… I wonder who she’s talking to…
“A thing is not strange in itself; it depends on me to make it strange.”
GUO PU (preface to the Guideways through Mountains and Seas)
Finding a good bad guy
The gentleman you see portrayed here on th eright is Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg.
And the word “gentleman” is probably not the right one.
Also known as “the Mad Baron”, Ungern-Sternberg is one of the blatant proofs that history can best pulp fiction any day of the week, and without trying.
There is no Bond villain, no dime novel Yellow Peril, no fictional bad guy that can go head-to-head with the Baron in terms of madness and cruelty, and hope to win.
And all this is just fine because, you see, I’m doing the final draft of my novel, and I need to make my bad guy… worse.
The eating-babies-alive sort of worse. Continue reading
Bogart Estate Neo-noir on IndieGogo
A very quick post to point out a worthy – and fun – campaign on IndieGogo.
The Estate of Humphrey Bogart produced an independent noir movie called This Last Lonely Place.
Now they are financing the launch and distribution of the film through a crowdfunding.
The gist of the thing – you shell out 8 bucks, you watch the movie in streaming, or download it before its release.
You pledge more, you get a cartload of perks.
But check out the campaign – it’s quite interesting.
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The other influential books
So, ok, you know the story about the ten books that influenced our lives and all that.
My friend Claire, being complicated*, made two lists – she rightly observed that if there’s some books that influenced our lives because we loved ’em, it’s also true there some books that pushed us in certain directions because we… well, because we loathed them.
So, can I put together a similar list?
Books that made me what I am because I did not like them?
I’m not sure I can make it to ten, so I’ll stop at five.
Yes, we have a new header.
Do you like it?
Use the star ratings above – or comment.
Small kingdom, great book
Armchair Traveler is a publisher that promises to drain my meager resources in the next few months. An imprint of Haus Publishing, they have an extensive catalog of travel books and travel memoirs.
I’m currently reading Martin Uitz’s Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdon of the Thunder Dragon, that they published in 2008.
Austrian Uitz was a travel writer, tour guide and mountaineer – he died in 2007,aged 55, from a heart hailment, and the book (originally written in German) was published as a commemoration to his travels and achievements. Continue reading
Karavansara 