Posted in Rants on June 28, 2007 | No Comments »
My general rule when it comes to reading more than one book at a time is that they have to be of different genres. More specifically, the basic thrills and joys that I get from them have to be somewhat different. Most of the books that I read involve excitement and action (because I [...]
Posted in Cool Stuff, Obsessive Compulsive Stuff on June 27, 2007 | No Comments »
So just today a post over at A Variety of Words brought a new website to my attention that I thought would be worth pointing out.
The basics are covered in that post, but what seems potentially interesting about Goodreads, when compared with LibraryThing, is that it’s attempting to be a sort of social networking site, [...]
Posted in Cool Stuff, Sci-Fi on June 27, 2007 | 2 Comments »
I am finally about to get my ever-so-grubby little hands on Tobias S. Buckell’s Ragamuffin–I’ve already discussed my driving desire to have this book, and why that desire was faced with a temporary roadblock, so understand that I am overjoyed. This is like a second Christmas. Or perhaps first Christmas, since June comes before December… [...]
Posted in Hard Case Crime, Hardboiled, Mystery, Reviews on June 25, 2007 | No Comments »
… I’m against killing people.”
Ahh, I just finished the most recent Hard Case Crime offering. That’s always a good feeling.
George Axelrod, the author of The Seven Year Itch, Breakfast At Tiffany’s (the screenplay, clearly), and The Manchurian Candidate, brings the hardboiled, hard drinking conventions of pulp mystery to the publishing world in Blackmailer… the results [...]
Posted in Pirates, Sabatini, Swashbuckling on June 24, 2007 | 4 Comments »
Ahoy there, shipmates! Readers hopping aboard the Spotted Dog need their wits about them to confound the mind-boggling riddles and bewildering puzzles Mam Spamme sets, as she tells the story of her quest to win a great fortune and free Captain Blood from dastardly Red Roger’s dungeon. With her son Sam, Black Dog and the [...]
Posted in Fairbanks, Movies, Reviews, Swashbuckling, Zorro on June 23, 2007 | No Comments »
And so, we have seen here and here how the character of Zorro rollicked into pop culture fame in the early years of the 20th century. Then, five years after Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was catapulted from stardom to superstardom by The Mark of Zorro, he decided to return to the character–sort of.
1925’s Don Q, Son [...]
Posted in Hard Case Crime, Hardboiled, Reviews on June 20, 2007 | No Comments »
There is another literary (or perhaps “trashy” is the word, but who cares?) love of mine to which I am wholly devoted, and it pains me that I’ve gone this long without addressing it here. That love is the old fashioned hardboiled crime novel. Whether we’re talking about a heist, a detective piece, or just [...]
Posted in Best Author Ever, Thriller on June 19, 2007 | 1 Comment »
I discovered a very interesting bit of information today about my favorite book of all time: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
Dumas, of course, often incorporated historical figures into his books, but generally less so when said book had a contemporary setting. Although Monte Cristo takes place over a good deal of time, [...]
Posted in Sci-Fi on June 18, 2007 | No Comments »
I don’t buy genuinely new books very often, and I pretty much never feel like I have to go out and grab one on the day of its release… but Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell was an exception.
Unfortunately, I could not find it in a bookstore the day it came out… I guess I assumed [...]
Posted in Cool Stuff, Fairbanks, Movies, Pimpernel, Swashbuckling, Zorro on June 15, 2007 | No Comments »
So, I certainly didn’t know that people had taken to posting public domain movies up on Google Video, but now that I do I figured I’d point it out.
First of all, the 1934 Scarlet Pimpernel that I mentioned the other day can be watched for free right here. Now, normally my problem with something like [...]
Posted in Fairbanks, Movies, Reviews, Swashbuckling, Zorro on June 14, 2007 | No Comments »
I’ve already covered the novel to which the ever-so-classic Zorro character owes his creation, but it really wasn’t until that same novel got into the hands of one Douglas Fairbanks Sr. that the masked hero truly took off. I know that this is generally a book blog, but bear with me… it’s a great movie.
Before [...]
Posted in Doc Smith, Sci-Fi on June 12, 2007 | No Comments »
Having just finished reading Gray Lensman today (I already used its cover in my last post on the subject, so here’s Galactic Patrol instead) I felt the urge to share a certain thought that’s been running through my head since fairly early in the Lensman series.
Maybe this kind of musing is better left to the [...]
Posted in Pimpernel, Reviews, Swashbuckling on June 12, 2007 | 6 Comments »
(This is kind of the best cover in the world, by the way.)
So, when we last left our hero (i.e. me) we were wondering what his (my) big problem with The Scarlet Pimpernel was. Well, as I said in my first post about Zorro, I like that that particular hero is a class traitor who [...]
Posted in Pimpernel, Reviews, Swashbuckling on June 11, 2007 | No Comments »
I have touched ever so slightly upon my issues with Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel before, but I think that there is more, both good and bad, about this novel that bears saying.
First of all, before I get into my problems with it, let me explain very quickly why I love it. The Scarlet Pimpernel [...]
Posted in Doc Smith, Sci-Fi on June 11, 2007 | No Comments »
I must admit that I’m a relative newcomer to science fiction (not on purpose, Lord knows, it just somehow happened that way) so when I just recently got a real start on reading the genre I decided, after becoming interested, to start at the beginning.
Not the beginning meaning Welles and Verne (although I have already [...]
Posted in Administrative on June 8, 2007 | No Comments »
I honestly haven’t the slightest clue as to how the etiquette of a blogroll goes. So, I just now decided to fill my links with a few other blogs of related content that I enjoy (as well as two others that I also write for) and see what comes of it. This is mostly so [...]
Posted in Flynn, Movies, Pirates, Reviews, Sabatini, Swashbuckling on June 8, 2007 | 3 Comments »
The vast bulk of our pirate story conventions come from Treasure Island. Duh. I do think, however, that one can safely say that the majority of those not originating from Stevenson come from the works of Rafael Sabatini–and movies based upon the works of Rafael Sabatini.
This, naturally, is because Rafael Sabatini’s books are, as a [...]
Posted in Comics on June 7, 2007 | 1 Comment »
So, for the record, I am not only into sword-wielding historical heroes and the like; I have a wide breadth of interests.
Another interest of mine? Dinosaurs fighting tanks.
Does it get any better than WWII soldiers fighting prehistoric beasts? ‘Cause I really don’t think it does. I mean, I’m actually not usually into campy stuff purely [...]
Posted in Reviews, Swashbuckling, Zorro on June 7, 2007 | No Comments »
This is the first in what will continue to be something of a series, taking a look at one of the greatest swashbuckler heroes of all time: Zorro. I plan to delve into a good number of his various iterations throughout books and film–although only the ones that I feel like bothering with, otherwise we’ll [...]
Posted in Cool Stuff, Obsessive Compulsive Stuff on June 6, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Librarything is a cool little, well, thing. I always feel weird plugging interesting websites because I can’t think of any way to do so without coming across as some kind of a spammer.
Nonetheless, my most wonderful mother introduced me to the site, and I got pretty damn addicted. If you’re into books (like me) and [...]
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