The Time Traveler's Wife...again.

I really need to finally read this....everyone says how good it is

I'm on run-through number 12.

wow....I don't think I've ever read a book 12 times. My favorite book is Mile Zero by Thomas Sanchez and I even adapted it into a screenplay, but I don't think I've actually read it more than 6 times.

Still reading Let The Right One In and going through my second go-round of the Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. I'm almost done with the 3rd book.

There's a few I've read over 10 times at last count -- Ordinary People, The Corrections, The Handmaid's Tale, Girl With The Pearl Earring, Girl Interrupted, Eat Pray Love, Catcher In The Rye. I've read every book I own at least 3 or 4 times. It's like visiting old friends.

Girl With a Pearl Earring is awesome. Haven't read the others except Catcher in the Rye, but not since I was 16!

Got Stephen King's first short-story collection in last week. Man are they cheaping out on the reproduction these days. Looks like it was scanned in and printed at low resolution. The letters are thick and not particularly clear, and the left side of the book's pages are bound so close to the spine that you have to really tug the book open to see the last letter of a sentence. I suspect this will wind up in the spine cracking and pages falling out. This is one of the few books I've gotten in a long time in which the physical act of reading it is going to be unpleasant.

Nice intros by John D. MacDonald and King though. I started in on the first story last night but only got a few pages before I feel asleep. I don't know when the book club on this one will get started, but I tend to divert my attention to many books at once so I'm going to try to plow through as much as I can in the next few days before it's too late.

Also got in The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle. I had never heard of it, but read a sample of it and read the incredibly glowing reviews on Amazon, and thought it would be a good idea to try it out. Fantasy isn't really my schtick, but I can appreciate most anything if it's particularly well written.

we're starting discussion of the first story on the 10th....sucks about the quality of your version, tho

Just finished Pet Sematary. It was good, but left me feeling a bit...unsatisfied, though I can't really put my finger on why.

I also don't like King's cheapass foreshadowing. Suzy walked happily out the door, entirey unaware that in three months she would be mauled by a bear. It was ok the first time, but around the third time he did it I started to get a bit irked.

'cause everyone dies?

Yeah, I guess. I hate stories that end like that

Pretty sure the only book I've read close to 10 times is The Hobbit. Have read a bunch 3-4 times.

Heheh, I remember talking about that at the beginning of this thread. It doesn't seem to be the sort of thing he handles particularly well.

Sirens of Titan is a relatively unheralded Vonnegut book that's very good. Cat's Cradle is probably the best that's left.

rambling:

So I finished Infinite Jest by DFW today, and, well, I loved it, though if you asked me why I honestly couldn't tell you. I don't know why it's great, it just is. The only thing I do know is that I love his prose. I know some (most) people will be put off by the length, nearly 1100 pages including endnotes, but every page was a joy to read due to Wallace's virtuosic command of the English language, which for me is saying a lot since I'm ~98% a plot-guy who cares very little (at least on a conscious level) about style, tone and other technical issues. So for me to like a 1000+ page novel where basically nothing happens is huge. I especially love some of the words he uses like map and demap (meaning face/soul/essence/being and to kill/eliminate respectively), X (to have sex with), kertwang (to **** over, to screw up etc (this also is now my favourite word of all time)) and interface (talk to). And the dialogue overall, but especially whenever Hal is involved is fantastic, major highlights including the very start of the book when he starts talking to the deans, and the other being when his dad pretends to be a shrink trying to get Hal to talk to him (his dad had this thing where when Hal was talking to him he (the dad) wouldn't recognise Hal as talking to him, i.e. Hal was talking but nothing was getting through to the dad).

This is a book that is begging to be analysed in length (as has been done by many different people) but I'm comfortable just letting it be what it is: a snapshot of a world created by DFW, inhabited by all these characters where some stuff happens and you can look for deeper meaning in it if you want or just be happy to enjoy it.

Also one more thing, before reading this I got the impression that the book would be very funny, but I found it to be quite sad actually. Sure it had several laugh out loud moments but overall it was quite downbeat. I'm willing to admit though that my reading experience may have been affected by seeing DFW in an interview say that he wanted the book to by extremely sad when everyone was saying how funny it was.

I'm very sad that it took DFW demapping himself for me to find out about him, but at the same time without said demapping I almost certainly would have never discovered him and his work so I guess I should be happy to at least have the work he left behind to add joy to my life even knowing that he'll never publish anything new.

Highly recommended. Don't be put off by the length and complexity. It's worth it. It was for me at least.

I Am Legend

Re-reading this classic. Matheson is brilliant.

Yeah I love that book. I got The Incredible Shrinking man to read again, and it came with a bunch of short stories too; awesome value. Read some short stories of his I hadn't come across(I've only dabbled in Matheson) and enjoyed them a lot. I'm buried in short stories now though so I've got to come back to Matheson later, but I look forward to it.

I only read What Dreams May Come and I am Legend. My edition of Legend came with a bunch of short stories, the same each edition comes with now, but for some reason I read them at a time that I had absolutely no appreciation for the rest of his work. Not so now. It seems like every day I'm going back to an author's body of work I only sampled ten years ago and finding out that the rest of their work is as good if not better than the one piece I tasted.

As for I am Legend, the book illuminates just what I hated about the recent film adaptation. The very title comes from the theme that we are all creatures aching to survive, doing so in ways that terrorize the other creatures around us. But we are oblivious to their terror, unless we choose to relish it, because what creature would not feel satisfaction ensuring its survival? We are only doing what we must to protect ourselves from other creatures with the same ambition. The same way we would kill a hungry bear intent on eating us, Neville will kill the vampires intent on eating him.

But the vampires are no different. They aren't all brainless blood addicts, like the brain-hungry zombies from a Romero film. They're as human as he is, but for the difference that he means to commit genocide based off the assumption that if he doesn't kill them, eventually they will kill him.

The line between hero and enemy is indistinguishable when you meet a creature similar to you in almost every respect but one: for you to exist, they must die, and vice versa.

Neville, the lone human in a world of vampires, in the end becomes the legend, the single vampire hunter they all fear in the same way humanity feared these vampires once as rare as he has now become. To the vampires, Neville is the abnormality, the freak of nature that must be destroyed. Humanity has turned into something he can never be.

The film misses out on all of this. Will Smith's vampires are brainless, except for a couple of interesting scenes that unfortunately go nowhere. If there had been ANY hope of saving the film, it's destroyed by the ending. The woman's fate is completely altered from what we see in the book, and the fate of humanity snatches away any remnant of the brilliance of Matheson's novel.

Change whatever you want to make an adaptation, but it's essential that you keep the essence of the novel. In this case, they failed.

Not to mention Will Smith's fate. I still don't understand why he couldn't get inside with them.

Just finished Augusten Burroughs' "Dry." It was very nice. I read it in one day.

Just now picking up Oliver Sacks' "Musicophilia."

I am on the island of Virgin Gorda in the BVI, in a villa, twenty yards from the Caribbean. I might read three or four books. This is where I am: www.nailbay.com. I am in the Sundowner.

Busto.... one of my least favorite books of all time is I am Legend. I felt like he just gave up on the whole story about halfway through. The story arc imo was unfinished. overall a cool story, but "not really finishing it" really ticked me off. It needed more and just didnt deliver for me....I havent even bothered with the movie.

Wow. I Am Legend was, for me, an example of a story that was just long enough to be satisfying. Any longer and it might have worn out its welcome. There's nothing worse than a good idea executed in every possible way. Leave me wanting more. I'll hate you for not giving it to me, but I wouldn't love the story as much if you did.

I just think they could have developed the female character a bit more. It just seemed like the end just jumped out of nowhere and although I definately got the whole "evolution" thing, I thought he could have stretched out the time it took for him to accept his fate. It would have made more sense that the last shred of humanity would have made an obstinent stand against what was "evil" (especially after being taken prisoner).
Also it could be that im just a sucker for character development, and this story only had the one character, which I guess wasnt really enough for me.


Non related topic.....
If theres still any Wheel of Time fan perusing this thread they have announced that the last book will actually be split into three seperate books, the first will be released in Nov.

nice. the novella is a classic for all the reasons you stated. the movie sucked balls.

wow, I love Virgin Gorda. I'm jealous. Have an awesome time! Edited to add - wow, those prices are pretty good, too.