Here be spoilers, but as I’m sure you’ve already seen the movie it won’t matter much.

The premise of I Am Legend, the movie starring Will Smith is very similar. There is a new cure for cancer which causes a plague, 90% of the population around the world die while most of the rest become very aggressive to the point of throwing themselves at their target, whether it be a person or a wall, until it breaks, not the person but the object, the others are immune. Robert Neville, played by Will Smith, is an army scientist and immune. His family were accidentally killed while being evacuated from New York city, he is left alone with his daughter’s puppy there seem to be no other immune survivors. He uses his own blood to help find a cure and manages to do so just in time to pass it on to Anna and Ethan who have heard his message of hope broadcast every day, they then take it to a survivor’s colony while he protects them.

This helps. If Neville is already a scientist and understands the virus before the book/movie begins then it makes enormous sense for him to continue working on the process of finding a cure, it wasn’t clear in the book what his occupation beforehand was and how it would help him work through the chemistry needed.

There were many differences between the movie and the book but it made no difference to my enjoyment of both of them. They’ve taken the essence of the book, distilled it and made it into a really good movie. Yes, I know I’m partial to Will Smith and that’s one of the reasons I had to see it but it is still a good movie. It has all the horror of being the only person alive while other beings are trying to kill you, it shows animals roaming the streets, it has some awesome special effects and it shows how nature will take over a city when people vacate it.

I bought the DVD and watched some of the extras as well which were well worth it. The movie only looks at the situation from a specific viewpoint in one specific city, it does its best to show some old news programmes showing the problem being replicated world wide and Neville does explain using some numbers how it’s affected the entire world but it still seems rather distant. The extras change that. They’ve been organised by Smith’s wife, Jada Plunkett-Smith, who is a very good actor in her own right, and they are four animated stories of different people in different cities around the world. They show stories of immune survivors and of plague ravished survivors, they are really powerful in their own right and support the main film immensely. I sat back having watched the movie and all four back to back stunned, in shock, it was challenging to come back to normal life. One of them was written by Orson Scott Card who is an excellent science fiction author in his own right but also co-authored The Abyss with James Cameron, you can find this book and two others by Orson Scott Card available for sale here.

Dreaming of a new life

Squid Ink has hit the nail on the head with this one. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick is a classic science fiction novel, it was made into a movie with Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard under the title of Blade Runner. It’s the story of androids who don’t want to be decommissioned (i.e. killed) and they fight back, I think we all dream of a new life. One of the questions that could be asked is whether the androids are considered sentient and this question could be extended to all life that isn’t human.

It’s one of those books I really recommend everyone read. I have one copy of Blade Runner available for sale.

If you’re still judging try reading this with its 784 comments. Some of them are very clever but I didn’t even get through the first page, I did mention bed for a reason as I’m writing this on Tuesday night.

This video is awesome, he shows us exactly why some children have so much trouble learning to read. Don’t tell them it’s easy if they’re having trouble and don’t rush them.

You could try reading this one which includes some more funny comments. Don’t look at the typo in the url, I said, don’t look at the typo!

It’s actually really hard to find your own typos and spell check may or may not help. I read an ebook a few weeks ago, it was very nicely put together the information was very good and the author had used a spell check to great effect, the problem was some of the perfectly spelled words were the wrong word for the context. I sent her an email about it offering to proofread it for her and haven’t heard back, I do hope she’s still talking to me. I have a perfectly dreadful example of spell check not working and if I receive permission I’ll be including it here, it was so bad I couldn’t reply to the email, the idea of the spell check fixing the word and making it wrong just froze me completely.

Edited to add the word.

The word was ‘orangutan’ and I can’t even show you what it was ‘corrected’ to as all my emails in that mailbox have been deleted somehow. Apparently Apple can autocorrect to the most common spelling as opposed to the correct spelling, which could lead to great problems in the future.

I’m not that picky, but I’d say my main go to for reading is romance; paranormal, chick lit, urban fantasy, etc. I like to escape. But I do have a passion for the classics so I have been known to spend days immersed in Jane Austen (which lets face it is old school chick lit).

I’m partial to a good thriller, although I haven’t read one in ages. I’m also quite fond of a good bit of literature.

Every year I attempt to read 60 books in a year. If you’re interested you can see my lists of books read since 2007 here.

…some of our book collection…

Why do you read?

Good question… I’ve been reading since I was young, my Dad actually learned to read at the age of 21 when I was a only a small child and as he learnt to read he taught me to. So it’s always been something I cherished because it was something he taught me and we did together. I read now as an adult because I really prefer it as a medium of entertainment over most of the stuff on television and the internet can only hold my attention for so long.

Reading for me is really about escapism and letting your mind be taken on an adventure. It’s also a great way to increase your vocabulary for Words with Friends!

Do you read for work or for pleasure and is there any difference between the two?

I definitely believe that there’s a difference between the two. I read as part of my job, so that’s reading as work, but predominantly I read for pleasure. I think there’s a huge difference; I tend to see any reading that I’m being made to do as a chore and unless the material is really captivating I resent having to read it. (I’m like a petulant child that way!)

Do you read to your kids or to someone else’s kids?

We don’t actually have children, although that’s set to change mid June with the arrival of our first child. I have big plans of reading to our child(ren), in fact one of the first things I purchased to celebrate our pregnancy was a book. I’ve been slowly collecting books to populate the nursery library. I’ve been hunting for all the books that my husband and I read and loved as children. Reading to our kids is one of the things I’m more looking forward to doing.

…nursery library taking shape…

Can you do the Safety Dance while reading?

I’m a pretty flexible reader but I’m not 100% sure that in my current condition I could pull this off.

Are you a rabid Discworld/Twilight/Harry Potter fan and would you attend a flash mob dressed as your favourite character?

How to answer this without being lynched… I appreciate the wonderful things for encouraging reading in teenagers that these books have done but I’m a little scared for the future generations if they consider Twilight to be well written. But each to their own… As for the flash mob, I think those days are behind me.

Angie is the creative genius behind GnomeAngel; a blog filled with snippets of life from the Australian Capital. She’s happily married to an imperfectly perfect man and shares her house with a Beagle named George, a golden retriever named Tyson and a screeching budgie called Reg. If you’d like to find out more about her you can stalk her on Twitter.

My OH gave me slippers which I’m wearing as I write, he generously let me have them a week and a half early to stop my toes touching the floor in my old ones.

After seeing our respective mothers we came home and the kids tell me to open my hands and close my eyes. A couple of packages in one hand and something around the other wrist I’m allowed to open my eyes again.

If you look at the photo you’ll see my loot. Around my wrist was a watch, one that won’t stop working or go backwards as normal watches do with me, it’s going to be correct twice a day! The earrings say ‘In one ear’ and ‘Out the other’, I think they came from my sister – I don’t want to know what she’s suggesting. On the card you’ll see four badges the kids picked up on Free Comics Day, specially for my collection, and a book. Richard Gordon is one of my favourite authors and I’m still trying to decide if I have a collection, I posted on this topic almost three years ago. I don’t have The Captain’s Table for sale but there are a few others here, some of the covers are really lovely. Some of Doctor books were made into movies with the gorgeous Dirk Bogarde in the lead role, he’s written his own autobiography, I’ve written about him before and have some of his books available for others delictation.

Richard Gordon! Earrings!

Transplant a heart and it will die unless its tissues match those of its new owner. Volunteers, who hope that when they die their still healthy organs will help another live, may carry cards that describe their tissues. Surgeons of the future plan ‘organ banks’ where hearts and lungs, livers and kidneys can be kept until they are needed.

I misread it slightly and thought I should share my thoughts with you.

So, I’m an organ donor but I don’t have a card to describe my tissues, maybe I should make one today. Having never seen most of my organs I’m not quite sure how to describe them but I could say something about my eyes.

Eyes: regular size, roundish, the colour changes depending on what I’m wearing, sometimes have flecks of green. You won’t need to put in coloured contacts, just change your clothes. Can’t guarantee you actually want these eyes as they’re old before their time. They’re short-sighted, the good news is they’ve stopped getting worse due to age and I now need to wear reading glasses to see the computer, my dinner, my tapestry…the other side of the table. Actually, maybe you do want them then you could have a blind date and you wouldn’t know what the person on the other side of the table looked like, they could look like a super model in your minds’ eye.

Some of my favourite books as a child were the Moomin books by Tove Jansson. They have a magical, pleasant, gentle quality that many books don’t have. The covers match those qualities and you can see three of them here.

Sendak will be much missed by many, his illustrations show character and enthusiasm as well as teaching people things don’t always have to be sweetness and light. Vale.

A new regular feature here is Mondayitis, published every Tuesday, it features guests discussing a series of questions. People have their own view of the questions and some use them as a starting point while others actually answer them, in their own particular way.

What do you read?

I tend to read fantasy first, with a slight overlap into straight Science Fiction. I am also interested in Biographies (particularly of movie stars for some reason) and have recently been working my way through a whole bunch of novels about biblical women (can anyone recommend something about a Hebrew queen called ShlomTzion? She sounds fascinating enough to have had (a) novel(s) written about her, but I can’t find anything!) I also subscribe to and read lots of Dance magazines and Sewing magazines. Oh, and I also read (and collect) comic books and have done so since I was 14 or thereabouts.

Why do you read?

Can’t imagine NOT reading! Will almost read anything that will stand still long enough for me to do so, including the Corn Flakes box and even the F* Manual!

Do you read for work or pleasure?

Mostly for pleasure, but will work my way through instructions on stuff if the pictures aren’t clear enough.

Can you do the Safety Dance while reading?

Didn’t know what the Safety Dance WAS until you recently posted a link to it. Could probably do it, but why? I’m usually lying (or at least sitting) down when reading. Difficult (but not impossible) to dance in that position!

Are you a Discworld/Twilight/Harry Potter fan?

Haven’t read Discworld, have read and enjoyed Twilight (Team Jacob, cos he’s cute and his name is almost the same as my grandfather’s) and Harry Potter (but only read the 7th book once). Am waiting on daughter to finish re-reading Hunger Games before I sink my teeth into it.

Would you attend a flash mob dressed as your favourite character?

Would I? I did! See attached picture from Take 5 magazine, from the attempt to get the Guiness World Record for the most people in one place in Superhero costume. (That’s me on the right.) There are lots of photos out there on Facebook of me in various costumes, which I’ve made. The latest was me as Deanna Troi at SupaNova 2012. I think that about covers it!

Edited to add the photo.

You can look for me on Facebook as “Aunty Jenny” if you would like to see and/or comment on the costumes!

Jen

Richard Adams, the celebrated author Watership Down was born on 9th May, 1920. If you believe his Wikipedia page he’s still alive. Watership Down was written in 1972 and it’s one of my most read books, I’ve laughed and cried through this many times. Squid Ink discovered it as well.

Lester del Rey died on 10th May, 1993, he was a well known author having started writing for pulp magazines, I know him better as an editor. Del Rey has edited many, many books and if his name is on it then you know it’s a good one. He was married to the late Judy-Lynn del Rey who also did quality work. Watch for their books, they’ll be good.

Douglas Adams died 11th May 2001. I’m sure you know who he was and what he did. They even named an asteroid after him - 25924 Douglasadams; its provisional designation of 2001 DA₄₂ references the year of his death, his initials, and the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything (42), as given in his novel serial The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Some of them are for sale here.