Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

One positive review of this compares it to The Americans TV show, but I’m actually reminded more of Homeland. Either way, this book is hard to put down. I guess it also makes me think of the movie Breach.

Loving this one.

My commitment to reading Spy fiction has definitely waned over the last few years. Partly, this is because I have been overdoing Spy movies and TV, so I don’t need espionage from books (as much). But this one caught my eye, and Katsu tackling this genre has got me very curious.

Like the hairstylist in The Rock says…”Well, it’s some kind of a thing, anyway.”. I do love it - sort of Escape New York with a Gilliam sensibility.

I put on order about twelve books mentioned in the reading guide 150 Exquisite Horror Books, and almost all of them have arrived over 48 hours. I just want to get to one of them! But it’s hard to decide which one to read first…so I’ll pick this one partly because it doesn’t look much like Horror, and I’m most curious about it. I’ll save the vampires and werewolves and hexes for a bit later…

Loving it. I only have dim memories of the other books in the series, been ages since I read them. A Crime & Mystery bookstore - Sleuth of Baker Street - is closing, the owners retiring after 44 years of selling books. Breaks my heart…but as the shutdown creeps closer, I go in there and pick out hidden gems I have let sit there too long. This is one of those books I decided I better buy before the store goes.

This book actually contains two novels, and I’ve finished the first one, called Ortog’s Arms. Next is Ortog and the Darkness. I will need to read that to decide how I feel about all this. This is a very odd reading experience (amplified by the typos). I have warmed to it, I can say that. And who am I to say what the 50th century should or shouldn’t be like.

Well, it moves fast and does quick worldbuilding. This seems to be about as Science Fantasy as a book can be. It's a pity books from this publisher have so many typos, but it's great to have all these French SF authors available in translation. Anyway, this is sort of Dune as by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with a Zelazny flavour? I dunno. Fun, though. The big flies that only eat eyes are gross.

The Introduction, with its various rundowns of other things the author has written, has made me want to read tons of this guy’s stuff. But let’s see how Ortog goes…

So, tracking some Radium Age SF books off a "Best of" list led me to Black Coat Press, and then once I ordered a few things, the books showed up and of course have new lists of other product they offer. I decided to try a few random things that looked cool. This is a bit outside what I had in mind - Fantasy from the 1960s - but I couldn't resist. Note: this publisher's stuff does have a lot of weird typos.

Excellent.

Ugh. I need to get off this glue trap of a book. Someday.

Maigret makes…a mistake!?

Almost there - shall finish this one up later today. Anxious to finally get back to Maigret, and after that, possibly Red Widow by Katsu, but not totally sure yet.

This series is very entertaining.