It was a dark and stormy century. Ghosts and goblins and spirits and ghouls were everywhere. Technology was taking on a life of it’s own. (“Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.”) Novels were written. Dark novels. Gothic novels. The dead cam back to life.
On this day 200 years ago a scientist willing to play god ordered his assistant, Igor, to throw the switch, and the energy of a thousand lightning storms coursed through the sluggish veins of an assembly of a dozen parts, taken from the ground. The man, nay, monster, awoke and began an unbelievable journey. He, or rather, it, would terrorize the townspeople, battle with Dracula and the Wolfman, get together with Abbot and Costello, and enchant a dozen dozen generations of Halloween revelers. Even Mel Brooks would get a cut!
Bwahahaha! It’s alliiiiive!
Happy Anniversary to the Publication of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
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Best birthday wishes and regards to the unnamed creation of Doctor Frankenstein. who, in turn, was the creation of Mary Shelley, who showed that you don’t have to write a long book to write a memorable and thought-provoking book about interesting and important issues.
Not really a short book, though.
who showed that you don’t have to write a long book to write a memorable and thought-“…provoking book about interesting and important issues.”
If you havnt read it already, I highly recommend Jean Giono’s short story entitled
The man who planted trees.
It’s astonishingly good fiction in the short form and a reader is unlikely to ever forget it.
For younger readers, Gleitzman is unsurpassed in shortish and short works, except for maybe Dahl. I reckon anyway.
If unfamiliar, ask your library if they got Two weeks with the queen, as a starting point to Gleitzmans works.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/452002.Two_Weeks_with_the_Queen
He has a brilliant very short story called Bomb in the Give peas a chance anthology which nails a child’s fears and thought processes perfectly.
And then let’s that child grow through the fear into something quite remarkable. The themes are for adults really, and yet Bombs target audience is maybe 10 or 11 years.
A certain ex polly wanted one of Gleitzmans books suppressed which only made her look stupid to the electorate. As if a children’s book is gonna get censored just cuz a polly wants it to be!!!
Don’t know where, but read that Franky is not about a dude playing gawd, but a slap down on Mary’s ahole dad. It is actually about a male bringing a being into the world and then being a terrible father, with a SciFi (fantasy) frame.
I just found the text for The man who planted trees by Giono, mentioned above.
http://www.pinetum.org/GionoUK.htm
I also note, with disgust, fucking arsehole cunts Kindle, who you seem to love Greg, are charging for it!!!!!
Giono intentionally never claimed copywrite as I understand it. This short story wernt about money to him.
And fucking Kindle is charging. Unreal. Lemme guess. Kindle ain’t from Nepal or Argentina or RSA or New Zealand eh. I bet they are fucking greedy yanks.
Jesus Christ. Charging for a free book. Unreal.
FYI Li D: Kindle isn’t a company, it is an e-reader and literature for it sold by the Amazon corporation. A Kindle reader will accept anything in either the normal Kindle format (which also goes by a another name I’ve forgotten, sorry) or Adobe’s pdf format. Just because the author didn’t take a profit for it doesn’t mean that someone or some organization doesn’t have copyright. Perhaps the author gave it to someone so that it got circulated.
I’ve found that if I waited for a while (months sometimes) that Amazon would drop the price of some of their (to me) overpriced books. Those sale-priced books are the kind that Greg usually mentions. I would have missed several because you have to keep track of the sales on almost a daily basis.
To give Amazon some credit, they also have a lot of books by new or now- neglected authors in a number of fields for no charge or 99 cents (American).
Oh I see now. Kindle is hardware.
And Amazon supplies the material.
Thanks Tyvor.
Well fuck you Amazon.
I’m gonna do an experiment.
Does this Amazon mob of pricks sell the UDHR for this kindle machine , or is it free, or even available at all?
Tippity tap tap.
https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Declaration-Rights-United-Nations-ebook/dp/B003VS0E1I
Imagine fucking charging for the UDHR.!!!
LiD
The Man Who Planted Trees (PDF) full free download:
http://www.idph.net/conteudos/ebooks/the_man_who_planted_trees.pdf
“To give Amazon some credit,”
Even more credit: you can use a Kindle to get e-books from libraries, so instead of giving long rants while casting eyes to the sky you can get free books from there. My neighbor, homebound while undergoing cancer treatments, loves it.
“…giving long rants while casting eyes to the sky…”
Hahahahaha.
Yeah that’s me sometimes.