Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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John Barry’s High Road to China OST

I already mentioned how High Road to China is one of my favorite stories.
I like the original novel, the movie adaptation, the cast, the set-up, the movie poster that still hangs in my room and, of course, the music.

high road to china 1

John Barry has been one of the composers that invisibly provided a soundtrack to my first twenty years – he scored movies I loved, TV series I grew up with… he was inescapable, even if I only realized his ubiquity years later.

So, for today1, here’s the complete soundtrack of High Road to China, 1983, by the great John Barry.
Enjoy.

  1. it’s Valentine’s day, after all, and to me High Road to China remains a great date movie – which probably goes to explain why I’m chronically single. ↩


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Screwball

“Welcome to another world – of sleeping cars and porters, automobiles that start with handles and stop without warning; of starlit ocean liners, long-distance buses and auto camps. Luggage, purses, clothing, memories, identities and minds will be lost. Almost everyone can render popular tunes in close harmony and dance, but almost nobody can safely carry a tray – crockery and silverware will be dropped. The books here have titles such as Why Snakes Are Necessary and archaeologists post each other bones that don’t exist. Telephones are vaguely monumental, ring as loud as fire bells, and are ignored. Even face-to-face communication is confused. This may be in part because three or four people will often talk at once and at speeds that are medically ill-advised. There could also be animals around. And a great deal of falling – over logs and feet and sofas, into ditches, into water, into love.”

A great article about screwball comedies and the women in them, from The Guardian‘s archives.

InNameOnly.1405968502

Screwball comedies were, in their own way, a sort of fantasy. Which probably explains why I like them so much.


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Five by Dodge

More ebooks – it’s been a while since I last talked about pulp.

David Dodge (1910-1974) is one of my favorite authors when it comes to thriller crime fiction.
Dodge is universally known as the author of To Catch a Thief, from which Alfred Hitchcock made his classic caper movie featuring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, but in fact had a huge catalog of titles, most of which are hard to find and have never been reprinted in these last forty years.

To Catch A Thief

Apparently, Dodge – an accountant with a passion for amateur theater – had started his writing career on a dare: when he had complained about the poorly written crime novel he was reading on the beach, claiming he could do better, his wife Elva bet him five dollars that he could not.

David and Elva Dodge, Princeton, NJ, 1956

In 1941, David Dodge wrote Death and Taxes, and won his five bucks. Continue reading →


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Arabian Nights Art 1: Kamar & Budur

arabian nights italy 1958 2My love of the Arabian Nights is on file – I have a few different editions, and I re-read a few tales every year. I’m still looking for the perfect, definitive edition, well knowing I will never find it and yet, that’s part of the mystique of the book.

Back in 1958, Italian publisher Fratelli Fabbri issued a gorgeously illustrated selection of stories from the Arabian Nights.
It was a 54-pages book – part of their line of books for young readers – and it included just three stories:

the Tale of Kamar al Zalam

the Tale of thge Blind Baba Abdalla

the Tale of Abu Kir the Dyer and Abu Sir the Barber

I actually never saw the book. What I saw was the artwork, which was absolutely stunning, and is credited to Benvenuti (most likely Gianni Benvenuti, 1926-2005).
So here’s a gallery taken from the first story, The tale of Prince Kamar and princess Budur.
You can read the original story on Wikisource.
I’ll post galleries for the next two stories in the next two weeks.


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Hard Case Crime in ebook

The good news is that I have discovered that finally a batch of Hard Case Crime novels are available in ebook format.
The bad news is that now I’ll spend a lot of money on Hard Case Crime ebooks. And I have already started, actually.

thieves fall outYesterday night, to give myself a prize for a job well done – and for discovering it was only Wednesday while I thought it was Friday already – I got me a copy of Gore Vidal’s Thieves Fall Out, a “lost” pulp novel the American writer originally published as Cameron Kay in 1953.

I had set my sights on the paperback a while back, but it was way too expensive for my tastes – especially considering I have a love/hate relationship with Vidal.

But then… the plot seems fun – a story of scoundrels abroad. And an Egyptian setting.
Also, the novel has been compared to the work of Eric Ambler – and that’s high praise as far as I’m concerned.
And the cover is absolutely fantastic – as per Hard Case tradition.
All this, for one buck? C’mon – how could I resist?
Now I have something for the weekend. I’ll let you know my impressions.

And as I said, it’s very likely that more titles will follow.
Don’t you hate it too, when that happens…?


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The Challenge Page

As you can see from the menu in top right corner of this page, there is now a static page for the Karavansara Reading Challeng 2016 – this will serve as an introduction to the project, and a repository for links and other information that might be required.

reading challenge patch 2016 1Also, I’m refurbishing the @karavansarablog channel on Twitter, and will use the #KaravanChallenge hashtag for announcements, blog post diffusion and, why not, scheduled live chats on Twitter.

AND we have a badge, that you see here on the left – feel free to steal it and expose it on your blog, website or social media to spread the word about the Challenge.
You can link it back to http://Karavansara.live, or to the above mentioned page.

Cheers, and thank you!