Heroes: Tim Kring, Veronica Mars, and various musings...

raissad (and my friend StarWolf too) pointed me to this interview with Heroes creator Tim Kring. ( Some points... )

(no subject)

From Nov. 8:

Would you say that you read about the same amount now as when you were younger? More? Less?
Why?

I read much less. Before I learned to read, I desperately wanted to know how - I thought being able to read must be the most wonderful thing on earth. And I was right. From the time I mastered Dick and Jane I was on my way to being a book addict.

Now, when I was a kid, I was sick a lot. Really a lot. I hesitate to even say how often I missed school; it would sound impossible to believe.

So because I wasn't well enough to do anything else a lot of the time, I would lie in bed and read.

There was a period in my teens where I did my best to read four books per day. Sometimes this would include Reader's Digest Condensed Books, just to cheat a little. I found some good authors that way. I read almost all the books my parents owned, and scoured the shelves of the Hampton Court branch of the Ottawa Public Library for anything that looked interesting. And sometimes the Main Branch too, just to keep up the habit.

But it wasn't all gothic romances and thrillers and historical novels and mysteries that I was reading. I was reading classics - for some reason, back then, I had a voracious taste for the Victorian novel. Maybe just because I could. Maybe because I'd fallen in love with Jane Eyre at the age of 12 (and with Mr. Rochester too) and was hoping to find something else as good. I had a passion for Dickens, and luckily, my mother had the complete works, and his biography (in two volumes) as well. I read and I read and I read. No SF or fantasy, though - not until I discovered Tolkien at 15, and John Wyndham at 18. I loved Dostoyevsky, especially Rodyon Romanovich Raskalnikov, for whom I had a rather morbid fascination. And Zola. Another fascination was with early 19th century Romantic poets: I started with Browning, branched into Shelley, Byron and Keats; never did like Blake in the least. I read multiple biographies of all of them, until they felt as familar as people I knew.

Meanwhile I was reading and collecting and loving comic books as well. Fantastic Four, X-Men, Adventure Comics - which later morphed into Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes - Spider-Man, Daredevil and (oh, how I loved this one!) Sgt. Fury and His Howlin' Commandos, The War Comic for People Who Hate War Comics. Stan Lee outdid himself with that one. I loved Nick Fury almost as much as Lymond, Aragorn, and Mr. Rochester.

At some point in my late teens my health improved. I started attending school every day. I had less time to read. When in University, I did a lot of reading, but a lot of it was assigned - which isn't the same as reading for pleasure, even though most of it was pleasurable. As an undergraduate, I was studying both Italian and French, and trying to learn Latin through a correspondence course - so I did a lot of reading in foreign languages, which slowed me down.

Once I started to work, it was hopeless: no more afternoons spent reading. Precious little time in the evenings. I struggled to keep up. I read on buses, in line-ups at the bank, anywhere and everywhere I could. Still do.

Once I became active in fandom, I spent a lot more time socializing and much less time reading. I became busy. Really, really busy. I branched out into reading SF and fantasy.

At some point I discovered slash, and then started watching more television, which cuts into reading time. I usually only follow one or two shows per year - last year, amazingly, I watched three or four - good heavens no, it was five! Veronica Mars, Heroes, Torchwood, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica. Wow. That was quite a year.

So I'm down to something like a book per week now. It only a fraction of my former reading obsession. Doesn't even compare.

Heroes: A surprising thought...

I was looking at photos from season 1 episodes of Heroes just now. If you've been reading this LJ, you know I love Peter Petrelli with a shallow but passionate passion. Last season, I thought his long floppy hair was utterly cute and I didn't think I could stand it if he cut it. Remember Samson and Delilah? Samson was never the same afterwards. And look at all those Merovingian kings.

So I was looking at pictures of Peter from last year, and was shocked to realize that I'd entirely forgotten that his hair had ever been longer than it is now - the short cut now seems normal. And it has seemed normal from almost the beginning of the season. And even stranger: his long, floppy hair that I thought was so sexy and adorable last year looks... peculiar.

Do my eyes betray me?