Last night (this morning?), I finished reading I Am Legend. Well, re-reading would be more of an accurate statement. And yet... This is the I Am Legend I recall from many years before, and at the same time, it's not the I Am Legend I recall from many years before. For clarification, I have not seen The Last Man on Earth or The Omega Man, but I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I've read some homage to Matheson's original work. Here's some of what I recall, in the hopes that a reader can point me to the story I remember: (Oh, and if you haven't read I Am Legend and you plan to go see the Will Smith movie, there are some potential plot spoilers ahead, so you may want to stop reading now, since it's likely you cannot help me anyway. Thanks for stopping by, though!) + as in the book, the story I remember takes place in Los Angeles, only the Neville character is living in a house on a hill, and has an actual moat in front of the place, so deep the vampires can't cross it. I want to say he even bulldozed the dead vampire bodies in to the moat. + I recall the story mentioning the vampires having blue tattoos. + the story was obviously more recent than Matheson's, since it has the Neville character watching a video of a plague victim, the Ben Cortman character, actually becoming one of the vampire creatures. + the Neville character has a dog that goes around with him, as we've seen in the trailers of the Will Smith movie adaptation, as opposed to the dog Neville tries to befriend in the book, but which ends up attacked by the vampires. + the Neville character, while foraging/hunting in the city, is trapped by a snare attached to a light pole. He spends a lot of time trying to get free, so much so that the sun begins to set, and vampire dogs come out. The Neville character's dog defends him while he frees himself, and is mortally wounded. This also looks like it will be in the Will Smith movie, and seeing this split-second snare bit in the trailer is one of the memories that jostled me to re-read Matheson's book. + the Neville character goes to a park to wait for any survivors who might still be alive; he leaves signs tacked up all over the city with the when and where. + the Neville character discovers a female survivor, very much like Ruth in Matheson's book; except in this story, instead of hitting him with a mallet, she drugs him after learning how to turn off/undo all of his house's defense mechanisms, letting the vampires in. + the Neville character is taken by the vampires to their underground lair, a miniature city below the real city, where he is somewhat put on display, and some of the vampires feed off of him. The Ruth character has a son or little brother, and the Neville character feels somewhat sorry for them, wants to help them, etc. + the Ruth character, and maybe others, help him escape, and they leave the city by a sailboat. That's the stuff I remember, and that stuff is not in the Matheson book. So where did I read it? I've spent a couple of hours searching the Internet for answers, all to no avail. Perhaps my Google fu isn't strong enough. Perhaps I just don't know what I should be searching for. But I know I've read this story as I've described above. Help me, scifi/horror readers. You're my only hope.

Earlier this evening, in an attempt to drown our sorrows over the Tigers blowing their national title shot, the family dined at Rockfish, then did a little shopping. Normally, I try to avoid frequenting retail establishments on Black Friday, but by dinner time things had quieted considerably in our little corner of the metroplex. Part of the shopping involved an excursion to Barnes & Noble. I'd been wanting to read No Country For Old Men for quite a while, more so after Nathan told me his impressions of it, as well as my own reading of Cormac McCarthy's more recent bestseller, The Road. Now that the movie is out, and I, like Nathan, am jonesing to see it, I figured it would behoove me to read the book from whence it came. (Seriously, what is the deal with McCarthy and dialogue? Does the guy just not believe in the use of quotation marks? All three of his books which I've undertaken to read have been bereft of this usual aspect of literature, and while it seemed to work well in The Road, at least for me, it's made reading Blood Meridian quite a slog. I'm only 19 pages in to No Country as of this writing, and it's not a problem so far, but geez.) I first read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend in...gosh, I really don't recall, but it was late middle school, early high school. I really enjoyed it at the time, read it once or twice more before leaving college and getting married. After that, I didn't give it much thought until, some time in the `90s, I learned that Tom Cruise's production company had optioned it for a motion picture. I was worried about what Cruise's involvement, notably as the star of the movie, might do to Matheson's work. Of the myriad actors in Hollywood, Cruise is certainly not one I could picture as Robert Neville. I'm somewhat apprehensive about the 2007 film release, even though I've yet to see it. I have no problem with Will Smith as Neville; from the teaser and trailer I've seen, he seems to bring the right elements to the character. I am disappointed with the film's movement of the plot location from Los Angeles to New York City, mostly because I don't really see the point; it seems to be a change simply for change's sake. I totally understand updating the story for our modern time: the book was written in 1954, and the story takes place in the mid- to late-1970s. There are minor tweaks to the main character--Smith's Neville is currently in the military, rather than formerly, and is a scientist, whilst Matheson's Neville is more of an everyman--and those are also understandable and digestable. But the change in the plot location... I guess I'll just have to see the film to make a final, informed judgment. Until then, another rereading of what I consider to be a classic is in order.

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling (hardcover)
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've only read the first Potter book once before, way back when it was released. So now I'm going through the whole series. And does anyone actually buy the paperbacks of the Potter books? Have parents actually made their children wait a year after each novel is released so they can buy the paperback because they're that...thrifty?
• Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
  Does this man ever use quotation marks to designate dialogue?
• The Hunters – W.E.B. Griffin
  The third in the Presidential Agent series, following By Order of the President and The Hostage. The paperback won't be out until December, so if you must read it now, nab the hardcover. Apparently I'm in a fiction mood at the moment, and a widely varying one at that. Fantasy, western, and modern thriller. Yes, I am a man with many sides...

Late last night, I learned that Lee Child's next Jack Reacher novel by will be released on May 15th. Bad Luck and Trouble is the 11th novel featuring the former Military Police officer turned drifter. I've been reading the Reacher novels since the beginning, and I'm anxiously awaiting this latest from Child.

The last John Grisham book I read was The Summons, and it was a decent read. Before that, the last Grisham book I had tackled was The Chamber, but I got bored and put it down before I was even a fourth of the way through, and have never picked it up again. Now, as far as decent fiction you don't have to really think about, the kind of books perfect for waiting around in airports, flying, or while on your daily bus or train commute, Grisham's work is usually perfect. I adore The Pelican Brief, not only because of the the writing, but also because my wife went to Tulane Law, and we were living in New Orleans when I read the book and when the movie came out. It's the only Grisham novel I have in hardcover. However, like I said, with one exception, it's been awhile since I picked up a Grisham book. That changed two weeks ago. On Sunday, December 18th, while browsing the books at Costco, I happened upon The Broker. I read the synopsis on the back cover. It sounded intriguing. Certainly more intriguing than the synopses for the other Grisham books I'd picked up and not purchased for the past decade or so. It went in to the cart, and I started reading it a couple of hours after we got home. I finished it Monday night. Yes, that Monday, as in the very next day, the 19th. I told my wife how good I thought it was, and she started it three days ago, and finished it off last night. It's as if after a long dry spell of just churning out books because that was what was expected of him, Grisham decided to write a book he would enjoy writing (which it sounds like he did, based on the acknowledgments) as well as one he would enjoy reading, and it shows. Most of the book takes place in Italy, which Grisham traveled through as part of his research. This could very well have a lot to do with why I enjoyed the book, as the author transports you to the cities and towns of Italy, and it gave my imagination a workout. Yet it has to be more than that, and I believe it's because it has the Grisham flow that made his early works so popular. The Broker is not going to win any literary awards, but let's face it: as with the Academy Awards, awards don't often reflect the reality of the marketplace. It's a fun book, and Retrophisch™ Recommended.

Hank Hanegraaff, of the "Bible Answer Man" radio show, and author Sigmund Brouwer have teamed up to write The Last Disciple, a novel about first-century Christians, and the people they come in to contact with, undergoing the Great Tribulation under the reign of Nero. Hanegraaff and Brouwer operate from a different view of biblical translation and interpretation than Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins do in the Left Behind series. As they state in the Afterword, they seek not to divide the Church over this issue, but rather encourage debate and study of the book of Revelation. Simply put, Hanegraaff and Brouwer believe that many of the prophecies the apostle John was witness to, and transcribed in to what we know as Revelation, have already been fulfilled, as they were written to the early Christian church. You can read more on their take at the book's Web site. The Last Disciple features several characters, including the wicked Nero, but follows mostly the path of Gallus Sergius Vitas, one of Nero's inner circle. Vitas, a former military commander and from a Roman founding family, has grown tired of Nero's persecution of Christians. He doesn't care for the Christians because they are followers of Christ who refuse to bow to Nero, but rather he is tired of bloodshed in general, having seen too much of it when he was fighting in Britannia, and lost his wife and son, natives of the isle. In the course of his trying to subtly subvert Nero, Vitas discovers an old friend has accepted Christ, and Vitas falls in love with a former slave, also a Christian. In the mean time, Vitas's brother Damien, in an attempt to recapture the honor he has cost the family name, becomes a fearsome slave hunter. Damien is hired by another of Nero's inner circle, this time to find the writer of Revelation, the letter Nero fears and hates. Damien is hired to hunt down John, the last disciple of Christ. Hanegraaff and Brouwer craft a good read, taking you through the workings and machinations of Nero's inner circle, the duplicitous politics, the last moments of a Christian on the arena floor, and the feelings of a man who walked and talked with the Creator and Savior of the universe.

Brad Thor delivers another Scot Harvath adventure in State of the Union, as the former Navy SEAL and ex-Secret Service agent is pitted against a Cold War enemy bent on the domination of the United States. Thor sets a good pace, and lets the reader inside Harvath's head. I found at times that Thor was trying too hard to be Clancy-esque in his descriptions of weapons systems and other equipment, but otherwise, this is a decent thriller.