Reading Report: February/March, 2024
Again this month, unless noted most of these are short stories.
Re-read Asimov’s “Where No Man Persueth.”
Listened to a reading (on You Tube) of Mike Resnick’s story “The Wizard Of West 34th Street.” Posted it for Resnick’s Birthday. (I met him once!) A very good story.
Read several stories from the collection “Dracula’s Brood,” edited by Richard Dalby (1987, Barnes and Noble Books.) “Another Squaw,” by E. Heron-Allen. Aylmer Vance and the Vampire” by Alice and Claude Askew, and “The Feather Pillow,” a horrific tale by Horacio Quiroga, a South American writer I had never heard of. All the stories in the anthology are lesser-known vampire tales by authors writing in the later Victorian era and right before World War One.
Read Fritz Leiber’s “The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar” which actually has some LGBT representation but if I revealed more it would give away some of the story’s surprises (and the LGBT characters aren’t the surprise!) Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are again their own worst enemies and to whom exactly does the title refer?
Also on the Leiber read front I read another of his Changewar stories: “Damnation Morning.”
Read “The Refugees,” a fun Dr. Poggioli mystery by T. S. Stribling. Who poisoned the wine? I actually managed to guess part of the solution to this near-100 year-old story.
FINALLY read Lord Dunsany’s often-anthologized “The Two Bottles Of Relish.” The set-up is a Sherlock Holmes-type story with the narrator (“Smethers”) doing the legwork. I half-guessed what was going on until the brilliant last line! (I think he wrote at least a couple more Smethers stories.)
I started reading Alan Napier’s posthumous memoir “Not Just Batman’s Butler,” finished by a writer who often interviewed him. It comes off like Napier is sitting down with the reader after dinner and spinning tales about his life over brandy or tea.
Read Kaje Harper’s weekly offerings (never miss those!)
Re-read Bruce Coville’s fun story “Am I Blue?” to post snippets on “Rainbow Snippets.”
Totally neglected Poe again. I’ll make up for that next month!
—–jeff baker, March 20th, 2024
authorjeffbaker 