Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

Just got done with Treasure Island. Having never been forced to read it in school, this was my first time picking it up. It was a good read. Nothing spectacular, but brisk and fun.

Well I was about to start the new Brandon Sanderson book in the Stormlight Chronicles (which Mrs Klen7 says is amazing and addresses all my issues in book 1) when I realized I hadn't finished 3 other books that I had started. So I'm re-engaged with Stephen King's "Under the Dome" before undertaking another thick book. I might also finish off the first book of "Monster Hunter International" as well

Read the Tao Te Ching, the true authorship of which is in some doubt but is historically attributed to Lao Tzu.

Reading The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, which was almost certainly written by Edgar Allan Poe.

Y'all might find this interesting, it involves Godzilla:

http://www.amazon.com/You-Think-Thats-B ... 0307594823
It's a short story collection, and this author specializes in historical, heavily researched, stories. And one of the stories happens to be about Eiji Tsuburaya and crew in the wake of making the original Godzilla. (!)

It's at my local library, I'm probably going to check this out tonight. I'm curious to how genuinely this guy portrays the birth of tokusatsu (this book was only published three years ago). I think this is pretty unprecedented.

Read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Reading The Pyrates by George MacDonald Fraser. If you love The Princess Bride and want something sorta on the same track you need this book - though it's lighter on the true love (more lust in that department) and heavier on the swashbuckling adventure.

I just finished Project Nemesis and Project Maigo by Jeremy Robinson. These are fantastic kaiju novels with interesting characters, heroes and villains. There is a third novel set in the same universe, Island 731 which I'm ordering tomorrow.

He may have decided to make it a series after the fact. He retroactively made "Pulse" a Chess Team Adventure only to rebrand the continuity as a Jack Sigler thriller 4 books in.

I'm not really reading a regular book or comic at this point in time, but I borrowed from one of my friends a book called Alien Vault. It is about the making of Alien and it is quite awesome so far. It's talked about different things that O'Bannon had to go through to even get the movie made. Also, did you know that the people in the space suit during the Space Jockey scene were actually Scott's kids and not the actors? That is something that you never see done today because they can just CGI everything. Oh, and there was supposed to be a pyramid scene that sounds pretty damn awesome.

Since my last post I've read At the Mountains of Madness, Frankenstein (with amazing Lynd Ward illustrations), the original novelization of King Kong... to be honest, I didn't do a lot of reading this year. Looking over my reading log I see I only read a dozen books of prose and even my comics intake was greatly reduced.

So this year I plan to make up for it! Currently reading Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edogawa Rampo.

Got this wonderful tome from the library:

Tales From Ovid by Ted Hughes.

Taking a break from 'Grasshopper Jungle' to read study guides for work related certifications...

I've finished off a few books just within the past week or so:

On Writing by Stephen King - I'm not in love with King's work generally, but when it comes to the act and art of writing, he knows his stuff. The autobiographical sections are great as well. It's interesting to read about such a famous writer's development.

The Elements of Style by Strunk & White - Some of the proscriptions here have aged better than others. I'd say roughly half of the advice can be easily swallowed; the rest is debatable or outdated. Nonetheless, I consider the book worth reading and owning.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - Blew through all of it today. It's a fascinating story well told, one of the better novels I've read in a while.

I also read some of Robert E. Howard's unpublished (in his time) Conan drafts and fragments. Conan is largely absent from most of them, but they're still enjoyable.

Taking a break from reading The Blue Lagoon to read something my mother virtually demanded I put before anything else because she liked it so much: (which yes, has a giant monster). It's actually pretty funny.

Also decided to pick up Alice's Adventures in Wonderland because I've been confronted with its influence several times within the past month and don't ever remember actually reading it.

Read A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. As concise and prettily written a world history you could ask for. A great resource if it's been a while since you've been to school and you want to get the sequence of events and the major historical players straight in your head. It was originally written for children when Gombrich was a freshly graduated Art History major in Germany in the '30s. Things got a bit Hitler-y soon after, and, being Jewish, he got out and went to England, where he became a citizen. Gombrich worked on this revised English translation in the last years of his life, and it was published just a decade ago. The last chapter, where he describes the parts of history he lived through after completing that first edition, is particularly powerful.

Now reading Flashman at the Charge, by George MacDonald Fraser, where we find the cowardly, loathsome fraud flail his way though another (impeccably researched) 18th century event. The Charge of the Light Brigade, in this case.

I just finished Punk Rock Blitzkrieg by Marky Ramone.

My autographed copy, that is.