Satyajit Ray does Tagore

For a time in the early 80s, Rabindranath Tagore was one of my favourite authors.  I read what was in print, and probably borrowed from the university library, too.  Then he went out of my life, until the Criterion Channel recently came on line.  I cannot begin to tell readers of this blog how wonderful it is to have this streaming service.  It's something I've waited for all my life, and dreamt about.  And I actually have time now to watch the films.  Our film festival this weekend featured three works by Ray.  Two of them were based on stories by Tagore, while the third was a biography/tribute to the man.

Three Daughters, which runs for just over 2 1/2 hours, features three separate films based on  short stories by Tagore.  Charulata is based on a novel, called The Broken Nest.  The English  film title was The Lonely Wife.  I first encountered Ray's films many years ago at DFT (Detroit Film Theatre), specifically the Apu Trilogy, which remain three of my favourite films of all time.  I have seen those twice.  The first film we watched this weekend has three stories:  The Postmaster, The Lost Jewels, and The Conclusion, which I would have called Crazy Girl.  

The Postmaster is almost too brilliant for words.  The print was not very good, but the subtitles were new.  A man from the city takes a job as postmaster in a Bengali jungle village.  Needless to say, he is very uncomfortable in his surroundings and doesn't remain very long.  Helping him get by (and saving his life) is a little orphan girl.  Ratan is a priceless jewel, but in India she is just another waif, doomed to a life of servitude and loneliness.  He teaches her to read and write a bit, then asks the newest postmaster, who is replacing him, to continue her lessons.  One can only hope.

 Three Daughters, a film by Satyavit Ray.  

The second short film of the trilogy is a standard ghost story, and is the least effective of the trio.  A woman, left alone all day by her husband in a giant house, goes mad, becoming obsessed with her jewellery.

Crazy Girl (my title) is the final short film, and focuses on a young teenage girl who loves to play outside, climb trees, play on a swing, and keep a pet chipmunk.  When a young man returns to the village from school in the city and chooses to marry her, she is not very responsive to him.  She wishes to remain the way she is, rather than grow up and submit to marriage.  All three films focus on the plight of Indian women, and how they have so little say in their life choices.  I would expect that this last film would have been scandalous at the time (1961), as the young man chooses not to beat the girl into submission, as requested by his mother and their neighbours.  Instead, he goes away and gives her time to grow up.  Which she does, after much soul searching.  She manages one final tree climb before agreeing to be his life companion.  This film and the first one are so amazing to watch as to be almost indescribable.  We are totally immersed in Bengali village life, and see things, and come to understand things, that no tourist or outsider could ever hope to experience.

The next feature film we watched was Charulata.  From 1964 and running just under two hours, we are again immersed in Bengali life, this time in the impressive home of a rich business man.  He runs a political newspaper, and has little, if any, time to spare for his beautiful and very intelligent, sensitive wife.  The house is dripping with bric-a-brac, and to the husband, his wife is a lovely accent to the home, like the beautiful furnishings.  When a young cousin of the businessman comes to stay, the woman's life begins to change.  Like her, he reads romantic literature and poetry, and he manages to coax her into writing, too.  She gradually falls in love with him.  An excellent portrayal of being female in Bengal in the late 19th century.

This film also had 4 Criterion extras, amounting to another hour of watching.  Great stuff, not accessible anywhere else.

 The final film of our weekend festival was called Rabindranth Tagore, Ray's tribute to this great Indian intellectual and writer.  Born in 1861, he died in 1941.  The film gives not only a good summary of Tagore's life and accomplishments, but gives an honest look at what the British were doing in Bengal and elsewhere.  It was brutal.  And despite promises of giving allowing more Indian representation after WW1, no such freedoms were forthcoming.  World events would eventually drown out the voice of one of the world's sanest, most humanistic men who ever lived.

We are off to Cincinnati on Wednesday, and will return Friday.  I will blog about the city visit and the film festival when we return, and will give a quick summary of my August reading.  I also need to write the September observing article for our astronomy club newsletter.

In other news, I have shut down the music studio for this year.  I still have a few students, but none of them are truly committed to full time study.  Should a promising student come along, I might reconsider opening again, but for now it is retirement, full and complete.  Amen.

Mapman Mike

Clear Nights Ahead

Two of them predicted, in a row.  That is big news.  And it is cool, so the mosquitoes may not be a problem.  However, the late summer and autumn moon rise timings are the pits.  I will only have about 2.5 hours of darkness tonight before the big white beast rises in the east, and about 3 hours tomorrow night.  Still, I am getting excited!

My movie choice this week was called Our Man In Havanna, a Carol Reed film starring Alec Guinness.  A vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba is recruited as a British spy, in a very funny film that features great performances from Ernie Kovacs and Maureen O'Hara, along with Burl Ives, Noel Coward, and Ralph Richardson.  From a novel by Graham Greene, the movie was filmed in Cuba.  We have seen the picture a very long time ago, but it still seems fresh and mostly funny.  A nice take on spy movies, from 1959.  This weekend is film festival weekend.  Three films have been chosen, but we'll see how many will get watched on an astronomy weekend.

 My movie pick for this week, from Criterion.

Deb's movie choice was Barbara Stanwyck's breakout film, directed by Frank Capra.  Ladies of Leisure is from 1930, with Ms Stanwyck playing the part of a party girl.  She is rescued very late one night by an artist, and he immediately wants to paint her.  She soon falls in love with him, but he is rich and out of her league.  Perhaps.  Ms Stanwyck gives a tour de force performance, bringing out the complexity of her character.  Of course the film is melodrama, but her performance never stoops to anything less than great stage acting.  This was Capra's 5th sound film, and the restored print was a marvel to behold.  The film is nearly 90 years old, but is now in better condition than when it first ran in theatres. 

 Deb's movie pick this week.  Love that fine print build up!!

In other news, Mogi the cat,who has been with us since September of 2007, has been limping rather badly, having problems with his back right foot.  He seems to have sprained it, as it gets better for a time, then he goes and does something and injures it again.  We are watching him, but he seems comfortable, still eats like a full grown horse, and is very social.

Deb had her infusion on Tuesday, and I had my teeth cleaned.  Thursday I had a follow up with my M.D. regarding my iritis flareup a few weeks ago.  Today, ADT is sending a techie over to reinstall the alarm on our front door, which had to be removed when we had it replaced.  The new door is amazing, and we notice how much quieter it is in the house now, too.  In the summer less cold air will escape, and in the winter less heat will escape.  Though the door will never pay for itself in our lifetime, it will make us more comfortable.

Mapman Mike

Syberia 3, Teotihuacan, and Fred and Ginger

First, the rain.  Since Thursday afternoon, we had 4" of rain through Sunday night.  That's a lot of rain, especially for an area already suffering from record high water levels in the surrounding lakes and rivers.  More is expected tomorrow, and possibly Wednesday.  What to do with it all.

For the past several weeks I have been playing Syberia 3, a game for PC, off and on in the evenings.  It's a rather tedious game, and not very special.  I am playing it only out of loyalty to the first two games in the series.  Anyway, as per usual, when I turned on the game to play, Steam downloaded an update.  Then, when the game finally loaded, all my progress was erased.  No saved games, no nothing.  Weeks and weeks of work down the tube, with no desire to start all over again.  I downloaded some saved games from the web, but so far they refuse to load.  Harrumph (and under my breath, many more worse words).

We finally sat down and played a mostly full round of our newest board game, called Teotihuacan.  It is certainly one of the better board games we now own.  It is an evening's commitment to set up the board and play, but it is a lot of fun, and as the game board changes with each new game, no sure fire strategy will help you win the next game.  And you get to build a pyramid, and decorate it.  How cool is that?  I think Tokaido Road and this game are our two favourites.  Now that the basement had been reassembled, I have room to store and display all of our board games.  Some have never been played yet.

Deb's weekend movie pick was Swing Time, starring Fred and Ginger.  From 1936, and directed by George Stevens, this b & w classic has some superb dancing and some memorable songs, including "The Way You Look Tonight," and "A Fine Romance," written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields.  Great dance numbers (and music) include "Never Gonna Dance," and Fred's black face tribute to Bill "Bojangle" Robinson.  Some great hoofin'.  The plot, of course, is virtually non-existent. 

 Showing on the Criterion Channel until the end of August. 

And now we return to our regular programming, featuring another fine landscape painting from the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Bernardo Bellotto

View of the Tiber in Rome with the Castel Sant'Angelo, 1743 or 1744

oil on canvas, 34" x 48", unframed. 

The museum did a complete reorganization several years ago, something which I think destroyed the overall layout and made finding any specific painting much more difficult.  One of the newer spaces is called The Grand Tour," and purports to show how Italy was on everyone's grand tour in the 18th Century, and the artists who did souvenir type works of art.  Canaletto, Guardi, Panini, robert, and Bellotto are some of these artists, and thanks to them we have some rather good impressions of Rome, Venice, and other cities because of their painstaking renditions for rich tourists to carry home.  This particular painting has always been a favourite of mine, and it is large enough to get in close and observe all of the wonderful details of the time.

Detail of the bridge.

 Detail of far left side.

Detail of St. Peter's dome.

Detail of the Castel, which once served as Hadrian's tomb.

Castel, further detail.

Paintings like this hang in every great museum of the world, and are always worth stopping to look at more closely.  This one has an evening twilight colour that cannot be captured in a photo, but is magical and difficult to describe in person.

I had my first piano lesson this afternoon with Philip Adamson, bringing him my newest program.  We got to work on the Bach Prelude and Fugue, and the Schubert Impromptu in C Minor.  Very helpful.  I will return in a few weeks for help with the Haydn Sonata and the Bartok Allegro Barbaro.  I will not likely make my August memorization goals.  For every three notes I stick into my head, two of them pop out the other side.  I'll get there, but it will take more time.

Mapman Mike

Ides of August

Our weekly Detroit visit was a short one, without actually any stops in Detroit.  We had two pick ups at the Dearborn mailbox, had lunch in  Dearborn, and came home.  However, the outbound voyage to the mailbox was a bit surreal, as we kept hitting obstacles that consumed a lot of time.  Construction in Windsor made the journey to the bridge quite long.  The customs line were much longer than normal to get into the US.  And an accident on the main freeway into Dearborn saw us trapped on the highway in nearly stalled traffic for a time.  A truck had overturned just up ahead.  The highway was gridlocked for over six hours.  It had just happened when we got stuck.  We managed to finally get off at our exit, which was somewhat busier than usual.

Lunch was at La Shish, where we shared an order of rice/almond salad (the best there is!) and a side of baba ganoush.  It comes with lots of freshly baked pita bread and two kinds of dips, a spicy tomato one, and whipped garlic, which comes out looking like butter.  Our lunch for two cost $22, including tip (we only drank water), and we brought home enough for our dinner.  In Windsor we stopped at Fred's Farm Fresh Market for a peach pie.  It was full moon night, so we needed something round to eat.  We never saw the moon due to heavy rain, but the pie was soon eclipsed by about 1/4.

Speaking of rain, it had been very, very dry around here, even though ditches are still flooded and our creek is still flowing backwards.  When we got back from Detroit at 3 pm I checked the rain gauge, as the ground seemed a bit damp.  It contained 0.7" of rain!  We had missed the biggest deluge of the summer while we were away.  But then an even bigger rain storm hit us dead on around 9 pm, which is about the time I was supposed to put out the recycling and garbage for Friday's pick up.  We received another 1.3", totally 2" for the day.  Not bad!  However, this is very localized rainfall, and most places did not receive any.  We got lucky.

This morning, the door guys are back, taking out and reinstalling our door.  Two weeks ago they were just finishing up when a heavy tool was dropped onto the new footplate, denting it severely.  Today everything has to come out, an new silver footplate installed, and then everything reinstalled.  I don't think they made any money on this sale.

In movie news, we watched a very long samurai film over Monday and Tuesday evenings, and a different kind of movie last night (Thursday).  Bandits Versus Samurai Squadron is showing on Criterion, while Mrs. Dalloway is showing on Amazon Prime.  Both movies started out as books, though the body count is much higher in the samurai film.  Bandits is a wide screen colour extravaganza, with some of the bloodiest stab wounds I have ever seen.  The plot is a little hard to grasp at the beginning, as there are two bandit gangs, and they are both robbing the same house on the same night.  They are rudely interrupted by the official police squadron.  So all of the main characters (about ten) are introduced within five minutes.  After a while things begin to make sense.  The opening scene when the squadron arrives on horseback, in the house, must have been quite the scene to film.  It is stunningly effective.  We have seen an anime series (on Prime) about this same squadron, from the same series of books.  Bloody, but some great sword work.  Also, the final castle scenes show one of the most stunning interior art and design I have ever come across in a movie.  Watch the final half hour to see it.

Bandits versus the Samurai Squadron, an epic film of love, violence, and lovely interiors.

Mrs. Dalloway is a late 1990s film from a novel by Virginia Woolf, starring Vanessa Redgrave along with much of the British acting guild.  So many characters recognized from so many other series and films.  But it is Vanessa's film, as she spends a day preparing for a large party she is giving that evening, and reminiscing about her coming of age years.  The setting is 1922, and intertwined with the party story is one about a young man suffering from what was then known as shell shock.  Shell shock was not something people took seriously, unless it affected one of their own.  There was no treatment, and sufferers were often left to their own devices.  If they attempted or threatened suicide, they were forcibly required to live in sanatoriums, or rest homes, to suffer in quieter surroundings.

 Showing on Amazon Prime.

    

It is a mostly gentle film, though there are some biting comments on British society of the time.  The costuming and interiors are of course perfect, and Ms. Redgrave sparkles as the hostess who fears that her party will fail miserably, but carries on with raised chin.  It's fun seeing many of the party goers as their younger selves in many scenes, (different actors, of course), and how they have changed and aged and matured, and mostly grown apart.  Live or die friendships at one age often become distant acquaintances in later life, and this movie handles that aspect quite well.  With top notch acting and some attempt at depth, the movie is quite enjoyable to watch.

Mapman Mike

Black Jack, a Film by Ken Loach

We are one day away from completing our 28-day walking program, the one we always use to go from a zero activity level (following Deb's surgery, and a very hot early July), to a basic level of walking fitness.  Today we undertook a 90 minute urban hike in Windsor.  It was sunny, pretty warm, (about 83 F) and very humid.  We stopped for lunch halfway through at Pause Cafe, a place with more and more vegan options every time we go.  He makes soup from very old recipes, and today he had one of our favourites, a cold soup from almonds from a recipe from Spain.  It is so delicious, and our bodies were ready for a cold soup today.  His gazpacho is also fearsomely good, but today it was almond soup.  We also split a large salad plate with tofu, cucumber, onions, kidney beans, and other delicious things.  By the time we were ready to leave, we were prepared for the long walk back to our vehicle, left way uptown.

Deb continues to have films shown on virtually every weekend this summer, and on into September.  We are two weeks away from attending the festival in Cincinnati, where three of her films will be screened.  One of them is nominated for an award.

Our listening program is in progress, and we have completed 70 of Haydn's symphonies, and 70 opus of both Brahms and Britten.  Next up is Symphony #71 by Haydn.

Deb's weekend movie choice was an odd little children's film from 1979, just released on the Criterion channel.  Called "Black Jack," the film is difficult to watch without subtitles (there were none).  The soft spoken Yorkshire accents are difficult enough, but the sound miking was less than good as well.   Shot on 16 mm film, it is still engaging, and the mostly outdoor settings and the costumes were absolutely perfect.  A very large man escapes death on the gallows by choking down a metal spoon before he is hung.  He awakens in his coffin, in a house where an old woman sells the bodies of such men to the local medical society.  The time is 1750, and the setting is Yorkshire. 

In his escape he kidnaps a young boy, and they disappear quickly into the countryside.  Here they encounter Belle, a young girl who is being delivered to a mad house.  When her carriage breaks down she escapes, and she and the boy (Tolly) link up and become friends.  The girl quickly loses her madness, and the two of them hook up with a "doctor" and his travelling medicine show.  From a novel by Leon Garfield, the film is worth a second viewing, perhaps after the novel has been read I have ordered a copy of the book).

 A wonderful little film from 1979, but pretty hard to understand the dialogue. 

On our trip to Detroit last Thursday we went downtown, spending some money at Vault of Midnight, a game and comic store.  I bought the complete comic of The Watchmen by Alan Moore.  The novel contains all 12 comics, as well as written fiction by the author that goes along with it.  I will read one complete comic each time I finish up a book on my Avon/Equinox list, so it will take me 12 books to complete the comic.  I'm currently reading a volume of 21 stories by Silverberg, which is nearly 400 pages long.  We also bought a new board game, called Teotihuacan: City of Gods.  It has an enormous and very attractive playing board, as well as about five thousand small pieces needed to play.  So far I have set up the board so it is ready for two players to play.  That took me two days!  We might get started tonight.

 The box.

 The game board.  For 1-4 players. 

Some possible heavy rain is predicted overnight.  Despite flooding still everywhere around us, mostly due to the high lake levels from the winter snow melt (record setting), we badly need some rain.  Just not 3", please.  Half an inch or so would be nice.

Mapman Mike

Murderers, Guns, Brexit, Climate Change, Kurosawa

As I write this at 5 pm, it appears that the two teenage Canadian murderers on the lam have been found, or at least their bodies.  No doubt done in by the flies, which can drive a person completely insane within minutes.  I am hardly qualified to get inside the head of someone who wilfully murders without motive, but killing strangers has always been a rare thing.  Like child abuse, it is usually done by someone who knows the victim.  There are very few random murders of strangers in Detroit, but there are plenty of murders.  Sometimes crossfire will kill an unintended victim, too.  Having been to Detroit hundreds of times, though mostly in better areas, we haven't even seen a gun yet.  Odds are we won't, but one never knows.  America is one of the more dangerous countries on the planet.  The price of freedom?  It is a rather high price.

Trump has split the US politically more than anyone else in my lifetime.  So have guns.  And so Brexit has split the UK more than any other event in my lifetime.  The world seems to be heading for an either/or showdown, which will result in more violence, more protests, and more damage to human relations.  This is not a world that is ready for any sort of peace.  And so it is a world that will never be able to agree on methods to control climate change, or stem the flow of greenhouse gasses.  And some people wonder why we did not wish to have children.  This crisis of humanity has been a long time in the making.  I see no hope for a solution.  As one country enables a liberal and Earth-loving leader, another one enables a right wing denier.  This is not balance, but catastrophe.  Deb and I should be able to live out our days on the planet, but adaptations are already required.  How many people/countries will be able to adapt?  We watch our Detroit River and surrounding Great Lakes at record high levels, with flooding a daily event.  Our backyard creek, which is supposed to flow into the major river, cannot.  Instead, the Detroit River now flows into our backyard.

As Kurosawa notes, in his weird, epic film "Dodes'ka-den" (the sound of a trolley moving along the tracks), poverty will never go away, and will only increase.  Climate change and violence always hit the lowest income earners the hardest, as they have less leeway and wiggle room than anyone else.  As a result, they are in the line of fire more often than anyone else.  

Kurosawa's first colour film is from 1970, and he uses colour in unique ways.  The film would have been too unrelentingly depressing in black and white, though perhaps some scenes would have worked better this way.  A small village built upon a landfill on the outside of the world, it would seem, is inhabited by a collection of rough living people living around a fresh water tap.  Shelters are made from old gasoline tins, a car, and scrap of all kinds.  The film is episodic, and examines several lives a bit at a time.  I have seen the film before, but remembered almost nothing about it, which is rather strange.  It is a memorable film, firstly for its use of colour, and secondly for its unrelenting look at the lowest class of humanity, those just barely able to scrounge a life from their surroundings.  Of course watching a depressing film makes one reflect on any manner of depressing events going on around the world at the time, so forgive me my first few paragraphs of this blog.  Of course everything will work out okay.  Brexit will be wonderful, as will another four years of Trump, and an upcoming Conservative government in Canada.  At least two murderers have been brought to a form of justice.

 Dodes'ka-den. 

In other cheerful news, typical of Detroit, the largest downtown skyscraper project has suddenly been greatly reduced in scope.  From 912 feet, it is now way, way down.  No one yet knows how low, but I'm guessing that leasing hasn't gone well.  Oh well--I always said that I wouldn't care about any new buildings downtown, as long as the major existing skyscrapers were fixed up and occupied.  At least that part has come true.  And downtown has never been more lively or beautiful since we moved here in 1976, so I am not going to complain about the height of a new scyscraper being reduced.  Detroit day was moved till tomorrow.  Looking forward to it, as usual.

Mapman Mike

Two Criterion Films

Babylon (British, 1980) did not get a release in Britain until the late 80s.  In the USA it was just released in 2019!  It was showing at DFT, and we were hoping to attend there to see it.  Then it popped up on Criterion, so we watched it at home.

 A British film from 1980, only now being released abroad. 

A London reggae band tries to win a music contest against a rival band.  All along the way, including the night of the actual performance, they are met with nearly insurmountable obstacles, not the least of which is racist cops and neighbours.  We watched the subtitled version (I don't know how you could watch it otherwise).  I'm certain that the problems dealt with 40 years ago by blacks are exactly the same as today--virtually nothing has changed.  Highly recommended, and worth a second viewing.  "Go back to your own country!"  "This is my fucking country!!" is still a mantra chanted daily in Britain and the USA.

Deb's pick was an early pre-code quickie called Night Nurse, starring Barbara Stanwyck.  She tries to defend two little girls who are slowly being starved to death for their inheritance.  In between saving them, there is a lot of drunken revelry, nurses in skimpy nightgowns, and some hard boiled violence, even against women.  Barbara is socked on the chin by an evil chauffeur played by Clark Gable.  She is befriended by a bootlegger.  There is a very bad doctor in on the plot with the chauffeur.  There are some good stare downs, and some crazy ambulance driving through the city.  A good film to remind one of what cinema was like before codes of decency were slapped on them.  Of course naughty nurses have continued on into our own time, a favourite theme of porno films.  But these nurses from 1931 are not naughty.  They are wholesome and likable, and they help sick people.

  From the novel by Dora Macy.  Starring Joan Blondell and Barbara Stanwyck, 1931. 

I seem to be caught up on my sleep, and practicing and reading have resumed.  Tomorrow we return to Detroit for our weekly visit.  I have completed my blog (see the one on the Midwest) on all of Detroit's breweries, and tomorrow I start blogging about the best taprooms for craft beer.  However, at least 5 new breweries should be open before Christmas, so the blog will continue to expand.  I do not count the suburbs; just the city.  I still haven't published the photos from Steve, Lynne, and Emma-Lee's visit.  Next time.  And I have not forgotten about landscape art in the DIA, either.  These take time.  We visited last Tuesday, to see an Impressionist show of art from Detroit and Buffalo combined.  Buffalo has some very important and iconic art, especially by Paul Gauguin.  Nice to have these works visit Detroit for the summer.

Mapman Mike

July Reading and Astronomy Bonanza

Three nights in a row of outstanding clear skies have left me pretty tired but happy.  We haven't had a streak like that since early January.  However, in January I can wrap up a three-hour session by 9:30 pm or so.  In July and early August things aren't done until after 1 am.  I've been getting to bed around 2:30 am.  Reading and piano practicing have gone out the window lately.  My eyes (and legs) last about three hours at a time at the telescope these days.  I have been consistently using my newest observing site, further from the lights of Windsor/Detroit in the northwest, and safe from the greenhouse lights in the south that are plaguing the official observatory.  I am in the shadow of a giant windmill, which varies its noise level with wind speed.  It can get pretty loud, but it is a sound I can live with.  The dark sky is magnificent, with an excellent Milky Way showing all the way to the horizon.

Last Wednesday we had our new, very expensive door installed.  Sort of.  Near completion one of the workers dropped a very heavy drill onto the silver footplate leading into the house.  It left a crater the size of the lunar Copernicus one.  So they will be back in two weeks.  They have to completely take out the new door, replace the plate, and put the new door back in.  So our screen door is not yet on, but we are (for now) sealed in tight with the new main door.  It will take them even longer when they return.

In July I managed to finish reading 13 books, 10 by authors related to the Avon/Equinox series.  Works by John Christopher, Harry Harrison, Kenneth Bulmer, E.C. Tubb, Jack Williamson, Rex Gordon (as Bennett Stanley), Hal Clement, Robert Silverberg, Michael Moorcock, and Ward Moore complete the project authors for last month.  

Bulmer's "World's For The Taking" was notable, as Earth is now in the habit of capturing Earth-like planets and inserting them into our solar system for colonizing.  A weird premise but very well handled.  Also memorable was E. C. Tubb's "C.O.D. Mars," in which three astronauts return from Alpha Centauri, the first space travellers to successfully undertake such a journey.  Expecting to return and be hailed as conquering heroes, they are instead quarantined and are sent out to orbit the sun permanently.  Some type of disease is suspected, but it turns out to be even worse.  A good version of an attempted alien invasion.

"Sea Struck," by Bennett Stanley" (alias Rex Gordon; S. B. Hough) is a fabulous tale of a sea captain trying to keep sailing his wonderful schooner for profit despite so many odds against him.  This book brings back fond memories of reading Conrad many years ago.  If you've ever wondered what it might be like to spend time at sea on a sailing schooner, than look no farther (hint: it's no picnic).  The first chapter of this book might be the best opening chapter to any book I have ever read. 

Hal Clement's sequel to "Needle," called "Through The Eye Of  A Needle," continues the story of an alien policeman living within the body of a young man who lives in the south seas.  Both books are good and recommended, though his finest work lies elsewhere (his "Mesklin" series is unbeatable).  Silverberg"s "The 13th Immortal" is a very early novel, his first written for Ace publishing.  Even way back then, the early beginnings of his famous Majipoor series can be traced in this adventure spanning several continents (North and South America, and a very futuristic Antarctica). 

I have begun reading Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius quartet of novels.  I had previously encountered Jerry in Heavy Metal Magazine back in the day (drawn by Moebius), as well as in a short story by Farmer.  Moorcock loaned out the character and asked other writers to contribute.  In addition to the four novels, Moorcock also wrote short stories.  The first book is called "The Final Programme."  It is a really fun and fascinating romp into 1960s (SF) London and the counterculture of the times.  Possibly the biggest and party party ever takes place in these pages.  In my review I said it was a cross between a Doc Savage pulp adventure, a James Bond novel, and a Highsmith Ripley story.  Great fun!  Looking forward to the next volume, in about 6 weeks time.

On the flip side of this month's Ace Double featuring the Mars story by Tubb was "Alien Sea" by John Rackham.  This is one of three books unrelated to my project authors that I read this month.  Rackam is a new name for me, and his title sums the story up nicely.  The entire book, which is quite memorable, takes place upon and within a planet that is now only ocean and floating space ship docks.  Unique and worth seeking out.  Wish it had been longer.  The opening chapter is really something.

A second non-project book I read was the first part of the SF version of the Finnish Kalevala.  "The Saga of Lost Earths," by Emil Petaja, begins the journey I completed last month, when I came across and read Book 4.  I got the first volume on Kindle, and will seek out the others, too.  Unusual and fun to read.  

The final book unrealted to my Avon/Equinox project was called "Beware The Usurpers," a violent tale from 1951 about six humans (including a blind man, a one-armed man, two elderly men, and a woman) trying to save the world from an nefarious and deadly alien invasion from another dimension.  It received praise from Robert Silverberg, and is a good example of pulp fiction at its most murderous and action packed.  I have no doubt that Farmer based his Tarzan and Doc Savage tales around material just like this.  From 1951, it was written by Geoff St Reynard (real name Robert Krepps).  If you want to know what real pulp writing is like from the early 50s, then this is for you.  Needless to say, I liked it.  if you read it you will come across another version of the Jack the Ripper legend.  This book was a sequel to a much shorter story, simply called "The Usurpers."  However, the plot of that story is summed up in this longer tale.

I just finished a novel by J. G. Ballard, but that will have to wait for the August review.  Or check out the Ballard page on my Avon/Equinox blog, and to read more about the books mentioned above (and to see their cover art).  Until next time....

Mapman Mike