Hello again, everyone. Just thought I'd do another post to let everyone know how I'm doing. Things seemed to have finally settled down a bit with my current online class. The last month or so with that class has been so crazy that I've hardly had any time to focus on actual writing. I've got a job interview coming up soon though, so getting back to my writing is going to have to be postponed for a bit longer. Then again, I've been having writer's block regarding my current projects anyway.
I also finally saw that movie, The Martian yesterday with my aunt. That was a really awesome movie. If anyone reading hasn't seen it yet, I highly recommend that you do. For those who may care, I also finally got a couple of packs from this Yu-Gi-Oh! booster set called High-Speed Riders, which has the Speedroid cards used by Yugo in Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V. I've kind of been wanting to build a version of Yugo's deck for quite some time now. In truth, one of the reasons I want to try building a Speedroid deck like Yugo's is for research for an Arc-V fanfic I've been developing since this past summer. The story is going to focus on Yugo, and it's going to have duels. So I think it'd be a better story if I had a good idea of how a Speedroid deck works.
So anyway, as the title of this post says, I've kind of been on a reading binge for this past month. I've now read three Stephen King novels. For those who may be wondering, "Why all the Stephen King books?", the reason is because it's October; the season of Halloween and the season of horror. Since none of the T.V. networks seem to show good horror movies anymore, I decided that reading horror would be an excellent substitute. Of course at the beginning I thought I was only going to read one novel, but then I got through the first one so fast I decided to go ahead and read another one. Then when I finished the second one, I decided to read one more.
The first Stephen King novel I read was The Shining. I have to thank XxArrancarFanxX for recommending it to me. That really was an outstanding novel. That old movie from the 1970s staring Jack Nicholson really doesn't do it justice. In fact, that old movie is pretty cheesy in comparison. Though I have to admit that Jack Nicholson did an excellent job playing a psycho in that film. Actually, the first version of The Shining I became familiar with was this two-part made for T.V. version that came out probably in the late 90s. I know now that said version is a lot more faithful to the original novel than that original movie from the 70s.
After I finished reading The Shining, I decided to reread probably my favorite Stephen King book, 'Salem's Lot. Now that book is a good example of how a vampire story should be. Probably the best way to depict vampires is as a kind of plague, but a plague spread by an evil intelligence rather than some mutated virus like in so many zombie movies. There's a movie from the 1980s called Lifeforce that uses the same formula as 'Salem's Lot, only it add the twist of depicting vampires as space aliens that feed on pure life energy rather than blood-sucking ghouls that are in league with the devil. I've actually experimented with the same concept in a couple of fanfics I've written. First in a Digimon fanfic, than in a Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL fanfic. Though admittedly the ZEXAL story was kind of ripping off Lifeforce, but then I mainly wrote that story as a way of coping with my cat's death and other stress going on in my life at the time.
Anyway, the third book I read, and actually just finished tonight, was Carrie. I had actually only started on that book last Friday, but then I guess it was a shorter book compared to the other two. But that book was also quite good. It was kind of tragic and had a chilling ending. In that book, you're kind of rooting for the title character. At least I was, I don't know about anyone else. Though I imagine I'm not the only one.
So I think that pretty much does it for my reading binge. I do have this book of Stephen King short stories, but I'm not confident in my ability to finish it before the end of the month. After Halloween, I pretty much like to take a break from horror until… oh, usually January or February. Plus I've got a lot of manga to read anyway. I'm currently in the middle of my annual reading of this one manga series called Psyren. I highly recommend that manga to anyone who hasn't read it. It's a real shame there hasn't been an anime adaptation made of it.
Well, I think that pretty much does it for this post. Sorry it was such a long one. Until next time.
