff I have were Wildside Press and the University of Nebraska Press. The Weird Tales collections were both by Wildside and they did it in two formats, regular sized paperbacks, and oversized trade paperbacks (book term not comic term). They sometimes shared titles, but the content was different in the titles-as sometimes a title used for the paperback series was a certain volume number but in the oversized series was a different voulme number, and the trade dress on the oversized books was not always clear it was part of a series. I have 5 volumes of the regular paperback series, but only two of the oversized. The series was titles The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard The regular paperback series   and the oversized volumes front and back...   again page counts are different and stories in volume 1 of one format might be in volume 2 of the other format because of it, so they are not interchangeable if you are trying to mix and match to get a complete series. Wildside also did volumes of non-Weird Tales Howard, but were thematic not systematic, such as this one...   University of Nebraska Press also did a series of thematic collections, mixing Weird Tales and non-Weird Tales content depending on the theme. I only have two of those volumes...   I am not sure how many volumes overall Uof Neb produced, I think I have seen at least one other. These are in addition to tall the Howard paperback collections of 70s and 80s vintage I have that collect many of the same tales, and I stopped buying these because I was getting so much repetition of stories I already owned. I know there are volumes of the oversized Weird Works I don't have, but I am not sure about the paperback sized ones. I believe there was a sixth volume released in that series, but I haven't tried to track it down, as I bought most of these prior to my returning to comics after a hiatus in 2012 and haven't had them on my radar since. -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 28, 2022 14:47:54 GMT -5
Wildside is a small press publisher and, obviously, U of Neb is academic. For those reasons neither keep books in print very long and they tend to be hard to find (and can get pricy) if you don't buy them when they first come out.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2022 14:50:12 GMT -5
Wildside is a small press publisher and, obviously, U of Neb is academic. For those reasons neither keep books in print very long and they tend to be hard to find (and can get pricy) if you don't buy them when they first come out. I got lucky, I picked up all of these at Half Price Books over the span of a year or two, all at 1/2 msrp, but I haven't seen any at HPB in a looong time. -M |
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Post by berkley on Jan 28, 2022 23:36:28 GMT -5
That's great info, thaks mrp. I've probably missed the boat, as far as finding them at a reasonable price is concerned but I'll keep an eye out for them anyway, you never know.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 29, 2022 19:34:56 GMT -5
I have that treasure of the Tartary book.. got it for $1 at a used book story. IIRC, one of the stories in there was turned into a Conan story my Roy Thomas in the comics
Bad News: The Turbulent Life of Marvin Barnes
by Mike Carey
Boy, talk about self-destructive! Barnes is a bit before my time, but from my dad and reading about the ABA, I definitely knew about it, but I never would have imagined anyone could get sucked in by drugs time and time again like this guy, yet still have so many people willing to help (perhaps enable) and try again.
I'm not sure if that's heart warming or sad. This book is definitely written by a friend, and presenting as much 'good side' as there can be... I can only imagine what the opposing view might look like.
There was enough fun basketball stories in the first half to satisfy my desire for those, though.
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