Charles Anderson Books

These are some more pictures from Paris that I have finally got developed. I used B&W film and it took a long time to get them developed.

Here are two new books that I am reading.

The first is Andrea Lee’s Lost Hearts In Italy. If you haven’t read her she is a rock star of a writer, and I’m looking forward to reading this one. Her short stories always give an outsider’s view of romantic/exotic places that sometimes we foreigners just don’t see and sometimes we just don’t understand.

I have never read any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and I am looking forward to reading this one The Hound of the Baskervilles. I am ready to go along with Holmes on his adventure into the dark moor.

It is that time in my life when I am rereading The Hobbit and really enjoying it. As a writer I can really appreciate some of Tolkien’s sentences in the first chapter and his use of language notably when Bilbo keeps saying ‘Good Day’ to Gandalf. The wizard is seeing right through Bilbo’s meaning and knows the underlying polite message.

Here is the wonderful version I am reading and the Peter Sis cover is one of my favorites:

Hobbit Name Generator:

Here is a fun and silly website that I stumbled across this morning:

What is Your Hobbit Name?

Mine is…Mungo Knotwise of Michel Delving…Now I know and that will no longer be a mystery.

Finally:

A good academic podcast on Tolkien and his writing in which I have enjoyed all of the episodes. Corey Olsen has done a really nice job with this one:

The Tolkien Professor

Very happy that Shaun Ferrel’s Adventures in SciFi Publishing is back, and it’s a pocast that I have praised in the past. After a few month hiatus the show has come back with a great episode that features Greg Van Eekhout, author of Norse Code.

Check it out here:

Adventures in SciFi Publishing

You can buy the book here:

Charles N Brown, the editor of Locus Magazine, died on July 12th. I didn’t know, never spoke to him, but I did see him once. It was in 2007, Sherry and I were at the Oakland Airport. Charles Brown was being pushed by us in a wheelchair and his small entourage to his boarding gate. When they arrived, he made sure that he was pushed to the front of the line of wheelchairs that was there, and when positioned in the proper place, he and the other oldsters seemed to have a great deal to talk about. I wanted to introduce myself and tell him that I really enjoyed his magazine and I knew one of his editors, Ed Bryant, but I was too shy and didn’t. That’s my only story about Charles N Brown. There are some people that you know you should speak to and he was one of them.

Locus Magazine's Charles N Brown