January 25, 2007

13 things I have never read or seen

Posted on by Patrick

EDMONTON—Everytime I say “I’ve nev­er seen Big Trou­ble in Lit­tle Chi­na” I get an aston­ished gasp from my broth­er-in-law or from my friend the Space Cow­boy. I tell peo­ple I’ve nev­er read Lord of the Rings* or The Hob­bit and they give me that side­ways look like a quizzi­cal dog, as if to say “How do you live?”

So here’s a list of things I’ve not read or seen. Things that may sur­prise you. Or may not.

  1. Solaris–nei­ther the book by Stanis­law Lem, nor either of the film versions.
  2. Glad­i­a­tor, the film by Rid­ley Scott.
  3. Titan­ic, the end­less movie by James Cameron.
  4. Any of Isaac Asi­mov’s Foun­da­tion novels.
  5. Any of Isaac Asi­mov’s nov­els, in fact. I’ve read some of his short fic­tion, but I just could­n’t get into the nov­els, no mat­ter how hard I tried.
  6. Deep Impact. I saw the oth­er dis­as­ter movie that year, Armaged­don, and thought, Meh.
  7. Robert A. Hein­lein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, though I know what “grok” means.
  8. Eragon, and I have no inten­tions of read­ing it either. Or see­ing the movie.
  9. Cow­boy Bebop or most ani­me. For what­ev­er rea­son, ani­me does­n’t turn my crank, although some peo­ple seem to assume it should.
  10. Sev­en Samu­rai or in fact any of Kuro­sawa’s cor­pus. This I intend to remedy.
  11. Any Shake­speare short of a cou­ple son­nets and Mac­beth. This too needs to be remedied.
  12. Any of the egre­gious Dune pre­quels. IMHO, they should’ve just pub­lished Frank Her­bert’s notes and called it a day.
  13. The Stand mini-series, some­thing which I still hope to see sometime.

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* Not strict­ly true; I start­ed, but around the mid­dle of the sec­ond book, I real­ized that I was read­ing a high­ly-detailed trav­el­ogue, where I had been expect­ing an action epic.

Tech­no­rati

Com­ment and I’ll add you! (But since I’m on the road, it may be a lit­tle while before I get around to adding you…)