Latest Finds II

[andydecker]

Jul 14, 2022 19:32:33 GMT dem said:

Thanks Andreas. Can't see me reading Moriarty to be honest — I've not managed to finish a Newman novel since the first Anno Dracula book (Red Reign?). Not sure why Bloody Red Baron annoyed me so, but it did, to the point where I swore never to waste time on his stuff again, though have since relented. To my way of thinking, the first three Where the Bodies are Buried novellas are a treat, as is Pitbull Brittan, his genuinely terrifying Bulldog Drummond upgrade. It reads less like satire with every passing year.

Yes, Red Reign is the basis for Anno Dracula. In hindsight the best of the bunch is Dracula ChaChaCha. I read it a couple of times. Maybe it is my growing love for Italian genre movies that I like it so. Every year I re-read some old novels, mostly crime novels, MacDonald, Chandler, GNS and so on, but this one made it on the list.

[dem]

Jul 15, 2022 19:34:11 GMT andydecker said:

Yes, Red Reign is the basis for Anno Dracula. In hindsight the best of the bunch is Dracula ChaChaCha. I read it a couple of times. Maybe it is my growing love for Italian genre movies that I like it so. Every year I re-read some old novels, mostly crime novels, MacDonald, Chandler, GNS and so on, but this one made it on the list.

Actually I'm now good as certain it was just Red Reign I read, and not the version expanded into the Anno Dracula novel, as I don't have a copy .... at least, I hadn't until this morning's shamble around the market. Mixed bag.

Burkhard Riemschneider [ed.] - 1000 Pin-Up Girls (Taschen, 2002; originally 1997)

Blurb:

"Girls, Gags & Giggles" — this was publisher Robert Harrison's recipe for dishing up the American pin-up to the U.S. male. In the 1950's his girlie magazines sold in their millions, before becoming icons of pulp and trash culture.

Kim Newman - Anno Dracula (Titan, May 2011)

Blurb:
It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. His polluted bloodline spreads through London as his citizens increasingly choose to become vampires.
In the grim backstreets of Whitechapel, a killer known as 'Silver Knife' is cutting down vampire girls. The eternally young vampire Geneviève Dieudonné and Charles Beauregard of the Diogenes Club are drawn together as they both hunt the sadistic killer, bringing them ever closer to England's most bloodthirsty ruler yet.

One from a Vault Mk I regular made good, Mr. Trash fiction himself:

Alwyn W. Turner - A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s (Aurum, 2014)
Blurb:
When Margaret Thatcher was ousted from Downing Street in November 1990, after eleven years of bitter social and economic conflict, many hoped that the decade to come would be more 'caring'; others dared to believe that the more radical policies of her revolution might even be overturned. Across politics and culture there was an apparent yearning for something the Iron Lady had famously dismissed: society.

Yet the forces that had warred over the country during the 1980s were to prevent any simple turning back of the clock. The 'New Britain' to emerge under John Major and Tony Blair would be a contradiction: economically unequal but culturally classless.

While Westminster agonised over sleaze and the ERM, the country outside became the playground of the New Lad and his sister the Ladette, of Swampy and the YBAs, of Posh and Becks and Jarvis Cocker. A new era was dawning which promised to connect us via the 'information superhighway' and entertain us with 'docusoaps'. It was also a period that would see old moral certainties swept aside, and once venerable institutions descend into farce - followed, in the case of the Royal Family, by tragedy.

Opening with a war in the Gulf and ending with the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, A Classless Society goes in search of the decade when modern Britain came of age. What it finds is a nation anxiously grappling with new technologies, tentatively embracing new lifestyles, and, above all, forging a new sense of what it means to be British.

... plus ...

Nick Davidson - Pirates, Punks & Politics: FC. St Pauli - Falling in Love with a Radical Football Club (SportsBooks, 2014)

Blurb:
FC Sankt Pauli – the football club in the red-light district of Hamburg; a transvestite chairman; terraces populated by punks, pimps and prostitutes; a club run by anarchists, united under the skull and crossbones flag.

This is the myth that has been lazily peddled, one which attracts clueless stag parties from the Reeperbahn to the Millerntor stadium. But it’s not the real St Pauli.
In Pirates, Punks & Politics author Nick Davidson puts the record straight, intermingling the history of FC St. Pauli, and the district it represents, with an account of his own involvement with the club.
This book goes beyond the stereotype to seek out the real St. Pauli – a club with a passionate, left-wing fan base that has made a stand against, fascism, racism, sexism and homophobia both in football and wider society. As the author and countless others have discovered, the Millerntor is also a place which welcomes with open arms fans seeking an alternative to the rampant commercialisation of football elsewhere, encouraging them to stay for hours after the final whistle and immerse themselves in the vibrant fan culture. Read this book and fall in love with a different kind of football.

[andydecker]

Don't know if it is grounds for shame or champagne, but congrats to your 16000nd post.  The Vargas girls at least are smiling. Must mean something.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jul 17, 2022 16:12:16 GMT andydecker said:

Don't know if it is grounds for shame or champagne, but congrats to your 16000nd post.  The Vargas girls at least are smiling. Must mean something.

Astonishing! Even more astonishing is that the vast majority of those posts have substantial content (to say the least). I know of a poster on another board who has hundreds of thousands of posts, but they are mostly "I agree" and the like.

[jamesdoig]

The mid-year Lifeline bookfair was on Fri-Sat - it's the smaller one and was pretty disappointing - not a lot to post, and most I already have:

These Arrows were a buck each:







These were $2:







3 bucks for Red Sonja:

[helrunar]

Those are lovely finds! I wonder how John Jakes holds up nowadays.

cheers, Hel.

[helrunar]

I'm mildly curious as to which of Alexander Woollcott's ghost stories was included in the First Arrow Book. I checked ISFDB but I don't see a listing for the Arrow Book series.

Only mildly curious so no need to bother if it's already packed away somewhere.

cheers, Hel.

[mrhappy]

Jul 19, 2022 2:14:32 GMT helrunar said:

I'm mildly curious as to which of Alexander Woollcott's ghost stories was included in the First Arrow Book. I checked ISFDB but I don't see a listing for the Arrow Book series.

Only mildly curious so no need to bother if it's already packed away somewhere.

cheers, Hel.

Moonlight Sonata

[helrunar]

Thanks, Mr. Happy!

cheers, H.

[andydecker]

Jul 18, 2022 21:46:41 GMT helrunar said:

Those are lovely finds! I wonder how John Jakes holds up nowadays.

cheers, Hel.

Love the Jakes cover. Great find!

The Brak stories are surprisingly readable in the right mood. It is a shallow Howard pastiche in some aspects, but this was already the case in the 70s, so nothing new there. But it is sometimes entertaining and no doubt colourful. There are much worse offenders in the genre.

[helrunar]

I learned last night from the interwebs that John Jakes turned 90 last March. Happy belated birthday!

Some American publisher put out a series years ago of "things overheard in bookshops"--I remember they were pretty funny. Some of the snippets were people revealing just how little they knew about books, or anything really, but other comments recorded were so off the wall they got into post-Dada terrain.

H.

[kooshmeister]

Got:

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
The Thing by Alan Dean Foster
The Incredible Melting Man by Phil Smith
Night of the Big Heat by John Lymington

On order:

Worm by Harry Adam Knight (yeah, evidently it was published under the Knight pseudonym)
Tendrils by Simon Ian Childer

Also eyeing:

Slime by John Halkin
Creature by John Saul
Saurian by William Schoell
The Lake by R. Karl Largent

[Dr Strange]

Jul 19, 2022 12:40:30 GMT helrunar said:

Some American publisher put out a series years ago of "things overheard in bookshops"--I remember they were pretty funny. Some of the snippets were people revealing just how little they knew about books, or anything really, but other comments recorded were so off the wall they got into post-Dada terrain.

Probably Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops (renamed Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores in the US) by Jen Campbell, which started out as a blog. Here's a selection I found online:

1. Customer: I read a book in the 1960s. I don’t remember the author, or the title. But it was green and it made me laugh. Do you know which one I mean?

(I think this one may have visited the Vault a couple of times.)

2. Customer: Do you have that book – I forget what it’s called; it’s about people with large, hairy feet. Bookseller: Do you mean hobbits? “The Lord of the Rings”? Customer: No ... erm, “The Hairy Bikers”.

3. Customer: Do you have a book that lists the weather forecasts for the rest of the year?

4. Customer: Do you have this children’s book I’ve heard about? It’s supposed to be very good. It’s called “Lionel Richie and the Wardrobe”.

5. Customer: I’m looking for a biography to read that’s really interesting. Could you recommend one? Bookseller: Sure. What books have you read and liked? Customer: Well, I really loved “Mein Kampf”. Bookseller: ... Customer: “Loved” is probably not the right word. Bookseller: Probably not. Customer: “Liked” is probably better. Yes. I liked it a lot.

6. Customer: Excuse me, do you have any signed copies of Shakespeare plays? Bookseller: Er...do you mean signed by the people who performed the play?
Customer: No, I mean signed by William Shakespeare.

7. Customer: What books could I buy to make guests look at my bookshelf and think "Wow, that guy's intelligent"?

8. Customer: Do you have this book (holds up a biography) but without the photographs? Bookseller: I think the photographs are published alongside the text in every edition. Customer: Why? Bookseller: I suppose so you can see what everyone looked like. Customer: I don't like photographs. Bookseller: Ok.
Customer: Could you cut them out for me?

9. Customer: Hi, I’d like to return this book, please. Bookseller: Do you have the receipt? Customer: Here. Bookseller: Erm, you bought this book at Waterstone’s. Customer: Yes. Bookseller: We’re not Waterstone’s. Customer: But, you’re a bookshop. Bookseller: Yes, but we’re not Waterstone’s. Customer: You’re all part of the same chain. Bookseller: No, sorry, we’re an independent bookshop. Customer: ... Bookseller: Put it this way, you wouldn’t buy clothes in H&M and take them back to Zara, would you? Customer: Well, no, because they’re different shops. Bookseller: Exactly. Customer: I’d like to speak to your manager.

10. Customer: Hi, my best friend came in last weekend and bought a book, and she really loved it. Do you have another copy? Bookseller: What was the title? Customer: Oh, right. Yeah. I don’t remember.

[dem]

Some kind soul donated a copy to the Little Free Library.

Jen Campbell, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

[helrunar]

Those are hilarious! Thanks, Dr Strange. Always nice to have a smile.

Some librarian a few years ago posted a snap of a shelf she and a couple of other people had assembled in their place of employment. It was near the circulation desk and consisted of books with red covers. This was in response to the thing that kept happening--a patron would wander in and say, "I read this book years ago and loved it, but all I can remember is that it had a red cover." Once this selection had been completed, whenever this happened the person would be waved over to the shelf with the suggestion that possibly they would find it amongst the volumes assembled there.

H.