So, What Are You Reading These Days? (besides comics)

[Alan M.]

Just bringing this discussion over to ning...

What books are you reading right now that don't have a narrative driven by images as well as words?

[Howard Bagby]

Luke Blanchard said:

How has Dean Koontz adapted Frankenstein?

Dr Frankenstein is still alive at age 240. He has set up shop in New Orleans. The original creation is also still alive. He goes to New Orleans to confront the Doctor. There are at least three books in this series. It was created as a series for USA network. Martin Scorsese also had a hand in it. Koontz left the series. Only the pilot was produced.

[Luke Blanchard]

Thanks, Howard. I was looking at how Frankenstein has been adapted or continued recently, so I was interested in hearing how Koontz had done it.

[Chris Fluit]

I'm in the midst of "The Battle of the Labyrinth," the fourth book in the Percy Jackson and the New Olympians series.

[The Baron]

All You Need Is Kill, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Interesting stuff - so far, it seems to be a cross between Starship Troopers and Groundhog Day. Earth has been fighting a long war against invading aliens. Keiji, our hero, wakes up in his bunk on the day before the big push. The next day, he goes off to battle and is killed almost immediately...and wakes up in his bunk on the day before the big push.

[Travis Herrick (Modular Mod)]

Travis Herrick said:

"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas. This will probably take me a little bit longer to read than the Elmore Leonard book.

I am over halfway done with this now and I am enjoying it more than I thought I would. It moves at a pretty quick pace as well.

[Luke Blanchard]

I've recently finished Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James, and Eye for Eye by Orson Scott Card.

James's stories are mostly about antiquarians. A number have a humorous element. Eye for Eye is a story about people with super-powers set in North Carolina.

[Doctor Hmmm?]

I finished up the Mars series and was going to move on to some Greek and Roman history, but someone handed me a pile of James Herriot books ("You'll love these!") and I felt guilty not giving them a try.

I am, in fact, loving them. They're a little treacly, perhaps, but Herriot/Wight has a knack for creating vivid characters, and I'm a sucker for stories about animals and the people who love them.

[Chris Fluit]

Stephen King's Under the Dome

I started on Thursday and I'm already 300 pages in.

[Luke Blanchard]

I've finished Deadly Beloved, a Ms. Tree novel by Max Allan Collins, and The Mask of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer.

In The Mask of Fu Manchu the title character tries to stir up a rebellion in the Middle East by impersonating a heretical 8th century religious leader called El Mokanna. To do this he needs to acquire El Mokanna's relics, including his mask. The novel is surprisingly anticlimactic: the rebellion never breaks out, and the failure of Fu Manchu's effort to instigate it occurs offstage. One wonders if Rohmer curtailed this part of the story after finding he didn't need to take it further to fulfil his word count. The book is better-written than The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, and it lacks the original volume's openly racist statements. (At least, in my edition. A character uses the n-word at one point.)

There's some interesting commentary on how El Mokanna's mask has been depicted here. The Avon comic book adaptation follows the novel with only minor changes.

[doc photo]

Over the weekend I decided to make another run at reading Edgar Rice Burroughs. I own an omnibus edition that contains three Mars novels and two Pellucidar novels; so far Pellucidar is the only one I have managed to get through. I attempted Chessmen of Mars at one point but gave up on it after a couple of chapters. This time around I am reading Thuvia Maid of Mars. Maybe it has to do with my mood, as I read two thirds of the story Sunday afternoon and found it much more enjoyable than Chessmen.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Funny you should mention ERB, doc. 2010 is shaping up to be the "Year of Tarzan" for me: comic strips, comic books, movies and novels. Over the weekend I moved on from "The Beasts of Tarzan" to "The Son of Tarzan," and although I've read them (once) before, I've forgotten so many of the details that they're like new to me. I'm supplementing my reading with Phillip Jose Farmer's Tarzan Alive! so I can simultaneously learn what "really" happened.

[doc photo]

In my youth I read a good portion of ERB's Tarzan output but never ventured beyond those books into his science fiction novels. Like you, I don't recall many details, but I have always counted Beasts of Tarzan and Son of Tarzan among my favorites. I really need to read the initial Mars trilogy which is often noted as Burroughs best work.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

Funny you should mention ERB, doc. 2010 is shaping up to be the "Year of Tarzan" for me: comic strips, comic books, movies and novels. Over the weekend I moved on from "The Beasts of Tarzan" to "The Son of Tarzan," and although I've read them (once) before, I've forgotten so many of the details that they're like new to me. I'm supplementing my reading with Phillip Jose Farmer's Tarzan Alive! so I can simultaneously learn what "really" happened.