Disturbing News

From Randy Johnson (not the pitcher):

With the recent announcement that the Gold Eagle imprint would cease in 2015, it would seem that Mack Bolan, at least the ghost written versions will be consigned to history.

More here, including some juicy inside stories.

I’m saddened by the news; I thought Mack Bolan would be eternal, and that the number of Executioner and related titles that I’d never get around to reading would continue to expand at an exponential rate. But now that the titles are limited, I might be fool enough to try to read them all.

Just kidding. I’m reading well under a hundred books annually these days, so I might not make it through all the ones I currently own without getting the other thousand plus.

Also, somewhere, sometime, will resurrect the series as eBooks or something.

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Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Welcome to the Party, Pal

Ross Douthat discovers something I learned eight years ago:

First, a critic’s confession: Since becoming a father, I can no longer quite trust my emotional reactions at the movies. Parenthood stretches the carapace around your feelings thin, makes the lump rise more quickly in your throat, turns the waterworks on even when the material is maudlin, cheap, heavy-handed. It makes you respond too willingly to the movies’ reliable, predictable tricks — the soaring score, the swooping camera, the child in peril, the unlooked-for reunion. Your critical faculties remain — your mind still knows what’s cornball, still recognizes manipulation — but your heart becomes a sucker.

To be honest, I’ve always been a wee bit sentimental so that brothers in danger kinds of tropes connected with me–for Pete’s sake, were I to admit I saw Legends of the Fall, I’d have to admit that the scene searching for the brother on a World War I battlefield filled me with near existential dread (and I don’t even talk to my brother(s) often enough).

But having children did something else to me entirely. I found myself with a lump in my throat singing patriotic songs to my children, and I also find the Stephen King child-in-jeopardy trope more gripping.

A cynical person on the Internet might say fatherhood is just a scam perpetuated by society on men to sell schmaltzy, sentimental music and movies.

But a father would not.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories