2012 Year End Blog Round-up

I enjoyed last year’s year-end blog post round-up, so here is a brief post summarizing and reflecting on the last year at Tales from the Bookworm’s Lair.

I wrote 46 new blog posts this year (including this one), which is certainly on the low side, but I hope to boost my numbers in 2013! What can I say, finishing a dissertation and starting a full-time college teaching gig takes a lot of time and doesn’t leave much room left for reading and blogging about books.

Here are the top search terms that visitors have used to reach my blog:

tintin
tintin covers
doc savage
tin tin
choose your own adventure
tintin cover
cthulhu mythos
the ship that sailed to mars
fuck me ray bradbury
james bama doc savage covers
classic vampire novels
alternative book titles
doc savage covers
alternate book titles
tin tin covers
tintin cover art
amazing stories
celebrity libraries
stephen king books
doc savage cover art
the insidious dr. fu manchu
the swap academy greg stevens

Obviously I need to write more about Tintin and Doc Savage!

Here are the most popular blog posts I’ve done thus far (my general home page gets the most hits by far, but people also seem drawn to particular posts):

Making reading sexy
Great “new” Doc Savage and Tintin Covers
Book Review: The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, by Sax Rohmer
Classic fantasy novel: The Ship That Sailed to Mars by William Timlin
Choose Your Own Adventure books analysis
New interview with Doc Savage cover artist James Bama
Stephen King Flowchart
20 celebrity libraries
Cartographic analysis of maps in fantasy novels
Review: Hell Island by Matthew Reilly
Alternate book titles for the classics
Modern science is catching up with occult tomes
Book Review: That Which Should Not Be by Brett J. Talley
Book Review: The Hunt for Bin Laden: Task Force Dagger by Robin Moore
Rachel Bloom has finally met Ray Bradbury
Review: Nick Carter #53: The Arab Plague
New Doc Savage novels!
Book review: Roberts Ridge: A Story of Courage and Sacrifice on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan by Malcolm MacPherson
10 classic vampire novels that inspired Anno Dracula
Book Review: Level 26: Dark Origins by Anthony E. Zuiker and Duane Swierczynski

So what do these results tell us? I’m not entirely sure, but several things are apparent:

1. Not much has changed since last year. These results are all remarkably similar to those from December 31, 2011.
2. My post regarding The Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society (link NSFW) was probably the single most popular blog post I’ve ever done, and has returned the most traffic to my blog of any site. As I said last year, carry on, ladies! May your outdoor reading adventures continue into the New Year, especially when it gets a little warmer.
3. Readers STILL love both Doc Savage and Tintin, and are frequently visiting in search of more. I didn’t write anything new about those series this year, but obviously there’s a great deal of interest in them, so I probably should.
4. As I said last year, t’s never clear to me what readers will enjoy and what they won’t, and that’s ok. I write this blog almost entirely for myself. However, I love interacting with readers, and hope to encourage more of that in the new year (suggestions on how to do that are always welcome). Here’s hoping I have a bit more time for reading, reviewing, and blogging in 2013. Now that I am also reviewing for Hellnotes (and reposting those reviews here after a brief delay), I am reading and reviewing even more horror-themed fiction than usual, but that’s not at all a bad thing.

I have several new blog posts queued up for the new year, and will open with something I had never done before: interview an author. So look for that soon. I will also have to include a post or two about recent book acquisitions (when not blogging I have been having a number of new book-related adventures) and some long-overdue commentary about the state of the book industry (writing, publishing, retailing, reading).

Just to close things out — and because I don’t like to do posts that don’t include an image to accompany a wall of text — here’s a picture of me reading my Kindle on the couch with my Chihuahua Crisco, who is apparently exhausted from all the reading that he’s been doing.

Hope the new year brings you many great books!

Year-End Blog Round-Up

I haven’t done one of these year-end blog posts before, but I’ve seen lots of others do them and they seem like fun.

Here are the top search terms that visitors have used to reach my blog:

making reading sexy
alternate book titles
tintin covers
doc savage horror in gold
harry potter comics
wildside press coupon
tintin cover
doc savage covers
doc savage desert demons
doc savage
harry potter comics
choose your own adventure books
alternative book titles
celebrity libraries
richard blade books
fuck me ray bradbury
horror in gold doc savage
james bama doc savage covers
james bama doc savage

Here are the most popular blog posts I’ve done thus far (my general home page gets the most hits by far, but people also seem drawn to particular posts):

Making reading sexy
Great “new” Doc Savage and Tintin Covers
Alternate book titles for the classics
New Doc Savage novels!
New interview with Doc Savage cover artist James Bama
Book Review: Invasion! Earth vs. the Aliens Trilogy by Robert Reginald
Review: Nick Carter #53: The Arab Plague
Harry Potter comics
Review: Rhialto the Marvellous by Jack Vance
Book Review: Allison Hewitt Is Trapped: A Zombie Novel by Madeleine Roux
Choose Your Own Adventure books analysis
Book Review: Masked, edited by Lou Anders
Tolkien literary criticism and new media
Book Review: Mugger Blood (The Destroyer #30) by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
Classic fantasy novel: The Ship That Sailed to Mars by William Timlin
Wildside Press coupon code
Cartographic analysis of maps in fantasy novels
Book review: The Hunt for Bin Laden: Task Force Dagger by Robin Moore
Rachel Bloom has finally met Ray Bradbury

So what do these results tell us? I’m not entirely sure, but several things are apparent:

1. My post regarding The Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society (link NSFW) was probably the single most popular blog post I’ve ever done, and has returned the most traffic to my blog of any site. Carry on, ladies! May your outdoor reading adventures continue into the New Year, especially when it gets a little warmer.
2. Readers absolutely love both Doc Savage and Tintin, and are frequently visiting in search of more. I think I will have to do some reviews of both series (two personal favorites) next year.
3. It’s never entirely clear to me what people will enjoy and what they won’t, and that’s ok. I write this blog almost entirely for myself. However, I love interacting with readers, and hope to encourage more of that in the new year (suggestions on how to do that are always welcome). Here’s hoping I have a bit more time for reading, reviewing, and blogging in 2012. Sorry my pace has slacked a bit this year, especially compared with 2010, but I’m teaching and finishing up my dissertation (cross your fingers for me in the spring) and sometimes I just don’t have it in me to post after I’ve finished all my work.

Hope the new year brings you many great books!

And just remember:

Recent Acquisitions: Pulpy awesomeness

I haven’t posted about recent book acquisitions in a long, long while, but I have some real treasures to mention, so here goes. I stopped by a local used bookstore I don’t pop into very often a couple weeks ago. No reason for staying away for so long, I just never get around to it. In any case, the place had lain fallow for probably a year or so. These finds were well worth the wait. Here’s what I got:

* The first two Dreamlands novels by Brian Lumley ($2.50 each). Sure, I know that many Lovecraft purists don’t like Lumley’s contributions to the Mythos, but I’ve always enjoyed his enthusiasm, even if he tends to expend too much of his wordcount on exposition and really long flashbacks.

* Seven Doc Savage novels (the Bantam editions), five of which I didn’t already have ($2.50 each). The ones I didn’t already have: THE MYSTIC MULLAH, THE PHANTOM CITY, THE METAL MASTER, THE KING MAKER, and THE RED TERRORS. The duplicates were THE DEVIL GENGHIS and THE LAND OF TERROR. I need to bundle up those latter books with my other Doc Savage duplicates and put them on eBay. I’ve also got some Dray Prescott and Fu Manchu duplicates, among many others, so drop me a line if you’re interested and perhaps we can work something out.

* Seven ORIGINAL pulp magazines, all in just about as good a condition as you could expect to find in 2011. ($4.00 each!!!!!) These are: FANTASTIC ADVENTURES June, July, September, October, November 1948; January 1949; and August 1952. I have many, many reprint editions of pulp novels, stories, collections, the magazines themselves, etc., but these are my first actual pulps. Yes, I know that this wasn’t one of the major titles, and it’s from an era that was slightly past the heyday of the pulps, but, hey, at $4 a piece, how could I pass these up? A phenomenal find, and one that made my day. (The pictures of these beauties are a little fuzzy because they are in plastic sheaths.)

New Doc Savage novels!

Doc Savage is one of the best known of the old pulp heroes, and while I’ve never reviewed any of the Doc Savage novels (I really should correct that obvious oversight), I have posted links to some great spoof Doc Savage covers as well as to an interview with James Bama who illustrated about sixty of the Bantam reprint edition covers of the Doc Savage novels.

The late, great Lester Dent wrote most of the original Doc Savage novels (using the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson), and his literary executor Will Murray completed and published seven Doc Savage manuscripts left unfinished by Dent in the early 1990s. Those were the last Doc Savage novels the world has seen.

Until now.

I am very pleased to report that, confirming some rumors and rumblings we started hearing a year or so ago, Will Murray will publish seven all-new Doc Savage novels, starting in July 2011 with Altus Press. The first title is The Desert Demons and looks like a class Doc Savage adventure. The second will be called Horror in Gold, and should come out in late summer. No word yet on the other titles. This press release includes a few more details. Needless to say, Will Murray is the right author for the job and Altus Press, famous for its support of pulps, is the right publisher. This is a good day for fans of Doc Savage.

New interview with Doc Savage cover artist James Bama

A new interview with classic Doc Savage cover artist James Bama has just been published here. At 84, he’s still alive and kicking.

In case you’re not familiar with Bama’s work on Doc Savage, here are a couple of good ones:


Now those are classic Doc Savage!

Here’s a link to a collection of many other Doc Savage covers.

Great “new” Doc Savage and Tintin Covers

No, sadly, these aren’t real covers for new, upcoming Doc Savage or Tintin books.

What would you give to read a Doc Savage/Shadow vs. Fu Manchu novel?

Here’s a cover for one of Tintin’s “lost” adventures where he encounters elements of the Cthulhu Mythos:

You can find many, many more Doc Savage covers here and here.

The Tintin cover is a from a small collection of four Tintin vs. Cthulhu covers available here.

[Edit dated January 5, 2011: Thanks to an alert visitor to the blog, I have discovered that there are now a total of seven Tintin covers available!]