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I Read Movies 2025 Novelization Round Up

Posted in Blog Series, books, movies, podcast with tags book review, books, writing, podcast, movie novelization, I Read Movies, fiction, reading on January 28, 2026 by Paxton

One more trip around the sun and here we are again at my previous year round up articles. As usual, I’m starting with my novelization podcast, I Read Movies. Which, coincidentally, just hit 100 episodes with this month’s episode. For those that don’t know, my novelization podcast is I Read Movies. It can be found on the Cult Film Club podcast feed as well as the CFC website. Every month on IRM I read a movie novelization and then I talk about the differences between the movie and the novelization. It’s really interesting to see the differences between the two because many times the movie novelization is written from a different version of the script. The most recent 100th episode doesn’t cover a novelization, but the 1975 draft of the Superman the Movie script that was written by none other than The Godfather’s Mario Puzo.

If you want to check out a list of all of the episodes online, you can find the show at IReadMovies.com.

All the episodes are nicely displayed there in a bookshelf format with book covers. Browse just like you do at the library!

So, let’s talk about 2025 real quick. I covered 13 novelizations this past year. I did two for Halloween in October. I finished out one of the movie franchises I had been covering. One of the novelizations I covered was a Holy Grail of mine that I had been hoping I’d get to cover on the show since I started it back in 2017. And one of the episodes was a previously released episode from my first podcast, Nerd Lunch, that I added to the CFC/IRM feed.

In this round up article I take a look at all of the novelizations I covered the previous year and pick my 5 favorites. And then I’ll go over some stats involving the authors I’ve covered over the years. Let’s see if I have 5 novelizations I can say were my “favorites” this year.

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. These favorites will be listed in the order they appeared on the show last year.

Let’s kick this off with…

The Net (1995) by Leonore Fleischer – The Net is a small cyber thriller from the mid 90s starring Sandra Bullock. An earlier, lesser known role; she had already been in Speed, Demolition Man, and While You Were Sleeping. But I love it. I’m not sure when I first saw it. I love 90s cyber thrillers, and this one is a fun one. The book is a good one too, it’s written by the Godmother of novelization authors; Leonore Fleischer. I really need to cover her more often on the show. If you haven’t seen this movie, check it out.

Mission Impossible (1996) by Peter Barsocchini – The very first Mission Impossible movie. If only we’d known what this little movie just started back in 1996. Surprisingly, this was the only entry in the franchise to get a novelization. I covered it in early May right before I went to go see the most recent entry in the franchise. This book was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed the background it gave on a lot of the characters. I loved this movie originally, I started not liking it for a few years, but I’m back around to very much enjoying it.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) by David Morrell – I was very eager to cover this one. The first movie was adapted from an existing novel, but Rambo 2 and 3 were wholly new creations. And the script for Part 2 was originally written by James Cameron. And this novelization was written by the original author who created Rambo, David Morrell. I found all of that interesting and was very much looking forward to this book. And it delivered. Lots of fun and lots of backstory and action.

Spider-man 3 by Peter David – I finally get to finish out the Sam Raimi Spider-man novelizations. Spider-man 3 as a movie was much maligned. Rightly so, it has a giant web full of problems. But Peter David always has fun with his subject matter, especially if it’s a comic book subject. Check out his Iron Man novelization that I covered, or the book I covered after this, 2005’s Fantastic Four. Peter David always brings his A-game, and I won’t say he “fixed” the movie for me, but he did make it more entertaining.

Midnight Madness (1980) by Tom Wright – And last but CERTAINLY not least. The coup de grace. My own personal white whale of a novelization I was never sure I’d ever be able to do on the show. Midnight Madness. For years this was going to be my 100th episode. An early Disney/Buena Vista scavenger hunt style movie featuring David Naughton, Stephen Furst, and the very first movie appearance of Michael J Fox! I love this movie with my whole heart, and I really enjoyed reading this book and digging into the story and going over all the places they went to in early 80s Los Angeles.

So those were my favorite novelizations I covered on IRM in 2025. Let’s take a look at a few stats for I Read Movies.

Over the course of the show I’ve covered nearly 120 books and novelizations (includes regular episodes as well as appendix and other special episodes). I don’t officially number the episodes, but as I mentioned, Midnight Madness in December was the 99th episode. And if you look now, you should see that IRM episode 100 is out there right now!

Peter David continues his domination of the “authors I’ve covered” list. David is now at 7 books (Spider-man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-man 3, Fantastic Four, Return of Swamp Thing, Iron Man, Batman Forever). And I definitely have several more to cover from him in the future. Next in the author rankings is Craig Shaw Gardner with 5 books. After Gardner, like last year, it’s still a three way tie at 4 books each; Alan Dean Foster, BB Hiller, and Glen A Larson. After this there is another four way tie of authors with 3 books on the show (James Kahn, Jeffrey Cooper, Robert Tine, and William Kotzwinkle). And rounding out the list are a plethora of authors with 1 and 2 books that I’ve covered on the show.

So that was I Read Movies in 2025. I thought this was a really strong year, capped by one of my favorite episodes EVER on the show. And as usual I had a lot of fun putting it together.

Coming up next for IRM is going to be a special “State of IRM” episode where I talk a bit about the show, and I get around to answering all of those questions that listeners sent me last year. That’s going to be a fun one. I have the schedule for the next few years laid out, and there are some good ones I’m excited about. Can’t wait to talk to you guys about it.

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Year End Book Report: My Favorite Books/Comics I Read in 2024

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, comic books with tags Beastie Boys, Book Report, books, comic books, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, reviews, Run-DMC, Superman, Year End Books on January 24, 2025 by Paxton

It’s the beginning of the year, which means it’s time for my yearly round up of the books I’ve read. I was surprised how many books I read I’d read last year, 275. Which is a nice total. But this year, I topped that. Which is kind of crazy. But as usual, it’s not all novels, there are a healthy amount of comics in that total as well.

As always, you can find my reading log on Goodreads. My reading goal for 2024 was 250. And according to Goodreads, I finished out the year with 344 books. Again, I smashed all my previous reading totals. I’m waiting for this surge to end. Watch, next year I’ll only read like 100 books. LOL

Let’s take a look at some of the GoodReads stats for 2024.

GoodReads stats 2024

I’m pretty happy with what I was able to read this year. Like last year, I think I’m comic book heavy in my overall totals. I may focus more on novels this year. There was a big stretch last year where I read all two years worth of John Byrne’s Superman comics. So that definitely inflated my totals quite a bit.

Let’s look at the numbers of some of the things I read.

Looking at my list it looks like I read about 61 novels this year. And everything else was comic books. You can see the shortest thing I read all year was a short story. It’s a part of Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, which I’m quite enjoying. I’m looking forward to the upcoming series for that. The longest book I read was the second Gray Man novel, On Target. So far, that Gray Man series is really good. I’m hoping they make more movies with Ryan Gosling based on the books.

These are the “most popular” and “least popular” books I read this year. It looks like Lord of the Flies was the one I read shelved by more people than any other. That’s still a good book, I hadn’t read it since high school. I had read the book FantasticLand right before it, and it reminded me of Lord of the Flies. So I re-read it right after. Still really good and you can see where it’s influenced so many other things. That issue of Tom King’s Wonder Woman looks like no one else had shelved it, which is not surprising, it’s a fairly new issue.

Okay, let’s dig into my list of favorite books I read in 2024. Rules are the same every year. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2024 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I typically had a few. I don’t usually read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens.

Here are the top 5 books I read last year in no particular order. Images and links are from GoodReads pages.

Books

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes – Back in 2023 I read Madeline Miller’s books; Circe and Song of Achilles. They made my 2023 favorites list. They made me want to read more modern retellings of mythology. Which, because of Madeline Miller, there are a lot of now. So from there I read a book this year called God of Fire. And I *did not* like it. Most of it was okay, but the way it handled the protagonist, Hephaestus, really grated on my nerves. Then Michael May recommended to me Stone Blind. And *this* one was exactly what I wanted. Modern retellings of mythology that are fun and interesting. This revolves mostly around the Medusa/Perseus myths, but you get a good grab bag of a lot of the stories. And they are written well. I really enjoyed what it was doing and how it got there.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries #2) by Martha Wells – I read the first book in this series back in April 2023. It did not make my favorites list. I liked it, I thought it was good, but not great. Consequently, I didn’t read the second book in the series until last year. Early last year. And I loved it. I think I just liked the overall story in this one better. Plus, the book introduced a ship run by an AI called ART. And ART was awesome and I loved his relationship with the main character. I wanted every book after this to be ART and Murderbot’s adventures into space. It’s kind of hard to describe this series, but Murderbot is a security robot that hacked its governor module and gave himself free will. Now all he wants to do is watch his downloaded media and be left alone. But instead he’s constantly pulled into drama with humans and having to save them when they inevitably put themselves into situations that will cause their immediate grisly deaths. I’ve read up through book 4 and hope to read book 5 very soon. For those that didn’t know, this book series is going to be an AppleTV+ series some time this year.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi – I’ve been interested in Scalzi for years. I had eyeballed his Redshirts for years to read. And I want to read his Old Man’s War this year, too. The only thing I’ve read by him (besides this book) is Kaiju Preservation Society, which I enjoyed quite a bit. This one I liked even better than KPS. A guy from a wealthy family is sort of the black sheep. He’s a step sibling, as his mother was different, and none of his siblings like him. One day a mysterious uncle on his mother’s side dies and leaves him his business. And the novel is spent learning about what this uncle did. And what the uncle did is kind of weird and hard to explain, but he’s somewhat like a Bond villain. And the guy has inherited this entire empire. It’s a really great world. Lots of great characters. It really has fun with the concept. I don’t want to get too much into it because the discovery of the world is the best part.

FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven – I think I read a review of this somewhere, and it got me interested. It’s about a hurricane that floods the surrounding area of an amusement park similar to Disney World, trapping hundreds of park goers and staff inside the park for a month. That’s interesting enough, but what this book does isn’t show you the events happening in real time. The story in the book takes place years after the event. It’s interviewing different people that were involved in the events and slowly reveals all the craziness that happened in the park. It’s a fascinating “oral history” of these events. I really really dug this book. It reminded me a lot of Lord of the Flies, and I went on a strange Lord of the Flies kick after reading this. I re-read the book and even watched the 1990 movie with Balthazar Getty and James Badge Dale.

James by Percival Everett – I’m a fan of Mark Twain. And I’m a fan of Tom and Huck Finn. I read both of those books in high school, and just a few years ago, I re-read both books and they hold up as good reads, especially Huck Finn. I even read the two novellas that Twain wrote as follow-ups; Tom Sawyer Abroad, and Tom Sawyer Detective. So when I saw someone had written a book that was essentially “The Adventures of Huck Finn but from Jim’s point of view”, I knew I had to read it. And it was exactly what I wanted it to be. It’s a lot funnier than I was expecting. Also, yes, there’s a lot of heavy themes most of them pertaining to slavery and how whites treated blacks. But also, Jim is really awesome as a character. And you see the events of Huck Finn just from a different angle. I love that. The end of this book though, kind of goes its own way, but in a good way, I think. It’s really good. I highly recommend it.

Together Forever: Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys
Together Forever: The Run-DMC and Beastie Boys Photographs – Yes! I’m sticking in a sixth book! This isn’t a novel, it’s a coffee table book. And it’s a collection of photographs of the rap groups Run-DMC and Beastie Boys; two of my favorite groups of all time. They used to tour together and hang out and did promotional stuff all the time. These are all the photos they did together. It’s a gorgeous edition. Lots of really awesome photos, the majority of which were in the 80s. I really really love this book.

Let’s switch over to comics! Here are the top 5 comics I read last year in no particular order.

Comics

Strange/Doctor Strange by Jed Mackay and Pascal Ferry, and various – I guess, if I HAD to pick a favorite comic of the year, it would be the epic run Jed Mackay had across the Doctor Strange titles. First with Strange, where Clea takes over as sorcerer supreme after Strange’s death, and then in Doctor Strange which has Strange return from the dead to join Clea. Mackay writes Clea as awesome and badass and funny. And I love her and Stephen’s relationship. They fully support each other and they have fun banter like Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man movies. I also read MacKay’s lead up event to this; The Death of Dr Strange. The main issues of that are really good as well, but these two titles are…*chef’s kiss*

Black Cat by Jed MacKay and various artists – Yep, I’m doubling down on Mr MacKay. MacKay’s run is made up of two different series, but they all kind of go together. I read the first series back in 2022. I finished out the series in 2024. I also read several one shots and minis that MacKay wrote for Black Cat after the series ended. They are all really funny. Particularly the run I read this past year where Black Cat and the Silver Fox face the God of Death and bargain with him. So much adventure, fun, and snappy banter. This is a great series. Felicia even manages to steal her own version of Iron Man’s armor from Tony Stark. GREAT!

Birds of Prey by Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero – Let’s switch over to DC Comics. Kelly Thompson has been a favorite of mine since she did Black Widow, Kate Bishop: Hawkeye, and West Coast Avengers several years ago. So when I heard she was going to take over the super girl group, Birds of Prey, I was pretty excited. And come to find out, I was correct. This title is AWESOME. It has a great set of characters, they have great and fun interactions, and the story plots are wild, adventurous, and really have fun with the concept. That’s all I want out of things. Just write like you enjoy the characters. Kelly Thompson does that and this title exemplifies that.

Wonder Woman by Tom King and Daniel Sampere – So I read several events by both Marvel and DC this past year. One of them was DC’s Absolute Power by Mark Waid, which was really good. But the best thing that this event did for me was introduce me to Tom King’s Wonder Woman. I read a bunch of the Absolute Power tie-ins. I’ll be honest, most of the one-off titles were garbage. But several of the in-title crossovers were good with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Particularly Wonder Woman, which was written by Tom King. Who for the most part I like, but sometimes he can’t get out of his own way. I love King’s Vision series and the beginning of his Batman run. But his Miracle Man title was WAY too convoluted. So I gave his Wonder Woman a try based on the Absolute Power crossover issues. And I loved it. This is such a great title. King does a great job respecting the character. He ties in Trinity and the other Amazons. The story structure is a little weird. We are introduced to a new villain called The Sovereign. The whole story is told by him in flashback AFTER the events have happened. So while I’m side-eyeing King’s decision to have Wonder Woman’s story told to us in flashback by a guy, a guy villain nonetheless, I will say, that construct does manage to get out of the way of the story and be as non-intrusive as possible. And the actual story that is being told is EXCELLENT. You really see how awesome and bad ass Wonder Woman is. I also want to point out that King also writes a backup story in each issue that takes place in the future involving the antics of Trinity, Damien Wayne, and Jon Kent. It’s funny and lighthearted. It’s supposed to be less serious. And it’s a wonderful companion to the main story. I love this title so much.

John Byrne’s 2 year run on Superman/Action Comics – I’ve talked about on this very blog how much I love Byrne’s run on Superman back in the late 80s. For two years he wrote and drew Superman and Action Comics. And towards the end, he was also writing Adventures of Superman. I was buying his run piece-meal from the racks in the 80s and loved it. So I decided in 2024 to read the complete 2 year run of Byrne’s Superman which includes the main Superman title, Action Comics, the mini-event Legends, the graphic novel The Earth Stealers, several issues of Adventures of Superman, and several issues of Legion of Superheroes that tied into his run. It was one long glorious ride. Not everything was my favorite, I’ll say that. But over the two years, particularly in the first year or so, there was some dynamite storytelling. And Byrne’s art. I love Byrne’s art. It’s just so well composed and lends itself to the action-y stories.

And there you go, some of my favorite things I read in 2024. I read some really fun stuff last year. It was difficult to narrow it down, but only for 1 or 2 things. Most of this stuff jumped out immediately as “this belongs on the list”.

Hope you guys found something new to read that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!

So that covers the year end articles for IRM, and now the things I’ve read. Next up…MOVIES!! I need to rewatch a few things, so movies may be another week or two down the line. But I’ll get them out, I promise you!!

Thanks for reading.

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I Read Movies 2024 Novelization Round Up

Posted in Blog Series, books, movies, podcast with tags I Read Movies, movie novelization, podcast on January 17, 2025 by Paxton

Welcome back to the beginning of my year end round up articles. Usually in January and February I will write up my favorite books and comics I read, movies I watched, as well as a third round up article talking about the novelizations that I read for my podcast.

For those that don’t know, my novelization podcast is I Read Movies. It can be found on the Cult Film Club podcast feed as well as the CFC website. If you haven’t listened yet, check it out. And if you have, thank you very much, you are a true gentleperson and a scholar. Every month on IRM I read a movie novelization and then I talk about the differences between the movie and the novelization. It’s so fun to see the differences between the two because many times the movie novelization is written from a different version of the script. Check out the podcast, I think you’ll like it.

If you want to check out a list of all 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, let’s revisit 2024 real quick. I covered 13 novelizations for I Read Movies, which was two more books than usual. I covered 2 books in March, and I normally take the month of November off, but you guys got an extra episode in November. And, spoiler alert, you will this year as well. I have another new-ish episode to you that I’ll post in November.

So, now, let’s talk about this year. Normally in this round up I’ll look at all 12 books I covered the previous year and pick my 5 favorites. And then I’ll go over some stats involving the authors I’ve covered over the years. Can I come up with my 5 favorite novelizations in 2023? *papers shuffling* Challenge accepted.

Let’s kick this off with…

Romancing the Stone (1984) by Joan Wilder – The novelization to Robert Zemekis’ hit romantic adventure was the first novelization I covered in 2024. Accredited to the fictional writer played by Kathleen Turner, Joan Wilder. The book is also written as if it’s a legit romantic adventure novel. It’s a lot of fun, it has several scenes that aren’t in the movie, as well as a bunch of backstory for characters like Ralph and Ira, but especially Jack Colton. Definitely worth the read if you like the movie.

Over the Top banner
Over the Top (1987) by Joel D Humphrey – Yes, the novelization of the Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling movie made my list of top 5 for the year. This book is exactly what you want in a novelization, particularly a Sylvester Stallone movie novelization from the 80s or 90s. The novelization is clearly written from an earlier script, I’d venture to say it was the script right before Sly rewrote it to be more “Stallone-ian” (that’s a word, look it up). The book is lighter on the arm wrestling, and heavier on the father-son bonding. And Lincoln Hawk is clearly supposed to be of Native American descent. It’s a really fun novelization to read.

Iron Man (2008) by Peter David – There were three adult novelizations for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Only three. This one, Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 2. After Iron Man 2, Marvel backed off adult novelizations, and leaned hard into junior novelizations for the MCU, including even re-adapting these first three movies. This was a really fun book. Peter David knows what he’s doing. He handles Tony Stark very well, and it’s action packed.

Spider-Man 2 – Peter David – Peter David may be the first author to show up twice in one of my IRM year end round ups. I don’t think I’ve covered any other author twice in one year–Oh, I take that back, I did it a couple times. Now that I think about it, I did Craig Shaw Gardner twice in one year when I did Batman/Batman Returns, and again when I did Back to the Future II/Back to the Future III. I also did Ed Naha twice in one year when I covered Robocop/Robocop II. This doesn’t take away from Peter David. Spider-Man 2 is my favorite of the Raimi movies and David expands a lot of the ideas in the movie. This is a really great read.

Superman III novel
Superman III (1983) by William Kotzwinkle – Sadly only the lesser of the four Chris Reeve Superman movies got novelizations. I covered Superman IV a few years ago, and this one completes the set. I don’t love this movie, but I was very curious how the book would handle the complete mess of a story. And William Kotzwinkle is an interesting writer, I have covered him previously for the ET the Extra Terrestrial novelization. He certainly makes this book interesting. Superman is super annoyed at humans and Earth. He has several super violent thoughts towards Brad. And Gus Gorman’s computer skills are treated as a kind of super power. He literally has no understanding of what he’s doing. He just does it. The book is interesting, but it doesn’t make me like the movie any better.

Terminator novelization
The Terminator – Randall Frakes & Bill Wisher – It took me a while to find this novelization and I was super excited to cover it. This was also one of the select few that had a completely separate book written by a different author over in the UK (horror writer Shaun Hutson). The US version is my favorite, it’s longer, and it adds more to the overall story. This is a great read. And I’m really looking forward to the T2 novelization, which is written again by Randall Frakes (but no Bill Wisher even though he did work on the script).

So those were my favorite novelizations I covered on IRM in 2024. Let’s take a look at a few stats for I Read Movies.

Over the course of the show I’ve covered over 100 books and novelizations (includes regular episodes as well as appendix and other special episodes). I don’t officially number the episodes, but The Terminator was the 87th regular episode of the show. How about an author breakdown?

Up to this year, IRM’s reigning champ of novelization authors has been Craig Shaw Gardner with 5 books (Back to the Future II, Back to the Future III, Batman 1989, Batman Returns, The Lost Boys). As of this year, Peter David finally caught him. David is now also at 5 books (Spider-man, Spider-Man 2, Return of Swamp Thing, Iron Man, Batman Forever). And I definitely have several more to cover for him in the future, so there may be some movement again in the author rankings next year. However, will someone else reach 5 books, or will someone finally SURPASS 5 books on the show? You’ll have to wait and find out!

Next is a three way tie at 4 books. We have Alan Dean Foster (Star Wars ’77, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, The Last Starfighter, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), BB Hiller (Superman IV, and all 3 Karate Kid novelizations), and Glen A Larson with 4 of the Knight Rider novelizations that I’ve covered on the show. After this there are a plethora of authors with 1 and 2 books that I’ve covered on the show.

So that was I Read Movies in 2024. I thought this was a really strong year, and I had a lot of fun putting it together. And knowing what the schedule is for 2025, I think it’s going to be another fun year. Please join me!

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Year End Book Report: My Favorite Books/Comics I Read in 2023

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, comic books with tags Book Report, books, comic books, DC Comics, Magic Johnson, Marvel Comics, NBA, reviews, time travel, Year End Books on February 2, 2024 by Paxton

Well, I was shocked in 2022 that I had read the most books I’d ever logged…EVER. And then, in 2023, I managed to top that. Which is crazy to me because in November and December I kind of stopped reading for a while due to work. Let’s dig into one of my most weirdly productive years ever.

As always, you can find my reading log on Goodreads. My reading goal for 2023 was 200. And according to Goodreads, I finished out the year with 275 books. Again, I smashed all my previous reading totals. It’s even more remarkable to me because around November, I had a streak of books/comics that I didn’t like and it killed my momentum for a month. So this total could have been higher.

Let’s take a look at some of the GoodReads stats for 2023.

I’m pretty happy with what I was able to read this year. Looking at it, I think I’m comic book heavy in my overall totals. Most of that was because, like I said, in Oct-Nov, I hit a snag where I just couldn’t read any books. It just wasn’t happening. That’s why I’m surprised I got as much read as I did.

Let’s look at the numbers of some of the things I read.

Going over my spreadsheet, it looks like I read roughly 64 novels. The rest were comics issues and trade paperbacks. In the image above you can see my shortest and longest book I read. Over Halloween I read several Poe stories. Cask was one of them. I also read Murders in the Rue Morgue and Masque of the Red Death. I enjoyed them. Longest book I read is that Return of the Living Dead Complete History. I love that movie. And that book was excellent. However, full disclosure, I wound up only reading the chapters for the first three movies. I did not care about parts 4 and 5. That came out to about 2/3 of the whole book, not the full 751 pgs.

Here are my “most popular” and “least popular” shelved books. Most popular was The Song of Achilles, which is EXCELLENT, btw. Wow over 3 million other people read that last year. And exactly 0 people read Tim Holt Western Magazine #11. That doesn’t surprise me, but if you were wondering why I read it, it’s because that is the first appearance of the original Ghost Rider, when he was a heroic but mysterious gunslinger.

Let’s move on with my recap of my favorite books I read this year.

Rules are the same as every year. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2023 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I typically had a few. I don’t usually read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens.

Here are the top 5 books I read last year in no particular order. Images and links are from GoodReads pages.

Books

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller – This was recommended to me by a family member. I’m a big fan of the Trojan War and the 2004 movie Troy, so I thought this might be an interesting read. It is FANTASTIC. It’s a retelling of The Iliad, but from the point of view of Achilles’ partner. In the movie Troy, that character is his cousin, but in The Iliad and this book, he’s more of a companion and lover. I loved this book. It’s a fantastic retelling. The characters are great. I loved it. So much so I also read Miller’s follow up, Circe. That is a retelling of The Odyssey and also fantastic. And then I read two of her short stories, Galatea, and Heracles’ Bow. I’m anxiously awaiting her next book.

Zorro #1
The Curse of Capistrano (aka The Mark of Zorro) by Johnston McCulley – I kind of got into a Zorro kick in 2023. I’ve wanted to read the original Zorro story for many years, and in 2023 I finally did it. And it is so much fun. Lots of action. Great characters. Fun dialogue. I was thrilled. It’s everything I wanted a Zorro story to be. So I read the next two McCulley Zorro stories as well; The Further Adventures of Zorro, and Zorro Rides Again. I loved all of them. They are really fun stories. I hope to keep going through McCulley’s Zorro series, but I don’t know how many full stories are left. I think a lot of them are short stories.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High – Cameron Crowe – I’m a huge fan of the 1982 movie. Have been for years. Finally was able to read a copy of the really hard to find book that was the basis for the movie. And it didn’t disappoint. The basic structure of the movie is there, but there’s a lot of extra content and even a few extra characters. Cameron Crowe wrote a fun book and managed to capture what it was like to be a teen in high school in the late 70s-early 80s.

On Target (The Gray Man #2) – Mark Greaney – I really enjoyed the first Gray Man novel (as well as the movie), so I thought I’d try the second book. And it delivers. Lots of action packed adventure. Court finds himself as a double agent sent on a mission for a Russian gangster. He’s supposed to assassinate an African dictator, but he works a deal with his old office, the CIA, to kidnap him instead and deliver him to them. In return Court will get back in their good graces and can stop running from agents sent to kill him. This was very twisty-turny. I love Court as a character. His mission goes sideways, of course. Lots of fun. Can’t wait to read more. And hopefully they can pump out a few more Gray Man movies with Ryan Gosling.

Let’s switch over to comics! Here are the top 5 comics I read last year in no particular order.

Comics

I Hate Fairyland (2022) – I was a HUGE fan of the original run of this comic by Skottie Young. And at the end of 2022 Young decided to return to this world. Gert, the protagonist/antagonist from the previous run, returned to Earth, but realized that since she spent so long in Fairyland, she had no life skills. So she has trouble keeping a job. Then a tech guru wants Gert to go back to Fairyland to find his son who disappeared there. I’ve read the 10 issues or so that they’ve released so far. It’s really good, a lot of fun, and I love the art. The first 5-6 issues felt like they were building up to something really big, and the last 4 issues felt like they were told to “wrap it up” by the publisher and it felt a bit rushed. The story I mean. There are a ton of action montages that briskly go over a lot of action. That’s a small nitpick though because the issues in question are still really good. And the art is always cartoonishly fantastic.

Batman White Knight
Batman: White Knight by Sean Murphy – I finally dug into the Murphyverse in 2023. And I loved it. I read all three White Knight series; White Knight, Curse of the White Knight, and Beyond the White Knight. As well as all the mini-series in between. Murphy has built up this excellent Batman universe with compelling iterations of your favorite characters. Particularly Jack Napier/Joker. I thought I was over any more Joker adaptations, but Murphy nailed his version. It’s so good. As is his Harley Quinn. For the first two books, I almost didn’t really even like Batman, he’s kind of a jerk, but that’s part of what Murphy is trying to do. And it worked for me. This is a great series of stories. I look forward to more.

World's Finest
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest by Mark Waid (writer) and Dan Mora (art) – I love Mark Waid as a writer. His Kingdom Come is for me, pound for pound, the best look at mythology and super heroes bar none. And yes, I’m including Watchmen and Dark Knight. So it was such a fun surprise to see Waid take on this title and have so much fun with it. He really plays around with the history of these characters and how their friendship works. And he brings in the Bat family, the Supes family, and tons of other heroes. This ongoing book is a joyful celebration of DC, its characters, and its history. You won’t believe the places this title goes in later issues. Oh, and Dan Mora’s art is THE BEST. It’s so clean and iconic. I really love it.

Superior Spider-man by Christos Gage – Superior Spider-man has become one of my favorite characters. Originally written by Dan Slott, Christos Gage takes over in this series. I love the concept that, on his death bed, Otto Octavius switches minds and bodies with Peter Parker, leaving Parker to die in his place and him to take over being Spider-man. And no one realizes it! Otto continues to try to be a better Spider-man than Parker ever was, but he has trouble working with other people. He certainly beefs up Peter’s operation and does seem to make it more efficient. This is a really great series. They are bringing Superior Spider-man back this year, and it’s written by Dan Slott, so count me excited!

Jughead
Jughead by Chip Zdarsky – I think I’ve mentioned I was a big fan of Mark Waid (again!) and Veronica Fish’s reinvention of Archie. This was a follow up series to that, written by the great Chip Zdarsky and Ryan North who took over in later issues. I really loved their version of Jughead. They also bring in Sabrina who I also love their version of her.

And there you go, some of my favorite things I read in 2023. This was a kind of tough choice, I did have a few really good things that didn’t make the list. I always threaten it, but maybe I’ll do an “honrable mention” article to talk about a few of the other books/comics that didn’t make the list.

Hope you enjoyed this article and found something new that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!

So that covers the year end articles for IRM, and now the things I’ve read. Next up…MOVIES!! This year, I’ve actually been taking my time with movies. I’m rewatching several I felt needed rewatches and I’m even for the first time watching a few movies I missed in 2023 to see if they’d make it into my favs list. Normally I don’t allow that. Let’s see if it changes anything!

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I Read Movies 2023 Novelization Round Up

Posted in Blog Series, books, movies, podcast with tags I Read Movies, movie novelization, podcast on January 30, 2024 by Paxton

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*

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.

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