Over the past week or so, the weather here in Southern Ohio has been growing gradually cooler, after a brutal heatwave throughout most of July and August.
Today we had a delightfully cool, overcast morning.
Autumn is my favorite time of year, and the time when I tend to be most productive. (My most sluggish time of the year is the dog days of high summer.)
I can tell you what I was doing, most afternoons at 3 pm in 1972. (I was four that year.) I was sprawled out in front of my parents’ boxy Zenith television set, tuned in to Cincinnati’s Channel 19, WXIX.
That was the time and place in which Speed Racer aired.
The Speed Racer franchise began in Japan in the 1960s as a manga comic series. In 1967, a Speed Racer animated cartoon was developed; and this is what found its way to the US market (dubbed into English, of course).
The best way to describe Speed Racer is as follows: The series concerns the adventures of “Speed”, the driver of the technologically advanced Mach 5 racer.
Like many Japanese manga, Speed Racer takes place in a setting that is the real world, but not quite the real world. There are unrealistic technological menaces (like the “Mammoth Car”); and the series may have had a monster or two.
I didn’t know back then that Speed Racer was a Japanese import. (I also didn’t know that many years hence, I would learn the Japanese language; but that’s another story.) At the age of four, I may not have even been aware of Japan.
I just remember being thrilled by the adventures of Speed and the Mach 5. These were fun cartoons, filled with action, and instantly accessible. Speed Racer is the first television series that I ever became a fanatic of; and in 1972, I was a Speed Racer fanatic.
I recently watched a few episodes of Speed Racer on YouTube, for nostalgia’s sake. These cartoons fascinated me at the age of four. And even at the age of 51, they retain for me a certain charm.
I’ve read Fahrenheit 451 several times. This is a short novel, and it won’t take you long to read. (Bradbury was more of a short story writer than a novelist. The novels that he wrote tended to be on the short side, too.)
Daunt plans to make B&N stores stripped-down versions of what they currently are. The model here is the airport bookstore on one hand, the local, neighborhood bookstore on the other.
In other words, small bookstores that carry about the same inventory as the book section of the nearest Walmart, Costco, or Kroger.
So why do you even need a bookstore, if Walmart already stocks about the same number of books?
Daunt is British, and this might be a viable strategy for the British retail market, which is decades behind that of the United States.
It isn’t a winning strategy for the US, where Amazon dominates by virtue of its wide selection, low prices, and economies of scale.
Daunt clearly has no plan to compete with Amazon. He plans to compete with…small neighborhood bookstores that have already gone out of business in most of the U.S.
The year is 1976, and the Headless Horseman rides again. A dark fantasy horror thriller filled with wayward spirits, historical figures, and a 1970s vibe.
The Kindle version of Revolutionary Ghostsis priced at just $0.99 through the weekend. This is your change to grab the book for next to nothing, if you haven’t read it yet!
Revolutionary Ghosts will, however, return to the normal price of $3.99 on Monday.
I remember cassettes well, of course. (I even owned a few 8-tracks, as they were being phased out, in the very early 1980s.)
There are a lot of things that I miss about the last century, but the hissing, easily tangled audiocassette is not one of them. (That and typewriter correction fluid.)
As the above-linked article states, the big selling point of the cassette was its distinction as the most portable audio format, under the technological constraints we faced in the 1980s. No one loved them for their sound, or their reliability.
For a limited time: a tale of horror, American history, and coming-of-age.
The year is 1976, and the Headless Horseman rides again!
Steve Wagner is an ordinary Ohio teenager in the year of America’s Bicentennial, 1976. As that summer begins, his thoughts are mostly about girls, finishing high school, and driving his 1968 Pontiac Bonneville.
But this will be no ordinary summer. Steve sees evidence of supernatural activity in the area near his home: mysterious hoof prints and missing persons reports, and unusual, violently inclined men with British accents.
There is a also a hideous woman–the vengeful ghost of a condemned Loyalist spy–who appears in the doorway of Steve’s bedroom.
Filled with angry spirits, historical figures, and the Headless Horseman of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Revolutionary Ghosts is a terrifying coming-of-age story with a groovy 1970s vibe.
Jane had been asleep for several hours when she saw the image of the little village. She was alone in the dream (at least at its beginning) without any guides or emissaries from that world. Nevertheless, she knew immediately, instinctively, that the sun-baked collection of thatch and bamboo huts was a village in Thailand—a village not far from Bangkok, in fact.
Jane and one of the night-shift security guards overcame the language barrier enough so that the latter could summon a taxi for the former. Jane was half-asleep by the time the taxi driver dropped her off at her hotel.
Jane’s first inclination was to go directly to bed. It was now a little past 10 p.m. local time. Then she realized how famished she was. If she went to sleep without eating anything, she would feel intolerably weak and light-headed in the morning.
The hotel restaurant was still open; this was Bangkok, after all. Jane ordered a spicy fish-and-rice dish, the sort of fare that could be found in practically any restaurant worth its chops in Southeast Asia. Continue reading “Luk Thep: Chapter 10”
Do you like supernatural coming-of-age stories? Do you like stories set in the 1980s?
Then check out 12 Hours of Halloween:
On Halloween night, 1980, three young friends must face a Halloween curse. Their familiar neighborhood becomes a ghostly landscape filled with witches, vampires, and supernatural creatures!
You can read 12 Hours of Halloween here on Edward Trimnell Books for a limited time.
