Dalenberg Complete Library of Antique Popular Literature
Twenty Years and Still Going Strong: The Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto Series
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.February 12, 2014I was a terrible piano student. At age 12 or 13, in the mid-1970s, when I am sure we could ill afford it, my mother plunked down something like $12.00 per half-hour lesson, and week after week I would show up at my teacher’s...
Why collect physical music?
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.January 13, 2013 Apparently I am a dinosaur when it comes to my collecting habits, because I still buy music CD’s. In fact, I even buy LP’s, usually used ones, especially if I think I won’t be able to find the music on CD. Back...
Nothing Mickey Mouse About It: A Century of Amoral Rodents
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.January 5, 2014 An important centennial sneaked by un-noticed this October 28: the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first Krazy Kat comic strip by George Herriman. The character of Krazy Kat had first appeared in Herriman’s...
Literary Pilgrimage: San Francisco
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.December 1, 2013We here at the Dalenberg Library are all about literary pilgrimages. I’ve personally been to Edgar Poe’s grave in Baltimore, which is in a slightly creepy city churchyard with actual crypts, where Poe is buried with his female...
Two tentpoles of the Harlem Renaissance
W.E.B. DuBois, the leading African-American intellectual of his time, from Molesworth’s new biography of Countee Cullen. Both Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes were championed by DuBois, who was an influence to both poets. DuBois’ famous book, The Souls of Black...
In Memory of Richard Matheson (1926 – 2013)
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D. November 10, 2013Even in the Internet era, news sometimes travels slowly, as I just learned this month of the passing of Richard Matheson on June 23. There has always been a special place in the Dalenberg Library for Mr. Matheson....
The Philip K. Dick Playlist
By Alex DalenbergSeptember 29, 2013 Greetings from your editor. I've been meaning to put up a post on this for a while here, but a friend of mind bringing home a copy of Philip K. Dick 's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) from...
‘Tell the Rabble My Name is Cabell’
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D. September 22, 2013 Almost forgotten by the American reading public today, but still exerting far-ranging influence among fantasists, and a cornerstone author of the Dalenberg Library, we come to James Branch Cabell. Like most people, I used...
Bob Dylan has the last laugh
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.September 10, 2013 After 41 albums, now starting on his 6th decade as an American musical icon, Bob Dylan’s saga is nothing short of legendary. For those of us who care about such music, and there are a lot of us, we know the story by...
Self-Destructing H.G. Wells Paperbacks from the 1960s
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.August 25, 2013 Now that science fiction has achieved respectability, showing up regularly on the New York Times Best Seller List and filling half the screens at the megaplex, we forget that in the early days, all we fanboys had was H.G....
An Edgar Rice Burroughs Gallery
By Dale Dalenberg August 5, 2013 Note: You can click through the slideshow above. Disney may not have succeeded in making Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter a household name, but few characters in popular literature are more universally known by name amongst even...
Check out this app: BookVibe
By Alex DalenbergJuly 28, 2013 Here's an app that not only manages to make sense of Twitter, but also generates great reading recommendations: BookVibe. What BookVibe does is simple. It pulls together tweets about books from the people you follow on...
Not easy being Superboy
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.July 2, 2013The new film Man of Steel (Warner Bros., 2013) gives us a re-imagined Superman who is entirely welcome in the already crowded universe of fine interpretations of this most super of all super-heroes. Henry Cavill as Clark...
This 1903 story paper gives a rare look into basketball’s early days
By Dale D. Dalenberg, MDJune 2, 2013 Tip Top Weekly was a popular five-cent story paper for boys published by the venerable Street & Smith, which was just beginning its run as the preeminent powerhouse of pulp magazine publishing when this dime novel came out...
School for Speculative Fiction
By Alex DalenbergJune 16, 2013 Sure, we touch on science fiction and fantasy here on the blog, but if you're interested in some rigorous backgrounding, I came across an interesting looking class that just got started at Coursera.It's called Fantasy and...
Stiff Records—The Little British Indie Label That Could, or Almost Could, or Didn’t Quite. . . .
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.June 9, 2013 It was an era of one-hit wonder bands, of counter-culture bar bands who hit it big for a minute then self-destructed or disappeared. It was a knee-jerk reaction to the musical wasteland of disco-pop. It was a rebellion...
NYC’s topless pulp fiction club has a way sexier blog than this one
By Alex DalenbergMay 26, 2013Here’s a group in New York City that is probably doing more for the cause of pulp fiction than this lowly blog ever will. Behold, The Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society, whose motto is “Making Reading Sexy”.Fair...
Old wedding cake fetches a hefty profit at auction
A slice of Grover Cleveland's wedding cake still survives, and it would likely demand a healthy price. Photo Credit: The Grover Cleveland Birthplace By Alex Dalenberg May 20, 2013 You've heard that you can't have your cake and eat it too, but here are some vintage...
Digging into the dime novel collection: Tastes have definitely changed
By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.May 19, 2013What did one read on the stagecoach or the train in the 1890s? Chances are it was a cheap, hastily written “novel,” the latest in a series of so-called dime or half-dime libraries. These lurid tales ranged from mysteries to...
Traps for the Young: Forgotten book, infamous message
By Dale D. Dalenberg, MDMay 12, 2013Earlier this year we wrote about new research into Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, basically the urtext of the anti-comic book crusade of the 1950s. You can read the original post here, but as a refresher, Dr. Wertham...