My Favorite The Dark Tower Covers

These one are from my own collection and will always have a special place in my heart. The first three books are from NEL - New English Library, the Dark Tower IV to VII are from Hodder. My copy of "A Wind Through the Keyhole" was also published by Hodder but is from a different volume as you can see (most likely it's newer than my Dark Towers and that's why there doesn't exist a paperback version that matches mine other seven books). Most unforunately some of these covers are scratched and scarred, but they have been through a lot of travelling and I didn't find these covers in another place. In any case, enjoy these beautiful covers. My favorite is "Wizard and Glass".

Thoughts on Stephen King's "The Breathing Method" Short Story

Finally finished the "Different Seasons" short story collection of Sai King today. Last story, novella or what ever one wants to call it was "The Breathing Method". It revolves around a man in the 1970s who is invited by his co-worker to The Club, a venue where senior folks meet to tell each other stories. Emlyn McCarrol, an eighty year old medical doctor takes it on him to tell the annual christmas story. He gives insight into a disturbing event of his professional carreer where a young single mother, at the times unheard of, was learning a special breathing method to ease the pains of giving childbirth. As she sits in a cab to the hospital to give a birth a traffic accident happens. She gets decapitated but her body nonetheless uses the breathing method to give birth and the child actually survives. A most disturbing fantasy. Remarkable was that this last short story had a link to King's opus magnum, The Dark Tower:

[...] and when the wind rose in another wild whoop, I felt momentarily sure that the front door would blow open, revealing not 35gh Street but an insane Clark Ashton Smith landscape where the bitter shapes of twisted trees stoos silhouetted on a sterile horizon below which double suns were setting in a gruesome red glare. [...] I opened my mouth. And the question that came out was: 'Are there many more rooms upstairs?' 'Oh, yes, sir,' he said, his eyes never leaving mine. 'A great many. A man could become lost. In fact, men have become lost. Sometimes it seems to me that they go on for miles. Rooms and corridors.' 'And entrances and exits?' His eyebrows went up slightly. 'Oh yes. Entrances and exits.'

I always find it most fascinating to stumble upon one of these subtle hints to the Dark Tower series in other King books. I'll also take Stephen King's advise from his afterword:

Okay. Gotta split. Until we see each other again, keep your head together, read some good books, be useful, and don't take any shit from anybody. Love and good wishes, Stephen King Januardy 4th, 1982 Bangor, Maine

We'll see each other (me and his books) again soon as I will go into some well earned holiday and vacation for the rest of the month and read some non-King-novels and academic stuff in the mean time. Then let's see where I will pick up again from as I still have some Richard Bachman and Desperation readily waiting to be read standing on my book shelf.

Skyrim Gets Game of Thrones Intro Treatment

This is truly fantastic. Especially as it gives me - the Dragonborn currently playing through Skyrim - a taste of what to expect in towns like Falkreath, Solitude or Markarth which I haven't seen yet (the game world is so super big, but I love this game).



Thrones from Brady Wold on Vimeo.

Dovahkiin - The Dragonborn Song

Lately I've become a real Skyrim nerd as this game takes me hostage nearly as much as Fallout 3 did previously. And it has a superb soundtrack. See here the reinterpretation of the main theme sung by a beautiful female voice and worked into in great trailer.
Original version here.

The Walking Dead S04E15 Season 4 Finale "A" Opinion

The episode was well narrated and made use of enlightening flash backs that showed where the season had come from.

So that was the season finale for the fourth season of The Walking Dead. It was a worthy finale for a great season. The episode made great use of the narrative tool of flash backs to remind its viewers the long way the characters traversed from episode 1 to episode 16. A good opportunity to bring back some of the most beloved - Hershel - and easiliest forgotten characters - Carls childhood friend with the glasses.

The Prison, a refuge the group deemed save, is gone for good after the Governors new band waged war against it, destroying all defence installations and flooding the complex with Walkers, rotten corpses. Had they not just survived a raging pestilence in one of The Prison's wings? The Governor just couldn't get enough. He had gotten what looked like a second chance and had wasted it just as lightheaded as the first. And he payed for it with his life. Our heroes however, were scattered and lost contact to each other, missingly wandering the woods. Eventually all of them came to signs promising them a safe haven in "Terminus". A bunch of events like surviving the attacks of a group of outlaws in a world without laws, discovering that one particular child is dead wrong in the head, and reuniting the lovers in a pitch black zombie infested train tunnel lead almost all our heroes to "Terminus". Having lost all their trust to anyone, being unable to bieleve in human good anymore they bring up all of Terminus subjects against them. The towns private military group eventually captures Rick, Carl, Michonne and Darryl in a train wagon where they are met with the rest of The Prison's survivors. All except one blond daugther of Hershel, Carol, Tyreese and Judith.

A group of bad guys tried to take out Rick. Didn't go so well for them.

That's how the season ends and leave us to a cliffhanger that will make us remember until the show returns in its fifth season, presumably later this year. I found it a good finale that connected some threads. The show always manages to build up hope, gives the group some place to live at for a while until it bloodily shatters the safe heavens and thins out the cast of characters. Remember the camping wagon town when the epidemic was still fresh, Hershel's farm in summer or The Prison, which had become a sort of kibbutz. Nothing stops the walkers and human tragedy in the long run and there wasn't even the slighted chance of it developing with Rick's uncompromising strategy as he saw these "peaceful" townspeople were carrying things that didn't belong to them. They had been right, but they can be glad to be still alive and shot to sieves. The Walking Dead's character development and tense story is what makes the show so great. May it be half a year of waiting, let it be worth the wait. In any case, it gives me some more time to catch up with the equally awesome comics that are as different to the show as is A Song of Ice and Fire to Game of Thrones.

Sneak Peak S04E16


The Making of S04E16


Inside S04E16