Like virtually everyone else in the English-speaking world, I was recently absorbed by the shock-and-awe that is the trailer for Tom Hooper's Cats movie:
I am not here to belabour all of the points that everyone else has already made about this trailer. After the fiasco that was Les Miserables I will not be spending any time on this movie.
However, the trailer did make me pretty curious about Cats. I know the song "Memory" and roughly what the stage show costumes look like and that's basically it. Well, except that I vaguely had an idea that some famous writer was behind it.
So I went down a bit of a Wikipedia rabbit hole.
Cats is based on T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.
Cats is the fourth-longest running Broadway show of all time.
What's the longest running? The Phantom of the Opera, of course.
But if you scroll down that list of longest-running shows, you may notice something interesting. I recognized everything until #8, which is a revue called Oh! Calcutta!, which ended in 1989 and which I have never heard of before in my life. Contrast that with #7, A Chorus Line, which ended its run a year later but which I have at least heard of a lot of times.
Scroll down even further, and you find #19 is Tobacco Road, and yes, it's the play adaptation of the book.
It's been almost four years since I last mentionedTobacco Road, because it's not a book I enjoy thinking about and nobody cares about it anymore. So needless to say I was shocked-and-awed to see that an adaptation of it was so popular.
Here are some details, all via Wikipedia of course:
The play was first performed in 1933, one year after the publication of the novel.
It ran for 3,182 performances until 1941.
As noted previously, this makes it the 19th longest-running Broadway show in history.
It's also the second-longest run for a non-musical on Broadway.
The reviews were negative but it gained an audience after ticket prices were extremely reduced (from $3.30 to $1.10).
Various cities and the United Kingdom banned it for being too sensational and immoral.
Anyway, I still don't recommend the book and just reading the synopsis of the play made my skin crawl all over again.
If not for that bizarre Cats trailer, I never would've found this out. It's so fascinating to me that something could've been so popular in its time but is almost completely forgotten now. I bet if you asked 100 people if they've heard of Tobacco Road, only one of them would have, and that one would be me.
Fame, ladies and gentleman. It is a whimsical mistress.
Welcome to Saskatchewan is A Thing, my compilation of all of the random references to Saskatchewan (Saskatchereferences), which I believe is over-represented when it comes to random references, chasing some of the greats like Timbuktu and Tripoli. If you know of a Saskatchereference that I haven't featured yet, please leave a comment!
It seems like ages since I reviewed On the Road, and that's because it has been ages, or rather two and a half years or so. It would be nice if I could actually get this sort of thing done in a timely manner.
I didn't care for the novel and haven't thought about it much since, but it did have a Saskatchereference in it, and that can't be overlooked. As per usual, it has to do with the wind.
She was about sixteen, and had Plains complexion like wild roses, and the bluest eyes, the most lovely hair, and the modesty and quickness of a wild antelope. At every look from us she flinched. She stood there in the immense winds that blew clear down from Saskatchewan knocking her hair about her lovely head like shrouds, living curls of them. She blushed and blushed.
Saskatchereference Tally: 7 Saskatchereferences per Saskatcheresident: 1/166,558 (7/1,165,903)
I just spent a little bit of time searching the blog and discovered that apparently I never wrote at all about seeing the Fifty Shades of Grey movie lo these three years ago when it was released in 2015. I'm pretty sure I actually went opening weekend. There's nothing about it anywhere, though, including my Current Distractions post for February 2015, which is when I would've seen it.
At the time I think I planned to review it, but given that I'm barely adequate at writing book reviews, I just haven't felt up to "formally" reviewing any movies yet here on the blog.
Anyway, I found the movie surprisingly enjoyable. It toned down a lot of what I disliked about Ana, and best of all it ends with her leaving him. If you ignored everything about the cultural phenomenon that was 50sog back then, and just saw the movie with no context whatsoever or knowledge that there are two sequels, I think you'd probably just be indifferent toward it at worst and mildly enjoy it at best.
Many people had a more violent/appalled reaction to the movie, though, and I think that's largely to do with the context.
But I'm not here to tell you what I think, because a YouTuber called Folding Ideas has made a video about this that basically articulates everything I thought at the time and more (he gets into things about filmmaking, plus the beginning of the video is a full-on history lesson about the origins of 50sog as a Twilight fanfic).
As you may or may not know, I get most of the books that I read from THE LIBRARY, aka one of my very favourite public services. I imagine that my public library has a ton of copies of The Lord of the Flies, but the one I got had a nice little treat in it.
Of course I don't know why someone was writing in Arabic script in this book*, but given that it started out pretty frequent in the beginning and then eventually ceased altogether, I imagine that an Arabic speaker picked this book up for some light reading in English and was either defeated by it, or knew English a whole lot better by the end than they did at the beginning.
Anyway, I know I've mentioned before that I find notations in books a bit annoying as a reader because I don't like having others' impressions of a book imposed on me on first reading. This was a bit different though, and a bit more interesting. But I suppose it's obvious that being distracted by notations that are entirely incomprehensible is less disruptive to one's experience of a book's content than notations that describe someone else's opinions about a text. It's all speculation on my part that the words that have been pencilled in are translations, even. I tried putting a few of the English words into Google Translate, but I have to say that nothing really definite popped out to my uneducated eye.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this mild curiosity as much as I did when I opened up the book.
*In fact I can't be 100% sure that this even is Arabic script, because let's be real I can neither read nor write Arabic. But it sure looks like it?
Occasionally I actually do benefit somewhat from my broader survey of the Western canon via The List.
Which is to say that there is a joke in Point Counter Point that I'm certain is a reference to Zuleika Dobson, and if not for this project, I never would've caught it.
It comes up a couple of times in Zuleika Dobson. Here is the first:
And Zuleika returned his gaze with a smile not less gay. She was not sure what he was playing. But she assumed that it was for her, and that the music had some reference to his impending death. She was one of the people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like."
That's really just set up for the second:
He asked: "To what am I indebted for this visit?"
"Ah, say that again!" she murmured. "Your voice is music."
He repeated his question.
"Music!" she said dreamily; and such is the force of habit that "I don't," she added, "know anything about music, really. But I know what I like."
And here's the one from Point Counter Point, which is much wordier, I'm afraid, and not as funny:
"I hesitated," Lady Edward went on in the same significantly intimate tone, "between Handel's Water Music and the B minor Suite with Pongileoni. Then I remembered you and decided on the Bach." Her eyes took in the signs of embarrassment on the General's ruddy face.
"That was very kind of you," he protested. "Not that I can pretend to understand much about music. But I know what I like, I know what I like." The phrase seemed to give him confidence. He cleared his throat and started again. "What I always say is..."
Welcome to Saskatchewan is A Thing, my compilation of all of the random references to Saskatchewan, which I believe is over-represented when it comes to random references, chasing some of the greats like Timbuktu and Tripoli. If you know of a Saskatchereference that I haven't featured yet, please leave a comment!
Once again, it's been a while since I posted a Saskatchereference. It may have something to do with the fact that this particular one is a bit tenuous.
Last year I reviewed Hotel by Arthur Hailey. While it was reasonably entertaining, it did end up on the chopping block when I did my latest "weeding" of my permanent book collection. That is, until I remembered that Saskatchewan shows up in this novel.
The book is set at a fancy hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, and one of the characters is a thief. At the beginning of the book, he steals a car that is plain-looking except for its green and white Michigan license plates. These plates are noticed late in the novel, leading to the following exchange:
"Has there been an arrest?"
The detective shook his head. "Wasn't discovered till hours after it happened. There is a lead, though. A neighbor saw a car. Couldn't remember anything, except it had license plates that were green and white. Five states use plates with those colors—Michigan, Idaho, Nebraska, Vermont, Washington—and Saskatchewan in Canada."
Emphasis mine, of course.
I call this a "tenuous" Saskatchereference because it's not as gratuitous as a typical one. "Saskatchewan" isn't invoked as a funny or exotic place, but simply because the fact is that the license plates in Saskatchewan were green and white. They're still green and white at present, actually.
In fact, the most interesting thing about this to me is that Hotel was published in 1965, during an era in which Saskatchewan license plates were exchanged each year for new plates with a different appearance. Two years prior, in 1963, the plates were blue on orange. Two years later, in 1967, they were purple on yellow. Here's a graphic from WorldLicensePlates.com which has an error or two but conveys the gist of what I'm saying.
There's one thing the main character of Something Borrowed and I have in common, and that's a deep and abiding love for "Thunder Road." A convenient excuse for this post.
Another summer wanes all too quickly, and here's the perfect song for that feeling.
However, I’ve now been asked about the series a couple of times, as people in my book club are just starting it or are reading it in preparation for the movie, and so I thought I’d write my own Dark Tower primer post which avoids spoilers more than the other stuff that I’ve written about the series, aimed at addressing questions like, “should you read the books?” and “should you see the movie?” If you want to read something that is substantially more than a primer, I will point you toward Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance by Robin Furth. This is a six hundred page reference book about the series that will probably end up on my bookshelf eventually, but which I haven’t read yet.
My complete Dark Tower (re)read is now four years behind me, but if forced I would probably place The Wind Through the Keyhole (Book 4.5) on that ranked list between Wizard and Glass and Song of Susannah, not because it was bad, but because it wasn’t very memorable. The Little Sisters of Eluria (Book 0.5, more of a novella) would go just below that, because I remember it being boring but it did have a few very memorable images.
So, I count myself as a Stephen King fan, but I acknowledge that he has some serious faults as a writer and also has written some garbage. When you write as much as he does, of course not all of it will be good. I came to the Dark Tower early in my King reading, mostly because I read Firestarter first and I wasn’t into horror yet (I’m not sure whether I even qualify as being “into it” now) so I was too scared to try any of his more famous works. I don’t know what year it was when I first read The Gunslinger but I’m sure I was in high school, and it made a big impression. I was already getting sick of epic fantasy, and the Dark Tower series represented something that had that epic feeling and some of those same tropes, but was blessedly different.
What is the Dark Tower series?
The Dark Tower is Stephen King’s magnum opus, but I don’t think I’d call it his masterpiece (I haven’t read enough of his other novels yet to make that call—“only” 24, including the Dark Tower books and three that he co-authored). It is the story of Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, who is on a journey to the Dark Tower, a destination whose significance is not immediately clear to the reader (and is perhaps a bit of a MacGuffin). Roland is a towering main character, enigmatic and magnificent. He carries a pair of huge guns that he doesn't hesitate to use. Over the course of the series, he is joined by various characters of varying quality, but his journey to the Tower is paramount. The genre is a mix of western, post-apocalypse, portal fantasy, science fiction, and road novel, with a bit of biblical imagery thrown in for good measure.
It begins with one of the greatest opening lines in the history of literature:
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
It's awesome.
It's also pretty wacky. Eventually, the series becomes self-referential to various other works in King’s vast oeuvre, and what started out as the story of a knightly figure, the last of his kind, pursuing a goal over a vast distance of time and space for mysterious reasons, turns into something much more complex. References creep in from other cultural touchstones as well, some more organically than others.
Basically, if you have any expectations whatsoever about the Dark Tower, you should abandon them immediately.
Should you read the Dark Tower series?
Short Answer: The whole series is available for your reading pleasure. If you start with The Gunslinger and stop when you get bored, there'll be no harm done.
It should be evident by now that I'm a big fan of the series, however I hesitate to recommend it without several words of caution.
The first thing to note is that the series is very unlike King's other work. There are King fans who dislike The Dark Tower and others who have only read The Dark Tower. That being said, a passing familiarity with King's work is beneficial but not essential on a hypothetical reader's journey to the Dark Tower. Knowledge of other King works means you might recognize a few more of the references he's making to them as the series progresses. It also might ease your discomfort with some of the weirder places that the series goes if you're already familiar with some of King's favourite themes and writing tics.
Next, know that there are basically two halves of the series, separated by the prequel novel, Wizard and Glass, that comes smack dab in the middle. The Gunslinger is my favourite book in the series partly because King evidently didn't know where he was going (he's what's called a "discovery writer" and doesn't plan ahead of time, which is kind of a problem with a multi-book series) and the cracks don't show yet in the first book. I suspect that King wrote the prequel novel when he did because he had no idea where to go after The Waste Lands, but that's just a theory of mine.
Anyway, the series was begun with a short story in the late 1970s, and Wizard and Glass, the wheel-spinning prequel novel, was published in 1997. The first three books are my favourites. They have a grander feel than the second half of the series, which suffers from the essential task of having to wrap up all the nonsense that the first half could just present without comment.
Also, in 1999, Stephen King was struck by a van while he was out walking, and was very seriously injured and also became extremely motivated to finish The Dark Tower. The last three books were published within one year of each other, which is a feat of epic proportions but the cracks show, and they are large. I would have to reread the series more carefully to confirm this, but I believe that the majority of the self-referenced material appears in these later books, and they set up the meta-narrative themes that become very important at the end of the series.
Overall, I think the series is worth it, but I wouldn't recommend pushing through if the early books don't interest you. It's a series that peaks early, so although I didn't hate the last three books or the ending of the series, I did find them disappointing, and you might as well.
Should you see the Dark Tower movie?
Short Answer: I'm not sure.
First you should watch this trailer.
I have a lot of thoughts about this:
The gun stuff looks great.
Matthew McConaughey looks perfect.
I am so upset that the gunslinger is costumed the way he is: it doesn't make sense to call your villain The Man in Black when your hero is also wearing all black. Get some denim on this man somewhere.
Also I think Idris Elba should be using his own accent. Roland is not from our world and therefore doesn't need to sound like an American, which I think is what they're going for here but it's hard to tell.
The scene where Jake tells Roland that he'll like the modern world? Yuck.
Etc.
I honestly haven't decided yet whether I'm going to see the movie, but I'm definitely going to wait and see what the reviews are before I go. I don't have a huge amount of faith in the creative team behind this (and when I say "creative team" I mostly mean "screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman"). I'm very jaded about adaptations lately. Also, ever since the Harry Potter movies managed to totally supersede my mental images of the books, I've been hesitant to see adaptations of things I really love.
Given that I'm so unsure about all this, I can hardly recommend that anyone else rush out to see The Dark Tower. On the other hand, if you think that trailer looks awesome, go ahead!
Do you need to read the books before seeing the movie?
Short Answer: Of course not.
Beyond the fact that I have no dog in the book-before-movie fight (or even in the book versus movie fight—I simply don't care anymore), it's hard to say whether a knowledge of the books would be helpful or necessary when the movie hasn't been released yet.
Before I get into the next bit, a warning that you should exercise caution when reading any of the many articles about how The Dark Tower film is actually a sequel to the series (the linked one very clearly identifies spoilers, but be careful anyway!).
The fact that the film is a sequel to the books is something that I find reassuring, I have to admit. If you are confused as to how there can be a sequel to a series that is finished, just trust me and don't think too hard about it. Just know I think this is the best possible route they could've taken to adapt the Dark Tower series. It means that you can't expect the movie to directly follow the events in the books (but also simultaneously need to have read the books to understand why that makes sense).
If they do a halfway competent job with this adaptation, you shouldn't need to have a familiarity with the source material. That is literally the point of an adaptation. That being said, I suspect that having read the series would add an extra layer of enjoyment (or perhaps frustration).
- - -
So I'm now pushing the 2000 word mark with this post and I'm going to wrap it up. I hope at least a few of those words were helpful to you!
If you've read The Dark Tower, I'd love to hear your opinions on all of this. And if you haven't read it, I'd love to hear whether you think you'll read the books, see the movie, or do both!
In light of my recent reviews of Tiger Lily and Peter Pan, I decided that there was no time like the present to pick up John Logan's script for a play called Peter and Alice, about a meeting between the boy who gave his name to Peter Pan and the girl who gave her name to Alice in Wonderland, when both of them were adults.
As it happens, this meeting did actually occur in real life, although Logan's play is very much a work of fiction. Over the course of the play, which is a mixture of fantasy and reality, the two people are haunted by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), James Barrie, and the fictional versions of themselves, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. While this goes on, the "real" Peter and Alice discuss what it means to have been immortalized as children in works of fiction and their relationships with Carroll and Barrie, both controversial figures because of their bizarre relationships with young children. The dialogue is interspersed with quotations from Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, picked up by various characters in intriguing ways.
I would very much love to see a production of this play, and would've especially loved to see the production in London in 2013, which starred none other than Dame Judi Dench as Alice Liddell Hargreaves and Ben Whishaw as Peter Llewellyn Davies. The play is a great reframing of the actual lives behind iconic figures, and I can imagine that with actors of that calibre in the lead roles, it would be fascinating and moving to watch.
The very short backstory to this is that after graduating from university in 2009, I took a month-long bus tour of Europe. My flight across the Atlantic landed in London a great many hours after having left Saskatchewan, and I arrived in the middle of transit strike, meaning that all of the information that I had about how to get to my hotel from the airport was rendered essentially useless. This resulted in me roaming Hyde Park somewhat deliriously, and deciding that when the tour ended and I was back in London, I'd visit it again properly.
That's precisely what I did, and having learned of the Peter Pan statue, I wandered around in search of it for quite some time, meanwhile discovering a lot of cool stuff in both Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.
I should've written this post earlier, because I'm now at sufficient remove from the book that I feel less bitter about the following excerpt, from pages 43 to 44:
It was years later that she called from the bathroom, Run to the drugstore! bring a box of Kotex! immediately! And the panic in her voice. Did I run! And then at home again, breathlessly handed the box to the white fingers that extended themselves at me through a narrow crack in the bathroom door... Though her menstrual troubles eventually had to be resolved by surgery, it is difficult nevertheless to forgive her for having sent me on that mission of mercy. Better she should have bled herself out on our cold bathroom floor, better that, than to have sent an eleven-year-old boy in hot pursuit of sanitary napkins! Where was my sister, for Christ's sake? Where was her own emergency supply? Why was this woman so grossly insensitive to the vulnerability of her own little boy—on the one hand so insensitive to my shame, and yet on the other, so attuned to my deepest desires!
Rereading it now, it seems to illustrate Alex Portnoy's total lack of consideration for his mother as a human being. I can't exactly remember the context that it was situated in, besides the fact that the entire novel is just Portnoy whining.
Removed from its context within the novel, though, the sentiment expressed above is one that disgusts me, and I think that's why I had to pull it out into a post of its own. I am not a member of the "period blood is art" school of thought in any way, shape, or form. Menstrual blood is one of the body's many waste products and therefore it's nothing to be ashamed of but also it is private. I have no doubt that it would be awkward for a young boy to have to go buy sanitary napkins for his mother, but here's a thought: get over it. You'd think that men might've gotten used to women's menstrual cycles by now after observing their effects throughout all of human history.
(Anyway, lesson learned that I need to write my rants while the memory of the book is still fresh.)
I wrote a bit about names in my review of The Thorn Birds, and I'm back to finally write about them some more.
One of the cool perks of being given a name that was very trendy for babies the year you were born is that eventually it will be a "Mom Name" instead. Like, if you're around my age, doubtless all of your mom's friends are named Sandy or Karen. The name "Megan," the popularity of which peaked in the mid-eighties, is currently tumbling over the precipice of Hot 20-something Name into a Mom Name. As someone who's never been either of those things (so far), this is kind of amusing.
A few years ago, Time Magazine put together this (somewhat buggy, alas) Baby Name Predictor that will show you the trend for various names and will also predict when the trend shows the name will become popular again. Signs for "Megan" point to an extended period in the doldrums.
I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it: we must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul.
Although this is pretty much exactly what I'm doing with The List, I must vehemently disagree that a book with only one great page is worth seeking out. There are enough books in the world that if you only seek the ones with one hundred great pages at minimum, you'll have more than enough to read over the course of a long life.
A fun thing about library books is that occasionally you get one that gives you some insight into its previous reader(s). I usually find personal annotations in books annoying, but here's an instance where an annotation is both delightful and a little bit sad.
While I was getting my Pale Fire review ready for posting, I found that I hadn't written down the first sentence, and I wasn't able to find an instance of the book on Amazon that I could look into (that's my usual tactic when something like that happens).
Lucky for me and maybe you too, someone has taken the time to turn Pale Fire into HTML, as I'm sure Nabokov always wanted.
Thank you Shannon Chamberlain, whoever you are. I doubt this translates well to mobile, but have a look anyway.
This also means that I can link to the commentary on line 493 that I mentioned in my review as being too long to quote but also the most harrowing thing in the entire novel.
Way back in my original review of Jane Eyre, I mentioned that I first read it when I was ten years old.
I knew that back then, after that first reading, I used the book for a book report. I'd thought that that book report was long gone, but thanks to my packrat tendencies and the fact that I'm currently trying to deal with the enormous volume of useless paper that I've accumulated over the years, I actually found it again. I have it here to present to you today. I wish I knew what my teacher at the time made of this.
What parts of this book seemed real?
The parts of the book that seemed real were the parts when Jane is at Thornfield under the employment of Edward (Rochester). Jane is a governess to Adèle (Varens). I believe it is possible to have such affection for a pupil. Jane (Eyre) is sometimes stern yet she is a good kind governess.
What parts of this book seemed fake or unreal?
One of the parts of this book that seemed fake was the description of Bertha Mason; the author describes her and gives her bloodshot eyes, swelled and dark lips, and purple coloured skin. I don't believe there could be anyone so ugly. Another is the description of Rosamond Oliver; she is too beautiful to be possible; she has picture eyes, long eyelashes, a smooth forehead, oval-like cheeks, sweetly formed lips, a small chin, teeth (very white), and blonde curls.
I'll read this book several more times and get something new from it every time, I'm sure, but it's pretty hilarious to see what made the biggest impression on me as a preteen. Certainly not the love story. I also love that I used two semi-colons.
And here's a character profile of Jane from the same book report:
Describe the character in the book. Tell what you think the character looked like.
She has hazel-coloured hair and green eyes. She was quite short because she is said to be small throughout most of the book.
What kind of personality did this character have?
At the beginning of the book Jane is place-less, is unloved, and dependent. Towards the end she changes and becomes independent also a loved and loving woman. Jane is quite confident in herself and she shows this first when she is 10 and argues with Mrs. Reed (child to adult) and second when she argues with St. John and Mr. Rochester.
What did the character do that you admire?
She left Mr. Rochester after she found out that he had an insane wife. Jane sets out on foot without money or food for four days.
Up to now I admit I've done an indifferent job of writing about film and tv adaptations of books that I've reviewed, although I've got plans to watch some older ones eventually and write about them. Maybe even sooner rather than later. When I posted about The Magicians being on tv, I mentioned that I basically didn't care, except that I recently found out that Arjun Gupta is on the show (playing Penny!), and I think he's a major hottie, so maybe I'll give it a try after all.
Anyway, this post is about the recent announcement that the movie adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower is happening after all, starring Idris Elba as The Gunslinger, and Matthew McConaughey as The Man in Black. I'm not sure I think Idris Elba is as perfect for the role as everyone says he is (although he does seem to have the right mix of dignity and menace about him), but that's not what I'm here to complain about today.
Instead, I'm reacting to the details in this article. There will probably be some spoilers and I'm going to assume some level of familiarity with the material, although I'll try to clarify where I can.
"The movie will take place 'in our day, in the modern world'"
Does that mean that the entire thing will take place in our world, and that there's somehow no Mid-World? How does that work? The books bounce between our world and the others pretty liberally, and it makes sense to bring some of those scenes up to modern times (especially in the later books, more on that in a sec). But setting the movie in our world alone would require significant changes that might actually alter the source material beyond recognition*.
"The movie's plot will actually pick up in the middle of the story"
I can only assume that this means they'll start with Wolves of the Calla, for the following reasons:
The actual middle book in the series is Wizard and Glass, and unless they can magically age Idris Elba down to John Boyega (who proved he can also do dignity+menace in Attack the Block, and ideally they'd go with an even younger actor) using CGI, they are obviously not starting with Wizard and Glass;
I'm not sure what else you'd call the middle of the story, because the first three books are all rising action;
Mostly just those two things.
This is a huge problem for reasons that I don't think I even need to state to anyone familiar with the source material, but for everyone else: after Wizard and Glass, the series takes a more or less noticeable dive in quality, depending on how critical you are. As far as I'm concerned all of the best stuff in The Dark Tower series happens in the first three books, with honourable mention to the witch in Wizard and Glass. More importantly, though, the books get weird, and I have no idea how the casual moviegoer will swallow most of what happens in the last three books of the series without being primed by the first three books, and even then it would be a hard sell.
Characters from other Stephen King books (besides The Man in Black) show up. Stephen King himself shows up. The man who nearly killed Stephen King with his vehicle shows up. The accident in which a man nearly killed Stephen King with his vehicle shows up. Susannah has an accelerated pregnancy and eventually gives birth via, let's just say, a number of complications, to a weird demon baby. There is a ton of travel between different dimensions. There are lightsabres and golden snitches. This is without getting into the Crimson King and the Tower and the Rose and God knows what else. The Dark Tower isn't your run of the mill, straightforward, Game of Thrones-style fantasy epic. It is Stephen King's epic, and that makes all the difference. It's not something you pick up halfway through and catch up as you go along.
The movie I might actually want to watch
I'd watch an adaptation of The Gunslinger for sure, especially an adaptation that restores some of Roland's sharper edges and moral ambiguity that King shaved off in the expurgated edition (sitting on my shelf). While the plot can tend to meander a bit, that would allow cuts for a more cohesive and contained story that wouldn't make the action completely bewildering to people who aren't familiar with the source material. I suspect other people would also be more prepared to show up for a post-apocalypse fantasy Western than a post-apocalypse fantasy Western parallel universe road trip.
Despite my general dislike of Wizard and Glass, I'd also happily show up to see an adaptation of that. This would allow the filmmakers to capitalize on the current YA film trend and, again, it's a relatively self-contained narrative that wouldn't be overly bewildering to a casual audience. I'm positive that a group of charismatic young actors could overcome virtually every problem that I had with this novel, and getting the witch, Rhea, on screen would give me everything that I wanted and didn't quite get from The Witch.
Just maybe, the whole series could be a tv show instead of a movie. I feel like the work as a whole isn't really adaptable at all, though, to be honest. The early going is so good and then it just descends into half-baked madness. And I say this as someone who really likes the series!
*On the other hand, maybe significant changes to the source material are the whole point. There's more than a little room to improve upon the original, but there's no way that the serial numbers could be convincingly filed off, so instead they might just make something that's informed by the Dark Tower books but doesn't stay faithful to them. I'm more ok with that prospect than I would be with a clumsy attempt to bring the last three books to the screen in a way that's accurate but so abridged that they no longer make any sense. Either way, I won't be seeing The Dark Tower film at all until I see some reviews.
NB: Since initially writing this, I've come across at least one article speculating that the film will actually begin with The Drawing of the Three. I think that's a bad idea, too.
I wish I actually had read all four of these books in a row, but the scheduling just didn't work out. Still, I've never read all four within a few months during one year, so that's close enough for me.
The good news is that I still love The Catcher in the Rye and The Scarlet Letter. It's such a cliche to love Catcher, but now that I've read it more recently I'm confident about it again. It's just plain good, I don't care what anyone else says. As for The Scarlet Letter, over one hundred and fifty years in the cultural consciousness can't be wrong, and what a treat it is.
I still have complicated feelings about how to pick favourites, though. I think that I have to take A Clockwork Orange and Good Omens off the list. I think the list has to evolve. I hate change, so that's scary, but I think it's a good thing, too. I think I'm just more reluctant to pick a favourite now than I was as a teenager. How can I say whether a book is a favourite that I'll want to revisit again, or that really meant something to me, when maybe it's something that I just finished and I'm on a reading high, or something? I realize the absurdity of that, of course, but it's still much easier for me to say something is the "best book I read this year," in comparison to "one of my favourites."
Maybe I should expand my four favourites to ten? I've been gushing about The Long Walk and The Haunting of Hill House to anyone who would listen for the past three or four years; maybe I should put those on the list. I've read Jane Eyre more times than any other book; maybe it's finally time that I admit that that one is a favourite, instead of being coy about how much it means to me for no reason. I recommend The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to anyone at all who reads 19th century literature, so it might deserve a place too.
I guess for me, the hardest thing about favourites is that naming a favourite seems to necessitate dethroning another one. That hurts. Loving a new book doesn't mean that I stop loving the old ones, but that's what favourites seem to imply.
So I suppose for the moment I have two favourites, and I'm considering some new candidates for the position.
