ope...a life books.1
The Lone Wolf Books are Joe Dever's most popular series of gamebooks, set primarily in the mythical world of Magnamund in the universe of Aon (hence our name). You, the reader, play as Lone Wolf, a warrior-monk whose potential as a hero emerges from the tragic defeat of his teachers and kinsmen, known as the Kai Lords. These are solo adventures that can be read and interpreted at your leisure, bringing a unique experience to the reader. The most similar books to these that found a mainstream audience are the Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy series. In Lone Wolf, however, you do not only make key decisions in the text, but also choose your equipment and unique abilities, which may help you to survive through encounters that have both strategic and random elements. Lone Wolf books are also relatively unique in that the books can be read and played individually or as part of the larger series, where you can use skills and items gained from one book in another book.
"I would be especially pleased if my granting of the rights to distribute my books in this way was seen as my 'millennium gift' to all those devoted readers who have kept the Kai flag flying high, through all the good times, and the not-so-good. It would make me very proud indeed if this enterprise laid the foundations of a lasting legacy, securing the longevity of Lone Wolf by making my creation freely and readily accessible to current and future online generations. For them, for us, for Sommerlund and the Kai.…"
- Joe Dever 1999
Author Robert Aspin. We should all go this way.
At the end? Bob died yesterday afternoon (May 22, 2008). A peaceful death, by all accounts, dozing on a sofa with a Terry Pratchett book still open in his hands. Unexpected? yes. Surprising? no, not really.
The U.S. government tried denying James Joyce's Ulysses "admittance into the United States." The government's motion was for a decree of forfeiture and destruction. The judge read the book to determine what was what. Here's some of what he said about it.
It would've been too difficult for a jury to read it:
It seems to me that a procedure of this kind is highly appropriate in libels such as this for the confiscation of books. It is an especially advantageous procedure in the instant case because, on account of the length of "Ulysses" and the difficulty of reading it, a jury trial would have been an extremely unsatisfactory, if not an almost impossible method of dealing with it.
The judge liked and loathed the book:
Furthermore, "Ulysses" is an amazing tour de force when one considers the success which has been in the main achieved with such a difficult objective as Joyce set for himself. As I have stated, "Ulysses" is not an easy book to read. It is brilliant and dull, intelligible and obscure, by turns. In many places it seems to me to be disgusting, but although it contains, as I have mentioned above, many words usually considered dirty, I have not found anything that I consider to be dirt for dirt's sake. Each word of the book contributes like a bit of mosaic to the detail of the picture which Joyce is seeking to construct for his readers.
Ulysses was sexy but not sexy:
...reading "Ulysses" in its entirety, as a book must be read on such a test as this, did not tend to excite sexual impulses or lustful thoughts, but that its net effect on them was only that of a somewhat tragic and very powerful commentary on the inner lives of men and women..."Ulysses" may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.