November Book Round-Up

SF: 137: Quofum – Alan Dean Foster

WE:138: The Trailsman: Seminole Showdown – Jon Sharpe

WE:139: Longarm and The Valley of Skulls – Tabor Evans

AD:140: Fargo: Alaska Steel – John Benteen

AD:141: Fargo: Massacre River – John Benteen

WE:142: Luke’s Gold – Charles G. West

MY:143: Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine: issue # 1 –  Marvin Kaye, editor

HR:144: Just After Sunset: Stories – Stephen King

PI:  145: Pattern For Panic(Cliff Morgan version) – Richard S. Prather

AD:146: Fargo: The Wildcatters – John Benteen

AD:147: Fargo: Apache Raiders – John Benteen

PI:  148: Pattern For Murder(The Scrambled Yeggs) – David Knight(Richard S. Prather)

PI:  149: Case of The Vanishing Beauty – Richard S. Prather

November Movie Round-Up

A Study In Scarlet(1933)

Murder At The Baskervilles(1937) a curious fact: the actor playing Watson was named Ian Fleming(played Watson in four films)

Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon(1942)

Sherlock Holmes: The Woman In Green(1945)

Sherlock Holmes: Dressed To Kill(1946)

Sherlock Holmes: Terror By Night(1946)

The Fighting Kentuckian(1949) Oliver Hardy stars as John Wayne’s sidekick

Ring of Fear(1954) Mickey Spillane investigates a series of “accidents” at Clyde Beatty’s Circus

It Came From Beneath The Sea(1955)

Die, Monster, Die!(1965) Boris Karloff

The War Wagon(1967)

Rocky(1976)

Yeti(2008) the cheese factor was high on this Sci-Fi “spectacular”

100 Million B.C.(2008)

Turner Classic Movies ran a couple of movies that I recorded for later viewing. The word classic in the channel name faked me out. MONSTER A-GO GO the less said the better. I never made it through the credits before I stopped it and erased. The second, THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION, lasted a bit longer. One of the actors, Alan Hale, the “Skipper”, played the sheriff. The very first lines of dialogue, when a young man stopped by the sheriff’s office,  went, “Hello, Sheriff.”, followed by “Hey, little buddy!” Everything was downhill after that.

NFL Week 12

Tags

Jets, Panthers, Redskins

Two thirds of my teams did well this week.

The Redskins won over the Seahawks 20-17, while the Giants and Cowboys won as well. What’s going on with the Eagles? They lost and changed quarterbacks at halftime while only down 10-7, putting in a young guy that hadn’t been working with the starters at all. That makes no sense.

That leaves the Giants secure in first at 10-1, with the Redskins and Cowboys tied at 7-4, the Eagles last at 5-5-1. With a three game lead and only five to go, playing as well as they are continuing to do, the division title looks secure for New York.

The Jets held on to first place by putting away the previously undefeated Titans 34-13. New England beat Miami in a shootout 48-28 to stay a game back and Buffalo won over the Chiefs, 54-31, to leave them tied with the Dolphins for third.

Now we come to the disappointment for the day.

My Panthers lost to the Falcons, 45-28, and are now tied for first with Tampa Bay, who beat the Lions 38-20, who put up a mild fight early before fading. Atlanta is a game back. New Orleans, at 5-5, plays tonight.

I feel for the fans in Detroit. Listening to the talking heads discuss it, they seem to feel the odds are good that the Lions will finish the season 0-16. A shame! I know the fans have supported the team for years. It would be nice if ownership had more of an interest in a winning team and less in the bottom dollar.

A winning team can be done. Look at the Atlanta Falcons. Last place in 2007, a miserable team, and now they are 7-4, only a game out of first.

Just After Sunset: Stories Stephen King

Tags

crime, horror, Stephen King

JUST AFTER SUNSET: STORIES is Stephen King’s latest collection. All but one were written witin the last couple of years.

It’s a nice mix of crime and horror stories, though the horror here has no raging, slavering monsters of the type that Mr. King does so well. The monsters here are all human, laden with the creepiness that only a human monster can come up with.

My favorite is THE GINGERBREAD GIRL in which we have a woman living on a seasonal island, mostly alone, dealing with a lost child and a crumbling marriage because of that. She develops a mania for running, running, and more running, which is the least of her problems on the lonely island. You see, there’s also a homicidal maniac lurking there.

Then there’s the portly commercial artist that develops a unique way to lose weight, the hit man that takes a contract on a cat, the young man with a group of people waiting at a lonely station for Amtrak to pick up the survivors of a derailment who goes looking for his fiancee who’s wandered off into the night, and the man living in New York City  who decided to play hooky one fateful day and now has an odd form of survivor’s guilt.

In MUTE, there’s a salesman running away from a philandering and embezzling wife that picks up a hitchhiker.  N. is the only new story, a tale of a psychiatrist with an OCD patient.

There’s more, a half dozen shorter pieces,  and I found this book one of the most satisfying from  Mr. King  in years. There seems to be something here for all types of readers.

Well worth a look.

The New Star Trek Movie

Tags

Star Trek

Here;s the secomd trailer for the new Star trek movie. It seems a lot of fans are unwilling to give it a chance. I’ve been a fan from the very beginning, though I don’t use the nomenclature most do(I’m not a trekkie or a trekker, just a fan) and I’m not obsessive about the actors. At this point, they are to old to play the parts with any kind of suspension of disbelief on my part.

I’m ready to move forward and give this one a chance. I’ll judge it as I would any movie I see. Good story. Good acting. The look of the film.

And that’s all.

In that rspect, this looks good. I make no further claims as I’ve been disapponted in the past after liking a trailer.

NFL Week 11

Tags

Jets, Panthers, Redskins

It was a good and bad week for my three teams: two winners and one bad loser.

My Redskins lost to the hated Cowboys, 14-10, tonight. One odd fact. They said in the history of the Redskins’ franchise, some seventy odd years, their record for games played on November 16 has now reached 0-10. Please, no more games on this day.

That leaves the Giants, a winner today in first in the NFC East with a 9-1 record, the Redskins two games back, the Cowboys three, and the Eagles last because they ended the day in a tie game with the Bengals.

The Jets defeated the Patriots Thursday night in a showdown for first place in the AFC East and the Dolphins won over the Raiders, 17-15, to keep them close. Buffalo plays tonight.

The Panthers beat the Lions, 31-22, to keep them winless. But Detroit played a pretty good game in losing, It seems they may have found themselves a quarterback in Daunte Culpepper, in spite of the gift interception he gave away near the end  that helped the Panthers build on their slim margin. I think they may be alright in the future.

That leaves the Panthers in first at 8-2. The Bucs won over the Vikings, 19-13, to stay one game back. Atlanta fell to the Broncos, 24-20, to fall two games back and the Saints won to even their record at 5-5.

The Titans won to remain undefeated at 10-0. Six more games to go. They will probably lose , but what a story.

AC/DC: The Old and The New

Tags

AC/DC

AC/DC has been around a long time. I saw them twice live years ago, once with the late Bon Scott and the other with Brian Johnson.

Here’s the earliest and newest clips I could find of the band.

Earliest: 1974

Newest: 2008

This newest is just a brief clip. The official video has the embedding disabled, so this was all I could get.

Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine: issue # 1 Marvin Kaye, editor

Tags

mystery, Sherlock Holmes

When I first ran across this on Amazon, I had a moment of excitement. A long time Holmes fan, I loved the idea of a magazine named after him. I have several variations of the Doyle Books, as well as innumerable pastiches.

Wildside Press is the publisher and there was an ad for subscriptions inside. When I went online to subscribe to the quarterly, I could find nothing about it in the magazine section. A query to Wildside revealed they’d backed up on the magazine idea, instead opting for a series of books.

I can live with that.

It’s laid out like a magazine, but the cover is paperback stock.

An editorial by Dr, Watson and Marvin Kaye, an advice column by no less than Mrs, Hudson, landlady to our two heroes, an interview with Ron Goulart, and an article comparing eight filmed versions of The Hound of The Baskervilles and why none of them are satisfactory, as well as why the book may be unfilmable comprise the regular departments of the “magazine.”

Then there’s the fiction.

Two Holmes stories(a pastiche bt Carole Bugge, THE STRANGE CASE OF THE HAUNTED FREIGHTER, and a classic from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, THE “GLORIA SCOTT”), a Harry Challenge story from Goulart, not to mention a Simon Ark from Edward. D. Hoch, and three other short pieces make up the rest of the book. I immediately subscribed to issues 2-4. There’s no mention whether they intend to carry it further. I suppose that will be decided if sales warrant it.

Luke’s Gold – Charles G. West

Tags

Charles G. West, western

At twenty, Cade Hunter had been on his own for six years. He’d worked with both cattle and horses, becoming quite accomplished with both.

Now, with old Billy, his horse since childhood, dead from stepping in a prairie dog hole and having to be put down, Cade was afoot. He hooks up with a cattle drive he comes across and meets Luke Tucker, an older drover, and they become friends.

After the drive, they go off together, Luke telling him a story about the Civil War. He was part of a patrol guarding nine mule loads of gold dust when they were attacked by Confederate forces. The patrol was wiped out, with Luke the only survivor, getting away with one mule load. He hid it and, only now, twelve years later, he wants to retrieve it.

Unfortunately, Luke is recognized by an old army comrade, Lem Snider, who thought him dead all these years, and follows along until they find the dust. Luke is murdered, Cade left for dead, and only the help of an old mountain man and his Blackfoot wife  save the young man’s life.

After he recovers, Cade decides to go after Snider. The gold he doesn’t care about, only avenging the murder of his friend. Along the way, he helps out people he runs across, making new friends, and starting to build a future, until the final encounter.

Charles West gets better with each novel. Early in his career, he wrote in trilogies, except for one four book sequence. Lately, though, he’s been doing standalones.

Well worth checking out for western fans. The style is smooth and easy reading, just fine for a few hours enjoyment.

Longarm and The Trailsman

Tags

Longarm, The Trailsman

Longarm and The Hell Riders – Tabor Evans

The Trailsman: California Carnage – Jon Sharpe

Longarm and The Valley Of Skulls – Tabor Evans

The Trailsman: Seminole Showdown – Jon Sharpe

I remember back years ago when the adult westerns first started. I sampled a few of them(I don’t remember titles or series) and wasn’t impressed. I recall thinking at the time, “If i wanted an adult novel, I’d read one and if I wanted a western, I’d read one of those.” They should not be mixed. I never messed with any of them after that.

Which brings me up to today. I’ve read the four titles above and enjoyed them in the last year or so. The primary reason was I’ve become a fan of the author’s work in the last few years. Now either i’ve mellowed since my youth or the writing is better because these seem to have less adult and more western than those earlier efforts by different writers.

Maybe it’s me. As I’ve aged, I’ve become less enamored of adult literature. Perhaps we all go through that(I’m speaking of males here as adolesence sometimes seems protracted  in us).

I probably will continue to read some of these as they appear. They are well written, nice plots, good characters. I doubt, though, looking for past efforts. You know, too many books, not enough time. Like most of us who read, I could stop buying books and, likely, not run out of unread volumes for the rest of my life. Why buy more books then?

That passion for books! There’s always something new that looks interesting.

Holding a book in one’s hands, it can’t be equaled. I don’t think I’ll ever warm up to these e-book readers. Just not the same as holding a book, the smell of the ink and paper as you turn the pages. I’ve read a few online novels. It was okay, but not enough to make me invest in a reader.

Two factors have already robbed me of one pleasure. Stalking the aisles of a bookstore looking for that surprise find. I used to be incapable of walking past a bookstore without  stopping in. I could be broke and still want to walk those aisles looking around.

My little town no longer has a bookstore and my disability makes a forty mile drive to the nearest store a bit unfeasible. These days, it’s the internet and Amazon or some of the used book sites for me.

Sorry about the rant.