Repeat offence

Worn Out: At Eternity's Gate
by Vincent Van Gogh.
© Wikimedia Commons

Since I don’t have an e-reader, yet, ebooks have not made an impact on my reading process. I still read books in physical form. The only ebooks I read on the laptop or desktop are short stories and short fiction, anything less than 50 or 60 pages, usually over two to three days. I don’t have the patience to read lengthy ebooks sitting at my desk. It is backbreaking and can lead to a stiff neck.

This post is not about the way I read books. It’s about the many authors I discovered and rediscovered in the first dozen years of this ebook century. While I cannot recollect each and every author I read over the past 12 years, I can tell you the ones who come back to me more often than others. I don’t know how that happens. My subconscious probably opens the door and allows them in.

I took a pencil and paper and wrote down, offhand, as many names of authors I could remember; authors new and old I read this century. I came up with a list of 24 names give or take a few worthy exceptions, like John Steinbeck, Brian Garfield, and Tom Sharpe.

I ran through the list of established authors and found that I had read several books written by most of them, with the exception of Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block, and Jonathan Kellerman. These are writers I discovered quite recently and I haven’t read all of their books yet. They account for a sizeable number of unread books in my collection. 

Then I placed the authors according to the genres they write in. This is what it looks like, with a subjective recommendation for nearly each of the authors. The titles mentioned are not my favourites, they are some of the books I really enjoyed.

Fantasy & SF
01. Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
02. Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan at the Earth’s Core
03. J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Spy & Thriller
04. Tom Clancy – The Hunt for Red October
05. John le Carré – The Constant Gardener
06. Craig Thomas – Snow Falcon
07. Harry Patterson (Jack Higgins) – The Eagle Has Landed
08. Don Pendleton (Mack Bolan) – War Against the Mafia

General
09. John Irving – The World According to Garp
10. Ernest Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls
11. A.J. Cronin – Beyond This Place (most would vote for The Citadel)
12. Nevil Shute – None that I can think of

Crime & Mystery
13. Mickey Spillane – Not read many
14. John MacDonald – Not read many
15. Ed McBain – Not read many
16. Agatha Christie – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (so far)
17. Elmore Leonard – Not read many. I haven't read his westerns
18. Lawrence Block – Not read many
19. Jonathan Kellerman – Not read many
20. Martin Cruz Smith – Gorky Park (Arkady Renko series)

Humour
21. P.G. Wodehouse – Blandings series

Western
22. Oliver Strange – The Range Robbers
23. Louis L'Amour – Flint

Classics
24. Thomas Hardy – A toss-up between The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure. Michael Henchard (in the first) and Jude Fawley (in the second) must be two of the most intense and pathetic characters in English literature.

Who are some of the authors who have stayed with you this century? Which ones keep coming back through the backdoor? Do you let them stay?

FILM REVIEW

Posse from Hell (1961)

There’s nothing like watching a good western on a Friday night. The next day is a holiday (if it's a second or fourth Saturday in my case), and you can wake up late. I did and here’s the proof of it, for Overlooked Films, Audio and Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

In a brief lifespan of 45 years, Texas-born Audie Murphy became a national hero and a screen icon.

Murphy is hailed as America’s most decorated combat soldier during World War II. His 33 medals include the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest US military award for bravery, and similar decorations from France and Belgium. He is believed to have killed some 250 German soldiers and wounded and captured several others during the war.

After the war, the charismatic First Lieutenant in the US Army returned home to a second blazing career, this time in Hollywood where he proved his acting skills in over 40 films, mostly westerns, over a period of 20 years. He died in May 1971. 

Audie Murphy with his medals.

I would never have known of Murphy, the war vet and son of a Texas farmer, if I hadn't seen Murphy, the actor, in Posse from Hell. Although I have read a few reviews of his western films online, I hadn't seen any of them until last weekend; not even the more acclaimed To Hell and Back (1955) based on a book he wrote in 1949 detailing his wartime experience or No Name on the Bullet (1959) nicely reviewed by Ron Scheer at Buddies in the Saddle.

Murphy, who played Jesse James in his last film A Time for Dying (1969), was before my generation which is no escaping the fact that I could have known him better through his many films. After all, I am familiar with the celluloid works of his many contemporaries like John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Yul Brynner, and Clint Eastwood. I attribute my singular amnesia over Murphy to his death at the young age of 45, taking him away from public limelight before his time. Few Indians would have heard of Murphy whose films were not broadcast often on the now-extinct TCM India. 

 
Well, there is always a first time for everything. This film was written by the US author of westerns, Clair Huffaker, who wrote the book of the same name. Many of his westerns, such as The War Wagon (1967), were made into films. Huffaker appears to be something of a cult figure in western fiction.

Clair Huffaker

I caught Posse from Hell quite by chance. I was surfing YouTube for full-length western movies when this particular one, directed by Herbert Coleman, popped up. I clicked start and, in a few moments, I was transported into the middle of a broad street on a moonless night. Dark houses line either side of the street in the old western town called Paradise. Four riders come out of the shadows and dismount in front of a saloon. They enter the batwing doors, hold the saloon and its few patrons hostage, and then kill randomly. There is no escape. An angry crowd gathers outside, their guns cocked, ready to storm the saloon. The four escapees from a death cell kill the brave Marshal Isaac Webb (Ward Ramsey) in cold blood before getting away with their prize catch—money from the bank and a lovely girl called Helen Caldwell (Zohra Lampert). The killers have an evil motive: rape the girl. 

Banner Cole (Audie Murphy), the sheriff’s deputy, arrives on the scene, just in time to hear the marshal’s dying words: he wants Banner to find the murderers and recover the loot.

The deputy, as fearless as his boss, decides to organise a posse. But, before he does, he tells the whitemen bluntly that they are free to back out if they don’t have the stomach for the long and gruelling chase. Banner touches a raw nerve and a few men drop out. He then leads a six-member posse out of town whose folks think he is crazy.

The film ends in predictable fashion with Banner rescuing Helen and falling in love with her on one hand and gaining a friend for life on the other. 

John Saxon, Audie Murphy and Rodolfo Acosta.

A few observations, in no particular order, won’t be out of place here.

1. Banner comes to rely on the lone half-breed in the posse more than he does on the whitemen. Johnny Caddo, played by Mexican character-actor Rodolfo Acosta, remains loyal to Banner and sticks with him up to the end. On his part, the deputy sheriff acknowledges Johnny’s worth and rues his death in an ambush. By a coincidence, I have been reading westerns in which Indians and half-breeds are shown in a better light.

2. The friend Banner gains in the hunt is Seymour Kern (John Saxon), a clerk at the bank, whose boss needles him into joining the posse to bring back the money. The city-bred Seymour is dressed in a suit and has never used a gun or sat on a horse before. He learns to do both in the posse. He also learns to fight fear and cover Banner when he needs it most. The posse makes a real man out of Seymour, a role that a young Saxon does justice to. 

The three-man posse takes cover.

3. Banner is as hard on his critics as he is loyal to his men in the posse which in the end comes down to just three men—him, Seymour, and Johnny—who take on the trigger-happy devils in a do-or-die spirit.

4. On one hand, the film exemplifies courage, loyalty, and friendship; on the other, it exposes the cowardice and hypocrisy of a town whose deeds fail to match its words. Most of the men who were ready to storm the saloon refuse to join the posse for fear of their own safety. When Banner rescues Helen and sends her back to Paradise, a fate worse than her rape awaits her. The town is repulsed by the “used” woman but Banner provides more than a healing touch. The attitude of the town’s people reminded me of Hindi commercial cinema with its share of taboo and social prejudice. 

Posse from Hell lacks the sophistication of a Tombstone and Audie Murphy the glamour of a Clint Eastwood, but it more than makes up with its realistic plot and characters, and a touch of humour. I liked the scene where Banner pours spirit down Seymour's butt to give him relief from saddle rash (or that's what I think it is). Seymour has never ridden a horse before and Banner and Johnny look amused as he tries to mount his. The film is a traditional western as evident from Banner’s simple attire and a rather ordinary single-gun holster, the posse’s journey through barren and hostile landscape, and true-to-life gunfights where both heroes and villains get hurt. Murphy acts well as Banner Cole who, with his soft but firm voice, good nature, and doggedness, is likeable throughout the film.

A surprise element in the film was a young Lee Van Cleef playing sidekick to the gang leader though he is barely visible in the cameo role.

A good western to watch.

BOOK REVIEW

The Hardy Boys are back!

It’s down memory lane with the sleuthing brothers for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. 

The first Hardy Boys mystery.

Okay, this is off the top of my head. No Google, no Archive, no Wikipedia...

Chet Morton, Biff Hooper, Phil Cohen, Tony Prito, and Jerry Gilroy are friends of Frank and Joe Hardy, teenage brothers and amateur detectives of Bayport, a fictional town in the US. They assist their father, private investigator Fenton Hardy, solve many of his cases, though most of the time they are sniffing out their own mysteries and doing a good job cracking them, often with the help of their friends.

In the books I read, then, Frank is 18 and Joe is 17 and their girlfriends are Callie Shaw and Iola Morton. Iola is best friend Chet’s younger sister. Fat Chet is to Frank and Joe what skinny Jughead is to Archie, loyal and always hungry. Like Jug, he loves food. He usually carries a weighty snack and is acutely nervous when he tags along with the brothers to find out whodunit. The boys stick their necks out and get into trouble. They always solve their cases and make their father and the Bayport police department proud. 

Fenton Hardy wears a felt hat and a suit. He is a devoted husband and a caring father. I picture Raymond Burr, in his younger days, or Humphrey Bogart in the sleuth’s role. His wife, Laura Hardy, is a housewife and has a supportive role in the mystery stories. Frank and Joe have to take their permission to work on cases during school days, and even on holidays. Their cases frequently take them away from home. There is talk of finishing homework too. They are obedient boys. You really can’t miss the morals behind the stories.

I read the Hardy Boys in school, from the age of nine onward. I read over a hundred of the thick blue-spine hardbacks that had readable titles like The Twisted Claw, The Phantom Freighter, The Wailing Siren Mystery, The Sting of the Scorpion, and The Infinity Clue. The big typeface against the stark white page was easy on the eyes. The covers had striking colour illustrations usually depicting one of the key scenes from the story within. There were other early editions too but I don't remember reading any.

We were a bunch of friends who borrowed a Hardy Boys mystery a day from the local circulating library and took turns reading it, each having an hour or so before passing it on to the next impatient boy in the queue. We used a similar modus operandi to read Commando comics.

The Hardy Boys series were highly appealing to young and impressionable readers. Frank and Joe Hardy inspired young boys like me to become detectives when we grew up. For some reason, the army was another thrilling option. Neither came true in my case.

For years I thought Franklin W. Dixon was a real writer. He turned out to be one ghostwriter too many. Like the group of writers behind Carolyn Keene who wrote the Nancy Drew mysteries. The boys and the girl were created by Edward Stratemeyer who founded the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a book-packaging enterprise (now that little bit I got from Wiki).

Since the 1980s both the YA series went through a lot of changes. The Hardy Boys were reinvented as the Hardy Boys Casefiles which, I suspect, might have been kept away from young teens because of their “adult” content, meaning a fair dose of murder and violence. Later, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were brought together in a combined series. By then, however, the series had lost its originality, and I, my interest. There were some film adaptations too. I haven’t seen any.

Now the original Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series are back, in small, compact, hardback reprints with their original cover design intact. They adorn the YA shelves in new bookstores in Mumbai. I scan the familiar titles and hold a few of the books, for old times’ sake, and I am happy that they still hold. One of these days, I am going to read a few of the books that first cultivated my reading habit.

FILM REVIEW

Six Days Seven Nights (1998)

A slightly different take on a largely forgettable romantic comedy directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Harrison Ford as Quinn Harris and Anne Heche as Robin Monroe, for this week’s edition of Overlooked Films, Audio and Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

Robinson Crusoe stormed out of the Ziegfeld movie theatre in New York and phoned Daniel Defoe who at that precise moment was wiping Indian ink off his writing table. He was in a foul mood for he had spilled a large quantity of the infernal liquid on his first draft of Captain Singleton.

He picked up the instrument. “Hello! Who is this?” he said, sounding very annoyed.

“Mr. Defoe, sir, it’s me Crusoe, from NYC.”

The frenetic voice of his own creation at the other end startled Defoe.

“What is it, Robinson?” he asked in a somewhat measured tone.

“Mr. Defoe, sir, I have just been to see Six Days Seven Nights and it’s not fair, just not fair.”

“What’s not fair, Robinson?”

“Quinn Harris had Robin. Chuck Noland had Wilson. I had no one!” he cried.

“Calm down, Robinson. What the hell are you blabbering about? Who is Quinn Harris? Who is…Whatshisname?”

“Chuck Noland, sir, from Cast Away.”

Defoe was bewildered. “Robinson, can you be more specific? Who are these people? Did they write the two books you mentioned?”

“No sir. Six Days Seven Nights and Cast Away are not books, sir, they are movies. Quinn Harris, a pilot, is the hero in one; Chuck Noland, a logistics guy, is the hero in the other.”

“What about it? What has it got to do with you?”

“It’s like this, Mr. Defoe. Their story is very similar to mine. They were both marooned on a deserted island. Bad weather caused their planes to crash. I, myself, as you know, was the victim of a shipwreck and I almost didn’t make it to…”

By now Defoe was irritated again. He cut in, “I am not quite sure about the first part, Robinson. However, you need not remind me how you landed on the Island of Despair. You know I put you there.”

“Indeed, I do, sir. Without you I should not have become famous and come into a good amount of money and bought my own island.”

“Then what’s your bloody problem, young man?” Defoe looked down and watched the spilled ink soak up the manuscript and blot out the words. He cursed under his breath.

“Did you say something, sir?”

“Nothing, Robinson. Get on with your story.”

“Like I was saying, Mr. Defoe, Quinn and Chuck are stranded on an island, in different times, of course. But they are not alone. Quinn has Robin and Chuck has Wilson.”

“Who the hell are Robin and Wilson?”

“Oh, did I not tell you, sir?”

“I am sure you did not,” Defoe almost shouted.

“Robin is a beautiful girl in Seven Days Seven Nights, sir. She is the editor of a New York fashion magazine. She is in the plane with Quinn when it crash-lands on the island. They don’t like each other at first but seven days on the island is all it takes them to fall in love with each other.”

“Very touching, Robinson. And who might Wilson be...their dog?”

“Good lord, no sir! Wilson is a volleyball. He belongs to Chuck. He is the only friend Chuck has on his island in Cast Away.

When Defoe did not say anything, Robinson said, “Remember the two films I mentioned? You thought they were books.”

“Yes, I remember well, Robinson. Go on.” Defoe said, resigned to his fate and that of Captain Singleton. He wondered how he might revive the story of the exploits of the English pirate.

“Well, Mr. Defoe. You see, both Quinn and Chuck spent far less time on their islands than I did…Quinn a mere seven days, Chuck just four years…and yet they had someone to talk to, someone to fall in love with. I, on the other hand, spent twenty-seven years in isolation on the island, not a soul about me and only god in heaven.”

The line between New York and London went quiet for a few seconds.

“Are you still there, Robinson?” Defoe asked at length. He could hear deep sobs at the other end.

“Yes, sir.”

“Look Robinson, I am sorry. But you were not alone. I gave you animals...let me see, a dog, a couple of cats, sheep, goats, some fowl, and Friday.” Remember him?”

“I do, Mr. Defoe, you also gave me savages. Remember them?”

“I do, Robinson, and you lived to tell me about it.”

Short Story: Arthur Machen (1863-1947) 

The Shining Pyramid

“I hate a mystery, and especially a mystery which is probably the veil of horror.”

Arthur Machen was a Welsh author and mystic who wrote short stories and short novels about the supernatural, fantasy, and horror. 

Most of his fiction beginning with the novella The Great God Pan (1890) is considered to be a classic. His reputation as one of the world’s most influential writers of horror has been confirmed by many who followed in his footsteps, including Stephen King, who is believed to have called The Great God Pan “Maybe the best (horror story) in the English language.” I have learned that this story, which I haven't as yet read, was criticised for its “decadent style” and “horrific and sexual content.” However, it didn’t stop Machen from writing more of the “degenerate” stuff.

Machen was quite prolific between 1890—when The Great God Pan first appeared in Whirlwind magazine before its publication as a book four years later—and 1936, the year he wrote at least one short story and a novella. He was then 73.

His short story, The Bowmen (1914), is widely believed to be the source of the ‘Angels of Mons’ myth during WWI. The myth pertains to a group of angels who protected British troops in the Battle of Mons at the start of the Great War. Later, this and other similar stories were published as The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War (1915).

Most of Arthur Manchen’s leading stories and novellas have been compiled into two volumes titled Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. Volume I & II have five and nine stories each. I have provided an index towards the end of this post.

I read just one story The Shining Pyramid (1895) in Volume 1. In this story, Dyson, a London-based writer and wannabe detective, accompanies his friend Vaughan to his country home surrounded by “ancient woods” to help investigate the sudden appearance of four mysterious objects and several eyes along the garden wall of the cottage.

The four objects made out of flints exhibit a curious pattern which, according to Dyson, represents the four signs of the Army, the Bowl, the Pyramid, and the Half-moon. Together, they make up an arrowhead and indicate something far sinister than meets the eye. Vaughan is scared. He realises that the signs are not the handiwork of school children passing by his house every day.

Dyson is convinced that the flint arrowhead is pointing toward something. His investigations take him and Vaughan into the deep and ancient woods, to a bowl in the earth, an infernal cauldron stirring and seething with horrors beyond imagination.

The Pyramid of Fire, as Dyson calls it, also solves the mysterious disappearance of a beautiful village girl called Annie Trevor who, a month before, had passed that way on her way to an aunt’s house and never came back.

“I don't regret our inability to rescue the wretched girl. You saw the appearance of those things that gathered thick and writhed in the Bowl; you may be sure that what lay bound in the midst of them was no longer fit for earth.”

Arthur Manchen writes in a style reminiscent of the period he lived in. The prose is smooth and uncomplicated but rich in substance. There is no urgency about the dialogue between Dyson and Vaughan: they might as well be conversing in a coffee house. Yet, neither the prose nor the dialogue diminishes the graveness of the horrific situation as it unfolds. The author’s description of the underworld in the bowl, the Pyramid of Fire, is not too explicit or macabre, but it’s enough to ignite your imagination. A sample:

“Then, it seemed done in an instant, the loathsome mass melted and fell away to the sides of the Bowl, and for a moment Vaughan saw in the middle of the hollow the tossing of human arms. But a spark gleamed beneath, a fire kindled, and as the voice of a woman cried out loud in a shrill scream of utter anguish and terror, a great pyramid of flame spired up like a bursting of a pent fountain, and threw a blaze of light upon the whole mountain. In that instant Vaughan saw the myriads beneath; the things made in the form of men but stunted like children hideously deformed, the faces with the almond eyes burning with evil and unspeakable lusts; the ghastly yellow of the mass of naked flesh; and then as if by magic the place was empty, while the fire roared and crackled, and the flames shone abroad.”

Verdict: highly readable and highly recommended.

Index to Tales of Horror and the Supernatural: Volume 1 & 2

Volume 1

1. Introduction by Philip Van Doren Stern

2. Arthur Machen by Robert Hillyer

3. The Great God Pan (1894), novella

4. The White People (1904,) novelette

5. The Inmost Light (1894), novelette

6. The Shining Pyramid (1895), novelette

7. The Great Return (1915), novelette

Volume 2

1. The Novel of the Black Seal (1895), novelette

2. The Novel of the White Powder (1895), short story

3. The Bowmen (1914), short story

4. The Happy Children (1920), short story

5. The Bright Boy (1936), novelette

6. Out of the Earth (1915), short story

7. N (1936), novelette

8. Children of the Pool (1936), short story

9. The Terror aka The Terror: A Mystery (1916), novel

Most of these stories are available online.

BOOK REVIEW

The Trojan Horse by Hammond Innes (1940)

This week Evan Lewis at Davy Crockett's Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and the Wild West is doing the Friday’s Forgotten Books honours usually handled by Patti Abbott at Pattinase or Todd Mason at Sweet Freedom.

“Deed-boxes make good coffins.”

A replica of my book.

There are two kinds of WWII stories: those about the actual war between the Allies and Germany and those revolving around it. The Trojan Horse falls in the second category and, while it does so, its outcome—were it to succeed—would have been no less significant than an open conflict on the battlefield.

In his fifth novel, British author Hammond Innes creates a peripheral war that is as frightening as the real thing.

Franz Schmidt is a shabby old Austrian Jew and a brilliant engineer. He discovers a special light alloy and decides to build a prototype of a new diesel engine that will give any air force vast superiority in the air and a sure-fire way to win the war.

When Hitler invades Austria, Schmidt flees to England on a false passport and with the engine design in his head.

In England, Schmidt lives with his dead wife’s family at Swansea, Wales. His brother-in-law Evan Llewellin, an undercover British agent, offers him money and a workshop where he builds his diesel engine. What he does not know is that the Nazis are already hot on his trail. Llewellin is killed and Schmidt is framed for the brutal crime. 

On the run from Scotland Yard, Schmidt approaches Andrew Kilmartin, a famous criminal lawyer of London, and pleads for help. The 42-year old barrister is initially reluctant to believe Schmidt’s story till he reads about Llewellin’s murder in the papers. He decides to defend Schmidt but the old man vanishes without a trace.

This is where the story begins.

Kilmartin is a combination of a legal eagle and a private eye—his sense of justice evenly matched by his thirst for reckless adventure. With nothing more than a mysterious sealed envelope left with him by Schmidt, the attorney starts investigating the engineer's disappearance and his fantastic claim that the Nazis are after his invention.

Over the next 100-odd pages Kilmartin, with the help of his close friend and studio photographer David Shiel, unearths a sinister conspiracy involving a powerful banker and shadow minister, Baron Ferdinand Marburg, who connives with the Nazi-controlled Calboyds Diesel Company to steal Schmidt’s diesel engine from under the nose of the British government. He also meets Schmidt’s beautiful daughter Freya, also an engineer, and falls in love with her. The novel ends in a high-octane drama on the high seas. 

British author Hammond Innes

The Trojan Horse is a page-turner in spite of the author’s obsession with the details. In fact, it is the details that make this 190-page thriller gripping.

For instance, in a 19-page chapter titled Lead on, Sewer Rat, Hammond Innes takes you through London’s filthy rat-infested underground sewer system that Kilmartin uses to escape from the vault of Marburg’s bank where he has been imprisoned by Nazi gangster Max Sedel. Just before that, the attorney has spent agonising hours lying in a foetal position in a deed-box that nearly becomes his coffin.

The author’s description of Andrew Kilmartin’s claustrophobic and nauseating experience, with Nazi agents in hot pursuit, is so vivid as to make the reader relive it. The book owes its unsparing details to the author’s proclivity for six months of travel and research and six months of writing.

The conspiratorial and anti-establishment tone of the novel, with its Nazi sympathisers and collaborators in Britain (and in America), is reminiscent of many fictional and non-fictional books that came out during and after World War II. Hammond Innes, an ex-artillery major and a yachtsman, gives the reader an unusual insight into one such anti-national plot which, in real time, could have had serious implications for Britain's war against Germany. 

“Once I nearly panicked. Only the dial of my wrist-watch saved me. It was a friendly face and gave me courage.” 

Hammond Innes, author of some thirty novels, has a clean and imaginative style of writing. He does not confuse you with too many characters. The main ones have names and faces, the rest are nondescript. The emphasis is on the plot and suspense on every page. It builds up slowly and, like a locomotive, gathers speed and then races towards the climax, one that I did not quite anticipate.

The world through a View-Master

On July 23, 2012, I did a small post on the century-old stereoscopic viewer, the “modern version” of which, Ron Scheer of Buddies in the Saddle reminded me, was the View-Master which came with circular picture discs, each containing over a dozen colourful images of animals, cartoons, and other themes. The pictures were sharp and clear and gave out a 3D effect. You went click, click, click…till you went full circle and returned to the first slide. 

© Andrew Hazelden

I thought of the View-Master again while writing about Beautiful People yesterday. The animals in the documentary reminded me of the picture disc of animals that I used to look at through my View-Master. The colour of most of the View-Masters I saw in childhood, including my own, was red while others were in blue.

The View-Master, which belonged to the family of special-format stereoscopes, was introduced by Sawyer's Photo Services in 1939, a few years after Kodachrome colour film which gave us small high-quality photographic colour images. The View-Master reels, as they were known, were thin cardboard disks containing seven stereoscopic 3D pairs of small colour photographs on film. You can read more about it here.

The View-Master held a strange fascination for me then, as the Samsung Galaxy Note does now. One was a simple and satisfying childhood indulgence, the other is an extravagance I can do without.