Street & Smith’s Top-Notch Magazine started as a magazine aimed at boys but soon changed to a general-interest adventure pulp, lasting from a start in 1910 until 1937. The March 15, 1923, issue is the first I’ve read, and it has the expected assortment of long and short fiction, including serial parts, filled out with …
Read the full post →“Wednesday Pulp: <em>Top-Notch Magazine</em>, March 15, 1923”
I finished two books during this week, as well as one pulp magazine issue. Books Towers & Tortures: A Double Dose of Dexter Dayle, by Dexter Dayle — a Ramble House collection that brings together two British “Piccadilly novels,” low-cost lending library thrillers by an apparently pseudonymous author. Neither novel in the volume is good: …
Read the full post →“Weekly Reader — February 26 – March 4, 2023”
The magazine begun in 1924 was by mid-1927 being published under the title shown above, though within a year it would be renamed once more, to its most familiar title, Detective Fiction Weekly, which it would retain until 1941. The September 17, 1927, issue contains the usual array of long and short fiction, including serial …
Read the full post →“Wednesday Pulp: <em>Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction</em>, September 17, 1927”
I finished two books during this week, as well as one volume of a multi-volume work and two pulp magazine issues. Books 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 …
Read the full post →“Weekly Reader — February 19 – 26, 2023”
One hundred years ago this week, the magazine Weird Tales debuted. The “Unique” magazine is perhaps the most famous of the pulps to readers today thanks to its publishing of horror by H. P. Lovecraft and Conan tales by Robert E. Howard, but it encompassed many more authors and works during its three-decade run. I’m …
Read the full post →“Wednesday Pulp: <em>Weird Tales</em>, March 1923”
I finished three books during this week, as well as one pulp magazine issue. Books Scarlet Riders: Pulp Fiction Tales of the Mounties, ed. by Don Hutchison — as an anthology, the usual mixed bag, with some stories straightforward adventure (e.g., “Red Snows,” by Harold F. Cruikshank, and “Doom Ice,” by Dan O’Rourke) and some …
There’s round-up action on the cover of this issue of the long-running pulp (indeed, the last to end publishing as a pulp). I like the image, but I can’t make out the artist’s signature. Ranch Romances is reputed to have fairly hard-boiled stories around this time, and I’ll be interested in seeing whether that is …
Read the full post →“Wednesday Pulp: <em>Ranch Romances</em>, Second October Number, 1949”
I finished three books during this week, as well as one 100-year-old magazine issue. Books Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe (Tenth-Eleventh Centuries), ed. by Gábor Klaniczay — a collection of five hagiographical works especially on missionaries and martyrs (often the one condition leading to the other): the Passion of Saint Wenceslas, by …
Read the full post →“Weekly Reader — January 29 – February 4”
I finished two books during this week, and I began my reading of 100-year-old magazine issues as well. Books The Antiquary, by Sir Walter Scott — This tale centers on the title character and his friends and neighbors, including a mysterious young man whom he befriends; it offers plenty of gentle comedy and a modicum …
The year 2023 is off to a pretty good start on the reading front, as I finished 6 books through January 7: The Lone Rider (I Must Ride Alone), by Jackson Gregory — First published in 1940, though I read the Popular Library paperback whose cover is shown above. This is a reasonably effective western …
