Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

It won’t last…but the idea is for me to read one Nonfiction book per month this year. Anyway, it looks like January won’t be the month I bail on this…y’know, the first month. I know I’m not up for The White Goddess by Graves, so we’ll go with some Spy shtuff!

I’ll finish it tonight - and, not sure, maybe one more book before returning to Amber.

It’s weird, because….there’s no humour, there’s no meta quality to it…and yet I feel like this is some kind of bizarre 1970s version of Scream, or Scream 2. Like Scream, with no cute - just creepy.

Unless they mess it up, this has turned out to be my kind of read.

An interesting start. I'm reminded of another Pronzini collaboration - one with John Lutz - called The Eye. I loved that book, and this one seems somewhat similar in structure and feel, so maybe this will be a winner for me, no matter how odd it gets.

I'm not going to lie - I'm a little leery of this one. The Pronzini/Malzberg collection called Problems Solved didn't completely charm me; plus, the reputation of this novel is weird. But, I don't mind experimental approaches to Crime novels - like Here Comes a Candle by Fredric Brown. If I can't get emotionally invested at all, because of the style and structure, then I'll be in trouble...

Next up is a story from The Martian Chronicles, and it was inevitable that something from that book was going to be in here. I read it ages ago, and it's always fun to find pieces of it now and then in story collections. I guess it's my favourite work by Ray Bradbury.

Fabulous. Her books usually get hyped for the suspense…but she’s usually running a cool mystery too. Same here.

I’m betting it’s another great one from Millar.

Just Books 9 and 10 left! I’ll get back to this after The Iron Gates and probably one other novel, a short story or two, and a graphic novel. Shouldn’t be long…

This bit with Coral has been my favourite section, when it comes to my returning to this book of ten smaller books, after reading Books 1 through 5 decades ago. When I bought this, I was more of a Fantasy fan, and more inclined to read huge books more often. I read Gormenghast and LotR to end 1999, and must have read half of Amber right around then too. Also: The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue, a great love of mine.

That’ll be it for tonight, but I’ll meet the book again for coffee, tomorrow morning. The closest I had had to this vibe, fairly recently, was Doctor Lerne by Maurice Renard - but it seemed highly unlikely things were going to go in THAT direction. I thought maybe ‘The Horror Horn’ by E. F. Benson…but again, we’re not quite doing that. Now it’s more surely Gothic, kind of like The Woman in White. But…not.

Hooked. I am very happy with this.

Well, reports of me putting this aside briefly to read The Ancestor were greatly exaggerated. I wasn’t trying to be cagey - I just couldn’t stay away from Jo Gar. And at this point, I will finish this book tonight. I love it!

Pretty far along with these stories. I notice from a footnote at the beginning of the next story, that we are leaping ahead after a major change in Jo Gar's life, major loss, that is not depicted in these stories, but in a longer work. So, I think that may be my cue to transition over to Trussoni's The Ancestor before getting back to Jo Gar. (RIP, to the person who died "offstage".)

Sorry my old Eight Faces at Three review keeps popping up as an update. I noticed a typo, and have tried to fix it, and the Edit doesn’t seem to work. “baton” still reads as “barton”, darnit! Anyway, I’ll accept defeat for now, and stop trying to fix it. (I also don’t seem to be able to stop each attempt from showing up in Update feeds, though I thought I was doing that successfully, too!). Apologies.

The stories have been fun…and I absolutely love the Manila setting. Reading a bunch of these together is not how I always handle short story books - but when the setting is unique and has its own personality, it’s great to have it filled out by several stories read in fairly quick succession. 1930s Manila has been a blast. Jo Gar is a bit enigmatic, but I like him too. Lots of fun!

I enjoyed the Introduction, which gave me a rundown - quickly - of Raoul Whitfield's life. I hadn't known much up till now, except the Hammett connection. I also liked the first story - but I expect it to be overshadowed by what's to come. I know from the three novels that Whitfield is not always about "fair play" whodunit construction, though there can be elements of that. Crime, over Mystery, I would say.

I read some Spider-Man comics back around this time…it was just before I stopped collecting monthly titles as they came out. The instant they showed Peter having phantom memories - dreams? - of himself in some kind of vat of chemicals, with tubes sticking out of his body, I knew EXACTLY what was going on! It would relate directly to what was going on when I started collecting Spider-Man, #s 147-150.

I'm now into Book 7, Blood of Amber. This collected edition has some typos, unfortunately. Other than that, I'm happy to be rediscovering this series. Zelazny works fast. The individual novels are relatively short, but put together it still makes a big book to haul around.