Saturday, May 17, 2014
Book Giveaway Today Only!
Livia J. Washburn: Prairie Rose Publications: PRP New Release -- Mending Fences By Livia J Washb...: Livia will be giving away a digital copy of MENDING FENCES to one lucky commenter today at the Prairie Rose Publication blog! Be sure to leave your contact information in your comment--it may be your lucky day!
Friday, May 16, 2014
I Miss the Old Days
Good Vibrations: On this day 16 May in 1966, The Beach Boys released the album Pet Sounds. The album is now regarded as the masterpiece of composer-producer Brian Wilson, and is often hailed as one of the best and most influential albums in pop music.
Three Free Books!
The Education of a Pulp Writer: Three for Free!: These ebook titles are free for a few days ... The Girls of Bunker Pines, BEAT to a PULP: Superhero, and BEAT to a PULP: Round 2. If you don't have a copy yet, now is a good time!
Southern Discomfort: Tumultuous Literature set in the American South.
AbeBooks: Southern Discomfort: Tumultuous Literature set in the American South.: The American South offers famous food, memorable music and honest hospitality, but why do so many authors dwell on the dark side of this region? Books like Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston, Alex Haley’s Roots and The Color Purple by Alice Walker are acclaimed, but harrowing. Discrimination of all kinds, voodoo and other black arts, violence and murder, incest and rape – you will find them all prominently featured in Southern-themed literature.
Nancy Malone, R. I. P.
NYTimes.com: Nancy Malone, a child model in the 1940s who became a successful actress as an adult before moving to the other side of the camera as a television producer and director at a time when few women in Hollywood held those positions, died on May 8 in Duarte, Calif. She was 79.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
FFB: Juvenile Jungle
Okay, it's '50s week for the FFB folks. I have one for you.We talk about books now and then that we say are "very much of their time." Nothing could be truer of Juvenile Jungle. There's a ton of hep '50s teen slang in John McPartland's "Party for the Kids," and no doubt it helped to fuel the fear of those nasty juvenile delinquents in many an old white male reader's heart (the story appeared in Esquire). I guess Americans always have to have someone or something to fear, and in the late '40s and a lot of the '50s it was J. D.s as they were often called. Check out the movie trailer below for a filmic example. (Besides the J.D.s, we had the Dirty Reds, too, not to mention The Bomb, but that's another story.)
James T. Farrell was a big name at one time, or at least a medium name. In the '50s, reprints of his books were all over the place, mainly the ones in the Studs Lonigan trilogy. "Scarecrow" is the oldest story in the book, from 1930, and it's as rough and raw as the stories in the trilogy, which I read when I was in high school. It's not about the threatening J. D.s like those in McPartland's story, but it's scary in its own way.
Jonathan Craig's "The Bobby Soxer" isn't about a threatening J. D., either. It's about an attempted rape of an underage girl by an older man, who's arrested and charged. The story's very short, and it has a nice little snapper of an ending.Hal Ellson made a career out of writing about J. D.s, the threatening kind, and "Pistol" is a good example. No good can come of it when a pistol falls into the wrong hands.
The next time you want to time travel back to the time of J.D.s and zip guns, give this book a try.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage: The War Makers -- Kenneth Robeson (Will Murray & Ryerson Johnson)
The War Makers is a sequel to an older Doc Savage novel, The Motion Menace, which was written by Ryerson Johnson using the Robeson name. This novel is based on Johnson's outline for a follow-up book, but you don't have to have read The Motion Menace to enjoy this one.A mysterious invisible barrier that can stop planes in fight and kill anyone who comes beneath it is devastating the country. Doc Savage and his crew are on the case, and the action never lets up as the story zips from Detroit to Florida to Washington, D. C., to the North Pole. Narrow escapes abound. People are not who they seem to be. Doc uses many gadgets and devices. He even smokes a pipe! (For good reason, as we learn.)
As usual, Will Murray captures the style and storytelling technique of Lester Dent just about perfectly. The War Makers is another rousing adventure in the grand Doc Savage tradition and a fine addition to the on-going saga.
Weird Washington Monument History
The Daily Beast: From indignation over a bare-chested statue of Washington to a gift from the pope tossed in the Potomac, here are 10 interesting facts about the newly reopened Washington Monument.
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee
UPI.com: Woman arrested for disorderly intoxication following underwear throwing incident
Literary hero to zero
Literary hero to zero: The only true judge of an author's merits is posterity. But why do some literary reputations last while others founder?
Mary Stewart, R. I. P.
RIP: Mary Stewart (1916 – 2014): SF Site is reporting that author Mary Stewart died on May 10.
SHe was best known for her Arthurian fantasies, such as The Crystal Cave and The Last Enchantment among others. She also wrote children’s books and her novel The Moon-Spinners was made into a film by Disney.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Only 99 Cents for a Limited Time
Amazon.com: Once A Warrior (Mustafa And Adem 2) eBook: Anthony Neil Smith: Kindle Store: It's been three years since Mustafa Bahdoon, one-time leader of the Southside Killaz, saved his fugitive son Adem from the clutches of pirates in Somalia. But when Mustafa is asked to rescue a young girl from the gang's sex trafficking empire, he returns from retirement to seize control once again. But his coup ignites a vicious gang war on the streets of Minneapolis. Meanwhile, still haunted by guilt over the girl he left behind in Somalia, Adem reprises the role of Mr Mohammed, legendary pirate negotiator. But the CIA is on his tail and he soon finds himself unwillingly enmeshed in a deadly campaign against organised crime.
Half a world apart, survival for both father and son depends upon telling friend from enemy, truth from lie, and their own true selves from the roles they must play.
Once A Warrior is the highly anticipated follow-up to the award-winning All The Young Warriors.
The Murder Farm -- Andrea Maria Schenkel (Trans. Anthea Bell)
The Murder Farm was originally published in Germany to great success. It's a short book, more novella than novel, especially when you consider that some of its pages are taken up by intercessory prayers for the dead. As regular readers of this blog know, I prefer short books, so for me the length is just right. The book is based on a real murder of an entire family that occurred at a rural Bavarian farm in 1922, but the time period has been moved to the early '50s. The book is told through short chapters representing a number of points of view. Residents of the remote community nearest the farm appear to be responding to interview questions about the crime, and in the process reveal as much about themselves and the community as they do about the family. The reader comes to understand more about all this than any of the individuals, and the circumstances leading to the crime are bizarre and unsettling. The original murders remain unsolved, as do the ones in the book, it seems, but the reader learns the killer's identity and motive.
The prose of The Murder Farm is spare and unadorned, and it serves the novel's purpose well. I have no idea how accurate the translation is, but it certainly works well to convey the bleak themes of the novel. If you're looking for something very different, this is one you'll want to try.
Criminal Genius of the Day -- He Didn't Even Have a Gub
Wales Online: A hapless criminal wearing socks over his shoes tried robbing a bank with a breadknife – just minutes after giving the cashier his full name and address.
Such a Deal!
THE DEAD MAN Vols 1-6 are today's Kindle Daily Deal in SF&F...for just $1.99 each for the next 24 hours. If you haven't read the series, now's the time!
Brand New Buffalo Bills
Brand New Buffalo Bills: A Cody family auction unleashes numerous photographs “unknown” to Buffalo Bill Cody historians.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Herb Lotman, R. I. P.
Father of the Chicken McNugget dies: Food industry inventor and entrepreneur Herb Lotman, who developed the mass-production system for making McDonald's frozen hamburgers, has died. He was 80. He "developed the first total distribution concept for McDonald's in the late-1960s with the use of cryogenics and helped conceive the Chicken McNugget in the 1980s."
You Know You Want It
Book Spine Lightswitch Cover at Bas Bleu | UH3142: Shine a literary light on your home library or office with this colorful lightswitch cover decorated with the spines of classic novels by Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, and Sherwood Anderson. Made of wood, plastic, and paper, and measuring 2 3/4"x4 1/2" this whimsical cover fits standard toggle lightswitches. Installation hardware included.Link via Boing Boing.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Possible Interest
Tales of A Jailhouse Librarian: Challenging the Juvenile Justice System One Book At A Time: Marybeth Zeman: 9780615953878: Amazon.com: Books: In a large suburban county jail, a rolling library book cart connects boys with their new counselor, a veteran schoolteacher. Faced with their unquenchable thirst for reading to help ease the unremitting boredom of everyday life, "Mrs. Z", now, "the book-lady," gives them the opportunity to share their hopes, their disappointments, their disillusionment and most of all, their anger at a system that is crushing their spirit and dreams for the future. What Frederick Douglass advised us about education rings true today--"It's easier to build strong children than repair broken men." Tales of a Jailhouse Librarian skillfully captures the sights, sensations and rhythms of jail life. Zeman mixes journalism, memoir and character sketches with facts about the juvenile justice system, describes the various agencies, provides relevant statistics, and specific court cases that become so palatable they are easily digested.
Stone Circle Update
Stone circles found on Virginia property: The complex along Spout Run has 15 above-ground stone features. Though still under study, it could be one of the oldest man-made structures in North America still in existence and twice as old as England’s Stonehenge.
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Dead But Not Forgotten
It's release day for Dead But Not Forgotten, a audio collection of stories based on characters in Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series. My story features the character known as Bubba, and you can hear a sample of it at the link below. Check it out. If you're not into listening, the print edition is forthcoming.
Don't Be Cruel by Bill Crider, Narrated by Johanna Parker - a story from Dead But Not Forgotten by Audible on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds: Charlaine Harris' smash-hit Sookie Stackhouse series may have reached its conclusion, but the world of Bon Temps, Louisiana, lives on in this all-new collection of 15 stories. Written by a killer lineup of authors, including New York Times best-sellers Rachel Caine, MaryJanice Davidson, Jonathan Maberry and Seanan McGuire, and with introductions read by Charlaine herself, Dead but Not Forgotten puts your favorite characters center stage.
Investigating Insects: Rare Entomology Books
H.R. Giger, R. I. P.
ABC News: Swiss artist H.R. Giger, who designed the creature in Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror classic "Alien," has died at age 74 from injuries suffered in a fall, his museum said Tuesday.
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee
Mail Online: Man, 29, 'chased his girlfriend with a sword and threatened to kill her as horrified neighbors looked on'
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Overlooked Movies: Up the Down Staircase
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When I read the other day that Bel Kaufman had turned 102, I immediately thought of how much I loved her book Up the Down Staircase and then the movie that followed. They hit home with me because in the year the novel appeared (the movie came a couple of years later), I was in my second year of teaching. The fact that I wasn't teaching in a school anything at all like the one in the book and movie didn't matter. I identified strongly with a number of things that Kaufman wrote about and that the movie portrayed. I think any beginning teacher would feel the same way.Reading the book, I would never have guessed a movie could be made of it. The book is told through a sort of collage or letters, p.a. announcements, signs, memos, notes passed in class, and so on. But the movie got made, and it's really good. What makes it good is the wonderful performances, particularly Sandy Dennis's as Sylvia Barrett, a beginning teacher in an inner-city school who's trying to cope with student don't seem to want an education and administrators who don't seem to have a clue. Why would anybody take that job? And who would keep it after seeing what it was like. Sylvia Barrett plans to get out, but then she discovers that maybe she does have a purpose and a reason for being there.
The trailer just below is a cheat. It doesn't give you any real idea what the movie is like, but it's worth watching to see what things were like 50 years ago.
Monday, May 12, 2014
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee
Sun Sentinel: A fight between Davie neighbors about feeding a Muscovy duck and her ducklings sent one man to jail and another to a hospital.
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee
Woman hired removal firm to strip her ex-boyfriend's flat bare: Woman who found out her boyfriend was using online dating site took revenge by hiring removal firm to strip his flat bare - including clothes, food and even CARPETS
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