New Books

Before I get carried away with other things, I should note that I have two new books out!

I have an essay in the McFarland Press collection Giant Creatures in Our World: Essays on Kaiju and American Popular Culture, edited by Camille D.G. Mustachio and Jason Barr: "'We are eating Gamera': Mystery Science Theater 3000 Consumes the Kaiju."

My long-awaited cemetery guide is also finally out: Ici Repose: A Guide to St. Louis #2, Square 3. When I said that this was of "regional niche interest," I was told that's an understatement. Nonetheless, this is a comprehensive visual guide to New Orleans' beautiful St. Louis Cemetery #2, Square 3, available in the black and white first edition, and a full-color Deluxe Edition which I am selling as cheap as the printer will let me -- which is $125.

What stranger stocking stuffers are you likely to find?

Spin Reveal!

And the winner of the Classics Club spin is: Hall Caine's The Manxman. Like Le Fanu's The Cock and Anchor, this is a book that I've really wanted to read, but has always seemed a little longer than I'm in the mood for. So this has been a good kick to get me started. So far I'm finding Caine's style very readable, and he seems to have good perceptions of human psychology. Because I'm me, I will also be trying to track down the silent Alfred Hitchcock film version.

You Spin Me Right Round

I tried to do the Classics Club spin once before, but wimped out. Since I don't have 20 left, I'm counting anything from 17 to 20 as a sign to read Can You Forgive Her?, which, luckily, I've already started!

1.  Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri: The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition 
2. William Baldwin: Beware the Cat (etext link)
3. Honore Balzac: Lost Illusions
4. Hall Caine: The Manxman 
5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Coleridge's Notebooks: a Selection  
6. Jane Collier: An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting
7. John Donne: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23772)
8. Anne Fuller: The Convent 
9. George Gissing: New Grub Street 
10. J. Sheridan Le Fanu: The Cock and Anchor 
11. Delarivier Manley: The New Atalantis 
12. Talbot Mundy: King of the Khyber Rifles 
13. Kay Nielsen: East of the Sun and West of the Moon   
14. Elliott O'Donnell: The Sorcery Club (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14317)
15. Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Who Would Have Thought It?
16. Charlotte Smith: Celestina 
17. Anthony Trollope: Can You Forgive Her?