From Saturday, 5 April through Sunday, 4 May, I read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West (NY: Vintage Books [a division of Random House, Inc.], 1985; 2010; ed.: Kindle edition; 349 pps.).


( Read more... )

I've been picking my way through Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian; or The Evening Redness in the West (1985), a much-ballyhooed (though after the fact) western or revisionist western based on the exploits of the Glanton Gang of scalphunters in Mexico (and in what would later become Arizona). Unfortunately, I've been picking through it on my Kindle ( Read more... )

Finally watched Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007) via Netflix; it had been recommended to me a few years ago by a co-worker from Eastern Europe who, while not normally beholden to conspiracy theories, has enough ethnic, national and religious hatreds (to wit: Roma -- whom he refuses to dignify by that name; he insists on calling them "gypsies" -- ( Read more... )

From Saturday, 8 March through Friday, 14 March, I read David Wingrove's Son of Heaven (London: Corvus [an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.], 2011 [ebook / Kindle edition published 1 Sept. 2012]; ISBN [ebook]: 978-0-85789-169-3; 376 pps.); from Friday, 14 March through Monday, 31 March, I read David Wingrove's Daylight on Iron Mountain (London: ( Read more... )

From Monday, 31 March through Saturday, 5 April, I read Joyce Carol Oates's novel Zombie (NY: HarperCollins; 2009 [originally published in 1995 by Dutton]; e-book edition [Kindle edition]; 196 pps.; ISBN: 978-0-061-960116) on my Kindle.

( Read more... )

Checked out the first three hardbound collections of Marvel NOW!'s Avengers (technically, Avengers Vol. 5) from the library; the first eleven issues were written by Jonathan Hickman, but #12-17 were co-written by Nick Spencer.

While I was pleasantly surprised by Hickman's run on Fantastic Four and its spin-off FF (which technically stands for " ( Read more... )

From Wednesday, 5 February 2014 to Friday, 21 March 2014, I read Clarence E. Mulford's Bar-20 (NY: Forge [a Tom Doherty Associates book], 1992; 2006; ISBN: 978-0-765-35737-3; 284 pps.; includes an introduction by Jackson Cain and a 3-chapter [33 pps.] excerpt from the 4th novel in the series, Hopalong Cassidy [Bar-20 is only 246 pps. long]), which ( Read more... )

From Sunday, 26 January 2014 to Wednesday, 5 February 2014, I read Stephen King's Needful Things: The Last Castle Rock Story (NY: Signet [published by the Penguin Group, Penguin Books USA Inc], 1992 [copyright 1991]; mass market paperback edition [movie tie-in edition]; ISBN: 0-451-17859-9; 736 pps.]), with illustrations by Bill Russell.

( Read more... )

From Friday, 24 January to Sunday, 26 January, I read Robert B. Parker's Appaloosa (NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons [published by the Penguin Group], 2005; ed.: 1st ed., hardcover; 276 pps.; ISBN: 978-0-399-15277-6); this is the first book in the Cole-Hitch quadrilogy. This was the first book that I started and finished in 2014, and the first book of ( Read more... )

This year, I've been forced to give a hard rethink to my former quasi-enjoyment of winter ( Read more... )