Bookstore Finds; Hidalgo

I took today off from writing (other than going back over what I wrote yesterday) and ran errands instead, including stops at a couple of bookstores. Here's what I wrote on the WesternPulps list about some of what I found:

Today I visited a little used bookstore I hadn't been to in quite a while. The last time I was there, they didn't have much of interest, but today there were some older Westerns on the shelves. I bought:
GUN HAWK, Ed Earl Repp (Hillman)
BORDER FEVER, C. William Harrison (Perma-Books)
THE GUNS OF FORT PETTICOAT, C. William Harrison (Gold Medal)
TWO FACES WEST, T.T. Flynn (Dell)
GHOST GOLD, Tom West (Pocket Books)
THE SHERIFF OF SAN MIGUEL, Allan Vaughan Elston (Dell -- a mapback)
THE ELKHORN FEUD, Philip Ketchum (Popular Library)
CONQUEST, Homer Hatten (Gold Medal)
EAGLE ON HIS WRIST, Homer Hatten (Gold Medal)

I also bought a Leisure Max Brand collection, THE LOST VALLEY, and an old Leisure Adult Western, SILVER LUST, by "Dallas Todd", who I suspect is a friend of mine. I was pretty pleased with this haul. I went in there to look for a book my daughter needed for school. Luckily I found it too, or I might have looked pretty bad coming out with all that good stuff for myself.

I bought one other book at that store, SECRET OF THE BLACK PLANET, by Milton Lesser, published by Belmont in 1965. This is a collection of two novellas, "Secret of the Black Planet" and "Son of the Black Chalice", both of them copyright 1951 by Ziff-Davis, so they were probably first published in AMAZING or FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. Lesser wound up being mystery novelist Stephen Marlowe. I like his work a lot under both names, whether it's SF or mystery.

Earlier in the day I made my usual stop at Half Price Books. The haul there included two books by Lin Carter, BEYOND THE GATE OF DREAM and OUTWORLDER, ORON #5: THE GHOST ARMY by David C. Smith (about as hardboiled a sword-and-sorcery writer as you'll find this side of REH), and a couple of SF digests, ASTOUNDING from January 1960 and GALAXY from December 1967. It was a good day for book-buying.

Another post from WesternPulps, concering the movie HIDALGO:

I finally got a chance to watch this movie on DVD. I'd wanted to see it when it was in the theaters, but that never worked out. However, even on a smaller screen, it's a very impressive and entertaining film, the sort of pure adventure movie that doesn't get made as often as they used to. It's a little heavy-handed in places with its moralizing and mysticism (as you'd expect from John Fusco, who wrote SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON), but like SPIRIT, the story overcomes that and sweeps the viewer along, creating some good characters and genuine suspense along the way. Good performances, too, not the least of which comes from Hidalgo himself. And it's always good to see Omar Sharif again. (I always liked DR. ZHIVAGO.) I'd recommend this one to anybody who hasn't gotten around to seeing it yet.

I'm still reading the Johnstone book.