Boxes, Lots of Boxes
In which we get ready for a big move, show off a cover, and get all dramatic with the World’s Finest.
The last couple of weeks have revolved around an increasing number of stacks of cardboard boxes that gradually took over every room of our house. And the reason? Well by the time this newsletter drops it will no longer be our house - for we are on the move from Texas.
It was a tough decision, but after seventeen years in the Lone Star State, we have decided to head back north to the state we called home when we first set foot on these shores twenty-eight years ago (wow - how time flies). We are returning to Maryland.
We have been in this house just shy of eight years and have accumulated a lot of stuff (most of it books), and as we will be moving from a good-sized family home in the suburbs to a downtown condo literally half the size, we’ve been doing some serious culling of said stuff as the packing marathon commenced.
But even then there was enough to fill a large truck once shipping day arrived. There will be a gap between us leaving TX behind and moving into the condo in MD (more on that in the coming weeks), so all our gear was packed into large wooden crates and headed off into Raiders of the Lost Ark style storage for the interim.
This week’s newsletter is brought to you from the first of what promises to be a succession of hotel rooms and AirBnBs as we set out on the next step of our adventure.
Alan
Other Stuff
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Brabazon Bits
As I mentioned last week I recently received the initial design for the cover of the Brabazon book. There were a few things that needed fixing, but after a couple of back-and-forths, everything is looking good, and the publishers were kind enough to permit me to share it.
So here we have it - the cover for Bristol Brabazon: The Ocean Liner Of The Skies And Its Ongoing Legacy - provisionally scheduled for release in 2025.
Work on polishing the manuscript is going to schedule as I get it ready to head out to selected early readers in a couple of months.
Pages and Screens
Books Read in 2024 - “The Invention of Prehistory” by Stefanos Geroulanos.
The title is a little misleading as this is less a walk-through of the development of prehistoric studies and more of a series of observations on how those studies have impacted society over the last couple of centuries.
The author’s central thesis that prehistory is by definition unknowable is a logical one, and that every archeological find just generates a series of often contradictory theories often driven by cultural bias of the time.
The main thrust of the book is a fascinating, and at oftentimes disturbing, look at how ideas about early humans are co-opted and used to justify politically-driven colonial suppression, xenophobia, racism, and even genocide.
It’s a deep and at times tough read, that makes you contemplate the darker side of history and human behavior.
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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 James Bond Lexicon newsletter, we discuss recent encounters with the numbers, 0, 0 and 7.
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Before They Were Beatles Updates
The latest issue of the Before They Were Beatles newsletter in which we take a sidebar and look at the history of the Liverpool suburbs that John, Paul, & 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 as we focus on February 1969 and books published in Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.
Although it is basically a reprint of the original US cover from World’s Finest #174 (March 1968), I like the way that this month’s Superman en Batman title from the Netherlands has stripped out all the text and surrounding imagery just leaving the isolated figures of Batman and Superman in a much more dramatic image than the original.
Where on the Web is Alan?
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See you next time
Alan J. Porter
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