It's Lee Goldberg and his lovely wife, Valerie, stopping by to say "hey" on their way to Galveston for the day. Great visit, and it was a pleasure to meet Valerie in person. Look for Lee to be posting a video or two on his Brash Books YouTube Channel.
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Look Who Dropped by for a Visit
It's Lee Goldberg and his lovely wife, Valerie, stopping by to say "hey" on their way to Galveston for the day. Great visit, and it was a pleasure to meet Valerie in person. Look for Lee to be posting a video or two on his Brash Books YouTube Channel.
The Mrs. Piggle -Wiggle Series Was Judy's Favorite When She Was a Child
Q&A: Ann M. Martin and Annie Parnell from the 'Missy Piggle-Wiggle' Series: If you grew up on The Never-Want-to-Go-to-Bedders Cure, The Thought-You-Saiders Cure, and The Slow-Eaters-Tiny-Bite-Takers Cure, then you're going to need a Don't-Speed-on-the-Way-to-the-Bookstore Cure, because the wonderful world of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is back.
A new school approach to critiquing dime novel Westerns
Beyond the Classroom - Digitizing classic fiction: Ellie Redding grew up outdoors in Southern California, often spending weekends in Death Valley with her family, and fell in love with the desert and the great wide open spaces. She's a senior now, and that abiding affection for the West has led Redding to take a serious look into how the popular vision of the cowboy days was created.
Hat tip to Beth Foxwell.
Hat tip to Beth Foxwell.
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee. . . .
Fort Walton Beach, FL: FORT WALTON BEACH — A 28-year-old Fort Walton Beach woman was charged with battery after gouging her ex-boyfriend with her nails during an argument.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Friday, September 09, 2016
The World's Most Expensive Book
The World's Most Expensive Book: This is the world's most expensive book. You are looking at the Bay Psalm Book printed in 1640, which sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $14.2 million on November 26, 2013.
FFB: Hard-Boiled Detectives: 23 Great Stories from Dime Detective Magazine, Dziemianowicz, Stefan R., Robert Weinberg and Martin H. Greenberg, editors.
As we all know, I don't read long books. Well, not often. I sat down with this one and read every single story, over 400 pages of pure pulp. As the title says, there are 23 stories. What it doesn't say is that they're all from Dime Detective and that the editors chose one story from each year of the magazine's existence. It also doesn't say why a particular story was chosen. I enjoyed most of the stories, but not all. Here are a few thoughts.One story I had to struggle with was Max Brand's "Nine Parts Devil." Brand's style bothered me, and his dialogue seemed pretty awful to me. I'd never read a Vee Brown story by Carroll John Daly, and it was kind of fun. Brown has the same attitude that Race Williams does, but Brown is a small guy who was pushed around a lot when he was young. Then he realized that a gun makes everyone equal and became a hunter of criminals, most of whom he kills when he finds them. He has a sideline under his real first name, Vivian, that's very different from his crime-busting. Erle Stanley Gardner's "The Hand of Horror" is different from anything I'd read by him. It's very contrived, and it could well have shown up in the shudder pulps without much alteration. I wasn't familiar with D. L. Champion's stories about a legless cop who might be a little bit nuts. Very interesting, and "Footprints on a Brain" is the first story in a long series. I'd be interested in reading more of them. Chandler's "The Lady in the Lake" seemed head and shoulders above the others, but they I'm probably prejudiced. I was a bit disappointed in Murray Leinster's story. The work I've read by him outside the SF field always seems weaker to me, though. John D. MacDonald's "The Man from Limbo" was very much a MacDonald story, but it leaned more on a lot of amateur psychology than I'd have expected. The book is what I'd call a good but not great anthology. Lots of good stuff, some not so good, most of it easy to forget. But fun while you're reading it. If you like pulp tales, the kind of stories where every character is smoking on every page, where detectives duck into all-night drugstores to make phone calls, where all the men wear hats, it's hard to go wrong with this volume
Contents: Hell's Pay Check (1931) by Frederick Nebel; The Crime Machine (1932) by Carroll John Daly; The Hand of Horror (1933) by Erle Stanley Gardner; Nine Parts Devil (1934) by Max Brand; A Burial is Arranged (1935) by John Lawrence; A Man's Last Hours (1936) by William E. Barrett; Something for the Sweeper (1937) by Norbert Davis; Footprints on a Brain (1938) by D.L. Champion; The Lady in the Lake (1939) by Raymond Chandler; Strangler's Kill (1940) by Merle Constiner; Ding Dong Belle (1941) by Hugh B. Cave; You Slay Me, Baby (1942) by Frederick C. Davis; Sleep No More My Lovely (1943) by G.T. Fleming-Roberts; I'll Slay You in My Dreams (1944) by Bruno Fischer; No Minimum for Murder (1945) by Julius Long; A Ghoul and His Money (1946) by C.M. Kornbluth; Cold Storage (1947) by Robert Turner; Death Comes Gift-Wrapped (1948) by William P. McGivern; A Dish of Monicide (1949) by Hank Searls; Safe As Any Sap (1950) by William Tenn; None But the Lethal Heart (1951) by William C. Gault; The Man From Limbo (1952) by John D. MacDonald; Murderer's Encore (1953) by Murray Leinster
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Con Lehane on “Stella by Starlight”
Con Lehane on “Stella by Starlight” | Trace Evidence: Con Lehane is the author of the Brian McNulty series of mystery novels, as well as this year’s Murder at the 42nd Street Library, which received a starred review from Kirkus. Here he talks about the inspiration behind his story “Stella by Starlight,” which appears in the current issue of AHMM.
The New “ABC for Book Collectors”
The New “ABC for Book Collectors”: If there’s any one book about books that I always keep within reach, it’s John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors. For about twenty years, my go-to reference has been the seventh edition (1995), edited and revised by Nicolas Barker. But now the time has come--not for deaccessioning, mind you, but for shelf rearrangement--because Oak Knoll Press has just released the ninth edition of this classic, with a completely revised text and a sleek design.
My edition is a much earlier one. I don't have it handy, but I bought it around 1967.
My edition is a much earlier one. I don't have it handy, but I bought it around 1967.
Peru Update
Video shows men chasing after strange 'glowing' figure at gas station in Peru
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
All Right!
Daily Mail Online: Grandson of ABBA legend Benny Andersson set to follow in his famous relative's footsteps after brilliant performance on Sweden's Pop Idol
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee. . . .
. . . and Texas leads the way! Authorities say man smashed police cruiser with toilet lid
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Meet The Tree That’s Older Than The United States
Meet The Tree That’s Older Than The United States: It’s known as the Endicott Pear Tree. By most accounts, it’s the oldest living cultivated fruit tree in all of North America, despite it not even being native to the continent.
Leslie H Martinson, R. I. P.
BBC News: Leslie H Martinson, a prolific director of US television whose credits included the 1966 film version of Batman, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 101.
Mystery of The Lost Amber Room
Amusing Planet: In the grand palace of Catherine I, the second wife of Peter the Great and Empress of Russia, there once existed a magnificent golden room adorned from floor to ceiling with precious amber, gold and other semi-precious stones. For nearly two hundred years the Amber Room dazzled visitors to the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg. But then the Nazis invaded, and the Amber Room, with its 6 tons of amber valued between $140–500 million, vanished without a trace.
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
The Reel Walk Downs
True West Magazine: The walk down to the lot behind the O.K. Corral has become a ritual in Tombstone productions—re-created, imitated and parodied in perhaps two dozen movies and TV shows, the first step of which, like the crossing of the Rubicon, changes history and becomes mythology. Here are eight of our favorites.
Overlooked TV: The Jack Benny Show
A few years ago I bought some dollar DVDs that each had three of Jack Benny's TV shows on them. The one I watched had a show from 1953 with Humphrey Bogart as the guest, the New Year's show from 1957 with Jayne Mansfield putting in a brief appearance, and a show with Liberace from around the same time.I always preferred Benny on radio, but I have to admit that there's no way radio could compete with the appearance of Jayne Mansfield. It's just something you have to see to believe. The rest of the show took place right in front of the curtain with Benny doing a "talent show" with Mel Blanc as one of the contestants. Blanc did some animal impressions, and there were some sight gags that wouldn't have worked on radio. As there were with the Landrews Sisters. Lots of fat jokes that wouldn't go over at all now.
The Liberace show had a sketch with Benny and Lee in Lee's mansion (furnished with dozens of candelabras, of course. Then Lee and Benny share a piano/violin duet on "September Song," with Benny clowning it up most of the time. However, at one point he plays it straight and shows that he's not bad at all.
The Bogart show also has a sketch, with Bogart as a tough crook arrested by tough cop Benny. It's an okay sketch, but I think radio would've been just as good for it.
What really stands out in all three shows is the hard-sell commercials for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Wow. I saw these all the time when I was a kid, but I'd forgotten what they were like. The shows are worth watching for the commercials alone. No wonder everyone smoked. If I'd had a Lucky handy, I'd have lit one up.
Monday, September 05, 2016
Hugh O'Brian, R. I. P.
LA Times: Hugh O'Brian, who helped tame the Wild West as the star of TV's “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp” and was the founder of a long-running youth leadership development organization, has died. He was 91.
Hat tip to Fred Zackel.
Hat tip to Fred Zackel.
The Prisoner at 50
BBC News: It was 50 years ago, on 5 September 1966, that the cameras rolled for the first time in the Italianate village of Portmeirion as filming got under way for the cult 1960s adventure TV show The Prisoner.
Sunday, September 04, 2016
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
![Further Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles (Cash Laramie & Gideon Miles Series Book 9) by [Grainger, Edward A.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51FGAt3iCfL.jpg)
Further Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles (Cash Laramie & Gideon Miles Series Book 9) - Kindle edition by Edward A. Grainger. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. Further Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles picks up where the two previous Edward A. Grainger short story collections left the lawmen in 1880’s Wyoming and takes them through to forty years later in The Big Easy.
Once Again Texas Leads the Way
Bravewords.com: With seven Billboard Top 10 albums to their name, multiple Platinum album certifications all over the world and a place in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, the legendary ZZ Top are officially the world’s longest running rock band with its original lineup intact.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)