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It’s been a while since I updated the books that The Daughter and I have been reading at bedtimes, so here are some capsules. Some of the most satisfying and entertaining reading I’ve done lately has come at night, as I read these books aloud to The Daughter, one chapter per night. What’s nice about reading aloud is that you can’t skim. At all. When reading silently, I do tend to slip into skimming once in a while, if I sense that I’m reading a passage that may not entirely be crucial to the action. Reading aloud re-directs my readingDown the rabbit hole….

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George R.R. Martin reports on the writing of A Dance with Dragons: he now has 1100 manuscript pages, and hopes to bring the book’s final manuscript in under 1500 pages. He says that the book is now longer than A Game of Thrones and A Feast for Crows, getting close to A Clash of Kings, and has a way to go before A Storm of Swords. Well, that’s nice and all, but I’m not going to get happy yet. I’ll probably start a re-read of the series in a year, though. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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UPDATE: Welcome, readers of Boneville, and thanks to Jeff Smith for the link. I’ve read a few graphic novels lately that I’ve procrastinated posting about, so here goes. I’ve seen Jeff Smith‘s name mentioned a lot in comics circles as being a highly-admired artist and writer, but I hadn’t read him much at all except for his recent Shazam! miniseries (which I reviewed for GMR back when). Smith’s most famous work to date is his gigantic opus Bone, which I’d held off reading for a while. The first time I heard of Bone was in the comics essay in oneDown the rabbit hole….

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Here’s a good example of something that makes clear that I’ll never understand the mindset that governs the way Hollywood does business. Apparently Bryan Singer, who was reported last week as being attached to a new Battlestar Galactica reboot movie, is also near to being attached to a project to remake John Boorman’s classic King Arthur film Excalibur: Warner Bros. has closed a rights deal to remake the 1981 “Excalibur,” with Bryan Singer producing and developing the picture as a potential directing vehicle. Deal comes as Singer gets serious about making the New Line-Legendary co-production “Jack the Giant Killer” hisDown the rabbit hole….

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The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch was pretty strongly hyped when it came out a few years ago; I remember seeing it mentioned on nearly every SF and Fantasy site I tend to frequent. I made mental notes to read it, and then kept forgetting about it…and forgetting about it…and forgetting about it…until I finally picked up a copy when I remembered it one day whilst standing in Borders. I read it soon after, and it turns out there was a reason for all the hype: it’s a really good book, an adventure story that actually rollicks. IDown the rabbit hole….

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Someone from the New Yorker decided to read some fantasy: I’ve read a few best-selling fantasy series—Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials, Twilight, Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, The Dark Is Rising—but I would never describe myself as an aficionado. First because all these books are on about a fourth-grade reading level– At this point, were this a sitcom like Scrubs, this is where you would hear the sound of the record needle being dragged across the grooves. “Fourth-grade reading level”? Lord of the Rings? Really? I don’t have much to say about the recommendations offered.Down the rabbit hole….

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So I was wandering the magazine aisle at work the other day, and I saw a new issue of Realms of Fantasy Magazine. This struck me as odd, because RoF ceased publication a few months ago. So what gives? Well, a new publisher has picked up Realms. By “new publisher”, it actually turns out to be an old publisher working under a new name: Warren Lapine’s old DNA Publications company is apparently now Tir Na Nog Press. Lapine’s former company ran into trouble some years back, and I remember reading that there was some bad blood left behind in theDown the rabbit hole….

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SamuraiFrog did this last week, and I just have to follow suit. That being the case, here are my thirty favorite fantasy movies. One caveat: I’m taking a more inclusive stance on what constitutes “fantasy” here, to basically include any kind of non-SF story in which supernatural stuff happens. For those who think that “fantasy” means armored Princes going to war on horseback using magical swords against evil wizards, well, you need to broaden your views! The list is in no particular order, except for the final two, which really do constitute my top two. Ghostbusters So, why start here?Down the rabbit hole….

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The Daughter and I recently finished working our way through Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising Sequence, a five-book series where each novel tells a distinct story that is part of a larger whole, depicting the final battle between the Old Ones, who serve the Light, and the servants of the Dark, who would seize the magic of the world and dominate the lives of men forever, or something like that. The books are interrelated, so that reading them out of order is not advisable, as each one assumes knowledge of what has gone before. However, the books don’t exactly tellDown the rabbit hole….

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After clearing the decks of some earlier reading I wanted to get out of the way, I’m finally embarking on something I’ve intended to do for a couple of years now: I am re-reading every word Guy Gavriel Kay has written, in the order that he wrote them. Why? Because he’s my favorite living author, and it’s been a while since I’ve gone through his work. Here’s how it breaks down: :: My last re-read of The Fionavar Tapestry was almost exactly three years ago. This will be, by my count, my fifth complete re-reading of the trilogy, although IDown the rabbit hole….