1st I read the "Tor.com 2019 Debut Sampler", 10 authors, 2019, 195 pages. Basically TOR publishes the 1st chapter or 3 of the novels by their new authors of last year and makes it a free eBook. So I got to read the 1st chapter of "Gideon the Ninth", which has gotten a lot of press, and which I will not be continuing. The only 1 in which I was interested enough to buy and finish reading was ...
"Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You", by Scotto Moore, 2019, 88 pages. There was no way I could not see how this tale of using incredible music to open dimensional portals turned out. A fun and quick (novella length?) read.
The 3rd SFF I read was "Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2019 Edition", 25 authors, 2019, 602 pages. Another free eBook. Some decent stories, but nothing that really made me want to start following the author. 2 or 3 of these I had read before. I was again annoyed by the Annalee Newitz story set in her future universe that includes slavery. I really hate to be made to imagine such a future. On the other hand, the story that involved historical slavery in the US "Blood is Another Word for Hunger", by Rivers Solomon, was moving.
Transitioning back to the real world with some 1930's detective stories: "Return of the Thin Man", by Dashiell Hammett, additional material by Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett, 2012, 274 pages. This is Hammett's screen plays for the 1st 2 sequels to "The Thin Man": "After the Thin Man" and "Another Thin Man". There is also a short treatment that never went anywhere. Rivett is Hammett's granddaughter, and provides narrative around the creation of these works. It was fun to read these, but now I want to watch the movies.
1 comment:
The Thin Man movies are great. I love the scenes with the Charleses nursing their hangovers with yet more gin in their separate-beds bedroom. Myrna Loy (who played Nora Charles) had quite an interesting history of progressive political activism as well.
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