Saturday, October 11, 2014

PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest

The Big Ugly: Jake Hinkson: 9780990591627: Amazon.com: Books  Ellie Bennett is an ex-corrections officer who has just served a year inside Eastgate Penitentiary for assaulting a prisoner. She’s only been out for a day when she accepts a strange job offer from the head of a Christian political advocacy group. He wants her to track down a missing ex-con named Alexis. Although no one knows where Alexis has gone, it seems like everyone in Arkansas is looking for her—from a rich televangelist running for Congress to the governor’s dirty tricks man. When Bennett finds the troubled young woman, she has to decide whether to hand her over to the highest bidder or help her escape from the most powerful men in the state.

Stories of the Raksura -- Martha Wells

I've enjoyed Martha Wells' novels about the shape-shifting Raksura, and this companion volume is equally entertaining.  It's not the place to make the acquaintance of Moon and Jade and Stone and Chime and all the other characters from the novels.  The stories stand on their own just fine, but you really need the background of the books to get the full benefit of them.

The first story (really a novella) is "The Falling World."  Jade and several others disappear on a trade mission to another court, and eventually Moon, Stone, Chime, and several others go looking for them.  When they find them, they're in a precarious situation, frozen in time.  Freeing them is a real problem, and it's complicated by the appearance of a creature the likes of which none of the Raksura have ever encountered.  

"The Tale of Indigo and Cloud," another novella, shows how the two courts came to be separated.  This was before the advent of Moon in Cloud, and it's a nicely done story of diplomacy and intrigue and fills in the backstory of the two courts.

The first of the two shorter stories in the volume is "The Forest Boy," which is a tale of Moon's life before he came to be part of Cloud.  He was a wanderer and didn't know who (or what) he was.  It's a story about being different and being unable to be what you're not, among other things.  "Adaptation" is another story about identity, this one featuring Chime.  Identity, come to think of it, is a theme running throughout the Raksura stories.  Anyway, this is a must-have volume for fans of the series.  I'd advise others to start with the first novel, The Cloud Roads, which I reviewed here.  You'll be glad you did.

13 Celebrity #TBT Photos You May Have Missed This Week

13 Celebrity #TBT Photos You May Have Missed This Week

Song of the Day


The Weird Week in Review

The Weird Week in Review

Today's Vintage Ad


Forgotten Hits: 50 Years Ago This Weekend ... And The Saturday Surveys!

Forgotten Hits: 50 Years Ago This Weekend ... And The Saturday Surveys!

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

And keep off their lawns!

Fist Fight Between Great Grandmothers In Hospital Maternity Ward 

PaperBack

 Vargo Statten (John Russell Fearn) Laughter in Space, Scion, 1952


NTTAWWT

New York Post: A thief with a creepy foot fetish has been yanking off the shoes of women at Brooklyn subway stations and then running off with them, according to police sources.  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson, who, purely coincidentally, lives in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Leads the Way

Which Cities Get the Most Sleep?: The visualizations, prepared by Principal Data Scientist Brian Wilt, paint a nuanced picture of how people sleep across the country. Overall, the county that stays up the latest is Brooklyn (12:07am), and Maui and Kauai counties in Hawaii go to bed the earliest (10:31pm and 10:33pm, respectively). Gotta wake up early to catch the wave!

10 Best Detectives in Books

10 Best Detectives in Books

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

WTAE Home: Witnesses allege that he then drove around the vehicle, cursing and yelling "I will kill you," then used the tractor to pin a man against the truck before striking him in the face several times.

10 Controversial True Crime Books

10 Controversial True Crime Books 

Friday, October 10, 2014

Free for Kindle for a Limited Time

Death Turns A Trick : A Romantic and Humorous San Francisco Cozy (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery Series Book 1) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) - Kindle edition by Julie Smith. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Jodi Picoult Interview

Jodi Picoult: By the Book 

Great Crime Writers Create Memorable Bad Guys

Great Crime Writers Create Memorable Bad Guys

9 Female Warriors Who Made Their Mark On History

9 Female Warriors Who Made Their Mark On History

Song of the Day

(Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes--Album Version (Lyrics in Description) - YouTube:

10 Terrifying Rulers Of The Underworld

10 Terrifying Rulers Of The Underworld 

Today's Vintage Ad


Uh-Oh

‘Lost In Space': Reboot In The Works

PaperBack



Hal Clement (Harry Clement Stubbs), From Outer Space (aka Needle), Avon


A Realistic Assessment of the 2015 Rock Hall Nominees

The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame: A Realistic Assessment of the 2015 Rock Hall Nominees

And here's where you can vote for your picks.

My 1949 Dodge Inexplicably Not Included

"10 Worst Cars of the 20th Century"

Annoying slideshow

Alvin, Texas, Inexplicably Not Included

The 20 Best College Towns In America 

Uh-Oh

Paul Feig confirms he will direct ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot with female cast   

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles

Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles Blends Sci-fi And Social Commentary  

Link via SF Signal.

Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952: A Retro-Review

FFB: Paperback Forum Issue #2 1985


This is another little zine I found not too long ago while rummaging through a neglected shelf. 

As hard as it is for a geezer like me to believe, some of you are probably so young that you don't remember the days before the Internet, the days when information about old paperbacks wasn't easily available, when you couldn't go to Bookscans and see just about every vintage paperback cover there ever was, when instead of searching through little out-of the-way thrift shops for years for that elusive book, you could click on Abebooks and find any title you were looking for, make another click and buy it.  

What we had in those olden times was zines like Paperback Forum, although this one came along a bit late in the game.  It was quite professionally produced, and it had a lot of B&W photos of paperback covers in addition to the articles.  

Probably the most interesting thing in this issue, and still of interest to anybody into paperbacks, is an interview with Knox Burger, conducted by Jon White.  I don't have to tell you, I'm sure, that Burger quite a career in publishing, especially as an editor at Gold Medal and Dell.  Piet Schreuders has an article on Bantam Books.  Geoffrey O'Brien has a review of Goodis: LaVie en Noir et Blanc, available at the time only in French and which has only just this year been translated for those of us cretins who don't read that language (that's Goodis on the cover, as you can see).  Barry Kaplan's article is  on paperback novels about homosexuality.  And of course there's other good stuff including Michael Barson's review of a couple of books about Dell.

It's hard to explain to someone who wasn't around what a thrill it was to get a copy of one of these zines in the mail, but, trust me, it was.  I still get a little tingle even now when I thumb through one of them.  

Thursday, October 09, 2014

Jan Hooks, R. I. P.

Yahoo TV: Jan Hooks, whose Hillary Clinton and Tammy Faye Bakker were hallmarks of Saturday Night Live in the late '80s, has died. She was 57.

Soon All Our Precious Freedoms Will Be Taken Away

And this place doesn't seem so nice to me.

Northwest Florida Daily News: NICEVILLE - Niceville Police officers were called to a residence after a man allegedly decided he wanted to sing and dance outside.  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

This Story Might Be a Hoax, but I Want to Believe!

Bride who had sex with dwarf stripper on hen do confesses after giving birth to baby with dwarfism

History of Civil War board game

History of Civil War board game: The Pro-Union Civil War Board Game That Was the Chutes and Ladders of 1862

Song of the Day

Gangster Of Love - YouTube:

Yes, Paris Hilton Is Included

31 Throwback Photos Of Celebrities When They Were Kids

5 Horror Films Based on Terrifying Real Life Supernatural Events!

5 Horror Films Based on Terrifying Real Life Supernatural Events!

Today's Vintage Ad


Christmas Is Coming

Paper Airplane Machine Gun   

Link via Neatorama.

A Forgotten Movie Brought to Light

Burroughs: The Movie, Lost and Found

PaperBack



Stuart Friedman, Nikki Revisited, Monarch, 1963

Now This Is What Scholarship Is All About

Scholar Publishes Study on How Much Damage Calvin Did During Calvin and Hobbes

19 Magical Bookshops Every Book Lover Must Visit

19 Magical Bookshops Every Book Lover Must Visit

And They Aren't Insane, Either

7 Insane Real Towns You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped 

Tar-Covered Men WBAGNFARB

Police arrest tar-covered man atop Daytona Beach store: When police arrived, they saw Holoman on the roof, covered in tar. He first said he was visiting family and then changed his story, saying he was an air conditioning technician trying to fix the units because he could hear them making noise from the ground, the report states.  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

And the Nobel Winner Is . . .

Patrick Modiano wins the Nobel prize in literature

Rock Hall of Fame Nominees

Green Day and Nine Inch Nails Among Rock Hall of Fame Nominees: They are among 15 nominees for the Hall of Fame’s class of 2015, along with Lou Reed, Kraftwerk, the Smiths, Sting, War, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, the Marvelettes and the Spinners. The Smiths, the pioneering British band led by the singer Morrissey, has been nominated for the first time, as have the blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who died in 1990, and Bill Withers, the singer of 1970s soul hits like “Lean on Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine.”  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Archaeology Update

Prehistoric paintings suggest Indonesians began making art 40,000 years ago

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

Drunk Florida stripper attacks boyfriend with an ax  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

The Return of Perry Mason?

E! Online: Yes, we have a Sherlock 3 in development. We want it to be the best of the series, so that's a pretty tall order," R[obert] D[owney] J[unior] answered, "Also, Perry Mason is a property I'm looking forward to developing further, going back to the 1931 book series…similarly to what we did with the first 2 Sherlocks, mining the original material for things that are 'new.'"

Soon Our Inmates Will Have No Rights Left at All

Inmate with State Fair turkey leg leads to investigation

I Want to Believe!

Researchers: Is Bigfoot a visitor from space? 

And in fact I wrote the story years ago.  It's in this book.

Free for Kindle for a Limited Time

Whose Body? (The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries Book 1) - Kindle edition by Dorothy L. Sayers. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: In the debut mystery in Dorothy L. Sayers’s acclaimed Lord Peter Wimsey series, the case of a dead bather draws Lord Peter into the first of many puzzling mysteries

No Comment Department

Even an Ozarks coroner gets surplus military guns: Doug Wortham used a Defense Department giveaway program for law enforcement to stock his office with an assault rifle, a handgun and a Humvee — even though the people in his custody are in no condition to put up a fight. 

They're dead.

It's All about Variety -- Janet Hutchings, Editor of EQMM

IT’S ALL ABOUT VARIETY | SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN

Captain's Memories -- Henry Melton

I'm in awe of the amount of planning that's gone into Henry Melton's future history series that he calls The Project Saga.  He's been writing stories about it since 1977 when one appeared in Analog and another appeared in Stellar 3.  The novels have been appearing for several years now from Wire Rim Press, and now we get Captain's Memories, which contains the stories mentioned above along with a lot of others.

But it's not just the stories.  Melton has created a framework into which they fit and connecting tissue to make them part of a history of some of the early days of the Project.  

Captain Pearce wants back into the Star Fleet after her early retirement, and teaching is the only route open to her.  She's going to teach students who are candidates for the Academy, and she's going to try to guide them into informed decisions about whether to go into the Fleet or find something else to do with their lives.  She also has an agenda of her own.

Captain Pearce's teaching comes through the telling of stories, like "The Christmas Count," which gives a good picture of a domed world and which is a nice Christmas story to boot.  And like "We Hold These Rights," which is about a possible rebellion and war and which is as relevant now as the time it was published.  And like "Three Coffins," a very unusual first-contact story.  And like "Working Alone," a good problem-solving story of the kind that I've always liked a lot.  There are a lot of others, and they're mostly hard science fiction.  The beamships and the methods of moving whole planets are all carefully worked out.  That doesn't mean the people don't count. The characters in every story and in the connecting material are all as real as can be.  If you like SF and if you haven't been reading Melton's books, this would be an excellent place to start.  Good stories and good storytelling make a potent combo.

Once Again Texas Leads the Way

Texas A&M develops smaller, better truck bomb barrier

Song of the Day

Cool Change Little River Band - YouTube:

I Need this Mirror

Smart Mirror Pays You Spot-On Compliments

Today's Vintage Ad


First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

Dog poop caused armed argument between neighbors  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

​12 Of The Worst Draculas Of All Time

​12 Of The Worst Draculas Of All Time  

Link via SF Signal.

Blood Moon, Alvin, Texas


PaperBack



R. V. Cassill, The Wife Next Door, Gold Medal, 1959

What? No Mr. Novak?

20 TV Teachers Who Inspired Us All To Be Better Students

Here's Your Flying Car, so Stop Complaining

AeroMobil: Flying car

Yet Another List I'm Not On

The 30 Best Debut Novels 

James Drury Interview

STORYTELLER’S 7: JAMES DRURY, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO THE HIGH PLAINS

Stunning Rare Book Sales in September 2014

Stunning Rare Book Sales in September 2014  

Includes annoying slideshow.

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Free for Kindle for a Limited Time

Hooligans - Kindle edition by William Diehl. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: Jake Kilmer is a cop for the Feds. His specialty is a branch of the Mafia known as the Cincinnati Triad. He's pursued them for years, and now they've set up shop in Dunetown, Georgia. This time, they will not escape the Hooligans, a tough squad of ex-cops that Jake has organized. This time, he'll settle the score once and for all....

So It's Come to This

Swings too dangerous for Washington schools: Swing sets are being removed from the playgrounds at Richland elementary schools because they're too dangerous.

15 Celebs Who Are Completely Washed Up

15 Celebs Who Are Completely Washed Up   

Annoying slideshow and wrong, wrong, wrong!

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Once Again Texas Leads the Way

Ebola killing robot developed in Texas

Song of the Day

BOBBY FULLER FOUR - Only When I Dream YouTube:

Or You Might Know All of Them

15 Things You Might Not Know About Texas

Today's Vintage Ad


Uh-Oh

Sony in Talks to Buy High-Priced Robin Hood Project: The tone of the story has been described as Mission: Impossible and the recent Fast & Furious movies.

10 Ways Technology Rewires Our Brains

10 Ways Technology Rewires Our Brains 

PaperBack



Dorene Clark, The Exotic Affair, Magnet Books, 1959

History's greatest female crime writers

History's greatest female crime writers 

Annoying slideshow.  And Gillian Flynn is already one of history's greatest female crime writers.

Cultural Icons’ Favorite Books

Cultural Icons’ Favorite Books

I Found a Penny Last Week

Mystery Fanfare: Agatha Christie Lost Diamonds found in old Trunk!

Makes Perfect Sense to Me

Man said he chugged stolen beer in store's bathroom, making it a freebie  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Marian Seldes, R. I. P.

NYTimes.com: Marian Seldes, a regal personality in New York theater for more than half a century in plays ranging from whodunits to the work of Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett and, especially, Edward Albee, died Tuesday at her home in New York. She was 88.  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

The Forgotten Story Of Classic Hollywood's First Asian-American Star

The Forgotten Story Of Classic Hollywood's First Asian-American Star

Overlooked Movies: What's Up, Tiger Lily?

I saw this movie long ago and thought it was pretty amusing.  Woody Allen took a Japanese spy movie, recut it, and dubbed it with U. S. actors doing mostly one-liners that had nothing to do with the original plot.  So, for example, whatever the MacGuffin was in the original movie has become the recipe for the world's best egg salad.  The trailer and the poster give the impression that Allen is in the movie.  He is, but only in the prologue at the beginning, when he tells about making the movie.

Little did I know that the movie I saw wasn't the one that Allen intended for me to see.  It had been altered with dialogue being added, along with additional scenes from another movie.  And the Lovin' Spoonful.  Yes, the Lovin' Spoonful sings a couple of numbers during the course of the movie for reasons that are obscure other than that somebody wanted them in there.  

Or that's one version of the story, at least.  There are others.  I don't think anybody really knows for sure how many versions of the movie there are or which ones exist on current DVDs.  It's something worth a look, though, if you want a movie unlike just about any other.  The one-liners are hit and miss, but they hit more often than they miss.  Or that was my long-ago impression.  Now they might all fall flat.  

What's Up, Tiger Lily?

What's Up, Tiger Lily? - classic comedy trailer - YouTube:

Monday, October 06, 2014

Geoffrey Holder, R. I. P.

BBC News: Geoffrey Holder, the Tony-winning actor, dancer and choreographer known to millions as Baron Samedi in Bond movie Live and Let Die, has died at 84.

Free for Kindle for a Limited Time

Big Lake - Kindle edition by Nick Russell. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: When an armored car hijacking leaves two men dead, Arizona Sheriff Jim Weber takes the crime personally, because one of the dead men is his brother-in-law. His hunt for the killers leads him into a world of sordid sex, deceit, and violence, with a suspect list that includes jilted women, a family of anti-government survivalists, and the beautiful wife of the richest man in town. 

With a plot that has more twists and turns than an Arizona mountain road, a cast of characters you won’t soon forget, and a shocking ending that shakes the town of Big Lake to its very foundation, this first book in the Big Lake series will keep you turning pages to the very end!

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

Suspect Stabs Utah Restaurant Employee Who Refused To Lend Him A Pen 

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

New Mexico Burger King manager attacked customer over cold onion rings  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Hearing Voices: Joseph Goodrich

Hearing Voices: Joseph Goodrich | Trace Evidence

Trick or Deadly Treat -- Livia Washburn

I always enjoy Livia Washburn's mysteries about Phyllis Newsome and her boarders.  Like the earlier books, this one's got a great small-town Texas setting, characters you feel like are old friends, and a solid mystery plot, but I liked this one even more than usual because one of the boarders, Sam Fletcher, adopts a dog. And it's not just any dog.  It's a dalmatian. 

[DIGRESSION ALERT] When I was young, my father brought home a dog that was mostly, but not quite all, dalmatian.  He called it Drift, but my younger brother couldn't pronounce that.  He said "Drip."  So that became the dog's name.  Now I know that a lot of you have had dogs that you think were pretty good dogs, and you are, of course entitled to your opinion, but Drip was the best dog ever, the smartest and most loyal and just the downright most lovable.  After Drip crossed the rainbow bridge, my parents had several other dogs -- dalmatians.  My brother, who has more dogs than I can keep up with, has a dalmatian among them even now.  Whenever a book or a movie or a story has a dalmatian in it, I'm almost guaranteed to like it. [END OF DIGRESSION ALERT]

The dog, Buck, proves to be the connection to the murder in the novel because its vet is accused of killing his wife (the vet's wife, not Buck's wife).  Sam can't believe the vet would kill anyone, but Phyllis has promised not to get involved in any more murder cases.  That leaves it up to Sam to do the investigating.  He knows he's not as good as Phyllis, but he's willing to go it alone if he has to.  Later in the book, however, he and Phyllis are hired by the vet's lawyer as consultants.  For the first time in the series, they're legit.  I have a feeling this will come into play in later books.

Naturally there's cooking along the way, and I'm hungry for white chili casserole right now.  Not to mention coconut cream pie cookies.  Recipes are included.

There's another development at the end of the novel that's related to cooking and that also promises to figure in upcoming books in the series.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.  If you haven't read any of the other books, you can jump right in with this one, but you'll get even more fun from it if you start at the beginning of the series with A Peach of a Murder.  The whole series is highly recommended.