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Post by kooshmeister on Jun 5, 2011 19:28:11 GMT
I use both but like most I guess - a cheap find kicks an internet purchase out of the pond. True, but as I said, with so few options available to me here in bumfuck North Carolina, I take whatever I can get and don't look back. Both have shipped, can't wait to get them.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jun 5, 2011 6:02:32 GMT
More like a how-to guide. As if people over forty don't know how to properly have sex.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jun 5, 2011 5:55:42 GMT
Nabbed Maggots by Edward Jarvis from a UK seller off of eBay and Slime by William Essex on Amazon. I was going to get Slimer, the other book in my I-want sig, but an ex-boyfriend (who is still close friends with me) recommended Slime to me so I decided to give it a try and save Slimer for another day. I hope that using the Internet to get these books isn't considered cheating. I know it'd be much more awesome to find them in a used bookstore but truthfully there's just nothing where I live, especially where UK books are concerned, so I get 'em however I can without shame.
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Post by kooshmeister on May 7, 2011 11:29:13 GMT
Started reading this. Was gonna start on Night of the Crabs since I finished Origin, but that drooling monstrosity on the cover of The Slime Beast compelled me to pick it up. So far I'm loving how fast-paced the story is. The locals are a real bunch of hot-tempered ignoramuses and I can't wait for Tom Southgate to die. Two things annoy me, though. Firstly, Lowson and Gavin continually leap to the wildest conclusions without any evidence. For instance, Lowson is just absolutely certain, without even the slightest bit of doubt, that the Slime Beast is an extraterrestrial. He's right to assume that the museum people would dismiss his theories: it's total nonsense. Whether or not it turns out to be true is immaterial since Lowson makes the theory based on nothing. I love how he sneers with contempt at the notion of the Slime Beast is an ancestor of humans. As if this is any goofier than it being an alien. He's possibly the stupidest scientist I've seen in a while. As well as the nastiest. He's so hellbent on claiming credit for a discovery (that is outside of his field!) he's scheming to murder Gavin and Liz! Likewise, I find it hilarious how Gavin just knows that firearms won't harm the Slime Beast, even though he doesn't have a gun at the time he decides this, nor has he seen one used against it before this. He just... decides guns won't work for no reason. Again, it doesn't matter that he's later proved right when Glover tells them his story later. Like Lowson, Gavin makes his incredible deductive leap based on absolutely nothing. Speaking of Glover, I loved how the guy who makes his living hunting birds is named Mallard Glover. And secondly, Smith is being annoyingly coy with the Slime Beast's antics so far. Harborne tells Lowson's party of Haywood's death, and Glover himself relates his own experience with the Slime Beast, but both events go unseen by the reader. At first I thought this was because the archeologists are the viewpoint characters so Smith won't show us what transpires when they aren't there... but then I remembered there's been two scenes so far where the story cuts to the Bull's patrons getting riled up. Why couldn't Smith have cut away and shown us (well, as much as a book can "show") Haywood's grisly demise and Glover's run-in with the monster? It seems a little disappointing Smith bypasses these potentially fun scenes to give us more of what we "really" need: Gavin and Liz making goo-goo eyes at each other and Lowson being a crotchety bastard. Blargh! I'm uninterested in these people! I want Slime Beasts eating people!
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Post by kooshmeister on May 7, 2011 8:00:54 GMT
Should've mentioned this previously but I only just now remembered it, I didn't like Rouse dying so soon. I knew he was a goner 'cause of the blurb on the back but he was set up to be such a bastard in the opening chapter I expected him to hang around a while. Instead he's offed in his second appearance in the book and his replacement is the inoffensive Joe.
Well, I'm all done. I just knew Joe was gonna bite it, the poor guy, so that wasn't a surprise. John and Christine dying is shocking on the surface, but, since this is a prequel and they aren't in Night of the Crabs from what I understand, them not living to the final page is a bit of a foregone conclusion.
I have to say that despite being impressed with the first half of the story I was severely disappointed in the last half of it. The attack on Joe and Canvers was essentially a repeat performance of Phil and Barrett: two guys see crabs, try to run, with one falling and his partner tripping over him. It felt like Smith copied and pasted the earlier scene and changed the names, with the added bonus of Joe firing his shotgun (I don't remember that happening with Phil and Barrett earlier).
The crabs' attack on McKechnie's house was great and should've been the climax of the book. After that, nothing much interesting happens and the sparsely spread attack scenes just seemed dull. it honestly felt like Smith should've given the book's last half a rewrite or two.
Another thing I found unusual is that Bryant and the rich embezzler at the end are literally introduced and killed off in the same chapter, with their deaths coming right on top of their detailed backstories. I'm fine with introducing characters just to kill them off, but the ending seemed a strange place to do it not once but twice. The beginning or middle is the best place for that.
All in all, though, despite these complaints, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read. That's all I ask out of these books. I just love nitpicking (don't get me started on the crabs' godlike invincibility!). I'll eagerly be devouring Night of the Crabs soon, and I am also certainly glad to have found this board.
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Post by kooshmeister on May 6, 2011 12:40:22 GMT
Just got my copy of this in the mail the other day. Will start on it as soon as I'm done with Origin.
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Post by kooshmeister on May 5, 2011 0:02:06 GMT
Moving swiftly along. Phil's brother is on the case now and hired Freddie the fish poacher, much to Freddie's misfortune. I knew the crabs would get him sooner or later.
Also in retrospect, is McKechnie an idiot, or what? His reason for keeping the crabs' existence secret is that he's worried they'll spoil the shooting parties he hosts. But does he ever stop to think that maybe the rich snobs who pay to come hunt on his estate might want to shoot at something new? And that gigantic crabs might prove an exciting new sport and lovely after-hunt dinner?
I mean, sure, we know bullets do diddily squat, but McKechnie doesn't. Why he is hellbent on preventing his guests from learning about the crabs, then, when he can pass them off as something he stocked the loch with for them to hunt? For a guy who only cares about money he sure is uncreative at making it. Would've been funny to see an intentional crab-hunting party go disastrously wrong. Maybe we still will? I'm only halfway through, after all.
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 27, 2011 23:12:08 GMT
The names are mostly the same, except that the Venture is called the Wanderer and instead of a Chinese cook named Charlie there is a salty old seadog named Lumpy with a pet monkey. The plot is mostly identical the finished film except for a couple of deleted sequences - the giant spiders being the most famous but a less well-known scene wherein Kong fights a bunch of dinosaurs in an asphalt swamp by chucking boulders at them.
It's the only novelization I can name that has been republished as part of The Modern Library Classics (!) line of paperbacks, complete with an insightful introduction. Quite a feat! That it has been consistently reprinted at all when most "movie books" are published once and then forgotten is a miracle unto itself.
Don Simpson's excellent Monster Comics adaptation was based on the novel and not the film. Due to copyright restrictions on the movie, Simpson couldn't draw any of the characters even remotely resembling their film counterparts, and so had to redesign them, resulting in Denham looking like Vladimir Lenin, Captain Englehorn having an Amish beard, and, weirdest of all (to me anyway), Jack looks like Ed Lauter from the 1976 film, 70's muttonchop sideburns and all!
And, since Peter Jackson's movie used the Lumpy character it's possible he read Lovelace's novel.
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 27, 2011 23:02:11 GMT
There's some weird name swapping going on in the Dreadstone novel concerning who is who's assistant. In the film(s), Frankenstein had Fritz and Pretorius had Karl.
Here, however, when Frankenstein recollects on the brain mixup, he blames "Igor" (!), and instead of Karl, Pretorius is assisted by a guy named Fritz.
What kind of mixup is that?
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 27, 2011 22:58:47 GMT
For me the most noteworthy thing is that Owen gave Captain Brandt a first name, "Einer." I love Konga by him too.
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 27, 2011 22:56:31 GMT
(If you're anything like me you'll be irresistably drawn to what's coming out the bloke's nose - somebody get that man a nasal hair trimmer, now!) I think it makes him look like he's got a mustache. Fungus-stache!
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 27, 2011 0:53:06 GMT
Got my copy of this direct from the UK and so far I'm liking it. My first Crab book! Fitting it should be the first chronologically. Smith's style is very descriptive and enjoyable, making something as mundane as Freddie the fish poacher sneaking around seem interesting. I can easily picture the dark, spooky woods surrounding Loch Merse. Freddie himself I for some reason envision looking like Sam Kydd. Barely into it and I'm already casting the characters in my head! I'm surprised that Freddie managed to escape the first crab! I figured he was gonna either get munched, or fall into the mire Smith established earlier, but instead he runs into something worse than giant crabs (arguably): the local bigshot's goon squad! Gosh, what jackasses. Freddie rightly calls them thugs later when he's talking to the priest, although Joe seems sympathetic enough (which probably means he's doomed). Rouse clearly is calling the shots, so Freddie gets a beatdown. If his henchmen are this nasty, I can't wait to see what sort of a man McKechnie himself is. Love Freddie's theory that Rouse put the crab there! Yeah, Freddie, McKechnie's goons just had a giant crab lying around which they use to scare off poachers. Can't wait to see what Smith does use that swampy mire for. Someone has to sink in it!
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 27, 2011 0:42:42 GMT
Got Fungus and Origin of the Crabs! ;D
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 23, 2011 16:03:30 GMT
The logic in a lot of these seems kind of backwards when it comes to the fairer sex. You'd think that evil Satanic women would want to be the ones doing the dominating, rather than be dominated, preferring weak but still virile men (and such people do exist) they can control easily. But then I guess this is why women don't usually read these kinds of stories.
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 23, 2011 15:55:19 GMT
I just wonder how the residents of Sutton felt about being portrayed as torch-and-pitchfork-wielding superstitious peasants! Ah, but "village" always equals backwards superstitious yahoos in fiction. Great, another one of these things I just have to have. That cover is great. Awkward pose, and the slime beast looks like a pug-nosed Creature from the Black Lagoon.
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