Fourscore

Hank Williams, The Biography, authored by Colin Escott and a couple others. A lot of information about Ol’ Hank and his short career. Hank was lucky that he came along at the time when music began to be recorded for inexpensive home entertainment. The country music, hillbilly if you will, was not only a Southern phenomena but reached up to the far north where a 3/4 ‘Score was developing his own musical tastes. The local dances often had a singer that would sing the latest juke box country hits and we could slow dance with the lady of our teenage dreams.
Hank’s trials and tribulations are greatly detailed, the gritty personal life, the attempts to make a living with ad hoc bands, the friendships along the way and of course the booze that he drank, and the drugs he used from the beginning until his end at 29.
So many of the big names from the Opry were getting their start at the same time, Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff, Ray Price, Little Jimmy Dickens and many, many more that the Boomers would remember.
After his death the pushing and shoving of those concerned to try to capitalize on Hank’s work, songs and reputation was unreal. Even today Hank Junior enjoys a career that his dad helped along, though Hank Junior has always been his own man.
His Songography is in the 1000s, his discography is somewhat less. Some crossed over to the pop charts. A lot of his songs are still being covered today, by unlikely groups. Listening to a country station today we might recognize the song when we don’t know the artist.
If anyone is interested I’d be happy to send the book along. Copyright is 2004, the paper shows its age.

 

Richard

This month’s literary journey commenced with a re-read of Neal Asher’s The Technician the events of which precede those of his Transformation trilogy. If you want to know what Amistad and Penny Royal were doing on Masada then this is the book for you:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7704959-the-technician

I then re-read two novellas set in Ben Aaronovitch’s “River of London” universe: What Abigail Did That Summer and The October Man:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55855546-what-abigail-did-that-summer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42389859-the-october-man
The latter was a Christmas gift in dead-tree form. An Aunt and Uncle asked me what I wanted and I gave them the titles of two books I hadn’t read. They went to the local Barnes & Noble and bought a copy of a signed limited edition. It’s arguably my best book. Aaronovitch is obviously writing with the possibility of Major Motion Pictures for the Modern Audience in mind. What Abigail Did Last Summer’s protagonist is a young teenage girl. She has adventures with a young teenage boy who has some kind of spectrum disorder and nearly all the adults she encounters are women. Nightingale makes a few cameo appearances.
The October Man’s protagonist is a man but his boss, his police partner, her boss, the Female Protagonist, and the police’s magic department’s medical examiner are all women. There is a group of hapless men, some of whom are killed and one of whom is the killer.

I then embarked on a re-read of  Nova Roma 1: De Itinere in Occasum written by some joker calling himself Anderson Gentry. He doesn’t seem to care about Major Motion Picture for the Modern Audience possibilities:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55781931-nova-roma-1
The plot is simple: An army fleet from the old Roman Republic gets blown to North America and brings conflict and war (but not disease) to the peaceful Indigenous Peoples 1500 years before Christopher Columbus. The protagonists are all men: Warriors, Leaders, Statesmen, and Husbands. The few women mentioned admire the men and want to marry them and bear their children. The peaceful Indigenous Peoples aren’t even matriarchal! Despite all these failings I’m going to buy a copy of the second book in the series when it comes out this August:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175671726-nova-roma-2

I just returned from an annual fishing weekend at my family’s cottage on the shore of the Missisquoi Bay of Highgate Springs, Vermont. Adjacent is a ritzy family resort called “The Tyler Place” run by generations of the Tyler family. I went to the gift shop and bought the last copy of  Ada of Enosburg which is a history of the family and of the beginning of the resort:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27907321-ada-of-enosburg
It excerpts many letters to describe what life was like in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in Northwestern Vermont. This is my second copy. I lent the first one to a dear friend and never got it back. It’s probably in the Vermont History shelf of his library.

This month’s new book is The Aeronaut’s Windlass the first book of Jim Butcher’s The Cinder Spires series:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24876258-the-aeronaut-s-windlass
A friend mentioned that the second book is coming out late this year, eight years after the first. I’ve read Butcher’s Dresden and Codex Alera series but had never heard of  The Cinder Spires.

 

The Hyperbole

Again I only read one book this month, but it was a big book. Black is the Night a collection of short stories by various authors inspired by the work of Cornell Woolrich, it has a introduction by Neil Gaiman and stories by Joe R. Lansdale and a host of other authors I’m not familiar with. As with any anthology there is the good and the bad, although more good than bad here, my only complaint is that it seems like every third story was a take on Rear Window, I get it, that is Mr. Woolrich’s most famous work but it got a bit tiresome after a while.

I am halfway through Atlanta Deathwatch the first book of The Hardman and Evens series by Ralph Dennis, so far so good, it was written in 1974, hard core detective stuff. from what I gather it’s considered a forgotten series but well respected by people in the genre. I’ll let you know next month how it pans out.

 

Reminder: The last Sunday of each month is “What Are We Reading” Day so if you want to participate get your reports in to HeyBuddyStopDoingThat@protonmail.com by the second to last Sunday.