November 2025 Reading Summary

I read ten books in November, two from my Avon/Equinox authors and the rest from my vast collection of fiction from Delphi Classics on Kindle. 

 

 

In the 1985 Storm Over Valia (#35 in the Dray Prescott series) Bulmer lets us in on what has been happening with Dray's #1 son.  We have heard a bit about his doings, but he has never had his own volume until now.  Drak is attempting to rid the mainland of Valia of traitorous enemies.  It takes several battles and reinforcements before he is able to turn the tide in his favour, but then he is kidnapped by the enemy.  #35 in the Dray Prescott series is filled with the usual amount of fighting, carousing, intrigue, humour and outrageous incidents, even though Dray is not present.  While he has been battling the witches' plagues, we learn what else has been going on in other parts of Kregen.  While Drak is a mere shadow of his father, he hasn't had the same amount of time to have his character developed.   Drak shares plot time with Silda, daughter of Dray Prescott's best friend.  Silda is a Sister of the Rose, highly trained in all manner of combat, and she gets a good chunk of the story to herself and her deeds, too.  In fact, she is a more interesting character than Drak.  This is a good entry in the series, allowing the readers to gain a more multi-dimensional view of what exactly is going on.

 

 

It's unfortunate that Tubb is an artful dodger.  In his Dumarest series Tubb never allows his hero to get near the original Earth, as if a change of direction for the series would be detrimental.  And in his Cap Kennedy series Tubb never allows us to stay long enough to learn more about the Zheltyanians, that ancient race that has left traces of itself across the galaxy.  I think most readers would like to see Dumarest getting closer and closer to Earth, and they would also like to see Cap learning more about the mysterious old ones.  But each time they make a discovery, it has to be destroyed for reasons to do with the main story plot.  In Spawn of Laban (1974; 127 pages), Cap and his team have to deal with giant insects, scorpions and spiders that will be used to devastate Earth in the near future.  A twisted professor is mixed up in the plot, and perhaps his lovely daughter.  It's a good story, except for the blowing up of the Zheltyana artifacts which are destroyed at the end.  It appears that giant wasps are using one of their ancient structures as a nest.  So much for getting clues from there.  Many of Tubb's stories would make fantastic movies, and this is one of them.  Any filmmakers out there listening?

 

Cover by Jack Gaughan. 

 

Turning now to Delphi Classics on Kindle, I began the month with an end of the world story by Arthur Conan Doyle.  The Poison Belt is from 1913 and undoubtedly influenced writers like John Chrisopher.  However, Doyle's story is somewhat spoiled by a chicken-out ending, where everyone wakes up next morning as suddenly as they had passed out and were presumed dead the previous day.  This is a Professor Challenger story (The Lost World), and the same team is together again as a poisoned bit of ether seems to have crossed Earth's path.  They survive the night with oxygen, and the best part of the story has them heading for London next day in a motor car to see the devastation.  And while the ending is a cop out, there has been great devastation as a result of people passing out amidst their duties.  There are train wrecks, shipwrecks, completely burned cities and other disasters.  So Earth does not get a get out of jail free card without considerable bumps and bruises.  If you like the stories of Christopher then you will certainly like this one, from one of the great storytellers.

An interior illustration for Doyle's story. 

 

 

Edgar Wallace wrote a few books featuring a London detective from Scotland Yard. The first of these novels is The Nine Bears from 1910. A group of men attempt to manipulate the stock market, causing a major London bank to fail if their plot succeeds. T. S. Smith has his hands full in this cracking crime thriller that has a global reach, including a climax at sea. Wallace writes well and craftily, setting up the capture of the group and their leader time and again, only to be foiled and outwitted. There is a master criminal mind behind the whole thing, and even the best at Scotland yard seems to be no match. My Delphi edition had colour plates of a few scenes. Highly readable, with the bad guys finally done in in the end.

 

 
Next up was T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, from 1922. This is only the 2nd time I've read this work, and the only time I had a clue as to what is about. My Delphi Classics edition includes the author's notes. The title and much of the mood of the text refers to Jessie Weston's book From Ritual To Romance, about the Grail legend. Eliot claims he was thinking a lot about the Fisher King, his wounded condition and how the landscape reflected that condition. Other influences include Dante, Ovid and Chaucer. The poem is divided into 5 segments, with the 4th being my personal favourite. However, I also love the opening to the 3rd part, and a part of the 5th. 

 

The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

 

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song. 

 

And.... 

In this decayed hole among the mountains
  In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
  Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
  There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
  It has no windows, and the door swings,
  Dry bones can harm no one.

 

Jacques Futrelle (real name John Futrell) was an American writer who wrote mystery and crime novels.  He was a passenger on the Titanic and died as a result of the sinking.  I read his first novel, The Chase of the Golden Plate from 1906.  The author sets up a man as being just about as guilty a person could be of committing a crime, with all evidence pointing to him ass the culprit.  Of course the man is innocent, and the reader must read on to find out how the author gets him off the hook.  Some of the tactics used are a bit much, such as the girl who is engaged to be married to him, and with whom she is eloping the very night of the robbery, does not recognize the fact that she is with someone else.  She thinks it is her lover the whole time.  Hmmmn.  Week, he did have a face mask on.  In the story we are introduced to The Thinking Machine, Futrelle's version of Sherlock Holmes.  He is a man who uses only logic to solve crimes.  It was an okay read, but not the kind of crime novel that I am a big fan of.

 

 

Next came a collection of stories by Gogol, an 1835 set of four tales collectively called Mirgorod.

"The Old Fashioned Farmer" is a tribute of sorts to the author's grandparents.  Minute descriptions of the house interior, exterior and lands surrounding it are given, painting a wonderful picture of a Ukraine ("Little Russia") homestead at the time.  Despite being silently robbed by the workers and overseer, as the old farmer no longer tends to the farm himself, they still get by without enough to keep them happy in their older years.  Not so much a story as a celebration of a way of life.

 

"Taras Bulba" is the tale of a Cossack's life back in the good old days.  It was a manly man's world, leaving wives and young children behind to live in a large permanent encampment upon the steppes of central Asia.  Everything you have wanted to know about Cossacks is here, and perhaps everything you did not want to know.  I would equate the true Cossack to its modern equivalent of the football (soccer in North America) hooligan, out looking for trouble for no real reason other than to prove 'manhood.'  In the famous story, which is quite a long one, Taras introduces his two sons to the life of a Cossack.  The eldest lad takes to it quite well, but the youngest is a bit soft on the emotional side and ends up falling in love with a beautiful woman.  Silly lad.  Several films were made from the story, including a famous Hollywood one.

 

"Viy" is a supernatural horror tale, one of the best!  A young seminary student, a philosopher, has a life or death meeting and struggle with an evil witch.  When he bests her and she dies his troubles begin.  This is a such a great story that I hesitate to give any of the plot away.  Last March we watched the 1967 Russian film version, which, as it turns out, closely follows the story and has incredible effects for the time. (see my review from the March 23rd/25 blog).  A must to read for horror fans. 

 

"The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled With Ivan Nikiforovich" is a tragic/comedy story about two very close friends who have a serious falling out and are unable to reconcile.  The story follows the men as their differences escalate into a court drama, and shows the negative effects it has on their aging and quality of life.  Told with humour, it is a good story that would also make a good film.

 

 

Carson McCullins' Clock Without Hands (pub. 1961) is the 2nd story by her I have read.  The lives of four male characters intertwine much like themes in polyphonic music, though decidedly in a minor key.  J.T. Malone is a small town pharmacist in southern Georgia, a man who failed to pass his second year of medical school.  Now 40, he blames Jewish students for his failure.  He soon finds out that he has leukemia and has just over one year to live.  One of his close friends is Judge Clane, a widower whose lawyer son committed suicide many years earlier.  The judge is a southern bigot, and his big scheme to become even richer than he is, is to get the federal government to redeem confederate money.  The time is the early 1950s.  The judge weighs over 300 pounds and has type two diabetes.  He hires Sherman, a blue-eyed young Black man, to help him administer his shots and to be his personal secretary, writing the letters dictated by the judge.  Sherman's blue eyes attract the judge's grandson, Jester, a homosexual young man yet to act on his leanings.  Sherman can also sing really well, and play piano.  The relationship between Sherman and Jester, between Sherman and the judge, and between Jester and his grandfather form the basis of the book, with Mr. Malone and his terminal illness providing a 4th narrative line.  They keeps the book interesting from start to finish.  There are a lot of f-bombs dropped during the tale, as well as liberal use of the n-word.  This is the deep south of the the 1950s, and it isn't a pretty place for Black folk.  But it's a time of change, too, and more Blacks are speaking up for their constitutional rights, though few are receiving them.  Malone himself is the main 'clock without hands', a man who cannot find himself in life until he is upon his death bed.  But none of the characters really know or understand what they are doing.  The judge fights for whites, in the end separating himself from Sherman.  His son who died by suicide had attempted to defend an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman, and this really put a chasm between the father son relationship.  The same thing happens with Jester, the judge's grandson.  Once Jester figures out what his grandfather really stands for, he rejects him and goes his own way.  Sherman finally finds a cause and a reason to stand up for himself and his race, but it is a useless sacrifice.  Though depressing in many ways (as a piece of music in the minor key can be), it is nothing but an honest glimpse at life in those "good ol' days" white Americans like to think about, the golden age of the 1950s.  I didn't like the book quite as much as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, though I am left with similar feelings after reading Clock.  Definitely a book worth reading, as this woman is a terrific writer.

 

 

Next came a collection of eight stories of childhood by Kenneth Grahame.  Dream Days was first published in 1888, and illustrated by Maxfield Parrish in a 1902 edition (the one I read).  Of the eight stories four of them are excellent, with one of these being among the best things ever written regarding childhood.  It is a follow up collection to his remarkable Golden Days of 1885.  My four favourite stories are "Mutabile Semper," where our young hero meets a new girl his age and what befalls their brief affair.  Funny and poignant at the same time with an irresistible point of view.  "The Magic Ring" opens with a warning to adults to be careful what they say aloud when children are present, illustrating perfectly how a broken promise can affect a child.  Again our hero becomes momentarily infatuated with not one, but two different females as he unexpectedly is brought to see the circus, after finding out that he would not be going with his parents after all.  We get to experience the lowest and highest points of childhood in one short story.  "The Reluctant Dragon" is one of the most famous stories of all time, and certainly worth reading.  Filled with dry humour and life lessons for accepting others as they are, the tale is a story within a story.  Two of the children, our young hero and his youngest sister, follow what they imagine might be dragon tracks in the snow.  It eventually leads them to the garden of a well known local man who works in the circus.  Once he discovers their mission, he offers to walk them back home, as it is now dark and very chilly.  Along the way he is prompted to tell a story, and out comes the tale of the reluctant dragon.  A beautiful package, indeed.  The final story of the set is the best of them all.  "A Departure" is the story of how the children parted with their toys once they had officially, though not emotionally, out grown them.  As they are packaged up to be delivered to a sick children's hospital, the two youngest, observed by the eldest, undertake to save at least a few of the precious and once-loved toys and give them immortality.  Very touching and moving if read by anyone that had well loved toys as a child.  Like the previous Golden Age stories, this set is indispensable reading.

 

One of ten plates included in my Kindle Delphi Classics edition of Dream Days.

The Man In The Moon watches as the children say good bye to a few of their old toys.
 

 

 

I finished up the month with a detective story by Anna Katherine Green.  XYZ--A Detective Story is a very readable novella about a detective hunting down a gang of counterfeiters, but inadvertently getting mixed up in another crime instead.  From 1883, the story involves a father estranged from one of his sons, and the efforts the other brother and a sister make to reunite the family.  When the father is murdered, however, the detective,thanks to several mix ups and misunderstandings, is right on the scene, and it doesn't take him long to collar the criminal.  Easy to read and quite a fun story.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

June Reading

 In addition to getting through books by my ten remaining Avon/Equinox Rediscovery authors, I managed two non-related books as well.  Reading continues to be a major pastime for me, with no end in sight yet for my project, now in its sixth year.  As usual, the month began with a novel by Robert Silverberg.  Tower of Glass is from 1970, and Silverberg already had captured the essence of a multi-billionaire's ego.  Krug is the richest man alive, with ambitions to match his wealth.  When a signal from space arrives indicating intelligent alien life, he sets out to build a communication tower.  This tower will be able to return a signal faster than light.  Krug wants to meet aliens before he dies, or at least talk with them.  The tower is being built west of Hudson's Bay, and it's a big one, all right.  However, the main theme of the novel appears to be the relationship between the fully human and the somewhat human AIs who do all the actual work.  Both themes intertwine to make a fascinating tale of the near future.  As we watch today's billionaires compete to be the first in space, and AI intelligence continues to be refined, this is not such a far fetched story 51 years after it was written.

Next I read Kiai! by Piers Anthony, a very early work by him focusing on a judo expert entering a mixed martial arts contest.  This work is quite terrible, and no doubt contributed to the disdain and disbelief most people have today regarding martial arts.  It is the first of a series, so I might try one more later on.  At this point I am trying the first book of each series Anthony wrote before deciding to continue of with them.

Winter In Eden is Harry Harrison's 1986 sequel to West of Eden, his major "what if" series about what might have transpired if the big meteor had not struck Earth.  In general I am bored by books about prehistoric humans.  But Farmer wrote a great one, and Harrison, a much better writer, has written a wonderful history novel.  The characters and races become a bit more complex, and new people are added to the epic tale.  All in all a good read, with one more novel in the set to go.

Roller Coaster World is from 1972, and is Bulmer's last single novel.  Now I only have his series to attack.  Bulmer sort of lost his way lately with exposition, but if readers stick to it, another good, solid SF novel emerges from the initial chaos.  At heart it's a hopeless love story, and would make a great film or series.  Several of  Bulmer's latest books go to a lot of trouble to set up an entire world and culture, only to end it permanently after the first book.  He seemed to have a mind for series later on, but managed to keep things to only the first book.  This story is about a human colony that thrives on the life-giving radiation a planet gives off.  Only the radiation has been dying out, leaving people feeling very poorly, indeed.

E.C. Tubb's Pandora's Box was written in 1954, but not published until the mid 1990s.  The story is really constructed well, and involves the smuggling of dangerous spores to Earth from Venus, sent by a mad professor to end all life on the planet.  But before we get near that aspect of the story, it begins on the Moon, at a customs station.  We meet John Weston, an honest customs agent who has a unique knack for finding smugglers.  He is saddled with Marge, a wife who likes to spend big.  John was once a space pilot, but lost his commission, along with his big salary.  Marge continues to spend regardless.  And so we come to the set up.  If John will allow one smuggler through, he will be well paid.  Once the smuggler has clear access to deliver his package (which he thinks are seeds for illegal drugs), then the story shifts to Venus.  A really good tale, by one of the best pulp writers to have ever taken up a typewriter.

Wall Around A Star, from 1983, concludes the Saga of Cuckoo, by Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl.  The series consists of two books, both confusing due to the number of major characters involved, and the number of alien races.  It seems unusually cluttered, with enough characters to have lasted for five or six books, if they had been slowly introduced to us over time.  But concepts, ideas, plots, characters, and races are all thrown at us quite breathlessly.  The central story is excellent, about an incoming solar system size entity about to invade our galaxy.  In book one, everything was still pretty much a mystery regarding this object (called Cuckoo by the investigators).  Book two provides full explanations for everything, which is a relief.  However, some of these explanations are a bit far fetched and difficult to swallow.  This second book isn't as fun as the first book, and the series itself is certainly not required reading for diehard SF fans.  Still, there is a lot to ponder in here, if you can keep the characters straight in your mind.

Michael Moorcock's conclusion to his 2nd Corum trilogy is called The Sword and the Stallion.  It marks a strong finish to a really decent sword and sorcery series featuring a troubled and put upon hero (Corum), helping for the sixth and final time to put down evil and restore decency to the world.  The only problem with Moorcock's final solution (as per usual for him), is that the evil has rendered such destruction, mayhem, and murder that there really isn't much of a world remaining.  I will continue with his eternal champion theme next month, as I begin a new series with a (mostly) new hero.

Next up was Volume 2 of Ballard's shorter fiction, another 750 pages of mostly very good short stories.  I have once again chopped it into three segments, meaning that I still have two months of Ballard reading remaining.  Last month I read 14 stories from 1964 to 1968.  Despite a few clunkers.  The best of them, the ones that should seriously be sought out, include The Lost Leonardo, The Terminal Beach, The Illuminated Man (the first, much shorter version of The Crystal World), The Recognition, and, perhaps the finest story ever written (I know I've said this before with Ballard's works--I can't help it), The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D.

The Sodom and Gomorrah Business by Barry Malzberg is from 1974, and continues his long winning streak in writing some of the most provocative fiction ever penned.  And there is always great storytelling going on, too.  This could be considered one of the weirdest road movie plots every created, as two cadets sneak out of their safe training haven in a 1964 Cadillac, and encounter the real world, head on.  Inspired by Anthony Burgess and Kubrick, the beginning owes a lot to Clockwork Orange.  The rest reminds me a bit of Budrys' writing, with a good solid chunk of Malzberg thrown in the mix, too.  A truly awesome writer.

Galactic Cluster contains 8 stories by master SF writer James Blish, all from the 1950s.  Six of the eight are truly fantastic tales, still resonating after almost 70 years!  Common Time, A Work of Art (Iain Banks??), Nor Iron Bars (in which a space ship ends up orbiting inside an atom!), Beep, and This Earth of Hours would all go on to influence SF writing for decades to come.  It's easy to see how and why.

Now we turn to the two books read not relating to my overall reading project.  These are books that have been on my reading shelf for years.  I am trying to clear off that shelf (about 20 books remaining on it), and it is slowly happening.  The hard part is trying not to add anything new to it!  Most new books are going on my Kindle, once the hard copies are read.  Even though I hope to read the complete Jules Verne (Kindle, $1.00), I had a hard copy of Carpathian Castle, a science based Gothic horror novel set in and near a small Carpathian village.  The story is told with humour, especially regarding the superstitious beliefs of the locals, but all the usual Gothic nonsense is also included.  The book is hard to put down once begun.  Despite all of the weird things that (seem) to go, they all have a scientific basis, explained at the end.  But the book's main flaw, which isn't explained, is why the (bad) Baron had to blow up his castle at the end.  He actually had done nothing wrong!  I am going to use parts of this story in my upcoming third Valeria the Vegetarian Vampire story, as her family goes to Eastern Europe on holiday.

Lastly comes a truly amazing and wonderful book by Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, called The Golden Age.  When we were studying for our education degree back in 1979-80, we learned all of the major theories of learning, and how children's minds work at different stages of their lives.  Piaget comes to mind here, especially as to his theory about concrete versus abstract thought processes.  This Grahame novel consists of many very short tales of childhood adventures and doings, wonderfully told (for adults) from a child's perspective, and illustrating better than anywhere I have ever seen exactly how children think concretely.  There are continuous laughs on every page, as well as some of the tenderest moments one could ever hope to live through.  This book is a real treasure, published by Dover.  I bought it new years ago from a store in Detroit, and wish I'd read it when I was still teaching.  It should be required reading for beginning teachers.

That (almost) takes care of this month's reading.  But I am going to add a new feature starting this month, for those of you not willing to tackle by Avon/Equinox webpage (see left margin for a link).  I will choose the best cover of books read over the past month, and post it here for your viewing pleasure.

Best cover of the month award goes to Charles Moll. 

Mapman Mike