Justin Howe's Blog, page 47
December 9, 2012
An Ur Post
The party started out on the banks of a forgotten subterranean river having come across by rope-pull after their boat sunk. They wandered through many caverns and encountered many strange things. Some of these things tried to kill them, others made them try to kill each other, and a few just gave them the willies so bad they turned tail and ran in the opposite direction. But when the night’s over, where’s the party? Back on the same riverbank. . . doing their laundry. All except the one guy w...
December 7, 2012
Idle Question
While you were sleeping all the cats on the planet gained the ability to speak. What kind of accent do they have?
My answer is Sinister German. My wife’s answer is Texan.
December 6, 2012
Greatest Game-Related Thing I Read All Week
“NOTE: You do NOT need a Ph.D. in History to play this game. This game is based around the most superficial knowledge of U.S. history, and the personages therein. If you only know Samuel Adams as a beer, or think LBJ is a political group fighting for the rights of alternative sexual lifestyles, so much the better!”
From “Presidents of the Apocalypse” a gonzo superhero presidents versus radioactive mutants homebrew Dennis has been tinkering with.
This game is genius.
You can be armed with an Eise...
December 2, 2012
Favorite Reads 2012
It’s December. Here’s my list of ten favorite reads for the year.
1. The Vagabond – Colette
Rene Neree is a divorced woman in the first decade of the 20th century who has “fallen” from society and become a vaudeville performer. The crux of the book concerns the question of whether she should give up the stage and remarry or reject a comfortable marriage in order to pursue her career. What sweeps you along is less the plot and more just Rene’s character and perceptions as she lives and travels a...
November 26, 2012
November 20, 2012
Go Here, Look At This
It’s Roald Dahl week over at Mounds and Circles for those of you who might care. (General light-NSFW warning for the occasional boob and crude peen drawing over at M & C.) The neon line-sketch portrait of Dahl in their header is pretty neat, and the write-ups of Tales of the Unexpected are amusing, but the real good stuff are the illustrations from Dahl’s books — like these for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that look like they were done by R. Crumb, but were done by Faith Jaques instead.
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November 13, 2012
November 11, 2012
One Book, Four Covers: Dino Buzzati’s The Tartar Steppe
This is the YA novel for the cynical teen in your life, that teen that has a burgeoning sense of the absurd and the blackly comic. Beyond this book lies Flannery O’Connor, Franz Kafka, and Italo Calvino. Buzzati’s never had a large English language following, and I wonder if there’s something in this book that the American mindset rejects as too cynical on the surface. Granted having taken part in Mussolini’s navy probably doesn’t help.
Above are the covers, half of them Italian. Most of the E...
November 3, 2012
The Project Gutenberg Reader
A while back my kindle broke and my books didn’t transfer automatically to the replacement one and phone calls to the service center in Ireland were required. Whatever enthusiasm I had for e-books and Amazon pretty much dwindled at that time, and now I generally stick to downloading free stuff off of Project Gutenberg, which is great, because Gutenberg has so much weird random classic stuff on it. Like the other day I was reading Greek and Roman Ghost Stories by Lacy Collison Morley and was o...
October 24, 2012
One Book, Four Covers: Jan Morris’s Last Letters From Hav
This is the book that made me start this series.
I find it interesting when a book has had a few covers and each edition or subsequent publisher has put their own stamp on it. What’s also interesting is how certain iconic images become tied to certain books. Like Moby Dick — you pretty much have either a whaling boat or a whale on the cover. Dracula covers are predominantly black and red. Conan covers feature sweaty manflesh, etc. Other books may lack iconic imagery, but get sold on their icon...
