High Plains Drifter

The Drifter
VIP
Come up with funny titles that you wish were real. Even better if in the end they turn out to be real.


Always thought it would be funny to see a book called.......

True Tales, of a Soda Jerk
How I Survived a Hour in Walmart, & Lived To Tell About It
Oh God, Is She Really Wearing Leggings, While Blading?
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
12923321_10153264192891191_1222822743962929033_n.png


Feel free to chat here about any and everything to do with books and literature.....

A literary free for all.....
 
Last edited:

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10



The adventures of Perry Rhodan, a series of science fiction books....

These seemed to be as prolific as Tribbles back in the day....






But has anyone here ever actually read them?

I know that I never did.

Are they any good?

And it seems that, as well as over a hundred novels, he has branched into comics too.

George Lucas has acknowledged that Perry Rhodan was an influence on Star Wars, although not as much as Flash Gordon.


 

CoriSCapnSkip

Member: Rank 2
So far I have obtained audiobooks from the following sources:

--CDs as gifts from Family and friends, or bought myself if I really wanted or found on sale
--CDs checked out from the library
--Files borrowed from Overdrive and OneClick Digital through the library
--Files purchased from Amazon
--Files for free from LibriVox (for out-of-copyright works if a professional recording does not exist or is hard to find)
--Even bought one as a file from iTunes once
--Cassettes bought cheap at bookstores, library book sales, and online. I also have a friend who sometimes gives me cassettes.

It's not enough! There are STILL books of which audio recordings were made, near impossible to reasonably obtain! I also have bales of print books I picked up because they were favorites, said by someone somewhere at sometime to be collectible, and so on. Some I might sell, but would actually rather trade for things I want. Hence this question regarding sites for book and audiobook exchanges, trades, and swaps:

Anyone tried these? How was your experience? Is one site recognized as the best? Thanks.

https://hubpages.com/literature/Audiobook-Swapping-Sites---Swap-and-Share-Audiobooks-Online
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10



The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility (originally called Futility) is an 1898 novella written by Morgan Robertson. The story features the fictional ocean liner Titan, which sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. The Titan and its sinking have been noted to be very similar to the real-life passenger ship RMS Titanic, which sank fourteen years later. Following the sinking of the Titanic, the novel was reissued with some changes, particularly in the ship's gross tonnage.


The first half of Futility introduces the hero John Rowland. Rowland is a disgraced former US Navy officer. Now an alcoholic fallen to the lowest levels of society, he's been dismissed from the Navy and works as a deckhand on the Titan. One April night the ship hits an iceberg, sinking somewhat before the halfway point of the novel.

The second half follows Rowland. He saves the young daughter of a former lover by jumping onto the iceberg with her. The pair find a lifeboat washed up on the iceberg, and are eventually rescued by a passing ship. But the girl is recovered by her mother and Rowland is arrested for her kidnapping. A sympathetic magistrate discharges him and rebukes the mother for unsympathy to her daughter's savior. Rowland disappears from the world.

In a brief final chapter covering several years, Rowland works his way up from homeless and anonymous fisherman to a desk job and finally, two years after passing his civil service exam, to "a lucrative position under the Government, and as he seated himself at the desk in his office, could have been heared to remark: 'Now John Rowland, your future is your own. You have merely suffered in the past from a mistaken estimate of the importance of women and whisky.' THE END" (1898 edition at Google Books).[2]

A later edition includes a coda. Rowland receives a letter from the mother, who congratulates him and pleads for him to visit her, and the girl who begs for him.


Although the novel was written before the RMS Titanic was even conceptualized, there are some uncanny similarities between both the fictional and real-life versions. Like the Titan, the fictional ship sank in April in the North Atlantic, and there were not enough lifeboats for all the passengers. There are also similarities between the size (800 ft (244 m) long for Titan versus 882 ft 9 in (269 m) long for the Titanic[3]), speed (25 knots for Titan, 22.5 knots for Titanic[4]) and life-saving equipment.

Beyond the name, the similarities between the Titanic and the fictional Titan include:

  • Both were triple screw (propeller)
  • Described as "unsinkable"
    • The Titan was the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men (800 feet, displacing 75,000 tons, up from 45,000 in the 1898 edition). The Titanic was 46,000 tons and 882 feet long and was deemed "practically unsinkable" (as quoted in Robertson's book).
  • Shortage of lifeboats
    • The Titanic carried only 16 lifeboats, plus 4 Engelhardt folding lifeboats,.
    • The Titan carried "as few as the law allowed", 24 lifeboats, which could carry less than half of her total complement of 3,000.
  • Struck an iceberg
    • Moving at 22½ knots, the Titanic struck an iceberg on the starboard side on the night of April 14, 1912, in the North Atlantic, 400 nautical miles (740 km; 460 mi) away from Newfoundland.
    • Moving at 25 knots, the Titan also struck an iceberg on the starboard side on an April night in the North Atlantic, 400 nautical miles (740 km; 460 mi) from Newfoundland (Terranova).
  • Sinking
    • The Titanic sank, and more than half of her 2,200 passengers and crew died. Of the Titanic's crew and passengers, 705 survived. 1,523 were lost.
    • The Titan also sank, and more than half of her 2,500 passengers also died. In fact, only 13 ultimately survived the disaster.
Following the Titanic's sinking, some people credited Robertson with clairvoyance. Robertson denied this, claiming the similarities were explained by his extensive knowledge of shipbuilding and maritime trends.


The novella is available free on amazon kindle here.....

The Wreck of the Titan or, Futility Kindle Edition
by Morgan Robertson

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wreck-Tita...690291&sr=1-1&keywords=the+wreck+of+the+titan



 

Hux

Member: Rank 6
That's nothing.

In 1838, Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. A story about a group of sailors who, without water or food, draw straws to choose who they will cannibalise in order to survive. They choose the character named Richard Parker.

46 years later in 1884, a ship named the Mignonette with four sailors aboard found themselves stranded without food or water and elected to draw straws to decide who would be sacrificed. The young boy chosen was... Richard Parker.

When the three men returned to England, they openly admitted what they had done (believing that the The Custom of the Sea ruling would protect them from prosecution). Sadly, they were wrong and their case ( R v Dudley and Stephens) set a president that Necessity should no longer be a defence against a charge of murder.

No evidence was offered against Brooks and Dudley and Stephens only served six months' imprisonment. Dudley never accepted the justice of his conviction.

When Yan Martel wrote Life of Pi, he chose the name Richard Parker because of its eerie relationship to stranded men eaten by others in order to survive.
 
Last edited:

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10


From behind the scenes making of books, to illustrated screenplays.... to photo-heavy coffee table books....

What are your favourite tie in books to some of your favourite movies and television programmes?



 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
I used to love this coffee table book growing up, profusely illustrated with black and white and colour films that I could only dream of seeing in those days before VHS or DVD.

Now I have had a chance to see many of the movies that created the many mysterious stills.

There have been a few disappointments! :emoji_alien:




There seemed to be a cottage industry in these type of books back in the day. More or less a stream of consciousness list of all the author;s favourite vintage films, complete with a photo from the movie. He was the expert and we were the humble, ignorant reader.

And I must confess, if it were not for this book, I would never have heard of Georges Melies ....

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/georges-melies.679/
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
il_570xN.338435969.jpg


Post your recommendations here for books that are regarded as throwaway rubbish by the bookreading elite!

But you enjoyed reading them really!

From horror, to romance, to science fiction and everything in between...

What were your guilty pleasures?
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
I loved this one as a kid, when Mills & Boon branched out into horror novels for a while!


bloodofdracula.jpg

I still wait in vain for the film adaption!

I found this info about it...


Sometime in 1977, a series of paperback novels appeared, out of the blue, in the book shops, newsagents, chemists and other places that routinely had racks of pulp fiction on offer at the time. These new books stood out, because they were clearly a series – unconnected to each other in content perhaps, but unconnected to any other paperbacks out there in look. For a start, they were very slim – around or under 100 pages each. And their covers – lurid illustrations against a white background – were unlike anything else on the market too.

They were published by the previously unknown Venture Books, but the look and size of them made a certain sense when you saw who Venture Books actually were – on the back on the books was the name Mills & Boon. Yes, the publishers of countless throwaway romantic novels for decades. M&B books were equally slim and uniform in format, clearly designed as a quick, forgettable pleasure.

What made them suddenly – and briefly – move into the world of horror, action and exploitation is unknown, but it was an experiment that was over as son as it began. Presumably, the books – despite lively covers, some genre name authors like Peter Tremayne and lurid titles – couldn’t compete with the more substantial efforts of New English Library and the like. These books, which were briefly everywhere, rapidly vanished and are now very hard to find. I rather wish I’d bought more than one (The Blood of Dracula), even if it was a rather lacklustre tale, notably lacking in very much Dracula action.


These were the other ones....


adam.jpg bigdeep.jpg houndoffrankenstein.jpg rig59.jpg tigertrap.jpg


 
Last edited:

Carol

Member: Rank 5
What were your guilty pleasures?
More of an "are" than a "were" - I do love getting stuck into the also-rans of the golden age of British detective fiction just as much as I do the grandes dames Allingham, Christie and Sayers. Although I take almost all my pleasures guilt-free there are aspects of political incorrectitude in their word views as you'd expect between the 1920s and early 60s - I cringe and move on with the plot (nearly) regardless.
 
Top