Here's a clue about why your subscribers like you so much Michael. Hemingway to Hellboy. Homer to Superman. Harlan Ellison to Ancient Rome & Persia. It's always a wild and informative ride!! (.....by the way, I like Hemmingway too! )
I think you should absolutely repeal the “no comics” condition of your challenge. No one should be forced to miss out on limited print titles they want in their library. Maybe you could buy them, but not read them until you finish. Or maybe you can do the challenge with a “vacation week” every 100 titles. Don’t live in a jail of your own making! It makes me sad for you. 😢 Have a great weekend! 😺✌️
I'd also like to have those collections of Blackwood and Clark Ashton Smith. For a long time, Blackwood's The Willows was my favorite short story, and I could recall the long first sentence entirely ("After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Buda-Pesth..."), and Clark Ashton Smith's The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis is an awesome story I've never heard mentioned on Booktube, and it counts for Rocket Summer, too.
I grew up with Harlan Ellison's commentary on the Sci-Fi channel in the early 90's, didn't read his stuff until recently, beginning with I Have no Mouth and Must Scream. There was a line in Delusion for a Dragon Slayer that just "slayed" me - "A man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams." I also love his commentary in the C.A. Smith Documentary. He was a fascinating character.
My sweetie came in, saw that I was watching you, yelled "HELLO!" At the television (she always returns your greetings, enthusiastically) saw what you were talking about and said: " Oh boy, if the lady of the manor sees this video he's going to be sent to the lodge without any hounds!" And also: "No. You can't send your friend any books!"
One of the Hocking Conan novels (the unpublished one I assume) was serialised in one of Marvel's recent and thankfully now ended Conan titles. It was definitely the best thing in their half-hearted attempt to relaunch Howard's characters and the Hyborian World in comics. My former colleague's brother, a well known fantasy artist among other subjects, was friends with Ellison and spent many an evening with him and Mrs. Ellison. According to the brother, after an excellent dinner you basically sat back and let Harlan go - no questions, no interruptions, just full-throttle Harlan.
This year is the centennial of Merritt's THE SHIP OF ISHTAR. Voted the best novel EVER published in Argosy/All-Story by the pulp's readers, beating out novels like A PRINCESS OF MARS. It was an inspiration to the likes of Clark Ashton Smith, CL Moore, Kuttner, Brackett, Ed Hamilton, Moorcock, Tim Powers and many, many others. Well worth reading, centennial or not.
Great video Michael, with such a long challenge it would be cool to see these from time to time as I had no idea about the new Blackwood collections! I hope you are able to appreciate just how far you’ve gone already. 180+ books! Most people would never have the willpower for that!
The Blackwoods are from Hippocampus Press. They also publish volumes of letters from interesting authors. I recently got their The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, 'Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill' It's well worth checking out publishers like them; I particularly like Tartarus Press, for works by Arthur Machen, or volumes of essays by Mark Valentine (writing about interesting fiction from the past - these are great)
You commented on messed up e book formatting and I totally agree. Drives me nuts. One and two character indents. Straight rather than curly quotes. Excess space between paragraphs. Ragged right instead of flush right. And so on. I won't buy any ebook that has these issues, cause they take me out of the story. It's not hard to properly format an ebook; I've done it a dozen times. If you can't, hire a pro formatter.
An additional comment. I too like Ellison. His short stories vary in quality, but some are astoundingly good. Also, very fun, are the collection of columns he wrote for an LA free newspaper, published in a book called The Glass Teat. They are hilarious, and held up really well in the nineties even though they were about 1960s TV. And there’s a collection of other essays, published as With An Edge In My Voice, that are great fun, especially one on the difference between Oreos and Hydrox cookies (Hint: Oreos are basically a harbinger of the downfall of civilization.)
Some challenges are better to fail. I only regret NOT buying some books when I could have... I never regret any I bought. A few things I passed up are now too rare and expensive to get, so, nope, I'm never agreeing to anything like that.
I seriously commend you on sticking out the challenge, Michael. I thought you cut yourself some slack about the omnibuses? I hope that your better-off fans take charge and send some to you,(I hope you aren't inundated with Hemingway.) I enjoy reading Hemingway because it is like listening to someone with an interesting accent. I love Hellboy. You have as eclectic tastes as I do, in other words, we are both well-rounded,(and maybe crazy).
I don’t even think I own 500 books 😂 the past few years I’ve been focusing on library collections, and only buying the occasional obscure book that libraries have a difficult time acquiring.
Funny in the last month I got both the Peter Green’s Argonautika and Emily Wilson’s Iliad and Odyssey, heard Green is the best adaptation of Apollonius, I’ll report back as I heard the same with Wilson on Homer, next year I’m doing a challenge of all translated books and these are on the 2025 TBR! Another great video!
uh oh .. thats my pick for Cimmerian September. I'd like your thoughts on '10 out-of-print books you'd buy' and how many versions of The Iliad do you have or have read, and by whom.
I love your videos first because you are a breath of fresh air ! Love your welcoming introductions and your enthusiasm for reading. The devotion of your sidekick Roger proves that you are one "To Ride The River" with(see June on the Range :)PS:Re Hemingway, his Old Man and the Sea was one of the only books I ever read where the Movie was Word For Word the same ! (darn good read by the way)
I think you should make a rule that you may buy limited edition comics/books which go out of print, OR get very expensive afterward. It's supposed to be a challenge, not a torture 😉
I suggest you adjust your challenge. Bump it to 1000 books. It’s a nice round number. But allow yourself to buy a book for every book you unhaul in your library. That would give you a bunch of flexibility while actually accomplishing the goal of curating your library.
I don’t know if I could force myself to stop buying books until I read a predetermined number of owned books. That’s brutal. And I don’t know why it’s trendy to hate Hemingway. The guy was a brilliant writer.
You need to get reading! Hemingway at his height was overrated, but now is underrated. This is due to the image of him as a romantic man's man. (Which was half-real and half-bullshit.) Ellison was one of the great short story writers and I was always fascinated by him as a person. I don't know if I would have liked him as a person. It would largely depend on whether he liked me. He was usually great to his friends, but horrible to his enemies.
I know a challenge is a challenge but those books that are not in your collection are important. I lost the chance to get a manuscript of A Mind At the End of It's Tether by H.G.Wells years ago and I''ve never passed on an opportunity to get a book I wanted since.
Have the essential Ellison and other Ellison books. My biggest stupid thing was when I needed money I sold off a buncha stuff including a signed copy of Deathbird Stories. Yea I'm an idiot.😮😮😮
I've never liked Harlan Ellison but I did have a letter published in Playboy, sometime in the 1980s, criticising an article he had contributed. I bought Playboy every month back then, most of the article were interesting, even the ones I didn't agree ith like the Ellison one. Some of the pictures were quite good as well but that's not why I bought it.
Why can't the Lady of the Manor get the Superman omnibus for you? That shouldn't count for your 500 challenge. I just went to a library book sale and got a box of books for $5.00. Mostly hardcovers, including a Richard Bachman book that looked like it had never been read. I have never gotten more than 1 or 2 books at a sale before so I was really pleased. I even found a couple Westerns for next year's June on the Range. Very happy with my haul.
I seem to remember omnibi being excluded (not from reading, but from the buying prohibition for this very reason.) But I certainly may have missed a rule change, or some other arcane subtlety.
When I finish Rome and Persia by Goldsworthy I will pass it along to you. I don't keep my books so it will be yours next. I bought mine brand new so it will be nice.
Gifting Harlan Ellison: Greatest Hits - Barnes & Noble has their own *unique* edition with bonus materials, including the manuscript of "On the Downhill Side", with notes and corrections in Harlan own writing. Same cover, uglier color. Just a note if any of your people were feeling generous, they should probably go that route so you don't get the FOMO
Something to add to your book-buying FOMO: That Harlan Ellison collection coincides with rereleases of Dangerous Visions 1 and 2 in anticipation of The Last Dangerous Visions finally getting published later this year.
If you sold or gave away a couple of the books you already own that you've read and didn't like, could you get around your "no buy" rule? The number of books you own won't change after all. Or, does your no-buy rule cover buying books for your friends? If so, maybe do that and drop a few hints.
If you can't buy ( your way out of the 500bk bondagephon) , why not beg, or ... borrrow? When was the last time you used your library card? You do have a library card don't you ? MIchael? Say it ain't so. Are there still libraries in America ?
It defeats the purpose of the challenge if people are sending him books. Yeah, it technically doesn't break the rule if he didn't buy it. But, come on.
I like Hemingway's writing, but from the moment I started learning about the man I got bad vibes. I felt extremely vindicated when I discovered he was unironically KGB. Commies are always disgusting
Wow. I thought you'd go another route as to why you got bad vibes from him. He was not really a commie but yeah capitalism is never-ever disgusting right?? It stands for everything pure in this world!
@@waffle.23 did I say that? Communism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin, both invented by Marx. They reduce people down to nothing more than economic units
@@j75099 I thought it was common knowledge at this point. He joined when reporting in the Spanish Civil War. You can go anywhere and read up on it, tho the KGB's official stance is "he never gave us any information" and I'm sure we can totally trust them on that. That's why he ran away to Idaho because he thought the FBI were after him for it(and they actually were, which is even funnier tbh lol)
@@Angel-sh7mn I'll look into it but I'm still doubtful that he actually joined the KGB. Worked with Communists on the ground (in Spain) to get what he wanted - sure. But no more than that. Just to be clear I regard communism just as evil as facsism and wish these ideologies never existed.
