Lucas Blogs About Books

One of these covers better communicates the reading or viewing experience to the audience. I'll leave which one up to you. Some people like to complain about the inevitable changes that occur when a story is adapted from one medium to another. But let's be honest, sometimes, the less faithful an adaptation is, the more memorable it is. So, in this series I'll be taking a look at adaptations where creators took one look at the source material and said, "FUCK THAT NOISE!" to see how that turned out. Today's Oddaptation: The Count of Monte Cristo ( Le Comte de Monte-Cristo ) (1844) by Alexandre Dumas (père) into Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo  ( 巌窟王 Gankutsuou ) (October 2004-March 20005) Studio Gonzo, Series Director, Mahiro Maeda Sure, Alfred Bester beat Studio Gonzo to the whole " Count of Monte Cristo  in SPAAAAAAACE" thing by several decades, but, he did so in the same medium as the original, buh-ut, according to Wikipedia , Gankuts...

Spoiler alert : the main character sustains a minor facial injury. So, what's this book's deal? Well, Hypothetical Reader, you might want to brace yourself. This manga actually deals with the thing that scares us millennials more than anything else. You can't mean – Yep! Adulting! And not just the lame stuff like negotiating a trip to the dry-cleaners, it's actually about becoming an emotionally mature person. That sounds even worse! I know, but trust me, this manga is a good read. And since it's a comic book, you could probably read it in about two days. I know I did. Oh, and before we go any further, I've actually read this once before (about five years ago). It was my introduction to mangaka  Inio Asano, and it remains my favorite of his works (also the only one to survive my semi-regular bookshelf purges). So. . . are we gonna talk about it? Yes we are. Solanin  (which we later learn is named for a song written by the main c...

Eat yer heart out cover artist for Gordon R. Dickson's The Right to Arm Bears ! My feverish pursuit of MOAR content brought forth this feature: Simplified Series. Here's the pitch: quick synopses (I'll try and keep them spoiler-free, but, you know, most of these are past the statute of limitations on spoilers) of the entries in a series followed by the reasons you should or shouldn't read it. This week: The Ack-Ack Macaque trilogy by Gareth L. Powell Background Info: So, you may recall that in 2013  Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie won the British Science Fiction Award (and several others) for Best Novel. It was actually a tie that year. The other winner was Gareth L. Powell's Ack-Ack Macaque . As one might expect, Ack-Ack Macaque  is very different from Ancillary Justice , you may have guessed from the titles and cover art that this series has a more humorous bent than the Imperial Radch trilogy (though I will say that Ann Leckie's books do have plenty...

Add caption So, what's this book's deal? Have you seen the 2006 anime adaptation directed by Satoshi Kon ? Is it possible for me not to have seen a movie you've seen? Well, doesn't the "Hypothetical Reader" conceit rrequire that you haven't read the books I have? Let's not examine that too closely. Yes, I've seen Paprika . Well, the novel isn't all that different. I mean, there are differences, but honestly, if you've seen the movie, I wouldn't say that reading the source material adds that much to the experience. Yeah, about the novel, this is theoretically a review of that and not an Oddaptations , right? Oh, right. So Yasutaka Tsutsui's Paprika  is a Philip K. Dickian sci-fi psychological thriller about a psychotherapist who is able to enter her patients' dreams. The therapist in question is Dr. Atsuko Chiba who's been using PT (psychotherapy) devices to treat patients since before the devices were legal...

Oh, like you're surprised that I own the complete works of Bill Shakespeare. Some people like to complain about the inevitable changes that occur when a story is adapted from one medium to another. But let's be honest, sometimes, the less faithful an adaptation is, the more memorable it is. So, in this series I'll be taking a look at adaptations where creators took one look at the source material and said, "FUCK THAT NOISE!" to see how that worked out. Today's Oddaptation: The Taming of the Shrew  (1590-ish?) by William Shakespeare into 10 Things I Hate About You  (1999) directed by Gil Junger and written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith So, hear me out: what if someone remade one of Shakespeare's most controversial plays but set it (record scratch) at a high school (second record scratch) in the 90s? The Original: The Taming of the Shrew is one those plays that reminds us that even if he died more than 400 years ago, your fave is problematic...

Huh, what's that on the back cover bottom right? Could it be a picture of the next book in the series? So, what's this book's deal? Well, Amberlough is the first novel by Lara Elena Donnelly. It's a sort of "sex and violence"/"trust no one" spy thriller. It takes place in a fictional country called Gedda that's on the verge of a fascist coup. We start with Cyril DePaul waking up in the apartment of his lover Aristide Makricosta. Cyril works a desk job at the "Foxhole" – Amberlough's branch of the Federal Office of Central Intelligence Services – and he probably shouldn't be sleeping with Ari since Ari's the boss of a local smuggling outfit, that is when he's not emceeing at the Bumble Bee cabaret. Also working at the Bee is Cordelia Lehane, she's a stripper who moonlights as a drug-dealer and is currently two-timing the Bee's owner with his best friend, the Bee's stand-up comic. The plot kicks into ge...

As you can see the covers for the last few are much less visually busy. My feverish pursuit of MOAR content brought forth this feature: Simplified Series. Here's the pitch: quick synopses (I'll try and keep them spoiler-free, but, you know, most of these are past the statute of limitations on spoilers) of the entries in a series followed by the reasons you should or shouldn't read it. This week: The Harry Potter heptalogy, part 2 by J.K. Rowling Background Info: So, after putting out one book a year from 1997 to 2000, Rowling spent a little more time working on the final three books in the series. They're also longer than the first four ( that's a lie, book six is shorter than book 4 ). I've always jokingly said it's because after the runaway success of the series Rowling's publishers no longer had the leverage to suggest that she make another pass and trim away more of the fat, but the truth is that the series remains enjoyable. However, this po...

Book (mostly) delivers exactly what this cover promises! (see review) So, what's this book's deal? Like, zoinks, Hypothetical Reader! This is a pulpy, post-modern, Scooby-Doo-meets-H.P. Lovecraft pastiche! Back in 1977, a quartet of preteens and their Weimaraner found out that a squatter was using legends of a lake creature to get control of an abandoned gold mine. Or so they thought. Anyway by 1990, jock Peter's committed suicide after a brief career in Hollywood, tomboy Andy's been kicked out of the Air Force and has an unrequited crush on science nerd Kerri, who's tending bar instead of going to grad school, and fantasy nerd Nate's been in and out of mental institutions because of his hallucinations(?) of Peter's g-g-g-ghost (Sean the Weimaraner is dead, don't worry, he's got a great-grandson, Tim). As for the squatter, well, Wickley's finally out of prison, but tracking him down only confirms Andy's suspicions that there's more...

And each of these telephone book sized tomes is a volume one. Some people like to complain about the inevitable changes that occur when a story is adapted from one medium to another. But let's be honest, sometimes the less faithful an adaptation is, the more memorable it is. So, in this series I'll be taking a look at adaptations where creators took one look at the source material and said, "FUCK THAT NOISE!" and whether they still work. Today's Oddaptation: Journey to the West (c 1592 CE) often attributed to Wu Cheng'en adapted into Dragon Ball (1984-1995) by Akira Toriyama So, how much of one of China's Four Classic Novels (six if you count the satirical one and erotic one) made its way into the manga/anime sensation that my freshman year roommate watched literally every day on Toonami? Let's take a look: The Original: Loosely based on the true history of the 7th century monk Xuanzong, Journey to the West  relates the story of the monk T...