Moe Lane

I’m picking Tim Powers’ Romantics-vampire novel The Stress of Her Regard because, as I noted years ago, the truly terrifying thing about the book was how much sense it made.  It was sort of like that moment in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies where the author realized that putting a British regiment in the countryside to fight a zombie outbreak filled an obvious hole in the original plot.  …Well, maybe not, but The Stress of Her Regard is still one of the best books Tim Powers ever wrote.  Check it out.

Jirel of Joiry is a collection of C.L. Moore’s pulp fantasy historical-supernatural stories about, well, Jirel of Joiry. Moore was one of the first women to do speculative fiction, and I picked this one up because I haven’t actually read much of her fantasy (her pulp SF hero Northwest Smith was more my speed). Never hurts to revisit the classics, hey?

It’s getting towards October, and the weather’s cooling down, which makes me like to read things like Something Wicked This Way Comes and Our Lady of Darkness.  And I will, obviously, but I’d like some suggestions for spooky books.  Not horror, per se — certainly not cosmic horror, although of course I do read that.  For this, I want books that are evocative of the cool October breeze twirling leaves in the moonlight, or the smell of the furnace as it gets turned on for the first time this fall.  Mysteries dark and perhaps even dangerous, but ones that can be faced and foiled by folk of good heart.  Books that have a good, if not always superficially reassuring, heart.

So, suggest away.

eARC from Baen, and I don’t care: I love eARCs. Eric Flint & Dave Freer’s All the Plagues of Hell is the latest in their Heirs of Alexandria alternate history series: it’s set in a Renaissance Italy where magic works and there’s a bunch of gods wandering around. It’s quite fun; this is the first new book in a while.  It’s also what I’m reading today, so there we go.  Book of the Week, all neat and tidy-like.

Oh, hey.  It’s September. Which means that next month will be October, which means that Halloween is coming.  I have grown to love this holiday, because my wife loves it and enthusiasm is catching; but Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes has always been a favorite of mine.  There’s just something about the wildness and danger that lurks in the promise of even the most prosaic carnival.  At least, when it’s Bradbury who is telling you the story.

Moe Lane

PS: WordPress is informing me that I did this book already. I don’t care.

Although it’s more like that Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology (What’s it about?  Just what it says on the label, folks) is this week’s Book that I keep reminding myself to actually read so I’m using this as a reminder of the Week.  There’s no earthly reason why I haven’t read it yet.  Shoot, my wife probably has it on her Kindle, at that.  I guess it just fell through the cracks.

Welp, easily fixed.

I really haven’t read anything new, can’t think of anything that should have gone up by now, and have been trying to come up with a suitable entity for several hours — and failing.  Sorry, folks.  This sometimes happens.  The fact that I’m also on vacation probably isn’t helping, either.

Feel free to offer suggestions to each other in comments.

Pickman’s Gallery is a collection of Cthulhu Mythos stories centered around the HP Lovecraft short story ‘Pickman’s Model.’  Just came out, in fact.  It features a story by Moe Lane.

:steady look:

:pause:

Aw, I’m just funning you. Still, I hear that a Kindle version is coming out next week.

I’m putting up Tom Clancy’s military counterterror technothriller Rainbow Six because weren’t they going to make a movie version?  They were trying to get Ryan Reynolds to play John Clark, which I dunno is that great a fit.  I mean, obviously Reynolds can play a badass, but I always saw Clark as being more hulking than Reynolds.  Also: can they afford him, at this point?  Ryan Reynolds probably has at least one more Deadpool movie in him, or at least an X-Force movie. …But I digress.  Rainbow Six has a bit of the Clancy Bloat to it, but I never cared too much; it’s a blessed beach book anyway.

Alternate Routes is the latest by Tim Powers.  You can preorder it via Amazon, or get the eARC from Baen.  i think we all know which route I chose.