Sunday, December 28, 2003
Current Favorite Author: Matt Ruff
Matt Ruff, author of Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls
(HarperCollins) on a few of his favorite books of the year (originally published by David Daley, books editor of the Westchester Journal-News):
Two of the most cherished books in my childhood library were The Mad
Scientists' Club and The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club by
Bertrand R. Brinley. The Mad Scientists were a group of teenage boys
from the town of Mammoth Falls whose idea of a fun after-school
project was building their own Loch Ness monster, or disrupting the
Founder's Day parade with a flying department store mannequin. Though
many of their exploits involved pranks, the boys also had a sense of
civic virtue where it counted: their nobler achievements included
foiling a bank robbery, ending a drought (with silver-iodide-tipped
model rockets), and rescuing a downed air force pilot.
Originally published in the 1960s, the Mad Scientist books were out of
print for more than two decades, and fans lucky enough to own copies
were forced to guard them zealously. Now Purple House Press has
reissued them in nice hardcover editions; even better, the reissue
includes a little-known third volume, The Big Kerplop!, which
describes how the Club got its start. Although the technology in the
books is somewhat dated--the Mad Scientists did their calculating on
slide rules rather than PCs--the stories themselves have held up
wonderfully, and you don't have to be young (or a boy) to enjoy them.
(from Jay - Ruff's Set This House in Order is one of the most underrated books of 2003. We should get behind this book to be a bestseller in paperback. Pub date is set for Feb 1, 2004 by HarperCollins.)
|
Go to Top of Page
(HarperCollins) on a few of his favorite books of the year (originally published by David Daley, books editor of the Westchester Journal-News):
Two of the most cherished books in my childhood library were The Mad
Scientists' Club and The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club by
Bertrand R. Brinley. The Mad Scientists were a group of teenage boys
from the town of Mammoth Falls whose idea of a fun after-school
project was building their own Loch Ness monster, or disrupting the
Founder's Day parade with a flying department store mannequin. Though
many of their exploits involved pranks, the boys also had a sense of
civic virtue where it counted: their nobler achievements included
foiling a bank robbery, ending a drought (with silver-iodide-tipped
model rockets), and rescuing a downed air force pilot.
Originally published in the 1960s, the Mad Scientist books were out of
print for more than two decades, and fans lucky enough to own copies
were forced to guard them zealously. Now Purple House Press has
reissued them in nice hardcover editions; even better, the reissue
includes a little-known third volume, The Big Kerplop!, which
describes how the Club got its start. Although the technology in the
books is somewhat dated--the Mad Scientists did their calculating on
slide rules rather than PCs--the stories themselves have held up
wonderfully, and you don't have to be young (or a boy) to enjoy them.
(from Jay - Ruff's Set This House in Order is one of the most underrated books of 2003. We should get behind this book to be a bestseller in paperback. Pub date is set for Feb 1, 2004 by HarperCollins.)
