The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England: Its Archeology and Literature by H. R. Ellis Davidson

"Then the sword related whatever had been done by it, for it was the custom of swords at this time when unsheathed to set forth the deeds that had been done by them." - The Battle of Mag Tured

1st corrected reprint 1994 (initially published 1962), gorgeous hardcover. A mostly very readable academic survey of the sword and its vast significance as weapon and cultural symbol of Old-English speaking groups in the early middle ages. The author draws on archeological evidence and literary descriptions (historical records, epic poetry, sword riddles etc.) Main chapters: The Making of the Sword, The Telling of the Sword, and The Using of the Sword. Includes b/w photographs and illustrations.

Lots of interesting details in all these aspects mentioned, fragments analyzed and pieced together to successfully allow a glimpse into a time when the sword was an important, integral part of society. Had this book for a while, really liked it.

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman. It's a warts-and-all biography of Stan Lee. Stan fanatics tend to hate it because they don't like anything that even suggests that Stan's public persona wasn't really real and that he wasn't the creative powerhouse he claimed to be, but I didn't find the book unsympathetic toward him. It simply acknowledges that he often said things that weren't true or were inconsistent with prior statements, usually involving creative credit, and that his beloved Smilin' Stan/movie cameo image was something he came up with relatively late in life.

The story that emerges through the book is that Stan's life ended up being a sort of tragedy. He achieved the American Dream several times over but kept needing more because it was somehow never enough either for him or especially for his spend-crazy wife and daughter. He gained the fame and riches he dreamt of since he was a boy, but the cost was that he spent his final years being jerked around by Hollywood parasites who started fighting over his carcass before he was even deceased.

Some interesting points the book reveals (and there's an extensive citations section, so it's well-researched): Stan distanced himself early from his Jewish heritage, much to the consternation of his father. He was practically forced to have a bar mitzvah and didn't observe any traditions or holidays for his entire life. His wife and daughter were Christian. He was an atheist.

He never liked comic books or superheroes and pretty much only tolerated them in the sense that they were the best/only vehicles he had toward achieving the fame he desired. He disliked Marvel's movies and only begrudgingly watched a couple of them despite having cameo appearances in all of them. Like a lot of people of his time, he viewed comics as junk that would bring no real artistic respectability to him. Even during Marvel's 1960s boom years, he was still looking for ways to exit the industry and hopefully break into Hollywood.

Despite getting his little brother a job at Marvel, he wasn't especially close to his brother. It seems they didn't talk often and when they did it was awkward and without much real familial bonding. Larry still lives in Manhattan but he's sadly very lonely these days and seems to regret wasting his artistic talent on a comics career.

He was a lifelong ladies' man/horn dog and when left to his own devices he often veered toward pitching erotica. The late debut of Stripperella isn't really as off-brand as many assumed at the time. Stuff like that was what Stan tried to sell for decades. He also had a thing for pasting humorous captions on regular photos and tried repeatedly to sell books and magazines based on that gimmick, never with much success. There's a definite overlap with his comics creation/Marvel Method technique of writing dialogue and captions over what his artists gave him.

Despite aspiring to write The Great American Novel or make movies, it seems he didn't actually make many serious attempts at developing ideas beyond very basic one-sentence pitches. His archives don't appear to include more than one or two drafts of anything substantial. It seems like he expected to build careers in other fields like he did in comics, where he would supply artists with a name or germ of an idea so they could put it all together for him and then he'd put his name on it to further his brand.

Thanks much for the great summary. This is not on my list of things to read, but I appreciate your well-written post, and the bits I learned from it.

You're welcome! And thank you for the kind words.

Dracula's Guest (Short stories)

by Bram Stoker

Having only read it during long bathroom breaks (and power outages if they happened, but they didn't), I'm happy with myself completing The Vampire Lestat in such short order. For a reckless idiot doomed to have all of his big ideas explode in his face, Lestat sure borders on sympathetic. Just 2 pages into Queen of the Damned, I'll read soon how he escaped the ending, right?

Queen should improve your opinion of Lestat, both the character and the book, I mean. And I'm sure I've said this before, but it's between it and Memnoch as the height of the series in my view, but quite clearly it was Queen in Anne Rice's, so you should keep it well in mind if you plan to eventually continue with the "modern" part of the series.

Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

Hochsensibel ist mehr als zartbesaitet by Sylvia Harke

Another unexpected read I got into because someone I trust mentioned the subject of sensory-processing sensitivity, and was happy to lend me her copy. I was sceptical about the contents being presented in question/answer (there are a hundred) format at first, but the author does mostly a good job thoroughly presenting helpful insight into the matter, without letting the structure get into the way. There were some important things I could mine in this book, not only on the topic at hand, but also in a minor way in terms of general psychology.

Books by Dr. Elaine Aron, the pioneer in studying sensory-processing sensitivity, appear like a proper starting point if you are interested in this subject (have not read any books by her, just where I might continue next).

Updated my reading list.

Finished reading the 10 book Shadows Of The Apt series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. What a brilliant series and writer. I've read the first of his four short story collections called Tales Of The Apt. That collection of stories was superb too.

Cinema Speculation, by Quentin Tarantino. This is basically Tarantino talking about a bunch of American movies he wants to talk about, almost entirely from the 1970s. You might think the movies would be a bunch of grindhouse movies, but almost all of them are major classic releases - Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Deliverance, Taxi Driver, etc. Probably the only relatively obscure entry is the last one, on Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse.

Of course, Tarantino still name-drops tons of more obscure movies, and many chapters have a rambling quality as he'll feel the need to put a movie in context or compare it to other movies. The chapter on Paradise Alley goes on about Rocky (Tarantino was a huge Rocky fan) and Rocky II (he thinks it's better than the first one), plus his theory that Paradise Alley is Stallone's take on an East End Kids movie means Tarantino has to explain the Dead End Kids > East End Kids > Bowery Boys evolution and his broad opinion on all those movies. Then he finally gets around to Paradise Alley itself (he loves it despite its flaws).

There are also random chapters, such as Tarantino musing on how Taxi Driver might have turned out if Brian DePalma directed it instead of Scorcese, as DePalma had the script first and passed on it. One is about the shift from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood to the "movie brats" (Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, etc.). Another chapter is a tribute to LA Times film critic Kevin Thomas, who often championed B-movies in his columns. Tarantino has an interesting theory that Thomas was the real key to how Roger Corman apprenticed so many big-time filmmakers, in that Thomas would review their movies in the Times, which was widely read by producers who would then hire people getting positive coverage, but when Corman switched to direct-to-video in the 80s his track record for star pupils seemingly dried up, the reason being that movies without theatrical releases wouldn't get reviewed in newspapers.

Overall, it's a fun read. Tarantino has an infectious enthusiasm for movies in general, because he seemingly has no life beyond consuming as many as he can possibly watch and sharing his opinions. His opinions are often interesting to read because even if you don't agree with his overall take, he often zeroes in on specific things like how an actor performs a role that only that person could do. Many chapters are littered with stray thoughts that I wish he had elaborated on - such as his clear admiration for Spielberg and his opinion that Jaws is the greatest action movie ever made. He also deeply hates 1980s movies, apparently seeing them as compromising toward audiences (i.e., they had to make money) in ways that the grungy late 60s-1970s movies weren't.

Although the book isn't a proper autobiography, you do get some info on Tarantino's personal background. His biological father apparently was never in the picture for him. His LA-based mother and stepfather were very permissive in terms of taking him to see adult movies as a boy, which resulted in him regaling kids at school about all the R-rated movies he was seeing that they couldn't (Tarantino was literally bred to be a hipster). After a while, his mother divorced his stepfather, who was apparently a bit of a racist, and then seemingly took up dating black men almost exclusively, which had the side effect of Tarantino getting deeper into blaxploitation movies and R&B music (he hates 1970s hard rock/metal, which he derides as "white boy rock"). Somewhere in there, there was an episode in which he had to move to Tennessee for a couple of years, which he clearly hated, referring to his relatives as hillbilly alcoholics, before getting to move back in with his mom. I get the impression that he was a bit of a problem kid and sort of maladjusted, but he doesn't seem to have noticed since that was just the life he knew.

The only downside to the book is that if you don't like how Tarantino talks, you probably won't like how he writes. It's got the same sense of loving his own voice that his interviews and screenwriting have, and he has a way of making assumptions that can be amusing and irritating at the same time. There's a very minor bit in which he's talking about how he was traumatized by Bambi, just like many other kids, but he seems to think the way he was affected was somehow different than everyone else. But when he explains it he doesn't seem to realize he's just parroting how the movie affects everyone; i.e., he doesn't have any special insight into audience psychology, but he arrogantly believes he does.

I was really into his early movies up through Grindhouse. I strongly dislike Inglorious Basterds, though, to the point that I haven't worked up the interest in watching his last three movies. But I probably will get around to them sometime soon. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood seems to be genuinely well-liked from what I've heard. His main issue to me is that he seems to believe his dialogue is his main selling point, but it's gotten out of hand to the point that the characters in his later movies just seem to yammer about nonense, and like a lot of very showy writers, they all seem to have a similar voice, which makes it worse. I think Jackie Brown is probably his best overall movie, probably because he had Elmore Leonard's book as a guide to help him stay focused and his idea of converting it into a blaxploitation movie was a good one.

I tried to rewatch True Romance recently, and couldn't go through with it. The performances are stellar, but this gung-ho glorification of a simplistic, misguided view of what it means to be a man, and the disastrous outcome of childish, unnecessary decisions by the characters that follow is just too silly a message now for me. It came as a surprise too, nostalgic me had remembered the film fondly.

Once upon a time in Hollywood, in my opinion, has one or two fun moments, and is mostly carried by Brad Pitt's acting. But I wouldn't recommend it as something you really have to see. The story seemed all over the place to me.