Summer Reading 2011

Hello, everyone!

Just wanted to send out a quick announcement and let you know that I'm finally done with school for the summer, so it's time for the Summer Reading 2011 posts to begin!!! Those of you who followed me last year will remember that my summer reading theme was Gothic Novels. I still have a ton of books from last summer on my reading list, so you can be assured that some of them will probably creep their way into this summer. However, the main theme for this year is going to be my LXG Challenge. So, to kick off this summer, I'm starting out with one of the only books from the challenge list that I happened to own: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. This will of course fulfill the challenge for our dear friend Dorian Gray from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Not sure who will come next on the list, but we shall see ;)

In the meantime, I'll be posting quotes, fan art, and definitely a review of the book. I've read The Picture of Dorian Gray twice before, but this is my first time reading it with a full knowledge of Wilde and the homoerotic undertones of the book, which I suspect will make for a completely different experience than I've had in the past.

Hope you're ready for some interesting books and book reviews! Summer Reading 2011 begins NOW!

P.S., if you have any books to recommend, please, please, please let me know in the comments feed :)

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

I have just finished watching one of the best movies I've seen in a long time! Movie Boy actually made the recommendation to me, telling me that I would probably like it because of the literary references, however, he cautioned me to not get my hopes up too much, since he was afraid that it was cooler in theory than in action. Well, I'm happy to report that it was just as epic in actuality as it was in theory! I was so pumped the entire time I watched this movie! Normally, I'm not a fan of action films, but this was the perfect mix of action and literary references!

For those of you who are not familiar with the story, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a tale of epic proportions. When Europe is on the brink of a potential world war, a mysterious figure named "M" gathers together the ultimate team to save the world from destroying itself:

Allan Quartermain (Sean Connery)

Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah)

Mina Harker (Peta Wilson)

Rodney Skinner, the Invisible Man (Tony Curran)

Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend)

Tom Sawyer (Shane West)

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Jason Flemyng)

This is a movie that you just have to see to believe! It was AMAZING! And actually, this has prompted a summer reading challenge for myself. I'm going to make it a point to read all of the books that inspired these characters:

• Allan Quartermain: King Soloman's Mines (H. Rider Haggard)
• Captain Nemo: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne)
• Mina Harker: Dracula (Bram Stoker)
• Rodney Skinner: The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells)
• Dorian Gray: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
• Tom Sawyer: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
• Dr. Henry Jekyll: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Lewis Stevenson)

This summer, I hope to be able to give you all exciting reviews of these books :) I'll be a bit brief when it comes to Jekyll's book, however, since I just reviewed it last summer. (I'm sure many of you remember my crazy "Jekyll and Hyde phase". Still, look forward to seeing reviews about all of these! It's going to be great :)

On a side note, I would like to make one small complaint about the film. I felt the tiniest bit annoyed that the writers took obvious creative liberties with several of the characters. The most notable for me, (with what I have read), would be Mina's vampirism (a fate which she is spared in Dracula), Dorian (no more information to be given...don't want to include spoilers here), and the appearance of Edward Hyde. Strange as it may seem, Hyde is actually supposed to be smaller than Jekyll, not the hulking brute that he is in the film. This is not to say that I'm complaining....I agree that the changes work well for the film, however, the stubborn English major within me protests that this is not how it was supposed to be.