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Post by berkley on May 10, 2021 22:19:16 GMT -5
Finished the first Avon Fantasy Reader last night, an anthology of fantasy stories that were published in the Avon Fantasy Reader (though many appeared in Weird Tales and other pulps previously). The cover is by Gray Morrow... I have the second Avon Fantasy Reader, which has I think an even nicer Gray Morrow cover, still looking for a copy of this first one. Were there only the two?
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2021 22:27:15 GMT -5
Finished the first Avon Fantasy Reader last night, an anthology of fantasy stories that were published in the Avon Fantasy Reader (though many appeared in Weird Tales and other pulps previously). The cover is by Gray Morrow... I have the second Avon Fantasy Reader, which has I think an even nicer Gray Morrow cover, still looking for a copy of this first one. Were there only the two? I believe there are only two (I have both). I see references for up to #18, but I believe those refer to the yearly annuals put out as periodicals through the 1950s not the paperback anthologies. -M
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 14, 2021 10:53:40 GMT -5
MurdermoonPaul Kupperberg, 1979 This is kind of like a Marvel Team-up story in prose novel form. It starts out with the Hulk in a New Mexico desert, getting attacked by the army. He makes short-work of them, and then leaps away, and eventually wakes up, as Bruce Banner, in an alley in some small town that he learns is in Kansas. With some money he had sewn into his tattered pants, he buys himself some new clothes and decides to hang around the town for a while, until he sees an article in a local newspaper about a radiation research institute in Chicago that has made a breakthrough in curing radiation poisoning (including gamma ray poisoning). Banner sees this as an opportunity to cure him of being the Hulk, so he rushes off to Chicago. Once he finds the research labs, things take a weird turn. In alternating chapters, Spider-man first stumbles onto a safe-heist in an office building and apprehends most of the thieves, except for the gang leader who makes off with only a tape containing some kind of data from NASA. Later, he, as Peter Parker, and a Daily Bugle reporter are sent by Jameson on an assignment aboard an aircraft carrier to get the scoop on the recovery of StarLab, an orbiting space station that's falling back to Earth (a ripped-from-the-headlines plot point, as Skylab did in fact come crashing down in 1979). However, something goes wrong with the ship's radar, and then all of a sudden it seems as though StarLab not only didn't fall where it was supposed to, but also just seems to have disappeared. Peter suspects that the safe heist and this incident are related, and when he gets back to shore, he starts investigating. Eventually, it turns out that the Hulk and Spidey plot-lines are very much connected, and they eventually meet and then, after the usual superhero donnybrook, they join forces to thwart a nefarious plan to blackmail the entire planet. Like Kupperberg's Spider-man novel that I reviewed here last November, this is a light, mostly enjoyable read, but as with that one, I think you pretty much have to be already familiar with the characters and the comics to really appreciate it. What I found interesting is that there were some nice character moments involving the Hulk/Banner (like when he's pondering what to do with his life in Kansas, and briefly toys with the idea of just settling down there in anonymity), while the Spidey parts of the story were mostly plot-driven action. The only character moments involving anyone from Spidey's supporting cast besides Jameson and Robbie Robertson feature a love-interest who first appeared in Crime Campaign, Cindy Sayer (shades of Cissy Ironwood!), and she only makes a showing in the last chapter.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 16, 2021 7:52:40 GMT -5
Her Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
I've been meaning to re-read this for a while, but couldn't find my copy.. this is one of those books I often recommend to people, so I suspect I lent it and it never came back (I'll see for sure next time I do a great book organizing).
Anyway, It's not hard to see why I love this series... it's basically a cross between CS Forrester and Anne McCaffrey, and it works perfectly. Novik does a great job getting the period right, IMO, and the making the dragons simply part of the natural world, rather than magical I feel works much better than the trying to introduce magical elements. I never actually read the last 2 books that came out (I don't remember why, but I do recall Victory of Eagles annoyed me somewhat), so I intend to fix that this time around.
I really love that Temeraire, in his naivety of government and social convention, is able to cut to the heart of what does and doesn't make sense of the 19th century ideals of honor, country and society... it makes for a great commentary on it while fitting seamlessly into the story. I seem to remember this theme being expanded on as the series continues, so I'm anxious to see how it turns out in the end.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 19, 2021 21:55:20 GMT -5
Baseball Gods in Scandal: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and The Dutch Leonard Affair by Ian Kahanowitz
I'd seen quite a few quick mentions of the Dutch Leonard affair, but never many details, so I was excited to see this book existed to give me some... and a local author to boot!
Sadly, there are not too many details to be found, and, in fact, the 'big revelation' promised in the unreleased portions of an interview with Smoky Joe Wood were just not very interesting.
The first part of the book does do as promised, and it seems pretty clear that there was no one throwing a game, certainly not Cobb and Speaker. At worst, Cobb may have bet on his team to win, which at the time was pretty common practice.
The 2nd half of the book recaps the first in the context of the feud between Ban Johnson and Kenesaw Mountain Landis (with a definite bias towards Johnson).. with some passages close to word for word the same from previous chapters. I can't say I've read much about either man though, so the mini bios on them were not bad.
Now if only I could find a book that would tell me one way or the other if John McCraw was ever involved in any fixing of games...
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on May 21, 2021 5:20:54 GMT -5
Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons by Ben Fong-Torres I probably bought this book back in 1993 or 94 or so, only 2 or 3 years after I'd first discovered Gram Parsons' work with The Byrds, The International Submarine Band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Emmylou Harris. It's written by Rolling Stone alumni Ben Fong-Torres and was first published in 1991, at a time when Parsons was still an impossibly obscure cult figure, known only to the nerdiest of record collectors, aficionados of the late '60s L.A. rock scene, or the most hardcore of country music fans. Of course, since then his reputation has continued to grow year-by-year, to the point where his seminal influence on the development of the country-rock, outlaw country, and alt. country genres is assured and he is a much better known artist nowadays than he ever was in his short lifetime. I guess it's been 20 years or more since I last read the book, but it still provides a decent, though somewhat lightweight overview of Gram's life and music career. It doesn't miss out anything of any importance, but it also doesn't go into too much depth. It's comprehensive, without getting mired in sterile minutia. Overall, Fong-Torres does a great job of separating fact from fiction – with Parsons himself being by far the most unreliable witness to his own life story (Gram was pretty much a consummate bullshit artist in the interviews he gave during his short lifetime). He traces Parsons' story via recollections from his friends, family, and musical associates, with Gram's heartbreakingly sad childhood, his early musical endeavours, his ground-breaking fusion of rock, soul and country music, and his erratically out of control personal life all presented here in a well-researched and well written manner. I'd be willing to bet that this was the first book that was wholly dedicated to Parsons and, as such, it's an important publication in terms of its place in the development of mainstream culture's awareness of his music and legend. Of course, it has been over-shadowed by much more thorough works in the years since it first came out, such as David N. Meyer's Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music, but nevertheless, this is still a handy place to start for anyone interested in reading a Parsons biography.
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 21, 2021 9:48:40 GMT -5
(...) I probably bought this book back in 1993 or 94 or so, only 2 or 3 years after I'd first discovered Gram Parsons' work with The Byrds, The International Submarine Band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Emmylou Harris. It's written by Rolling Stone alumni Ben Fong-Torres and was first published in 1991, at a time when Parsons was still an impossibly obscure cult figure, known only to the nerdiest of record collectors, aficionados of the late '60s L.A. rock scene, or the most hardcore of country music fans. (...) Really? Back then, and now for that matter, none of those appellations apply to me (except I like the late '60s LA rock scene), but if anyone asked me I would have at least known that Parsons was a former Byrd and he was doing some kind of country music - and I was familiar with "Love Hurts" with Harris of course. I think that was true of most rock fans at the time who listened to AOR stations and were into '60s/'70s rock. Parsons wasn't super-popular or mainstream, but he wasn't *that* obscure.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 21, 2021 12:00:04 GMT -5
Rusty Puppy by Joe R. LansdaleLansdale has pretty much become my go-to author if I'm suffering from "reader's block." I can open any of his books and just get sucked in no matter how hard a time I'm having reading anything else. So this book was just what I needed when I'd spent a few weeks struggling getting through anything else. As an added bonus this was by far the best Hap & Leonard since the very early days of the series. Not that any of the books (or novellas) have been bad by any means. But I hadn't always loved the directions that they'd been going and the previous full novel, "Honky Tonk Samurai" was, by far, my least favorite of the entire series. Rusty Puppy felt more like classic Hap & Leonard. The jokes were funnier. While they're still actual detectives they felt a bit more like the early days of them helping out because it's the right thing to do. No Vanilla Ride or Dixie mafia. Yeah, they're dealing with corrupt cops, but that's not the first time they've been there. Leonard, in particular, was in great form in this one. His interactions with the "400-year old midget vampire" (actually a very sassy 11-year old black girl) are excellent. And the boys get back to their early days of physically kicking ass on reasonable opponents instead of the threat escalation that had been going on in the series. I think it may have even benefitted from a dearth of Brett and Chance. Not that I dislike either character, but I liked the return to the old-school Hap & Leonard dynamic. This isn't the place to start with the series. But it's the one I've enjoyed most since at least "Two-Bear Mambo," back in book three.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on May 21, 2021 19:01:51 GMT -5
(...) I probably bought this book back in 1993 or 94 or so, only 2 or 3 years after I'd first discovered Gram Parsons' work with The Byrds, The International Submarine Band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Emmylou Harris. It's written by Rolling Stone alumni Ben Fong-Torres and was first published in 1991, at a time when Parsons was still an impossibly obscure cult figure, known only to the nerdiest of record collectors, aficionados of the late '60s L.A. rock scene, or the most hardcore of country music fans. (...) Really? Back then, and now for that matter, none of those appellations apply to me (except I like the late '60s LA rock scene), but if anyone asked me I would have at least known that Parsons was a former Byrd and he was doing some kind of country music - and I was familiar with "Love Hurts" with Harris of course. I think that was true of most rock fans at the time who listened to AOR stations and were into '60s/'70s rock. Parsons wasn't super-popular or mainstream, but he wasn't *that* obscure. Well, when I first got into him I didn't know anyone else who had ever heard of him (other than the guy who turned me on to him, of course), and that remained true until the mid-90s at least. Perhaps he was a little better known in the U.S. than he was in Britain though? But then again, I remember a journalist from one of the big UK music weeklies interviewing the head of A&R at Reprise Records in 1991 and asking if the label had any plans to reissue the two solo albums that Parsons had recorded with the label and this exec had to admit that he had never even heard of him. Just think about that; Parsons was obscure enough in the early 90s that the head of A&R at Reprise had never heard of him. My recollection is that it wasn't until the likes of The Lemonheads, Elvis Costello, Sid Griffin of The Coal Porters, the early alt country acts, and the odd UK indie band began to drop his name as an influence in the 90s that music nerds and the music press began to talk about him. Even today, I think it's safe to say that the majority of people wouldn't have heard of him. He's still something of a cult figure, though of course he is much better known than he was 30 years ago. Like I say, maybe it was different in the U.S., but the fact that his solo albums and the Flying Burrito Brothers albums were all out of print in America between the mid-70s and the late 80s/early 90s demonstrates to me that there really was little or no demand for his music among record buyers during that time.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2021 19:10:05 GMT -5
Slam_Bradley have you seen the Hap & Leonard comics? I saw a couple of Hap & Leonard trades while I was at Half Price Books today waiting on them to process the books I brought in to sell. I hadn't seen them before, but I thought of you as soon as I saw them. -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 21, 2021 19:40:21 GMT -5
Slam_Bradley have you seen the Hap & Leonard comics? I saw a couple of Hap & Leonard trades while I was at Half Price Books today waiting on them to process the books I brought in to sell. I hadn't seen them before, but I thought of you as soon as I saw them. -M I have not. I’ll have to look into them. I do highly recommend the TV show, however. I was very well done and quite faithful to the books.
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 22, 2021 3:03:04 GMT -5
(...) Like I say, maybe it was different in the U.S. (...) Possibly it was. Like I said, back then (as now) my knowledge of the music scene was pretty average, but I still had some idea of who Parsons was. However, to your point, if anybody back then asked me to name anything recorded by Parsons post-Byrds, except for that cover of "Love Hurts" with Emmylou Harris, my response would have been "...uhhh..."
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 22, 2021 8:16:27 GMT -5
Slam_Bradley have you seen the Hap & Leonard comics? I saw a couple of Hap & Leonard trades while I was at Half Price Books today waiting on them to process the books I brought in to sell. I hadn't seen them before, but I thought of you as soon as I saw them. -M I thought they were pretty good... I have Savage Season in Comic form... definitely was pretty good. I haven't watched the show yet... I believe Slam that's it good, but the actors are way to young and pretty... haven't been able to get over that yet.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 22, 2021 10:34:53 GMT -5
Slam_Bradley have you seen the Hap & Leonard comics? I saw a couple of Hap & Leonard trades while I was at Half Price Books today waiting on them to process the books I brought in to sell. I hadn't seen them before, but I thought of you as soon as I saw them. -M I thought they were pretty good... I have Savage Season in Comic form... definitely was pretty good. I haven't watched the show yet... I believe Slam that's it good, but the actors are way to young and pretty... haven't been able to get over that yet. Too pretty is in the eye of the beholder, but no way they were too young. James Purefoy was 52 and Michael Kenneth Williams was 50 when the first season came out. Considering Hap was 40 in Savage Season they’re a bit too old if anything. Hap does quite well with the ladies. And Leonard finds plenty of fellers. I don’t think I’d even call Michael K. Williams pretty.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 24, 2021 7:14:30 GMT -5
Perhaps I'm misremembering the trailer... I'll give it another look
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