I mean, yeah, The Lost World was written on the assumption it would adapted into a film.
Similar vibe to Thomas Harris' Hannibal (which is awful).
Books!
Re: Books!
For Crichton, I've only read Jurassic Park and half of The Lost World so far. I really liked Jurassic Park. I was also enjoying The Lost World too, but I stopped reading about halfway through and let too much time pass to pick up where I left off. I have a thing where if way too much time passes, I have to start it over from the beginning (I do the same with video games).
I've been trying to go to thrift stores when I get the chance, the average book is $2-3. And one local thrift chain has a buy 3 get 1 free deal on books. The problem is, thrift stores on Long Island are usually super crowded and I feel like they're always picked over. You can find popular authors, but it's usually their less popular books. I sometimes find good stuff, but my guess is that I was lucky enough to find it before someone else did. Anyway, I was able to pick up Dragon Teeth and Airframe (both by Crichton) but haven't read them yet. I definitely will pick up his more popular titles, if I ever come across them.
In regards to Thomas Harris, a few years back I read through Red Dragon, Silence of the Lamb and Hannibal all back-to-back. I don't remember Hannibal being bad at all. I rather liked them all, although I would say that Red Dragon was best and Lamb was second best.
Hannibal Rising, on the other hand, I wasn't able to get into. I didn't get very far in the book, something about it was just very boring to me. Since I liked the first three books, it sounded kind of neat to get a prequel of Hannibal's back story. But we all thought the same thing with Darth Vader. I don't care about Hannibal as a small child, and some characters are more interesting when you DON'T know their back story so well. Also, I've read that Harris was pressured into writing it which might explain why it was so bland and flat compared to the previous books.
Speaking of my thrift store book finds, I just recently found a few books that have been on my list for a while now. One of them being Bram Stoker's Dracula. Has anyone ever heard of the Great Illustrated Classics line of books? They're adaptations for children of well-known books. When I was young, I found Dracula in a book store and was super excited to get it. I didn't realize that it was the Great Illustrated Classics adaptation though. I was so bummed after finding out. Dracula has been on my to-get list ever since. So I was super stoked to find it in a thrift store. The problem though, the cover is really lame. I mean, just look at it...
Looks like some lame stock photo and something you could have put together in MS Paint on Windows 95. I'm a real sucker for book covers, so although I was happy to find this book for cheap, I'm just not satisfied with the cover.
Has anyone seen those Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions? Normally I don't like buying books at retail, I feel like they're just too expensive. But when searching for what covers exist for Dracula, I came across the Barnes & Noble Collectible Edition. And that led me down the rabbit hole. They have a ton of classics with some really nice looking covers. It's hard to tell from the stock pictures, so I looked up some YouTube reviews of them. They look like really nice books. I couldn't resist, I decided to pick up a few of them. I haven't seen them yet in person, I'm still waiting for them to be delivered.
I've been trying to go to thrift stores when I get the chance, the average book is $2-3. And one local thrift chain has a buy 3 get 1 free deal on books. The problem is, thrift stores on Long Island are usually super crowded and I feel like they're always picked over. You can find popular authors, but it's usually their less popular books. I sometimes find good stuff, but my guess is that I was lucky enough to find it before someone else did. Anyway, I was able to pick up Dragon Teeth and Airframe (both by Crichton) but haven't read them yet. I definitely will pick up his more popular titles, if I ever come across them.
In regards to Thomas Harris, a few years back I read through Red Dragon, Silence of the Lamb and Hannibal all back-to-back. I don't remember Hannibal being bad at all. I rather liked them all, although I would say that Red Dragon was best and Lamb was second best.
Hannibal Rising, on the other hand, I wasn't able to get into. I didn't get very far in the book, something about it was just very boring to me. Since I liked the first three books, it sounded kind of neat to get a prequel of Hannibal's back story. But we all thought the same thing with Darth Vader. I don't care about Hannibal as a small child, and some characters are more interesting when you DON'T know their back story so well. Also, I've read that Harris was pressured into writing it which might explain why it was so bland and flat compared to the previous books.
Speaking of my thrift store book finds, I just recently found a few books that have been on my list for a while now. One of them being Bram Stoker's Dracula. Has anyone ever heard of the Great Illustrated Classics line of books? They're adaptations for children of well-known books. When I was young, I found Dracula in a book store and was super excited to get it. I didn't realize that it was the Great Illustrated Classics adaptation though. I was so bummed after finding out. Dracula has been on my to-get list ever since. So I was super stoked to find it in a thrift store. The problem though, the cover is really lame. I mean, just look at it...
Looks like some lame stock photo and something you could have put together in MS Paint on Windows 95. I'm a real sucker for book covers, so although I was happy to find this book for cheap, I'm just not satisfied with the cover.
Has anyone seen those Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions? Normally I don't like buying books at retail, I feel like they're just too expensive. But when searching for what covers exist for Dracula, I came across the Barnes & Noble Collectible Edition. And that led me down the rabbit hole. They have a ton of classics with some really nice looking covers. It's hard to tell from the stock pictures, so I looked up some YouTube reviews of them. They look like really nice books. I couldn't resist, I decided to pick up a few of them. I haven't seen them yet in person, I'm still waiting for them to be delivered.
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BoneSnapDeez
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 20128
- Joined: Mon May 02, 2011 1:08 pm
- Location: Maine
Re: Books!
Ziggy587 wrote:Has anyone seen those Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions?
Yeah those are really nice, I browse through them every time I go to the local B&N. Been meaning to get the Poe and Lovecraft anthologies, just haven't done it yet.
There's actually a Jurassic Park / Lost World Barnes & Noble Collectible Edition now too.
Re: Books!
BoneSnapDeez wrote:Yeah those are really nice, I browse through them every time I go to the local B&N. Been meaning to get the Poe and Lovecraft anthologies, just haven't done it yet.
There's actually a Jurassic Park / Lost World Barnes & Noble Collectible Edition now too.
LOL I actually picked up the Poe and Lovecraft anthologies, among some others.
I saw the JP/Lost World book. That's a neat idea, but I don't know how I feel about the big giant collection books. The Lovecraft complete works seems pretty thick, I hope it isn't a pain in the ass to read.
Re: Books!
I've genuinely considered getting into painting so I could make and sell classic public domain novels illustrated by yours truly. My top first choice is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
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prfsnl_gmr
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 12318
- Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 10:26 pm
- Location: Charlotte, North Carolina
Re: Books!
Ziggy587 wrote:Has anyone ever heard of the Great Illustrated Classics line of books? They're adaptations for children of well-known books. When I was young, I found Dracula in a book store and was super excited to get it. I didn't realize that it was the Great Illustrated Classics adaptation though. I was so bummed after finding out. Dracula has been on my to-get list ever since. So I was super stoked to find it in a thrift store. The problem though, the cover is really lame. I mean, just look at it...
Looks like some lame stock photo and something you could have put together in MS Paint on Windows 95. I'm a real sucker for book covers, so although I was happy to find this book for cheap, I'm just not satisfied with the cover.
Has anyone seen those Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions? Normally I don't like buying books at retail, I feel like they're just too expensive. But when searching for what covers exist for Dracula, I came across the Barnes & Noble Collectible Edition. And that led me down the rabbit hole. They have a ton of classics with some really nice looking covers. It's hard to tell from the stock pictures, so I looked up some YouTube reviews of them. They look like really nice books. I couldn't resist, I decided to pick up a few of them. I haven't seen them yet in person, I'm still waiting for them to be delivered.
The Great Illustrated Classics books are usually abridged; so, you may want to skip those. I much prefer the Children’s Classics and Junior Illustrated Library series. The books are unabridged, and the illustrations are better. (Children’s Classics has better interior illustrations, but Junior Illustrated Library has better dust jackets.)
Dracula and The Hound of The Baskervilles are two of my favorite horror novels, and I was lucky enough to find first North American editions of each. Neither is that valuable, but I think they’re neat. There are lot of other really handsome editions, though; so, I’m sure you’ll find something you like.
I only have one of the Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions. It’s Dune, though, and it looks awesome. I’d like to get a few others, but you don’t see them at thrift stores very often!
Finally, The Andromeda Strain is my favorite Crichton novel. The Great Train Robbery is a close runner-up, though.
Re: Books!
prfsnl_gmr wrote:The Hound of The Baskervilles
Never heard of it, so I just looked it up. Ah! I recognized the author immediately. I've yet to read any of the Sherlock Holmes books/stories, but it's been on my to-get list for so long. The problem is, there's so many collections and a lot of them seem to be cash-grabs. When I dig into reviews for some of them, they sometimes have extremely small print and/or thin pages that make them hard to read. So I settled on getting a non-complete collection. The batch of B&N Collectible Editions that I just picked up, it includes a Holmes book! I just pulled the page back up, and it does indeed include The Hound of The Baskervilles. The description says it includes what Doyle himself considered the greatest Holmes and Watson adventures. I figured that if I read through this entire collection, and enjoyed it enough to want more, then at that point I'll seek out a complete collection.
prfsnl_gmr wrote:I only have one of the Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions. It’s Dune, though, and it looks awesome. I’d like to get a few others, but you don’t see them at thrift stores very often!
I'm not counting on ever seeing any of them in a thrift store. I figure most books at thrift stores are from people that read them once then get rid of them. The B&N Collectible Editions are for people that want to keep it, so not likely to end up in a thrift store. At least they don't cost an arm and a leg at retail. Most of the ones I've seen are $15, some of the larger ones are more. But I figure, a cheap mass paper back can be $15, so a premium book for that price isn't all bad. Still, way more than what you pay at a thrift store!
prfsnl_gmr wrote:Finally, The Andromeda Strain is my favorite Crichton novel. The Great Train Robbery is a close runner-up, though.
Yeah, I'll definitely snatch those two up if I ever come across them. I don't really know anything about either (I like to keep it that way) but those are such great titles! The Andromeda Strain sounds like the name of an episode from Star Trek TOS.
And speaking of Star Trek and thrift store books... I always see a TON of Star Trek books in them, but I always just skip by. Mostly because there are so many series that I wouldn't know where to start. But I recently read the synopsis for a TOS book, and it sounded like a missing episode to the TV show LOL. So I might have to start taking a look at these now. Like I need more books to read!
Re: Books!
There were some really good authors who wrote TOS books, like James Blish. And some of those books really did look to the series for lore and tried to make a meaningful and consistent contribution.
Re: Books!
Well, I have just started reading a translation of Chen Quifan's Waste Tide, in which a young woman living on an island that serves as the world's electronics dumping ground gets embroiled in the gang wars and government machinations there.
For the Barnes & Noble collections, I have bought several of these for my mother over the years as replacements for older books that have worn apart and to help her as she builds out her library. The covers are well done, and the construction on them is solid. Plus, modern paper treatment methods means they're durable and don't feel like they were written on tissue paper as well as resist mold. They're solid.
Michael Crichton tends to be better the farther back you go. In the mid-90s, his quality feels like it dropped. Still readable, but Timeline and Prey were not as great as The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, or The Great Train Robbery in my opinion. Dragon Teeth is one of his three posthumous releases, so I don't know how good it will be. Pirate Latitudes is another that I did read, and it definitely felt unfinished. That said, not all of it is easy to return to. Rising Sun is based off reactions to the American-Japanese economic relationship in the 1980s (the same one that still fuels a lot of cyberpunk media), and it now feels problematic.
For H.P. Lovecraft... it's not easy to read, regardless of the page quality. Lovecraft had an archaic style even compared to his contemporaries. Good luck!
For the Barnes & Noble collections, I have bought several of these for my mother over the years as replacements for older books that have worn apart and to help her as she builds out her library. The covers are well done, and the construction on them is solid. Plus, modern paper treatment methods means they're durable and don't feel like they were written on tissue paper as well as resist mold. They're solid.
Michael Crichton tends to be better the farther back you go. In the mid-90s, his quality feels like it dropped. Still readable, but Timeline and Prey were not as great as The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, or The Great Train Robbery in my opinion. Dragon Teeth is one of his three posthumous releases, so I don't know how good it will be. Pirate Latitudes is another that I did read, and it definitely felt unfinished. That said, not all of it is easy to return to. Rising Sun is based off reactions to the American-Japanese economic relationship in the 1980s (the same one that still fuels a lot of cyberpunk media), and it now feels problematic.
For H.P. Lovecraft... it's not easy to read, regardless of the page quality. Lovecraft had an archaic style even compared to his contemporaries. Good luck!
Re: Books!
So my B&N books came in, and they really do look fantastic! The only thing is, they shipped them in a box with some air pillows but nothing else. Luckily they arrived in almost perfect condition. I say "almost" because 5 or so pages were kind of dogeared on Dracula. My guess is the corner of another book slammed into Dracula in transit and bent a few pages in. Or who knows, perhaps it came from the factory that way and the packer didn't seem to care. But either way, it wasn't too bad. I was able to bend the pages back and sandwich the book, it seems alright now. Not worth an exchange, at least. But anyways, these books look amazing. They're definitely the nicest looking books in my collection now. I'll definitely be ordering a few more.
For reference, here's the B&N books I just got...
I'm going to save Dracula for October. There's a few other books I'd like to read in October, so I might start Dracula early if the weather is right. Frankenstein seems to be about half as long as Dracula, and anything else I'd like to read this October is rather short.
So speaking of short reads... I've really grown to love them! I'll only start a new novel if I know I'm going to finish it. I really hate stopping halfway through a novel. If I stop halfway through and let too much time pass, then I wont want to pick up where I left off. I feel like I would have forgotten too much. So I'd rather start over, but that's also annoying. So I end up not starting a new novel very often. Short reads, on the other hand, are great. I love being able to blow through something without any kind of real time commitment.
That said, I never realized how short some classic stories are. Either short stories or novellas. I mean, I knew the Poe stuff wasn't very long. And I guess I sort of knew that some of the Holmes stuff was short stories. But I didn't know that Jekyll and Hyde was a short read. And I didn't know that the Lovecraft stuff was short as well. I also picked up an H.G. Wells set a while back, and they all seem on the short side too. I like the idea of being able to just read a short story, and jump around between different things depending on what mood I'm in. Unlike, for example, a King novel that I better set aside some serious time for.
Does/did anyone here read Goosebumps books? I remembering Goosebumps being crazy popular when I was in elementary school. I had a few of the books from back then, and I actually still have them now. I always loved the covers (with the exception of a few), I was actually more interested in the covers than I was reading the books LOL.
A few months ago, I decided to go for a complete set of the original line of Goosebumps books. And I did just that. I've read a few of them so far, and I oddly enjoy them. Reading them as an adult, there's sometimes some "give me a break, that would never happen" kind of stuff. But keeping in mind that they were written for children, I don't mind. They're silly/spooky, not to be taken seriously in the first place. But that said, since they are written for children, they're super easy to read. But Stine's writing style is still enjoyable enough as an adult. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm creeping up on middle age that it has that "I remember my childhood" factor for me.
They're incredibly short reads, and somewhat large print compared to a typical paperback. But that's what I like about them. If I'm tired from work or whatever, they're easy to just blow through. If my eyes lids are getting heavy, the large print is easier to read LOL. I think I can get through one in an hour or two. So depending the mood I'm in, I can either blow through one in a single sitting, or read it in 15 minute intervals over a few nights. And they're simple enough to follow that I can be half paying attention and still enjoy it.
For reference, here's the B&N books I just got...
I'm going to save Dracula for October. There's a few other books I'd like to read in October, so I might start Dracula early if the weather is right. Frankenstein seems to be about half as long as Dracula, and anything else I'd like to read this October is rather short.
So speaking of short reads... I've really grown to love them! I'll only start a new novel if I know I'm going to finish it. I really hate stopping halfway through a novel. If I stop halfway through and let too much time pass, then I wont want to pick up where I left off. I feel like I would have forgotten too much. So I'd rather start over, but that's also annoying. So I end up not starting a new novel very often. Short reads, on the other hand, are great. I love being able to blow through something without any kind of real time commitment.
That said, I never realized how short some classic stories are. Either short stories or novellas. I mean, I knew the Poe stuff wasn't very long. And I guess I sort of knew that some of the Holmes stuff was short stories. But I didn't know that Jekyll and Hyde was a short read. And I didn't know that the Lovecraft stuff was short as well. I also picked up an H.G. Wells set a while back, and they all seem on the short side too. I like the idea of being able to just read a short story, and jump around between different things depending on what mood I'm in. Unlike, for example, a King novel that I better set aside some serious time for.
Does/did anyone here read Goosebumps books? I remembering Goosebumps being crazy popular when I was in elementary school. I had a few of the books from back then, and I actually still have them now. I always loved the covers (with the exception of a few), I was actually more interested in the covers than I was reading the books LOL.
A few months ago, I decided to go for a complete set of the original line of Goosebumps books. And I did just that. I've read a few of them so far, and I oddly enjoy them. Reading them as an adult, there's sometimes some "give me a break, that would never happen" kind of stuff. But keeping in mind that they were written for children, I don't mind. They're silly/spooky, not to be taken seriously in the first place. But that said, since they are written for children, they're super easy to read. But Stine's writing style is still enjoyable enough as an adult. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm creeping up on middle age that it has that "I remember my childhood" factor for me.
They're incredibly short reads, and somewhat large print compared to a typical paperback. But that's what I like about them. If I'm tired from work or whatever, they're easy to just blow through. If my eyes lids are getting heavy, the large print is easier to read LOL. I think I can get through one in an hour or two. So depending the mood I'm in, I can either blow through one in a single sitting, or read it in 15 minute intervals over a few nights. And they're simple enough to follow that I can be half paying attention and still enjoy it.