So, I'm going to GaryCon. For the first time ever. Less than a month from now.
It'll be great to see some of my old TSR colleagues from my time there. Also to put a face on folks I know online but haven't met in person.
If you'd like to touch bases, drop me a note in the comments.
--John R.
--current reading: THE MOON CHILD by Aleister Crowley (1917)
So, I knew that one of Lord Dunsany's books was reviewed by Aleister Crowley. What I did not know until a few days ago is that Crowley critiques Dunsany in passing, in what might have made for an interesting blurb.
The passage in question comes three-quarters of the way through Crowley's occult novel THE MOON CHILD (1917). Crowley writes
Lord Dunsany's stories are
the perfect prose jewels
of a master cutter and polisher,
lit by the rays of an imagination
that is the godlike son
of the Father of All Truth and Light;
[page 209 chapter 18:
The Dark Side of the Moon]
---John R.
--current reading: THE JOURNAL OF JULIUS RODMAN by Edgar Poe (best described as 'Poe does Lewis & Clark').
Dear Valmer
Here's what I suggest.
Send me a comment connected to this post. If you'll include yr email address in the unpublished comment, I'll delete said comment and respond to you directly.
--John R.
So, I hadn't had a chance to get into a bookstore for a while, and held off ordering from Amazon, that great big bookstore in the sky (or perhaps the ether), since we were away for a brief visit to Rockford / Lake Geneva / & Milwaukee and having books come while we're having mail held is inviting trouble. Once we were back I did a little catching up:
THE ALABASTER HAND by A. N. L. Munby
--Read twice before, finding it enjoyable but derivative; this time I thought better of it. After all, if you're going to imitate somebody it might as well be the best (in this case, the ghost stories of M. R. James). Plus the book was written under difficult circumstances (in a prisoner-of-war camp). Jared Lobdell was interested in this book but never articulated why.
BLOOD & THUNDER: THE LIFE AND ART ODF ROBERT E. HOWARD by Mark Finn
--a well-researched new (-ish) biography of R.E.H., creator of Conan. Meant to be a corrective of the de Camp biography and its many shortcomings.
THE MAJOR AND THE MISSIONARY: THE LETTERS OF WARREN HAMILTON LEWIS AND BLANCH BIGGS ed. Diana Pavlac Glyer
--the back-and-forth correspondence between C. S. Lewis's brother and said a missionary living and working in New Guinea: pen friends who never met. I heard this one read out as a play-for-voices at a Mythcon years ago and enjoyed it then; I expect to enjoy it again now that it's available in book form.
There's a fourth book, by Barfield, but that has not yet arrived.
--John R.
--current reading: Finn's Howard.
