Yeah, I phrased that poorly. I meant that I realized it just from reading the text, before I learned about the history behind it.
Going from the sacred to the profane, I finally got around to reading the novelization of VAN HELSING by former Trek writer and editor Kevin Ryan. Enjoyed it more than the movie!
I finished The Dresden files battle ground . So for now I have only the Dresden files the law to read and thats it. I hope Jim Butcher quickly comes with a new Dresden files book
Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded by Jason Heller. Basically, a history of the crossover of the science fiction and rock music worlds, bookended by David Bowie’s Space Oddity (1969) and its 1980 sequel, Ashes to Ashes. I’m really enjoying this, currently reading about Michael Moorcock’s involvement with Hawkwind in 1971. Highly recommended, if you have any interest in the music and/or the SF of the decade.
Tobit Judith. It sure does take a while for the heroine to finally put in an appearance. And I would read either or both of these apocryphal books recreationally. Despite the presence of an invocation (thankfully not all that graphic) of the "eye scream" trope in Tobit.
"Turn of the Table" by Jonathan Stagge. A murder mystery, first published in 1940, I stumbled across on my bookshelf yesterday while looking for something else. Have no idea when or how I acquired it, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Van Helsing, the movie that @David Mack sent me running, screaming from a room at Shore Leave that year. It's been a long time since I looked at any of the Van Helsing material, but I recall enjoying the animated film (The London Assignment) and the tie-in comic far more than the film (which I thought was awful). The London Assignment was written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (another Trek connection!) and sees Van Helsing battle Mr. Hyde before the events of the film. The comic book had Van Helsing tangle with Dr. Moreau.
Just finished reading last night Randy West's very entertaining tome, TV Inside-Out - Flukes, Flakes, Feuds and Felonies: The backstage blunders, bloopers and blasphemy of celebrities in search of success (BearManor Media, 2022). Randy West has spent his entire adult life working in the entertainment industry, first on radio and then, after being mentored by the famous Johnny Olson (the original "Price Is Right" "COME ON DOOWWWWN" announcer), began his long career in 1988 as a game show announcer, audience warm-up personality, and voice performer. West has worked with or at least interacted with many of the television and motion picture celebrities, and has had the ear of even more actors, writers, producers, directors, and other figures who have worked in television going all the way back to the 1950s who could share with West stories that West himself could not have personally witnessed himself. After a lengthy introduction in which West expounds upon the nature of being a celebrity and how some people react to the pressures of fame and success (and stresses to continue to succeed) differently than others, West begins telling his stories of television game show hosts and producers, actors who off screen couldn't stand each other, morning show and late night show hosts, news announcers, talk show hosts, etc. How deals were agreed upon and then broken. Personality clashes. Hosts who were warm and friendly--accept when the cameras weren't rolling. Friendships and professional partnerships that splintered apart over sometimes real, sometimes only perceived, betrayals. Tales of personal life travails that derailed successful television careers. And, likewise, stories of others who overcame great obstacles. I read this book very slowly over several months, just a chapter or two at a time (sometimes even only part of a chapter) as West's style of jumping from one anecdote to another encouraged me to read it this way. His chapters are short and most of them discuss two of three different celebrity tales or stories from different television shows, although a few chapters do focus on one particular celebrity like Johnny Carson and Betty White. I learned of this book by Randy West's appearing on Ed Robertson's "TV Confidential" radio show/podcast and immediately asked my local public library to get a copy, which they did. I recommend if for anyone who loves reading about old tv shows and celebrities "behind the scenes" stories (although it's not just "classic TV" figures and events West shares about, he also includes tales of celebrities, as well, right up to the year this book came out). Many of the stories are ones that have been told before, but that's okay. There are most likely just as many if not more that most readers have not heard before. And it's a book that some can read as I did, the entire thing, cover to cover, while others jump around in, reading about only the celebrities or genres of television that they personally are interested in. I gave TV Inside-Out four out of five stars on GoodReads. — David Young
Haven't movies/TV shows taught you that you probably shouldn't read books that just show up on your shelf with no explanation?
Also read The Orville Season 2.5: Digressions (published by Dark Horse Books, March 2022). Written by David A. Goodman, art by David Cabeza, colors by Michael Atiyeh, lettering by Richard Starkings and ComiCraft’s Jimmy Betancourt. Dark Horse Books (a.k.a., Dark Horse Comics), third and last (so far) trade paperback collection of comics they released based on the Seth McFarlane sci-fi television series, The Orville (which ran on Fox for two seasons, 2017 to 2019, and a third season exclusively streaming on Hulu, June to August 2022). Dark Horse released their Orville comics as mini-series, one or two per year in 2019, 2020, and 2021. They released some of these mini-series with somewhat confusingand contradictory titles, some with both an overall The Orville series title (numbered issues #1-4) but at the same time also titled as “The Orville: [First two-issue story title] Part 1 of 2” and “Part 2 of 2”, followed by “The Orville: [Second two-issue story title] Part 1 of 2” (as seen in the two Orville trade paperbacks that came out prior to this one, The Orville Season 1.5: New Beginnings (which contains two separate two-issue stories, "New Beginnings" and "The Word of Avis") and The Orville Season 2.5: Launch Day (which contains the stories "Launch Day" and "Heroes). This third Orville trade paperback, The Orville Season 2.5: Digressions (2022), reprints The Orville: Digressions #1-2 (May 2021-June 2021) and The Orville: Artifacts #1-2 (October 2021-November 2021). Digressions is by far the more interesting of the two stories in this collected edition as it follows upon the events of the season two Orville episode, "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow", in which a younger version of Commander Kelly Grayson (played by Adrianne Palicki) is accidentally brought through time to the show's present day and learns all of the things that has happened to her in the intervening years before the crew finally figures out a way to send her back to her proper time. As seen at the end of that episode, however, the "mind wipe" that was supposed to make her forget everything she has learned prior to being sent back fails and she remembers everything. Digressions continues this story by showing how different decisions she makes in her life based on that knowledge have far reaching consequences, ones that ultimately threaten the survival of the Union and all of those on Earth when the inevitable Kaylon invasion occurs. This is a very well done two-issue story which, unfortunately, ends abruptly at the end of the second part with a note saying, "Continued in 'The Road Not Taken'..." (which isn't the second story in this collected edition but instead is where the story picks up on the television series). Digressions is basically a "filling in the gaps" bridging story between those two episodes, something which I didn't realize when I first started reading it (and therefore couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed when I realized it wasn't a complete story in and of itself). The second story in this collection, Artifacts, is a decent enough (if at the same time very forgettable) story of an old academy professor of Captain Mercer's convinces Mercer to take his ship into a dangerous region of space obscured from the rest of the galaxy by a unique four-star phenomenon, inside of which may be hidden an ancient legendary fleet of warships from a now extinct species. The professor has ulterior motives, however, that only perennial goof-off Orville helmsman, Gordon Malloy, seems to be suspicious of. I ended up giving this Orville collected edition (as I did the previous two) three out of five stars on GoodReads. (For those who might be interested, Dark Horse has also released a more expensive The Orville: Library Edition hardcover collection that is an omnibus of all three of the trade paperbacks (containing all of the Dark Horse Orville stories in one volume.) — David Young
Esther (with apocryphal insertions) First Maccabees (And please note, neither First Maccabees nor Second Maccabees mention any miracle of a one-night supply of consecrated lamp oil somehow lasting eight nights. Just as nowhere in the New Testament is there any mention of Santa Claus or flying reindeer.)
I finished reading A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series by David Kalat. While the author's opinions and mine differ on some of the movies, I found it valuable to hear about the background and reasoning behind how some of the movies turned out in the way they did. Some of the movies have little or no supplemental information on their DVDs/Blu-rays, so it was fun to learn about those especially.