Cavalcade of Awesome

Another day, another dollar.  Another year, another….well, I don’t actually know where I was going with that.

Time for another year end round up of the books I covered on my movie novelization podcast, I Read Movies.  If you haven’t listened, check it out.  Every month I read a movie novelization and then I talk about the differences between the movie and the novelization.  I can’t believe it’s time to do this again.

If you want to check out a list of the episodes online, you can find the show at CultFilmClub.com/IReadMovies.  All the episodes are nicely displayed there in a bookshelf format with book covers.  Browse just like you do at the library!

So, 2023.  I covered 11 novelizations for I Read Movies this year. Well, technically, I did about 13, if you include the quick Karate Kid sequel novelizations I covered in the main Karate Kid show.  And all the books were connected in some way, as this year I picked books via the Daisy Chain Challenge.  For those that weren’t listening, the Daisy Chain Challenge meant that each book had to have some connection, however small, with the previous book.  It made picking books this year a fun challenge.

So, let me go through the list of novelizations I covered this year and see if I can come up with my 5 favorite books I covered in 2023. *papers shuffling*

The images I use for each of the below entries are my photoshopped episode banners, assuming I made one, for that book.  I really enjoy doing them and I want to showcase them a bit more.  I’ll link each entry to the IRM show page on CFC.com.

This list is in the order of show release.

The Saint by Burl Barer – I love this movie, plus the character has such as rich backstory due to The Saint being a popular adventure series back in the 30s. This movie did a great job modernizing him, and Val Kilmer pulls off another great role. I say modernizing the character, but when you watch this movie now it oozes the 90s. It’s delightful. Elizabeth Shue is so adorable and fun in this movie and she has great chemistry with Val. The villain, Tretiak, is all world. I love him. And it has a great soundtrack.  How this did not become a series of movies starring Val Kilmer is beyond me.

Die Hard with a Vengeance by Deborah Chiel – This is the only Die Hard movie with an actual novelization. The first two movies were based on previous novels. And this one was a LOT of fun. Like the movie it uses New York as a character of its own, including some New York history added into the story. We even get a few mentions and callbacks to other movies in the book we don’t get in the movie. Plus, it has a whole alternate ending.  Like I said, a really good adaptation that also manages to completely crush my theory that Die Hard with a Vengeance is actually a prequel to Die Hard 2.  It still works with the movies, but this book actually calls back to events in Die Hard 2.

My Science Project by Mike McQuay – I love this movie.  It’s one of my favorites.  We covered it on Cult Film Club a while ago.  I was very excited to be able to do this book, but also anxious because it had a small-ish page count and I thought there wouldn’t be anything good for me to talk about.  But I was wrong, there was some good extra info and especially a few extra fun scenes with the parents of the main characters.  I was delighted I really enjoyed the novelization.

Jason X by Pat Cadigan – Okay, this was a novelization I had read previously.  About 10 years before I did the show.  This one is a hard one to find, I was lucky to get a copy swapping online.  It’s 400+ pages and it expands the movie pretty well.  The best thing it does is set up what’s going on in the future.  How we got there, what it looks like.  It also sets some context around the characters that discover Jason; who they are and why they are dressed like that.  It’s long for a slasher novelization, but it’s good.  The sequel that Cadigan wrote, The Experiment, which I also talked about, not good.  Very disappointed in it.

Demolition Man by Richard Osborne – I saw this movie in the theater.  I loved it.  I even read the novelization back when the movie came out.  So I was really excited to revisit both this movie and the novelization.  The novelization is really good.  It’s lots of fun, has a few extra character bits and scenes, particularly involving John Spartan’s daughter, which was cut out of the movie.  What I guess I discovered on this rewatch, is that I didn’t like Sly’s John Spartan very much.  He’s kind of a jerk.  Everyone else in this movie is great.  I still really like it.

So those were my favorite novelizations I covered on the show this past year.  Let’s take a look at a few overall stats for I Read Movies.

I didn’t mention this in the Demolition Man episode, but that was the 75th episode of I Read Movies.  Over the course of the show I’ve covered just about 90 books and novelizations. That includes the 75 episodes of the main show, as well as the Appendix special episodes, and any other special episodes I did for Nerd Lunch and Cult Film Club.  How about an author breakdown?

Currently, the author I’ve covered the most on I Read Movies and the reigning champion from the last few years is Craig Shaw Gardner.  I’ve covered five of his books including Batman 89, Batman Returns, The Lost Boys, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III.  It doesn’t look like anyone will surpass him next year either, but you never know.

The rankings below Gardner haven’t changed much since last year. In second place is still Alan Dean Foster with four books on the show (Star Wars ’77, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, The Last Starfighter, Star Wars: The Force Awakens).  But we do have a new entry in the 4 book club; BB Hiller now has 4 novelizations on the show with Superman IV, and all 3 Karate Kid novelizations.

Third place is still a four way tie between James Kahn, Jeffrey Cooper, Glen A Larson, and Peter David, with three titles each.  However, since I know the schedule next year, I see that there may be more movement between the 3 book and 4 book tiers!  We’ll just have to wait and see!  Stay tuned!

So, that’s my I Read Movies 2023 year end novelization round up.  Hope you enjoyed this past year of the podcast.  I believe I have a lot of good novelizations coming up this year.  You’ve heard the first one, Romancing the Stone.  That one was a lot of fun.  Next up after that?  Another Sylvester Stallone banger, Over the Top!!  I can’t wait.

This entry was posted on January 30, 2024 at 10:27 am and is filed under Blog Series, books, movies, podcast with tags I Read Movies, movie novelization, podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.