On 11 July 2000, Mark Sullivan wrote:
: I was thinking how much it would have helped if they had
included a
: line like, "If you like this, you should try this . . ."
And that's
: what I get from the debates over classification, the
examples and
: groupings of authors, so I can say, Hey, I like these
three, but who's
: [blank]? I'll have to try reading [blank].
That's the best kind of guide to have. Bloomsbury has done
them for SF, mysteries and a couple of other topics (not
available in the US, as far as I know). Short intros to major
writers in the field, a few recommended books, and pointers
to other similar writers. They also threw in some larger
diagrams where they'd take a major book, pick apart its
elements, and suggest other titles that shared that
theme.
Does anyone have the one they did on mysteries? I think I
used to, but no more. Here's what Kenneth McLeish's
BLOOMSBURY GOOD READING GUIDE recommends as follow-ons to
Hammett: Chandler's THE LADY IN THE LAKE, Cain's NO ORCHIDS
FOR MISS BLANDISH (sic), Macdonald's THE DROWNING POOL, Peter
Coffin's (Latimer's pseudonym) THE SEARCH FOR MY GREAT
UNCLE'S HEAD, Andrew Bergman's THE BIG KISS OFF OF 1944 (?),
and Mailer's TOUGH GUY'S DON'T DANCE. Chandler leads you to
THE MALTESE FALCON, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, THE DROWNING POOL
again, John Milne's SHADOW PLAY (?), NO ORCHIDS which is
correctly attributed to James Hadley Chase, and Greg
MacDonald's FLETCH.
If anyone wants to take a writer X or book Y and suggest,
with reasons, a handful of writers or books to try if you
liked X or Y, we could make up a list that would probably be
handy for us and newcomers to the field. Heck, we could
identify some salient elements of hardboileditude and pick
the five books that best represent each aspect.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Jul 2000 EDT