I finished two books during this week, as well as one volume of a multi-volume work and two pulp magazine issues.

Books

1. All Those in Favor, by H. Martin — a 1969 collection of business-related cartoons published by the American Management Association, this small volume reprints items that first appeared in several journals, including three put out by the association and the doubtless similarly oriented magazine Sales Management. Though some of the content is out-of-date, quite a few of the cartoons still elicit at least a chuckle. Mildly recommended.
2. Crossfire Trail, by Louis L’Amour — a shanghaied sailor makes a promise to a dying man to aid the man’s wife and daughter, but he meets with mistrust and hostility when he attempts to fulfil his commitment; fast-paced and engaging, although a few plot threads aren’t really resolved, and a few developments in the story are rather rushed; recommended nevertheless, but perhaps not the best place to start with L’Amour.

Continuing Reads

1. A Laugh a Day Keeps the Doctor Away, by humorist Irvin S. Cobb — a collection of 366 amusing anecdotes published in 1923, which I’ll be reading at the rate of one per day.
2. More Heart Throbs — the sequel to the similar Heart Throbs, an anthology of prose and verse selections, often sentimental in nature, submitted by the general public and famous people, published in 1911; I’ll be reading one or more pages (as needed for the selections) per day throughout the year.
3. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, translated by Sir Richard F. Burton in the late 19th century — I hope to read all ten volumes as well as the six supplemental volumes this year. I finished the first volume (and the first 33 nights, this week.
4. Orlando Innamorato, by Matteo Boiardo, translated by Charles Stanley Ross — I hope to finish this Renaissance Italian epic this year.

Magazines

1. Ranch Romances, Second October Number, 1949
   Though fairly enjoyable, the stories in this issue of Ranch Romances were a middling lot overall, with perhaps the best being Austin Corcoran’s novelette, “Veiled Courage,” in which a cowhand with a past comes to the aid of a woman who has witnessed a killing. The short story “The Courting of Molly,” by Philip Ketchum, offers up some gentle humor, and the article “Cowgirl Saddlemaker” gives an interesting profile of Samantha “Sammy” Sisco, who together with her brother Gene and sister Bertha was a noted leather-carver in the mid-twentieth century.
   For a cover image and a bit more discussion, see my previous post on this issue.
2. Weird Tales, March 1923
   The inaugural issue of “The Unique Magazine” suffers from rather too much of its sort of thing, as there are several cases where more than one story treads the same ground — and too many just aren’t very good. Still, there are a few standouts: Anthony M. Rud’s novelette “Ooze,” pictured on the cover by by R. R. Epperly, tells an intriguing tale of an experiment gone bad, though curiously the action is largely off-page; even madder science is to be found in “The Ape-Man,” by J.B.M. Clarke, Jr., albeit the latter story is minor in its achievement. And though not my favorite, “Hark! The Rattle!” by Joel Townsley Rogers gives a foretaste of the sort of nightmare one encounters in his masterpiece, The Red Right Hand. Hamilton Craigie’s “The Chain” is of interest as a more-conventional detective story, and “The Accusing Voice,” by Meredith Davis, tells a tale of a former jury foreman haunted, apparently, by a guilty conscience (though this is one of the stories that suffers a bit because of a similar tale earlier in the issue, Merlin Moore Taylor’s “The Place of Madness.” I’ll be reading the rest of Weird Tales for 1923, so I’m looking forward to seeing whether and how the magazine’s contents develop over those issues.
   For a cover image and a bit more discussion, see my previous post on this issue.