Something Wicked This Way Slowly Saunters

My reading as of late has been very sporadic, or I've been re-reading novels, mostly fantasy-adventure. This is, and has been for 8 months, due to one thing: I have not finished the Dark Tower series.

I just found out (or rather, was reminded) that the trade paperback edition of the final novel in the series, The Dark Tower, is not available until November. To be quite blunt, that sucks. I know why they've done it, of course. The typical wait time between hardcover and paperback (or trade) is roughly 6-9 months, depending on the popularity of or hype surrounding the book in question. It can be as long as 12 months, but very very rarely.

The Dark Tower will be have been a 12-month wait by the time it hits trade paperback. Thus far, I have been lucky in that no one has ruined it for me, or even spoken of it. The entire series has become a very private thing for most of Stephen King's CRs, as he calls them ("constant reader"s, as in "Have faith, my constant reader"). People simply don't talk much about it because it's one of the rare sets of books that people enjoy internalizing. No one wants to know what another person thinks of Roland, or Eddie or even Oi ("'Ake!"). The storyline in the Gunslinger (book one) is more open to discussion, but as soon as the second and third and fourth books emerged, it became "Have you read Wizard & Glass?" "Nope, not yet." ... silence. Not "Oh, it's really good" or "It's too damn long", just acceptance of the response and a tacit understanding that nothing more can be said without verging upon the blasphemous.

Anyway, all my reading energies are being conserved for this final volume in what has become, essentially, a modern-day saga; the closest this age may come to calling a literary work an epic (minus the "in media res", catalogue of warriors, and other epic conventions) since Milton.

In other news, it looks like Hollywood has recognized the substantial impact of video games on their demographic, and are moving into movie-ized versions of a few. There has already been the two Tomb Raider ones (bleh), and coming up are Doom (with the Rock) as well as Hitman: Codename 47 (with Vin Diesel). Hard to say how either of those will go, as there was never much of a story to either one, and you can hardly fill 1.5 hours with random assassination missions (in the case of Hitman) or opening doors and chainsawing zombies with rocket-launchers for arms (in the case of Doom). Though if the head rocket-launcher arms guy were to be played by Christopher Lee or Gary Oldman... hmmm... I can picture it now. "I have crossed oceans of time... 2 PWN U CUZ 1 4M L337!!11one!1!"

That is all for now. Bring on the weekend and beer and BBQ and Family Guy!