Not all that much has changed since last we spoke. I'm still busy bulling (or, rather, snailing) my way through all those doughty historical works I mentioned in the last post (although I am now about halfway through Sinclair's A History of New Zealand, and somehow managed to work my way through the nebulous 20-page introduction to The Philosopher's Handbook).Still, there have been some changes, and there are a few things which I think I should bring to your attention. First of all, in the space of about two days, I read a book that Elaine gave me before I left Korea: A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah.
It's Beah's own memoirs of being a child soldier in Sierra Leone fifteen years ago. Parts of it are quite horrific, with graphic descriptions of the dismemberment the author witnessed (and sometimes caused) during the war. At times, it is heartrendingly poignant; Beah loses his entire family to rebels and rebel armies, eventually fleeing to New York by way of Guinea after much suffering and trial. It's a book on a dark subject, and yet somehow I was not at all depressed at the end of it. Rather, I was moved. Hopeful, almost. It's startling just what people can survive (physically and mentally) if they're put to it, given enough time. Read this book and you'll see what I mean. Thanks, Elaine.
Second, there's a comic book I've been mentioning here and there but not fully discussing, much less vaunting like I should be. It deserves it. Yeah, okay, it's a manga (a Japanese comic book). It's called One Piece.This marvelous comic series, one of the best I've ever read at home or abroad, deals with the adventures of one Monkey D. Luffy and his crew. Luffy (the boy in the red vest) was inspired by a pirate captain to become the next legendary King of the Pirates by finding the ultimate treasure left by the previous king: One Piece. With big dreams in his head and the love of adventure in his heart, Luffy's no different than the thousands and thousands of other would-be Pirate Kings who are sailing the world's fiercest and most dangerous ocean, the Grand Line, in search of the treasure. Well, maybe a little different: as a child, Luffy ate the magical Gum-Gum Fruit and gained the power to stretch like rubber. Gifted with superhuman strength, incredible rubber powers, and unsinkable optimism, Luffy and his misfit crew (whom he garners along the way) eat, sing, and fight their way through a colorful world of epic scale, swashbuckling derring-do, and dark danger.
This is good stuff.
The fights are spectacular, for one thing. Not only is Luffy's stretchy fighting style a joy to watch (think Mr. Fantastic from Stan Lee's The Fantastic Four, only Luffy's no super-genius), but the other crew members get into some amazing dust-ups as well. Luffy's first mate, Roronoa Zoro, has mastered the three-sword fighting style: one in each hand and one in his mouth. The crew's cook, Sanji, has legs strong enough to kick through cement walls and dent metal, all without wrinkling his tuxedo. The sniper, Usopp, though he's got a yellow streak a mile wide, is a phenomenal marksman with his slingshot, flinging everything from rotten eggs to explosive devices into the faces of his enemies. Nami, the crew's wily orange-haired navigator, defeats her enemies through cunning (and some rather devastating weather manipulation).
That's just half the crew. With these and many more Luffy sails into the unexplored Grand Line and begins to cross it island-by-island, encountering giants, dinosaurs, gangsters, zombies, secret agents, Marines, hidden kingdoms, fantastic treasures, sea monsters, and a longer list of colorful characters and dastardly super-powered enemies than even Bleach could boast of. The adventure is high, the fights are incredible, the humor is gut-busting (Luffy is, to say the least, extremely simple-minded, frustrating his crew to no end) and in all this manga is just a joy to read. I can't get enough.Saying 'How's your grannie, and good old Ernie?'/'He coughed up a tenner on a premium bond win.'
Sorry, I'm listening to "Thick as a Brick" by Jethro Tull as I write this.
Finally, I just want to give you the customary preview of coming attractions. I placed another order to Amazon.com the day before yesterday (I don't know when to quit). Among some of the things I ordered were:
One Piece Volumes 14,15 by Eiichiro Oda (did I really need to tell you that?)
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
The World Turned Upside Down by Eric Flint, Jim Baen (authors) and David Drake (editor)
The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft
Miyamoto Musashi was, of course, one of the world's most famous swordsmen. He fought many duels and battles all across medieval Japan, never losing. He was not a samurai; simply a student of swordsmanship, as well as philosophy. The Book of Five Rings is, in fact, his most famous work on philosophical pursuits. I'm interested in reading it not only because, well, I know next to nothing about Japanese philosophy (and as I've mentioned heretofore, I'll read anything if I think I can learn something from it) but also because Musashi is a character in my novel. (He's the person one of my protagonists is reincarnated from.) I hope this book will give me some insight into the man's character, which will thereby translate to this monster of a book I'm trying to write.
Not many people know that Pierre Boulle also wrote books like The Bridge Over the River Kwai, but he did. That happens to be a marvelous book, and much better than the movie...which is one of the reasons I suspect I'll like his other well-known book, Planet of the Apes. The Charlton Heston movie was splendid (I'd like to forget that there was ever a Tim Burton remake), but I think the book will blow it out of the water. It never fails. The book is always better than the movie. This promises to be good.
The World Turned Upside Down is a compilation of stories which influenced contemporary writers. Yeah, right. This is a so-called "genre anthology" and the influenced contemporary writers in question are the authors, Eric Flint and Jim Baen, both of whom work in science fiction. This book is a collection of sci-fi stories showcasing work from unknowns as well as giants. I'm always interested to read more science fiction, but this particular book caught my eye since it features John W. Campbell's novella "Who Goes There?", the inspiration for one of my favorite movies ever, eminently creepy and horrific: John Carpenter's The Thing. I've always wanted to read this story, ever since seeing the movie...I'll bet I won't even be able to sleep for a week. Heh heh heh...
The last entry, The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, is exactly what it sounds like: a selection of that worthy's most bone-chilling tales. I got into Lovecraft only recently, as a consequence of getting into Robert E. Howard; the two were coeval, after all. But from what I have read (At the Mountains of Madness) I think I'm in love. Lovecraft's stories consist mostly of first-person accounts with extremely macabre or terrifying overtones...and fantastically horrific implications. These are made credible by clinical, eloquent prose and the strategic evincing of madness (on the part of the narrator) and overarching design (on the part of the horror itself). The mythos Lovecraft created behind his stories is no less compelling. Enter the Elder Gods, disgusting and bestial extra-dimensional beings who came to Earth billions of years past and held dominion, of which only their long-dead cities, inhuman servants and (in some cases) filmy tendrils remain in evidence. Lovecraft's stories tell tales of various unsuspecting innocent human encounters with these cities or servants or tendrils that invariably leave said humans gibbering, insane wrecks. It'd be horrific enough to encounter a half-man, half-fish creature abducting human women to breed with; worse yet is the implication that legions of fish-creatures have been committing such kidnapping for hundreds of years at the insidious behest of their endlessly evil and repugnant Elder God creator, who once ruled over a dark, otherworldly kingdom on land and sea populated with such hybrids, millions of years ago.
See what I mean?
Stay tuned for the book reviews. You know you want to.
Still, there have been some changes, and there are a few things which I think I should bring to your attention. First of all, in the space of about two days, I read a book that Elaine gave me before I left Korea: A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah.
It's Beah's own memoirs of being a child soldier in Sierra Leone fifteen years ago. Parts of it are quite horrific, with graphic descriptions of the dismemberment the author witnessed (and sometimes caused) during the war. At times, it is heartrendingly poignant; Beah loses his entire family to rebels and rebel armies, eventually fleeing to New York by way of Guinea after much suffering and trial. It's a book on a dark subject, and yet somehow I was not at all depressed at the end of it. Rather, I was moved. Hopeful, almost. It's startling just what people can survive (physically and mentally) if they're put to it, given enough time. Read this book and you'll see what I mean. Thanks, Elaine.
Second, there's a comic book I've been mentioning here and there but not fully discussing, much less vaunting like I should be. It deserves it. Yeah, okay, it's a manga (a Japanese comic book). It's called One Piece.
This marvelous comic series, one of the best I've ever read at home or abroad, deals with the adventures of one Monkey D. Luffy and his crew.
Luffy (the boy in the red vest) was inspired by a pirate captain to become the next legendary King of the Pirates by finding the ultimate treasure left by the previous king: One Piece. With big dreams in his head and the love of adventure in his heart, Luffy's no different than the thousands and thousands of other would-be Pirate Kings who are sailing the world's fiercest and most dangerous ocean, the Grand Line, in search of the treasure. Well, maybe a little different: as a child, Luffy ate the magical Gum-Gum Fruit and gained the power to stretch like rubber. Gifted with superhuman strength, incredible rubber powers, and unsinkable optimism, Luffy and his misfit crew (whom he garners along the way) eat, sing, and fight their way through a colorful world of epic scale, swashbuckling derring-do, and dark danger.
This is good stuff.
The fights are spectacular, for one thing. Not only is Luffy's stretchy fighting style a joy to watch (think Mr. Fantastic from Stan Lee's The Fantastic Four, only Luffy's no super-genius), but the other crew members get into some amazing dust-ups as well. Luffy's first mate, Roronoa Zoro, has mastered the three-sword fighting style: one in each hand and one in his mouth. The crew's cook, Sanji, has legs strong enough to kick through cement walls and dent metal, all without wrinkling his tuxedo. The sniper, Usopp, though he's got a yellow streak a mile wide, is a phenomenal marksman with his slingshot, flinging everything from rotten eggs to explosive devices into the faces of his enemies. Nami, the crew's wily orange-haired navigator, defeats her enemies through cunning (and some rather devastating weather manipulation).
That's just half the crew. With these and many more Luffy sails into the unexplored Grand Line and begins to cross it island-by-island, encountering giants, dinosaurs, gangsters, zombies, secret agents, 
Marines, hidden kingdoms, fantastic treasures, sea monsters, and a longer list of colorful characters and dastardly super-powered enemies than even Bleach could boast of. The adventure is high, the fights are incredible, the humor is gut-busting (Luffy is, to say the least, extremely simple-minded, frustrating his crew to no end) and in all this manga is just a joy to read. I can't get enough.
Saying 'How's your grannie, and good old Ernie?'/'He coughed up a tenner on a premium bond win.'
Sorry, I'm listening to "Thick as a Brick" by Jethro Tull as I write this.
Finally, I just want to give you the customary preview of coming attractions. I placed another order to Amazon.com the day before yesterday (I don't know when to quit). Among some of the things I ordered were:
Lovecraft's stories tell tales of various unsuspecting innocent human encounters with these cities or servants or tendrils that invariably leave said humans gibbering, insane wrecks. It'd be horrific enough to encounter a half-man, half-fish creature abducting human women to breed with; worse yet is the implication that legions of fish-creatures have been committing such kidnapping for hundreds of years at the insidious behest of their endlessly evil and repugnant Elder God creator, who once ruled over a dark, otherworldly kingdom on land and sea populated with such hybrids, millions of years ago.
See what I mean?
Stay tuned for the book reviews. You know you want to.
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