Culling the Library
In which I have a hard time saying goodbye to some old friends from the shelves.
The last couple of weeks have been a difficult and emotional time as we have had to say farewell to a large proportion of the 3,000 books that were resident in pretty much every room in the house. I have been tasked with slimming down the collection to around half its number.
Why, you may ask, has this become necessary?
Well, we will shortly be on the move. In early June we will be saying farewell to Texas and heading north to return to our first US home state, Maryland.
Just to make things even more fun we will be exchanging our family home in the suburbs for a ninth-floor condo in the city center. A condo that is exactly half the square footage of our current house - so something needs to go, and that includes books that are heavy to move and take up space.
Don’t worry we will still have books, it’s just we’ve now got stricter guidelines for what we keep. In fact, while deciding what will stay I came up with a four-point system. To survive the cull a book has to meet at least one of these four criteria.
It’s a signed copy.
I haven’t read it yet.
It’s needed for research for a writing or podcast project.
It has an emotional attachment and I will reread it.
What is interesting to note has been our change in attitude as we have continued to roam our shelves and pull books. Originally every book leaving a shelf was like ripping out a piece of me. It was painful.
But now as I stroll past any shelf I can’t help but look at the books that remain and think - “OK prove to me why you should stay!”
Of course, if we get to the other end, and after unpacking find there are gaps in our new bookcases, well we all know what that means.
New bookstores to explore!
Alan
Other Stuff
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Word Slinging
Earlier this week I spent all evening struggling with the opening for a new short story. Write it out three times and delete every attempt.
Decide to call it a night and sleep on it. Get into bed. Settle down - and the opening I wanted pops into my head!
Ah, the writer’s life…
But now I’ve made a start things are starting to flow well with 1,500 words written during downtime in my hotel during a business trip. Hopefully, there will be more to come over the next few days too.
Pages and Screens
Books Read in 2024- “Breaking Bold & Brave” by Jim Beard.
Back when I seriously started to collect comics one of the things I enjoyed finding was the various Index type magazines. They were a great way to discover new titles and issues to look out for.
Many years later at the height of my Batman collection, I had a full run of all the Caped Crusader’s team-up issues in the Brave & The Bold series. These eclectic off-beat stories with great artwork by the underappreciated Jim Aparo were among my favorites.
This new volume from my friend (and sometimes editor) Jim Beard combines my appreciation of comics indexes and fond memories of a much-missed title.
While the factual information about each issue of Brave & The Bold is interesting as a comics historian, Jim’s comments on the stories, good and bad, and his insightful interstitial essays make this collection stand out.
If you enjoyed reading B & B back in the day, then I recommend you check out this volume.
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If you enjoy the books I review here, you may want to check out my Instagram account where every book I read gets a quick review as I finish it.
We’ve also updated our online bookstore at Bookshop.org with a list of the books read in 2024 to date, so you can pick up copies of any that interest you, while also helping out local independent bookstores
Bond Briefings
In the latest edition of our bi-weekly James Bond Lexicon newsletter, we take a look at how James Bond is treated at the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C.
If you enjoy the worlds of 007 and haven’t subscribed, you can join us at the link below
Before They Were Beatles Updates
The next episode of THE FORGOTTEN BEATLES podcast is now live and available on your podcast platform of choice or directly at the link HERE.
In this episode, we uncover the man with the weeping guitar who was credited as "Eddie Clayton." (aka Eric Clapton).
The April issue of the Before They Were Beatles newsletter is now online in which we take a sidebar to examine the history of the Liverpool suburbs that John, Paul, and George called home. If you don’t want to miss out on the expanded story of the early Beatles’ history when they are published, you can sign up for a subscription below.
Weekly Web Round-Up
Batman On The Cover - The journey through Batman’s comics publishing history continues this week we move on to February 1969 with new editions of Detective Comics, Batman, Brave & The Bold, Justice League of America, and World’s Finest
My pick from these is the cover of Brave & The Bold #82 in which Batman teams up with a seemingly hypnotized Aquaman. Yes, it’s another Neal Adams cover, but this one always reminds me of our oldest daughter Meggan’s name for Aquaman when she was younger. She always used to call him “Mermaid Dude” - and that is how he is still often referred to around our family.
Where on the Web is Alan?
You can now find links to all the places you can find me online, websites, newsletters, social media, and more in a single LINKS page - on my personal website.
As always, thanks for joining me this week. If you know someone else who might enjoy the contents of this week’s newsletter, or just my weekly ramblings in general - please feel free to share by clicking the button below.
See you next time
Alan J. Porter
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