League of Extraordinary Books

[wreade1872]

Ok, been meaning to do this for a while hence the length of the list below. So i'm a big fan of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels and started using it and the associated annotations to create a reading list.
So here i'll post what i've read so far and later i'll give a bit more of a review on the good or bad stuff but let me get my list of stuff i've read up first.
The good thing about this list is that most of the items are out of copyright and i was able to get them free and legal for my e-reader and the others i got from libraries so its been completely free :hurray: . Apart from all the cash for the e-reader anyway :nonod: .
Oh before i print the League list these are the items i'd read BEFORE which are also referenced in the League comics:
Dracula [4/5]
20,000 Leagues [5/5]
Wind in the Willows [4/5]
King Solomons Mines [1/5]
Journey to the Centre of the Earth [2/5]
Treasure Island [3/5]
War of the Worlds [4/5]
H.P. Lovecraft ALLLLLLL his stuff [5/5]

And now this is what i've read SINCE i began my Extraordinary reading list:
A Blazing World by Duchess Margaret Cavendish [4/5]
Carnacki the Ghost Finder by William Hodgson [4/5]
Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung [4/5]
Orlando by Virginia Woolf [4/5]
Orlando Innamorata by unknown (prose translation) [1/5]
Song of Roland by unknown (poetry) [3/5]
Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan (poetry) [3/5]
Floating Island by Richard Head [2/5]
She by H.Rider Haggard [3/5]
Allan Quartermain by ,, ,, [3/5]
Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc [1/5]
Fantomas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre [3/5]
Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde [2/5]
Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer [3/5]
My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse [2/5]
Code of the Woosters by ,, ,, [3/5]
Fanny Hill by John Cleland [3/5]
Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch [3/5]
Doctor Syn by Russell Thorndyke [3/5]
Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper [3/5]
Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy [3/5]
Limehouse Nights by Thomas Burke [4/5]
Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan [2/5]
Bulldog Drummond by Herman Cyril McNeile [3/5]
The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley [2/5]
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer Lytton [4/5]
The Coming Race by ,, ,, [4/5]
Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott [5/5]
Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift [3/5]
Gulliver of Mars by Edwin Lester Arnold [3/5]
Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs [1/5]
Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill (musical) [4/5]
The Tempest by Shakespeare (play) [2/5]
The Alchemist by Ben Johnson (play) [1/5]
Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry (play) [1/5]
Earth-Spirit by Frank Wedekind (play) [2/5]
Pandoras Box by by ,, ,, (play) [3/5]
Melmouth the Wanderer (abridged) by Charles Maturin [1/5]
The Vampyre by John Polidori [2/5]
Manfred by Lord Byron (poetry) [1/5]
Robur the Conquerer by Jules Verne [1/5]
The Mysterious Island by ,, ,, [3/5]
An Antarctic Mystery by ,, ,, [3/5]
Earth to the Moon by ,, ,, (both volumes) [3/5]
First Men in the Moon by H.G.Wells [4/5]
Island of Dr.Moreau by ,, ,, [2/5]
Invisible Man by ,, ,, [3/5]
Time Machine by ,, ,, [2/5]
The Crystal Egg by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Moonstone by Wilkie Collins [2/5]
Moonchild by Aleister Crowley [3/5]
Meccania by Owen Gregory [4/5]
Metropolis by Thea von Harbou [3/5]
The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham [3/5]
The Beetle by Richard Marsh [3/5]
Sherlock Holmes, The Final Problem by Arthur Conan Doyle (short) [2/5]
Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (short) [2/5]
Mystery of Marie Roget by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Purloined Letter by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Cask of Amontillado by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Fall of the House of Usher by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by ,, ,, [3/5]
The Angels of Mons by Arthur Machen [1/5]
Frank Reade Jr.'s Electric Air Canoe by (short) [3/5]
Captain Mors the Air Pirate (issues #1 and #156) by unknown (short) [3/5]
Mysta of the Moon by unknown (all 28 issues, comic) [4/5]
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll [2/5]
Through the Looking Glass by ,, ,, [2/5]
Hunting of the Snark by ,, ,, (poetry) [3/5]
Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear (poetry) [3/5]
Bluebeard by Charles Perrault (from Mother Goose Tales) (short) [2/5]
Seven Voyages of Sinbad by unknown (from the Arabian Nights) (short) [3/5]
Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson [3/5]
Purple Terror by Fred M. White (short) [2/5]
Monster of Lake LaMetrie by Wardon Allen Curtis (short) [3/5]
Casting of the Runes by M.R. James (short) [1/5]
The Birds by Aristophanes (play) [3/5]
On Gargoyles by G.K. Chesterton (short) [3/5]
Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss [3/5]
Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School by Frank Richards [3/5]
Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges (short) [3/5]
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino [3/5]
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming [2/5]
1984 by Orson Wells [4/5]
On The Road by Jack Kerouac [3/5]
Doctor Sax by ,, ,, [3/5]
Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope [3/5]
Prince Zaleski by M.P. Shiel [3/5]
Palos of the Dog Star Pack by J.U. Giesy [2/5]
L'Assommoir by Emile Zola [4/5]
Christianopolis by Johan Valentin Andrea [1/5]
A Crystal Age by William Henry Hudson [3/5]
Secrets of Dr.Taverner by Dion Fortune [3/5]
Dr.Nikola's Experiment by Guy Boothby [2/5]
A Voyage to Cacklogallinia by unknown [4/5]
The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nash [3/5]
Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [3/5]
Pollyanna by Eleanor Hodgman Porter [4/5]
Maza of the Moon by Otis Adelbert Kline [3/5]
Varney the Vampire by Thomas Preskett Prest (2/3's i'll get to the rest eventually) [3/5]
City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson (poetry) [5/5]
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spencer (both volumes, poetry) [4/5]
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (both volumes) [3/5]
Aucassin and Nicolete by unknown (poetry and prose) [3/5]
At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald [3/5]
Fattypuffs and Thinifers by Andre Maurois [3/5]
Alasto by Percy Shelley (poetry) [3/5]
Fortunio by Theophile Gautier [3/5]
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville [3/5]
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh [3/5]
Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor [3/5]
Encounter at Dawn by Arthur C.Clarke (short) [2/5]
Child of the Phalanstery by Grant Allen (short) [3/5]
Strange Case Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson [2/5]
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [4/5]
Moby Dick by Herman Melville [3/5]
Riallaro, the archipelago of exiles by John Macmillan Brown [4/5]

All ratings out of 5 but i'll give a better indication of quality with some mini-reviews when i get around to it.

[PeterL]

Don't forget the complete works of Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, and of many other people who died more than 75 years ago. gutenberg.org is an excellent source for books in the public domain, and there are a fair number on this site.

[wreade1872]

Ok time to start my reviews and since swift was mentioned in previous comment i think i'll start there as Gulliver's Travels was on my list and i'll also review to similar items starting with:

A Voyage to Cacklogallinia
Written in the 1720's if memory serves this is a short pamphlet about 80 page but manages to get a lot packed into that space. The intro on the version i read did say it's considered to have inspired Gulliver's Travels and it is the same sort of thing. After some initials incident which is interesting anyway the main plot starts as the protagonist finds himself washed up on an island run by giant intelligent chickens! Hey if your going to do satire its hard to go wrong with giant chickens :lol . Its pretty funny stuff and the author takes a shot at everyone from the king and court, to the law, church and the common people for putting up with it all, its no wonder it was written anonymously. Eventually the hero finds himself on a chicken expedition to the moon to get gold and the moon turns out to be purgatory... yeah its pretty weird :), but good. Some conversations on the moon towards the end weren't great but overall i really liked it. [4/5]

Gulliver's Travels
It might seem odd to some but i avoided numerous opportunities to read this over the years because i thought it was a kids book. Obviously i was very much mistaken. Biting political and social satire i did like it but an overfamiliarity with some aspects of it from popular culture may have stunted the impact a bit. The element i most enjoyed was actually the characterization. Gulliver's a very strange guy, he has an odd subservient streak no matter what land he's in, and then theres the end where despite having followed him and seen everything from his point of view you suddenly get to see what others must think of him. Of course he looks completely insane and his reaction to getting home and his wife and children is quite poignant. Overall good and only perhaps its ubiquitousness may have lower my appreciation of it a tad. [3/5]

Riallaro, the archipelago of exiles
Finally today Riallaro, written in 1901 by a John Macmillan Brown under the pseudonym Godfrey Sweven. In the vain of Gulliver's Travels the protagonist travesl to this fog bound archipelago and discovers various islands each run on different philosophies. There are four or so major islands, run by what i would describe as liars, communists, warmongers and sensualists. Then each of these islands takes anyone they deem mad and sends them to another island filled with people who share their madness or extremist views.
So you have islands populated by nothing but anarchists, another by journalists, others by religous extremists of one kind or another, one filled with book critics another by people who value pedigree above all else, another by people who will always argue the opposite of what you say, others who will always agree with whoever seems the most popular, another with those who think they can talk to the dead etc.
That last one is one of my favourites, the community has divided into two groups the traditionalists who build creeping castle and creaky houses to attract ghosts and the modernists who say you don't need al that crap and ghosts are perfectly happy turning up in a modern kitchen and communicating by knocking on the underside of tables, provided you only ask questions everyone knows the answers too. Its funny stuff.
Not as well written as Gulliver's Travels and not very strong characterization of the main character but lots of ideas and it also has a certain internal logic, theres a fairly reasonable explanation why this place exists and how such weird communities manage to survive. So nothing as sci-fi-ish as laputa or liliput. Overall i just really enjoyed it. And theres a second-part or sequel which i'm definitely going to read at some point its called Limanora, the island of progress. [4/5]

[mona amon]

You seem to be having a lot of fun with this. Good work! :)

I know hardly anything about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but the other day I learnt that Olive Chancellor, a very interesting character in Henry James' The Bostonians featured in one of the issues. I'd love to know what she was doing there!

[wreade1872]

You seem to be having a lot of fun with this. Good work! :)

I know hardly anything about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but the other day I learnt that Olive Chancellor, a very interesting character in Henry James' The Bostonians featured in one of the issues. I'd love to know what she was doing there!

Actually i've just checked this reference and i DON'T think you want to know what she was doing there :lol. Along with Katy from What Katy Did, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Pollyanna, she's one of the students you see briefly at Miss Rosa Coote's boarding school. I won't go into details but Miss Coote's character is from the erotica/bdsm magazine The Pearl published around 1900. So yeah... i wouldn't look further into it if i was you ;) .
The Bostonians is on my to read list but haven't gotten to it yet.

[mona amon]

Ha Ha! Thanks for the interesting info! :D

[wreade1872]

Another triple review, this time The Waterbabies, Pollyanna and At the Back of the North Wind.

The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley
This is about a child chimney sweep who due to circumstances i don't want to spoil gets turned into a sort of mermaid creature and learns various lessons on how to be good.
I saw a BBC program i think it was called the Do-Gooders and it said that this book caused quite a stir when it came out and not long after child chimney sweeps where banned. I think this bit of prior knowledge may have raised my expectations and the book failed to live up to them.
Its alright and quite weird and ethereal, aswell as melancholy but overall there just isn't that much story to get into. [2/5]

Pollyanna by Eleanor Hodgman Porter
If this were written today it would be used as the script of a Pixar film :lol . Like a Pixar film it slides right through the hardened shell of the cynical adult and stabs you in heart. Its about a little girl who always tries to look on the bright side. It would be truly unbearable to read if not for fact that everyone else in the story is sane, and reacts just as normal people would. Its just so damn cute... but in a good way :) . The ending isn't the best as a certain climax level is reached which the last part of the story can't live up to but overall i was VERY surprised at how much i liked this. [4/5]

At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald
And this is the reason why i've reviewed these 3 together, because this book is like a cross between the Water-babies and Pollyanna. Its got the slightly braindamaged Pollyanna-like optimist although a boy this time, combined with the weirdness and attempts to put a happy face on death of the Water-Babies.
The first third or so of the book is really good as you meet the suitably etheral spirit of the North Wind and also get some info on the darkside of life for poor children at the time, seen in the other two books above aswell. Unfortunately the author seems to run out of ideas later and fills out the story with poems and in one case an entire fairytale which has nothing to do with anything and seems purely there to take up more pages. Finally the ending is tame and disappointing. Nevertheless those early chapters were enough to keep me from regreting the experience. [3/5]

[wreade1872]

Ok finally an update to this post, my initial Read, list wasn't entirely complete and i've gone through a fair amount of material since so heres all the rest of it:
all 28 issues of Mysta of the Moon (comic) [4/5]
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe (short) [4/5]
The Ice Queen by Hans Christian Anderson [3/5]
The Kindly Ones by Anthony Powell [3/5]
The Castle by Franz Kafka [3/5]
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter [4/5]
Mother London by Michael Moorcock [4/5]
Roadtown by Edgar Chambless [3/5]
Utopia Limited by Gilbert & Sullivan (musical) [3/5]
all 16 issues of Stardust the Super Wizard (comic) [2/5]
The Warden by Anthony Trollope [3/5]
Mount Analogue by Rene Daumal [3/5]
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (poetry) [4/5]
Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo by Gerald Kersh (short) [3/5]
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski [4/5]
Disappeared City by Victor Hugo (poetry) [3/5]
The Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner (opera) [3/5]
The Curious Republic of Gondour by Mark Twain (short) [3/5]

Non-Literary, film unless stated otherwise:
The Third Man [2/5]
First Men in the Moon [3/5]
Cat Women of the Moon [2/5]
Amazons of the Moon [1/5]
The Phantom Empire (serial) [3/5]
Duct Soup [3/5]
The Great Dictator [4/5]

So i'll try to get back to some proper reviews soon. Currently reading the Yellow Danger by M.P.Shiels and trying to finish of the Varney the Vampire pennydreadful which has become a bit of a slog.

[kev67]

Are these all graphic novel adaptions?


Ok, been meaning to do this for a while hence the length of the list below. So i'm a big fan of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels and started using it and the associated annotations to create a reading list.
So here i'll post what i've read so far and later i'll give a bit more of a review on the good or bad stuff but let me get my list of stuff i've read up first.
The good thing about this list is that most of the items are out of copyright and i was able to get them free and legal for my e-reader and the others i got from libraries so its been completely free :hurray: . Apart from all the cash for the e-reader anyway :nonod: .
Oh before i print the League list these are the items i'd read BEFORE which are also referenced in the League comics:
Dracula [4/5]
20,000 Leagues [5/5]
Wind in the Willows [4/5]
King Solomons Mines [1/5]
Journey to the Centre of the Earth [2/5]
Treasure Island [3/5]
War of the Worlds [4/5]
H.P. Lovecraft ALLLLLLL his stuff [5/5]

And now this is what i've read SINCE i began my Extraordinary reading list:
A Blazing World by Duchess Margaret Cavendish [4/5]
Carnacki the Ghost Finder by William Hodgson [4/5]
Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung [4/5]
Orlando by Virginia Woolf [4/5]
Orlando Innamorata by unknown (prose translation) [1/5]
Song of Roland by unknown (poetry) [3/5]
Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan (poetry) [3/5]
Floating Island by Richard Head [2/5]
She by H.Rider Haggard [3/5]
Allan Quartermain by ,, ,, [3/5]
Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc [1/5]
Fantomas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre [3/5]
Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde [2/5]
Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer [3/5]
My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse [2/5]
Code of the Woosters by ,, ,, [3/5]
Fanny Hill by John Cleland [3/5]
Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch [3/5]
Doctor Syn by Russell Thorndyke [3/5]
Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper [3/5]
Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy [3/5]
Limehouse Nights by Thomas Burke [4/5]
Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan [2/5]
Bulldog Drummond by Herman Cyril McNeile [3/5]
The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley [2/5]
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer Lytton [4/5]
The Coming Race by ,, ,, [4/5]
Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott [5/5]
Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift [3/5]
Gulliver of Mars by Edwin Lester Arnold [3/5]
Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs [1/5]
Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill (musical) [4/5]
The Tempest by Shakespeare (play) [2/5]
The Alchemist by Ben Johnson (play) [1/5]
Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry (play) [1/5]
Earth-Spirit by Frank Wedekind (play) [2/5]
Pandoras Box by by ,, ,, (play) [3/5]
Melmouth the Wanderer (abridged) by Charles Maturin [1/5]
The Vampyre by John Polidori [2/5]
Manfred by Lord Byron (poetry) [1/5]
Robur the Conquerer by Jules Verne [1/5]
The Mysterious Island by ,, ,, [3/5]
An Antarctic Mystery by ,, ,, [3/5]
Earth to the Moon by ,, ,, (both volumes) [3/5]
First Men in the Moon by H.G.Wells [4/5]
Island of Dr.Moreau by ,, ,, [2/5]
Invisible Man by ,, ,, [3/5]
Time Machine by ,, ,, [2/5]
The Crystal Egg by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Moonstone by Wilkie Collins [2/5]
Moonchild by Aleister Crowley [3/5]
Meccania by Owen Gregory [4/5]
Metropolis by Thea von Harbou [3/5]
The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham [3/5]
The Beetle by Richard Marsh [3/5]
Sherlock Holmes, The Final Problem by Arthur Conan Doyle (short) [2/5]
Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (short) [2/5]
Mystery of Marie Roget by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Purloined Letter by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Cask of Amontillado by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Fall of the House of Usher by ,, ,, (short) [2/5]
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by ,, ,, [3/5]
The Angels of Mons by Arthur Machen [1/5]
Frank Reade Jr.'s Electric Air Canoe by (short) [3/5]
Captain Mors the Air Pirate (issues #1 and #156) by unknown (short) [3/5]
Mysta of the Moon by unknown (all 28 issues, comic) [4/5]
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll [2/5]
Through the Looking Glass by ,, ,, [2/5]
Hunting of the Snark by ,, ,, (poetry) [3/5]
Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear (poetry) [3/5]
Bluebeard by Charles Perrault (from Mother Goose Tales) (short) [2/5]
Seven Voyages of Sinbad by unknown (from the Arabian Nights) (short) [3/5]
Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson [3/5]
Purple Terror by Fred M. White (short) [2/5]
Monster of Lake LaMetrie by Wardon Allen Curtis (short) [3/5]
Casting of the Runes by M.R. James (short) [1/5]
The Birds by Aristophanes (play) [3/5]
On Gargoyles by G.K. Chesterton (short) [3/5]
Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss [3/5]
Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School by Frank Richards [3/5]
Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges (short) [3/5]
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino [3/5]
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming [2/5]
1984 by Orson Wells [4/5]
On The Road by Jack Kerouac [3/5]
Doctor Sax by ,, ,, [3/5]
Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope [3/5]
Prince Zaleski by M.P. Shiel [3/5]
Palos of the Dog Star Pack by J.U. Giesy [2/5]
L'Assommoir by Emile Zola [4/5]
Christianopolis by Johan Valentin Andrea [1/5]
A Crystal Age by William Henry Hudson [3/5]
Secrets of Dr.Taverner by Dion Fortune [3/5]
Dr.Nikola's Experiment by Guy Boothby [2/5]
A Voyage to Cacklogallinia by unknown [4/5]
The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nash [3/5]
Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [3/5]
Pollyanna by Eleanor Hodgman Porter [4/5]
Maza of the Moon by Otis Adelbert Kline [3/5]
Varney the Vampire by Thomas Preskett Prest (2/3's i'll get to the rest eventually) [3/5]
City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson (poetry) [5/5]
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spencer (both volumes, poetry) [4/5]
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (both volumes) [3/5]
Aucassin and Nicolete by unknown (poetry and prose) [3/5]
At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald [3/5]
Fattypuffs and Thinifers by Andre Maurois [3/5]
Alasto by Percy Shelley (poetry) [3/5]
Fortunio by Theophile Gautier [3/5]
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville [3/5]
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh [3/5]
Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor [3/5]
Encounter at Dawn by Arthur C.Clarke (short) [2/5]
Child of the Phalanstery by Grant Allen (short) [3/5]
Strange Case Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson [2/5]
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [4/5]
Moby Dick by Herman Melville [3/5]
Riallaro, the archipelago of exiles by John Macmillan Brown [4/5]

All ratings out of 5 but i'll give a better indication of quality with some mini-reviews when i get around to it.

[wreade1872]

No those are the normal books which get referenced in the 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' graphic novels. So ordinary books except where stated otherwise, mostly victoriana.
I'm just using the comic as a sort of recommendation guide, so if i spot a reference in the comic i go look up and read the original work.

[kev67]

How many years have you been doing that for?

[wreade1872]

How many years have you been doing that for?

Ouch... theres the question i was hoping nobody would ask :lol. I'm sure its a lot less impressive a list when i work that out :).
Lets see started after i got the LoEG: the Black Dossier, that came out in 2007 but i think i got it a bit later, so best estimate, i started maybe in mid-2008.

So 4 1/2 years... damn thats quite a while :lol.

[wreade1872]

Some more reviews:
The Faerie Queene by Edmond Spenser
I liked this so much that after reading it all on my e-reader i wanted to buy a nice hardback copy. Which turned out to be not so easy to do as there arn't really any cheap modern ones, i ended up grabbing a copy from ebay which turned out to be from the 1850's, for a surprisingly low price and makes a great addition to my bookshelf, but i digress.

So the Faerie Queene is quite important in terms of the League comics, in the comics you find out 'Queen Gloriana I' setup the creation of the 1st League and it seems as if Alan Moore is saying that the 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' comics are a spiritual successor to the Faerie Queene.
And theres plenty of evidence to support this, the Queene has this mix of lots of different story elements just like League.
Theres christian mythology, greek myth, oberon the faerie king gets a mention, theres a dragon that wouldn't be amiss in Lord of the Rings, at one point we hear the mythological version of the founding of Britain by Brutus, and of course King Arthur shows up wielding a magic sword, except the sword is Durendel, which is actually the sword of the Roland myths not the arthurin ones.

So you have this mix of all these elements in the same way the League comics combine characters from different stories and theres further similarities.
Sex, violence, numerous attempted sexual assaults, strong female characters, archaic language, good action scenes etc. (i really don't know how the action scenes work so well in poetry but they just do :lol )
And lastly i was struck by how mature and real some the Faerie Queene is which is weird to say for poetry and a christian allegory, i expected something like He-Man with this endless march of victory but its not like that.

I think the Faerie Queene is to poetry what the League and other Alan Moore works are to comics. They are both far more real and interesting than i would have thought given the medium in which they are written.

Overall, really good, second volume not quite as good as 1st. Sometimes a bit too complicated with so many characters running about. Strangely easy to read especially given the language. And here i thought i hated poetry, but this is not the stuff they make you study in school :) . [4/5]
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Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
So not much to say about this one its ok but thats about it. It will probably begin to seem familiar to any reader after a few pages as its been made into the film 'Dave' with Kevin Kline. They alter a few plot elements for the film but basically the same story and i preferred the film. There is however a sequel and prequel to the book so i might check one of those out sometime. [3/5]
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Zanoni by Edward Bulwer Lytton
I don't know why Bulwer-Lytton is such a literary joke these days, this is the man who came up with great sayings like 'the pen is mightier than the sword' and was massively popular in his day. I've only read two of his books but they're both pretty damn good and this is one of them.
So storywise its a supernatural romance sort of thing, an immortal and a mortal girl. Its quite a while before the story actually centres around Zanoni, you get a lot of background on the female lead which is probably just aswell as by the end you might kind of hate her, but this is mitigated a bit by knowing how she was raised.
The magic depicted in this is quite Lovecraftian especially a thing called the 'Haunter of the Threshold' which is something people encounter when they try to make themselves immortal.
The novel also mixes in real historical characters but not in a way that rewrites events which is just aswell as that rarely works (except in Inglorious Bastards where it really worked).
The end i hated, but not because it was badly written it just wasn't what i wanted to happen.
Overall good but going in you should know its not all about Zanoni theres at least 3 important characters that the story follows and some readers might get impatient to get back to Zanoni but i liked all the elements.
Oh and this has also been turned into a film, the Will Smith superhero movie Hancock, i kid you not... :crazy:
[4/5]

[Bustrofedon]

Ouch... theres the question i was hoping nobody would ask :lol. I'm sure its a lot less impressive a list when i work that out :).
Lets see started after i got the LoEG: the Black Dossier, that came out in 2007 but i think i got it a bit later, so best estimate, i started maybe in mid-2008.

So 4 1/2 years... damn thats quite a while :lol.

Still impressive, voracious reading.

[mona amon]

Yeah, I'm totally impressed! And back in our days parents and teachers used to worry that comics would spoil our reading habits!

[wreade1872]

Was going to do 3 more reviews but my patience with writing is a lot shorter than that with reading so just the one today:

The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
A man discovers a technologically advanced lost branch of human society, forced underground in some remote ice-age. The Ana or Vril-ya, Vril-ya meaning the people who use Vril.

Vril is a sort of cross between plutonium and the Force (from starwars). It's an energy source which reacts to human thought. So for example if you power a weapon with it the damage it could do would depend on the mental strength of the user.

This book has a certain amount of historical baggage. Many top Nazi's including Hitler were involved in a stonecutters-esque secret club known as the 'Vril Society' partially based on this book. Not the authors fault of course.
The Vril-ya could be seen as a bit Nazi like, they will exterminate anyone they deem a threat and are protective of their genetic purity but it makes sense in the context, since the ability to control the Vril is partially genetic and has been bred into the Vril over thousands of years. Foreign genetics would make it harder to control the Vril which is the entire basis of all their technological development.
The Vril-ya are extremely logical perhaps a little sociopathically so, but come across more like Vulcans (startrek) than Nazi's, at least to me.

In terms of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics, the Vril-ya are never really depicted like they are in the original work. Especially problematic is an image from 1969 where a Vril is shown with his wings clipped, but the Vril-ya have artifical wings which they can slip on and off not real ones. So this is either an artists mistake or giving them the benefit of the doubt it may in fact be a reference not to the Vril-ya but rather a Wieroo, a cheap knockoff of a Vril from the later works of Edgar Rice Burrough, who do have real wings which could be clipped.

Getting back to the story, its really amazing that this was written in the 1870's. About a third of it is really good the rest is ok but its so like an episode of startrek the original series in places. There's robots, elevators, artificial wings (thought controlled through the Vril) and Phasers. Seriously the Vril-ya have Phasers, i don't know what else to call them!
Oh and its also really funny in places, for example females are the aggressors in relationships rather than men as its believed this will result in more happy relationships. Sounds kinda feminist, however the reason they want women to be happy is that they're afraid an unhappy women might lose control and with the power of Vril wipe out half the country! Which is pretty funny and of course incredibly sexist.
The idea that most of the work of H.G.Wells and Verne came after this book was written is mind-blowing because it is so far ahead of anything i've read of theirs.
Don't get me wrong i love 20,000 Leagues and First Men in the Moon but this book feels so much more like modern sci-fi in places than any other classic book. [4/5]

[wreade1872]

Well i never did get round to writing anymore reviews, the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak... Still that doesn't mean i haven't kept up with my reading. So here's a quick update of what i've gone through since my last post:

Thousand and Second Tale of Scherezade by Edgar Allan Poe (short) [3/5]
Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges (short) [4/5]
The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson [3/5]
The Yellow Danger by M.P. Shiel [4/5]
Varney the Vampire by Thomas Preskett Prest (completed finally) [3/5]
Lair of the White Worm (40 chapters) by Bram Stoker [2/5]
The Lost Continent of Mu by James Churchward [1/5]
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen [3/5]
The Voyages and Wonderful Discoveries of Capt.John Holmesby by John Holmesby [2/5]
Sweetheart Roland by Brothers Grimm (short) [2/5]
Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers [4/5]
The Thinking Machine by Jacques Futrelle (short) [2/5]
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole [3/5]
Dick Donovan, the Problem of Deadwood Hall by J.E.Preston Muddock (short) [3/5]
Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo by Edward Lear (poetry) [3/5]
A Honeymoon in Space by George Griffith [3/5]
The Coral Island by R.M.Ballantyne [3/5]
The Face in the Abyss by A.E.Merrit [4/5]
007 by Rudyard Kipling (short) [3/5]
The Town Where No One Got Off by Ray Bradbury (short) [3/5]
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr [3/5]
Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis [2/5]
Howl by Allen Ginsberg (poetry) [4/5]
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell by Doris Lessing [4/5]
The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman (short) [4/5]
Formosa by George Psalmanazar [1/5]
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons [4/5]
Aline and Valcour by the Marquis de Sade [2/5]
The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley [2/5]
Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus (play) [2/5]
Etidorhpa by John Uri Lloyd [3/5]
Cream of the Jest by James Branch Cabell [3/5]
Giphantia by Charles-François Tiphaigne de la Roche [2/5]
Medusa's Coil by Zealia Bishop and H.P.Lovecraft (short) [1/5]
Candide by Voltaire [3/5]
Roderick by John Sladek [3/5]
A Rendezvous in Averoigne by Clark Ashton Smith (short) [3/5]
Crotchet Castle by Thomas Love Peacock [4/5]
The Sanatorium by Bruno Schulz (short) [4/5]
Awful Disclosures by Maria Monk [2/5]
Noddy Goes to Toyland by Enid Blyton [3/5]
Across the Zodiac by Percy Greg [4/5]
I Saw it on Mulberry Street by Dr.Seuss [2/5]
The Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan (opera) [2/5]
In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan [4/5]
Epitaph of Bion by Henry Alford (poem) [2/5]
Lament for Bion by George Chapman (poem) [2/5]
The House of Invisible Bondage by J.U.Giesy [3/5]
The Trap by H.P.Lovecraft & Henry S.Whitehead (short) [3/5]
The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman (short) [4/5]
The Adventures of Captain Kettle by Cutcliffe Hyne [3/5]
The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde (short) [4/5]
The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde (short) [2/5]
Niels Klim's Underground Travels by Ludvig Holberg [4/5]
Dr. Dolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting [4/5]
Bleak House by Charles Dickens [4/5]
The Story of the Glittering Plain by William Morris [4/5]
Master of the World by Jules Verne [2/5]
Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle by Victor Appleton [2/5]
Island of Frivola by Gabriel Francois Coyer (short) [3/5]
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock [4/5]
H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert & Sullivan (opera) [3/5]
Vathek by William Beckford [3/5]
Hell House by Richard Matheson [4/5]
Utopia by Thomas More (short) [2/5]
Hackney: That Rose Red Empire by Iain Sinclair [3/5]
Caliban upon Setebos by Robert Browning (poetry) [3/5]
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain (short) [4/5]
The Songbook of Quong Lee by Thomas Burke (poetry) [3/5]
EreWhon by Samuel Butler [3/5]
The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle (short) [3/5]
Brier Rose by the Brothers Grimm (short) [1/5]
The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood by Charles Perrault (short) [2/5]
Miss Coote's Confession by William Lazenby [2/5]
The Convent School by William Dugdale [2/5]
Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco [4/5]
The Wise Woman: A Parable by George MacDonald [4/5]
Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe (short) [4/5]
...in progress The Ivory Child

OTHER Media (film unless stated otherwise)
The Creature from the Black Lagoon [3/5]
The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari [4/5]
Dracula Prince of Darkness [2/5]
Citizen Kane [4/5]