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Got through about 80 more pages while waiting in the jury lounge. It's very interesting and detailed, beginning with the early 20th Century pre-WW2 jazz scene, though the author doesn't quite grasp the culture of Southern California at least he did his research and gets his facts down. Lots of interesting quotations from key figures. Right now it's the early 1960s with the Beach Boys just starting their thing. Once in a while the author's hipster tastes intrude, but it's infrequent enough to be tolerable. The only real problem is he flings so many names at you at once that it can sometimes be hard to keep track of who's who without re-reading a paragraph and going, "Okay, he's now referring to Phil Spector as 'he,' not Jerry Leiber." Voros, you would probably find this book worth your while.
It's always interesting to me to learn how people lived and what they ate. A historical RPG setting comes alive to me more when I can describe things as simple as what sort of vittles your cowpoke has on his breakfast plate.
Still waiting on Across the Great Divide, but fortunately I have this to occupy me once I finish Waiting for the Sun. It's sort of a companion to the latter, expanding upon a chapter about the singer-songwriters of the Laurel and Topanga canyons of the late '60s-mid-'70s. Probably will start tomorrow or Saturday.
Unfortunately there's no particular reference volume I know of that I would recommend. What little I know and use to present a façade of realism is drawn from dozens of novels, reference books, TV shows, and so on. A couple of decent books for a general overview are these two:Any book you could recommend as a good source about Old West culture and everyday life, something easily referrable that doesn't bury all details in walls of text? Like you say, this is more about bringing to live the setting for my players than it is about getting historical dates and events perfectly correct.
Sheer happenstance, but it's the perfect bookmark for reading Hotel California:
I actually finished a book! I really enjoyed this. Hope to get a hold of Andy Taylor's biography Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran from somewhere and look forward to any biographies the other (former) band members may publish in the future as keyboardist Nick Rhodes hints at this in the forword he wrote to John Taylor's book.In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death and Duran Duran
That reminds me I need to start posting in this thread again:Golden Age Batman starts a little rough, but becomes excellent in relatively short order. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the issues from the later 1940’s. It’s available in reasonably sized HC omnis up into the middle 50’s. I’m considering clearing a shelf exclusively for it. I have 3 book cases full of comics.
You'll enjoy the many ways Tony Quinn inspired the writers of the early Batman comic books: the Batcave, Batmobile, relationship with the police, and so on all occur in Black Bat stories before they appeared in Detective Comics or Batman.I normally only buy ebooks, but as I couldn't find this in digital format, I sprang the 19+ bucks for this:
Since I'm interested in using The Black Bat in some fiction I'm hoping to write, I figured it was worth the investment. It's the first 3 stories featuring the character, and I tend to like starting from the beginning. I'm actually liking it so far
You'll enjoy the many ways Tony Quinn inspired the writers of the early Batman comic books: the Batcave, Batmobile, relationship with the police, and so on all occur in Black Bat stories before they appeared in Detective Comics or Batman.
Fun fact: The Black Bat was originally going to be called The Tiger due to the scarring on his face looking like a tiger's stripes.I can already see that in the first story; it doesn't surprise me in the least bit. Wikipedia mentions that the fins on Batman's gloves came after Bill Finger mentioned to Bob Kane about the gauntlets Black Bat wears. Daredevil obviously took some cues from Black Bat as well.
I read up a little bit about the character, and saw he debuted around the same time as Batman did. DC almost sued Nedor over it (both sides claimed that the other copied their character). One of DC's editors, Whitney Ellsworth, had previously worked for Nedor. He got both sides to talk it out, and Nedor agreed not to use Black Bat in comics. They did create another character named The Mask (he was originally going to be called The Owl, and his mask looked like an Owl's head) who has the same origin/background as The Black Bat.
My interest in the character came after reading a modern take on the character from Dynamite Comics. Since I'm looking to use the original Black Bat, I wanted to read the original stories. I'm impressed with how well written they are. It's a much easier read for me than some stuff by more well known authors from the early 20th century (Burroughs, Howard, Lovecraft, etc). Except for some terminology from back then (and the lack of advanced technology), this could easily be from a more recent time period
Fun fact: The Black Bat was originally going to be called The Tiger due to the scarring on his face looking like a tiger's stripes.