Staying at home is the norm... What are you reading?

[Johnny Novgorod]

Took a break today to read a short Roald Dahl book that I hadn't read yet, The Magic Finger (I'm about 100 pages, out of 414, from finishing the Odyssey). It's funny how so many of Dahl's children's stories are basically horror stories but for the cutesy, totally guileless drawings adjoining the text. This is one of his earlier books and he's already all about children seeking vengeance on cruel adults, and evidently he was always deeply wounded by hunting and animal cruelty, which also go on to show up a lot in his work.

About the Odyssey, which is structured into 24 "books": it takes 4 books to get to Odysseus himself, and another 4 books to get to the meat and potatoes of the odyssey itself (the cyclops, the underworld, Scylla and Charybdis, etc.), most of which is relayed as a story within a story across the following 4 books. The odyssey itself takes about 10 years, most of which are spent in the captivity of sex-starved goddesses (Circe, Calypso), which doesn't sound like such a bad deal. The succeeding 12 books are wholly concerned with Odysseus posing as a hobo back home while machinating the undoing of the suitors, and it's a bit of a lull until we get to the single most poignant moment in the text involving Odysseus' dog and the wheels are finally set in motion.

I keep trying to picture how Nolan will structure his movie and I'm assuming he'll probably do the Two Towers thing of cutting between Odysseus and Telemachus' journeys, forego of the story-withing-a-story conceit, and probably readapt Agamemnon's murder into the timeline, based on casting rumors.

 

[Ezekiel]

Shiver: Junji Ito Selected Stories

"The Long Dream" short story, about a man whose dreams become longer and longer, doesn't really seem quite horror. More like a pretty good dark sci-fi fantasy story that Hollywood would have adapted already if they read more manga. Can't find it online for free right now, but it was (badly) dubbed.

 

[BrawlMan]

Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Beat'Em Ups.

@Worgen, my only problem with this book, is that it's missing a few brawlers. For whatever reason they have the first Rastan in the book, but not Warrior Blade: Rastan III. Rastan I isn't even really brawler. More of an action platformer where you use a sword or an axe. They have Sonic Blast Man I, but not Sonic Blast Man II in an entry. They have all of these other obscure brawlers or ones that never made it stateside in their book. Retro-Bit missed Nosferatu in the book too. It's still a great read, but it's odd they have entry that is really not a beat'em up, and missing some games that aren't that obscure. I know they can't get every single game, but when you get a mediocre Japan only GBA brawler with cute action girls in your book, but not two games that came out in all regions, then something is wrong here.

 

[Worgen]

@Worgen, my only problem with this book, is that it's missing a few brawlers. For whatever reason they have the first Rastan in the book, but not Warrior Blade: Rastan III. Rastan I isn't even really brawler. More of an action platformer where you use a sword or an axe. They have Sonic Blast Man I, but not Sonic Blast Man II in an entry. They have all of these other obscure brawlers or ones that never made it stateside in their book. Retro-Bit missed Nosferatu in the book too. It's still a great read, but it's odd they have entry that is really not a beat'em up, and missing some games that aren't that obscure. I know they can't get every single game, but when you get a mediocre Japan only GBA brawler with cute action girls in your book, but not two games that came out in all regions, then something is wrong here.

Weird, they tended to be pretty good with the fps book, they even mentioned Hedon which is the best but when they were making the book it was either still in EA or hadn't been steam released yet.