Richard Matheson “I Am Legend”

After watching the movie (which, even though I had some problems with parts of it, I liked a lot, mostly because of Will Smith) I wanted very much to read the book as well, if only to see how much the movie version differed from the original story. So when I found the book on Bookmooch I snatched it up right away.

When I had the actual book in my hands I was happy to see that it contains not only the eponymous story, but a total of 10 stories by the same author. So to get a feel for his writing style I decided to read the other ones first, keeping the one I already knew for last.

Written, as far as I can tell, between 1951 and 1987 some of the stories feel quite dated and the ’science’ in them is accordingly ludicrous, which for me takes away quite a bit of the reading pleasure. Also, some of them were a bit disturbing (especially “The Dance of the Dead” comes to mind). Most of them were ok, but nothing to write home about. And certainly nothing that will stay with me for any amount of time.

Thus it was with considerately lowered expectations I went ahead to finally read ‘I Am Legend’. Considering it is counted among the science fiction classics (and even Stephen King cites it as “an inspiration”), this was probably a good thing. To make a long story short: this might be one of the very few instances in which I actually prefer the movie version to the book. I ended up not actually hating the book version, but not too far from it either.

The first surprise for me was that the Robert Neville in the novel is described as a blond, blue-eyed arian type of guy. *blech* Considering the book was written in the fifties I should have seen that coming, but nevertheless it bugged me the whole time. And not only is the guy Whitey White, he also came through as a complete asshole. I can’t even put my finger on why exactly I felt this way, but I didn’t connect to him at all. I tried to ignore the descriptions of him and picture Will Smith in my mind, but it didn’t work in the least. So it was hard to feel for him in any way.

The story itself has been, not surprisingly, considerably altered for the movie, especially the end. The ending of the book made a lot more sense to me and, had the book-Neville been an even slightly likeable charcter, would have been much more poignant and moved me to tears than the movie’s. As it is I couldn’t wait for Neville to die, so the whole story was wasted on me. Shame, really.

All in all I am afraid I have read this book way too late to understand its supposed classic status in the least. Maybe in the fifties, or even in the seventies, this was a new idea and maybe back then the ’scientific’ parts of it might have seemed at least partly plausible to the average reader. But today, not only are there loads of better vampire stories out there, also lots of the supposedly ’scientific’ and ‘logic’ explanations for the myths surrounding vampirism are just plain ridiculous. Like, the vampirism is caused by a kind of bacteria, which makes them sensitive to light and therefore you can kill them with a wooden stake, because by stabbing them you open up their bodies to let the light in and the bacteria die instantly. Or something like that. In any case it didn’t make any sense at all and annoyed the hell out of me. Definitely a book I won’t ever read again.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

From time to time I like to read children’s books, especially when they deal with my favorite genre: the world after a catastrophe that more or less wiped out humankind.

Robert O’Brien’s “Z for Zachariah” is, along with Jean Ure’s “Plague” and David Palmer’s “Emergence”, one of the classics of the “dystopian fiction for children” genre. Granted, I often don’t have much luck with the so-called “classics”, but in this case I like all three of those books a lot. I am not sure if they are really suitable for children, considering the grim subject matter, but this is another topic altogether.

The book is written from the perspective of 15-year-old Ann, who lives alone in an isolated valley after her family and everyone else has died in a war that lasted all of one week and involved copious amounts of atom bombs. The world outside her sheltered little valley is a devastated deathland and she has no way of finding out if any other people survived the catastrophe. One day a man in a radiation suit arrives and changes everything. Not necessarily for the better.

I loved the way the book was written in the form of diary entries. And I am quite impressed with the way O’Brien managed to immerse himself in the mind of a 15-year-old girl, I thought her voice was very realistic. Of course, what with the book being written ages ago, for today’s standards Ann seems painfully naive and her wish to believe in the inherent good in people almost costs her her life. But maybe that can also be attributed to a sheltered upbringing.

All in all a very good book and a worthy addition to my dystopian fiction collection.

I have to admit, when I first read the title of this book, I was a bit confused. One would think that if one can read at all it shouldn’t be much of a problem to read novels. After all, I have done it for years. For a moment I even was afraid this would be one of those ‘how to interpret novels correctly and discover the hidden theme’ kind of books, which I absolutely loathe. After reading the Amazon reviews, though, I was not only reassured on that point, but also intrigued to find out more.

I found out that the title is completely misleading, for one thing. What this book is, or tries to be, is a help in picking the right novels to read in today’s world of overflowing bookstores, so by rights it should be titled “How To Choose a Novel”.

Nobody can ever hope to read all the books that are published every year and with the prices for new books (especially the hardcover versions) being quite hefty, you obviously need a way to choose the right book for you. But with all those beautiful covers, the enthusing blurbs and the hype surrounding certain books, picking and choosing is easier said than done.

Sutherland tries to give readers some pointers to the possible pitfalls in choosing their reading matter. He covers more or less any point that might influence your decision to read a book or leave it on the shelf, from reviews to reading page 69 in the bookstore, or watching Oprah and see what she recommends. He discusses the relative merits of a “book of the film” versus the “film of the book”, the question of hardcover versus paperback, the annoying phenomenon of overhyped bestsellers, the relative helpfulness of various fiction prizes for deciding on what to pick, and lots of other stuff.

Some of his tips are just plain common sense. Of course you would take the blurb on the back of a novel with a grain of salt, because obviously no publisher would put anything negative about it on there. And reading the first couple of pages should go without saying as well. As to reviews: personally I rather like the reviews on Amazon, because the people writing them usually say what they really think and have no personal store in the success or failure of the book. I just trust those reviews more than the ones of paid reviewers. But that’s just me.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this book, even though I didn’t really learn anything new that would make picking my next book any easier. For the most part this enjoyment was due to the fact that I found John Sutherland a very likeable guy. Reading the book was like having a chat with him about books. He mentioned a lot of books I have read (and some others that I have just added to my wishlist) and generally I agree with his opinion of them. It is certainly not a book you absolutely have to read if you love books, but it doesn’t hurt either.