NYC Book Loot

Still a bit on the stuffy side but I have returned with spoils, so it's only fitting I talk about those spoils. I'm not going to discuss anything bought as a present; this is just for me. 

Head-Hunting in the Solomon Islands Caroline Mytinger, 1942, McMillan. Bought at the Argosy.

... we were unencumbered by the usual equipment of expeditions: by endowments funds, by precedents, doubts, supplies, an expedition yacht or airplane, by even the blessings or belief of our friends and families, who said we couldn't do it. We especially lacked that 'body of persons' listed for expeditions by the dictionary. We were a staff of two rather young women: myself, the portrait painter, and Margaret Warner, the bedeviled handyman, who was expected to cope with situations like God - if machinery was lacking, then by levitation. Her expedition equipment was a ukelele.

If that opening sentence does not tell you why I bought this book you have no soul. 

I'll only add that, once upon a time I was part of a team that worked on Pelgrane's Expeditions book. We spent such a lot of time calculating what an expedition might need, how best to simulate that in play.

Two middle class white kids and a ukelele. Jaysus H. 

They'd stop in a place for a while, earn a crust by painting portraits, and when they had enough in their pocket they set out for the next stop. Eventually they reached their destination, which they only knew about from books. It's pretty Trail-friendly; it covers an interesting part of the world in the right time period. But seriously, how could I pass this up?

The Pyrates George MacDonald Fraser, 1983, Knopf. Bought at the Argosy.

MacDonald Fraser is best known for his Flashman series, and those never seem to go out of print. His other books have vanished into the ether, for the most part. I got a copy of Black Ajax and Mr. American while I was in the UK, and I strongly suspect that those two remain in print only because Flashman or his antecedents appear briefly in them. His MacAuslan wartime comedy stories are still in print, but his own war memoir is more difficult to find. Pyrates, and his Hollywood memoirs, have eluded me. Now I have Pyrates. Can the memoirs be far behind?

Murder at the Manor, Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries, Death on the Down Beat, all British Library Crime Classics, bought at the Mysterious Book Shop. 

Again, how could I not? Death on the Down Beat has a particularly interesting premise: a conductor is shot dead, and the shot can only have come from the orchestra. But which player could it have been? This one's a bit gimmicky but it's saved by brilliant writing, and the location - fictional UK town Maningpool - is worth stealing for your campaign, if only for its eponymous Lumps. 

Scandinavian Ghost Stories, edited by Joanne Asala, 1995 Penfield Press, bought at the Strand.

The Strand's mythology section isn't up to much but occasionally you find gold. Bought and read in the same day, which should tell you how much fun I found it. 

Dictionary of City of London Street Names Al Smith, 1970 Arco Publishing, bought at the Argosy

Well, that's the budget blown, I thought. I honestly wanted to only spend about a hundred at the Argosy. Silly me and my haughty airs. It is literally what you think it is: the title does not lie. Every so often there's a gem, and even if there isn't one on every page it's packed with information about Baghdad-on-the-Thames.

The Mafia is not an Equal Opportunity Employer, Nicholas Gage, 1971 McGraw-Hill, bought at the Argosy.

A useful little bridge between Prohibition and the 1960s, which means it's Noir Country. Based on investigative reporting by the author, who I presume is the same Nicholas Gage who was involved in Watergate's reporting though this book isn't listed among his published works. Which may mean Wikipedia got it wrong. 

Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century, Jack Finney, 1983, Doubleday, bought at the Argosy.

An investigation - more of a histori-fiction retelling, really - into the 1857 murder of Harvey Burdell in New York, and a half-dozen other 1800s-era misdeeds. Finney, the mind behind the Bodysnatchers, has a talent for this kind of work. 

The World And The 20s: The Best From New York's Legendary Newspaper, edited by James Boylan, published Dial Books 1973, bought at the Argosy. 

I mentioned this last week, but it's worth repeating: if you want to write historical fiction it is useful to know what they thought, said and worried about. You can't do better than by reading their news.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.