In Michael Dirda’s Introduction to The Age of Decayed Futurity: The Best of Mark Samuels, Dirda points out that a Mark Samuels story usually presents the reader with a narrator who may or may not be insane. In “Sentinels,” Inspector Gray of the London police, investigates strange doings in the London Underground. As you might suspect, Inspector Gray finds more than he bargained for.

My two favorite stories in The Age of Decayed Futurity are “A Gentleman from Mexico” and “The Crimson Fog,” both with Cthulhu Mythos elements. In “A Gentleman from Mexico” A writer visiting Mexico meets a man who seems to be H. P. Lovecraft reborn. A group of soldiers attempt to rescue Major Qersh who seems to be trapped in a strange crimson fog in the jungles of Chang-Yi province. Once in the fog, the soldiers find death and a transformed Major Qersh and…more.

If you’re in the mood for some creepy stories full of terror, The Age of Decayed Futurity delivers 18 stories to horrify you. Are you a fan of scary stories? GRADE: B

Table of Contents:

Introduction, by Michael Dirda — 9
Mannequins in Aspects of Terror — 13
The White Hands — 29
Apartment 205 — 45
Vrolyck — 59
Ghorla — 73
Cesare Thodol: Some Lines Written on a Wall — 93
Sentinels — 105
A Gentleman from Mexico — 121
The Black Mould — 145
Thyxxolqu — 149
Regina vs. Zoskia — 161
The Age of Decayed Futurity — 175
My World Has No Memories — 189
Outside Interference — 197
The Crimson Fog — 215
Court of Midnight — 245
In the Complex — 255

Acknowledgements — 267

I’ll watch anything with Christine Baranski in it. Baranski plays the “Maggie Smith” character–who gets the best lines– in Julian Fellowes’s (Gosford Park, Downton Abbey) HBO series, The Gilded Age.

Set in New York City in 1882, the 9-episode series focuses on the glamour and gaudiness of the rise of industrialism and “New Money.” Baranski’s character represents “Old Money” and the changes sweeping through the social system causes a lot of friction. Baranski and her fellow Old Money tribe resist the growing power of robber barons and wealthy industrialists.

The Gilded Age takes on equality, racism, homosexuality, and social mobility. Are you a fan of costume dramas like Downton Abbey and The Gilded Age? GRADE: Incomplete (but Episode One was a B+)

Forty years ago, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar rocked the academic world with their Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Ninteeth-Century Literary Imagination. Gilbert and Gubar ignited a conversation on why women writers were mostly ignored in English Departments.

In their latest disruptive book, Gilbert & Gubar bring their analysis to women writers of the 1950s to 2020. There’s plenty here about Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, Adrienne Rich, Nina Simone, Margret Atwood, Susan Sontag, Toni Morrison, and Gloria Steinem.

My favorite chapter is Chapter 6: Speculative Poetry, Speculative Fiction with excellent profiles of Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr, Joanna Russ, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Gilbert & Gubar cover a lot of ground in Still Mad. But for a one-volume history of major women writers in America from mid-20th Century until now, this would be my pick. Do you have a favorite woman writer from this era? GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Possible and the Impossible 1

Glass Ceilings and Broken Glass 3

How the Seventies Changed Our Lives 7

The Schooling of Hillary Rodham and Her Generation 12

The Cultural Chaos We Face 19

Keeping Things Going 23

Section 1 Stirrings in the Fifties

1 Midcentury Separate Spheres 29

Sylvia Plath’s Paper Dolls 31

HIS AND HER Time 36

Anatomy and Destiny 41

2 Race, Rebellion, and Reaction 48

Diane di Prima as a Feminist Beatnik 49

Gwendolyn Brooks’s Bronzeville 51

The Stages of Lorraine Hansberry’s Militancy 54

Audre Lorde’s Lesbian Biomythography 62

Joan Didion’s Vogue versus Betty Friedan’s Problem That Has No Name 66

Section II Eruptions in the Sixties

3 Three Angry Voices 73

Plath Despairs While Ariel Takes Wing 76

Adrienne Rich as a Cultural Daughter-in-Law 85

Nina Simone, Diva 92

4 The Sexual Revolution and the Vietnam War 102

Sex in New York City: Gloria Steinem versus Helen Gurley Brown 103

Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, and San Francisco 110

Women Strike for Peace 119

Valerie Solanas and the Rise of the Second Wave 125

Section III Awakenings in the Seventies

5 Protesting Patriarchy 135

Kate Millett’s Touchstone Book 139

Susan Sontag as Feminist Philosopher 146

Best Sellers in the Womanhouse: From Toni Morrison to Marilyn French 152

Plath’s Electric Take on the Fifties 164

6 Speculative Poetry, Speculative Fiction 173

The Metamorphoses of Adrienne Rich 175

Dystopias and Utopias 187

Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr. 188

Joanna Russ’s Misandry 197

Ursula Le Guin’s Androgyny 199

7 Bonded and Bruised Sisters 204

Gloria Steinem and Alice Walker at Ms. 205

Audre Lorde Dismantles the Master’s House 215

Maxine Hong Kingston’s Ghosts and Warriors 220

The Dinner Party 227

Section IV Revisions in the Eighties and Nineties

8 Identity Politics 235

Andrea Dworkin and the Sex Wars 238

Gloria Anzaldúa’s Mestiza Consciousness 244

Adrienne Rich’s Judaism 249

The Intersectionality of Toni Morrison 256

9 Inside and Outside the Ivory Closet 265

The Culture Wars 267

The Queer Theories of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler 269

Anne Carson’s Poetics of Love and Loss 276

Postmodernism/Transsexualism 281

Who Owns Feminism? 285

Section V Recessions/Revivals in the Twenty-First Century

10 Older and Younger Generations 293

The New Millennium 293

Alison Bechdel’s Literary Genealogy 298

Are You My Mother? 304

Eve Ensler’s V-Days 308

Transgender Visibility: From Susan Stryker to Maggie Nelson 311

11 Resurgence 318

Claudia Rankine Makes Black Lives Matter 320

The Broken Earth of N. K. Jemisin 326

Patricia Lockwood Sends Up the Church and the Family Romance 329

Headlining Feminism: From Rebecca Solnit to Beyoncé 332

Keeping Things Stirring 335

Epilogue: White Suits, Shattered Glass 345

Acknowledgments 355

Notes 359

Credits 413

Index 417

Yes, I know there’s an NFL Playoff game at 3:00 P.M. today between the LA Rams and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but the game all Buffalo Bills fans are waiting for is the Bills vs. Chiefs game with a 6:30 P.M. kickoff. The Chiefs are 3-point favorites. But the weather forecast for 36 degrees with mild winds beats last Saturday’s arctic conditions when the Bills put a beat-down on the Patriots. Of course, I’m rooting for the Bills, but I’m under no illusion that the Chiefs will make this a Tough Game. Go Bills!

Can Tom Brady do it again? The LA Rams destroyed the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night Football Playoff Edition 34-11. But the Buccaneers are tough to beat at home. The Bucs are favored by 2 1/2 points. This could be an Overtime game! I’m going with the Rams.

Who do you think will win these games?

“If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.” — Dorothy Parker

“If any two people could ever really get inside each other’s head, it would scare the pee out of both of them.” — John D. MacDonald, Dress Her in Indigo

“The best things in life are free. The second best are very, very expensive.” — Coco Chanel

I’m a sucker for books like Garner’s Quotations. As Dwight Garner points out in his Preface, people used to keep “commonplace” books where they would record bits of conversation, clever sayings from books, and snatches of dialogue from plays, TV, and movies. I found Garner’s Quotations a browser’s delight.

Garner’s Quotations includes a handy Index where you’ll find that there are six quotes from Henry James in this book…and 18 quotes of Clive James. If you’re looking for diversion and entertainment, Garner’s Quotations delivers both! GRADE: A

Mercedes Lackey has written dozens of fantasy novels. But, with A Study in Sable (2016) Lackey starts a sequence in her Elemental Masters series that border on Sherlock Holmes pastiches. I say “border” because Sherlock appears at key points in the novel, but so does Watson (who has Water Elemental powers) and his wife, Mary (with Air Elemental powers).

Continuing characters Nana Killian (a Psychic) and Sarah Lyon-White (a Medium) along with their clever birds–raven Neville and parrot Grey–investigate a series of strange events that lead them to a deadly entity. If you’re in the mood for a Sherlock Holmes pastiche with magical elements, A Study in Sable will entertain you. GRADE: B

Other Sherlock Holmes Pastiches in the Elemental Masters Series:

1. A Study in Sable (June 2016, ISBN 978-0756408725) featuring Sherlock Holmes and based on The Twa Sisters
2. A Scandal in Battersea (October 2017, ISBN 978-0756408732) featuring Sherlock Holmes and based on the Pied Piper of Hamelin
3. The Bartered Brides (October 2018, ISBN 978-0756408749) featuring Sherlock Holmes
4. The Case of the Spellbound Child (December 2019 ISBN 978-0756412111) featuring Sherlock Holmes

Kiss cash good-by! Eswar Prasad claims that we will become a cashless society in a couple of decades. More and more people use credit cards and their phones to pay for their purchases. Some stores are refusing to accept physical cash (partly because of Covid-19 concerns).

The trend is toward cryptocurrencies like:

• Ethereum (ETH)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Cardano (ADA)
• Polkadot (DOT)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
• Stellar (XLM)
• Dogecoin (DOGE)

If you want a peak at what the future of money will look like (and sooner than you think!), I recommend Prasad’s The Future of Money. We still use cash and checks so we’re in for a shock! How do you pay your bills? GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

I Laying the Bedrock

1 Racing to the Future 3

2 Money and Finance; The Basics 23

II Innovations

3 Will Fintech Make the World a Better Place? 61

4 Bitcoin Sets Off a Revolution, Then Falters 106

5 Crypto Mania 150

III Central Bank Money

6 The Case for Central Bank Digital Currencies 193

7 Getting Central Bank Digital Currencies Off the Ground 239

IV Ramifications

8 Consequences for the International Monetary System 277

9 Central Banks Run the Gauntlet 313

10 A Glorious Future Beckons, Perhaps 354

Notes 363

References 453

Acknowledgments 467

Credits 469

Index 473

Adam Zyglis, who grew up in Western New York, is a talented political cartoonist (checkout his political cartoon below). However, the grind of drawing political cartoons led Zyglis to writing a book celebrating Buffalo, its people, and the quirky lifestyle of this unique area.

Many of Zyglis’s cartoons in You Know You’re From Buffalo If… concern the Buffalo sports teams: the Bills and the Sabres. But, Zyglis isn’t shy about celebrating the legendary snowfalls that Buffalo is known for.

Adam Zyglis is a Pulitzer Prize winner and his cartoons are syndicated internationally. I appreciate that Zyglis took the time and effort to produce this love letter to Western NY. GRADE: A

The Cincinnati Bengals take on the well rested Tennessee Titans. The Bengals are 5-point underdogs. A lot of people think the Bengals can pull off the upset…but I’m not one of them.

The frozen tundra of Lambeau Field welcomes the San Francisco 49ers who humiliated the Dallas Cowboys last week (heads will roll). The well rested Packers should handle the 49ers who are 6-point underdogs.

Who do you think will win these games?

In his excellent Introduction, Richard A. Lupoff discusses the history of pocket-sized paperbound books designed for mass-market consumption. The Art of Pulp Fiction specifically concentrates on the paperback publishing industry from 1940 to 1970. The Art of Pulp Fiction chronicles the rise of the paperback format–at times at the expense of hardcover books–which appealed to a new audience of readers.

The Art of Pulp Fiction explores all the genres–Science Fiction, Fantasy, Westerns, Spy Novels, Mysteries, etc.–and includes wonderful cover artwork from the paperbacks of that era. The Art of Pulp Fiction is a feast for the eyes! Don’t miss this one! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction: A bright new morning / by Richard A. Lupoff — 8
In the beginning: dime novels, proto-paperbacks, and pocket books — 10
The floodgates open: publishers surge into an exciting new marketplace — 26
Gats, gals, and gumshoes: crime and mystery novels, hard-boiled and otherwise — 44
Saddles, six-guns, and sagebrush: Westerns, and the cactus cavaliers that made them popular — 64
Adventurers, past and present: spies, pirates, warriors, explorers, and soldiers of fortune — 84
Distant planets, future threats: science fiction migrates from the pulps to paperbacks — 104
Terror tales, fantasy worlds: tales of horror, the supernatural, and the imagination — 124
Changing times, new directions: post-World War II social issues influence paperback fiction — 144
The pulp-hero revival: Tarzan, the Shadow, Doc Savage, the Spider, and others — 164
Sex on the sleazy side: softcore sex novels promise more than they deliver —
Toiling at typewriters: paperback authors who enjoyed remarkable success — 184
Brilliant brushwork: paperback artists whose striking covers guaranteed sales — 218
Afterword: Paperbacks since 1970 — 232

Index — 236

Picture Credits/Acknowledgements — 239

Contributors — 240