Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Sleepless nights and dinosaurs

This last week has been pretty weird all things considered.
It’s now 2 am as I’m writing this. My usual insomnia made a major comeback, so that I spent most of the nights up, and then crashed into a deep, dream-infested slumber after lunch.
Which sounds pretty lovecraftian, but is really bad for the little social life I still manage to have.
On the plus side, I spend the nights writing, and have now hit a solid 8000-words per day rhythm, and I am now actually hitting all of my headlines in time, if not with a certain advance. Right out I’m putting the finishing touches on a story I’ll submit tomorrow morning – if I can dream up (ah!) a suitable title.
And I’ve been following online courses.
Apart from the course I am following about heart diseases (because I saw what happened to my father and I want to live), I’ve been brushing up my Spanish (because I want to leave this country, and Spanish is quite widespread) and I’ve just spent a few hours refreshing my knowledge of dinosaurs with a wonderful MOOC from the University of Alberta, called Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology. Because, dinosaurs.

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By the way, this course actually starts officially next week, and if you like dinosaurs, it’s highly recommended: clear, in-depth, fun, and with some spectacular interactive support.
Check it out.

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The World Adventurers Club and the OTRR Group

I guess my friend Claire will love this one.
I recently discovered the Old Time Radio Research Group (aka OTRR Group), a band of old time radio enthusiasts that maintain what they describe as the most accurate archive of OTR series in the world.

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Which is quite the thing – and in these evenings, while Italy was being besieged by the San Remo Music Festival, I slipped back into the past thanks to a pretty fun radio series from 1932, called World Adventurers Club. Continue reading


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KaravanCast Episode 1: a resources list

This is a sort of follow-up to my post about the first episode of the KaravanCast.
I’ve been asked to provide links to some of the books and movies I mentioned in my ramble about King Solomon’s Mines, and here’s a short roundup of what you can find for free on the web.

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Future podcasts will be posted with a full list of resources included.
Thanks for listening!

Books

King Solomon’s Mines on Project Gutenberg

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar on Project Gutenberg

The Scarlett Citadel at Project Gutenberg Australia

Movies on Youtube

1937 King Solomon’s Mines

1950 King Solomon’s Mines

1985 King Solomon’s Mines

2004 King Solomon’s Mines

Note: quality can be less than optimal.

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The other books by Clive Cussler

php49246e79454e7Confessions of a reader and writer of adventure stories: I always found Dirk Pitt insufferable.
And while I always liked Clive Cussler for his no-frills attitude to writing and his honest commercialism (and his aloha shirts), every single time I tried to settle down with a Dirk Pitt novel I wasn’t able to go beyond the third chapter.
In part I blame the Italian translations, in part the lasting effects of Raise the Titanic, that sort of cast a lugubrious shadow over what was supposed to be a high-adventure yarn, spoiling my fun for the following decades.
And much as I appreciated the opening titles sequence and the soundtrack for Sahara (see below), it did not actually help the defense of Dirk Pitt’s case as far as I am concerned. Continue reading