The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym of Nantucket, by Edgar Allan Poe - I pulled this from the shelf from a collection my wife has had for ages and ages after finishing the manga of At The Mountains of Madness last month, which was so heavily inspired by this. A few years ago, I was writing a pirate TTRPG that I put aside after learning too much about actual piracy - if I'd read this back then, it might have pushed me onward. There's some absolutely weird tonal thumps in here that don't connect with the modern reader, and I mean thumps like shoes in a drier. The framing is bizarre, and there's the requisite early 1800's racist subplot, but on the whole I'm glad to have read this, especially knowing all the other works it's inspired over the centuries. Love how you could just... stop writing a serialized story back then and be like "figure it out, weirdos".
Cookbook of the Seven Seas, by Dagmar Freuchen - Part of a trove of 1960's cookbooks I found in a little free library. It's not explicitly framed as such, but this is an homage by the author to her husband, who died unexpected on an exploration trip. His memory touches every chapter, which are based around how the couple interpreted the seven seas of the world. The only recipe I bookmarked was about making rice pudding with Coca Cola and a single almond merely to make my own spouse shudder. It's a sweet and sad cookbook illustrated by the author, her own vanished world wrapped in other layers of disappearance here for me decades later.
Taste of Eritrea, by Olivia Warren - Same cache of books, but from the 90s. I can't find out anything else about the author, but the subtitle for this one is "Recipes from one of East Africa's most interesting little countries". Hrm. Well, it's autobiographical of her several-month stay, and she seems to have had a lovely time. The recipes themselves are two thirds "yes, cook food with spices" and one third "oh no that would take three days". Her hopes for the country itself have not turned out quite the way she hoped, sadly.
Saga Vol. 11, by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan - Forgot I ordered this, and got a nice little mailbox surprise. It's more Saga, it's more "war is awful" drum beat, but a few surprising character moments. The dream sequence/flashback is getting a little tired as a storytelling device, no matter how much of an excuse it gives to draw dead characters. Still, looking forward to the next one.
42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams, edited by Kevin Jon Davies - I Kickstartered this and a 42nd birthday present to myself, thinking the timing was just too good. The pandemic slammed research and production though, and I just got it this year, having almost forgotten about it. The drafts and scraps of unproduced works I found the most fascinating, these stories that'll never be fully told. The letters that his friends were invited to write were a touching addition I don't recall seeing in other anthologies. I think I'm going to have to pull some of his books off the shelves soon after reading this, I haven't touched them in too long.
Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s, by Adam Rowe - I got this new, but I can't remember where I heard of it. I was at first surprised at quantity of the writing, expecting more of an art book, but then pleased by its quality and the context it set. The production quality is quite nice, which is fitting of the gorgeous subject matter. I want to take another couple lazy passes at this one, just soaking in the imagination oozing out of these pages.
