Litfan's Book News Thread

[litfan10]

Hi all. I have been a passionate reader my whole life. Since my late twenties every place I've lived I needed an extra room for a library and generally my books spilled out to all the other rooms as well.

I thought it would be fun with this thread to share all sorts of bookish news, trivia and whatnot purely for fun. Feel free to share anything bookish beyond what you are currently reading as we have a thread for that already.

 

[litfan10]

2020 Hugo Award Novel Finalists:

The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)
The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley (Saga; Angry Robot UK)
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK)
Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK)

I find I read a lot more mysteries than sci fi these days so I am way behind. However, I absolutely love Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth and hope this will be the winner.

Harrow the Ninth, the next in the series comes out August 4th.

 

[litfan10]

This past February Nora Roberts under her J.D. Robb pseudonym released the fiftieth book in Eve Dallas series, Golden in Death with a new fifty-first book Shadow in Death due in September.

I can't recall any series running for that long. I read the first two, and they weren't bad by any means, and I know people who love the entire series.

I have ARCs of Golden and Shadow but there are a lot of books between what I read and those two.....

 

[litfan10]

I've been trying to think of other long running series with the same main characters.

The first one that comes to mind is Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone mysteries which ran for twenty-five books. I find it very sad she never got all the way to 'Z' before she passed away.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series ran for fourteen.

I'm just thinking along the adult books line as for kids there are the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Babysitters' Club series that ran forever.

 

[lovecraft68]

I've been trying to think of other long running series with the same main characters.

The first one that comes to mind is Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone mysteries which ran for twenty-five books. I find it very sad she never got all the way to 'Z' before she passed away.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series ran for fourteen.

I'm just thinking along the adult books line as for kids there are the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Babysitters' Club series that ran forever.

There was another lesser known kid detective series I read in my early teens that was pretty good "The Three Investigators.

Nancy was always my girl though. Glad to see they're doing more current versions.

 

[litfan10]

There was another lesser known kid detective series I read in my early teens that was pretty good "The Three Investigators.

Nancy was always my girl though. Glad to see they're doing more current versions.

I read it back when it was called Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. They were written by Robert Arthur. I adored that series. Actually, I am collecting them now.

I liked Trixie Belden more than Nancy.

 

[lovecraft68]

Of course an immensely popular series for kids was Goosebumps. Horror for younger kids...something they didn't have in our time. I was reading-sort of-Salem's Lot at 10.

My daughters had dozens of them, and then Stine did Fear Street which were aimed at older teens. But I admit I read a few Goosebumps myself and thought they were fun.

 

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)

I know Charlie from her journalism work on IO9. I'll have to check out her fiction. Thanks for the tip.

 

[litfan10]

I know Charlie from her journalism work on IO9. I'll have to check out her fiction. Thanks for the tip.

With all the hundreds of new sci fi releases each year it is pretty cool to be a finalist and a sure sign of high quality.

I'd love to hear what you think of it when you read it.

 

[litfan10]

While on a Hugo mindset, N.K. Jemisin was the first African-American writer to win a Hugo for best novel with The Fifth Season, the first book in the Broken Earth trilogy, in 2016.

The second book in the series The Obelisk Gate won best novel Hugo in 2017. The third book in the trilogy, The Stone Sky won best novel in 2018 making her the first writer to ever win best novel in three consecutive years and for winning best novel Hugos for all the books in a series.

They were incredible books, very much deserving the awards in my opinion.

 

[litfan10]

Robert Arthur Jr. wrote the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators books in the mid/late 1960s.
The series came back in the seventies rebranded as just the Three Investigators.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/74/TheMysteryOfTheWhisperingMummy.jpg/220px-TheMysteryOfTheWhisperingMummy.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51KpV-7Mp8L._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

 

[lovecraft68]

Robert Arthur Jr. wrote the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators books in the mid/late 1960s.
The series came back in the seventies rebranded as just the Three Investigators.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/74/TheMysteryOfTheWhisperingMummy.jpg/220px-TheMysteryOfTheWhisperingMummy.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51KpV-7Mp8L._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Yup, I remember those. I was an eclectic reader. By then I was already reading King McCammon and some seriously twisted stuff, but then I'd sit and read these made for kids type books and enjoy them just as much.

 

[litfan10]

James Patterson gave the American Booksellers Association $500,000 to give out to struggling independent bookstores during the coronavirus shut down.

The American Booksellers Association has also refunded independent bookstores their membership dues for March through June.

 

[gordo12]

There was another lesser known kid detective series I read in my early teens that was pretty good "The Three Investigators.

Nancy was always my girl though. Glad to see they're doing more current versions.

I used to read the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift. The original series of Swift dated from 1911 and predicted hi tech inventions that had not yet been seen. The Swift Jr series from around the 50's was similar. I devoured them. It lead me to reading Sci-Fi as a serious pursuit in my teens and most of my adult life. In fact I read almost NOTHING else for decades.

Aaaannnddd... my shameful secret! I used to sneak into my sister's room and swipe her Nancy Drew books when no one was around. Couldn't be seen reading those!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Tom_Swift_and_The_Visitor_from_Planet_X_-_dust_jacket_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_17985.jpg

 

[litfan10]

For some reason I never got into Tom Swift but I thought he was cool. I went straight to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar books. I got bored fairly quickly with Tarzan, but Pellucidar? Man, I ate those up.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Jshbz835L._SL300_.jpg

 

[gordo12]

And John Carter of Mars. There's another set I loved. Used to have all these books but lost them when I left home. My parents threw them away. GRRRR.

I just looked at the Burroughs books and the mars series (if not others) are in the public domain and available for free on Gutenburg.org
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62

Strangely enough they make no mention of the paperbacks published in the late fifties or sixties, except one. I recognize the Princess of Mars cover (1917)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510PdCYybYL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Also
https://www.erbzine.com/mag14/pomdj.jpg

 

[litfan10]

Of course it's not a far stretch from these to Robert E. Howard and his creation, Conan the Barbarian.

Howard wrote the first story to truly scare the crap out of me: "Pigeons from Hell".

 

[litfan10]

This has been more of a reminisce than a news thread but the dialogue is fun which is what counts.

It's sad. I clearly remember the first music I was given (Shades of Deep Purple and The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour,) and I remember the first music that I bought for myself (Elton John's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.)

I can't for the life of me remember my first books. Dr. Seuss was big in our house hold. I remember that much.

I remember in school getting the Scholastic flyer and ordering a crap ton of books every month as my parents were very passionate about reading. The teacher would get the order, sort it during lunch, and leave the books on the corner of our desks. I would always have a huge stack.

When I was older I mowed, raked, shoveled snow, had a paper route, and babysat to earn money. I had a huge comic habit buying weekly from the Owego Smoke Shop which was the local smoke shop and magazine store and going around the corner to Woolworth's to buy paperbacks. They had a long rack against the short barrier wall for the stairs leading downstairs. I bought mysteries and science fiction/fantasy. That was were I got my first Agatha Christie's.

I remember my first writing (and drawing) was when the comics would have story lines my friends and I didn't like so I would write and draw alternative stories on blank paper that I stapled.

 

[RandyD1369]

John D. McDonald was one of the most versatile authors of the middle 20th Century, respected not only for his detective/mystery writing but also for his science fiction ("The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything" for example). His really great and widely known character, Travis McGee, owner of the houseboat Busted Flush, has more than a dozen novels in the series, all with colors in their titles. Around 2000, author Spider Robinson swore there were still people going to Bahia Mar Marina in Ft. Lauderdale looking for slip F-3 where Busted Flush was supposed to be docked.

In the last part of the century, Laurence Sanders (The 1st Deadly Sin) wrote a similar series of novels about a McGee-like character named Archie McNally. and I'm sure we've all heard of Perry Mason.

Gordo, I also chance to have all 11 of Burroughs' original Barsoom series in paperbacks reissued in 1963 and printed in the middle and late 1960s. Perhaps a trade could be arranged by PM.

 

[lovecraft68]

The first books I remember reading when I was young was Winnie The Pooh, Curious George and of course Doc Seuss.

I was a precocious reader and was several grades ahead of my class reading level wise and that came from sneaking my mother's books-all horror, my mother was not a romance reader, and trying to make out what I could of those.

First real novel I recall reading, and understanding, was the Amityville Horror at about 10. I tackled the Exorcist at 12 and that was not only scary AF, but very eye opening, and all the demons dirty sexual slurs and insults were way over my head.

Another-and obviously for my writing today-first that was important was when I found a handful of those nasty paperbacks from the 60's written by 'anonymous' in an attic of an old abandoned house me and my other punk friends had broken into to poke around in, and drink whatever we could steal from the corner store that carried some liquor.

They were hardcore incest, orgy and non con stuff and obviously....they stuck with me, although even back then the Non con made me feel uneasy, but being knew it everything I read it all.

 

[lovecraft68]

This is a series I loved and instilled my love of violence and fight scenes in stories.

The best part of the series was they had some dirty little sex scenes and my parents had no idea, thought they were 'adventure' books

https://www.google.com/search?q=the...EHXRzDYsQ_h0wDXoECAsQCQ#imgrc=C1_A4-IVP5MXOM:

 

[litfan10]

John D. McDonald was one of the most versatile authors of the middle 20th Century, respected not only for his detective/mystery writing but also for his science fiction ("The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything" for example). His really great and widely known character, Travis McGee, owner of the houseboat Busted Flush, has more than a dozen novels in the series, all with colors in their titles. Around 2000, author Spider Robinson swore there were still people going to Bahia Mar Marina in Ft. Lauderdale looking for slip F-3 where Busted Flush was supposed to be docked.

In the last part of the century, Laurence Sanders (The 1st Deadly Sin) wrote a similar series of novels about a McGee-like character named Archie McNally. and I'm sure we've all heard of Perry Mason.

Gordo, I also chance to have all 11 of Burroughs' original Barsoom series in paperbacks reissued in 1963 and printed in the middle and late 1960s. Perhaps a trade could be arranged by PM.

Don't forget Dashiel Hammet and the original I an Fleming James Bond books.

I remember a series my brother read about a spy who never slept. It was interesting. Kind of like Mac Bolan and Doc Savage meets John D, MacDonald.

 

[litfan10]

This is a series I loved and instilled my love of violence and fight scenes in stories.

The best part of the series was they had some dirty little sex scenes and my parents had no idea, thought they were 'adventure' books

https://www.google.com/search?q=the...EHXRzDYsQ_h0wDXoECAsQCQ#imgrc=C1_A4-IVP5MXOM:

This was my series to sneak some smut into my early teenage hormonal reading:

https://www.google.com/search?q=nick+carter+novels&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjQ8_Th5_ToAhVIQKwKHcjFAEsQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=nick+carter+novels&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzICCAAyBggAEAgQHjIECAAQGDIECAAQGDIECAAQGDIECAAQGDIECAAQGDoFCAAQgwE6BAgAEEM6BwgAEIMBEEM6BggAEAUQHjoECAAQHlCQaVjinwFg9aABaAFwAHgAgAHiAYgB9g6SAQYxMS42LjGYAQCgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZw&sclient=img&ei=926cXpCcM8iAsQXIi4PYBA&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS756US756&safe=off

 

[gordo12]

Gordo, I also chance to have all 11 of Burroughs' original Barsoom series in paperbacks reissued in 1963 and printed in the middle and late 1960s. Perhaps a trade could be arranged by PM.

My parents threw all mine away after I moved out. However I saw a set on Ebay in ex to Vg for books 1-11 this morning. Couldn't resist and paid $125 for them and shipping.

Thanks anyway!

Damn all this nostalgia! It's expensive!

 

[gordo12]

This was my series to sneak some smut into my early teenage hormonal reading:

I got hold of a copy of Fanny Hill when I was around 13. That book and I went through a lot of hormonal reading together.

Then one day it just disappeared. Could have been the housekeeper or parents. But how do you ask!