Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?

@WaveWitch Before that, i was on an RL Stine Goosebumps rampage back in elementry school. With Robert Munch paving the way prior, Nintendo Power during the 8-16 bit era, GamePro, EGM, Dreamcast Official Magazine, etc.

• I've read those Resident Evil books and mentioned the author S.D. Perry not that long ago. I haven't played the games but I did read the books and the one with the monitors on the cover (checks) Underworld, was my favorite. They didn't require me to really know the series, the same with the Doom novels. The difference is that the Resident Evil books as a whole were quite good but only the first Doom novel was worth reading and the rest were terrible. Most gamers don't realize the wealth of tie-in novels that exist for game novels. Looking at my collection (I catalogue my books) I see:

Fable, Sonic, Silent Hill, Pathfinder, Far Cry, Sniper Elite, Rage, Rimworld, Metro, Life is Strange, Space Engineers, Resident Evil, Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, Cyberpunk, Dark Souls, X-Com, Watch Dogs, Alan Wake, Homefront, Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed, Diablo, Dying Light, Death Stranding, The Division, Ico, Doom, Dishonored, Hitman, Batman, The Witcher, Borderlands, The Elder Scrolls, Battlefield, Dead Island, Dead Space, Bioshock, Final Fantasy, and many more.

My last two gaming book purchases were (checks) Abyssal Archive: The Mythology of Dark Souls and Demonic Archive: The Mythology of Demon's Souls, the listed ones above are novels and most have multiple editions/novels in each series. I haven't catalogued the lore/reference books. There are all kinds of game related books out there, it's a nice side of the industry and so far still physical.

Haven't sat down and read a book in ages. Just graphic novels or the occasional comic book series. I was enjoying Archie's official Mega Man Comic Book series back in the 2010's, up until a certain point. But they switched up the aritsts and the quality went down the draino'. Wild Storm's mid to late 90's 6-part Resident Evil comic book series was another i went ga ga over when i was utterly obsessed with all things RE during 96 - 2000.

• Playing the Arkham Asylum game pushed me to exploring graphic-novels. I played the game and had a lot of questions about each character, I'd seen the movies but so much of it required extra reading. So I started with Batman and loved what I saw, I'd known Judge Dredd but he was different and so was his world. I think after that I tried Spawn followed by some movie tie-in omnibus volumes like Predator, The Mask and Robocop. That one was brilliant, and was going to be the second movie but they wouldn't give Frank Miller's vision the required budget. I've read the Aliens graphic-novels too and of course the novels themselves. I think I've read most Goosebumps books, my favorite was The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight. I'm not sure why but I really liked that one. If you know this series called Are You Afraid of The Dark? it was Canadian, it's been revived with new books. There are three so far: The Tale of the Gravemother, The Tale of the Twisted Toymaker and The Tale of the Vanishing Circus. They are still aimed at children and I think well written.

@GirlVersusGame "Ashlad" (took me a while to realise who that was, even if it's a direct translation of his name) is recurring character that embodies the virtues mentioned - kindness, cleverness and being industrious - and typically wins out over his brothers because of those qualities.

Also, "the blood of a Christian" is actually the direct result of the sometimes very violent Christening of Norway and as Christians were seen as virtuous and pure, they were in direct opposition to the evil trolls.

I'm sorry if I missed any points in your post that warranted a comment, but I'm really having trouble reading some of your posts due to the strange formatting with bullet points and unclear quoting/attribution. Not a big deal, but I may miss some details/intentions, so for that I apologize.

@FuriousMachine I wasn't sure if the Ashlad was the same person each time or like you said a kind of embodiment of certain qualities, that happens with English too. I need to read up on the religious situation, transition and history of Norway. I only know it through the words of certain Black Metal bands and it seems like their only motives were violence, hatred and bigotry, the church burnings etc. They said it was because Christianity was forced on Norway, it's not my land nor my culture so I don't know, but probably should read into the history, then find the truth.

I'm sorry if I missed any points in your post that warranted a comment, but I'm really having trouble reading some of your posts due to the strange formatting with bullet points and unclear quoting/attribution. Not a big deal, but I may miss some details/intentions, so for that I apologize.

• That's okay and I didn't think you missed anything, I use this minus symbol (I don't know it's name it's a horizontal line between zero and the plus key) to make what you called the bullet points. Formatting and typing were self-learned, but I'd rather my formatting was strange and my words not as strange, but no I don't think you missed anything. But I am tired and a little jet-lagged so I could be missing something myself. Either way I really liked the collection, Scottish folktales might be next. It has a deep history of Witchcraft as does Wales, hopefully the tales and stories reflect just that.

HEre is a little beauty @GirlVersusGame since you have been reading our norwegian folk history.

@Skarasny I'm not sure what I watched but I liked it thank you for sharing. I had to sort of intuitively translate it and at the start I assumed that young boy was saying he was going to leave and explore the world and his Mum was telling him he would stay at home and be laborers like his brothers. Then I suppose he left and ventured into the forest, met that wise old man who told him about that magic longboat. What I really liked was how personality and the spirits of the land were featured in the landscape, it was subtle and seemed to just 'be', unless they discussed it. Much like the Celts there was no debate whether there were spirits in the land, it was widely accepted and I picked up on the same thing in that story. I do believe in spirits of the land, and I believe they were here before we were but most 'rational' people will say otherwise. The puppetry was really impressive too, I've watched similar productions and usually spot wires. In this one I couldn't, it looks like stop-motion but very fluid and a lot less wooden than some I've seen. It's a perfect example of language not really being needed when the story telling is so visual. It reminds me of this one.

• The Old Man of the Mountain (1989) It's also stop-motion and anthology film featuring fables and tales.

Brian Blessed is the narrator, it was a collaboration between a Czech studio and a British one. I did watch productions like that, I wasn't allowed things like The Simpsons, certainly not South Park, but did watch Dogtanian and Three Muskahounds, The Raccoons, The Dreamstone and a couple of others. Dubbed of course, that's something I like about Youtube, preserving old media with real heart. My favorite thing about what you shared was definitely those forest/mountain faces/spirits, that's why I love faierie lore. I don't mean the kind like Tinkerbelle, I mean the proper Good People. I like how they stick to themselves, have their own ranks, rules, follow their old ways and if you get involved with them they tend to gain more than you lose. I can relate to them, they live on the fringes of society, their world is their world and as long as you respect them they respect you. There's such a cautionary tale with each story, to respect the land, to have reverence for nature and to in a way stick to your own. Well the faieries do at least, unless they lure someone into their world.

It's a shame that a character/figure and word like Troll has become so ingrained with internet culture, there's a kind of disrespect there. The Trolls I did read about were capable of discussion/weren't always fully driven by primal urges and now the word is almost derogatory. Like fairy, I never really thought of it before, movies can be folklore too and C.H.U.D has also been adopted for that same use. I think that's also a good example of losing more than we gain, Troll becomes an internet staple, meanwhile how many people are reading about and learning about the true meaning/origins of the word. Not many I don't think, perhaps fairy tales are being replaced with something else.

I've recently been reading The Rambo Report: Five Films, Three Books, One Legend by Nat Segaloff. One of the most interesting aspects of Segaloff's book is how it explores the evolution of Rambo from Morrell's troubled Vietnam veteran into the larger-than-life action hero we all recognise today.

It also looks at how the films reflected the political and cultural climate of their time, particularly changing American attitudes towards Vietnam, patriotism and the military. There's plenty of behind-the-scenes information, stories about the filmmakers, differences between the books and films, and how Rambo became such a huge part of popular culture.

It's fascinating to look back at just how different the original First Blood is in tone from the later films, and how much the character changed along the way.

Nat Segaloff has clearly done his homework, and there's plenty here to enjoy, particularly if you're a fan of Stallone or the action films of the 1980s.

A really interesting book about an iconic character. Definitely worth a look for any Rambo fans out there.

Now that I've finished this, I'm looking forward to my next read. I'm eagerly awaiting Chronicles of the Tomb Raider by Alex Forbes-Calvin, which is released next week. Looking forward to getting stuck into that one!

@LtSarge You mentioned watching the first Conjuring movies over Halloween and really liking them so I thought I'd share something you might like, I have a soft spot for the original first editions from The Warrens and their associated cases and I love a nice worn spine/cover too and the original artwork.

The first you watched would have been the farmhouse, that's the House of Light House of Dark collection and I don't count those because of the author, she's a lovely woman though. The second would have been the Enfield case, I have both editions for that case. Some others you might not know are the Smurl case that would be 'The Haunted', the movie would be 'Last Rites' and the Fox TV one called 'The Haunted' from 1991. I've always liked that movie so I'll included a link.

Werewolf is the William David Ramsey case (another case from England) it's not been made into a movie and Satan's Harvest is the Maurice Theriault case which I can never see being made into a movie and I can't even discuss the theme here, it's a much darker case. The Devil in Connecticut is the Glatzel case and that book came from the Author's home, he found a box of unsold copies in storage so I naturally grabbed one, that would be The Devil Made me Do It. I liked the earlier movies they weren't bad at all. I was bigger into their cases earlier in life. Once I eased out of Witchcraft I moved a little further away from that darker material but I still have thousands of books on Demonology, Witchcraft and so on. I almost forgot 'In a Dark Place', that was Snedeker case. If you ever saw the movie 'A Haunting in Connecticut', it's the same case. I don't know if you are a big reader, but if you want more context the books are a good place to start.

While I'm waiting for Chronicles of a Tomb Raider by Alex Forbes-Calvin to arrive, I thought I'd dust off my copy of Ancient Egypt: The Definitive Visual History (DK Classic History) and have a bit of a peruse through that.

I got the urge to delve back into Ancient Egypt after watching the 1994 film Stargate on Saturday night. I was thinking that it's funny how sometimes a film or tv programme can spark an interest in a particular subject and send you reaching for a book!

So, in the meantime, I'm enjoying a little exploration of ancient Egyptian history while I wait for Lara to arrive (hopefully) on Thursday.

@DangerousChicken Those are some of my Egyptology books
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/70717790?tag=egypt-tribal

It's one of my favorite parts of the world to visit and to study, we were discussing Stargate a couple of months ago too, mainly because of the various transfers and the sickly green that plagued one of the first home video prints. DK are quite good for cutaways too, I don't read their material all that often but do collect books and DK do crop up often enough. I imagine you mean the Steven Snape one, I'm flipping through it at the moment to see what jumps out. I like The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt by Ian Shaw and Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization by Barry J. Kemp. I personally approach it from a more esoteric standing but quite like researching the history, customs and traditions too. It's a part of the world that everyone should see at least once, I try to visit at least once each year. The last visit would have been July. I'm a practitioner of The Golden Dawn and Egypt is central and a core foundation of our belief structure, primarily through Egyptosophy, both our cosmology and our pantheon feature that same symbolism and concepts, our deities too, Isis, Horus, Anubis and Thoth etc. I like DarkHorse too so I'll grab a copy of that Tomb Raider book.