The Jim Butcher Files: Dresden . Codex Alera . Cinder Spires & More

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by alansplace

I picked up some new books with my Father's day gift cards, two of which were Hex Appeal by P. N. Elrod and Blood Lite III: Aftertaste by Kevin J. Anderson. Both are urban fantasy short story collections from various authors. I wanted them because of the new Harry Dresden stories by Jim Butcher included in them, I Was A Teenage Bigfoot and Bigfoot on Campus. These two are my next read!

Originally Posted by alansplace

Quoting Jim Butcher's website from May 21, 2012:

Finished both Bigfoot short stories and they were superb.

Originally Posted by Filark

Is "I Was a Teenage Bigfoot," coming out May 29 in an anthology called Blood Lite III: Aftertaste a new story or a retread? Does anyone know? Sounds new to me.

Filark, they're new! I got both volumes and only read the two Dresden/Bigfoot stories so far. They were great (up to par)!

Hex Appeal by P. N. Elrod



Blood Lite III: Aftertaste by Kevin J. Anderson

[Filark]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Filark, they're new!

Cool! I just finished my reread of Turn Coat. Maybe I'll track down the new shorts. They sound like fun!

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by Filark

Cool! I just finished my reread of Turn Coat. Maybe I'll track down the new shorts. They sound like fun!

Jim's Store will tell you where they are available for purchase.

[alansplace]

Quoting Risingshadow - Coming Books:

3 January 2013 Cold Days by Jim Butcher
no cover image (The Dresden Files, part 14) Fantasy

For those of you discussing the release date of Cold Days the above is the site (and info) where I found that info and posted it on 02-25-2012 (it's still there and still says the same thing).

Quoting Mad Hatter's Bookshelf:

Anyway, this was supposed to be an update on Cold Days. Well, there is no firm update. Butcher started writing the book in earnest around the beginning of the year after finishing a trio of Bigfoot/Dresden short stories. So it is coming, but being a 2012 release is pretty out the door. I tweeted back and forth with Jim's US editor briefly and she said it has not been decided/announced yet. There is a 2013 listing for Cold Days on Amazon UK with a January 2013 release, but I wouldn't set that in stone until Jim says so. January is probably the hope, but we'll see.

Jim has said that he is also working on a pitch for a Steampunk novel, which seems likely to be his next project after Cold Days. Those hoping he would do a run of a couple Dresden books in a row will have to be disappointed. Butcher mentioned many times he needs to take a breather from that world every other book. Before the Alera books did this. I was mostly hoping for his Sci-Fi cop series United System Marshalls to be the next, but I certainly wouldn't turn a Steampunk read down.

Other unofficial info above!

[alansplace]

Fan Art by Autumnflame

[Spacechik]

RE: FAN ART

Oh, lovely. I know JB describes her (Karrin) as a blonde. for some reason, I picture her as a brunette. Maybe because the tv show had a brunette. Valerie Cruz . Thanks for sharing.

[Nyssa]

Yeah, I can not reconcile the picture in my head with the picture posted above. I too think its because she looks closer (to me) like the actress from the show.....even though Butcher mentions her as a "petite blonde" at least once in every book.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Fan Art by Autumnflame

Originally Posted by Spacechik

RE: FAN ART

Oh, lovely. I know JB describes her (Karrin) as a blonde. for some reason, I picture her as a brunette. Maybe because the tv show had a brunette. Valerie Cruz . Thanks for sharing.

Originally Posted by Nyssa

Yeah, I can not reconcile the picture in my head with the picture posted above. I too think its because she looks closer (to me) like the actress from the show.....even though Butcher mentions her as a "petite blonde" at least once in every book.

I've never been able to fathom why some folks can't visualize the characters the way Jim describes them in his novels simply because of how the TV series was cast. The TV series created a completely different Dresdenverse, borrowing the names of some of Butcher's more major characters and a plot point here and there (except for the pilot wich was eventually cut down considerably and aired as episode 8).

The book series detective, Karrin Murphy is petite, blond, rides a motorcycle and kicks ass! The TV police detective, Connie Murphy though she's an interesting and mostly likeable character is a very different individual, lacking many of the attributes of Karrin Murphy.

If you look closely at the TV series characters individually you should notice that each of them are much different than the characters that Jim describes in the books.

The above is my personal opinion.

[Nyssa]

In my case I think its because I saw the tv show first....Years before I knew the novels even existed.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

In my case I think its because I saw the tv show first....Years before I knew the novels even existed.

Me too, but the book descriptions of Murphy pushed the TV version right out of my head. Aside from occasionally seeing Harry as the lead from TV (but mostly not) the show really hasn't colored how I see the novels.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

In my case I think its because I saw the tv show first....Years before I knew the novels even existed.

Originally Posted by taosaur

Me too, but the book descriptions of Murphy pushed the TV version right out of my head. Aside from occasionally seeing Harry as the lead from TV (but mostly not) the show really hasn't colored how I see the novels.

Me three, and after watching the entire series every week when it was first broadcast on SyFy I missed it a lot when it was cancelled.

So I searched for and found the books. I discovered early on in my reading that none of the TV episodes (with the exception of episode 8) were even remotely connected to the story lines of the book series. Just a plot point here and there and a secondary character and/or character name here and there.

Besides that, Jim's descriptions of the major characters was so vivid and compelling that I was not able to correlate these characters with the characters in the TV series. The TV series was really well done and I still like it a lot, but it was just marginally related to the series of novels.

The above is my personal opinion.

[pwalker8]

oddly enough, I found the books first, then started buying the audiobooks via the website. I think I saw some 5 minutes of the one of episode of the TV series before turning it off. One look at Bob was all it took. I suppose if I hadn't read the books first, I would have had the negative reaction. Perhaps I'll try the TV series again at some point.

[bizzybody]

I'd read all the Dresden books that were available before watching the first episode of the TV series (which is all I've ever watched).

Aside from both being about a wizard named Harry Dresden who lives in Chicago, there's pretty much nothing in common between them.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

oddly enough, I found the books first, then started buying the audiobooks via the website. I think I saw some 5 minutes of the one of episode of the TV series before turning it off. One look at Bob was all it took. I suppose if I hadn't read the books first, I would have had the negative reaction. Perhaps I'll try the TV series again at some point.

Originally Posted by bizzybody

I'd read all the Dresden books that were available before watching the first episode of the TV series (which is all I've ever watched).

Aside from both being about a wizard named Harry Dresden who lives in Chicago, there's pretty much nothing in common between them.

If you attempt watching the TV show again try to keep in mind that if the producers actually were attempting to follow story lines from the books they probably would botch the attempt so badly you'd be constantly criticizing them. But what they did instead is take the basic premise (Wizard who lives in Chicago) and developed a show around that premise, occasionally borrowing a character name, plot point etc. Much better than botching all the already written stories to fit in a TV show format. Of course this would be a lot easier for you to do if you only hadn't already read the books. Oh well.

The above is my personal opinion.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by alansplace

If you attempt watching the TV show again try to keep in mind that if the producers actually were attempting to follow story lines from the books they probably would botch the attempt so badly you'd be constantly criticizing them. But what they did instead is take the basic premise (Wizard who lives in Chicago) and developed a show around that premise, occasionally borrowing a character name, plot point etc. Much better than botching all the already written stories to fit in a TV show format. Of course this would be a lot easier for you to do if you only hadn't already read the books. Oh well.

The above is my personal opinion.

Agreed. Adaptation from books to screen isn't just a matter of transcribing the dialogue and passing it out to actors--the people making the show have to have their own vision if they're going to invest anything in the work. In the case of the Dresden books, there's no way to translate the stories anywhere near directly. There's too much going on in each volume for one episode, and too little for a season, and even spreading them out over two or three episode arcs would run through the existing novels pretty quickly.

That said, the novels definitely stand out more among genre books than the TV series did among genre shows. It was enjoyable, but a B- effort at best.