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Post by Batflunkie on Apr 2, 2024 13:56:30 GMT -5
I often think about buying art books, whether by the likes of Salvador Dali and Picasso, or by comic/pop culture artists like Boris Vallejo or Frank Frazetta, but I never do. I always kinda just think that if I want to look at the works of a particular artist I can access it all online. I guess I just see art books as potentially taking up precious shelf space that could be used for books with words in them. But at the same time, I do kinda wonder if I'm missing out. Anyone care to try and sell me on art books? My mom is fairly big into Dali as well as cookbooks, so some years ago I bought her two Dali related cookbooks that were released in English for the first time called "Les Diners De Gala" and "The Wines of Gala". They're both beautiful and fairly surreal as can be expected of Dali  |
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Post by Chintzy Beatnik on Apr 2, 2024 14:49:24 GMT -5
Try Anything Once by A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
When you're 23 books in to a continuing detective series, it's pretty clear that you like it. And it's probably at a point where the formula is set and maybe there's diminishing returns. I had thought that maybe I'd gotten to that point with Cool and Lam. But then again...maybe not. This was a super solid entry in the series 23 years and 23 books in (funny how that worked). Yeah, it's still mostly hitting the formula that was established after the end of WWII and Donald came back from service in the navy. But Gardner still throws a curve here and there. While Donald still gets himself in to a jam, it's mostly not his fault. Bertha gets him in to a case he doesn't want to take (not unusual), he really does try to keep it from spiraling out of control, and Frank Sellers is even more awful than usual. If I had a big complaint about the last few entries it's that Sellers has been made in to a quasi-antagonist. And that's a problem. On the other hand we see a nice turn in the relationship between Donald and Elsie, which is welcome. And Bertha was definitely better than usual. The real telling point is that I read this book (recognizing it's not super long) in two evenings. That's a sign that it sucked me in. I plan to read this series one of these days - assuming I like it after trying the first one - but I might try to sample it the meantime, by which I mean reading maybe two or three of them for now and coming back to the rest later on. I assume it's best to start at the beginning, but after that, would you recommend any particular ones, or just keep going in order?
I really liked the most recent release from HCC, Fools Die on Friday. It has the Raymond Chandler blurb about it being the best since the first and you wonder if that’s exaggerating but I found it to be pretty true. |
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Post by berkley on Apr 2, 2024 15:09:49 GMT -5
I plan to read this series one of these days - assuming I like it after trying the first one - but I might try to sample it the meantime, by which I mean reading maybe two or three of them for now and coming back to the rest later on. I assume it's best to start at the beginning, but after that, would you recommend any particular ones, or just keep going in order?
I really liked the most recent release from HCC, Fools Die on Friday. It has the Raymond Chandler blurb about it being the best since the first and you wonder if that’s exaggerating but I found it to be pretty true.
Thanks, and also to Slam, this gives me three titles to look for - the first two books and this one, which is #11 according to the wiki page.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,140 
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Post by Confessor on Apr 2, 2024 15:34:02 GMT -5
Talking of art books, I've been looking at some of the big coffee table collections of Bill Ward's risqué 1950s cartoons (I really like his art a lot...and not just for the ladies!). But secondhand copies are all sooooo expensive.
I "watched" a couple of TASCHEN collections on eBay that were priced at over £100 for the pair and today the seller has sent me an offer for £80 for them both. While that it a good saving, £80 is still a lot of money for a couple of used books, but that does seem to be the going rate for these saucy Ward collections.
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Apr 2, 2024 15:56:52 GMT -5
Talking of art books, I've been looking at some of the big coffee table collections of Bill Ward's risqué 1950s cartoons (I really like his art a lot...and not just for the ladies!). But secondhand copies are all sooooo expensive. I "watched" a couple of TASCHEN collections on eBay that were priced at over £100 for the pair and today the seller has sent me an offer for £80 for them both. While that it a good saving, £80 is still a lot of money for a couple of used books, but that does seem to be the going rate for these saucy Ward collections. Some of those Taschen volumes fetch a pretty penny on the secondary market, especially those related to comics and fantasy art. High production quality and limited press runs are likely the biggest factors, coupled with high demand. -M |
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Post by berkley on Apr 2, 2024 19:39:26 GMT -5
Talking of art books, I've been looking at some of the big coffee table collections of Bill Ward's risqué 1950s cartoons (I really like his art a lot...and not just for the ladies!). But secondhand copies are all sooooo expensive. I "watched" a couple of TASCHEN collections on eBay that were priced at over £100 for the pair and today the seller has sent me an offer for £80 for them both. While that it a good saving, £80 is still a lot of money for a couple of used books, but that does seem to be the going rate for these saucy Ward collections.
Fantagraphics a a good, though smallish collection a few years ago but unfortunately it looks like that one too is now over-priced. I have that one, a similar one of Dan De Carlo, and another called Humorama that has art by Bill Ward and others. All three very nice but if there were a bigger ,more comprehensive collection at a reasonable price I'd go for it.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 6, 2024 16:03:14 GMT -5
 Damned in Paradise by Max Allan Collins
It's been some time since I last read a Heller novel, but it was just like meeting up with an old friend. And this had the added attraction of a case with which I was familiar, but not overly familiar. While he's still working on the Lindbergh kidnapping, Heller is approached by old family friend Clarence Darrow to act as his investigator for his trial in The Massie Affair. I was generally familiar with the basics of the case, because Darrow is a hero of mine. But it's not one of those cases that I've made an intense study. By way of background, in September 1931, Thalia Massie, the wife of a Navy Lieutenant based in Pearl Harbor was found wandering around area of Ala Moana having clearly been assaulted in some way. Massie was related to both the Bell (Alexander Graham) family and the Roosevelt family. She was also well known for considering herself to be "better" than rest of the Navy wives. The investigation was, at best, poorly done and ultimately five non-whites (native Hawaiians, Chinese and Japanese), were charged with assaulting and raping Massie. The trial of the five ended up in a hung jury, the jury being split down racial lines. Before retrial could take place, Massie's mother, husband, and two enlisted sailors kidnapped and murdered, Joseph Kahahawai, after he refused to confess (they had previously threatened to throw another of the defendants off a cliff). Darrow was hired to defend the four on the murder charge. It was an odd case for Darrow who came out of retirement to take it. Darrow, at this point in his career, was not given to representing rich, white people. And the racially charged nature of the case and Hawaii, in general, made it an odd mix. Darrow ultimately asserted a temporary insanity defense on behalf of Lt. Massie because of the stress of his wife's assault and rape, which, according to Hawaiian law at the time inured to all the defendants. The jury (again made up of a mixture of races) came back with Manslaughter convictions, which really was a testament to Darrow's skill as a defense attorney. The Territorial Governor (under severe pressure from both the Navy and from Congress, which was threatening to put Hawaii under martial law) then commuted the sentence to one hour detention in his office. The entire case was a travesty of justice and it's a case that I've always been disappointed in Darrow for taking. I recognize that he was hurting for money after the stock market crash and fully accept that everyone deserves a vigorous defense. But...damn! He should have been better. Of course, Heller's role in this, is to figure out what really happened. And he does. It's almost universally accepted now that the five defendants who became known as the Ala Moana Boys were railroaded by the white portion of the Hawaiian police establishment. Typically Collins will find an alternate theory of the case that Heller will find out is correct. In this one, I think, Collins came up with Heller's conclusion himself. And I don't find it particularly satisfactory. But, whatcha gonna do. Still, even though I don't like the ultimate conclusion, it's a very entertaining book and it gives a ton of opportunity to look in to a time and a social situation of which I was largely unfamiliar. And Heller gets to meet a couple of real-life celebrities (besides Darrow) in an pretty organic manner in Buster Crabbe and Duke Kahanamoku. So it's another very good entry. Oh...and for those who wonder about my take...to me, the most likely scenario was that Massie was assaulted by one or more drunken Navy officers who were tired of her putting on airs. Violent crime was, contrary to what was portrayed in the media at the time (huh...go figure) very rare amongst the natives of Hawaii, be they Hawaiian, Chinese or Japanese. It was far more common among the white soldiers and sailors. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 7, 2024 10:48:16 GMT -5
Once Upon a Time in AfrikaBalogun Ojetade, 2012  I picked this one up years ago as an e-book together with Griots ( reviewed on the preceding page), as it was released by the same publisher ( MVmedia). It’s a sword & soul tale set in a fictionalized version of a past Africa that is here called Onile. The basic plot driver here involves the emperor of the vast and mighty Oyo Empire wanting to marry off his beautiful eldest daughter, Esuseeke, so he announces a tournament of the finest warriors from throughout the continent to meet in single combat, with the winner getting his daughter’s hand. The emperor, by the way, secretly wants his war chief to win and even connives to have this happen. Esuseeke, however, falls in love with someone she thinks is the war chief, but who is actually a young warrior-in-training named Akinkugbe – he, in turn, is the son of two of the empire’s two finest fighters (his father trains the empire’s elite shock troops, while his mother is a highly respected zen-master type martial artist who’s never been defeated in hand-to-hand combat by anyone, woman or man). Many of the champions who travel to Oyo to participate in the tournament have agendas of their own – including a wizard who wants to settle a blood debt with Oyo’s war chief. And also, the empire’s northern border is then invaded by a powerful army of another empire from the neighboring continent. I have mixed feelings about this. It’s a pretty entertaining story – some of the subterfuge in which the various participants in the tournament engage is almost humorous at times – and it’s impressive that Ojetade was able to have everything come together pretty coherently in less than 140 pages (yes, it’s a really short novel, almost a novella). However, the ending seems a bit rushed given the immense amount of build-up. Also the story is filled with a little too much jargon – which often necessitates consulting the helpful glossary at the back of the book. And honestly, Ojetade could have made some sections a little longer just to give the story a chance to breath and to better develop some of the characters.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 7, 2024 15:12:57 GMT -5
Chain of Thunder
Jeff Shaara
WAY back when I first discovered Jeff Shaara and I read Gods and Generals... I remember thinking the first person style was SO cool. It's been a bit since I've read any of his book (he seems to have quite a lot of them now), and this time I would it really dragged. I quickly got what he was trying to say which each of his point of view characters (he definitely makes you feel bad for Gen. Pemberton), and found myself skimming through the end.
He did have some great maps and bits for the actual battles, but the rest was a bit repetitive.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 8, 2024 17:46:00 GMT -5
 Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell by Tom Clavin
Tom Clavin, author of Wild Bill and Dodge City, which I previously read and co-author of The Heart of Everything That Is, about Red Cloud, is back and this time he's taking on Tombstone, The Earps and the Gunfight at the OK Corral. I think that at this point we can safely say I like Clavin's writing. This is popular history. He's not re-writing history or doing much in the way of new research. But his distillation of events is interesting and, while I found some omissions in Wild Bill, I didn't see any egregious omissions or errors in this one. I think you can make a good argument that the Gunfight at the OK Corral has colored the view of the American Old West more than any other single event. It has all those classic elements. The gunfight. Law versus lawlessness (though which side was which is occasionally in dispute). The posse going after the miscreants (in this case dueling posse's). The desert southwest setting. Interestingly, the iconography comes from what was almost the very last true "Old West" gunfight. And, at least in the case of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, you have two of the archetypes of the mythology represented, the Lawman and the Gambler. Clavin has to sift through almost 100 years of popular culture embellishment and artistic license to attempt to get to a reasonable consensus of history. And not just popular culture but any number "histories" and memoirs that were ultimately self-serving or written with an agenda. Which isn't to say that Clavin's work is objective (or to say it isn't). It seems to lean a bit pro-Earp...though so does history. Overall it seems reasonably objective, and, again, I don't see any glaring errors or omissions. So if you want a concise readable history, one that goes in to a pretty significant background on Tombstone itself and the lead-up to the show-down, this is a good option. It might help to have read Clavin's "Dodge City" as it gives additional background on the Earps in general and Wyatt in particular. |
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Apr 10, 2024 12:24:04 GMT -5
Latest read: Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey  Finally got through a novel after a bit of a dry spell where I was just reading short stories. Mercedes Lackey is Mrs MRP's favorite author. She did her senior thesis on Lackey's Valdemar books at university, and made the trip to Gen Con to meet her the year she was a guest of honor there (a trip I couldn't make because of health issues at the time). However, prior to reading a pair of Lackey stories in the Sword and Sorceress anthologies within the last 6 months, I had never read any of her stuff. I did very much enjoy the two stories in those anthologies, both of which features Tamra the Swordsworn of the horse clans and Kethry, a mage who is her bond-sister, so decided to give the first novel featuring them a go. I think part of the reason I got through it during this dry spell is that it read more like a series of short stories and novelettes than a traditional novel, and within the bounds of the novel it told 4 distinct stories that did build on one another (#4 was a direct sequel to events in #2 and # for example). Lackey's prose style is unique and she often does the literary equivalent of a hand wave to move events along to get to the parts she wants to explore. Sometimes skilling over travel or recovery time, others skipping over minor skirmishes where the aftermath matters more than the details of the events itself. She focuses on the moments that develop and reveal character whether that is an action sequence or a quiet moment, a combat or a conversation in a tavern or at a campfire, and glosses over the stuff that is only mundane or routine stuff that doesn't do much to reveal or develop characters, but does happen in the course of the day to day lives or her characters. It's very different than the current trend in modern fantasy where bloated books explore and explain every minute detail about the world whether it matters to story or character or not, and different from pulp fantasy/sword and sorcery which are mostly action and story driven. It's high fantasy, but the approach is different than a lot of those who operate in a Tolkien imitation model. I enjoyed it, and I will continue with the series, but I want to clear up and finish off some of the anthologies I am in the middle of, and a short novel I have out from the library before I do. -M |
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Apr 12, 2024 1:08:03 GMT -5
So that novel was a short one (145 pages) and went quickly... At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop  Told from the first person perspective, with an unreliable narrator (because he is going mad), this is the story of a black Senegalese soldier fighting for France in the trenches of WWI along side his childhood friend/adopted brother. When his adopted brother is killed in a particularly gruesome way, the soldier seeks vengeance against the Germans, sneaking into their trenches at night to single out one to slaughter, disembowel and take their severed hand as a trophy. This is the start of his descent into madness, and he believes his fellow soldiers begin to see him as a demm-a soul-devouring sorcerer, and they begin to shun him. He is sent away from the front where his descent into madness continues while a French doctor tries to treat him, but the ending is truly ambiguous as his madness leads to a total loss of his sense of self, you the reader is left to mostly guess what happened in the final chapters. This is Diop's second novel, the first I read, and it's translated from the French, and I am not sure if that had any part in the ambiguity. The prose is certainly well-written, and the flashback sequences our soldier indulges in offer a striking insight into the everyday life of an African "peasant" in the Senegalese region during the early 20th century, and this is worth reading for those chapters alone (I very much got Chinua Achebe vibes form those segments), but overall it is meant as a psychological horror tale, and as such I'm not sure it holds up as well. Elements are certainly horrific, but the longer the story goes, the more the unreliability of the narrator and the ambiguity work against the horror as I as the reader began to question what was real and what were the actual deeds of this soldier, and what was the result of his fevered descent into madness, and that unreliability even calls into question the bits we saw in flashback as to what was real and what was imagined during his descent. This book pooped onto my radar while I was doing research on another topic using my library's online catalog, so I borrowed it to give it a shot, as I had not heard of it or the author previously. I really do like Diop's prose and the African themes in this, so I might check out something else by him if it's in that vein, but overall, this one didn't quite work for me overall, leaving me a little more frustrated than satisfied. I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads nonetheless as some of that may stem from my own preferences and expectations, not form the quality of the writing itself, which a sI said, is quite good. -M |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 13, 2024 8:56:38 GMT -5
Contact edited by Noel Keyes  I was in the mood for some short stories.. this collection actually maintains it stated theme throughout.. 1/2 the book is first contact stories with 'man the discoverer' and the 2nd half 'man the discovered'. The stories are all from the the early fifties, and is quite an all-star roster. There are a few classic ones that I've read before elsewhere. First Contact by Murray Leinster is one of my favorites... the perfectly dated cold-war era first contact story. Both the human and alien captain assume they have to kill each other to keep their planets safe until on crew member comes up with a unique plan. There's also 'What's he doing in there?' by Fritz Leiber, which is a very short cute story that makes a great point about people understanding one another. 'Knock' by Frederic Brown is another classic one that can be found here.. with the famous start. 'The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...' Among those I hadn't read before, Asimov's 'Gentle Vultures' was great..an alien race hangs out on the moon waiting for Earth to destroy itself.. only we don't.. yet. 'Specialist' by Robert Sheckley and 'Lost Memory' by Peter Phillips were both really unique and interesting takes on first contacts with similar aliens but very different results. Just what I need to get over a bit of readers block![/b]
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Apr 13, 2024 22:59:51 GMT -5
This is not one I am reading (I've had to read excerpts for various classes and research projects over the years and that's enough for me), but I saw someone post this spine design for the series and I am seriously impressed with the cleverness of this design. It's certainly more clever than anything Gibbons ever actually wrote.  -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 14, 2024 15:08:36 GMT -5
 Gothic Wounds by Joe R. Lansdale
Another collection of Lansdale's short fiction. This one generally focuses on stories with a bit of a historical setting. Which doesn't mean there isn't weird shit here...it's Lansdale. I'd already read all but a handful of the stories before, but with most of them it had been close to a decade since I'd read them. Short story collections are weird to try to review. Suffice to say I'm a huge fan of Lansdale's work and he's a master of pretty much every page-length. Read his work. It's worth it. |
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