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George Szirtes (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
A rare day at home, bar a visit to the dentist. Dentist fills one tooth, photographs another, says come back. Fine. It's a beautiful sunny morning, if blowy, and I return to translate, to write yet another introduction to something, and to deal with correspondence. The sun shines. Le soleil brille. At about one C and I decide to have hot comfort-food lunch at the caff on the corner - sausages and mash...
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Book Calendar (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009
Reading Woman, August Macke (1887-1914) Daily Thoughts 10/30/2009 I read some more of Sandman Slim during lunch. It is very entertaining. I am almost finished reading it. It might be a bit too dark for some people. It is also a bit profane so some people may not like it. The story is very good though and the writing is excellent for the type of story it tells. This morning, I did a display of mysteries...
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Monster Rally (Free subscription) | 09/27/2009
News/Features... Your Favorite On-Screen Undead Sequence? @ basement of ghoulish decadence Movies... Moon Zero-Two (1969) @ Republibot Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) @ Radiation-Scarred Reviews Franklyn (2008) @ HeroPress Trick 'r Treat @ Horror Squad Trick 'R Treat @ /Film Robogeisha @ FSR Clay @ DVD Talk Cinephemera... Getting a Wolfmanicure @ Classic Movie Monsters Coming Attractions of the Past Tobor...
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Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Free subscription) | 09/17/2009
I really love old crime novels. I've read them since I was a kid, and the only real problem was finding copies of stuff that was long out of print. I have Strange Pursuit , by N. R. De Mexico, which is one of only three entries by Suspense Novel, falling apart. And I've found old books from publishers like Phantom, Popular Library, Gold Medal, and Red Seal. Earlier this year, I found a publisher that...
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Barrie Summy (Free subscription) | 09/02/2009
Are you sitting down? Nice and comfortable? A coffee and a cookie nearby? Ready to delve into some great book reviews as we head into the fall? Good. You're in the right place. Welcome to the EIGHTH (I know, it's incredible!) meeting of The Book Review Club. And we're just in time for September 6 which is Read a Book Day and for Banned Books Week (September 26-Oct 3)! I'm going to hop right into my...
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Rough Edges (Free subscription) | 08/30/2009
I've known for years that Erle Stanley Gardner and Luke Short, a couple of favorite writers of mine, dictated their novels. Years ago I tried dictating into a little tape recorder and did a chapter or so of one book that way, but I didn't care for it and didn't continue. I'm always on the lookout for anything that will speed up my writing, so when voice recognition software became available, I was...
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Dark Worlds (Free subscription) | 08/19/2009
Came across this tid-bit of info on the Net and found it fascinating. Back in the 1940s when Perry Mason was on the Radio, the network wanted to turn Mason into a soap opera. Erle Stanley Gardner wisely said no. The result was EDGE OF NIGHT in which the lead character is a thinly disguised PM. I never heard these shows on the radio, being a child of the 1960s but I do recall the TV version. Many Radio...
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Time And Space (Free subscription) | 08/16/2009
Perry Mason is a fictional Los Angeles defence attorney who originally appeared in 82 novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, but perhaps is better known today as an Emmy-winning American TV series that originally ran between 1957 & 1966 and played by actor Raymond Burr. A further 30 TV movies were produced between 1985 & 1995. He never lost a case!
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Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine (Free subscription) | 08/07/2009
Last week I bought a copy of Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep. Back w hen the title was announced, I immediately thought of Masur's book, which is a lot different from Abbott's, I'm sure. Masur was a lawyer who wanted to write a book that crossed the with of Rex Stout's books with the complicated legal stuff in Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels. Masur's first-person narrator is lawyer Scott Jordan,...
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MediaBistro.com (Free subscription) | 08/06/2009
By a 68 to 31 vote, the Senate has confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the country's newest Supreme Court Justice--putting a fan of the televised adventures of Perry Mason on the nation's highest court. Sadly, most of the articles about Sotomayor's love for Mason focus on television episodes, rather than the work of author Erle Stanley Gardner , the Ventura, California civil rights lawyer turned pulp...
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Nik Nak’s Old Peculiar Blog (Free subscription) | 07/18/2009
Jeeez! What a day that was, yesterday. Definitely a bad one! I’m just hoping today’s a better one! I know I’ve got a movie to look forward too, if nothing else. At any rate, here’s today’s questions; complete with a bit of a Roman theme … Q1) July 18 th , 64 AD, saw the start of the Great Fire of Rome; which Emperor — according to legend, anyway — famously...
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A Boat Against the Current (Free subscription) | 07/18/2009
July 17, 1889— Erle Stanley Gardner , a colorful attorney who created the most famous fictional lawyer-detective of all time, Perry Mason, was born in Malden, Mass. Before writing proved so lucrative that he turned to it full-time in the 1930s, Gardner could be seen in the California communities where he lived and worked walking to court in his white Panama hat, pulling out his white cigarette...
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Electronic Cerebrectomy (Free subscription) | 07/17/2009
Yeah, it's my 33rd birthday today, so I thought I'd do this birthday meme that was sent to me and that I've been sitting on for a while. It goes like this: 1) Go to Wikipedia 2) In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year. 3) List five events that happened on your birthday 1203 – The Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople. 1717 - Handel's Water Music premieres. 1762 - Catherine...
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The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | 07/17/2009
As The Writer’s Almanac reminds us, it was 120 years ago today that Erle Stanley Gardner took his first experimental breath in Malden, Massachusetts. As a boy, he moved west with his family to California, taught himself to be a lawyer, and eventually abandoned that profession in favor of writing crime and mystery fiction.Restless and prolific, and willing to work under a variety of pseudonyms,...
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Nik Nak’s Old Peculiar Blog (Free subscription) | 07/17/2009
Phew! THAT was what I call a storm, last night. A very impressive one to watch. It’s just annoying I had to walk home in it, really! Apart from that … At any rate, here’s today’s questions … Q1) July 17 th , 1889 saw the birth of lawyer and author, Erle Stanley Gardner; which fictional lawyer did he famously write about? Q2) July 17th is also the feast day of Saint Alexius...
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