Extollager
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Machen also was an admirer of Hawthorne, e.g. The Transformation, which I think is more commonly known as The Marble Faun.
Book Hauls!
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Machen also was an admirer of Hawthorne, e.g. The Transformation, which I think is more commonly known as The Marble Faun.
Ordered my favourite non-fiction writer Bill Bryson's new book: One Summer: America 1927
Description on Amazon sounds very interesting:
'Britain's favourite writer of narrative non-fiction Bill Bryson travels back in time to a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and, in five eventful months, changed the world for ever.
In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth. (So famous that Minnesota considered renaming itself after him.)
It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone's reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan by a madman, the ill-conceived decision that led to the Great Depression, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of a wheezing, over-the-hill baseball player named Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more.
In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a story of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy, with a cast of unforgettable and eccentric characters, with trademark brio, wit and authority.'
I am already wondering what his next book will be about.
Description on Amazon sounds very interesting:
'Britain's favourite writer of narrative non-fiction Bill Bryson travels back in time to a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and, in five eventful months, changed the world for ever.
In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth. (So famous that Minnesota considered renaming itself after him.)
It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone's reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan by a madman, the ill-conceived decision that led to the Great Depression, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of a wheezing, over-the-hill baseball player named Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more.
In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a story of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy, with a cast of unforgettable and eccentric characters, with trademark brio, wit and authority.'
I am already wondering what his next book will be about.
j d worthington
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Good to know my two bucks were well spent.
Having read both collections relatively recently (a little over a year ago, if memory serves), I can honestly state that I do not think you will be disappointed. I, at any rate, enjoyed them immensely.
That Machen would like that one in particular so much is very fitting, given the extremely delicate hints of the fantastic in it, very much on the level of his own "A Fragment of Life"....
dask
dark and stormy knight
Did some book hunting this week:
dask
dark and stormy knight
And a few more:
And some hardbacks with no dust jackets:
THE CONDUCT OF LIFE by Ralph Waldo Emerson
REPRESENTATIVE MEN by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Both these books have the look of hardbacks that never had dust jackets to begin with. Look fairly old, published by A.L. Burt Company with no date.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN by Benjamin P. Thomas, 1952.
CHARLES THE FIRST KING OF ENGLAND by Hilaire Belloc, J.B. Lippincott, 1933, first edition. Nice illos.
And some hardbacks with no dust jackets:
THE CONDUCT OF LIFE by Ralph Waldo Emerson
REPRESENTATIVE MEN by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Both these books have the look of hardbacks that never had dust jackets to begin with. Look fairly old, published by A.L. Burt Company with no date.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN by Benjamin P. Thomas, 1952.
CHARLES THE FIRST KING OF ENGLAND by Hilaire Belloc, J.B. Lippincott, 1933, first edition. Nice illos.
Last edited:
TheShadowsandSilence
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Did a scout of the local bookshops this morning and found some gems:
Hitler - Ian Kershaw (one volume abridged edition, I'd like the two volume set at some point but this will do for the moment)
Stalin - Robert Service
Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 - Max Hastings
Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier - Stephen E. Ambrose
The Anubis Gates - Tim Powers
Shadow and Claw - Gene Wolfe
Hitler - Ian Kershaw (one volume abridged edition, I'd like the two volume set at some point but this will do for the moment)
Stalin - Robert Service
Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 - Max Hastings
Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier - Stephen E. Ambrose
The Anubis Gates - Tim Powers
Shadow and Claw - Gene Wolfe
dask
dark and stormy knight
UNDAUNTED COURAGE is near the top of my tbr pile.
JunkMonkey
Lord High Vizier of Nowt
After swearing on a stack of P K Dick books THIS THICK! that I wouldn't be buying any more books till I had got on top of my TBR pile - I just couldn't leave these sitting in my local Poundland... could I? I mean, a quid each? It would have been rude NOT to buy them...
j d worthington
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After swearing on a stack of P K Dick books THIS THICK! that I wouldn't be buying any more books till I had got on top of my TBR pile - I just couldn't leave these sitting in my local Poundland... could I? I mean, a quid each? It would have been rude NOT to buy them...
Hope you don't regret buying the first. Wagner can be fun, if approached in the right spirit... but if you don't have the patience for a genuine penny dreadful.....
dask
dark and stormy knight
Before James Baen came out with the premiere issue of DESTINIES (Nov./Dec. '78), "The Paperback Magazine Of Science Fiction & Speculative Fact" Robert Hoskins introduced the Infinity series, each volume being "A Magazine Of Speculative Fiction In Book Form." I've swooped up a few over the years but never had the chance to pick up the first one until now:
Value Village, 99¢.
From one thrift store to another, I found this goody at Goodwill:
99¢ again.
Today my wife and I took Amtrak to Seattle to spend the day bumming around. Went to SAM (Seattle Art Museum) to check out the Peruvian exhibit, had a great lunch in Pike Place Market and found this at a bookstore just a few feet away from the lunch counter:
Three bucks but things are a little more expensive in the big city.
Value Village, 99¢.
From one thrift store to another, I found this goody at Goodwill:
99¢ again.
Today my wife and I took Amtrak to Seattle to spend the day bumming around. Went to SAM (Seattle Art Museum) to check out the Peruvian exhibit, had a great lunch in Pike Place Market and found this at a bookstore just a few feet away from the lunch counter:
Three bucks but things are a little more expensive in the big city.
TheShadowsandSilence
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Just starting to get into crime/detective fiction so I've been keeping my eyes peeled for the essentials. Picked up at an Oxfam shop:
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
Clockers - Richard Price
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets - David Simon (non-fiction)
And some classics:
The Monk - Matthew Lewis
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
Clockers - Richard Price
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets - David Simon (non-fiction)
And some classics:
The Monk - Matthew Lewis
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
j d worthington
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Question: Which edition of The Monk -- that is, what modern edition? The reason I ask is that several are abridged to a greater or lesser degree, some are simply expurgated. On the other hand, at least some are not, and one (Oxford World's Classics) restores material from Lewis' original manuscript....
Nice one...From one thrift store to another, I found this goody at Goodwill:
99¢ again.
I recently purchased a copy of this myself. B Travern was something of a mystery man but the main reason I bought that book is because Roberto Bolano based his central character in 2666 on Travern, not to mention the fact that this book appears to be something of a neglected masterwork...a bit like the recently rediscovered classic turned publishing phenomenon Stoner by John Williams that I am currently reading.
I'll keep a look out for any comments you might make on this novel.
Recently picked up...
Latest 2 SF Masterwork offerings....
No Enemy But Time - Michael Bishop *Not a book I'm familiar with, although I believe it was a former Hugo winner. Blurb: Joshua Kampa is torn between two worlds - the Early Pleistocene Africa of his dreams and the 20th-century reality of his waking life. These worlds are transposed when a government experiment sends him over a million years back in time. Here, John builds a new life as part of a tribe of protohumans. But the reality of early Africa is much more challenging than his fantasies. With the landscape, the species, and John himself evolving, he reaches a temporal crossroads where he must decide whether the past or the future will be his present.
Time of the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis*I've read a little by Willis but this is the first collection of her shorter fiction I've ever had. Blurb: An original collection of stories from the SFWA GRAND MASTER AWARD-winning author - the first original SF Masterwork.
Stoner - John Williams *This is another NYRB publication but not one I would have taken a lot of notice of except for the literary notoriety this book has received as a re-discovered classic starting off as a publishing phenomenon in Europe before returning to its home in the US. Hailed by many writers and critics as one of the great 'forgotten' now re-discovered works of the 20th Century. Quite an accolade. Blurb: William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude. John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.
Finally....
The Last Dark - Stephen Donaldson *Final book in the final Covenant series, I'm looking forward to seeing how it all ends after first discovering this seminal series in the early 1980s. *May contain spoilers* Blurb: The bestselling fantasy series from one of the biggest names in the genre comes to an unforgettable conclusion. This is the final volume of the epic Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - one of the keynote works of modern fantasy. Compelled step by step to actions whose consequences they could neither see nor prevent, Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery have fought for what they love in the magical reality known only as 'the Land'. Now they face their final crisis. Reunited after their separate struggles, they discover in each other their true power - and yet they cannot imagine how to stop the Worm of the World's End from unmaking Time. Nevertheless they must resist the ruin of all things, giving their last strength in the service of the world's continuance.
And on order from the excellent NYRB series..
The Black Spider - Jeremias Gotthelf *I hope to review what seems to be regarded as a European horror classic once I get hold of it in a couple of weeks time. Blurb: It is a sunny summer Sunday in a remote Swiss village, and a christening is being celebrated at a lovely old farmhouse. One of the guests notes an anomaly in the fabric of the venerable edifice: a blackened post that has been carefully built into a trim new window frame. Thereby hangs a tale, one that, as the wise old grandfather who has lived all his life in the house proceeds to tell it, takes one chilling turn after another, while his audience listens in appalled silence. Featuring a cruelly overbearing lord of the manor and the oppressed villagers who must render him service, an irreverent young woman who will stop at nothing, a mysterious stranger with a red beard and a green hat, and, last but not least, the black spider, the tale is as riveting and appalling today as when Jeremias Gotthelf set it down more than a hundred years ago. The Black Spider can be seen as a parable of evil in the heart or of evil at large in society (Thomas Mann saw it as foretelling the advent of Nazism), or as a vision, anticipating H. P. Lovecraft, of cosmic horror. There’s no question, in any case, that it is unforgettably creepy.
Latest 2 SF Masterwork offerings....
No Enemy But Time - Michael Bishop *Not a book I'm familiar with, although I believe it was a former Hugo winner. Blurb: Joshua Kampa is torn between two worlds - the Early Pleistocene Africa of his dreams and the 20th-century reality of his waking life. These worlds are transposed when a government experiment sends him over a million years back in time. Here, John builds a new life as part of a tribe of protohumans. But the reality of early Africa is much more challenging than his fantasies. With the landscape, the species, and John himself evolving, he reaches a temporal crossroads where he must decide whether the past or the future will be his present.
Time of the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis*I've read a little by Willis but this is the first collection of her shorter fiction I've ever had. Blurb: An original collection of stories from the SFWA GRAND MASTER AWARD-winning author - the first original SF Masterwork.
Stoner - John Williams *This is another NYRB publication but not one I would have taken a lot of notice of except for the literary notoriety this book has received as a re-discovered classic starting off as a publishing phenomenon in Europe before returning to its home in the US. Hailed by many writers and critics as one of the great 'forgotten' now re-discovered works of the 20th Century. Quite an accolade. Blurb: William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude. John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.
Finally....
The Last Dark - Stephen Donaldson *Final book in the final Covenant series, I'm looking forward to seeing how it all ends after first discovering this seminal series in the early 1980s. *May contain spoilers* Blurb: The bestselling fantasy series from one of the biggest names in the genre comes to an unforgettable conclusion. This is the final volume of the epic Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - one of the keynote works of modern fantasy. Compelled step by step to actions whose consequences they could neither see nor prevent, Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery have fought for what they love in the magical reality known only as 'the Land'. Now they face their final crisis. Reunited after their separate struggles, they discover in each other their true power - and yet they cannot imagine how to stop the Worm of the World's End from unmaking Time. Nevertheless they must resist the ruin of all things, giving their last strength in the service of the world's continuance.
And on order from the excellent NYRB series..
The Black Spider - Jeremias Gotthelf *I hope to review what seems to be regarded as a European horror classic once I get hold of it in a couple of weeks time. Blurb: It is a sunny summer Sunday in a remote Swiss village, and a christening is being celebrated at a lovely old farmhouse. One of the guests notes an anomaly in the fabric of the venerable edifice: a blackened post that has been carefully built into a trim new window frame. Thereby hangs a tale, one that, as the wise old grandfather who has lived all his life in the house proceeds to tell it, takes one chilling turn after another, while his audience listens in appalled silence. Featuring a cruelly overbearing lord of the manor and the oppressed villagers who must render him service, an irreverent young woman who will stop at nothing, a mysterious stranger with a red beard and a green hat, and, last but not least, the black spider, the tale is as riveting and appalling today as when Jeremias Gotthelf set it down more than a hundred years ago. The Black Spider can be seen as a parable of evil in the heart or of evil at large in society (Thomas Mann saw it as foretelling the advent of Nazism), or as a vision, anticipating H. P. Lovecraft, of cosmic horror. There’s no question, in any case, that it is unforgettably creepy.
Extollager
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sooC, what's the Russell Kirk story in that issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction?
I interviewed Kirk almost 30 years ago. A real gentleman.
I interviewed Kirk almost 30 years ago. A real gentleman.
Extollager
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Those are two of my favorites of Kirk's ghostly tales, sooC. He seems variable to me; I don't care for the two or three (?) Manfred Arcane stories. "The Princess of All Lands" is good, as I remember, except that Kirk was unconvincing about the drug-use aspect of one of the characters; you have to excuse him. At his best he's certainly a worthy contributor to the modern ghost story tradition.
dask
dark and stormy knight
Someone recently donated a small collection of Time Reading Program paperbacks to the local Salvation Army (hopefully not because they passed away, but I strongly suspect...) as new copies have been appearing weekly for about a month now. For fifty cents each I couldn't help picking up a few:
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