Portland Week
In which I get a little damp, have some thoughts on AI, and am delighted by an unexpected book find.
Home after an excellent (if a little damp) week in Portland. It was so good to catch up with many of my content strategy colleagues and friends over the last few days at yet another inspiring LavaCon Conference.
The abundance of the initials ‘A’ and ‘I’ during the various presentations gave me food for thought on where I stand (or maybe sit) on what seems to be the rush to adopt the current technology fad in the corporate content world. Enough for me to have a minor rant about it in my consulting business newsletter -
Of course, when one is in Portland, one simply should visit its treasures—which for me means a stop by the four floors of the city block that make up Powell’s Books. With its impressive mix of new and used volumes, Powell's Books is easily one of the best bookstores in the US.
I found a couple of books I’ve been looking for to add to the research stack for a potential new non-fiction project. But my real prize find came when browsing the British history section and finding a biography of one of my ancestors published in 1952 that I didn’t even know existed.
I rounded out the week by finding out that the impressive wooden ceiling at Portland airport in the photo at the top of this newsletter was done by one of my consulting clients' partner companies.
While waiting at Portland airport for my flight home, I enjoyed spending some time in the delightful 30-seat movie theater in the terminal that shows locally made short movies for free. - There should be one of those at every major airport.
Alan
Other Stuff
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Brabazon Bits
Work on the Brabazon book is now out of my hands, but here’s a reminder that if everything goes to schedule “Bristol Brabazon: The Ocean Liner of the Skies and its Ongoing Legacy” will be published on 30 MAY, 2025 in the UK and 30 JULY, 2025 in the US.
It’s also available for pre-order on both Amazon UK and Amazon US sites.
Word Slinging
If you are in the Baltimore / Washington DC / Delaware / Southern PA area come check out the Books & Brews event on 16th November. I’ll be there from 11:00am until 2:30pm with some of the historical short-story anthologies that have my words in them.
The few hours layover I had in Chicago on my way to Portland meant time to relax, which helped me figure out the plot details for my upcoming Musketeers short story.
The down-time during the conference and a couple of long plane rides on the journey home meant I actually got to make a start writing it too.
Podcast Procrastinations
My co-host Jarrod Alberich and I have once more been discussing Bond vs Spy Movies, and in the latest episode of our podcast on the On Her Majesty’s Secret Podcast network, we looked at the first Bond v Bond event as we reviewed and compared the multiple 007s of 1967 as You Only Live Twice took on the infamous psychedelic multi-Bond version of Casino Royale.
You can find the full discussion HERE.
Pages and Screens
Books Read in 2024 - “The Eagle Has Landed” by Jack Higgins.
The movie version of The Eagle Has Landed with Michael Caine is a regular rewatch for me. It’s what I tend to put on if I feel in the mood for a WW2 action thriller.
But I hadn’t really thought about the source material in years until it was covered on The Curiously Specific Bookclub podcast. So when on our recent book hunt I came across a beat up bargain paperback copy I grabbed it.
The plan was to take it on my next travel trip as a bit of light background reading during the week. It must have been close to 50 years since I last read it. So I was wondering if it would hold up.
I ended up reading it straight through on a 4-hour flight. It grabbed me from page one and didn’t let go.
I’d forgotten how little of the book’s story was adapted for the movie. There is so much more in the narrative, with other subplots and characters that were ignored in the adaptation. Higgins does a superlative job in weaving them all together while also expanding on the backgrounds, motivations, and moral conflicts of the main characters you may be familiar with from their cinematic versions.
If you enjoy the movie and have never read the book, or haven’t read it in a while, go find a copy and check it out, you won’t be disappointed.
It holds up way better than many of the other WW2 adventure tales from the 70s and 80s that I’ve re-read recently.
Our online bookstore at Bookshop.org is fully up to date with the books read so far in 2024, so you can pick up copies of any that interest you, while also helping out local independent bookstores.
Weekly Web Round-Up
Batman On The Cover - The journey through Batman’s comics publishing history continues as we move into August 1969 with books published in Brazil, Denmark, and Germany all featuring reprints of earlier US covers.
Racing Comics - Although I haven’t posted it yet, a fun recent find on the racing comics front that I hadn’t seen before is this house ad from Charlton Comics advertising their “Hot-Rod Comics Group” of titles: World of Wheels, Top Eliminator, Hot Rods and Racing Cars, and my personal favorite, Grand Prix.
Based on the covers shown in the ad this must have been published around September 1967.
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See you next time
Alan J. Porter
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