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annarellix · 1 year

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Quilling Me Softly by Nigel May

Meet the craft group swapping decoupage for deception and glues for clues…

Violet Brewer is the owner of Rooney-at-Burrow’s charming wool shop, Brewer’s Loop, and the organiser of its weekly crafting group. Nothing much usually happens in the sleepy little English village. Until now. But when Sir Buster Burniston, much-loved owner of nearby Burrow Hall, is found dead, a cloud of mystery lingers in the village air. Or at least it does for Violet and her fellow craft mates in Team C.R.A.B – the Crafters of Rooney-at-Burrow. They are certain that the old man’s death might not be as cut and dried as Violet’s police officer nephew, Samuel, seems to think. Violet has lived in the village for over sixty years, and something tells her and her creative pals that there is more behind Sir Buster’s sad demise. Violet and her friends are determined to turn detective, despite what her nephew says. And soon murder is on the cards at their meet and make sessions as they discover a mystery that needs to be unpicked stitch by stitch…

Purchase Links Amazon UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quilling-Me-Softly-completely-addictive-ebook/dp/B0BTLXF6LZ/ Amazon US - https://www.amazon.com/Quilling-Me-Softly-completely-addictive-ebook/dp/B0BTLXF6LZ/

Review: I chose to join this blog tour looking at the cover because my gut told this was going to be an excellent cozy mystery. This nearly paranormal reason for choosing a book was spot on and I thoroughly enjoyed this story as it’s entertaining, full of humour, and well plotted. The style writing is a bit tongue in cheek and I was imagining the author like a sort of Noel Coward who observe his characters and makes smile because he can see the good and the defects. The characters are one of the plus of this book, Violet and her friends are realistic and relatable, you cannot help loving it. This is cozy mystery that is tightly knitted and solid but it’s also the description of the life in a small English village. I loved every moment and fell in love with the story since the first pages. I hope there will be a lot of other stories featuring these characters. Highly recommended. Many thanks Nigel May and Rachel’s Random Resources for this digital copy, all opinions are mine

The Author: Nigel to no stranger to the worlds of both publishing and crafting. He has published seven previous novels - six glam fiction blockbusters such as Trinity, Addicted and Revenge, which saw him gain fabulous reviews and nicknamed as the 'UK's male Jackie Collins', and a gripping psychological thriller called The Girl Unknown. Quilling Me Softly is his first foray into the cosy crime world. Crafting is very close to his heart as he has been working as a TV presenter on the UK's biggest crafting TV channel, Create & Craft, for over 16 years, and he has launched his own successful craft range, A-May-Zing, as well. He was named top Male Personality Of The Year in the Crafts Beautiful Awards in 2021.

As well as writing and telly hosting, Nigel presents a weekly national radio show on Gaydio, interviewing celebrities from the worlds of TV, film and music. He lives in Brighton and his obsessions include Eurovision, all things 80s, flea markets and juicy reality TV.

Social Media Links: Twitter @Nigel_May Insta: https://www.instagram.com/nigelmay/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nigel.may

THE HUGE QUILLING ME SOFTLY CRAFT GIVEAWAY (Open Int)

Seeing as Quilling Me Softly is based around the members of a fabulous craft group and Nigel also works in the world of craft it only seems right that the launch of Quilling Me Softly should come with a massive crafty prize giveaway! Nigel has teamed up with one of the craft world's most inventive companies, the incredible Lisa Horton Crafts to give away a bumper bundle of crafting goodies worth over £150. Included in the prize bundle are loads of inspirational layering stencils and embossing folders plus the worldwide crafting smash that is the Ulti-Mate Multi Tool - it's the perfect crafting tool for everyone when it comes to stamping, stencilling and blending.

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/33c69494546/?

#blogtour #Rachel's Random Resources #cozy mystery #review

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ecsundance · 3 years

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Sundance 2021 Festival Summary

Although many film festivals were born out of the demand for lesser known filmmakers to be able to showcase their counterparts to the Hollywood mainstream, some question remains about the democratization of these festivals in times where virtually anyone can create and share content through the internet. Festivals such as Sundance started out “creating value for independent films through critical acclaim and through strategic exclusivity” (Tryon 158), meaning that these were places where new talent could be discovered and ultimately score a distribution deal. With the arrival of newer and more globalized distribution models, however, festivals have begun to place less emphasis on the communal viewing aspect and more on the opportunity to reach distribution platforms. Mumblecore filmmaker Joe Swanberg acknowledges this changing atmosphere by saying, “I’ve come to realize that my festival run is my theatrical run” (158). Another indie film director Steven Soderbergh also acknowledged this with the historic release of his film sex, lies, and videotape at Sundance in 1989, which rocketed to worldwide success. In doing so, he feared that the festival would become a place where filmmakers went to try and achieve a similar success, rather than “a festival which fostered independent voices” (162). Chuck Tryon reiterates this in his discussion of “Reinventing Festivals,” stating, “By the mid-1990s, Sundance and festivals like it appeared to be part of the larger industry involved in the production of commercial mainstream fare” (162).

Sundance has since made efforts to reinvest in truly small scale filmmaking in several areas. One of these projects included a two hour documentary titled Life in a Day, made by selected footage from Youtube users all around the world, attempting to capture a global snapshot. The 2010 event was historic in confirming the way that digital production tools could allow for the democratization of filmmaking and how virtually anyone could become a filmmaker. It not only went against the festival’s previous production of exclusivity, but also opened up the experience for many more to witness through novel modes of exhibition. Additionally, the same year that Life in a Day premiered, Sundance launched the Next series, designed to foster “extremely low-budget films” (164). The series attempted to bring back into focus independent visions, implying that making a movie on a minimal budget was motivated by personal expression. Although these strategies were met with some cynicism, Sundance went on to expand its focus further by distributing current and past festival films on a range of digital platforms, creating further accessibility to even more audiences. Other film festivals, such as South by Southwest and Tribeca attempted to market themselves against Sundance’s commercialization, dubbing themselves as homes for the “underdog outsiders.” Festivals started to use more and more digital streaming platforms, which, while featuring drawbacks such as differences in time zones and lack of on-demand experiences, opened up the experience of what was once considered an exclusive event to a more accessible way to connect to the “cutting edge of independent and art-house films” (157).

I can definitely recognize both the advantages and the drawbacks of the digitization of film festivals as discussed by Tryon. I imagine the tension between the traditional festival experience and the new ways of fostering a wider audience have only continued to develop as we’ve seen major technological developments in the years since 2013 when this piece was written. From what I experienced at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, I think I would prefer attending in-person as opposed to online in the future. I can certainly recognize the benefits of providing an online experience, but in my opinion it isn’t the most ideal. I’m glad that this year’s digital offerings likely exposed a whole new audience (myself included) to what Sundance has to offer, and I think they should continue offering those opportunities in the future. However, it was also extremely overwhelming at the same time trying to navigate such an expanse of programming, and as with any technological endeavor, there are bound to be technical difficulties. For example, instead of offering on-demand viewing for feature films, there were specific time slots online like there would be in-person. While I was lucky enough to have most of my film picks line up scheduling-wise, for those attempting to do as much viewing as possible, I can see how this would be limiting. Additionally, with timed premieres came restricted viewing windows, which did not work in my favor on one occasion. I clicked on the link that led me to the video page for “Documentary Shorts” in search of a description of the event without realizing that it would start the clock on the few hours I had to complete it. Therefore, upon returning to it later, I found that I was unable to view it. I also found the layout of the Sundance website to not be very user-friendly in nature. The distinction between certain programming was unclear to me, and oftentimes the sheer number of events, talks, and other pages became quite overwhelming in trying to figure out what I wanted to attend and when these opportunities would be available. It was also nearly impossible to navigate the website without encountering an advertisement or sponsored page that had very little to do with the actual subject of film, which was an annoyance to me, although I recognize that these sources are necessary for festival funding. It was in these experiences that I really recognized the increasingly corporate nature of the film festival as Tryon had described it in his discussion. That being said, I did very much enjoy the experiences that I was eventually able to access.

The films that I was able to see included I Was a Simple Man, Rebel Hearts, Eight for Silver, In the Earth, Misha and the Wolves, The Blazing World, and The World to Come. I Was a Simple Man was not a personal pick of mine but I’m glad I was able to see it. A very personal and introspective film, it offered something I did not previously have in my festival lineup. Rebel Hearts was my favorite film. It documented the stories of a group of revolutionary nuns in the 1960s who sought to create a more liberating and just society for themselves and others, told through interviews, archival footage, and beautiful animations. Eight for Silver was another one of my favorites, and felt most akin to the Hollywood blockbusters I’ve seen in years past. It brought a clever edge to the traditional werewolf story that I felt differentiated it from its predecessors. In the Earth was a bizarre and timely thriller that was truly a unique viewing experience in its use of sound and light. Misha and the Wolves was a heartbreaking and fascinating film exploring the story of one woman and her supposed life during the Holocaust, and the truths, as well as the lies, her story brought to light. The Blazing World was my least favorite of the features I watched. While visually stunning, I felt the film achieved very little beyond that. The World to Come was another favorite of mine. Based on a short story, this heartbreaking period romance featured some of the best acting and direction I saw throughout the entire festival. I also attended the Animation Spotlight event, featuring some incredible and wacky animated shorts, my favorites being “Ghost Dogs” and “Little Miss Fate.” I wish I had planned better in order to attend more talks, but of the one I did attend, exploring the genres of horror and thriller, I learned a lot. The Q+A’s following films were also very fun, my favorite being the one for The World to Come, where I could really see the chemistry between cast and crew which made for such an incredible film. My favorite New Frontier experience was definitely the video event “Weirdo Night,” hosted by eclectic performer Dynasty Handbag and featuring a number of bizarre acts. In my experience, the most fun events were definitely the weirdest ones. If I could impart some wisdom on future Sundance-goers, it would be to plan, plan, plan! If the website doesn’t allow you to add something to your online schedule, write it down on paper! This will make for a much more seamless experience and allow you to optimize your viewings. Secondly, try to go out of your comfort zone as much as possible. Sundance has always been a place to discover the new and unusual, and you never know what you might find.

-G.

Explore Sundance

Buy passes to Slamdance, Sundance’s underground (and more wallet friendly) alternative.

#sundance #sundance 2021

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riichardwilson · 4 years

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Is top of the funnel content under attack? How the SERP is set to change

I’m a big believer in paying a lot of attention to the details of Google’s goings and comings. So when Google was found to be utilizing a new filter at the top of the SERP my curiosity was peaked. When I saw that the potential impact of this change to the SERP aligns with another major push by the search engine I went from curious to cautious.

Here’s why I think Google is gunning for top-level, top of the funnel, content.

Is a new SERP filter whisking away broad content opportunities?

Every once in a while, and maybe more frequently than that, Google does something pretty nifty. Such was the case when on June 16th, Barry Schwartz reported on a top of the SERP filter that modified the query.

In the first example we all saw of this, Google was filtering a question about how much you need to save for retirement. Of course, this all depends on your age and when you plan on retiring. Thus, Google showed filters that represented different retirement ages so that you could get highly specific information. (Which, of course, is great for users.)

All good, right?

Not exactly.

Here’s the filter in action for the query best selling books:

At first glance, this is a really helpful tool. And indeed it is. A user seeing this might say, “Well, you know what, the search engine is right, so I’d like to see the best selling thrillers!” In this case, the user would click the Thriller filter option and be whisked away to a SERP all about the best selling thrillers to hit the market.

But it’s more complicated than that. Here’s the same SERP I just showed just with the top-ranking result, a Featured Snippet, also included:

When you look at the Featured Snippet here and its purpose and compare it to the filters and consider its purpose… a sharp contrast emerges.

Let’s ask, who is this Featured Snippet targeting? Simple, people who want to find and read good books. What kind of books? Any! This list casts a wide net and could apply to anyone who likes to read.

Imagine the URL within the Featured Snippet was for an outlet that sold books (and not Wikipedia), perhaps Barnes and Noble. Why would Barnes and Noble create such a list? It’s kind of obvious, but I’ll run through it. An outlet that sold books would create this list to appeal to a broad audience of readers who would click on the URL. In many cases, the books on the list might not appeal to the user once they arrive on the page. Not a problem, the Barnes and Noble website allows you to search by genre.

In other words, sites use top-level content, such as a list of the best selling books, to bring consumers in so that the sales funnel can begin.

This very unassuming filter at the top of the SERP completely kills that process.

Here, Google is completely cutting out that top-level “net casting” and directing the user to go straight to more targeted content.

This, clearly, stands in contradistinction to bringing in a broad audience and siphoning them off to the right pages once they get to your site. Sites do this because it’s economical. Why create 10 pieces of content when you can create one and then move the user to the right page in the next level of the funnel?

Well that doesn’t work with this filter, does it? If Barnes and Noble want this user to head over to their site, they better have a list of the best thrillers (and the best mystery, non-fiction, kids, and sappy romance books as well)!

You can see the problem.

You could argue that the user never had any intention of utilizing the over-generalized results on a SERP and that they would have ran a more refined query anyway. Certainly a possibility. It’s also a possibility that content/results on initial SERP produced by the over-generalized query would have enticed a click. Prior to the filter’s appearance, there was at least the opportunity to entice a user to your site. In other words, should the user have entered an unrefined query, one where the results shown were never part of their true intentions, the user still may have gone to some of the sites listed on such a SERP. As opposed to refining their query and running a new search, the user may well have decided to utilize a site shown and refine their quest via the site itself.

What do I mean?

Take our example around books. A user could refine their search for top selling books by looking for top selling mystery books or they could click on the Featured Snippet that lists all sorts of books with the intention of finding those great mystery books on the site itself. In other words, the user seeing a reputable place to buy books, such as Barnes and Noble, might induce a click even if the content shown in the Featured Snippet (or as part of a result’s title or description) was a bit too general. Faced with the option of running a new search or just heading off to a reputable retailer’s site, the user might elect to go with the latter.

All good sense would say that the likelihood of the user utilizing a site in this manner goes down exponentially with Google showing a top of the SERP filter that presents them with an immediate opportunity for query refinement. They no longer need to rethink their search and decide on new terms. All the user needs to do is click a button that comes into view before they even glance at the sites ranking on the SERP.

To sum it up, what we have here is Google targeting top-level, wide casting, top of the funnel content, and using the SERP to replace it!

Multiple messages pushing for targeted content production

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Google limit the potency of “top-level” content. The proliferation of answers on the SERP (made famous by the notion that more and more searches don’t result in a click) has the same impact on “top-funnel” or “top-level” content as the new filters. Namely, making such content as hosted on a site increasingly obsolete.

More answers ups the need for content specificity

Answers on the SERP disincentivizes the creation of top-level content, the kind of content where a user might start their exploration of a given topic or product. Conversely, such a construct forces content creators to offer deeper, nuanced, and more specific forms of content.

In other words, a sports site might not be as relevant for looking up the score of the game last night as it once was. But users looking for analysis of the game per se won’t be satisfied with a short snippet on the SERP and will need to visit an actual website.

Answer Boxes, such as this one that presents sports scores, disincentivize the need to visit a website.

Where I think Google still has some work to do is connecting the user from their top-level search to more specific content. You see the search engine trying to do this with features like Interesting Finds on mobile. But still, I think Google could do a better job presenting a user who searches for top-level information with the opportunity to use a website to explore the topic a bit more intricately.

The Interesting Finds feature offers the user the opportunity to explore a “top-level” topic in greater depth.

That aside, the advent of more answers on the SERP is another example of Google signaling that it prefers more nuanced and highly-specific content. A message quite similar to the one Google is sending with the new filters.

No room on the SERP for the unspecific

Just to complete this thematic analysis, there is yet another example of Google signaling that it is looking for the average site to go more specific and it comes from the results themselves. In many verticals, typing in a top-level query is a guarantee for super-authority domination.

Pretty much any top-level query related to health will produce SERPs like the one below:

The SERP here, and for pretty much any query like it, is dominated by the likes of WebMD, major educational institutions, and government sites. Not that it’s impossible, but it’s extremely difficult for your “average” site to rank for these sorts of top-level queries.

However, once we move away from broad terms and get a bit more specific, the SERP opens up:

While I wouldn’t call the SERP above the epitome of “niche,” the results clearly present more opportunity as the presence of super-authorities is limited.

As the use of nuanced language within the query increases so does the opportunity for your “average site.” In other words, Google, via the results per se, is telling us that it wants more highly-specific content from most sites. That opportunity for the masses exists in specificity and nuance. Casting a wide net with top-level content will increasingly be less effective as time goes on.

For the record, I don’t think Google is doing any of this to “go after” sites. Rather, this seems to be Google responding to what it thinks users want and reacting to what might be the natural evolution of content.

Prepare for impact

Google’s multi-faceted messaging paints a picture where the direction of the SERP is all about specificity. For reasons that are both obvious as well as a bit cryptic, Google is looking for sites to offer more targeted content and less generically generalized content. This changes the opportunity landscape going forward in a serious way. And while we’re not “there” yet, the SERP is well on its way towards catering to and rewarding specificity more than it ever has. And it’s all thanks to an innocuous little filter.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Mordy is the head of marketing agency for Rank Ranger, an industry leading all-in-one SEO Company reporting suite. Outside of helping to build the Rank Ranger brand, Mordy spends most of his time working to help educate the SEO Company industry by publishing a constant stream of in-depth research and analysis. You can hear Mordy take up the latest issues facing the SEO Company community on his weekly podcast, The In Search SEO Company Podcast.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/is-top-of-the-funnel-content-under-attack-how-the-serp-is-set-to-change/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/621772686099693568

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scpie · 4 years

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Is top of the funnel content under attack? How the SERP is set to change

Here’s why I think Google is gunning for top-level, top of the funnel, content.

Is a new SERP filter whisking away broad content opportunities?

All good, right?

Not exactly.

Here’s the filter in action for the query best selling books:

But it’s more complicated than that. Here’s the same SERP I just showed just with the top-ranking result, a Featured Snippet, also included:

When you look at the Featured Snippet here and its purpose and compare it to the filters and consider its purpose… a sharp contrast emerges.

In other words, sites use top-level content, such as a list of the best selling books, to bring consumers in so that the sales funnel can begin.

This very unassuming filter at the top of the SERP completely kills that process.

Here, Google is completely cutting out that top-level “net casting” and directing the user to go straight to more targeted content.

You can see the problem.

What do I mean?

To sum it up, what we have here is Google targeting top-level, wide casting, top of the funnel content, and using the SERP to replace it!

Multiple messages pushing for targeted content production

More answers ups the need for content specificity

Answer Boxes, such as this one that presents sports scores, disincentivize the need to visit a website.

The Interesting Finds feature offers the user the opportunity to explore a “top-level” topic in greater depth.

No room on the SERP for the unspecific

Pretty much any top-level query related to health will produce SERPs like the one below:

However, once we move away from broad terms and get a bit more specific, the SERP opens up:

While I wouldn’t call the SERP above the epitome of “niche,” the results clearly present more opportunity as the presence of super-authorities is limited.

Prepare for impact

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/is-top-of-the-funnel-content-under-attack-how-the-serp-is-set-to-change/

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douglassmiith · 4 years

Text

Is top of the funnel content under attack? How the SERP is set to change

Here’s why I think Google is gunning for top-level, top of the funnel, content.

Is a new SERP filter whisking away broad content opportunities?

All good, right?

Not exactly.

Here’s the filter in action for the query best selling books:

But it’s more complicated than that. Here’s the same SERP I just showed just with the top-ranking result, a Featured Snippet, also included:

When you look at the Featured Snippet here and its purpose and compare it to the filters and consider its purpose… a sharp contrast emerges.

In other words, sites use top-level content, such as a list of the best selling books, to bring consumers in so that the sales funnel can begin.

This very unassuming filter at the top of the SERP completely kills that process.

Here, Google is completely cutting out that top-level “net casting” and directing the user to go straight to more targeted content.

You can see the problem.

What do I mean?

To sum it up, what we have here is Google targeting top-level, wide casting, top of the funnel content, and using the SERP to replace it!

Multiple messages pushing for targeted content production

More answers ups the need for content specificity

Answer Boxes, such as this one that presents sports scores, disincentivize the need to visit a website.

The Interesting Finds feature offers the user the opportunity to explore a “top-level” topic in greater depth.

No room on the SERP for the unspecific

Pretty much any top-level query related to health will produce SERPs like the one below:

However, once we move away from broad terms and get a bit more specific, the SERP opens up:

While I wouldn’t call the SERP above the epitome of “niche,” the results clearly present more opportunity as the presence of super-authorities is limited.

Prepare for impact

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

Via http://www.scpie.org/is-top-of-the-funnel-content-under-attack-how-the-serp-is-set-to-change/

source https://scpie.weebly.com/blog/is-top-of-the-funnel-content-under-attack-how-the-serp-is-set-to-change

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laurelkrugerr · 4 years

Text

Is top of the funnel content under attack? How the SERP is set to change

Here’s why I think Google is gunning for top-level, top of the funnel, content.

Is a new SERP filter whisking away broad content opportunities?

All good, right?

Not exactly.

Here’s the filter in action for the query best selling books:

But it’s more complicated than that. Here’s the same SERP I just showed just with the top-ranking result, a Featured Snippet, also included:

When you look at the Featured Snippet here and its purpose and compare it to the filters and consider its purpose… a sharp contrast emerges.

In other words, sites use top-level content, such as a list of the best selling books, to bring consumers in so that the sales funnel can begin.

This very unassuming filter at the top of the SERP completely kills that process.

Here, Google is completely cutting out that top-level “net casting” and directing the user to go straight to more targeted content.

You can see the problem.

What do I mean?

To sum it up, what we have here is Google targeting top-level, wide casting, top of the funnel content, and using the SERP to replace it!

Multiple messages pushing for targeted content production

More answers ups the need for content specificity

Answer Boxes, such as this one that presents sports scores, disincentivize the need to visit a website.

The Interesting Finds feature offers the user the opportunity to explore a “top-level” topic in greater depth.

No room on the SERP for the unspecific

Pretty much any top-level query related to health will produce SERPs like the one below:

However, once we move away from broad terms and get a bit more specific, the SERP opens up:

While I wouldn’t call the SERP above the epitome of “niche,” the results clearly present more opportunity as the presence of super-authorities is limited.

Prepare for impact

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/is-top-of-the-funnel-content-under-attack-how-the-serp-is-set-to-change/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/06/is-top-of-funnel-content-under-attack.html

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markpauldaphotography · 4 years

Text

37 Books Every Gentleman Should Read

World Book Day is tomorrow as it is every 23 April. Commit yourself to reach back to the classics, then begin reading. Some book titles included in this list are expected, though there are a handful of surprises. And, if you're thinking what to read during a general free time on the sofa, or by a pool or an ocean, I've got you covered. A well-read gentleman is also a good conversationalist. It's the perfect excuse to get lost in a good book. Self-Control: Its Kingship and Majesty by William George Jordan The turn of the 20th century was the golden age of personal development books. In contrast to the self-help books of today, which are filled with flattering, empty, cliche platitudes, they’re direct, masterfully written, and full of profound and challenging insights that centre on the development of good character. Even in this golden age, one author stands supreme: William George Jordan. His Self-Control is full of beautifully written wisdom on self-reliance, calmness, gratitude, and more.

How to Be A Gentleman: A Timely Guide to Timeless Manners by John Bridges Being a gentleman isn’t just being a nice guy, or a considerate guy or the type of guy someone might take home to meet their mother. A gentleman realizes that he has the unique opportunity to distinguish himself from the rest of the crowd. He knows when an email is appropriate, and when nothing less than a handwritten note will do. He knows how to dress on the golf course, in church, and at a party. He knows how to breeze through an airport without the slightest fumble of his carry-on or boarding pass. And those conversational icebreakers―“Where do I know you from?” A gentleman knows better. Gentlemanliness is all in the details, and John Bridges is reclaiming the idea that men―gentlemen―can be extraordinary in every facet of their lives.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces is one of my favourite books of all time. This New Orleans-based novel won author John Kennedy Toole the Pulitzer Prize. Its perfect comedy of errors is centred around the character of Ignatius J. Reilly, a lazy and socially ignorant, but very intelligent man, who still lives with his mother at the age of 30. A Confederacy of Dunces serves as a guide for what a man ought not to be while providing sound entertainment all the while.

Lord of the Barnyard: Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming the Aware in the Cornbelt by Tristan Egolf A literary sensation published to outstanding accolades in America and around the world, Lord of the Barnyard was one of the most auspicious fiction debuts of recent years. Now available in paperback, Tristan Egolf's manic, inventive, and painfully funny debut novel is the story of a town's dirty laundry -- and a garbagemen's strike that lets it all hang out. Lord of the Barnyard begins with the death of a woolly mammoth in the last Ice Age and concludes with a greased-pig chase at a funeral in the modern-day Midwest. In the interim there are two hydroelectric dam disasters, fourteen tavern brawls, one shoot-out in the hills, three cases of probable arson, a riot in the town hall, and a lone tornado, as well as appearances by a coven of Methodist crones, an encampment of Appalachian crop thieves, six renegade coal-truck operators, an outraged mob of factory rats, a dysfunctional poultry plant, and one autodidact goat-roping farm boy by the name of John Kaltenbrunner. Lord of the Barnyard is a brilliantly comic tapestry of a Middle America still populated by river rats and assembly-line poultry killers, measuring into shot glasses the fruits of years of quiet desperation on the factory floor. Unforgettable and linguistically dizzying, it goes much farther than postal.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson I saw the theatre production of Treasure Island at the National Theatre not once, not twice, but three times. Then, I read the book again with much delight. Pretty much everything we think of when we think of pirates comes not from the pages of history but from this book: treasure maps with “X” marking the spot, deserted islands, peg legs, parrots, and more. Published as a children’s tale (and a rather adult one at that), American novelist Henry James praised it as “perfect as a well-played boy’s game.”

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton Read Hamilton's Federalist Papers, then read the Constitution. Composed of 85 articles, The Federalist Papers served to explain and encourage the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The majority of the essays were penned by Alexander Hamilton and originally published in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet. While the Constitution lays out the laws of the land, these essays provide the 18th-century version of the ballot/blue books we get the mail around election time, explaining the laws that are being proposed. It is essential reading for any civically minded American. Forget the theatre production. Your Car’s Owner’s Manual Yep, that dusty book in your glove compartment. Come on, bring it out and get to know your car better. So, it’s not exactly “literature” but it’ll teach you something that will come in handy. Guaranteed. By the way, I was shocked to learn the battery in my Mercedes is located under the driver's seat. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith The fundamental work on free-market policies: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.” Want an education in economics? This book is a great start.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie The granddad of books about people skills, the advice found in How to Win Friends and Influence People is still sound and applicable 80 years later. Carnegie writes about skills like making people feel valued and appreciated, ensuring you don’t come across as manipulative (which happens unintentionally more than we think!), and essentially, “winning” people to your viewpoints and ideas. While it can sound a little disingenuous in its description, these are true skills that people use every day, and this book is a great resource for boning up your social game.

The Republic by Plato The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BC, concerning the definition of justice and how a just city-state should be ordered and characterized. It is the great philosopher’s best-known work and has proven to be one of history’s most influential works of philosophy and political theory. In it, Socrates and other various interlocutors discuss the meaning of justice and examine whether or not the just man is happier than the unjust man, as well as the theory of Forms, the immortality of the soul, and the role of the philosopher in society.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway Robert Jordan is a young dynamiter in the Spanish Civil War. He’s an American who’s volunteered to fight against Franco’s fascists and is sent behind enemy lines to take out an important bridge to impede enemy forces from advancing. He lives in a rudimentary camp with anti-fascist Spanish guerillas and comes to embrace their hearty way of life and love. And of course, there are some incredible battle scenes, which were informed by Hemingway’s own time as a correspondent in the Spanish Civil War.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac A defining novel of the Beat generation, On the Road, is fictional, but a semi-autobiographical account of two friends’ road trips across America, against the backdrop of a counter-culture of jazz, poetry, drug use, and the drunken revelry of back-alley bars. Along with their travels, they’re searching for what many young men are: freedom, ambition, hope, and authenticity.

Travels With Charley In Search of America by John Steinbeck To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colours and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way, he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s. A Moveable Feast brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss After a terrible storm, the Swiss family Robinson becomes shipwrecked on a deserted island. With teamwork, ingenuity, and a bit of luck, the group strives to overcome nature’s obstacles and create some semblance of community and civility within their new environs. A truly classic survival and adventure tale.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand While there’s plenty of political, moral, and economic philosophy in this book, it’s coated in an action thriller of a story. Set in the near future, our protagonists are Dagny Taggart, heir to a transcontinental railroad empire, and Hank Rearden, the head of a steel company who’s invented a revolutionary new alloy. Together, they battle against evil government bureaucrats and socialists to hold civilization together, while all the while powerful industrialists are mysteriously disappearing, leaving behind only the cryptic phrase “Who is John Galt?” Though this book is associated with passionate libertarianism, the story is an interesting one to ponder no matter one’s political persuasions.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas The ultimate tale of betrayal and revenge. Edmund Dantes, days before marrying his beloved Mercedes, is brutally betrayed, arrested for treason, and consequently taken to a prison on an island off the French coast. The story goes on to tell of his escape from prison (don’t worry, it’s early in the novel and doesn’t ruin anything) and his becoming wealthy and re-entering society as an educated and sophisticated Count. He plots his revenge, eyes reclaiming his love, and ultimately…well, you’ll just have to read it.

Self-Reliance & Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson “Self-Reliance” contains the most prominent of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophies: the need for each individual to avoid conformity and personal inconsistencies, and to follow their own instincts and ideas. You’re to rely on your own self versus going with the ebbs and flows of culture at large. Other essays in the collection focus on friendship, history, experience, and more. Is it just me, or is this Self Reliance a necessity in today's world? I'm anything except a conformist.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov There is nothing more manly than a bout with the Devil. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote this entertaining commentary on the social bureaucracy in Moscow during the height of Stalin’s reign. Lucifer himself pays the atheistic city a visit to make light of the people’s scepticism regarding the spiritual realm. The novel also visits ancient Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate’s rule. Even for the non-religious, this book will provide plenty of food for thought.

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand This 1897 play follows French cadet Cyrano de Bergerac. He’s a poet, musician, and expert swordsman — a true Renaissance Man. Unfortunately, Cyrano has a tragically large nose, which hinders his confidence to the point that he’s unable to profess his feelings to Roxane and feels he isn’t worthy of anyone’s love. What is a man to do in such a situation? Read and find out.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes It’s all well and good to be a dreamer, but a man must also be grounded in reality. It’s a lesson that Don Quixote comes to learn in the 17th-century eponymous book, which is widely considered to be the world’s first novel. Quixote, along with his squire Sancho Panza, travels the world in search of grand adventures and heroic deeds which would earn him the title of Knight. He continues against all odds, and in some cases, against all common sense. It’s funny, surprisingly easy to read given the fact that it’s over 400 years old, and can provide a man many lessons on the aspirations of heroism.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley This short, but ever-popular tale is a young woman’s take on humanity and horror. Mary Shelley was just 21 when Frankenstein was first published in 1818, and the book is widely regarded as the first popular science fiction/horror novel. While you surely know the monster and the story of mad scientist Victor Frankenstein bringing him to life, it’s a much darker and more philosophical book than what pop culture has made it out to be. You learn about science, ego, pride, and ultimately, what it means to be human.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Dickens should be a part of every man’s reading life, and A Tale of Two Cities is a good starter. It’s set in London and Paris during the French Revolution and depicts the plight of the French peasantry, their turn to violence towards the aristocrats who marginalized them, and the parallels to London society during the same period.

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux In this travelogue, Paul Theroux recounts his 4-month journey through Europe, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia on the continent’s fabled trains: the Orient Express, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express and the Trans-Siberian Express. His well-documented and entertaining adventures have come to be considered a classic in the travel literature genre. This journal satisfies the vicarious traveller and inspires the adventurous man.

The Iliad & The Odyssey by Homer These epic poems are some of the world’s oldest pieces of literature. They’ve been read, enjoyed, and studied for thousands of years, and for good reason. They are not only beautiful to the ear, but contain lessons that every man can learn about heroism, courage, and manliness. The Iliad takes place during a few weeks of the final year of the Trojan War and details the heroic deeds of both Achilles and Hector, as well as a variety of other legends and stories. The Odyssey, a sequel of sorts, is about the great warrior Odysseus’ voyage home after the Trojan War. He faces various obstacles in his return to Greece, and we also see how his family back home dealt with his assumed death.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway The novel that catapulted Hemingway to worldwide fame and success. The Sun Also Rises follows Jake Barnes and a group of ex-patriot friends through Spain and France, with plenty of wine-drinking and bull-fighting. The novel is a bit semi-autobiographical in that the main character is trying to deal with his war wounds — both physical and emotional — and escape to the supposed romanticism of travelling and eating and drinking to your heart’s content. Does Jake find happiness? You’ll have to read to find out.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky While the book’s plot centres on an ageing, disinterested father and his three adult children, the substance found within goes much beyond that. Dostoevsky’s final and greatest novel, this book also involves spiritual and moral dramas and debates regarding God, free will, ethics, morality, judgment, doubt, reason, and more. It’s a philosophical work clothed as a novel — which of course makes Dostoevsky’s weighty ideas easier to digest. The McDuff translation gets rave reviews.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli Written in the early 1500s, this is the classic guide on how to acquire and maintain political power (even if those methods are sometimes unsavoury) — a so-called “primer for princes.” Its precepts are direct, if not disturbingly cold in their formulaic pragmatism. It asks the classic question: “Do the ends justify the means?” A worthy read for any man wishing to better understand the motivations and actions that tend to rule modern politics.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Set among New York City elites in the roaring ‘20s, this book is considered one of America’s great literary products for a reason. Narrator Nick Carraway is befriended by his mysterious millionaire neighbour, Jay Gatsby, and proves to be a crucial link in Jay’s quixotic obsession with Nick’s cousin, Daisy. The metaphors, the beautiful writing, and the lessons one can garner about reliving the past all make The Great Gatsby worth reading, again and again. Our interview with NPR’s Maureen Corrigan is worth a listen. She is the author of So We Read On: How To Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures. We discussed her research into why a novel was written about Jazz Age New York that resonates with Americans nearly a century later.

1984 – George Orwell Read 1984, then go delete your Facebook account. Perhaps the most essential to re-read today, 1984 sets stage in an oppressive futuristic society monitored by the ever-watching Big Brother. Protagonist Winston Smith goes to work every day at the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites and distorts history. However, Smith decided to begin a diary — an action punishable by death. Amid modern-day data mining, the fall of Net Neutrality, and lunatic leaders, we cannot forget the toll of tyranny and totalitarianism.

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck Another assigned high school read you probably didn’t appreciate when you were sixteen, it’s time to revisit the ambling of George Milton and Lennie Small, migrant workers who search for jobs throughout California amid The Great Depression. And with all great novels, it’s been banned time and again for its mention of violence, swearing, racism, sexism, the works, but it’s an essential commentary on the nature of The American Dream, the dichotomy of strength and weakness, and the loneliness of isolation.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain Often called “the greatest American novel,” The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn proceeds Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and is renowned for its use of written vernacular in imitation of southern antebellum society. The story follows teenager Huck Finn and his friend Tom Sawyer as they navigate themes of race and identity. So, yeah, you should re-read that one today, especially given that the original novel has been the subject of censorship in schools for years.

The Poetry of Pablo Neruda If you need an “excuse” to read some of the best love poems ever written about oceans and women and the earth, say you’re brushing up on your dating one-liners. But the words by Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician Pablo Neruda are so much more than kindling. They are pure fire and combustion. This book will wake up your soul. It also mends broken hearts.

The Stranger – Albert Camus An ordinary man finds himself on trial after committing a murder in one of the greatest novellas of the 20th century. A dissection of morality and the philosophy of the absurd, The Stranger is particularly relevant today as we face a world of heightened sensitivity and, perhaps, a society that makes no sense to us.

The Call of the Wild – Jack London Try this: Take the novel on a long, boring, or otherwise dreaded journey. Close the last page a changed man (it’s that phenomenal) with a new outlook on struggle and bonds. Set in Yukon, Canada, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, London writes of Buck, a dog that is abducted and forced into the chaos and brutality of frontier life. In a word: rugged. Secretly: a tear-jerker.

Lord of the Flies – William Golding A band of British boys are shipwrecked on an island and try to maintain order and normalcy the way governments do. As you might guess, it all goes terribly, terribly wrong. Lord of the Flies, the first novel from Golding, is a perfect glimpse at the nature of savage inclination. It’s a short read but it’s a damn good one.

Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger We’ll bet you first glimpsed the vibrant red cover of Catcher in the Rye some time in high school. But don’t let your memory fool you into thinking it’s a kids book. Possibly the best coming-of-age tale in all of literature, Salinger writes of the young and relatable protagonist Holden Caulfield and his first-person commentary on the world as he struggles between embracing adulthood and hiding in his childhood memories.

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Year In Review - Books I Read in 2018

Last year, I thought I was at the limits by reading 300ish books, mostly old Gutenberg stuff. This year...kind of left that for dead, with 689 books or book-like things scratched off. This is not merely 'way', but 'way, way' too many, and may have contributed to stagnation as an author in the middle of the year: what we read inevitably ends up setting the context for what we write, and the amount of Edgar Wallace and E. P. Oppenheim I read this year can't have been good.

To try and make sense out of these way too many books, I'm not going to post review snippets for each of them, or even the 50ish (less than 15%) that I unreservedly liked; instead, I'm going to go through and find something to say about every author I read at least three books from this year. This is still going to be huge, but hopefully, it'll be more coherent huge, and less bad-huge.

A. Hyatt Verrill was an immense chore to read, astonishingly racist almost everywhere and completely up his own ass about branches of science he knew literally nothing about, but fighting through it, I managed to get a lot of close description of the Caribbean as it was in the early 20th century. This isn't a recommendation of, really, any of his work, but more of a warning about how to be sure you know what you know -- that, and maybe establishing a full-privilege-people shoveling bureau to help recover any diamonds from similar shitpiles of the past for general use. :\

Alfred J. Church never, as far as I read this year, put out a good book -- he was fatally tripped up by, to some degree, the expectations of his time and markets, and in another way, by not really understanding what fiction is and how it works. I didn't have to read his crap to find this out, but it was faster than doing another lit class and I could do it while waiting for airplanes, so again :\

I read the first 30 of Arthur Leo Zagat's Doc Turner stories this year; in addition to being critical two-fisted pulps, they're also an object lesson in self-examination: Turner's whole deal is being the protector of the downtrodden new-Americans of Morris Street, but at such an angle that you can't help but notice who gets to be human and worthy under their hokey dialect and who doesn't. This series was trying to be woke and progressive in its day, and where and how it fails at that should be a critical pointer for people trying, also, to lead the moment and hopefully not look grimy and problematic in another fifteen years.

I'd obviously read some Arthur Machen before, but doing a deep dive over his whole corpus this year was still a revelation. A lot of his stuff is kind of far-corner weird, and it was really interesting to come back later in life and see the threads of just how it ended up that weird.

Arthur Morrison put up a real mixed bag: a lot of good humor and some solid detective bits, but with real problems with dialect; this is something you kind of get with nineteenth-century humor, but that doesn't make it not suck. There's always going to be a use, as a writer, to faithfully representing non-classroom-standard pronunciation and usage, but reading stuff with major dialect should be a bucket of cold water to rethink about how you actually put that on paper.

C. Dudley Lampen's shit-bad books, exactly enough to qualify, show how a sufficiently-motivated author, regardless of ability above a certain and very low minimum standard, can always find a publisher. Lampen got there with Christianity; there are other paths for other bads, but taking them rather than taking your rejections will not get you where you actually want to be.

I had a bunch of D. W. O'Brien short stories this year that added up to about a qualifying extent; he's one of those writers who for the most part does make it up in volume, but there was a lot of breadth there this year, and more good material than before. I can't understand why he isn't better known among general audiences, in the context of pulp writers before the end of the Second World War.

I notched 126 books or book-equivalents from E. Phillips Oppenheim this year, and nearly all of them were a dreadful waste of time. Craft-wise, I liked seeing how he put together serial collections as dismembered novels, unlike Wallace's barely-attached piles of independent stories, and the way he, in mid-life, read one of his early books, threw it into the sea because it was so bad, and then got somewhat better is heartening, but that is a lot of material for very little result. Oppenheim always wants to be literary and do well, but he never got any good at it, and "churn out a lot of barely-qualifying crap" is no longer a valid market strategy with so many other entertainment options.

I read all of E. W. Hornung, including all of the Raffles stuff, this year, mostly sitting in one place in London waiting for a plane to Jo'burg. The cricket interplay was pretty good, and there was a lot more to think about, in a social-history dimension, than I thought there would be, but there also was a lot less material than I thought this guy had put up.

Earl Derr Biggers (including all the original Charlie Chan books) was a lot less racist than I was dreading going in, and a lot better at all kinds of stuff about place and human relationships than you really expect a detective writer to be. Biggers is another one where you really see the contrasts between 'trying' and 'succeeding' at including marginalized people as truly human, and how you take that lesson forward is important.

This year accounted for 111 Edgar Wallace things, which were less of a waste of time than the Oppenheim if immensely more aggravating. Wallace is a better and snappier technical writer, but he has dialect problems, he's intensely racist, he ran out so many failed experiments and slabbed together so many reprint collections, and his organization of anything novel-length is frequently a disaster. It's more informative, maybe, to read Wallace writing about writing than it is to read his own stuff; he's thoroughly, professionally artless, but he has a distinct vision for what can sell where, and a grounded approach to writing as craft. But for general audiences, god, no, stoppit.

Edward Lucas White had a minimum-qualifying extent this year, all read in Zambia, which was good in places and eh in others. I liked his shorter stories better than his full-length novels, but they really go to show how a racist and orientalist fear of the unknown underlies a lot of that great early-20th-century boom in weird fiction -- as someone who likes reading and writing that sort of weird, it's another spur to re-examine what I'm doing and how I do it.

I covered all of Elizabeth McKintosh this year as well, and as much as I liked the Inspector Grant material, her non-Grant mysteries were maybe better. It was also cool to get her full spread, and see her doing things other than mysteries; too often you see authors only through a lens of what stays in print, what the library buys, etc, and you miss these parts of their development or personality.

I finished up most of the Ernest Bramah I'd missed five years ago in Russia while I was in Zambia, and enjoyed the more Max Carrados stuff I hadn't found before. I did not enjoy another volume of Kai Lung shittiness, but will keep it as a memento mori for doing characters so significantly outside oneself. :\

This year also saw all of Ethel Lina White's thrillers, and while I was reading them, it was ceaselessly awesome. If there's anything in this year that's going to qualify for re-reads in some distant future, these are going to be it.

I ground through all of Felix Dahn while I was in France, and hated about every single page of it. The transition from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages is interesting, but maybe don't send a moustache-twirling kleindeutsch racist to tell the tales of Germans taking over from Rome. :\

Intensely stupid and so significantly, broad-spectrum racist that I frequently wondered whether I was unexpectedly drunk rather than the book being just that bad, I somehow made it through most of Francis H. Atkins' material this year, and the most significant thing I gained out of it was never having to read those atrocious crap piles ever again. There are a very few interesting or novel points in this guy's fiction, and none of them are worth putting up with the writing to dig out.

If you need a sleeping pill, you could do worse than Frederic W. Farrar -- unless you break out into uncontrollable laughter when confronted with mid-Victorian pietisms. His school stories are picture-primer trash; his Romanica is ahistorical sermonizing trash. Again, do not.

Georg Ebers can't draw characters, compose a plot, or hold reader interest, but he does a hell of a job re-writing research on Roman-era Alexandria over into thick piles of sequential words. Dude sucks, but if you can skip around, he's done all of the work on this little corner of Egyptian history and it just remains for moderns to take that work and re-cast it.

George A. Henty made the minimum qualification, and I wish he hadn't -- his three bad to very bad novels made the worst of the flight out to Hong Kong, and should not be given the chance to spoil anyone else's time, ever again.

George Griffith had a fuck of an arc -- some of his early material was just blindingly awful, both stupid and poorly composed, but he recovered and improved in later books to put up some stuff that's borderline worth seeking out. That this kind of metamorphosis is possible is a great encouragement to keep going: no matter how bad you are, you will not necessarily *stay that bad forever.

I've still got a couple left before I finish George J. Whyte-Melville, but from what I did read of him this year, it's pretty clear that sometimes authors have fields they're good at and fields they suck at. His Victorian stuff is not that bad -- and his riding manual is an unintentional treasure -- but his sword-and-sandal stuff sucks major balls. If you need to stay in your lane, that's something to learn as soon as possible.

H. Bedford-Jones is a weird one; not real good, but he takes on these gigantic imaginative ideas and does them almost correctly, almost completely. I obviously want to avoid that sort of missed-it-by-that-much outcome, but to a certain degree you need to take on big challenges to even have a chance at that.

I read most of J. U. Giesy's work (with Junius Smith on Semi Dual) last year, and the minimum-qualifying stuff that slopped over into this year was mostly very bad, but there was a WWI novella in the bunch that was so good I wondered if it had been misattributed. Again, what's good, what you like, and what will sell are all completely disconnected propositions.

James Hilton provided the requisite Mid-Century Popular Intentional Literature ration this year, some of which was good, some of which was confusingly-accumulated, and some of which ended up lapped by Richard Rhodes. Hilton is another re-read candidate, but not all of his stuff; in bulk, this is a lesson about the advantages and disadvantages of throwing yourself so wholly into your works.

The John Buchan I had left for this year, after reading him in the main, much younger, was a picked-over bunch to be sure, and as usual to be grappled with rather than just taken up entire. It's not something I'd go and recommend to others, but A Lodge In the Wilderness was maybe the most important and impactful book I read, personally, this whole year.

The one good thing I, or anyone else, can take from John W. Duffield's shitty corpus, is the expression "what is this Bomba-the-Jungle-Boy horseshit?", which means exactly what it looks like it means. Duffield has some imaginative ideas, but has zero capacity to actually execute on them, ever, and put up some of the most virulently stupid racism I had to grind through this year. Bad even among his contemporaries, the likes of Duffield are why informed people are reluctant to make major hay out of Lovecraft's racism -- not because he isn't still problematic, but because a lot of stuff in the contemporary popular press was that much even worse.

I technically had a qualifying amount of Ladbroke Black this year, but you blink at this dude -- who ghosted a lot of the high-speed, instantly-disposable Sexton Blake as well -- and his entire corpus is gone. As much as I can remember, the stuff I read this year was similarly functional but not noteworthy, and fortunately not real influential.

I probably read enough Leroy Yerxa to qualify, between various short repacks; he's a middling pulp author, but going through, all of his stuff is still publishable, which is important. He turned in acceptable work in the right trip lengths, over diverse subjects, to place out; there's a place for this kind of workmanship, even if it doesn't ever get to great heights.

I didn't expect I'd like the Lloyd C. Douglas stuff that I liked as much as I ended up liking it: there's bits of clunk through his whole corpus, but he almost never gets preachy, and where his stuff works, it hits just absolutely ceaselessly, and is very cool. (But yes, some of it does suck, very important to note.)

M. P. Shiel was responsible for the book that I got maybe the maddest at this year, and definitely the one I wrote the longest negative review blurb for. He had a couple good parts, but there was too much that was just over-ornamented where it didn't straight up suck. Honestly, all of this material was back last January and a pain to think about even then.

For Golden-Age space-opera, it doesn't get much better than Malcolm Jameson, who I mostly cleaned up this year and who barely got over the qualifying line. This took in a little more of his range than I had before, which was really good: he always comes up with neat outer angles on stuff, and almost always with correct science, at least of his time.

Max Brand is my current 'major' campaign, and reading the next hundred-ish things from him in the pile will take most of 2019. I've already chewed a decently big chunk, though, and it's interesting to see more of his warts and weak points as a writer, where what I'd seen from him before lacked a lot of that. I'm also seeing, for the first time, some of his non-cowboy fiction, and for the most part that's another 'stay in your lane' incentive; we'll see what of this changes next year.

I finally got around to reading most of Otis A. Kline's corpus, and it...was not really worth the wait. Kline is another idea factory, and while he's generally more able to execute on them than Duffield and less racist in doing so, neither comes out perfect and he's substantially in the shadow of Abraham Merritt on Earth and E. Rice Burroughs when he's off on a planetary romance. Functional and imaginative, yes, but you really really want that extra push to make it through to 'good'.

The one thing you really want to take out of S. S. Van Dine is his 20 rules for detective fiction; I got that this year, in amid the Philo Vance stuff, which takes a bit of an effort. Van Dine's career arc is a hell of weird one, and it must have hurt, from the cleaned-up later books, to look at the over-artifacted mess of the first couple and regret not doing them better. This sort of view is why I want to read less of these in the future -- I can't keep having my mental context dictated by works that are a hundred years and more out of date.

Sabine Baring-Gould is approached a lot better as an antiquarian and a writer of sourcebooks than of fiction. His fictional works are okay, if you excuse some major structural problems, but for all of their unstoppable thickness, his collections of legends and historical tales are just mighty. Maybe not an author to read, but definitely one to keep around.

I'm also kind of in the middle on Sapper, who's showing some okay range, but in many parts really exemplifying how perspective and market demands can put blinders on you. His wartime stuff recalls Tim O'Brien or Joseph Heller in places -- mechanized warfare tends to have similar effects at whatever distance -- but there as in his thriller serials he's also the staunchest guy since Wallace, and he does a really poor job of not Drudge-siren hyperventilating about threats to the class system. Again, we'll see next year how the rest of this goes.

I read all of Tacitus' Annals and Histories this year, and damned if I can remember a whole lot about them that deterministically wasn't in Suetonius or Julius Caesar last year. Roman writers are definitely more primary-source than pleasure-reading at this point, but it does help to have that text as a reference for reading bads out of the Bibliotheca Romanica.

The Talbot Mundy I had on the stack this year was very much for cleanup, and doesn't change last year's impressions: a still-problematic dude who is less racist, less colonialist, and less bad than a lot of people are willing to extend him credit. If a book has Chullunder Ghose in it, it's probably worth reading, even if I still would like to see a South Asian writer pick up and grapple with the character.

Thomas C. Bridges did probably the best boys'-own adventures I read this year, which is kind of like "least stinky garbage dump" or "best-tasting light beer". He does good stuff and some absolute horseshit, but his pacing and action flow is just magic, even when his characters are being intolerable racist fucks; another one to scrape the gunk off maybe.

I got to see Valentine Williams turn, over the course of a lot of books this year, from a John Buchan disciple so close to almost be clone into an independent if not always original thrillerist; in 2018, we'd read the Clubfoot series out for ableism -- von Grundt is kind of defined in his villainy and power by his grotesque body -- but Clubfoot himself is one of the classic spy villains and an absolute monster of a character. There are ways to get to that level without punching down, but this is the mark, right here.

Wilkie Collins was mostly accounted for in 2017, but the three books finished this year -- The Moonstone, The Queen of Hearts, and The Woman In White -- would be a sufficient reading for a whole year for a lot of people. Every single one of these is plain and pure magic, and if you haven't read them, there's your '19 project.

Somehow, I made it through all of William H. Ainsworth's wild and degenerate gothicisms; I'm just not always sure how, or completely why. Ainsworth is another author to be handled with the fireplace tongs, not because he's bad or problematic, but because he's just so weird and relentlessly extra, and I'm not really sure you want to get that on you.

* * * What stands out in the above, or what should, is how unbalanced it is: I read a couple other women authors this year who fell below the threshold, and McKintosh and White put up some of the best total results of anyone I read this year, but the volume problem is exactly as bad as it looks. This is something I really need to make a point of fixing, but it's something that ought to also come naturally in making the other change I'm targeting for 2019.

That other change, of course, is to read more contemporary material. There's stuff to be gleaned from the past, sure, but what I got from chewing through that much Oppenheim is of seriously debatable value. To some extent, pulping Gutenbooks is what I do because I can do it easily at work or on the road, but I really need to set aside time to read newer, better, smarter, more diverse material if I actually want to improve as an author -- and it'll probably be less teeth-grinding, too.

#meta #criticism #wow that is way too many books #why do i do this to myself

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