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.
- Solaris–neither the book by Stanislaw Lem, nor either of the film versions.
- Gladiator, the film by Ridley Scott.
- Titanic, the endless movie by James Cameron.
- Any of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels.
- 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.
- Deep Impact. I saw the other disaster movie that year, Armageddon, and thought, Meh.
- Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, though I know what “grok” means.
- Eragon, and I have no intentions of reading it either. Or seeing the movie.
- Cowboy Bebop or most anime. For whatever reason, anime doesn’t turn my crank, although some people seem to assume it should.
- Seven Samurai or in fact any of Kurosawa’s corpus. This I intend to remedy.
- Any Shakespeare short of a couple sonnets and Macbeth. This too needs to be remedied.
- Any of the egregious Dune prequels. IMHO, they should’ve just published Frank Herbert’s notes and called it a day.
- 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.
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…)
- Doug’s Movies list (I swear I didn’t see this before doing mine up)
- 13 things about Jack’s Raging Mommy
- You could be next!