Book twenty-one: The War of the Worlds by Herbert George Wells

In 1816, Mary Shelley was hanging out around Lake Geneva with heavyweights Percy Shelley and Lord Byron (along with a few others), when the group came up with the idea, after a night of reading German ghost stories to each other, to create their own scary stories. For Mary Shelley, this was when she conceived the idea that eventually lead to the creation of Frankenstein. I immediately thought of this after finishing The War of the Worlds. It was written nearly a century later but I kind of think Wells would have fit in perfectly with this group. What a great story. I imagine the movie remake Cruise did in 2005 sucks in comparison but I may have to watch it anyway just to see the level of suckage.

Excerpt 1:

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. ... Are we such angels of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

Favorite line:

And strangest of all is it to hold my wife's hand again, and to think that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead.

21 down, 5 to go.