^ I started and stopped House of Leaves half a dozen times before I finally finished it.

Sometime last year a friend messaged me about something he saw online somewhere about an old paperback book based on the Lost in Space show, asking if I had heard of it before (we are both Lost in Space fans). Not only had I heard of the book, I had picked it up sometime in the early 1970s and had it somewhere in my vast collection of paperback books. So I dug it out to send him a picture of it, noting that I had never bothered to read it. So, after just finishing The Martian, what better follow-up could there be?? It was as lame as you might imagine, holding very close to the TV show.

Appreciate the commitment to the colored font!

The Navidson report is the best part of the book, and much easier to read than the rest. So I recommend trying to at least get to that before bailing. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember allowing myself to skim sections (especially the parts that are parody of dry academic writing) greatly increasing my enjoyment.

"TV's most famous science fiction series"?

To be fair, Lost in Space did much better in the ratings than Star Trek when first aired.

The Chris Claremont who used to fill comic book panels with text is way too wordy?

So true!!!

Made that seventy-five cents stretch, though.

Compared today, when you can read a $3.99 comic book in under two minutes.

I never read those books -- despite George Lucas and Christ Claremont's names attached to the books, I was not a fan of Willow -- but I did read Claremont's science fiction novel trilogy. I remember them being good, though they were very Claremont-y... hypercompetent oversexualized women, cat people, body transformation, multinational team of protagonists.





Speaking of funnybook creators writing novels, John Byrne wrote a couple of horror novels, Fearbook (which I have neither read, nor even seen a copy of) and Whipping Boy (which I did read) that was part of the Dell Abyss line. Byrne also had a couple of stories in Jeff Gelb's anthologies... one in a Hot Blood book and another in Shock Rock... Byrne writing erotic horror is about an cringey as one might imagine.

And speaking of Hot Blood, Grant Morrison also had a couple of short stories published in the Hot Blood books... "The Braille Encyclopedia" and "The Room Where Love Lives," which were both quite good.

Finished:

Pet Sematary by Stephen King



This was my first reading of this book since right after it came out in the late fall of '83. At the time, I thought that it was one of the scariest books that I'd ever read, an impression that lasted up until this reread...and, while the plot still worked, it didn't raise even the mildest shiver. I guess that over forty years of exposure to the book and the films made from it have drained the scare factor right out of the book for me. I'm a bit disappointed that it was no longer able to work its dark magic on me, but it's still a cracking good read nonetheless.

Up next:

The Quick and the Dead by Louis L'Amour



I'm ready for a change of pace, and it's been a year and a half since I've read a western novel (and two years since I've read a book by L'Amour)...so it's time.

Been slacking on my updates

Finished

^ I read that a few months back an enjoyed it. It reminded me of Michael Crichton.

There's a second book in the series coming out in April called 'Paradox', so I figured I would read book one and then roll into book two - as I'm already a fan of Preston.
As for the Crichton reminders there was already a 'Jurassic Park' reference by one of the characters so I assume Preston knows he's dabbling in borrowing from established Pop Culture. I hope.

A few recent finishes:


Lost Gods by Brom. Brom has yet to disappoint me. I liked the world-building of an afterlife that mashes together all of the world's mythologies.


A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. Short (only ~100 pages) and sweet, and the type of "cozy" reading you'd expect from Becky Chambers.


Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker. More of a "me" problem than a book problem, but I wouldn't have read this if I knew it was a COVID book (which in retrospect the title makes obvious). Aside from that, I liked the Chinese mythology about ghost month and hungry ghosts, which is a wrinkle on ghost stories I wasn't familiar with. Well, I'm sure I've seen silly Hong Kong movies about this but not seriously portrayed as in here.

I recently picked up a biography of Mark Twain, which I haven't gotten around to reading yet. I knew I had a copy of Huckleberry Finn somewhere in my piles of old paperbacks, and thought it might be more enlightening to read that first, to get a better feel of Twain's writing before reading about his life. Upon locating the Huckleberry book, I found that I also had Tom Sawyer! I'm not sure when I came into possession of these, but I suspect it was the late 1960s (the books are 1967 editions). Probably from my mom. Anyway, I decided to start with Tom Sawyer, and just finished it. I am always very careful in handling books (being a comic book collector does that), and can read a paperback book without stressing the spine at all. The books will look mostly unread when I'm done. That's just a quirk of mine. I freak out when I see people folding the covers back and bending the hell out of the spine!

Sadly, this book had been in various boxes over the decades, and had become noticeably tanned on the inside covers. (Cardboard is really bad for storing books, comics and anything paper). I proceeded reading in my usual careful manner, but the glue apparently had either dried to the point of disintegration, or the book was just faulty all these years. But it started coming apart! First a few pages came loose, then more, and eventually the entire cover simply separated from the bulk of the bound pages. I held it together as best I could.

Anyway, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was a very fun and enjoyable read! If I had read it in the '60s, I don't recall, although I knew some aspects of the story just through osmosis over the years. Indeed, a classic!

Here's my poor copy ...

I have never read any Mark Twain! Must rectify. Is the bio you have the 1200 page brick?

Nope; it's only 1174 pages.

I haven't read a lot of Twain, but what I have read I enjoyed. I mentioned not long ago that I stumbled upon a short story and thought it was very interesting. Gave an insight to his view of humanity. Might go with Huck before tackling "the brick" - not sure I'm ready for another huge book yet. (Les Miserables still weighs on me!)