Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Quick Hits

Our Internet service has been spotty for the past few days, so I figured I'd better get something posted while I can.

I saw several mentions on various lists today that Jim Aparo has passed away. For those who aren't familiar with the name, Aparo was a comic book artist who worked primarily for DC during the Sixties and Seventies. Never a comics superstar, he was a solid, dependable pro who drew many a Batman story, all of them excellent. Like most of the comics artists from his generation, he was a fine storyteller.

Page count for Monday: 16. I'm getting close to the end of this book and hope to wrap it up this coming weekend. No pages today, too many errands to run, as well as dealing with some more auto repair issues.

One of our stops today was Half Price Books, where I bought a DVD of the Richard Lester version of THE THREE MUSKETEERS. I saw this when it was new in the Seventies and have watched it several times since and thoroughly enjoyed it every time. Haven't seen it for quite a while, though, so I'm looking forward to watching it again.

I'm reading APACHE HOSTAGE, a Western by Lewis B. Patten. Patten has never been one of my favorites and I didn't like the last book of his that I read, but this one is pretty good so far, one of the better Westerns I've read lately, in fact.

4 comments:

Juri said...

Strange that you don't like Patten. He has been one of the Western writers I've uniformly liked. But the old cliché says: different strokes for different folks.

James Reasoner said...

Often I find the motivations of Patten's characters to be too much of a stretch. Even in APACHE HOSTAGE, which I liked, I couldn't believe the reasons for some of the actions. I really do like Patten's terse, no-nonsense style, though. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong books of his.

Juri said...

Have you tried his later work? I liked immensely "The Orphans of Coyote Creek" (1975) and "Hunt the Man Down" (1977). The latter was a hardback from Doubleday. But then I also liked his first, "Gunsmoke Empire" (GM 1955).

James Reasoner said...

I don't have either of those books, but I'll keep an eye out for them.