Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Monday, May 9, 2011

INCOMING

During what may be referred to as The Week of the Haul, these lonely books found their way to my doorstep:

  • William Bayer, The Dream of Broken Horses (crime novel), Stardust (crime novel), Wallflower (the third Frank Janek mystery).
  • Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg, editors, What Might Have Been, Volume 2:  Alternate Heroes.  SF collection of 14 stories.
  • Rhys Bowen, Evans Above.  Mystery novel, the first Constable Evans novel.
  • Charles Bukowski, Betting on the Muse:  Poems & Stories.  Posthumous collection of previously uncollected work.
  • Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night, a traveler.  A novel by Italy's master fantasist.
  • Ramsey Campbell, The Nameless.  Horror novel.
  • Edmund Cooper, The Tenth Planet.  SF novel.
  • Michael Crichton, Travels.  Nonfiction.
  • Peter Dawson, Man on the Buckskin.  Western.
  • Lester del Rey, The Mysterious Planet.  SF novel, originally published in the Winston Adventures in SF series under the name "Kenneth Wright".
  • David Drake, The Jungle.  SF novel set in the "world" of Henry Kuttner's 1943 classic story "Clash by Night", which is also included in the book.
  • Bruse Elliott, Asylum Earth.  SF novel.
  • Michael Flynn, In the Country of the Blind.  SF novel.  Revised edition.
  • Victor Gischler, Vampire a Go-Go.  Gonzo fantasy.  I've been looking forward to this one.
  • John Gribbin, Father to the Man.  SF novel, a "Ben Bova Presents" selection.
  • J. Roy Guyther, M.D., Mechanicsville:  The Story of Our Village.  Local history.  Mechanicsville, Maryland, is a hop, skip, and half-a-jump from where I live, so I was interested.
  • Carolyn Haines, Revenant.  Thriller.
  • Peter Haining, editor, Scottish Stories of Fantasy and Horror (original title, Clans of Darkness).  Horror/fantasy anthology of 21 stories, along with Haining's always interesting story notes.
  • Joe Haldeman, Worlds Apart.  SF novel, the second in the Worlds trilogy.
  • Parnell Hall, Last Puzzlement & Testament.  Mystery novel, the third in the Puzzle Lady series.  I love Hall's Stanley Hastings books and the Steve Winslow books written as J. P. Hailey, but I haven't read this series.  About time I started, don't you think?
  • Dr. Hans Holzer, Beyond this Life.  Non-fiction (?) by the noted (take your pick) ghost-hunter/hokum artist.  This book cannibalizMayes part of an earlier book, Life After Death/The Challenge and the Evidence.
  • Alex Irvine, Batman:  Inferno.  Comic tie-in.
  • J.A. Johnson, The Loner:  The Bounty Killers.  Western.  The seventh in the Loner series.
  • Louis L'Amour, The Lonesome Gods,and A Man Called Trent.  Westerns both, the last being an omnibus of two pulp novels originally published as by "Jim Mayo".
  • Frank Lauria, Communion.  Horror novel, "based on an original story by Rose Mary Ritvo & Alfred Sole".  A movie tie-in for a movie never made, perhaps?
  • Doris Lessing, Shikasta, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five, and The Sirian Experiments.  The first three volumes in Lessing's SF series Canopus in Argos:  Archives.
  • Richard Lupoff, Sun's End.  SF novel.
  • Mary Ann Madden, Maybe He's Dead, and Other Hilarious Results of New York Magazine Competitions.  Humor.  I'm a fan of this sort of wordplay.
  • Robin McKinley, Beauty.  Fantasy novel.  McKinley's take on Beauty and the beast.
  • Vance Randolph, collector, The Talking Turtle and Other Ozark Folk Tales.  A collection from one of America's premiere folklorists.
  • Martin Roth, The Writer's Complete Crime Reference Book.  Revised and updated through 1993.
  • Al Sarrantonio, Skeletons.  Horror.
  • Particia Wentworth, The Watersplash.  A Miss Silver Mystery.

8 comments:

  1. Wow. This is an impressive number of books. I read the Calvino but he is too post-modern for me.

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  2. Pretty impressive haul, indeed. No comma in the Calvino (Patti should try ITALIAN FOLKTALES or even my old FFB pick THE CASTLE OF CROSSED DESTINIES). Sarrantonio has never written a novel or story I've read that I haven't found (I fear) unintentionally risible, odd in a decent anthology editor. There have been films called COMMUNION...have you tried these Lessings before?

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  3. I hit a library book sale last week, but it didn't result a lot of goodies. I might have to give that folklore book a try.

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  4. Todd, for some reason I always shied away from the Lessings, but a recent review in Locus convinced me I should give them a try so they are in my TBR pile -- although not quite at the top. BTW, no Overlooked Film from me this week; I watched the latest Montalbano on tv, though, and realized that I kept moving my hands while I read the captions.

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  5. George, Randolph's folklore collections are always worthwhile. He had a couple of stories from them reprinted in F&SF back in the 50s. I don't know if any of his books are still in print, but they all should be readily available through an interlibrary loan.

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  6. Yes, a couple of Randolph's books are still in print from one of the university presses, if one wants new copies.

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  7. The strangest thing about the MONTALBANOs as presented by MHz WorldView is that the guy doing the subtitles had a bug up his ass about calling Commissioner Montalbano "Detective Montalbano"...because, I guess, he couldn't quite Get the notion that the word "Commissario" could be translated into English, or he didn't think people would understand police forces had commissioners. Don't ask me...but that's why the subs have people calling to Montalbano, "Detective!" and such, as if they are Ra's al Gul taunting Batman/Bruce Wayne.

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  8. Ra's al Ghul, that is. So, the Italian hand gestures come through the captioning, though, eh?

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