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…)

4 thoughts on “13 things I have never read or seen”

  1. At first I was like OH! But you have to! Then I real­ized, well, not real­ly. I mean- you gave Asi­mov a shot so that is some­thing. Oth­er than that the only thing would be The Stand, but you do intend to see it, so I’m com­plete­ly moot.

    My T13 is up

  2. I thought the Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy was bor­ing. Unen­gag­ing char­ac­ters, ho hum premise when you get right down to it.

    Solaris — haven’t read it, but have you ever read any of Lem’s Pirx the Pilot sto­ries? There are a cou­ple of col­lec­tions avail­able. Neat stuff.

    Stranger in a Strange Land — Hein­lein at his preachiest.

    Glad­i­a­tor — def­i­nite­ly has some fine moments. Not a per­fect movie by a long shot, but we liked it.

  3. Pingback: Balls and Walnuts - more than you ever wanted to know » An early Thirteen: Thirteen Movie Memories

  4. Eh. Glad­i­a­tor had the per­pet­u­al­ly sad-eyed Rus­sell Crowe in it, and weird scenes where he was float­ing above the ground. I was under­whelmed. You did­n’t miss anything. 🙂

    I thought Deep Impact was more fun than Armaged­don, but maybe that’s because I had a teenage girl in the house at the time and the teenage-tru-luv sto­ry was a hit here.

    Titan­ic: the boat sinks. But see above, re: teenage girl. She LURVED Leo. She’s come to her sens­es, thank good­ness and now prefers John­ny Depp like any sen­si­ble woman.

    I liked Asi­mov when I was a teenag­er, but the only thing I’ve read of his in recent years is The Naked Sun. I still liked it. I’ve got the Foun­da­tion tril­o­gy, just don’t remem­ber it at the moment.

    My 12-year-old start­ed read­ing Eragon, did­n’t like it, and said he did­n’t want to see the movie. That’s good enough for me. I’ve got a big enough TBR pile and Net­flix queue with­out it.

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