Monday - June 11, 2012

Read Me First

Two new books today. One brand new, and the other a find from 1958.


In the mail today author Stephen Martino sends me a free copy of his latest, The Final Reality. It looks to be a medical mystery novel, set in the present day, steeped in current politics and the world-wide economic crisis. Some kind of Andromeda Strain story? An ancient virus awakens and starts to modify human kind for the better. Stronger. Faster. Smarter. Is this another Flowers For Algernon? Or is the virus merely a backdrop for an Obama warning: what will a powerful fascist dictator do to control the new people? What won’t he do? Oh, and we’ve got secret Old Testament bible codes to find and unravel to save the human race. Probably terrorists and Code Pinkos as well.

Sounds interesting. Sounds like a great summer read. I may have to put aside my third trip through George R.R. Martin’s Dance With Dragons, the 5th and so far last book in his Game of Thrones series (actually called A Song of Ice and Fire) to give this one a read.

Thanks Stephen! It’s only 461 pages in a mid-size format, so it shouldn’t take me more than a week or two, and I’ll give you an honest review as promised.

Sometimes it’s great to run a blog.




Good buddy Peiper will get a kick out of the next one.

I had a little business with the condo association folks today, so I had to go down to their office in the village clubhouse. On the way out I stopped by the door to peruse the “don’t care” library - a few shelves of old books donated by the folks that live here. Take one, read it, and return it if you want, or donate an old book of your own. We don’t care.

And sitting there in amongst the Danielle Steeles and the Dean Koontzs and the other recent works, was a little old paperback, hardly a half inch thick. Pitcairn’s Island, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. First published by Little, Brown in 1934, Pitcairn’s Island is the book from which the movie Mutiny on the Bounty was made. The one with Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, and Richard Harris in 1962, and the earlier one with Clark Gable and Charles Loughton in 1935. Yeah, the same Mr. Christian that our Mr. Christian used as an avatar. As part of their campaign to enhance literacy, Cardinal came out with an inexpensive paperback edition in 1954, one title among hundreds. Among thousands. It sold well, so they kept right on printing them. This copy is from the 4th printing so it has no collector value. Heck, the book only cost 35¢ when new; the price is printed right on the cover. But it’s not the low cost, or the long life of so inexpensive a book that’s enjoyable.

No, what’s giving Peiper a smile right now is the authors. Because he has their other earlier semi-autobiographical book, Falcons of France. A true-life adventure story. Both Nordhoff and Hall were fighter pilots in World War I. In the Lafayette Escadrille. The Western Front. Aeroplanes of spruce and linen. Petrol and castor oil. Dawn Patrol. Look for the Hun in the Sun.

It all started one day when I mentioned in a post that ...

Raoul Is Not Amused

... and he had no idea who Raoul was.

He does now. I did a bit of online digging at several old book shops in England, and sent him a Boy’s Holiday worth of books on the men and the airplanes of WWI, purchased for mere pennies, and then mailed him my well chewed copy of Falcons. Woke up all his boyhood dreams and gave them a good workout.

So now he knows. Raoul Lufberry, legendary flier and fighter ace from the days when you could hear the wind in the wires. The immortal knight of the sky who died on a fencepost.

Having survived the Great War, Nordhoff and Hall had had their fill, and moved off to the South Seas to run a copra plantation. But they had the writing bug, and turned out quite a large number of books over the next few decades. Pitcairn’s Island is a rather brutal book about rough men in a rough age; by the time the Bounty mutineers were found by the outside world in 1808 almost all of them were dead, and almost all of them were dead by violence by their own hands. Pitcairn Island is still one of the remotest spots on the globe, and the great-great-great-grandchildren of Mr. Christian still live there.

So I’ve got a “new” paperback that’s older than I am to read, an honest to gosh “true adventure” from long ago and far away.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/11/2012 at 01:59 PM   
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