Sunday 11 October 2015

What I read in September..

A bit late, sorry...*punches self in face*

Wax by Ethel Lina White
This month I discovered Valancourt Books , a brilliant independent small press who publish some truly gush-worthy lost classics, and they do it beautifully with original cover art and everything. This little waxwork horror mystery from the 30's is slight but charming and cute, with some good sassy dialogue and some creepy smalltown Britishness. Riverpool, heh..

Musical Chairs by Kinky Friedman
We went to End Of The Road Festival in Sept, and so much fun we had, and I bought this from the Rough Trade tent. My first Kinky (actually number 5 in the series, nerds). If you're into detective fiction, outlaw country, cats, and 70's counterculture I guarantee you'll enjoy this as much as I did.

Confidentially Yours by Charles Williams
A highly regarded pulpster, I've read one other Charles Williams (can't remember it's name right now but it's on Hard Case Crime) and it was a good'en, and Confidentially Yours is too. Dude finds himself in the usual ungetoutable situation, the police are at his heels, stylish, snappy, short...Barbara (his secretary) was totally the highlight for me, probably deserved her own series if the genre wasn't so MAN.


Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Brilliant, you should all go read this. Has absolutely not dated at all, and remains a profound, troubling, sad thing about humanity and its limitations in the face of the truly alien.



This Was Ivor Trent by Claude Houghton
I'm still flummoxed by this one, and feel like I want to read more Houghton who was a bestselling author in his day but sadly quite forgotten now. Does the whole rainy late-night London of the 30's so well, but also in some ways felt dated and ungraspable. An odd narrative about a reclusive writer (Ivor) and a series of meetings and connections made by the people in his life after he is confronted by a man from the future and goes into convalescence.  Yep, this was somehow a bestseller in the 30's... Also, a whole lotta Nietzsche goin' on...(oh, and this is from Valancourt Books also).


No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...