Recent Readings

I've actually been getting through quite a few books recently. I'm also listening to some on my Kindle on my commute. Here's my quick updates.

Gangdom's Doom, either 4th or 7th in the Shadow series by Maxwell Grant. I listend to this one, in which the Shadow goes from New York to Chicago. I actually liked this one about the best of the ones I've listened to so far. It featured the Shadow on stage more than some of the previous volumes, which focused overly much it seemed to me on Harold Vincent, the Shadow's assistant.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, by John Ryder Hall. This is a novelization of the movie and stays pretty close to the film. I have to say I liked the film somewhat better. I thought the book started out well but began to seem rushed toward the end. Plus, it stayed almost too close to the movie. I like when novelizations expand a bit on the film.

Why Mermaids Sing by C. S. Harris. Harris is really Candice Proctor. This is the third in her Sebastian St. Cyr historical mystery series, which is set in England in the early 1800s, the Regency period. I love this series. I read the first two back to back but then somehow got distracted and delayed picking up the third. Once I finished this one, though, I launched immediately into the fourth one, Where Serpents Sleep. "Mermaids" was wonderful and so far I'm really enjoying "Serpents" as well. I have the fifth one, What Remains of Heaven and it's scheduled next. The sixth in the series will be out next year. I'm actually not a huge mystery reader but the character of Sebastian St. Cyr is so compelling, and the settings so wonderfully etched, that I'm hooked on this series.

I'm currently listening to She by H. Rider Haggard. Definitely a bit of a slow start but once it gets going it's pretty cool. I had not previously read this and I was kind of fascinated at some similarities in the 'introduction' to the story to the introduction that I used for Swords of Talera. Almost uncanny in some places.

Here's a couple of books I'm wanting below:




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Rip Through Time

Some breaking news. I revealed something about the secret project I worked on this past summer in a previous post. It was a serial time travel story conceived by David Cranmer and executed by several guest writers, including me. The first installment of “A Rip Through Time” is now up online at Beat to a Pulp. This opening segment is by Chris F. Holm, so I hope you’ll check it out. My piece follows Chris’s in the story sequence. I had a lot of fun with my part, and from what Chris says here he had a lot of fun as well.

In other news, I’ve been kindlizing some old pulp stories, Doc Savage and The Shadow, for listening to on my Kindle while I make my commute to school. A problem was that the Kindle’s volume output was not enough to overcome the travel noise at much above 40 MPH. I first hooked up a set of speakers to the Kindle and used a cigarette lighter plug-in to power the whole thing, but this was pretty awkward and still didn’t produce enough volume to cover all contingencies. I finally bit the bullet and went to Mobile One on Saturday and had them put in a new radio/CD player for me with an auxiliary port, which I can plug the Kindle into directly so that it plays through my radio speakers. This is working out well. My 2005 Scion didn’t come with an auxiliary port, and I was needing a new CD player anyway so I killed two birds with one stone.

And speaking of Kindle and ebooks, sales have fallen off dramatically, (shall I say, precipitously), on my western collection, Killing Trail, so if you are hungry for some shoot outs and shoot-em-ups, please give the collection a try.


And for a final note for today, The Lovely Lana is running a contest over at her blog where you can pick up one of her great photos. Check it out.
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