Current Reading

As you can see, I have a few books working now, and I finished a few in January and earlier this month. The most recent start was on the Library of American paperback Reporting World War II. This book was originally published in two hardcover volumes in 1995, and the current version is excerpted from that material. Over 800 pages, with all sorts of scholarly impedimenta, and including pieces by Ernie Pyle, Edward R. Murrow, William L. Shirer, and so on. I bought this book in 2007 at the Borders remainder store in the outlet mall in Castle Rock. That store is gone now, and there are many vacant storefronts in the mall. We went up there on Friday to shop for sheets, but the Wamsutta outlet store is gone, too.

A few years ago, on one of my trips to North Carolina, Dave Drake gave me a copy of The World Turned Upside Down. This anthology of science fiction stories was edited by Dave, along with Eric Flint and the late Jim Baen. Anyone into science fiction will recognize such stories as "A Pail of Air," "The Menace from Earth," "St. Dragon and the George," "The Cold Equations," and "Who Goes There?" Great stuff, and there have been, so far, a few stories I'd never read before. I'm loving this stuff!

The Monster Book of Zombies: Tales of the Walking Dead (2009, originally published in 1993 as The Mammoth Book of Zombies) is edited by Stephen Jones, and it contains some fine old classic horror stories by Lovecraft, Lumley, Poe, Manly Wade Wellman, and Karl Edward Wagner, as well as more recent stories. The most intriguing title belongs, of course, to the last story in the collection, "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks," by Joe R. Lansdale. I read "A Warning to the Curious," by M. R. James, today, and it's interesting to contemplate how effective a story first published in 1925 can be.