Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

So, it’s official. I’m going to take little breaks, as I get through the rest of this novel. Last time I did that was with Last and First Men. The print in this book is very small (and then it gets even smaller for special sections!), and though this is turning out to be a fascinating read, I can’t handle everything coming at me, out of its pages, in such a constricted amount of time.

Alright, I'm at page 101, out of 411 (not counting Notes and other attachments), and it's definitely living up to the billing of "challenging, but rewarding reading". I might do something I don't usually do with a novel - stop for a bit (at around pg. 122), and read a short novel before returning to this. It's against my nature - and it's not that I dislike the book - but I might do that, take a few breaks. Not sure.

I’ve gone from being intimidated by it, to feeling like, really, this could be one of my favourite books. Early pages, I know - and it’s still intimidating - but this is truly something special…uhh, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Dog, in a Dystopia. The language, the style - even in translation - is stunning; I hope it is at least an echo of the style of the original Polish.

This will be a challenging read, I think.

Yes! That is how you do a 10-page Mystery story! Okay. The bar has been set.

Not the most Christmas-y of Christmas whodunits, but I’m enjoying it. It’s certainly been a revolving door of detectives working the case.

A terrific Western.

Once I get The Invader and this Western read, I will have read 300 books for 2024! I don't usually get to 300 books this early in December, and have had to scramble fast to read short stuff, including comics, other years...but since it looks like I'll be hitting that milestone pretty early, I think I'll saddle myself with a huge tome, after Sundown Jim. Not quite yet, though...

Quite good. And Stableford is right: Derennes is one up on Doyle’s The Lost World, or Jules Verne’s vision, because he has not just resorted to dinosaurs; he has allowed for evolution taking place, and come up with evolved lizard beings that have been hidden away but advancing in their own way. That’s pretty cool, for a 1907 “lost world” book. This is almost like some ancestor of Harrison’s West of Eden.

Who knows. I don't know. I suspect it gets less orange as it goes along, but we'll see. "From the Publisher of The Godfather" is the timelessly irrelevant selling point on the cover.

Ready for some translated proto-SF dealing with a “Lost World”. This is very early, to be all that. Lizard people!

Unique. Loving it.

The stories have all been winners, so far.

This author usually impresses me. Let’s try again.

At this point, it’s hard to tell if the book is supremely different than the film version, or, as in a lot of cases, did they just cut out a lot of set-up, so that the film can start faster. I read a novel where the first scene in the film was about 120 pages into the book. BUT - here, it seems, at least some major changes happened (beyond Moto not being in the film!).

I’m past due to get to this fairly famous collection of stories, because it is on a “100 Best Horror Books” list I have been using, since about 1988. First, this book was hard to get, and pricey. Then, it came back into print, but despite the high average rating around these here parts, some negative comments by people I respect suggest a book that has not aged well, maybe in the extreme. I do need to get this read.

I can almost smell all the books in this book. A delight! The demonology angle is a surprise, though.