The Reading Must Go On (Books 23-28 of 52)

A recent Battlestar Galactica marathon (the new series) inspired me to dig up anything I could find on the original series. One bit I found was a book by the same name written by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston thirty years ago. How far the concept has come! While I can't get enough of the cable series, the book was disappointing. Instead of reading like a science fiction classic, it read like a tired space western with lazy dialogue and uninspired action sequences. Whatever made the story work on the screen failed to make it to the page because it was a truly awful book.

When Rich mentioned that Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons was his favorite comic story of all-time, he piqued my curiosity. After reading a copy borrowed from the library, I can see why. It’s a graphic novel that deserves more than one reading. It contains a complex story that involves morally ambiguous characters and spans two generations of costumed adventurers (a.k.a. superheroes). A movie adaptation of the comic is rumored to appear in theaters next year and my only hope is that they don't make a mess of it like they did with Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

When Tony Blair recently resigned as prime minister, it felt like as good a time as any to read more about him, but before I dug around for Blair biographies, I thought it might be good to read about a few of Britain's previous prime ministers. (Yes, I know I haven't finished reading the biographies of my own country's past leaders and I promise to remedy that eventually, but in the meantime...) The first one that came to mind was Winston Churchill. John Keegan's biography of the man who led England through World War II is brief, but well-crafted. It portrays Churchill as a brilliant speaker and a prolific writer (he wrote 43 books) with great ambitions and a deep interest in history. He was a hardheaded man without any friends. He was also plagued throughout his life by illnesses and injuries. His early opposition to Hitler and appeasement made him an outcast and was a serious (though temporary) blow to his political aspirations. Now I'm curious to read some of Churchill's writings, especially his early war memoirs.

As my last two posts likely indicate, I've been on a Potter binge lately. With the completion of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I'm now ready for the last installment in the series, which I'm waiting for as I type this (no sign of a delivery van yet). The books are still as dark and delightful as I remember them. I'm just hoping the last book lives up to the anticipation. Oh, and if you don't hear from me over the next couple of weeks, it's because I've been checked into Potter Rehab.

On Tuesday, I finished reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's the first DailyLit book of notable length that I've completed. It took several months to finish, but felt a lot shorter. As for the book itself, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Conan Doyle's writing style. Reading his mysteries was deeply satisfying.