First off, an addenda to last month’s report; I read a Sherlock Holmes story I hadn’t read before. “The Adventure of The Three Students.” I’m crazy about anything Arthur Conan Doyle wrote and this story is fun, even though the resolution is a sad one. I didn’t remember reading it until I was putting up my books and found the story bookmarked in “The Complete Sherlock Holmes.”
For Mark Twain’s birthday (November 30th) I read a few of his shorter pieces, including “Curing a Cold,” “A Visit to Niagara” and “A Fine Old Man.” Also bummed through just a little of “The Prince and the Pauper.” Also I got a signed paperback copy of David Morrell’s collection “Black Evening.” Read through the story introductions. Had no idea he was inspired by Stirling Siliphant’s TV scripts or that they had known each other! Read Morrell’s fun story “Partnership.” Very much an “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” kind of story and first appeared in AHMM. Also bummed through his story “Dead Image,” which I’d read years ago and loved.
Read a couple of stories in Kaje Harper’s “The Distant Hills” that I may have read before online but may not have read in the book. “Perceptions” and “Looking Forward.” Excellent as always.
And I read a few stories from J. Scott Coatsworth’s fine collections “Spells and Stardust” and “Tangents and Tachyons.” The stories; “A New Year,” “The Frog Prince” and “The System.” Wonderful!
Read “The Terror of Blue John Gap” by Arthur Conan Doyle.
And I read the first of my Edgar Allan Poe stories for my Poe Project: “King Pest.”
Got Nelson Bond’s fix-up novel containing the stories about “Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman.” Looked up which stories were turned into which chapters and read “FOB Venus.” It’s a typical Bond comedic romp where there’s a comedic twist at the end that saves the day. Science-fantasy, not hard sci-fi. Great fun! And as I read it I mentally compared it to Heinlein’s “The Rolling Stones.” Rbt. & Ginny Heinlein did meticulous research for their book. I’m guessing Bond just made it up. Both are intentionally funny; with the humor in the Heinlein flowing naturally from the characters.
Oh, and the Bond story has a Scottish engineer on a spaceship. This some twenty-plus years before “Star Trek.”
Also read some of Carol Burnett’s memoir “This Time Together.”
Commemorated James Thurber’s December 8th birthday with a Thurber read; “More Alarms at Night” from “My Life and Hard Times.” I decided to read through the stories I hadn’t read in the book and then thought “what the hey.” and decided to read the whole thing. So far I’ve read “University Days,” “A Sequence of Servants” and “Draft Board Nights.” The latter of which ends with Thurber being awakened by bells ringing the Armistice all over town. “The Car We Had to Push” made me laugh out loud.
I’d read “The Night the Ghost Got In” before but listened to a fine podcast reading of this funny (and apparently true) story. (This is what inspired me to read the whole book again.)
Not a part of “My Life and Hard Times,” nonetheless I, uh, Thurbed-out with “A Box to Hide In,” and “Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife.” And yes, I DO consider an audiobook to be “reading.” The feeling is the same.
More from J. Scott Coatsworth, who was kind enough to send (okay, sell) me signed copies of his collections “Androids and Aliens,” and “Love and Limitations.” From the latter I read “The Boy in the Band,” “Ten” and “I Only Want to Be With You.” From the former I read “Rise” and “Ping.” (I had read some of those stories before but I re-read them. He’s that darn good.)
And one more by Arthur Conan Doyle; someone on a book video was gushing about how good “The Boscome Valley Mystery” is and I agree. It’s a Holmes story I didn’t remember reading. From “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.”
And that will do it for this month, but I have more books/stories to read. I’m surrounded by books as I type this, including “The Rolling Stones” which I’ve got to finish and what looks like a fun Christmas sci-fi/fantasy anthology with a story by Joe Haldeman I hadn’t read.
As it is a few days before Christmas, I’d better start in!
———jeff baker
December 22, 2023
Hugoton, Kansas
authorjeffbaker 