A while back, Jessa Crispin of Bookslut (I think that's who it was) commented that people reviewing the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (crappy movie, from what I've read, but the comic is excellent) kept spelling "Quatermain" wrong, inserting an extra "r." It's easy enough to do (I've probably done it myself), but kind of sloppy when you're writing something for publication. Well, the other day I was arranging some books on the shelf, and I noticed that my old falling-apart Avon Edition copy of Allan Quatermain had that very typo on the cover. It says Allan Quartermain, extra "r" and all. On the inside pages, it's spelled correctly, though. It amused me.

But then I was thinking about the book again, and I went and got it off the shelf to flip through. And I realized that I've never actually read it. Or at least I don't remember reading it. I saw the abysmal Richard Chamberlain movie. I've read She and Ayesha and even Eric Brighteyes (more than once), but somehow I never got to Allan Quatermain. Unless I read it and don't remember, which is possible. So then I got the bright idea that I should read all the books alluded to in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic, that is), starting with the ones from which the main characters came. So I began to make a list.

I soon realized that this was going to be a big list. I consulted Ye Olde Internet, and found some fabulous annotations by Jess Nevins (now available as a book). There's a lot of reading there. But then I really like to read.

'Course, the search led me to this site, which has annotations for lots of comics, including 1602. But I think I'll wait to go through them until I read the whole series. Then I'll have an excuse to re-read it.

Oh, I have a lot of reading to do. Yay!