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So What Are you Reading?: Generations

Last night, I finished ADF's The Director Should Have Shot You.

This morning, for the first time in close to five decades, I read the first chapter of Ben Bova's Escape. It's a novel (really, by length, little more than a novella) about a juvenile delinquent, given an indeterminate sentence at an extremely high-tech reform school. Like the copy I read before, it was published by Scholastic, in case there was any doubt in anybody's mind that it's a youth novel.

In many ways, my vague memories of the book (along with a real-life youth ranch charity that I support) informed and inspired a fictional institution that gets passing mention in my own novel-in-progress, an institution I call "The Roger Williams Interfaith Ranch for Troubled Youth." (And yes, that Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, and father of church-state separation in North America.) But enough of my own writings.

So far as I can recall, this is the only work of Ben Bova's science fiction I've ever read. I do, however, recall reading some of his science books (although I can't recall any specific titles).
 
Now a bit over halfway through Let Me Sing and I'm Happy. After taking the reader through her meeting William Bolcom, recording her debut album, After the Ball, with him, and marrying him (they've now been together for over half a century), she now concentrates on "pulling back the curtain" on her tricks and techniques (the book does, after all, bill itself as "The Memoir and Handbook [emphasis mine] of a Singing Actress."
 
Well, January 2025 is now behind us. My reading log for January is pretty slim. I only managed to read (and finish) two books in January.

Ms. Marvel Volume 4: Last Days by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, et al. (Marvel, trade paperback, 2015*) (* actually read the individual issues via Marvel Unlimited)

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Asylum by Una McCormack (Gallery Books, 2024)

I started on three other books (John Jackson Miller’s Batman: Resurrection novel and Marvel’s Original Sin and Original Sin Companion from 2014-2015). But the clock struck midnight before I could finish any of those—I’m only 15% into the Batman novel anyway—so those will have to end up counting for February.

Things got very busy with family/life stuff in January. That plus the end of the NFL Football season and the playoffs, and me also catching up on some of my streaming shows (oh, and “The Rookie” finally starting up again!) all had an impact on my reading time.

I still usually try to read for at least a bit each night before going to sleep but if I don’t start on that until very late (after the point where I should have already have gone to sleep), I end up reading less pages per night. And some nights this past month I was so tired I didn’t read anything (gasp!)

Oh well, I’ll just have to rebound in February.

My 2025 GoodReads Reading Challenge that I’ve set for myself is 75 books (which was what I upped it two last year in October after I blew right past the fifty books I’d originally set my goal for last year; I ended up reading 66 in 2024).

As of the end of January I’ve read 2 (which is 3% of my goal total). They’ve changed how the Reading Challenge page looks, no longer saying how many books ahead or behind schedule you are. However, after one month I should have read 8.3% (six books). So, I’m four books behind at this point.

— David Young
 
How would know if the third issue of IDW's Godzilla's Masterpiece Theatre is right for you?

Does the idea of Godzilla fighting kaiju-sized Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy excite you?

No?

What about the idea of Godzilla going mano-a-mano with a kaiju-sized, Jack Kirby-esque Jay Gatsby, complete with a panel caption that reads, "Godzilla versus the Great Gatsby"?

No?

Then Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre probably isn't right for you and you should talk to your doctor.

But if that does sound right for you, the third and final issue was a lot of fun, in an absurd, stupid kind of way.

The premise of the series, to recap, is this: in the 1920s, Godzilla attacks the East and West Eggs of Long Island during one of Jay Gatsby's parties and absconds with Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby is determined to get her back, and he and his rival Tom Buchanan recruit Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne, and Thomas Edison to help them fight off Godzilla. Meanwhile, Dracula has a plan, and the Time Machinist arrives from the future with a dire warning.

I was expecting something like Moore and O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Godzilla, but Tom Scioli's comic is much funnier and just as strange in its own way.
 
How would know if the third issue of IDW's Godzilla's Masterpiece Theatre is right for you?

Does the idea of Godzilla fighting kaiju-sized Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy excite you?

No?

What about the idea of Godzilla going mano-a-mano with a kaiju-sized, Jack Kirby-esque Jay Gatsby, complete with a panel caption that reads, "Godzilla versus the Great Gatsby"?

No?

Then Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre probably isn't right for you and you should talk to your doctor.

But if that does sound right for you, the third and final issue was a lot of fun, in an absurd, stupid kind of way.

The premise of the series, to recap, is this: in the 1920s, Godzilla attacks the East and West Eggs of Long Island during one of Jay Gatsby's parties and absconds with Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby is determined to get her back, and he and his rival Tom Buchanan recruit Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne, and Thomas Edison to help them fight off Godzilla. Meanwhile, Dracula has a plan, and the Time Machinist arrives from the future with a dire warning.

I was expecting something like Moore and O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Godzilla, but Tom Scioli's comic is much funnier and just as strange in its own way.


Hmm, I could buy Frankenstein's Monster growing to giant size, since there's precedent for that in the Toho canon. I guess since Dracula's a shapeshifter, he could turn giant if he wanted to. The others are more of a stretch, no pun intended.

A human turning giant to fight kaiju doesn't appeal to me, unless the human is host to an Ultraman. The appeal of seeing humans fight kaiju is seeing them have to cope with something far vaster than they are. (And Jay Gatsby doesn't strike me as the heroic, self-sacrificing type that Ultras generally pick out as hosts, although they have picked one or two self-centered jerks, like Asuka from Ultraman Dyna.)
 
How would know if the third issue of IDW's Godzilla's Masterpiece Theatre is right for you?

Does the idea of Godzilla fighting kaiju-sized Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy excite you?

No?

What about the idea of Godzilla going mano-a-mano with a kaiju-sized, Jack Kirby-esque Jay Gatsby, complete with a panel caption that reads, "Godzilla versus the Great Gatsby"?

No?

Then Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre probably isn't right for you and you should talk to your doctor.

But if that does sound right for you, the third and final issue was a lot of fun, in an absurd, stupid kind of way.

The premise of the series, to recap, is this: in the 1920s, Godzilla attacks the East and West Eggs of Long Island during one of Jay Gatsby's parties and absconds with Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby is determined to get her back, and he and his rival Tom Buchanan recruit Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne, and Thomas Edison to help them fight off Godzilla. Meanwhile, Dracula has a plan, and the Time Machinist arrives from the future with a dire warning.

I was expecting something like Moore and O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Godzilla, but Tom Scioli's comic is much funnier and just as strange in its own way.
I don't know if I'd read it, but your review is wonderful!
 
I finished up Greg Cox's "Lost To Eternity" today after a nice long afternoon read. I really enjoyed it. Loved getting 3 stories in one that all had a single thread connecting them. One of my favorite parts was how the 2024 story gave a different kind of look at ST IV. Seeing all those little events from the movie from her perspective was really fun. Loved the ending as well. Classic trek goodness for me.
 
I finished my favorite mezzo's memoir, and learned things about her (and her husband) that I never knew (and never had any reason to know, either). Like that she's got chronic hypoglycemia, and deals with bouts of stage fright. And comforting things like the fact that even she has had to "take a Mulligan" (my words, not hers) on a song.

Now, I'm somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way into Robb White's The Lion's Paw. And I must have only read it once, all the way through, because literally all I remember is the business about the main protagonists running away from an "eganahprO," and referring to themselves as "eganaps." Interesting copy I glommed onto: a 2008 printing of a 1990s-era hardcover reprint of a 1946 book that had already gone out as a Scholastic paperback.

One thing that (as an adult) hit me very decisively: there is a very large lacuna between the end of one chapter (Ch. 1, I think) where Nick is on his way out on a "2-week trial" adoption, plotting to break his sister Penny out, and the beginning of the next chapter, when the two of them are free, and sneaking aboard a sailboat. I don't remember this turning into a dream fantasy at the last minute (then again, I don't remember much of anything about it, as I said), but I do question White's choice to leave a gaping lacuna instead of plastering it over with summary.
 
The Compleat Werewolf by Anthony Boucher. A collection of 1940s stories from Weird Tales, Unknown, etc.

I devoured this book back in the junior high, where I checked it out of the school library over and over. (I think I was the only one who ever did, judging by the check-out cards at the front of the book.)

Couldn't resist snagging a paperback copy at a used bookstore yesterday.
 
Now a bit over 100 pages into The Lion's Paw. And snippets are ringing the occasional bell: a sea chantey about subsisting on a diet of marlinspikes and oakum (neither appetizing nor particularly healthy!), a 12-year-old protagonist (Penny, disguised as a boy) buying black paint and being asked "house paint or boat paint," and then being given a lift on a mule-drawn wagon, with the driver offering her chewing tobacco, then (when she politely declines) assuming she smokes instead.

Definitely a children's novel of a different era.
 
I decided I was still more of a comic book mood after I started The Return of the King, so I'm taking a break from that for a couple more comics. First up is IDW's Star Trek Library Edition Vol. 2, which I'm reading TNG: The Space Between in. Back when the series first came out I got and read the physical versions of #3 and #4, but never got any of the others, and I'd been wanting to read the whole series, so now that Hoopla got the Library Edition with it and Intelligence Gathering, which I already read, I am.
 
Finished The Lion's Paw last night. The owner of the boat (who's also the father of the 15-year-old) turns out to be alive (and to have spent some 2 1/2 years in a Japanese POW camp). On learning of the situation, he promptly knows exactly where to find the missing kids and the boat, and turns up just in time to deck the local who was attempting to claim the reward, put an end to his brother's efforts to sell the boat, and adopt the two orphans.

Nothing on-deck. I think I'll be getting back to my DSC season 5 DVD set.
 
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