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Tag: reading

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In the Museum: Translating Research to Video

Remember the post IN THE MUSEUM: A JFK AUTOGRAPH MYSTERY? Well, the video produced out of that work is now live, and apparently has been for a while, but I missed it.

Anyway, the gist of the video: A very young, not yet famous John F. Kennedy signed a copy of his book Why England Slept to Father Edward J. Flanagan, founder of Boys Town. We’re not sure when/ how/ where that happened, but it did. I do have a photo of a very young JFK signing a copy of this book to Spencer Tracy dressed as a priest on a movie shoot. Given the timing, Tracy could have been in the middle of shooting the sequel to the movie Boys Town, Men of Boys Town. Maybe, Spencer had JFK sign a copy to Fr. Flanagan. No word from the Tracy estate that he had a signed copy too. Fr. Flanagan was out to California for some shooting at different times, but we don’t know for sure when, so he may be just out of shot on this too. Who knows.

So, this video was a lot of fun to work on with our in-house writers, videographers, and editing people. Our organization is pretty big and focused on child care, so getting to use these amazing resources toward history and the museum, in particular, was a real treat.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

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More About Working In Museums:
VHS is Dead
How to Research History Like a Novelist

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Book Review: Come Twilight by Tyler Dilts

Come Twilight cover ebook Tyler Dilts

WITH A BANG

Tyler Dilts’ latest installment in his current Long Beach Homicide series is fantastic.

Long Beach homicide detective Danny Beckett has had it rough, but things are starting to look up. That is until someone tries to kill him by blowing up his elderly Toyota Camry. The people around him, his fellow officers, his partner, and even his girlfriend do what they can to keep him safe from the mysterious people who have targeted him. And he hates it.

RECOMMENDED

I’m new to the series, which usually means I don’t get the ‘inside jokes’ and things, but it felt more like spending time with a group of great people, old friends, after hitting it off with a member of the group who is nice enough to include and accept you. I felt comfortable jumping in so late in the series and look forward to future books from Tyler Dilts.

I received a free ebook copy for review.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.

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MAYBE YOU LIKE THIS TOO?
Book Review: Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston
Noir Renaissance?

 

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Happy 100th Birthday Roald Dahl

roald-dahl-books-spines

henrysugar

Where would we be without Roald Dahl’s books? Separate the man if you can and consider his work. This past week I read aloud to my partner Susan The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and other stories. It’s a fantastic collection of fiction and non-fiction. Some of it horrifying (I’m looking at you, bullies and the swan story!), but all of it perfectly RoaldDahlian. That perfect mix of weird and wonderful, macabre and marvelous.

Modern Moms and Dads sometimes say his stories are too dark. Too gross. Too profane, and are too mature for young readers. Bull. Shit. Dahl was brilliant (and yes grouchy), but I’d never tell a parent how to parent (now that I am one, I get it) however I will judge you silently. Everyone from Tim Burton to Stephen King and those who follow them, like Stranger Things’ Duffer Brothers, stand on Roald Dahl’s shoulders today.

What would I be without his strange sense of wonder, his fascination with life and death, and his sense of justice?  And acceptance? Like that of a grandmother and her grandson who has been turned into a mouse and will never be a boy again. Reading Dahl as an adult teaches me far more lessons than when I read him as a child. I think that’s the point.

We read The Witches in the last month or so waiting for the birth of our son last year. Reading aloud to one another each night and taking a few moments to talk to the baby yet to make his debut. Each chapter is a prayer to be able to love, to be brave, and stand up to wrong no matter the odds. It was perfect.

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roald-dahl

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Book Review: Front Page Affair by Radha Vatsal

book review Front Page Affair by Radha Vatsal

Out of the Gate Like a Stutz Bearcat

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Radha Vatsal is a scholar and a talented storyteller, evident in her strong historical mystery debut, A Front Page Affair, just released this summer.

Capability Weeks (“Kitty” to her friends) and her father (a well-to-do, self-made mogul) live well in 1915 New York City. Kitty, a young addition to the New York Sentinel‘s Ladies Page, covers a July 4th society soiree and becomes tied to a murder and what looks like a plot to endanger the delicate international balance. 

Kitty Weeks (and supporting cast) are wonderful. She’s young and privileged and begins to recognize what that has meant in her life throughout this story. I don’t go for that combination in a hero much, but Kitty’s introspection and awareness redeem her (to me at least). A hero who can throw money at their problems and make them go away is not much of a hero. Kitty also works not only externally but internally as well, to find solutions, being creative and brave throughout.

Radha Vatsal has sentences in this book that are heavy with history. It’s hard to write historical novels without ‘info dumping’ on readers. It’s a challenge to weave historical information, foreign to modern readers, and achieve a native harmony so readers glide along, learning without being jarred by the thrills and not the history.

…

RECOMMENDED

Get in on this new series straight away. You’ll enjoy this plucky young hero as she matures during a time of great change in our nation and our world. Strong historical research sunk deep below the surface pushes this debut novel to the top of my recommendation list this month. For a work of fiction, there’s a fantastic ‘Further Reading’ and ‘Selected References and Sources’ pages. Old historian habits die hard.

About the Author: Benjamin Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.

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Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review.

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Book Review: Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston

Book Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston
Book Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston
Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston

It was the blurb on the cover that did it. “This is one mean, cold, slit-eyed mother of a book.” — Peter Straub.

A couple weeks ago, I roamed Omaha’s wonderful Jackson Street Booksellers, and I know there’s at least one dedicated James Crumley fan on staff who puts books on a certain big table for browsers. Finding this book on that table carries the same weight to me as a personal recommendation from a good friend. This table is one of my best friends.

Table’s recommendation didn’t let me down. Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston is book two of a three book series. It’s unlike me to go out of order (if there’s an order) but I felt like I was caught up quickly and not too out of the loop on the main character and what had gone on to this point at the opening of book 2.   It’s contemporary noir (ca. 2005), so my history die-hards may look askance, but shouldn’t!  Classic noir fans will enjoy Huston’s style, though I will warn you, this is not a book for those with language and violence sensitivities.

This book is nearly non-stop, with nuanced and realistic action, and a main character that perfectly walks that line between hero and anti-hero. The main character, Hank Thompson, is also nuanced and realistic, conflicted. There are cracks in his life and character as a result of his choices. It’s also unexpectedly funny.

A big recommend from me.  Thanks, big table.

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Book Review: Drive!

Stuck in mud

201605_goldstone_driveDrive!: Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent the Auto Age by Lawrence Goldstone

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A useful history I will return to again and again. Taking the 30,000-foot view, with plenty of details to give the history a personal feel. With the wide-angle overview approach, however, the story moves along without becoming bogged down in details most readers won’t be looking for in such a book. Goldstone weaves the early history of automobiles into a highly readable account, creating a very straight-forward narrative arc, though historical topics are anything but. Highly recommend to those interested in the later Industrial Revolution, early 20th-century history, and of course, car nuts.

If you’re looking at Lawrence Goldstone’s name and thinking it looks familiar, he and his wife wrote at least three excellent memoirs about bibliophiles and the rare book trade — that was my introduction to him as a writer.

This book was provided to me via NetGalley for review.

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Old Gems found in Fourteen Great Detective Stories

I dipped into this wonderful old anthology over the past couple of weeks.  I once actively collected the Modern Library series, and this book was on those shelves, though it’s in far from collectible condition. It does have a fun old gift inscription and a big old crease through the front board, which somehow makes the book look more friendly.

Earlier I read an essay about how the story The Case of  Oscar Brodski, one of the Dr. Thorndyke mysteries by R. Austin Freeman was revolutionary for being the first We See Who Commits the Crime, Will They Be Caught style of stories.  In old essays about crime fiction, this is often called an Inverted Detective Story.  I had never read Dr. Thorndyke and was not familiar at all with The Case of Oscar Brodski.  Then, VOILA, springing forth from my own shelves, there it was. I think Freeman’s story holds up and was pretty good, even to this modern reader.

However, also in this book, the real treat was Cornell Woolrich’s short story The Dancing Detective.  Wow!  For suspense, menace, and just a straight-up creepy story, what a knockout! The narrator’s voice was so enjoyable, with just the right amount of dark humor. The contemporary slang, also very well done and hilarious. This short story exceeds a lot of stuff coming out today, but then again, Cornell Woolrich is still considered a master of the genre.

 

The stories included in this edition (earlier editions had slightly different contents):

Bailey, H.C. The Yellow Slugs
Bentley, E.C. The Little Mystery
Chesterton, G.K. The Blue Cross
Christie, Agatha The Third-Floor Flat 
Dickson, Carter The House of Goblin Wood
Doyle, A. ConanThe Red-Headed League 
Freeman, R. Austin The Case of Oscar Brodski
Futrelle, Jacques The Problem Of Cell 13
Poe, Edgar Allan The Purloined Letter
Post, Melville Davisson The Age of Miracles
Queen, Ellery The Adventure of the African Traveler 
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Bone of Contention
Stout, Rex Instead of Evidence
Woolrich, Cornell The Dancing Detective

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

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To new beginnings

Notebook and coffee

This is definitely not my first blog post.

I had a blog about book collecting and bibliophilia for many years over on blogger.  I’m active over on tumblr too, but that isn’t so much blogging as a constant stream of amusing/pretty/cool stuff.  I post a lot of photos and quotes and things I happen to like, (i.e. typewriters. I love me some typewriters.)  It’s more immediate too, so there will be music links and funny memes, you know, tumblr stuff. Here, I’ll share links to articles, tools, and especially historic research resources I find helpful.  I may occasionally post music to write to, or cool images.

Here, I’ll talk about my research, my writing, whatever I’m working on as I progress toward my writing goals.  What are those goals?  Well, in the short-term, I’ve managed to get a piece of flash-fiction placed with cool series from Akashic Books.  Next is to finish another short (but longer than flash) piece and get it placed somewhere.  Longer term, I’m working on what I’m seeing as a novella series, and then another series of full-length novels.  Both series are historic thrillers/mysteries. One of those series grabbed me by the collar and is dragging me along.

What I’m working on now: a novella set in and around 1930s Denver. I was not alive in the 1930s nor have I lived in Denver, so there’s some research to do.  This story also features a main character who I think will be a series character.  Anyway, the short has been a lot of fun, using info I’ve dug up previously, but haven’t used.

I’ve gotten to know the main character  in this one pretty well.  He first appeared as a supporting cast member of my first attempt at a novel back in 2007 or so.  Through edits, rewrites, and dumping the whole thing and starting over a couple times, he’s emerged as one of the two main characters of that novel — he was too fascinating, and too much fun to hang out with compared to my original main character.

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Anyway, thanks for reading.  No spoilers, but amazing poster served as a bit of inspiration this week:

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