Saturday, April 27, 2013
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
In the past, Marshal Everett Tolliver and Sam Blaylock haven't seen exactly eye-to-eye on things involving the ranch hands. Tolliver intends to hold the peace in town no matter what the cost. But he's going to need help if he's going to find out who murdered Jessie Holden in cold blood.
Even after they've set there differences aside for the time being, Sam and Tolliver still have to put their lives at risk to hold the line in Shooter's Cross in a gundown on Main Street that will become a legend.
Emilie and the Hollow World -- Martha Wells
Let me say right off the bat that I'm a sucker for hollow world stories. Put me in Pellucidar or send me off on a journey to the center of the Earth, and I'm a happy guy. So naturally I was predisposed to like this book. It doesn't disappoint.
The story takes place on an Earth-like world in a steam-punky time in which sorcerers can work with the aetheric current and find pathways to the underground world, which can be reached through the sea or through an opening like a volcano. The first man to make such a journey has disappeared, and his daughter, Lady Marlende, has mounted an expedition to go and look for him.
Emilie is a runaway, and with good reasons, which we discover as the story moves along. She wants to go to live with her cousin and go to school. To get there, she has to stowaway on a ship. Her plans are upset by some mysterious doings on the docks, and she winds up on the Sovereign, the ship that's about to descend below the ocean. By the time she's discovered, the trip is underway and the adventures have begun.
Wells is excellent, as always, at world-building, and the societies that Emilie and the others encounter are interesting and believable. There's plenty of intrigue, danger, and action, too, and Emilie proves herself more than capable of dealing with just about any emergency. If you read YA fiction, this one is great fun and should be on your list.
The Folio Society: Devoted to Beautiful Books
AbeBooks: The Folio Society: Devoted to Beautiful Books: Standing like an island amid the sea of cheap mass produced paperbacks and formulaic new releases from the latest bright young things is the Folio Society. This organization is half publisher, half book club (as it has members) and was founded in 1947 on the principle that books should be beautiful to the eye as well as captivating to the mind.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
Amazon.com: Heaven's Fire (A Fireworks Thriller) eBook: Sandra Balzo: Kindle Store: "Heaven's Fire" may be what Pasquale Firenze, patriarch of the family-owned Firenze Fireworks, calls his painting of the night sky with light, color and sound, but television producer Wendy "Jake" Jacobus has more practical considerations than her featured showman's artistry. Or so she believes, until Pasquale is killed--live on-camera--by an explosion, and Jake is hurled into a tangled web triggered by her job, her legacy as a cancer survivor, and her growing attraction to Simon Aamot, the federal agent assigned to the investigation. Aamot has problems as well, but when the two are forced together by the tragedy, the man unable to let go of his past and the woman afraid to trust her future must race to prevent another catastrophic explosion--this one at the county's Fourth of July celebration.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Amazon.com: Mafiya eBook: Charlie Stella: Kindle Store: The Russian Mob is on the rise in New York City, but the younger brother of the boss is making waves taking risks that can bring down everybody--a snuff film unsanctioned by the boss. A former prostitute, Agnes Lynn, loses her best friend to the younger brother of the Russian Mob and seeks revenge. A starred review crime novel that intrigues start to finish.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Amazon.com: When Mars Attacked: Orson Welles, The War of the Worlds & the Radio Broadcast That Changed America Forever eBook: David Acord: Kindle StoreOn October 30, 1938, Orson Welles broadcast a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds…and the country would never again be the same. Written in a realistic style that mimicked “breaking news” bulletins, the play convinced listeners from coast to coast that the United States was actually being invaded by Martians. The ensuing panic made Welles an overnight sensation – and one of the most hated men in America.
The War of the Worlds panic was one of the twentieth century’s defining moments, and remains an indelible part of our culture. But serious questions and misconceptions still linger. Did Orson Welles actually intend to “trick” the American public? Was the broadcast a hoax or an unfortunate accident? Did listeners commit suicide and drive their cars off of bridges, as rumors claimed? How exactly did he come up with the idea in the first place? And most importantly – why did so many people believe that what they were hearing on the radio was real?
When Mars Attacked tells the riveting true story of the broadcast: Orson Welles’ sudden rise to fame in the mid-1930s; the social and political forces of the Great Depression and an impending World War that aligned to create a “perfect storm” of anxiety leading up to the broadcast; the massive controversy that followed in its wake; and the untold story of how close the country came to imposing sweeping restrictions on free speech in order to ensure that nothing like The War of the Worlds panic ever happened again.
Incorporating never-before-seen government documents and rare correspondence locked away in the National Archives for decades, When Mars Attacked is a first-rate nonfiction account of a pivotal moment in American history. Author and veteran Washington, D.C. journalist David Acord offers a vivid retelling of that fateful night in 1938, essentially re-reporting the chaos minute by minute just as it unfolded, in a fast-paced, riveting “tick-tock” fashion.
The War of the Worlds still haunts us, and offers a sobering lesson on what can happen when embattled citizens lose both hope and their sense of perspective in the midst of dismal economic conditions and international military threats. Although it was broadcast more than seven decades ago, Orson Welles’ radio play is more relevant than ever.
Gator Update (Golf Edition)
Three-Legged Alligator Crosses Fairway During Golf Tournament
Video at the link.
Hat tip to Angela Neary.
Video at the link.
Hat tip to Angela Neary.
George Jones, R. I. P.
George Jones, country superstar, has died at 81: George Jones, whose supple Texas voice conveyed heartbreak so profound that he became perhaps the most imitated singer in country music, died Friday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville after being hospitalized with high fever and irregular blood pressure. He was 81.
Forgotten Books: A Dark Traveling -- Roger Zelazny
It's also pretty hard to describe because the plot is pretty complicated once you sit down and start thinking about it. The story begins, as a lot of Zelazny's work does, in the middle of things. The reader doesn't know what's going on, and it takes a while to catch up. In the prologue, a girl named Becky, a witch, is having visions. She doesn't know what they mean, and neither does the reader. Some of them don't become clear until the very end of the book.
Aside from the prologue, the book is narrated by James Wiley, who's fourteen and who's a werewolf, though he's never gone through a complete transformation yet. Becky is his sister, except that she's really not, and his brother, Barry, isn't really his brother, either. His father, who's really his father has disappeared. There's blood on the floor, and the transcomp is damaged.
Eventually we find out that a transcomp allows people to travel between the many alternate timelines, timelines created when a certain event causes one line to branch off from another. There are three different kinds of timelines, and people who have a transcomp can visit all of them. Naturally there are some you don't want to visit.
All of that is just the setup, but you can probably guess that there's going to be some timeline travel, that there are big events involved, and that James Wiley will go through a full transformation. The best writing in the book, and the most like the Zelazny I enjoy, is the transformation scene. Great stuff. Maybe the best werewolf transformation ever. The rest of the book doesn't live up to it, but it's very short, it's a good adventure, and I got a little fun out of reading it again.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Amazon.com: My Short, Happy Life In "Jeopardy!" eBook: Brendan DuBois: Kindle Store: From award-winning mystery author Brendan DuBois comes this unique and inside view of America's favorite gameshow, "Jeopardy!" As a lifelong reader, fan of trivia and watcher of "Jeopardy!", DuBois tried twice to become a contestant on this Emmy-award winning show. But the third time proved to be a charm as he successfully auditioned for the program, and flew from his rural New Hampshire home to Los Angeles to tape his appearance and go head-to-head among some of the smartest people in America.
Along the way he reveals information such as:
-- The best way to prepare as a contestant.
-- Important websites you should visit, and books you should read. -- What's it like to be "behind the stage" as the show is taped.
-- And hey, what's Alex Trebek really like?
Skull Fragments Must Be Secured in a See-Through Plastic Bag and Weigh Less than 6 Ounces
News - Home: Transportation Security Administration agents found pottery filled with dirt and human skull fragments inside a carry-on bag at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
To Err is Human: Typos in Literature
To Err is Human: Typos in Literature on AbeBooks: Most readers find typographical errors to be one of life's little annoyances, like being stuck at a traffic light when in a hurry. For others, the publishing of a spelling or grammatical error is one of the most grievous mistakes imaginable. I personally enjoy a particularly silly error, and if it's done right, see it as a value-added perk to a book. Perhaps it's because I am such a mind-bogglingly bad speller (any of my co-workers will attest to this). Whatever the reason, I enjoy when an ordinary sentence is rendered hilarious and turned on its ear by an incorrect homonym or rogue comma.
Take the Quiz and See
Science and Technology Knowledge Quiz: Do you know more about science and technology than the average American?
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Archaeology Update
New Straits Times: A small robot has discovered three possible burial chambers under a temple in Mexico’s pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan, a find that may reveal secrets about funeral rituals in the ancient site.
The robot, dubbed Tlaloc II-TC, located the chambers in the last section of a 2,000-year-old tunnel tucked under the Temple of the Feathered Snake, surprising archaeologists who had expected to find just one room.
The robot, dubbed Tlaloc II-TC, located the chambers in the last section of a 2,000-year-old tunnel tucked under the Temple of the Feathered Snake, surprising archaeologists who had expected to find just one room.
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013): T. Jefferson Parker: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: A brilliant novel of one man's quest to protect the innocent, as he tries to face down a terrible guilt locked in his own past.
Yet Another List I'm Not On
Top 10 Ghostwritten Books as Chosen by AbeBooks: No matter where you go on the planet you will find tales of the supernatural. Spirits, spooks and spectres are everywhere. However, there is one reclusive mythical creature that particularly sparks fear in literary hearts – the ghostwriter.
J. D. Salinger Update
9 Letters From Young J. D. Salinger Unearthed - NYTimes.com: But this elusive author comes vividly to life in a series of letters he wrote from 1941 to 1943, which few people have seen in the 70 years since.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Here's the Outline for Your Next Bank Robbery Thriller
I'm not kidding. The whole novels already there, waiting for you to write it.
In Virginia's Fairfax County, Robbing Banks for the CIA
In Virginia's Fairfax County, Robbing Banks for the CIA
Will the Persecution Never End?
Mail Online: On Monday she was caught in the (illegal) act of texting and driving.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Allan Arbus, R. I. P
The Hollywood Reporter: Allan Arbus, a top-notch photographer who left that business to become an actor, most notably starring as sardonic psychiatrist Maj. Sidney Freedman on the CBS hit series M*A*S*H, has died. He was 95.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
The Dead Man Vol 5: The Death Match, The Black Death, and The Killing Floor: Lee Goldberg, William Rabkin, Christa Faust, Aric Davis, David Tully: 9781477807422: Amazon.com: Books: After dying in a freak accident, Matt Cahill inexplicably “wakes up” three months later with the disturbing ability to see things—terrible things—that others cannot. Drafted as a warrior in the battle between good and evil, Matt will stop at nothing to destroy the malevolent Mr. Dark. In The Dead Man Volume 5, a trio of sinister new stories tracks the reluctant hero on his nightmarish quest. Matt enters the violent world of underground cage fighting where a brutal DEATH MATCH becomes a fight-to-the-undead that could lead him to the truth about his reincarnation…or to a gruesome demise.
THE BLACK DEATH is a deadly new form of crystal meth that turns users into black-eyed, homicidal maniacs. Matt must destroy the virulently addictive drug before the madness spreads from a backwoods community to the entire nation.
A hydro-fracking operation resurrects an ancient, terrifying entity that pits Matt against Mr. Dark in an epic battle that began centuries ago and that will end today with the fate of mankind at stake on the blood-soaked dirt of THE KILLING FLOOR.
Croc Update (Local Legend Edition)
The Local: Nearly 40 years ago, the African nation of Mali gave former East Germany a baby crocodile as a gift. Now, Theophila is over three metres long and lives in Magdeburg's water treatment plant where she has become a local legend.
Archaeology Update
guardian.co.uk: The remains of a woman who was buried almost 4,500 years ago has been discovered in a quarry in Berkshire wearing a precious necklace of gold beads – a particularly rare find from a woman's grave, when even her near contemporary, the Amesbury archer, the richest burial of the period ever found, only had two small gold hair ornaments.
Overlooked Movies: King Solomon's Mines
Stewart Granger plays Alan Quatermain, and he was great in the role of an angsty white hunter. This film and Scarmouche made me a fan for life. And I had a crush on Deborah Kerr ever afterward. She's a woman who's come to Africa looking for her husband, who's disappeared while searching for the fabled mines of King Solomon's. Richard Carlson is her brother, who's come along to help out.
Every movie (probably all Tarzan films) I'd seen about Africa up to this point in my life had been filmed on Hollywood back lots. This one was the real thing, Africa in full Technicolor glory. The scenery and action scenes are still breath-taking even now.
The movie is essentially a road trip through Africa, though there's plenty of plot, too, with secret tribes, a wrongly deposed king, villains, trial by combat, danger lurking everywhere, and of course those mines. Wonderful stuff. I loved it when I was eight years old, and the eight-year-old that lives in me now loves it still.
Monday, April 22, 2013
This Could be OK
FX Developing 1950s Hollywood Drama From Author James Ellroy: FX has bought a drama pitch from L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy and producers Joe Roth and Clark Peterson. Based on Ellroy’s 2012 novella Shakedown, the project is set in the tabloid world and underbelly of Los Angeles circa the late 1950s and centers on the city’s top informant/operator/wire tapper/fixer, Fred Otash, who lives and works where the glamour and the grime intersect.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
World's 25 Most Popular Ghost Stories (of the 19th Century): T. M. Gray, Charles G. Waugh: 9781935573609: Amazon.com: Books: World's 25 Most Popular Ghost Stories (of the 19th Century) brings you twenty-five of the most popular ghost stories ever written together in this one collection. Stories by well-known authors such as Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allen Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, as wells as a few not so well-known authors of today, such as Wilkie Collins, F. Marion Crawford, or Margaret Oliphant, are included in this collection. These stories are classified as the World's Most Popular Ghost Stories as they were the most frequently reprinted 19th Century ghost stories as determined by Mike Ashley and William G. Contento's The Supernatural Index: A Listing of Fantasy, Supernatural, Occult, Weird, and Horror Anthologies, 1995-, a 900-page reference work. 6x9, soft cover, 496 total pages.
Richie Havens, R. I. P.
Flavorwire: Richie Havens, the legendary folksinger whose performance of “Freedom” is one of the most iconic of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, died this morning of a heart attack. He was 72.
Bob and Ray - KeenerThan Most Persons -- David Pollock
A guest review by Art Scott.
Were
this a podcast, I'd be awfully tempted to do this review as an episode of Bob
& Ray's Webley Webster Book Review feature. "The Webley Webster players will now dramatize what I think
is the most exciting scene in the whole book.
They're three days out to sea . . .". But this is a blog, and the voice of Webley Webster is stilled,
so I'll have to make do with text.
Two
young radio announcers/disk jockeys, recently demobbed from WWII, started
kidding around and doing ad lib bits at Boston's WHDH to fill the half hour
before the Red Sox games. The show was
titled Matinee with Bob and Ray, thus setting the billing, and
beginning what would be a 43-year partnership of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding,
who created a unique brand of comedy based on slightly off-center characters
dealing with absurd situations with deadpan seriousness.
I am
a proud, fanatical member of The Cult of Bob & Ray. For decades, B&R's
radio routines have been in my ear as I relaxed at home, walked, biked and
drove anywhere. At first, the material
came from the B&R tape underground, on reel-to-reel tape, then cassette,
often of dubious provenance and fidelity.
More recently, many volumes of high quality transfers have come out of
the B&R archives, on CD and MP3.
You can find them on Amazon.
This
new joint biography of "the
boys" by David Pollock is a valuable resource for B&R fans, for radio
buffs, and for cultural historians studying the evolution of American
comedy. It covers their private lives
and their career. The personal material
is simply told. Both were home-loving
family men (eleven children between them), uncomfortable with celebrity, and
remarkably untainted by “showbiz” and the angst and neuroses that have been
part of the personality package of so many famous funny men.
Their
career is a much more complicated story, at one time or another touching all
aspects of the entertainment business, often several simultaneously. The first few years after they left Boston
and went to New York are especially crazy, as they bounced around from local
radio to network shows, game shows, remotes, night club gigs and infant tv (There
are YouTube clips out there from the latter; they demonstrate that their
material at the time was ill suited for television, but they are wonderful
samples of the raw and chaotic character of live tv in the early '50s). The information density in this portion of
the narrative is very high, and could have used a graphical timeline to help sort things out.
Pollock
is himself a comedy writer with an impressive resume of tv hits. As such, he is scrupulous in identifying and
crediting the producers, directors, engineers, sound men and especially writers
who worked behind the scenes of “The Vast Bob & Ray Organization.” He
gives due credit to writers who created so many classics bits, notably radio
pioneer Ray Knight (Bob married his widow), Phil Green, and especially Tom
Koch, who mailed them gem sketches from California for thirty-three years.
As they
refined their material and their reputation grew their work became a bit became
more focused and less scrambled. They
had a run on NBC’s weekend Monitor, a series on Mutual, and for two years
beginning in 1959 (replacing Edward R. Murrow!), Bob and Ray Present the CBS
Radio Network a series of 15 minute shows that I consider the high water mark
of their art. At around the same time
they had launched and developed their pioneering advertising business,
Goulding-Elliott-Graybar Productions (motto:
“Puissance Without Hauteur”), best remembered for their long-running
Bert & Harry cartoon ads for Piel’s Beer.
The
final third of the career arc chronicled by Pollock follows their varied
activities as beloved comedy icons: their smash Two and Only show on Broadway (in July, 1971 I saw the
show on tour at Stanford University, one of the most memorable experiences of my
life); their association with Mad magazine, feature film appearances (most
notably Norman Lear’s Cold Turkey), their many appearances on Carson,
Cavett and Letterman (all huge fans), one more run on New York radio at WOR
(where Wally Ballou made an abortive run for mayor), and a Last Hurrah radio
series on NPR. There’s a bittersweet
cast to the last twelve years of their partnership, as – kept secret from
nearly everyone – Ray was slowly dying of kidney failure, and their work had to
be scheduled around his dialysis sessions.
Ray died in 1990. Happily, Bob
is still with us, having just celebrated his 90th birthday, and he, along with
Liz Goulding, Ray’s widow, provided extensive information to Pollock in
preparing this book.
Throughout,
Pollock supplies titles and brief descriptions of lots of classic B&R routines, and bits of dialogue. Fans will recognize many such, and smile as
they replay the bits in their head, but they will also be frustrated to learn
of many that are missing from their collections. There is so much
fantastic stuff; and it must be heard.
Even the three volumes of B&R scripts that were published in the
‘70s and ‘80s are inadequate. Their
humor came from character and situation -- and brilliant voice acting – and
can’t be adequately conveyed on paper (again, go look on Amazon!). However, a book is the right medium for a
biography, and Pollock has done an outstanding job.
There
are many wonderful photos, an extensive bibliography, and two indices, one
general, the other an index of B&R Parodies. I spotted only one mistake (one I suspect many Bill’s Blog
readers would have noted as well). In
discussing their early tv show, Pollock mentions an actress’s previous job on Rocky Corbett, Space Cadet. That
title, of course, is a mistaken conflation of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, the latter, of course, being the inspiration for
B&R’s long-running serial, Lawrence Fechtenberger, Interstellar Officer
Candidate (brought to you by “chocolate cookies with white stuff in between
them”).
American Cities With The Worst Health Coverage
American Cities With The Worst Health Coverage
Seepy Benton's hometown checks in at #9. He's so proud!
Seepy Benton's hometown checks in at #9. He's so proud!
Chrissy Amphlett, R. I. P.
Divinyls singer Chrissy Amphlett dies - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): Australian rock legend Chrissy Amphlett, best known as the singer of the Divinyls, has died in New York aged 53.
The charismatic frontwoman was surrounded by family and friends at her home when she died this morning.
Her husband of 14 years, former Divinyls drummer Charley Drayton, says Amphlett died of breast cancer and multiple sclerosis.
The charismatic frontwoman was surrounded by family and friends at her home when she died this morning.
Her husband of 14 years, former Divinyls drummer Charley Drayton, says Amphlett died of breast cancer and multiple sclerosis.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
San Jacinto Day!
San Jacinto Day in United States: San Jacinto Day is a day of state pride for many Texans in the United States on April 21 each year. It commemorates a battle between the Texas Army and Mexican forces about 25 miles from downtown Houston, Texas, on April 21, 1836. This became known as the Battle of San Jacinto and was a turning point for Texas' independence from Mexico.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)