8 Clicks From Nowhere

(words about fatherhood, fitness and other fickle things)

  • The Week of Lists
  • Those 30 Posts in June
  • (Dis)Claimer
  • How to Blog
    • Topics I Tend to Avoid
    • Feedback for the Author
    • This is not the page you’re looking for…
  • About this Blog
  • The Random Travel Writings
  • 100 Things to Do Before You’re a Teenager
  • The New Years List
  • Epic Collections
  • Sums & Pieces

quick read

Foundation (5.1) & Trilogy

Wednesday, February 17, 02016

As I rarely discard a book, it should thus come as no surprise that I have overflowing shelves of novels I’ve once read, enjoyed, savoured and then swore up-and-down-back-and-forth that I was going to re-read someday. Alas, it is someday. I’m spending whole of 2016 revisiting my book collection, digging back into books I read once, but that I haven’t read (or listened to) in at least four years. So, we’re about to find out what was worth reading… twice.

I thought I would do something a little different for my fifth book of the year. I picked up my copy of the Issac Asimov classic Foundation and started to read, only to (re)discover that the book is quite short and quite a fast read. In fact, I read the first quarter of the the first book of the Foundation trilogy on the train home.

So, I figured, why not read the whole trilogy: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, & Second Foundation, or at least the original trilogy, those core three novels compiled in the 1950s. The “trilogy” has since been supplemented with a small collection of at least four additional novels, but we’ll save those for another year.

Foundation, for those who haven’t heard of this classic science fiction work, is the story of the end of the Galactic Empire, ten thousand years in the future. The collapse is predicted and a scientist leads the charge to establish a “foundation” at the edge of the universe in an effort to stave off a predicted thirty-thousand years of darkness by preserving some few fragments of human knowledge — and manipulate the course of history in the process.

It’s pulp, but it’s classic pulp science fiction and worth yet another read.

Posted in: books & reading Tagged: asimov foundation quick read sci fi short short stories trilogy

The Princess Bride (2.2) Inconceivably Miraculous

Saturday, January 9, 02016

As I rarely discard a book, it should thus come as no surprise that I have overflowing shelves of novels I’ve once read, enjoyed, savoured and then swore up-and-down-back-and-forth that I was going to re-read someday. Alas, it is someday. I’m spending whole of 2016 revisiting my book collection, digging back into books I read once, but that I haven’t read (or listened to) in at least four years. So, we’re about to find out what was worth reading… twice.

It helps when you’ve seen a film adaptation of a book so many times that when you re-read the book it takes about a quarter of the normal brainpower to actually focus on said book. Such was the case with my re-read of The Princess Bride by William Goldman, which I completed in a short forty-eight hours.

So, we re-watched the movie again this morning, Claire and I, because it was refreshed in my mind (and minus twenty eight degrees outside!) and an otherwise idle Saturday morning.

Worth a Second Read?

Yes. Oh, so much yes, and not just because it was a quick visit back to a fun and familiar story.

There were bits that had strayed from the literal interpretation of the book into the film, but having quickly read through the novel I can see that the spirit of both remains intact between the merger. This was so much the case that reading dialogue in the novel I virtually always could hear it in my head in the voice of the various actors who played those characters (especially true for Max and Valerie, I will add.) Which only goes to further prove my point… if only to myself.

I don’t think I can really add much to the cultural snowball that this book as become, other than to simply say that having just re-read the book and re-watched the film adaptation of the same, if you have never participated in the story that is The Princess Bride, you should watch it, read it, watch it again, and perhaps begin to understand that this classic tale of true love and high adventure is more nuanced than it first appears, and it is worth a few hours of your time, and I’m glad I re-read it.

Posted in: books & reading Tagged: book twice characters comedy familiar fantasy film princess bride quick read

About this Blog

This is a personal website to which I've been posting for over sixteen years. It's neither news nor journalism; It is often trivial fluff, but occasionally perspective and opinion.

At its heart, this blog is little more than my odd collection of words, photos, thoughts, vents, ideas, fiction and assorted mental farts, a collection that happens to live online in the form of a blog.

I tend to fill this space with musings of little value to anyone but myself. Occasionally others find what I write to be interesting, and read it or share it. But usually it just is what it is: My ramblings.

So, share and enjoy... or just move along.

Narrow Your Experience

  • My Running Blogging
  • Scratchy Violinyst
  • Sums & Pieces Daily Questions
  • Just the Short Posts
  • Everything Travel-Related

Categories

Archives

Disclaimer

The opinions herein are my own wistful musings and have absolutely nothing to do with the opinions, policies or ideas of anyone else including employers, family, friends, or otherwise. Read my EULA before you read anything else… or bug off.

Even More Details

8 Clicks From Nowhere has been posting since 2001 and maintains public online archives for 6214 days (about 17 years ) of content, from April 20, 02001 through April 10, 02018 It was calculated in precisely 1.360 seconds by a mechanical steam-powered wordpress difference engine.

A product of Canada. 8 Clicks From Nowhere is currently produced from Edmonton, Alberta but has been written from too many places to list. Share and enjoy!

Copyrighted © 02001 - 02018 by the Author | Privacy Policy / Terms of Use / EULA | Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).

Website Security Test

Copyright © 2018 8 Clicks From Nowhere.

Modified Om 2017 WordPress Theme by