Time for another Book Blogger Hop question: How will we be reading in 100 years’ time? Will there be any printed books left? How about ereaders? What might they look like?
Such an interesting question! I am sure much has been written on the subject by people far better informed than I, but here’s my particular theory on it… Continue reading “Blog Hop: Reading a Hundred Years From Now”
This week’s Imaginary Illustration is for the book-lovers…which is probably all of you! 🙂 Another quote from my upcoming novel, The Storyteller and Her Sisters.
I previous wrote a rather sentimental tribute to Mayberry and The Andy Griffith Show–and praised the themes of Barry Manilow’s CD, Fifteen Minutes, on the corrupting influence of fame–and strangely enough, I’ve now found a movie that combines the two! A few years before landing in Mayberry, Andy Griffith starred in A Face in the Crowd…and was not playing the Sheriff Andy Taylor we know and love.
The movies opens with Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal), who arrives at a small-town jail looking for material for her local radio program. There she finds Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith), locked up with his guitar, under a week’s sentence for drunk and disorderly conduct. Dubbing him “Lonesome Rhodes,” she convinces him to come host at the radio station. His mix of humor, stories and singing takes off, catapulting Lonesome into national fame. But Marcia finds herself in the role of Dr. Frankenstein as fame goes to Lonesome’s head and he spirals out of control.
IMDB tells me this was Griffith’s film debut, and that it has been described as “stunning.” It really is. It was filmed before The Andy Griffith Show, but the context now is unavoidable, and I think it strengthens the movie. While I can’t imagine Andy Taylor ever in jail for being “drunk and disorderly” (actually, that could make a good plot, if it was a mix-up…), Lonesome still seems rather like a rough-edged Andy Taylor when we first meet him. He’s got the accent, the guitar and the big grin–and you can almost ignore the feeling that there’s something just a bit off about his open-mouthed laugh. Continue reading “Movie Review: A Face in the Crowd, starring Andy Griffith”
I know I read The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells some ten or fifteen years ago–and I must have completely forgotten it. Frankly, if I had remembered it more clearly, I don’t think I would have reread it! But since I did (well, listened to it on audio), I’m counting it as a read for R.I.P., as classic horror and certainly full of mists and mystery.
The story begins with a reclusive, bandaged man taking lodgings at an inn, there to work on a mysterious experiment. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that the bandaged man eventually removes his bandages–and is completely invisible. Unfortunately, he’s also a complete psychopath. He wreaks a fair degree of havoc until he eventually runs into an old acquaintance, and sits down for an extended narration about how he became invisible, and his future plans to (more or less) conquer the world.
For the record, I like old books. I really do. I can handle a fair degree of slow writing, a fair amount of focus on random side characters, and even a plot that takes a little while to get going. I just finished Shirley, a Charlotte Bronte novel that had all of those problems, and still enjoyed it immensely. But The Invisible Man? Sad to say, I found it pretty irredeemable. Continue reading “Book Review: The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells”
Continuing my new blog feature, sharing quotes from my (unillustrated) books, paired with pictures. Today it’s another quote from The Wanderers, another of my wandering adventurer’s rules for life–one which I think many heroes of fantasy novels would do well to follow!
If the heroes in horror novels would just follow this, the bloodshed would be so reduced…
Tales of the Marvelous 