What are you reading in 2024?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Does Brandon Sanderson have the time to finish all of these series?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished REH's Black Vulmea's Vengeance. It was good, but not great. I suspect Black Vulmea just didn’t grab REH (or the pulp audiences) as much as his other characters. Of the three stories, he is entirely absent from the third. They’re fun, don’t get me wrong, but of Howard's non-Conan stories, I would not go to these first, second, or even third.

Now I'm reading the Lin Carter-edited The Year's Best Fantasy Stories 3 from DAW. The year in question being 1976,

 

[overgeeked]

I finished REH's Black Vulmea's Vengeance. It was good, but not great. I suspect Black Vulmea just didn’t grab REH (or the pulp audiences) as much as his other characters. Of the three stories, he is entirely absent from the third. They’re fun, don’t get me wrong, but of Howard's non-Conan stories, I would not go to these first, second, or even third.

Now I'm reading the Lin Carter-edited The Year's Best Fantasy Stories 3 from DAW. The year in question being 1976,

REH's boxing stories are quite fun. I picked up a full set of the Del Rey anthologies when they came out. I still have barely scratched the surface of his non-Conan stuff. Maybe one of those should be my next read.

 

[Alzrius]

REH's boxing stories are quite fun. I picked up a full set of the Del Rey anthologies when they came out. I still have barely scratched the surface of his non-Conan stuff. Maybe one of those should be my next read.

You can pick up two such stories for $1.50 as part of NUELOW Games's The Conquests of Wild Bill Clanton (affiliate link).

 

[overgeeked]

You can pick up two such stories for $1.50 as part of NUELOW Games's The Conquests of Wild Bill Clanton (affiliate link).

Or, since they're (almost) all in the public domain, you can legally download them from the various Project Gutenberg sites. Here's his listing from the US Project Gutenberg (not an affiliate link).

 

[Alzrius]

Or, since they're (almost) all in the public domain, you can legally download them from the various Project Gutenberg sites. Here's his listing from the US Project Gutenberg (not an affiliate link).

Yeah, but the one I posted also has some new d20 game materials.

EDIT: Also, the Wild Bill Clanton stories ("The Purple Heart of Erlik" and "The Dragons of Koa Tsu") don't seem to be on the Gutenberg site, likely because in the U.S. things are only in the public domain (as of 2024) from 1928 and earlier, so (presuming there wasn't an issue of copyright not being renewed during the period when that was a thing) since Howard didn't die until 1936, the works he made during the last eight years of his life are still off-limits to Project Gutenberg.

 

[Nellisir]

No you are not missing any Peter books.

So my rant-like list of questions was somewhat out of context, but I'm pretty certain I -AM- missing a book, because I've only got 8. But I don't know what one because a) I don't have them here; and b) it might (likely) be that I read one but don't own it (library? GF?).

Appreciate the info, btw. Warms my heart.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So my rant-like list of questions was somewhat out of context, but I'm pretty certain I -AM- missing a book, because I've only got 8. But I don't know what one because a) I don't have them here; and b) it might (likely) be that I read one but don't own it (library? GF?).

Appreciate the info, btw. Warms my heart.

Hmmm. There are indeed nine:

Rivers of London
Moon over Soho
Whispers Under Ground
Broken Homes
Foxglove Summer
The Hanging Tree
Lies Sleeping
False Value
Amongst Our Weapons

My guess for the missing one would be Whispers Under Ground, as it is, imho, by far the worst of the books, and the only one I'd consider borderline skippable, and is very to forget existed!

 

[Alzrius]

I just finished reading Rules for Radicals, the last book that Saul Alinsky wrote before he died, and it's quite the guide to community organizing.

What struck me most was the pragmatism on display throughout the text. For Alinsky, working to better the conditions of other people means that success is paramount, even if you have to compromise on your moral principles to do it. Hanging other people out to dry, he says, just so you can feel good about yourself should be anathema to an organizer. If you have to get your hands dirty (emphasis on "have to"), then get them dirty.

As an example of this, he cites how during a negotiation he was involved with on behalf of a union, a sympathetic corporate executive approached him and offered him pictures of his (the executive's) boss that proved said boss was a closeted homosexual. Alinsky, despite just having been threatened with pictures of him checking into a hotel with a young lady (which Alinsky laughed at, telling them to go ahead and publish them), refused to take them, stating that he didn't play dirty just because his opponents did. But he then writes that if there'd been no other way of accomplishing the union's goals, he'd have used those pictures without a second thought.

There's a lot more to the book, of course, and it's a fascinating discussion of what works and what doesn't when trying to mobilizes the Have Nots (and the "Have a Little, Want Mores"), against the Haves.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

REH's boxing stories are quite fun. I picked up a full set of the Del Rey anthologies when they came out. I still have barely scratched the surface of his non-Conan stuff. Maybe one of those should be my next read.

They are indeed! There's such a sense of fun and humor in them, something that doesn't always come through as strongly with his Sword and Sorcery tales.