I got this link from a friend today. It seems that someone took a publically available O’Reilly CD-ROM, which contains the text of every O’Reilly book, and put it on-line. Whoever that man or woman is, I heartily say thankee-sei.
My fiance sits on the couch finishing Return of the King as I sit typing at the computer. Having just come from Stephen King’s web site, having just watched a number of DT inspired short films and having made plans to watch The Two Towers on DVD tonight, I feel the need to reaffirm why I love books tremendously more than movies. Mr. King himself said it better than I can, at least right now, so I will lift what he wrote from the FAQ section of his site in response (it was in response to the question “Are you going to make a Dark Tower Movie?”):
“I’ve always resisted that idea because movies have a way of freezing characters and places in the audience’s mind whereas in books everybody has their own different idea of, for instance, how Roland or Susannah looks but if you do it as a movie, immediately that kind of gets frozen in place and you say ‘Oh, Billy Bob Thornton is what Roland Deschain looks like.’ Or you say ‘Brad Pitt, that’s what Eddie Dean looks like.’ You know what I’m saying, or you can say ‘Calla Bryn Sturgis from Wolves of the Calla looks like maybe the Universal back lot’, and I’ve always resisted that.”
‘Nuff said for now…
Just in time for the end of October dress-up day, here is some news related to two of the best comic book artists currently on the scene, Neil Gaiman and Alex Ross. Both are incredible in their own ways, one with words that paint lurid pictures, the other with pictures that defy words.
View the Slashdot post, which links to all sorts of goodies about our favorite Sandman creator Mr. Neil Gaiman here.
Read the article about Alex Ross here.
Click here to read about Neal Stephenson’s new book. Personally, I cannot wait to read it…
One lucky fan will have the opportunity to hang with Mr. King himself, that is if he or she can win this contest.
Sounds like a great idea and I cannot wait to see what some of the movies look like upon completion. I just hope the quality of the work submitted is worthy to review.
The Tower draws nearer! This past Sunday I read a new introduction to The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three while in a Costco of all places. Stephen King wrote in it about how he wanted to create a Tolkien-like saga in a Sergio Leone movie landscape (think Lord of the Rings set in “The Good, The Bad & the Ugly”) and I immediately and gleefully starting thinking, “Yes! I knew it! I knew it!” He wrote about what motivated him, way back when, to write this series and what is driving him now to finish it. Yes, finish it. Over the next year and a half, expect bold new things from Mr. King!
First things first – Books V, VI and VII of the Dark Tower series have been named and slated for delivery. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla will arrive in stores on November 5th, 2003. The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, will arrive in store in the Summer of 2004 and The Dark Tower VII, The Dark Tower, will arrive in November, 2004. It also seems that Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger has been updated to make it more in-line with the other books. Supposedly there is now 10% more content than the previous edition. Speaking of previous editions, new introductions have been written for all the first four books.
Second, at Stephen King’s web site there is a section completely devoted to the Dark Tower. Click here to go check out either a short flash movie or enter the site itself. Overall, it’s a really well done flash site – definitely one deserving to be associated with The Dark Tower.
Third, I learned from George about this book entitled The Dark Tower: A Concordance, Volume 1. It is a comprehensive handbook for all things Mid-World (characters, high speech phrases, etc) from the first four books. Volume 2, published when Dark Tower V comes out this November, will cover the last three books. While my reading load is currently backed up by a couple of books, I will need to buy this ASAP. I think pretty soon I’m going to need a new bookcase.
Some complain that e-mail is impersonal–that your contact with me, during the e-mail phase of our relationship, was mediated by wires and screens and cables. Some would say that’s not as good as conversing face-to-face. And yet our seeing of things is always mediated by corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and some neural machinery that takes the information from the optic nerve and propagates it into our minds. So, is looking at words on a screen so very much inferior? I think not; at least then you are conscious of the distortions. Whereas, when you see someone with your eyes, you forget about the distortions and imagine you are experiencing them purely and immediately.
— Neal Stephenson, an excerpt from Cryptonomicon
I am ashamed of my century
for being so entertaining
but I have to smile
— Frank O’Hara, an excerpt from “Naptha”
Violence stinks, no matter which end of it you’re on. But now and then there’s nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan. Sometimes people are just begging for that frypan, and if we weaken for a moment and honor their request, we should regard it as impulsive philanthropy, which we aren’t in any position to afford, but shouldn’t regret it too loudly lest we spoil the purity of the deed.
— Tom Robbins, an excerpt from one of his books, exact book unknown
From the ruins, lonely & as inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building. And just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the plaza roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as the eyes could reach, so now I went to the roof of the last & most magnificent of towers. Then I understood. Everything was explained. I had discovered the crowning error of the city; it’s Pandora’s box. Full of vanity, pride, the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected. That the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed, but that it had limits, fading out into the country on all sides into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the while shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground. That was the gift that Alfred Smith gave to the citizens of New York.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, excerpt from My Lost City