Some books I've read; my incredible insights thereon; updated when I can be arsed.
E
Read 2004, re-read 2021
***
I was aware of these origins even as a child, but loyalty to the zany Adventures comic and general lack of interest in gritty Frank Miller parodies meant I'd only ever checked it out briefly as a weird novelty. It's not good, but interesting to see just how much of it made it to other iterations intact. Not interesting enough to read a more substantial collection though.
Read 2022
***
This felt more like a first comic than a picture book. While I'm normally in favour of creeping kids out, it's refreshingly free from gritty realism as our plucky newborn topples invincibly from the tree and befriends its natural predators.
Read 2022
***
Apparently a severe abridgement of the celebrated classic, we read it through enough times in a row to make up for it.
Read 2020
****
The author optimistically coins some theoretical terms I've forgotten already as he situates this anachronistic curiosity in its various canons and dredges up the salient themes. His commentary graciously avoids spoilers for those of us foolish enough to read as we watch, only hinting at the clues under our bloody noses.
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Read 2012
My #1 book of 2012 and somewhere up there on the epic all-time ranking. Eco was never going to top his debut novel, and enchanted readers can't help but feel similar disappointment that it's all going to be downhill from here. To improve would simply be unreasonable.
This smart-arse monastic murder mystery is rightly adored by bookworms, but you don't need to be well-versed in the classics to see the tributes all over the place. (Here's a starter for free: they're Holmes and Watson. I didn't encounter Borges until later).
But it doesn't just have cleverness going for it. He also had to put it in a vivid, atmospheric setting, didn't he? I read it during a month in Sri Lanka, and was so engrossed in the fruitless quest for meaning that my real memories of the place are mixed up with mouldy manuscripts, secret chambers and giant lion statues. Oh hang on, that one was real.
Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
***
This was the main motivation for putting myself through the chore of reading all the fiction from one of my favourite authors, because I had to finish it some time.
It was tied with Illuminatus! as one of two books I'd had a decent crack at, twice, but still never managed to get even half-way through. And both are paranoid conspiracy piss-takes that are technically right up my street. On paper, at least. But what about on paper?
If this is the thinking man's Da Vinci Code, I guess that makes me an idiot. It starts getting somewhere when they finally start crafting the fictional conspiracy and the fiction starts to consume their lives, but it takes forever to get there, and the path is strewn with time-wasting tangents. I was annoyed that I'd got over half-way through before I found out there's an abridged audiobook read by Tim Curry.
It doesn't help that the setting is the unglamorous world of indie publishing. At least set it hundreds of years ago in an exotic location.
This was the main motivation for putting myself through the chore of reading all the fiction from one of my favourite authors, because I had to finish it some time.
It was tied with Illuminatus! as one of two books I'd had a decent crack at, twice, but still never managed to get even half-way through. And both are paranoid conspiracy piss-takes that are technically right up my street. On paper, at least. But what about on paper?
If this is the thinking man's Da Vinci Code, I guess that makes me an idiot. It starts getting somewhere when they finally start crafting the fictional conspiracy and the fiction starts to consume their lives, but it takes forever to get there, and the path is strewn with time-wasting tangents. I was annoyed that I'd got over half-way through before I found out there's an abridged audiobook read by Tim Curry.
It doesn't help that the setting is the unglamorous world of indie publishing. At least set it hundreds of years ago in an exotic location.
Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before
Read 2017
****
Umberto Eco, Baudolino
Read 2017
***
This fanciful account of crusades, exploration and fantastic adventure would be an incredible historical document, if only it were real. Though that still wouldn't make it any more credible than it is as a 21st-century work of fiction.
To call Baudolino an unreliable narrator is putting it lightly. He mentions hanging out with unicorns as early as page seven, and it doesn't take too long for basilisks, face-chested people and skiapods to show up on his tour of exotic/pretend Asia. I assume the cover was painted from life.
He might well be one of the most annoying characters in literature, claiming credit for every significant event of the period and bragging about his pan-lingual ability even as we see, in an extract from his juvenile memoirs, that he's barely literate.
Written in broken dialect with uncouth punctuation, that's the most frustrating part of the novel for sure, so it's pleasing that Eco put it right at the beginning to keep the casual readers away. It would have been even more entertaining/infuriating if he'd gone for broke and written the whole thing like that. The translator might have had a heart attack.
Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
Read 2015
***
Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
Read 2013-14
*****
My #1 book of 2013 (probably). As with most historical novels (alright, all of them), I know so little about late 19th century Italy that I'm happy to trust the authenticity of the events and cameos that Eco's bound together in his fictitious web.
It's an ingenious forgery about one of the most famous and poisonous forgeries of all time. It riffs on similar themes of contagious conspiracies and shadowy doppelgängers to his earlier books, but there are two main things that make it stand apart:
i). We're trapped in the diseased mind of a truly twisted individual as he drags us ever further down the spiral of madness.
ii). The compulsively detailed accounts of what Simonini's eating make for a uniquely mouth-watering read.
I expect some mental health experts would take issue with the author over his protagonist('s/s'(?)) peculiar condition. Does he have to be an expert on everything?
****
From its (slightly) thinner spine, you might judge that Eco wasn't so serious about his third novel. It's more appealing already.
It's not fuelled by frustration like the previous one seemed to be. He's not trying to break a literary genre that's ticking him off this time. It feels more like he's been poring over old maps and immersing himself in the Age of Discovery for the scholarly day job, and now he wants to have a bit of fun in that world. This is all fine with me.
I fancied reading something from that period anyway, and while this fake relic is less insightful than a real one would be, it's obviously more readable. Even warped through the prism of a self-important editor, it's a tender tribute to a time of fanciful lies, scientific magic, courtly courting and self-destructive valour.
It's not fuelled by frustration like the previous one seemed to be. He's not trying to break a literary genre that's ticking him off this time. It feels more like he's been poring over old maps and immersing himself in the Age of Discovery for the scholarly day job, and now he wants to have a bit of fun in that world. This is all fine with me.
I fancied reading something from that period anyway, and while this fake relic is less insightful than a real one would be, it's obviously more readable. Even warped through the prism of a self-important editor, it's a tender tribute to a time of fanciful lies, scientific magic, courtly courting and self-destructive valour.
Umberto Eco, Baudolino
Read 2017
This fanciful account of crusades, exploration and fantastic adventure would be an incredible historical document, if only it were real. Though that still wouldn't make it any more credible than it is as a 21st-century work of fiction.
To call Baudolino an unreliable narrator is putting it lightly. He mentions hanging out with unicorns as early as page seven, and it doesn't take too long for basilisks, face-chested people and skiapods to show up on his tour of exotic/pretend Asia. I assume the cover was painted from life.
He might well be one of the most annoying characters in literature, claiming credit for every significant event of the period and bragging about his pan-lingual ability even as we see, in an extract from his juvenile memoirs, that he's barely literate.
Written in broken dialect with uncouth punctuation, that's the most frustrating part of the novel for sure, so it's pleasing that Eco put it right at the beginning to keep the casual readers away. It would have been even more entertaining/infuriating if he'd gone for broke and written the whole thing like that. The translator might have had a heart attack.
Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
Read 2015
If you were hoping for something less wordy that didn't consist almost entirely of an amnesiac book dealer's confused monologue, you should really have looked for a different author. Admittedly, it's my least favourite of the three-and-a-half Umberto Ecos I've read (I'm due for another crack at Foucault's Pendulum – third time's the charm), but I feel the book is fine with that, since it mainly serves as a love letter to literature in general. If you ever find a novel denser with quotes and references than this one, check again because you're probably reading an encyclopaedia.
Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
Read 2013-14
My #1 book of 2013 (probably). As with most historical novels (alright, all of them), I know so little about late 19th century Italy that I'm happy to trust the authenticity of the events and cameos that Eco's bound together in his fictitious web.
It's an ingenious forgery about one of the most famous and poisonous forgeries of all time. It riffs on similar themes of contagious conspiracies and shadowy doppelgängers to his earlier books, but there are two main things that make it stand apart:
i). We're trapped in the diseased mind of a truly twisted individual as he drags us ever further down the spiral of madness.
ii). The compulsively detailed accounts of what Simonini's eating make for a uniquely mouth-watering read.
I expect some mental health experts would take issue with the author over his protagonist('s/s'(?)) peculiar condition. Does he have to be an expert on everything?
Umberto Eco, Numero Zero
Read 2017
Eco's shortest and most straightforward novel was inevitably going to receive backlash on those unforgivable grounds alone, and it seems to largely come from people who adore Foucault's Pendulum. Since that dense book mainly annoyed me, I was actually looking forward to the prospect of its antithesis.
On the plus side, it spent significantly less time boring me. But by forsaking the rich historical backdrops of most of his novels for the grimy urban 1990s, it couldn't even coast along on atmosphere like a lot of his more perplexing passages do.
I had to read up briefly on the Italian scandals of the period, because this litigious satire/speculation necessarily lacks Eco's usual detailed exposition. He can't just come out and say it's about Berlusconi. The 84-year-old author died just over a year after this was published. "Pancreatic cancer": yeah, right.
Read 2023
**
Squidgy bedtime colours.
Read 2021
***
The clockwork solar system setting was irresistible, shame about the plot and art. Still, the point-'n'-click adventure game potential is staggering.
Read 2023
****
The classics are curated by time, so I'm spared having to read all the generic '80s animal picture books to find them.
Read 2023
**
She chose this herself, progressively transgressing the rigidly-defined unicorns/dinosaurs gender divide. It was funny when the stegosaurus put pyjamas on too.
****
Even though it's geared towards a type of long-form sales letter I've never been asked to write (yet), Edwards' copy thesis (in my web-abridged form) has benefited my professional writing more than almost any other book I've read, with the possible exception of Janice Redish who helped me to clear out the clutter. The key takeaways have pride of place as daily reminders at the top of my Diary.txt.
Read 2011
***
I questioned the point of reading this all throughout reading this, but it was so readable that I didn't worry about it too much. I have to question why I consider straight-up fiction more worthwhile than honest memoirs, and why the fictional digressions helped me to get through this.
Read 2020
**
The incredible story of a self-important American who went to the rescue when Russians failed to solve their own mystery for fifty years.
Daniel Ekeroth, Swedish Death Metal
Read 2015
***
In this satisfyingly specialist project, our infernal scholar provides an exhaustive history of the first five or so years of the regionally specific genre, before cutting it off abruptly in '93 when his personal interest and nostalgia wanes. Loads more great stuff was to come, but it's his book innit? Best are all the photocopies of felt-tip demo tape sleeves, fanzines and gig posters that would really take me back if I'd been born 10 years earlier in Sweden, but beyond the scrapbook, the history itself isn't especially exciting. It was those pesky Norwegian black metallers who did all the church burning and stabbing; these morbid kids just made the most of an affluent society that encouraged creativity and offered an abundance of cheap studios for hire.
S. A. Eldin, I Was the Artist
Read 2017
**
I Was The Artist is yet another Young Adult saga about a young adult with superpowers who’s destined to save us all, presumably somewhere towards the end of S.A. Eldin’s third book.
When Zac makes his first accidental leap through time and space, you wouldn’t take home much for betting he winds up in gaslit Victorian London. Where did you expect, the Wild West? That’s the next stop.
Considering the limitless powers the Gifted possess, this is a franchise that could theoretically spin off indefinitely. But you’ve already seen it all before.
Read 2007, re-read 2017, 2019
*****
Not as grim and overbearing as I remembered, partly thanks to the warm tones of Alec Guinness, there's lots of sombre beauty in Eliot's hellish collage. It's a defining exhibit of why it's probably better to be content in ignorance than wise to what a mental shitshow everything is.
T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
Read 2018
***
Since I don't normally read or attend verse plays for fun (unless some cheapskate events site offers single press tickets to shoddy Fringe productions in exchange for befuddled reviews), I didn't get a lot out of it. The scene-setting chorus overtures are nice and poetic with memorable lines, it's a shame the dialogue and plot kept interrupting them, really.
Read 2020
***
Skipping from the dark chaos of The Waste Land to the illuminated confidence of these wartime sermons is good advertising for the therapeutic benefits of religion. A lot duller though.
Albert Ellis and Raymond Chip Tafrate, How to Control Your Anger Before It Controls You
Read 2020****
Since my predictable rage quickly dissipates once a temporary annoyance predictably resolves itself (until the just as predictable reprise), I've never dwelled too much on the problem I clearly have. But now that my outbursts are waking up a sleeping baby all the way from downstairs, it seemed like it might be a good time to deal with this, before she becomes a predictably naughty toddler or I have a predictable heart attack and miss the rest of it. This long sales letter for a modern take on stoicism has lots of good tips.
Read 2014
****
I'd watched someone get mildly fucked up reading this dangerous filth in the past. While my own reaction wasn't as strong, I didn't particularly enjoy the time spent hanging out in this sick Phil Collins fan's head. Every bit as unpleasant as intended, the shallow yuppie satire almost excuses it, but it's not a book everyone should read. Or maybe anyone.
Read 2010
***
There's lots to admire in Ellis' rich transhuman cyberpunk gonzo... thing. I tried to get it, but bailed a few books in. I'm a wuss.
Read 2021
***
Impractically optimistic space program propaganda with inappropriate sharp edges.
Read 2015
*****
That's more like it! Admittedly it's a best-of spanning four decades, so you'd expect it to be pretty good, though as ever some of the inclusions are questionable. I was only previously familiar with the writer through his memorable contributions to Star Trek and various TV anthologies, none of which prepared me for how fucked-up his regular fiction can be. Common themes include dystopia, impending death and non-consensual having-it-off.
Faves: 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,' '"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman' (stupid titles make better stories?)
Worsties: 'The Very Last Day of a Good Woman,' 'The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke.'
Harlan Ellison, The Voice from the Edge, Vol. 2: Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral
Read 2015
****
I generally prefer seeing how original story collections stand up rather than cheating retrospective mixes like these, but then I'd miss out on hearing these classic and/or unpleasant tales performed by the author. These selections turned out to be mostly average anyway, with plenty of filler saving me from dealing with a parade of hits. That was considerate of them.
Faves: 'Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral,' 'Jeffty is Five,' 'The Function of Dream Sleep.'
Worsties: 'In Lonely Lands,' 'The End of the Time of Leinard,' 'Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish.'
Harlan Ellison and Robert Bloch, The Voice from the Edge, Vol. 3: Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes
Read 2015
The author must have been feeling pretty down when he made these selections. Apart from a couple of escapist classics that unfailingly involve death and misery anyway, it's mainly an assortment of depressing afterlives, tragic life lessons and Ripper riffs.
Faves: 'Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes,' 'The Discarded.'
Worsties: 'Between Heaven and Hell,' 'Fever,' 'Darkness Falls on the River,' 'The Silence,' 'Base': inconsequential shorts.
Harlan Ellison, The Voice from the Edge Vol. 4: The Deathbird & Other Stories
Read 2019
****
These audio anthologies are a long way from scraping the barrel yet, with most of these stories and novellas being winners or nominees of some prestigious award or other. The tone's generally pretty grim, but nothing you should take too seriously.Faves: 'The Deathbird,' 'The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore,' 'Count the Clock That Tells the Time.'
Worsties: 'Ellison Wonderland,' 'The Creation of Water,' 'The Beast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.'
Harlan Ellison, The Voice from the Edge, Vol. 5: Shatterday & Other Stories
Read 2019
***
The last of the curated audio archives, this feels more bent towards the horrific, but it turns out I've said that about most of them. A semi-autobiography, comedy and romance with a unicorn keep things varied.
Faves: 'Shatterday,' 'Basilisk,' 'Goodbye to All That.'
Worsties: 'In the Oligocenskie Gardens,' 'Shattered Like a Glass Goblin,' 'Susan.'
Harlan Ellison, Scott & David Tipton and J. K. Woodward, Star Trek: Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever – The Original Teleplay
Read 2015
****
I was aware there'd been a long-running battle between Harlan Ellison and the suits who supposedly diluted his vision for the classic Trek episode (that won a prestigious award regardless), but I didn't know much about it. Finally getting to see that infamous first draft brought to the screen page, it is quite different. Beyond it being a certified good story, these primordial Treks are always a treat – stories written before the series went to air and before they'd really nailed down the characters or moral outlook, so we get to enjoy mean Spock, Kirk justifying his horniness, the Enterprise's resident drug dealer, historically accurate xenophobia and a disposable cripple whose existence, we're explicitly told, is pointless. Fascinating, but the tamer TV episode is probably better (loser).
Read 2020
***
A circa 2000 Metropolis website in book form, these brief introductions and literary analyses are only slightly more substantial than something you might get with a deluxe DVD. Most interesting was the comparisons of how reactions to the film changed over time, those observations now 20 years out of date themselves.
Marty Elsant, People Are Just NO DAMN GOOD!
Read 2017
***
You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy Marty Elsant's new collection of short stories. Well, maybe one or two.
These seven polished stories are all informed by the author's own experiences growing up as a Jewish American or by his wider interest in how the international community has fared through the turbulent 20th century, but their themes are universal and their characters will be familiar to anyone who isn't dull enough to be ordinary.
Read 2022
***
I didn't get my hopes up, but got into the spirit and enjoyed the limits of revulsion being tested, at least. It's credible that they'd actually bother writing this shit, since the disbelief is pretty securely suspended already.
Read 1999
***
Background and selected sketches for all or most of the kerr-azy characters from Harry's TV shows and stand-up. "Nice!" Oh hang on, that's not him, I mean, "brilliant!"
Read 2022
****
As when confronted with other atrocities of the recent past or present that haven't personally affected me, I was disgusted and depressed to be reminded. But not to worry, I'll immediately forget about it again so I can be freshly appalled next time.
Read 2008
****
Taking the bronze after Sandman and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing as one of the best long-form comic series I've read, that was too long ago to break down my thoughts on the individual story arcs I've forgotten, which means it's long enough ago to justify reading again.
Read 2007
****
Understandably and deservedly one of Garth Ennis' lesser known works, I'd still heartily recommend stopping off to imbibe some of its therapeutic silliness between your comic epics. It's one of the funniest things I've ever read.
Read 2019
***
I don't know whether Garth Ennis was being meta when he wrote this literal and figurative mash-up. It's all been done before, some of it ad nauseam, but the more enthusiastically gruesome art makes it worth another go around.
Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans, Evolving Ourselves: How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation are Changing Life on Earth
*****
It's common sense that we've seriously screwed ourselves up, for better and worse, but it's great to get some actual statistics on obesity, autism, lifespans, immunity and micropenises rather than relying on fear-mongering headlines or non-scientifically-grounded self-reckonings. I assume it wasn't the authors' intent, but I'm even less inclined to pass on my defective genes now.
Terry J. Erdmann with Paula M. Block, Star Trek: Action!
Read 1999**
Not being a film student or particularly interested in the technical aspects of production, I wouldn't have bothered checking out this highly specific reference work if I wasn't taking advantage of a promotional offer that was ultimately taking advantage of me. It was only really valuable for offering privileged access to season finales that I wouldn't have the chance to see for a while.
Read 1999
***
If you're obsessed with Star Trek IX, or more likely padding out a book club promo offer with things you're not really bothered about one way or another, this is your chance to peek behind the curtain and see how they executed those distractingly sub-par special effects when Industrial Light & Magic was too busy or expensive. 'Secrets' my arse.
Terry J. Erdmann with Paula M. Block, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion
Read 2000*****
Deep Space Nine was my favourite Trek and one of my favourite TV shows generally, so I was very pleased when the compulsory episode guide turned out to be so damned definitive. Filled with current rather than retrospective interviews and concept art, it's the best reference work I've ever read and everything a fan could want, short of it existing in ebook form, please.
Read 2014
*****
After a vintage introduction by the artist and brief summary of every piece, everyone shuts up so you can get lost in the brain-bending art, handily organised by category. I don't know whether the physical book is pocket-sized or coffee-table, but either way, it'd be a keeper.
Read 2022
***
It did take her a little while to grasp the maze concept in the other book, so I guess this is the beginner one. It doesn't offer much to adepts.
Read 2022
***
Presumably there'll be unicorn-themed books to guide her every step of the way to adulthood. At least this one found a pun.
Read 2021
***
A brief overview to kick off independent study of the well-loved concept album and its accompanying, less overplayed, but similarly digestible themed works. Along with some less interesting abstract ones to skip.
Al Ewing and Henry Flint, Zombo: Can I Eat You Please?
****
"Baubles! Eating my face-- AAAAAGGGHHH!"
I guess 2000 AD's not been for kids for a while. Exactly the kind of morbid over-the-top comedy gorefest I found hilarious at 12, it's surprisingly tense before an increasing fixation on pathetic parodies of specific 2009 light entertainment British telly spoils it.
Fave: 'Zombo'
Read 2021
****
The zanier take on 2000 AD's customary violent satire continues down chaotic and unpredictable gutters. Few people will find it as consistently side-splitting as its creators clearly do, but it got me sometimes.
Al Ewing, Rob Williams, Simon Fraser, Boo Cook and Warren Pleece, Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor – The Complete Year One
****
A decent stab at an intermediate era, coming out just after the real run ended means they can be retrospective about character and style while still being caught up in that zeitgeist. Along with the plot's characteristic mild non-linear tomfoolery, this makes it a more satisfying answer for what fans would be specifically searching for than the usual franchise blandness, with a David Bowie stand-in absorbing much of the compulsory quirk to take the pressure off our hero.
Read 2023
***
Intriguing pitch, filled out with characters I didn't care about.
Read 2019
***
I enjoy Hammer horrors, but could never be bothered to go through them all. This admirably concise filmography does it for me, interestingly capturing the exact moment when the studio became irrelevant and hit its sharp decline – something its new boss was clearly oblivious to with his lofty cross-platform ambitions for the brand. After reading dry interviews with the important men behind it all, your patience is rewarded with a photo gallery of Hammer babes and boobs. I'm sure this was a big hit with young fans at the time, they love behind-the-scenes trivia.
F
Javier Fabra, The Lesbian Vampire Erotica Bundle: Five BDSM Lesbian Paranormal Vampire Erotic Stories
Read 2016
*
Yes, I know it's a cliché, and that every list of erotic "classics" written today is required to mention The Lesbian Vampire Erotica Bundle: Five BDSM Lesbian Paranormal Vampire Erotic Stories, but I thought I'd add to the discussion regardless. One of the stories was quite atmospheric, that's about all the praise I can give. The rest is just about the worst thing I've ever read, down to the clear lack of proofreading that lets terrible spelling and grammar go unchecked ("procession" is substituted for "possession" so many times, it can only be the author's confusion). And he's not fooling anyone with the cautious disclaimer that all characters are consenting adults, considering how much dark mesmerism is involved and that every other story gets off on describing freshly pubic maidens. They develop late in Transylvania, I guess? Or you're all just terrible people.
Faves: 'Den of Thorns.'
Worsties: 'The Blood Countess,' 'Blood Maiden,' 'Mirror of the Vampire.'
Read 2020
*
Reading this tedious meta-analysis of an artistically vacant mashup of two artists I don't care about was something of a cultural low point for my year.
Read 2020
***
Not bad for a businessman's first crack at fiction, even if its complete lack of distinctiveness consigns it deeper down the bin of Victorian supernatural literature that you'll eventually get around to a couple of decades into your reading. It's always nice to go back for another round, even if the spark reliably fizzles out early yet it goes on.
David Fanning, Nielsen: Symphony No. 5
Read 2020***
The most painstaking bar-by-bar analysis I've seen so far – certainly the first where the background music overtook the commentary when listening along – the fan writer makes no apologies for imposing his own skewed interpretations of which passages he reckons represent malevolence and healing or when the triangle and oboe are duking it out. That made it easier to follow than a technical analysis alone, and there are diagrams to help with that part.
Bart Farkas, Diablo II: Official Strategy Guide
Read 2015
**
I already wasted enough of my sexually legal teens playing this classic game, but after more than a decade of abstinence I gave myself permission for a concentrated hit of nostalgia. I forgot there was actually quite a good story connecting those bosses that gradually eroded into exp 'n' trezer mines. Considering the game was patched and updated regularly (presumably still is), and this doesn't even include the less atmospheric expansion pack, significant chunks of this strategy guide will have become obsolete fairly quickly.
Read 2024
****
Authenticity appraisal and poetic paean.
Read 2020
****
A new writer to me, this spin on the back-to-basics dystopia is some of the most original and unnerving sci-fi I've read in a while, though I'm sure I'd get more of a kick out of all the historical figures if I knew more about the real world.
Read 2020
***
I wasn't done with Riverworld's mysteries after the first round, so I was glad to stay aboard and see how immortal society was getting on. But I think I'll abandon ship here rather than risk it running aground or capsizing through increasingly unlikely historical team-ups.
Read 1998
*****
It's mainly a one-man moviemistakes.com, but as my introduction to recreational cynicism it was a revelation. BBC repeats and video releases were stuck in the shoddy early seasons at the time, which was a drag, but this made those bad episodes fun.
Phil Farrand, The Nitpicker's Guide for Classic Trekkers
Read 2020****
The dodgier Next Generation episodes proved the most enjoyable to rip apart in his previous book, so I coveted this fabled prequel in my youth. My apologetic admiration for the silly sixties series has grown over the years, so it was good to be reminded how ridiculous it often was, and a nice way to make that voyage again without having to actually sit through it all. I especially enjoyed the running headcanon that the events of 'Spock's Brain' justify the science officer's inconsistent behaviour thereafter. I got about 2% of the trivia questions right.
Phil Farrand,
The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers, Volume IIRead 2020
***
"And now the conclusion." Picking up from its premature predecessor to cover the final season and first film, bringing things bang up to date for about a year, this then fills out the remaining four fifths or so of its runtime by going back over the rest of the series with input from readers to catch the subtler, duller and more pointlessly critical nits he missed.
Read 2023
****
Having loved his Next Gen guide, I can't remember why I didn't snap this up the one time when I saw it in Oracle Books as a teenager, while the series was still going and steadily becoming my favourite incarnation, but my dithering was no doubt partly culpable in a Volume II never materialising.
Read 2015
***
Apparently one of the most prolific writers ever, Howard Fast's conveyor belt evidently moved so rapidly that the books didn't always turn out as expected – hence this collection of two uneven novellas, presumably because 'The Trap' didn't end up being long enough to stand alone and there weren't enough other short stories hanging around since the last collection for 'The Hunter' to join in. There's no other reason for these two stories to be joined at the spine. The only connection is that they're both alright.
Fave: 'The Hunter,' in which an arrogant game hunter gets his just desserts. I think we're supposed to be on his side actually, but you can approach it how you like.
Worstie: 'The Trap,' which is basically a less colourful X-Men.
Howard Fast, The General Zapped an Angel
Read 2015
I haven't found the great Howard Fast book yet. There isn't much to these short stories, which sometimes try to be whimsical or didactic but mainly feel like those lightweight episodes of The Twilight Zone between the heavy hitters.
Faves: 'The Vision of Milty Boil,' 'Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal.'
Worsties: 'The Mohawk,' 'The Interval.'
Read 2007
****
That's how you make Modernist stream-of-consciousness stylistic wank readable, Joyce & co – make it funny! Unless it wasn't supposed to be a dark comedy and I'm just sick. I keep planning to commit to more Faulkner, but a failed attempt at The Sound and the Fury put me off trying for another decade or so.
Read 2022
***
A sequential tour and insightful dismantling of the sexy cyborg dystopia.
****
Writing guides are mainly going to be retreading ground when you're in the double digits, but this is another useful and fairly comprehensive step-by-step one that should have come higher in the pile, even if, like most of them, it assumes you don't have deadlines or other hobbies to be getting on with. Plutchik's wheel of emotions was a new one on me.
Read 2020
***
I braced for rap and was pleasantly surprised to get chaotic background music instead. This document of an enigmatic swan song fittingly flits all over the place with existential musings and psychoanalytic readings that the author confesses may be a load of old wank, but it was a nice gesture.
Read 2020
****
This could be the best book in the series, interviewing every band member and other influential figures to argue why this is peak metal without feeling the need to shit over other bands you like. With its star profiles and digestible sections, it's like a belated Reign in Blood Annual 1987 without the pics.
Read 2023
**
2001: A Space Odyssey for preschoolers.
Read 2022-23
***
They've literally mapped out their shared universe of generic fantasy creatures as a handy guide/warning to parents. I like how a dinosaur's included, that's not going to confuse her education.
Read 2022
**
The inevitable spin-offs.
Read 2023
*
Abandoning the series' premise to cash in on festive fever. Merry Xma$$$!
Read 2024
**
Dystopian bloodsport isn't a great fit for the tweedy time and space trek.
Read 1994
**
Highlighting gender issues for kids more sensitively than something like Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, this reminded me of Big, but I mainly remember it for launching an assignment to write our own gender swap story, which I probably would have done in my free time anyway. Mrs Clarke was the best teacher ever.
Read 2021
**
I can't say I was looking forward to learning what that cover was about, and I'm still none the wiser. Three humdrum tales of spirited youth for you.
Fave: 'Fight the Good Fight'
****
Nice novella and all, but it feels like it's stealing that high rating and should rightfully be surrounded by some middling short stories to bring it down a notch. I would have preferred to read it in this ace looking vintage anthology, but while its A-list contributions are widely available elsewhere, tracking down the more obscure entries would have required investing in 1940s digital back issues of Harper's Bazaar et al, which I didn't feel was worth it for a four-page story, even if I could pick up Audrey Hepburn fashion tips while I'm there.
Kristen Fischer, When Talent Isn't Enough: Business Basics for the Creatively Inclined
Read 2015
Another quick side trip from cosy escapism back to the real world, this book answered some of the questions I had about what it would take to be a completely independent freelancer who doesn't rely exclusively on the seasonal whims of agencies, and confirmed I'm better off where I am. Anything that means I don't have to deal with the clients. Some of this might be useful for my wife's independent projects, though it would have been more useful if the specifics weren't exclusively written for Americans.
Read 2020
***
Murnau's silent hallucinatory fable is a godsend for academic overanalysis and this cinephile doesn't hold back from the onset. I enjoyed all of that, and I didn't mind all the big screencaps making a short book even shorter, since that space is normally taken up by redundant plot summary.
Read 2023
*
It's about a dog.
Robert Fisher, Brain Games for Your Child: Over 200 Fun Games to Play
**
Do you know what types of games involve the brain? All of them, making this selection less specialist and more bloody obvious than it first sounded. Though that's probably less of an issue once you get out of the first three years, helpfully grouped together here like the uniform epoch they are. I might hang onto it, just in case, but school should be taking care of it by then.
Read 2007
****
It's strange; reading a synopsis as a reminder, this sounds like an appalling celebration of twats, but I remember it being really good and flying past. Stick it on the re-read pile to confirm, or maybe read some of his others if he's so good.
Julian Flanders, 1001 Days Out: Your Comprehensive Guide to the Best Attractions in the UK
****
This reliably economical Parragon guide has been road tested at precisely 0.0% of locations so far (as a family unit), but with its regional focus and broad smorgasbord – from overhyped star attractions to quirky dilapidation and plenty of nature – it should get a lot of use as both guide and motivator. If I let the challenge aspect get to me, this could end up having an insane amount of influence on all our lives. Chester Zoo, here we come.
Read 2020
***
A more specialised take on the same theme, since she's always on the lookout for 'doo-doos,' this has the advantage of actual photos. We like the owls particularly.
Read 2015
I've never seen a Bond film all the way through. But I know who he is and stuff, for god's sake. Since this book was voted one of the top 100 crime novels ever, I expected it to be as average as the several others I've read from that list over the last few months, as well as extremely sexist and a tad racist. I was mainly correct, but there were a few surprises in store – Bond being as much a pimped whore as his Russian counterpart is unexpectedly subversive, and he's quite shockingly bad at the whole spy thing too. I might even have liked him if he hadn't taken nearly half the book to show up.
Read 2023
**
Of course it's a whole series. When you gotta go, you gotta go.
Read 2022
***
Another series stretched by courtesy of the same stock characters, but she enjoys them and they're free, aren't they? It's better than Peppa Pig.
Read 2008
*****
Still the longest book I've sat down and read rather than had passively read to me, it wasn't just about setting a superficial record. It was also a pathetic demonstration of commitment to a girl who liked it. Since that didn't work out, it also fortunately happened to be a really absorbing and life-affirming story that gave me a new appreciation for historic architecture, when I remembered.
Read 2009
***
I never would have bothered with the equally weighty sequel to Pillars if not for a passive audiobook that could drone on while I worked. I don't remember it being anywhere near as compelling or majestic as the first one. I mainly remember sex.
Read 2024
**
Cute enough for re-reads, but she still didn't get the message.
Read 2020
**
With the author's reputation, I was hoping for something comparable to what Robert Shearman did for Doctor Who, but this self-indulgent quirky!!1 comedy came out more like Michael Moorcock's 'Who misfire.
Read 1993, re-read 2020, 2022
*****
I always enjoyed this colourful interplanetary dinosaur book on the superficial level, but now that I appreciate its heavy-stomping hippie ideals a lot more, I recognise it as a true classic.
Read 2022
**
A bit advanced for now, unless I'm holding her back. Though I'm not sure whether encouraging young readers to recall traumatic and embarrassing experiences from their past is a great idea. It's all a bit social services.
Read 2015
**
It's all well and scientific to point out UFOs in Renaissance paintings centuries later, but here's actual evidence (evidence will not hereafter be a concern) that people were discussing mysterious flying objects before 1947. In this founding text for Forteans and Fox Mulders, Fort lays out his mad, grand explanation for why strange sightings and disappearances may occur, which requires even more suspension of disbelief than the phenomena themselves. He makes a few good points about the limits of traditional scientific approaches and arbitrary categorisation, but mainly it's a cautionary tale about what can happen if you lock yourself in a room with too many books for too long. What?
Read 2023
*
Crunching leaves and other incredible approximations of the mundane. Just go to the park.
**
Best known for writing old-school novelisations (credited and not) of major motion pictures in the days before home video, Foster has also had a less-New-York-Times-bestselling career writing his own damn stories. This is the first, a rip-roaring tale of space scoundrels and psychic orphans that would have made an unspectacular film. Still, you have to respect the off-putting anti-commercial title. He definitely had something to prove.
Alan Dean Foster, Star Trek: Three Exciting New Complete Stories
***
The 1970s Power Records LP/comic sets are one of the more obscure continuities out there, but conceivably one of the most nostalgic for those born in a certain time and space. The ubiquitous Alan Dean Foster keeps things on brand with brief adventures that manage a mini message and even make use of the audio medium on occasion. I don't know how well they work as comics, since I only glanced at those for the hilarious ethnic mixups.
Fave: 'The Crier in Emptiness'
Read 2015
**
I've seen Star Wars, for god's sake. But I've never felt the urge to explore the expanded universe by picking up a book, until I found this time-bound curiosity. Foster had already ghostwritten the advance film novelisation but presumably hadn't seen the finished product when he was tasked with writing a potential budget-conscious sequel. Had Episode IV not turned out to be a monumental blockbuster, we may have been treated to this Harrison Ford-free tale of an amorous not-siblings-yet Luke and Leia looking for a magic crystal in a polystyrene cave set, running into as few imaginative creatures as possible along the way. Instead, we got The Empire Strikes Back. It was better.
Read 1998
*
A few show-off literary classics aside, I've never been one for poetry, and children's poetry with its jaunty rhythms and slobbery sibilants is the worst. I checked through this sole collection that my brother received at some point when we were asked to bring a poem into English, but I didn't like anything enough to endorse it.
Read 2020
***
This is how I'd unimaginatively write one of these – give the briefest possible introduction so there's more time to go through the songs in order. Turns out that's not so rewarding when it's your first time listening along and that those band biographies I've moaned about can be useful context.
Read 2023
**
We're all special, provided you have a magical horn too.
Read 2021
*
Tedious instructional to encourage white toddlers not to be prejudiced, apart from against the disabled, conspicuously. I appreciate that she didn't care for it, it was bad enough the first time.
Read 2022
****
The anticipation sees it through and the variety and background extras lend it to re-reads. Nice to get some ovine representation too.
Read 2023
****
User-friendly manual to the product and associated consumer electronics/toys involved.
Read 2022
**
Completing a 4 for £1 offer with something potentially useful for lack of worthwhile frivolity, but it's too advanced for me, let alone a preschooler.
Read 2023
**
We're mainly playing obscure ponyspotting at this point.
Read 2024
***
Not afraid to be slightly creepy, and a nice little message.
Read 2022
***
Sixties Toy Story. She immediately set about roleplaying it, which is always a glowing recommendation.
Read 2024
***
An informative assortment.
Read 2020
Phil Farrand would release his nitpicker's guide in time, when there was a bit more to go on than just the first three years, but this eager X-phile couldn't wait to have a crack at his own, with a little help from lurking on CompuServe forums. With most errors being along the lines of boring production gaffes or unrealistic government processes in a supernatural sci-fi show, it's somewhat less fun that the introduction promises. Then there's the annoying layout, which slips up on every other page, if we're nitpicking here.
Read 2020
****
A convincing defence of James Cameron's derivative feminist killer cyborg B-movie against snobs and people who haven't seen the film since before their lit crit senses were honed to delight in clumsy Biblical symbolism.
Read 2022
***
If this is a series, we're up for more surreal photofit collages. You can have a hamster when the cat dies.
Read 2020***
DC's TNG miniseries was hilariously premature, written by a bad writer who hadn't seen the non-existent episodes yet. The subsequent main run was handled by a prolific franchise writer a couple of years into the show, with the characters acting in-character and plots based on familiar themes, so it's inevitably less worthwhile. This first batch is mainly notable for inhabiting the comparatively rare second-season status quo and for catching the tail end of the '80s with planets populated by Thundercats rejects.
Michael Jan Friedman, Gordon Purcell and Pablo Marcos, Star Trek: The Next Generation Comics Classics – The Battle Within
***
Data's new kid buddy saves the day in a weak two-parter, because Wesley Crusher's aged out of being relatable for the target comic-buying demographic now, then a more mature and substantial four-parter redeems the collection with some memorable scenes. There's also the historical curio value of Picard's juvenile near-death experience being interpreted "wrong" a few years before it was revisited on the show.
Michael Jan Friedman, Pablo Marcos, Ken Penders and Mike Manley, Star Trek: The Next Generation Comics Classics – Maelstrom
**
The (arguably) premature final collection of curtailed DC TNG reprints (less than a quarter of the way through the run, though some arcs were released earlier) is a typically variable and forgettable batch that leans more towards the crap side this time, not helped by increasingly unreliable art that creates plot holes when it's not just colouring uniforms wrong. No worries, I doubt Trekkies are going to notice something minor like that.
Michael Jan Friedman and Peter Krause, Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Star LostRead 1998
***
Dependable Michael Jan Friedman and decent likeness artists kept the TNG cash-in comic somewhat better than it was required to be for a commendable 80 issues. This five-parter would have made a good if very derivative episode when economised down to budget.
Michael Jan Friedman, Peter David and Pablo Marcos, Star Trek: The Modala Imperative
Read 2020**
Back when crossovers were a big deal, this proved one of the more forgettable 25th anniversary cash-ins. DC 'Trek regulars David and Friedman swap series for novelty and have a handle on their characters, but nothing of much interest happens and there are no interesting parallels or Blakeian contrasts across the split narrative, however you sequence it. On the positive side, Pablo Marcos is good at drawing.
Read 2024
**
I somehow forgot how bad these were. Damned nostalgia.
Read 2020
**
I had quite low expectations for this non-canonical sequel to the rather popular two-parter, but its bogstandard alternate universe plot still managed to underwhelm. I'm surprised it never had a collected edition back in the day regardless, Borgs were the Daleks of the '90s.
Michael Jan Friedman, John de Lancie and artists, The Best of Star Trek: The Next GenerationRead 1998
***
Written and drawn while the series was actually on the air this time, DC's authentic TNG Vol. 2 isn't as much fun as the ridiculous Vol. 1, but it passes the time. I read most or all of the collections they put out, if the library had them, but I preferred this random assortment over the longer arcs – though it's not the highest water mark for 'best' I've ever seen.
Michael Jan Friedman, Mike W. Barr and Gordon Purcell, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine / The Next Generation – The Landmark Crossover
Read 1998-2018
**
I read the first part of this story when it featured in the UK Star Trek magazine. The fact that I didn't feel the need for closure over 20-plus years is a testament to its mediocrity. I didn't get many pages into Michael Jan Friedman's Crossover novel either.
Like its contemporary Star Trek Generations, the team-up gimmick is more important than the story. There's an issue's worth of unremarkable plot spread across four comics that are mainly (correctly) about pairing up like characters from TNG and DS9 and fan-ficking some chemistry. We don't learn anything insightful, except that neither of the writers can write Sisko. The DC comics half has better art.
Like its contemporary Star Trek Generations, the team-up gimmick is more important than the story. There's an issue's worth of unremarkable plot spread across four comics that are mainly (correctly) about pairing up like characters from TNG and DS9 and fan-ficking some chemistry. We don't learn anything insightful, except that neither of the writers can write Sisko. The DC comics half has better art.
Read 1997
***
Great episode. Also one of the first Trek vids I bought, so I didn't need a mildly differentiated stopgap novelisation, but I picked it up cheap and read it at my dad's over the weekend, presumably wishing I'd brought the video over.
Michael Jan Friedman based on the story by Jeri Taylor, Star Trek: Voyager – Day of Honor – The Television Episode
**
Likely the most random episode to be credited with a novelisation (usually reserved for two-parters and other special events), this snuck through because a line of dialogue or two legitimised Pocket Books' Klingon crossover event. Or maybe no one could be arsed to write a unique Voyager story for that theme, so they wrote up what they had. Still, it was the chance to "see" a new Voyager episode that the BBC wouldn't broadcast for ages, so I took it.
Michael Jan Friedman, Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Captain's Table – Dujonian's Hoard
Read 1998****
'The Captain's Table' was the only one of Pocket Books' otherwise unimaginative crossover events that I found appealing, and Picard going on a treasure hunt sounded more fun than the other entries. It's still probably the most entertaining Star Trek novel I've read, so I probably should have taken the hint and switched to sea shanties rather than struggling stubbornly through licensed mediocrity.
Read 2022-23
**
Deceptively wholesome cash-in on Frozen fever, with a dash of My Little Pony and probably other ingredients I've been spared so far. The back covers shows they're already desperately milking it as a franchise. I suppose this is what it takes to survive these days.
Mark Frost, Twin Peaks: The Final DossierRead 2019
**
A companion piece to the flawed 2017 season, this mainly catches up on some of the dull backstory that the series or the cast couldn't be bothered with. It's more interesting when clarifying some of the stranger happenings. No explanations though; no need to ruin it.
Read 2009
***
It would be unfair if Fry was a great novelist on top of everything else, so I suppose it's comforting that this tale of upper-crust life was just okay. Except the bit where the kid rapes the horse, that's not okay.
Read 2009
***
I didn't think much of Fry's adult autobiographies when I read them later, but his childhood memoir's more interesting for being so unrelatable that it might as well be fiction.
Read 2013
**
I probably listened to this for the backstage and behind-the-scenes anecdotes, not realising that it ends right when the good stuff and debauchery begins. So I didn't get much out of it.
Stephen Fry, More Fool Me: A Memoir
Read 2015
**
Read 1996
****
At something like £1.99, this thick, full-colour square of '90s space knowledge was great value while also conveniently fitting in your pocket so you'll know what to do if you come across a quasar.
Jim Fusilli, The Beach Boys' Pet SoundsRead 2019
****
An album so universally revered that even I like it, this song-by-song analysis from a veteran music journalist is passionate, astute and interesting. Many lesser writers in this series tend to fall down at that third part.
G
Read 2019
***
It took me about a decade after my first nonplussed listen to appreciate the connoisseur's Nirvana album, but it still wasn't quite my favourite. I was hoping that an insightful commentary might tip that, but instead got a methodical chronicle of studio dates, repetitive statements of intent and overblown near-controversy. Nevermind.
Neil Gaiman, Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion (a.k.a. Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Read 2020****
Misleadingly marketed as some kind of episode guide, later editions (updated by other writers when Neil Gaiman got too big to be a jobbing biographer) would more accurately reframe this as a Douglas Adams biography and career retrospective, from the Footlights and Graham Chapman co-failures through the messy success of Hitchhiker and other curious nuggets. Neil's funny and insightful narration makes for another classic if unusual literary collaboration that's better than it was contractually required to be, but as good as Douglas deserved.
Read 2020
***
This early showcase for Gaiman/McKean covers similar formative traumatic ground to Mr. Punch, without the seaside whimsy. I suppose that could be a sequel, poor sod.
Read 2014
***
The non-illustrious precursor to Sandman, this feels too much like Alan Moore Swamp Thing worship, the elemental even making an apologetic cameo at one point. What should be a tidy and timeless stand-alone is too mired in late-1980s DC continuity to enjoy on those terms. Still, nice art.
Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg, The Sandman, Volume One: Preludes and Nocturnes
Read 2007, re-read 2009, 2018****
If this seven-part miniseries with a relaxing outro was all there'd been of Sandman, it wouldn't be remembered as one of the greatest comics in history, but there would be much lamentation about its premature cancellation just when it was really getting going. If you're reading as a literary snob rather than a comics fan, like most of us have been doing since the 90s, the DC crossovers in these early issues can seem a bit weird, but it's just Gaiman exploring another mythology.
Read 2007, re-read 2020
****
Gaiman & McKean's gloomy artist triptych lurches forward to the end of life for a thoughtful exploration of personal apocalypse. I vaguely remember reading this before, when I was too young and invincible for it to make an impression. Maybe I'll read it again before the end.
Neil Gaiman, Malcolm Jones III and Steve Parkhouse, The Sandman, Volume Two: The Doll's House
Read 2007, re-read 2009, 2018*****
My favourite Sandman arc and up there with my favourite graphic novels (don't even need the word 'graphic' in there), the Dream King steps back until he's needed and lets the metamyth unravel itself.
Every issue's a classic, with legendary entries like 'The Collectors' and 'Men of Good Fortune' back to back. Gaiman still hasn't shaken off the Alan Moore influence, the series would start going downhill when he finally did.
Every issue's a classic, with legendary entries like 'The Collectors' and 'Men of Good Fortune' back to back. Gaiman still hasn't shaken off the Alan Moore influence, the series would start going downhill when he finally did.
Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham, Miracleman Book Four: The Golden Age
****
Alan Moore left this comic in a right state, but Gaiman embraces the disconcerting utopia, telling disparate tales of people, gods and resurrected android replicants trying to find their place in the new world order. By focusing on the little people it's more relatable than Moore's Miracleman became, but without those three volumes of context I imagine it would be pretty impenetrable. It's hard enough when you're following along.
Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Charles Vess and Colleen Doran, The Sandman, Volume Three: Dream Country
Read 2007, re-read 2007, 2009, 2018
*****
This slim volume of stand-alone tales, usually with a lower price reflecting its lower page count, is a good place to start your nocturnal voyage. This is where I came in. If you find it a bit heavygoing and need to keep looking things up, reading the series from the start won't help with that. It's all in the contract.
Faves: 'Calliope,' 'A Dream of a Thousand Cats.'
Worsties: I'm not big on Shakespeare.
Faves: 'Calliope,' 'A Dream of a Thousand Cats.'
Worsties: I'm not big on Shakespeare.
Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Mike Dringenberg and Matt Wagner, The Sandman, Volume Four: Season of Mists
****
This meandering mythology parade is supposedly the popular favourite, but I always find it a bit of a lull. I prefer it when the main character takes more of a backseat, since he's probably the most annoying character in it. The dithering plot could be summarised in a short paragraph, but it's more about the people and/or other we meet along the way and the infernal ambience of one of the best literary Hells. The art might be at its best here, I'll give you that.
Neil Gaiman, Shawn McManus, Colleen Doran and Bryan Talbot, The Sandman, Volume Five: A Game of You
*****
The last of the perfect Sandman arcs, before the series started to buckle under its increasing heft and momentum. I only found out recently that this socially-conscious horror-fantasy, with its strong cast and memorable imagery, is bizarrely considered to be the low point of the series generally, at least by fans at the time. You rad 90s idiots, go and play on your Mega Drives.
Neil Gaiman and artists, The Sandman, Volume Six: Fables and Reflections
Read 2007, re-read 2009, 2018
****
The bloated sibling to Dream Country, quantity excuses inconsistent quality in the least coherent Sandman volume. Sweeping up all the odds and ends between the central arcs and providing non-essential yet valuable context for the remainder of your journey, some of the best and worst of the series can be found here.
Faves: 'Three Septembers and a January,' 'The Parliament of Rooks,' 'Ramadan.'
Worsties: 'August,' 'Soft Places.'
Faves: 'Three Septembers and a January,' 'The Parliament of Rooks,' 'Ramadan.'
Worsties: 'August,' 'Soft Places.'
Read 2007, re-read 2009, 2019
***
Going down to Earth in the humdrum waking world, Gaiman's amorphous tale assumes its final shape and begins its drawn-out death march. It continues to be a modern classic all the way, but the magic has gone.
Neil Gaiman and artists, The Sandman, Volume Eight: Worlds' End
Read 2007, re-read 2009, 2019
****
Your response to this flippant interruption from the escalating storyline might come down to whether you prefer novels or short stories. More deliberately structured and juxtaposed than the earlier assortments, this round of tall tales is the highlight of later Sandman for me, though they're as variable in quality as ever.
Faves: 'A Tale of Two Cities,' 'Hob's Leviathan.'
Worsties: 'Cluracan's Tale.'
Faves: 'A Tale of Two Cities,' 'Hob's Leviathan.'
Worsties: 'Cluracan's Tale.'
Read 2007
***
Sandman's breakout character gets a spin-off that was perhaps inevitable, but at least restrained. Mandatory for 90s goth girls, it didn't do much for me, but would be nice to believe.
Neil Gaiman and artists, The Sandman, Volume Nine: The Kindly Ones
Read 2007, re-read 2019***
Back in the 90s, following this comic series month by month by month by how-many-months-has-it-been-now? must have been a nightmare. Even when you've got it all on tap, this is seriously long-winded, the pattern coming loose in the middle before it's finally knitted together. It's an amalgamation of all that's come before, bringing back the horror of the early years, but somehow unsatisfying. Maybe it lasted too long, all stories have to end some time.
Read 2007, re-read 2014
*****
This wistfully sinister seaside tale is my favourite stand-alone work from Neil. Dave McKean's art can be overkill on the wrong projects, but the writer and artist are in perfect harmony here. That's the way to do it.
Neil Gaiman, Matt Wagner and Teddy Kristiansen, Sandman Midnight Theatre
Read 2019***
If Gaiman's request to revive the Golden Age gasmasked vigilante hadn't been rejected as hopelessly obscure in 1989, we never would have got his alternative take on the namesake. He finally got his chance to (co-)write a Wesley Dodds story towards the end of his own comic's epic run, and the Sandman/Sandman crossover event is a charming if insubstantial curio.
Neil Gaiman and artists, The Sandman, Volume Ten: The Wake
Read 2007, re-read 2019
***
Of course the entire series was building to a pun, how did we not see it coming? The epilogue to the saga is satisfying, but then the series inexplicably carries on for a few further scattered installments that don't accomplish anything and aren't even all that good. Maybe Neil miscounted and had to satisfy his record contract with hasty B-sides.
Faves: The Wake.
Worsties: The rest.
Faves: The Wake.
Worsties: The rest.
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere: Author's Preferred Text
Read 2019
*****
I didn't know what to make of this socially-conscious urban-fantasy horror-comedy when I watched the TV version as a 11-year-old. I had to step through the threshold of adult responsibilities and tedium before I could appreciate Gaiman's fairy tale for dejected grown-ups, though I enjoyed the relentless literal-minded puns even before I saw a Tube map in real life.
It wasn't any kind of surprise to confirm that – like Hitchhiker's and possibly Red Dwarf – the book was the definitive version, but the unshakeable mental images of the cast proved to be a bonus rather than a hindrance. Fortunately though, my imagination wasn't similarly constrained by a BBC budget elsewhere.
Read 2019
***
I gave up on this on my first attempt, and as a full-length work in the style of my least favourite bits of Sandman, it had its work cut out to win me over. It almost got there in the end, but beneath the self-aware irony it's just an overlong fairy tale with ten stock ideas for every fresh one.
Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions / Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
****
More than a decade on, I have a foggy sense of these stories and how they made me feel without remembering too many specifics, so they'd be well worth reading again. I remember preferring Fragile Things overall. The perpetually looping hell was my favourite.
Read 2021
***
Scanning along with the episode, it was interesting to see how minimal the alterations were from script to screen. Not as interesting as if it had gone the other way, of course. Maybe one day he'll publish his Doctor Who scripts.
Read 2019
Far East pastiche tended to make for my least favourite Sandman issues, so I opted out of this tenth anniversary prose supplement on previous readthroughs of the series. This time around, ignoring a bonus Sandman story seemed absurd, especially when it's paired with such enchanting art. Inevitably, it turned out to be lovely.
I only learned in the afterword that the story wasn't Gaiman's invention, but rather a fairly straight retelling of a specific folk tale that just happened to feature uncanny Sandman parallels. This made me simultaneously appreciate it less and more.
Read 2008, re-read 2019
***
Coming to gateway Gaiman after his less grounded works, I wasn't so taken with his postmodern Americanized deities. I appreciate the theological psychogeography, and he's still all about the puns, but one foot's planted too firmly in reality to ascend to his former heights and it drags. Gaiman's Fisher King.
Neil Gaiman, Coraline
***
It might have been a childhood favourite alongside the similarly eerie The Witches if I'd been born a decade later or found a time portal. Some of the imagery is delightfully twisted in the way the best kids' fiction is, balanced by empowering life lessons and silly comic relief where the book loses its universal appeal and becomes something older readers can appreciate on young readers' behalf instead.
Read 2007
***
We didn't really need more Sandman, but Neil felt like writing some and he gathered some nice artists together for these variations on seven eternal themes.
Read 2012, re-read 2019
*****
I didn't realise this was an American Gods spin-off the first time around. Smaller in scope and a lot less serious, it's a much funner read that feels more in tune with Neverwhere or even Good Omens. Probably his easiest to overlook and probably my favourite.
Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
**
Even if I hadn't been 23 when it was published and 33 when I got around to reading it, I don't imagine I would have been much more enthralled with this morbildungsroman as a boy. I'm all for gothic atmosphere, it's just too slow. The illustrations were boring too, but I haven't seen the originals, only the special version made for pathetic adults who are ashamed of the things they like.
Read 2021
***
Neil Gaiman drops back into comics to pay his predictable respects, padded out with his Bat miscellany. Not the classic it wants to be.
Read 2021
***
It's a bit early to creep her out with Coraline (though her cousin was obsessed with the film when she wasn't much older), but this interactive sneezalong was a fast favourite. Neil's put in the work to earn his celebrity children's author retirement more than most.
****
I don't know why Neil went off novels for a while, but this insubstantial splash helped to keep things afloat until the Neverwhere sequel hopefully rides in on a new wave. Coraline for grown-ups, Neil evokes the childhood experience so nostalgically that I misremembered the book being a lot sweeter and less ghoulish than it really is. The dark-fantasy elements are all a bit rote by now and not as noteworthy as that backdrop.
Read 2021
**
I was going to get her this one ahead of preschool, but the library gave us an off-season preview. It was disappointingly down to earth after the flight of fancy of his day at the beach, taking the worthy motivational route instead. It might prove useful, but it's not much fun.
Read 2015
****
It's been a few years since I read/listened-to Fragile Things, my favourite of Gaiman's then-two collections of short stories and miscellany, but I have a feeling this new one's even better.
Even if you haven't already come across some of its contents by following his work over the last decade or just picking up one of the various anthologies they were originally written for (I'd already read the Doctor Who one, and I think he read the living statue one at an Amanda Palmer gig), there won't be much that's surprising in this reliable assortment of SF/fantasy/horror, stylistic tributes, twisted fairy tales, urban fantasy and other labels I've seen applied over the years and imagine I know what they mean.
Even if you haven't already come across some of its contents by following his work over the last decade or just picking up one of the various anthologies they were originally written for (I'd already read the Doctor Who one, and I think he read the living statue one at an Amanda Palmer gig), there won't be much that's surprising in this reliable assortment of SF/fantasy/horror, stylistic tributes, twisted fairy tales, urban fantasy and other labels I've seen applied over the years and imagine I know what they mean.
Faves: 'The Thing About Cassandra,' 'Orange,' 'The Case of Death and Honey.'
Worsties: The dainty filler is pleasant, but doesn't stand a chance.
Read 2021
***
A more imaginative and surreal sequel for kids growing up with the series in real time. He's grooming his future readers and I'm all for it.
Neil Gaiman and J. H. Williams III, The Sandman: Overture
Read 2015
***
Read 2015
Joining in with the great 90s cult resurgence, I'm as happy to see Sandman made a strictly limited comeback as I am X-Files, Twin Peaks and Faith No More. They were all a bit worn out by the end, so there's no pristine legacy to tarnish – just go for it. As expected, the prequel/sequel is more in line with the mystical faff of the series' later years than its horror origins, and the art is steeped in the prestige the brand demands because you can't just draw Sandman like a comic any more, apparently. It's full of itself, but less so than The Wake and Endless Nights.
****
While most hacks marked the 30th anniversary of the classic trilogy by tediously evaluating its "predictions" of what 2015's technology and culture would be like and failing to realise it's a comedy, this dedicated fan took an in-depth look at the whole thing. Packed with new, exclusive interviews with notoriously reticent cast and crew, it's the definitive special feature and the second greatest BTTF-related book after George Gipe's mental novelisation.
Read 2023
**
Her main takeaway amid the misinformation was learning about chameleons, but she was too scared to check out a real one.
Read 1996
**
Apparently the most obscure thing I've ever read, I was drawn to this book by its cover (which doesn't exist on the internet) of a roller-skating skull. A collection of amateur comic strips written for radio, it was as good as that description suggests, but it included words like 'git' and 'knackered,' so I enjoyed it on that level when I was ten.
Read 2023
**
It didn't leave me hungry for more chili-dog-flavoured eco-fairytale Looney Tunes action, but the classic British comic would fare even worse if I only had the formative stuff to go on.
Fhiona Galloway, What Do Animals Do All Day?: Tiger / Penguin
**
It's weird to me when these books that dispense actual facts don't combine them with photos or lifelike drawings. White tigers might as well be as mythical as unicorns.
Read 2022
***
Sit still and don't go into caves with sharp teeth. She's got a trampoline, so we don't deal with these problems.
Read 2015
**
TV books are generally about squeezing money out of fans with lazy or recycled material, but this one's at least up-front about it. The contrived premise for its in-universe existence – a publishing agent with a substance abuse problem leaves a sensitive contract in a bar run by vain psychopaths who jump at the chance to make a quick buck and explain why they're so great – is plausible as an average episode. More plausible than the Red Dwarf crew or the Local Shopkeepers keeping a diary filled with catchphrases and publicity stills anyway. It's only when you get past the apologetic preface from HarperCollins (the best part) that this starts to break down. They wouldn't actually bother to do the work. Even Charlie's illiterate hieroglyphics are more legible than they have a right to be.
Read 2020
***
I don't have the patience to put this wacky professor's theory to the test, but it turns out I'm doing some of these instinctively anyway.
Read 1996
***
Gardner's accurate transcription of the second film lacks the uncanny pre-production strangeness and authorial embellishments of George Gipe's legendary novelisation of the first one, so it's better and worse at the same time. Having only seen the pre-watershed BBC edit of Part II at the time, this was where I learned that Strickland-A wasn't threatening to shoot Marty in his "guts" after all.
Read 2020
**
Some timeless tips and old-school cheese packaged with the dubious USP of urgency. I didn't sign up to the course he kept pushing, so he can't be that good.
Read 2012
***
One to read when you're excitedly counting down the days to your tropical getaway, rather than two years in when you're burnt out and taking paradise for granted. I had great times on islands, but was never free or free-spirited enough to seek out a true escape like this, what with having to spend an hour or two writing about blockout blinds and business broadband every day.
Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
Read 2015
***
For most of my years at the Dingle C.P. School, a reproduction of this ominous book cover loomed over the main hall, painted by pupils in some previous year or other. I thought it was amazing – look at it! – but never bothered to check out the source. Turns out it's a local(ish)-interest children's fantasy novel set in the real geography around Alderley Edge in Chester. It sadly didn't make it onto the reading list of any of my classes, but I got there in the end.
Xenophobic county pride aside (still 18 miles away from that school hall, but you wouldn't want to set a story in Crewe), it's not exactly groundbreaking with its stock wizards, goblins, knights, dwarfs, witches and hooded scary thing, but it might be the best six-part Children's BBC drama never made. I could smell the cliffhangers.
Read 2019
***
One of the only books set in rural, fictionalised Cheshire that's not written by Alan Garner, I found the lack of local references disappointing. These episodes from the cloistered matriarchy could have been set anywhere.
John Gaskin, The Long Retreating Day: Tales of Twilight and Borderlands
***
"It's comforting and reassuring. Antiquity safe and tested. You always seemed more at ease in another age."
Wilfully old-fashioned tales of neurotic academics experiencing vague unease. The best could be mistaken for an M. R. James or Robert Aickman. Others are so obscure, they're barely there.
Wilfully old-fashioned tales of neurotic academics experiencing vague unease. The best could be mistaken for an M. R. James or Robert Aickman. Others are so obscure, they're barely there.
Fave: 'Road Closed'
Read 2020
***
The harsh context to and poetic appreciation of what's apparently a defining hip hop album, before that was spoiled. It's good to get some grounding in genres I don't normally like, or I'd end up like that pathetic TIME review for nervous honkies, calling it "leisurely paced, with amiable melodies."
Mark Gatiss, The Devil in Amber
Read 2015
I should have gone for an authentic noir/occult/sexist spy thriller rather than just another affectionate homage, but this also helps out in my side quest of consuming everything Mark Gatiss has ever done, even if that means disappointment more often than not. At least he reads the audiobook himself, so our smug hero is a bit more tolerable. I'm pretty sure I read the previous book in this series years ago, but I can't remember much about it. There's a third book too, so hopefully I'll digest and forget the whole saga before the decade's out.
Read 2023
***
A worthwhile literary expansion of one of those middling episodes destined to be only vaguely remembered, padded out with a bonus prologue.
Read 2007
***
An obscure and wordy French Romantic horror novel, it's also quite short, which sealed the deal. With refreshing ambiguity, the sceptical character and reader are left to decide whether the events that transpired were coincidence or something more sinister.
Read 2023
*****
Enough life has passed that my friend's vainly/insightfully self-published hardback blog was a joy to revisit, having been along for that ride as parallel observer, snarky commenter (see earlier this sentence) and occasional special guest star.
Read 2020
****
If ever a book wanted to be a documentary and almost convinced me I actually watched it, it's this chronicle of a random band's moderate rise and fall and humdrum rock 'n' roll lifestyle clarified by interviews with the gentlemen themselves. He only breaks the spell when he has to give a brief, passionate rundown of each track to tick my box.
Read 2020
**
The most worthlessly preemptive programme guide I've come across, this covers all of half a season of The X-Files' forgotten sister show, treating each instalment as a launching pad for thematic digressions on killers, conspiracies and mythology rather than any behind-the-scenes insights. Still, "First."
Read 2021
**
The abruptly final half-season guide before the writer, the publisher or the readers lost interest (probably all three), the promise of forensic analysis of a developing series falls short when entire episodes are ignored for digressions on serial killers and other tangentially related topics.
Read 2016
***
Now that the war's over, it's good to be getting back to some good, honest star trekking, though I was oddly disappointed that this week's imaginative aliens would have been impossible to realise under the limitations of a late 90s TV budget. Hopefully there'll be less of this embracing the freedom of the format in the future, and I can imagine Michael Westmore gluing bumpy foreheads to American actors as usual. We're not here for proper sci-fi, know your audience.
I don't know why this one's double the usual length, but I'm surprised Pocket Books didn't just cut it down the spine or reshuffle the chapters of these two separate, parallel plots to make this a five-book series rather than four. That would mean the hassle of awkwardly Photoshopping another cover, I guess.
I don't know why this one's double the usual length, but I'm surprised Pocket Books didn't just cut it down the spine or reshuffle the chapters of these two separate, parallel plots to make this a five-book series rather than four. That would mean the hassle of awkwardly Photoshopping another cover, I guess.
Gary Gerani and Robert V. Conte, Star Wars: The Original Topps Trading Card Series, Volume One
***
Maybe best known today for featuring Threepio's infamous full-on robot chubby, this archive captures the original wave of fanaticism, before sequels and a franchise diminished the wonder and cemented terminology and spellings. As with other books in the series, the commentary is a mix of relevant insights and rambling digressions.
Read 2020
***
I didn't need quite this much scientific and anecdotal evidence to persuade me to follow my instincts, but the non-controversial title is determined to justify itself. Parents hoping for handy blog-style bullet points will have to go through and make their own. Don't be a Victorian is a good start.
Read 2019
****
There's no improving on Heinlein's concise closed circuit, but this Star Trek writer's looser take on self-perpetuating time jaunts is significant for different reasons as he voyages where no man has gone before. No doubt a few paperbacks were thrown at the bin half-way through by science fiction fans whose imaginations turned out to have quite narrow horizons after all.
Read 1997
**
David Gerrold wrote one of the most fun Star Trek episodes, but his history of the series (up to Search for Spock) is pretty dry. This was the first book where I saw "†" used for footnotes. That's the most interesting thing about it.
Dominic Gettins, How to Write Great Copy: Learn the Unwritten Rules of Copywriting (a.k.a. The Unwritten Rules of Copywriting)
Read 2020***
If I'd known this was almost squarely aimed at the modern day Mad Men (& Women) trying to come up with a killer slogan, I wouldn't have bothered, but it's always good to go through the general rules again. Though I'd say they're not 'unwritten' if they were already written down in the first edition and in most other copywriting books. Plenty of UK-centric examples to show American readers what that feels like.
Read 2020
****
Mysterious, ancient artefacts, a smouldering volcanic island, mutiny, shipwreck, scurvy pirates, a sea monster and old-school diving gear, this packs a hell of a lot into a short, cliffhanger-led serial. It's a shame it wasn't a longer run. Or a film!
Read 2003
***
I liked Fear Factory and The Matrix, but the cyberpunk root directory didn't do much for me, I can't remember if I finished it. If I'd known that Gibson wrote the episode that made me quit The X-Files for good, I wouldn't have bothered.
Read 2019
**
I didn't think much of Neuromancer as a teenager, but thought I might have grown into it, or that its retro future might appear more charming with further vintage. The sequel left me similarly cold, maybe because I lost track of what was going on fairly early. This new-fangled cyberpunk moves too fast for me.
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
Read 2019
****
When the pioneers of cyberpunk linked their beige '80s computers across the ocean to collaborate on a novel in green text, few would have expected the dot-matrix-printed result to be a vague Victorian alt-history mystery that would kick off another sub-genre for less imaginative people to ruin.
With every machine-punched detail and tidal ripple obsessed over, the authors introduce a vivid setting that they're too classy to dilute with sequels or satisfactory conclusions. This is the sort of thing I've tried to write before giving in to laziness and insecurity. Better to read the more competent things that already exist.
With every machine-punched detail and tidal ripple obsessed over, the authors introduce a vivid setting that they're too classy to dilute with sequels or satisfactory conclusions. This is the sort of thing I've tried to write before giving in to laziness and insecurity. Better to read the more competent things that already exist.
William Gibson and Johnnie Christmas, William Gibson's Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay
**
Alien³ has a bad reputation, centred around it not being very good. Its overriding grimness means that not even the nostalgia of it being the first 18-certificate film I was excitingly allowed to watch more than a decade early doesn't give me any fondness for it. I didn't expect William Gibson's rejected pitch to be any better, and with its dull and formulaic plot and bizarre lack of Ripley not excused by the other returning characters, it's probably worse. Still, it's always satisfying to see these curious artefacts unearthed and presented authentically in spite of taste.
Read 2014
****
It'd be better without the artist's diary consuming valuable page, but if your appreciation of Biomechanics only extends as far as Xenomorphs, this is the only Giger book you need.
Read 2003
****
A basic, budget overview of Giger's works for films, books and album covers, this could be the starting point for further adventures in biomechanics, or it could be all you need to get it out of your system. Not in that way. It's only erotic if you're weird.
Read 2022
****
Bigs up the subtly subversive mainstream romcom and reveals the alternately weirder and pandering alternatives we were spared.
Read 1998
***
Having started and abandoned a fair few grown-up Star Trek novels, I tried out this patronising one for kids, starring the two slightly annoying teenage characters from DS9, and found it much more readable. This was book 9; I went back to the beginning with The Star Ghost but couldn't get through it. Too childish.
Read 2024
***
Long-winded fan poem. Presumably good?
Read 2015
*
Another mediocre TV tie-in from the good people who brought you genocidal Kirk and emotional Spock, this time I haven't even seen the parent series. That's to be expected, as it apparently didn't last much longer than this comic, both issues of which are reprinted for undeserved posterity along with some much nicer promotional art and misguided publicity materials for the show. As I followed these two hapless "scientists" on their tumbles through invariably massively significant moments in time, running, shouting and punching folks all over the place as they try to interfere with the course of history on a whim regardless of the consequences, I was gradually able to find it funny. It's the only way to make it through. Does not feature dinosaurs.
Read 2020
***
Primarily an advert for his podcast, this goes over well-known trivia from the films before exploring the lesser-discussed expanded universe of cartoons, comics, rides, musicals and other works of minimal value tellingly described as "content."
Read 2016
***
This chronological atlas of beasties was informative, comprehensive and disappointingly dull. It reminded me of the long essays on silly subjects I cheekily got away with at university, which were similarly lacking in character and supported entirely by references to earlier, better studies with just a few of my own reckonings.
I guess what I really wanted was an illustrated A-Z like last year's Encyclopedia of Demons. How am I supposed to choose my fave and worstie beasties when you keep interrupting with musings on evolutionary psychology? I did like the strict but arbitrary rules he imposed on himself though: like not counting ghosts and zombies because they're too human, but Jekyll & Hydes are okay.
Henry Gilroy and Rodolfo Damaggio based on the story by George Lucas, Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom MenaceRead 1999
**
I was never a big Star Wars fan, only really liking the first two, so while I didn't escape Phantomania entirely, I didn't go so far as to actually go and see the much-hyped film. Not until we rented it on video, a year or so after I read it in bland comic form. It wasn't very good, was it?
Read 2022
***
This infamous early draft adaptation is an interesting glimpse into a parallel universe, but there's no way the screenplay was ever this relentlessly over-explained. It should really have Eric Stoltz on the cover.
Read 2020***
The selective reprint retrospective doesn't run chronologically, instead choosing to lead with the free-reign corporate commission that produced the strangest car advert in history. The introductions explaining his creative process really skirt around the drugs.
Faves: 'The Repairmen' & 'Upon a Star (A Citroën Cruise).'
Read 2020
****
It would be too entitled to expect Moebius to write as well as he draws. These darkly comic fantasies get by on mood and spectacle, the adventures of his pterodactyl-riding warrior-rapist dispensing with text altogether.
Faves: 'Arzach,' 'The Detour.'
Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Mœbius 3: The Airtight Garage
Read 2020**
Art: ****
Plot:
The sort of freeform nonsense you'd produce at 12 to amuse yourself, but better drawn and for a bewildered audience, even after George Lucas-style revisions that were supposed to make it more coherent.
Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Dan O'Bannon and Philippe Druillet, Mœbius 4: The Long Tomorrow and Other Science Fiction Stories
Read 2020***
Best treated as detailed storyboards for awe-inspiring matte paintings and expensive model shots for films that don't exist, kids will also appreciate the hardcore sex and gore. There was at least one 2000 AD style twist I enjoyed, but those directors didn't hire Mœbius for the quality of his non-existent scripts.
Faves: 'The Long Tomorrow' & 'Blackbeard and the Pirate Brain.'
Jean "Moebius" Giraud and Philippe Druillet, Mœbius 5: The Gardens of Aedena
Read 2020***
These self-introduced retrospectives seemingly went to the artist's head and gave him the self belief needed to manoeuvre himself right up his own arse and conceive the Mœbius Universe. That's his theory, anyway – the main story here's as freestyle as ever, but it's a pleasant pastoral detox from the zany dystopias. Other stories are a crime pastiche and Fantastic Voyage with AIDS; the method behind the curation eludes me sometimes.
Fave: 'The Gardens of Aedena.'
Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Mœbius 6: Pharagonesia and Other Strange Stories
Read 2020***
By Moebius' standards, these stories aren't any stranger than usual, one of them being depressingly down to Earth, but I'd struggle to come up with an overarching theme too. As ever, the silent ones are the most interesting.
Faves: 'Shore Leave on Pharagonesia,' 'Absoluten Calfeutrail.'
Worsties: 'The Hunt for the Vacationing Frenchman,' 'The Apple Pie.'
Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Mœbius 0: The Horny Goof and Other Underground Stories
Read 2020**
A collection of pre-Metal Hurlant juvenilia (in tone, not age), coloured in for posterity it doesn't deserve, but there'll be a few people who absolutely love his self-described blend of "bawdy humour and fairly sophisticated science-fiction." Maybe these deluded liner notes have been taking the piss all along and the sarcasm just didn't translate well.
Read 2020
**
Part three in the philosophical sci-fi trilogy that began as a lavish car advert, Moebius' subterranean dystopia has classic Twilight Zone charm, but it's not especially original or interesting. Better than his mad shit like The Airtight Garage though.
Read 2020
*
Scraping the gun barrel of Mœbius' Collected Fantasies, his art for a fellow Frenchman's boring American Civil War antiparable is unrecognisable in its realism and lack of zest. Too coy to even show blood, this must have looked really out of place amid the fantastic landscapes, tits and gore of other Heavy Metal strips.
Jean "Moebius" Giraud and Alexandro Jodorowsky, Mœbius ½: The Early Moebius and Other Humorous Stories
Read 2020*
These collections can't have been doing too poorly if they could scrape the barrel this clean. Going even further back than the previous early years and retroactivrly zeroed volumes, this presents Moebius' vintage "funnies," which are as humorous as is conventional for the form. It can't even fall back on nice art or imaginative zaniness this time, looking more like Viz.
Read 2020
***
I don't know (i.e. care) if the saga continued after these numbered volumes that I only stuck with for completion's sake. The content hasn't always been great, but it's been interesting to see his progression and phases over the decades. This one's even coherent with the earlier parts of the story!
Read 1995
**
An unremarkable kids' book I only read because I liked its cartoony cover. This might have been the first book I ever reviewed, as a required school activity before I started doing them for fun.
Read 2023
**
Like regrettably clicking 'Read more' on a random punk album's YouTube comments.
Read 2023
**
Stiff flaps in the new library book ironically made it harder work than actual baking.
Read 2021-23
**
This little guy always jumped out at her from the library shelves and these were some of the first longer books she sat through, so kudos to the artist.
Read 2024
*
Presumably a parody of objectively, obliviously worthless self-published fanfic, but done so well in that regard that it's hard to tell.
Read 2020
***
Explores the multi-faceted musical, poetic and social influences that blended to make a cutting-edge, depressing and unlistenable opera.
Read 2020
***
Presents the evidence that octopuses and their invertebrate brethren are smart and have feelings as if that's a shocking game changer. Arbitrary cut-off points for empathy are bizarre.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part One
Read 2015
***
I was probably the only one in my A-level English lit class who found Marlowe's Doctor Faustus a pleasure rather than an archaic chore. Meanwhile over in Modern Foreign Languages, Herr Thunder was adamant that Deutschland's version was the superior, so I finally put it to the test 12 years later... ("A pleasure," right, but I'm still not likely to read a 200-year-old German play unless I've imposed some deranged limitations on my free time).
I think everybody's right. Top marks for making the English translation actually rhyme, whoever did that. That must have been a fun year.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part Two
**
Decades after his popular, some would say definitive take on the Faust fable (I like Švankmajer's better), Goethe released a divisive sequel that spends most of its time retreading Greek myths. To the extent that you'd be better off just reading those instead. Even the vanilla Librivox recording lasts over seven hours – how long was this damned play? Sorry, Herr Thunder, I like the English one better.
Read 2002
****
My brother had this. Rather than being a tacky cash-in, it turned out to be a valuable introduction to the horror canon for clueless goths, setting me on course for Expressionist vampires and Hammer horrors.
William Golding, The Spire
Read 2018
**
Read 2022
Pippa Goodhart and Nick Sharratt, Just Imagine (a.k.a. You Choose Your Dreams)
Pippa Goodhart and Nick Sharratt, You Choose in Space / Fairy Tales / Christmas
Pippa Goodhart and Augusta Kirkwood, Happy Sad
Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson (story by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett), Alien: The Illustrated Story
Read 2019
****
Archie Goodwin and Steve Ditko, Creepy Presents: Steve Ditko
Read 2015
**
Faves: 'Collector's Edition!', 'Second Chance!'
Worsties: 'Room With a View!', 'Black Magic!', 'Demon Sword!'
Mel Gordon, Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin (Expanded Edition)
Read 2015
****
Robert S. C. Gordon, Bicycle Thieves
Read 2020
***
Edward Gorey, Amphigorey: Fifteen Books by Edward Gorey
Read 2015
***
Faves: The Object-Lesson, The West Wing.
Worsties: The Listing Attic, The Sinking Spell.
Maxim Gorky, Twenty-Six and One and Other Stories (a.k.a. Twenty-Six Men and a Girl)
Read 2019
****
Fave: 'Twenty-Six and One.'
Worstie: 'Tchelkache.'
Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace, Are You Dave Gorman?
Read 2003
*****
Read 2018
**
Style is usually enough to win me over for want of substance, but this just bored me throughout. Books that trap me in someone's deranged mind can go either way, and I found the hubristic Dean intolerable. Which is the point, but I just wanted to get it over with. It's clever, but so are a lot of things I'm not interested in reading.
Pippa Goodhart and Nick Sharratt, You Choose
****
We'd read the Peppa Pig bastardisation previously, and it unsurprisingly works better without awkwardly-appropriated branding. She has plenty of multiple choice in her daily life already, from breakfasts to playgrounds and library books, but she seemed to enjoy making endless inconsequential decisions with no apparent logic. It's a shame they don't conglomerate into a unique story at the end, but it's not like it's on a computer, is it? Hang on, maybe that's my job.
Read 2022
**
The appropriately laid-back sibling to You Choose, I could have done with more lucidity and less of the observing other people's dreams.
Read 2022-23
***
These genre and seasonal variants are a bit cynically contrived, but she found them fun enough for a couple of goes around.
Read 2024
**
A thoughtful feelings story, shame it has to make up words.
Read 2019****
From flying industrial cathedrals to innuendo-strewn biomechanics, I've always been more in love with Alien's production design than the story. This efficient adaptation captures all of that in rough storyboard sketches, while editing the action down to fit a 30-minute slot with adverts. Alongside Alan Dean Foster's highly-regarded novelisation, a screencaps storybook, souvenir magazine and The Book of Alien, pre-VHS Alien fans were well looked after.
Archie Goodwin and Steve Ditko, Creepy Presents: Steve Ditko
Read 2015
**
Continuing my dark voyage of false nostalgia through the pages of Creepy and Eerie sorted by artist, this was a less gratifying round from a more mainstream figure, though it's interesting to see the co-creator of Spider-Man struggling to adjust his style to the indie publisher's cheap black and white presses. His best efforts use intricate cross-hatching, his laziest look like they're done in felt tip. The stories are nearly all written by editor Archie Goodwin rather than freelance wild cards, and are thus repetitively on-brand.
Faves: 'Collector's Edition!', 'Second Chance!'
Worsties: 'Room With a View!', 'Black Magic!', 'Demon Sword!'
Mel Gordon, Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin (Expanded Edition)
****
I studied Weimar Germany in GCSE history, but for some reason the syllabus didn't cover Berlin's debauched cabarets, stratified prostitution or rampant paedophilia. Since the target audience is presumably those who find Nazis kinky, the chronicler makes no apology for glamourising depravity, and as usual the commentary is less valuable than the scrapbook of art and photos, underground 'zines and alternative travel guides.
Read 2020
***
He draws as much as he can out of a film about nothing, but this joins Casablanca as another superlative classic I don't get. Maybe the relatable ordeal hit too close to home. You have to let these things go.
Edward Gorey, Amphigorey: Fifteen Books by Edward Gorey
Read 2015
***
A space-saving compendium of short illustrated books, a couple of which are suitable for children, the rest decidedly not. Not because they're always risque, I just can't imagine the duller tales and awkwardly rhymed verse about idle arosticrats holding their interest. I only persevered because of the lovely cross-hatching. And it's worth it, since every once in a while a gleefully morbid or cryptically deranged one comes along.
Faves: The Object-Lesson, The West Wing.
Worsties: The Listing Attic, The Sinking Spell.
Maxim Gorky, Twenty-Six and One and Other Stories (a.k.a. Twenty-Six Men and a Girl)
****
I prefer to take works on their own merits rather than investigate the authenticity of the author's experience, but the preface made it clear that these three tales of the daily struggle and twats who opt to make it worse are more or less autobiographical. Their elegance keeps it from being a total bummer.
Fave: 'Twenty-Six and One.'
Worstie: 'Tchelkache.'
Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace, Are You Dave Gorman?
Read 2003*****
A super-low-budget acquired-taste comedy tucked away in the BBC schedule, The Dave Gorman Collection was naturally going to be a favourite, and the book version might be even better, turning a solo show into a semi-antagonistic double act. Released at exactly the right time – when search engines and email encouraged extravagant globetrotting, but before social networks would have rendered the whole thing [even more] pointless – it's a satisfying millennial time capsule.
Dave Gorman, Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure
Read 2004
***
Dave Gorman, Dave Gorman vs. the Rest of the World: Whatever the Game — Dave Takes on All Comers!
Read 2019
****
Dave Gorman, Too Much Information... or Can Everyone Just Shut Up for a Moment, Some of Us Are Trying to Think
Read 2015
***
René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, Asterix and the Golden Sickle
Read 1997
***
James Goss, Doctor Who: Dead of Winter
Read 2019
***
James Goss, Doctor Who: The Blood Cell
Read 2014
***
Arturo Graf, Art of the Devil
Read 2014
***
Oakley Graham, Bradley Hunt and Lauren Ellis, 555 Sticker Fun: Horses and Unicorns
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
David Grann, The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon (a.k.a. A Tale of Deadly Obsession)
Read 2019
***
Alan Grant and Arthur Ranson, Mazeworld
Charles L. Grant, The X-Files: Goblins
Charles L. Grant, The X-Files: Whirlwind
John Grant, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Grant Naylor, Red Dwarf
Read 1997 etc., re-read 2018, 2019-21
Grant Naylor, Better Than Life
Read 1997 etc., re-read 2018, 2021
Grant Naylor, Red Dwarf: Primordial Soup – The Least Worst Scripts
Read 1998, re-read 2022
****
Rob Grant, Backwards
Read 1997, re-read 2018, 2021
**
Paul Groves and Edward McLachlan, Bangers & Mash: Eggs Is Eggs / Ghost Boast
Read 1991
***
Louis Growell and Chris Jevons, Jack and the Giant Tantrum
Lady Charlotte Guest trans, The Mabinogion, Volume 1
Read 2015
**
Ensley F. Guffey and K. Dale Koontz, Wanna Cook?: The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad
Read 2020
****
Ensley F. Guffey and K. Dale Koontz, A Dream Given Form: The Unofficial Guide to the Universe of Babylon 5
Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology
Read 2015
****
Faves: Belphegor, the personification of misogyny who appears in the form of a phallus and offers you his excrement, Despite all this, he is repulsed by sex. There's a complex character for you.
Worsties: Rhyx Axesbuth, who causes piles. Prhyk.
Adam and Charlotte Guillain and Garry Parsons, Molly's Magic Wardrobe: Search for the Fairy Star / The Mermaid Mission
David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars
Read 2003
**
Mark Haddon, Agent Z and the Penguin from Mars
Read 1996
**
Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Read 2011
****
Adele J. Haft, Jane G. White and Robert J. White, The Key to The Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages
Read 2020
**
Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters
Read 2015
**
Jennifer Hallissy, The Write Start: A Guide to Nurturing Writing at Every Stage, from Scribbling to Forming Letters and Writing Stories
Read 2020
**
Smriti Halls and Ali Pye, Who Are You?
Smriti Halls and Erika Meza, Stop! That's Not My Story!
Larry Hama and Michael Golden, Bucky O'Hare
Emily Hamilton, The Yawnicorn
Kenneth Hamilton, Liszt: Sonata in B Minor
Read 2020
**
Sam Hamm and Joe Quiñones, Batman '89
Dashiell Hammett, The Continental Op: The Complete Case Files
Read 2017
****
Ranking Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest
Read 2017
****
Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse
Read 2017
***
Paul Hammond, L'Âge d'or
Knut Hamsun, Hunger
Read 2015
***
Martin Handford, Where's Wally? series
Read 2004
***
Dave's wacky quests had diminishing returns for me, after his classic namesake odyssey and Important Astrology Experiment that few people seem to regard as highly as I did. The book adaptation also misses the dual voices of the previous one, and the China 'gag' was just irritating.
Dave Gorman, Dave Gorman vs. the Rest of the World: Whatever the Game — Dave Takes on All Comers!
****
Dave's off on another themed odyssey (what's he like!), but this time he's in it for the sheer fun (wouldn't say no to a book deal, mind) and with less rigid rules (except for all the complicated rules). An optional side quest in the Gorman canon, he doesn't amusingly suffer or meet as many dangerous weirdos as you might hope, but there's still one or two. And not as much fun as playing a game, obviously.
Dave Gorman, Too Much Information... or Can Everyone Just Shut Up for a Moment, Some of Us Are Trying to Think
Read 2015
***
I've read enough flimsy "What's All That About?" paperbacks from stand-ups to recognise a patchwork of bits from their themed tour shows and obscure Dave channel series when I see one, even if in this case I haven't seen those. I enjoyed the reckless whimsy of Dave Gorman's early years, but not so much the vexed, premature old man persona he's adopted since. I'm not on social networks and haven't seen most of the trends and TV adverts that were getting his goat c.2013, but even with my sheltered experience it seemed pretty understandable What All That was About. Annoying and symptomatic of the end times, sure, but not baffling dilemmas for someone who's been along for the internet ride. Even the more surprising examples were cleared up or roundly debunked with a quick google, so it's in no way authoritative and not amazingly funny either. Just good-ish.
Oh, I forgot, I'm supposed to seamlessly integrate badger glove puppets into this write-up, so there's that. Can you can tell I'm in marketing?
Oh, I forgot, I'm supposed to seamlessly integrate badger glove puppets into this write-up, so there's that. Can you can tell I'm in marketing?
Read 1997
***
It was a nice enough quest story, but I wasn't enough of a military history buff or Warhammer guy to really get into the series.
Read 2019
***
Goss can be relied on to shake things up, and this epistolary tale told in multiple unreliable voices mucks around in ways that wouldn't work on TV or audio, which is more than I expect. A minimalist historical horror, it fits well thematically with the parallel sixth series.
Read 2014
***
Cash-in fan fic justifies itself when it turns out better than most of the televised episodes produced that year. This is pretty good, though in fairness the series had been going downhill for a while, so the bar wasn't that high.
Read 2014
***
Not literally (He doesn't exist) and not a celebration of His infernal works. Instead, it's a decent assortment of the usual public domain painters, sadly with no 1980s album covers in sight. The full-page prints are the main draw, but some bloke also natters on about Beelzebub in-between so they can pretend it's a proper book.
Read 2022
**
As deceptively good value as any sticker book mainly padded out with the tiny, boring stickers she was never going to bother with.
Read 2022
***
Wodehouse from the riverbank. A bit twee without substantial nostalgic support.
Read 2019***
I haven't read the original New Yorker article that was expanded to book length, but the padding's still clear. Grann's own Amazonian adventure is intermittently teased while he tells the stories of those whose footsteps he's foolishly following. It's about the journey, but the destination is surprisingly non-anticlimactic too, even if I found it hard to care about a few privileged missing-presumed-dead glory-hunters against the backdrop of colonial rape and genocide.
Read 2021
***
Sincere violent fantasy escapism from the 2000 AD archives. Stream-of-consciousness novelisation of an adventure game that never was, because he couldn't be bothered.
Read 2022
**
Trying to capture the feel of a standard 45-minute TV episode in a 200+ page paperback often makes for an awkward slog, but the padding's usually more subtle than sending a parade of characters to the same fate one by one and sending your investigators on pointless detours so they don't accidentally resolve things ahead of schedule. As the first X-Files novel, it's also a bit too premature to have much of a handle on anything.
Read 2022
**
A good premise for an episode or comic story, stretched way beyond the point of interest. The series would inevitably get around to similar themes.
Read 1998
***
Preemptively browsing for my toddler's future approachable classics library, I'd forgotten I'd read this, and can't remember exactly when, I just remember the atmospheric art being enthralling. Shame I didn't check out more of Usborne's illustrated adaptations as a break from all-consuming franchises.
Read 1997 etc., re-read 2018, 2019-21
*****
When I listened to this repeatedly as a teenager in abridged form, I didn't feel anything was lacking, even though I was well aware that it was. Finally getting around to reading the book again, it's only really the 'Future Echoes' adaptation that feels a bit clumsily inserted and pointless, since it wouldn't get a follow-up. But since that was the part that most impressed me at eleven, not having seen the episode, I guess it still had a purpose.
The most interesting part of this book, which is the most interesting part of all the books, is getting to know more about Lister and Rimmer before the accident. In Rimmer's case, his fleshed-out quirks and neuroses have always informed how I see him in the early episodes. Book Lister is a different beast from TV Lister, and I prefer him. They both develop very nicely, to the extent that you could have a fulfilling reading experience even if you'd never heard of the TV series and thought this book was all there was. It is properly good.
When I listened to this repeatedly as a teenager in abridged form, I didn't feel anything was lacking, even though I was well aware that it was. Finally getting around to reading the book again, it's only really the 'Future Echoes' adaptation that feels a bit clumsily inserted and pointless, since it wouldn't get a follow-up. But since that was the part that most impressed me at eleven, not having seen the episode, I guess it still had a purpose.
The most interesting part of this book, which is the most interesting part of all the books, is getting to know more about Lister and Rimmer before the accident. In Rimmer's case, his fleshed-out quirks and neuroses have always informed how I see him in the early episodes. Book Lister is a different beast from TV Lister, and I prefer him. They both develop very nicely, to the extent that you could have a fulfilling reading experience even if you'd never heard of the TV series and thought this book was all there was. It is properly good.
Read 1997 etc., re-read 2018, 2021
*****
Re-reading changed my mind on this one. It might be a case of the abridged audiobook being superior, as that wisely loses pretty much all the copy-pasted series III scripts that feel flatter on the page. There are some fantastic sci-fi concepts here (some of which made their way into the series, rather than the other way around), but less focus on character, fewer laughs, and the whole thing doesn't hold together quite as well as the first book.
Now I've got that out of the way, I can talk about how much I love Garbage World: brilliant pessimistic world-building that brings the series' "mission" to an abrupt halt halfway through the second book. It turns out that getting "home" isn't all it's cracked up to be, and Lister will have to find a new purpose to keep him going – one that falls into his lap in the surprisingly happy ending. He deserves it after the unrelenting torment he's been through.
Re-reading changed my mind on this one. It might be a case of the abridged audiobook being superior, as that wisely loses pretty much all the copy-pasted series III scripts that feel flatter on the page. There are some fantastic sci-fi concepts here (some of which made their way into the series, rather than the other way around), but less focus on character, fewer laughs, and the whole thing doesn't hold together quite as well as the first book.
Now I've got that out of the way, I can talk about how much I love Garbage World: brilliant pessimistic world-building that brings the series' "mission" to an abrupt halt halfway through the second book. It turns out that getting "home" isn't all it's cracked up to be, and Lister will have to find a new purpose to keep him going – one that falls into his lap in the surprisingly happy ending. He deserves it after the unrelenting torment he's been through.
Read 1998, re-read 2022
****
I'd only seen one of these episodes at the time, such is the tragedy of pre-internet fandom. To make up for that, I recorded myself on cassette doing a one-man show of 'Marooned' that included narrating all the scene descriptions and stage directions. Unlike Dave Lister, I certainly did not lose my virginity at twelve.
Rob Grant, Backwards
Read 1997, re-read 2018, 2021
****
Grant's further splitting of the multimedia multiverse came out later than Naylor's take, but it's a more direct and conservative continuation of the second novel, since he didn't have the same vested interest in exploring new directions for the series.
The solo project is a lot less obvious this time, mainly because it incorporates Grant Naylor scripts more directly, riffing on the same general era as the other book, but tactfully opting for different episodes. Some of the most popular, as it happens, though the whole 'Gunmen' sequence feels as randomly shoehorned as 'Future Echoes' did in the first book.
That's not to say Rob Grant fails to make his voice heard, though anyone desperate for confirmation of their childishly simplified theory that Rob wrote the sci-fi and Doug wrote the jokes won't find their evidence here.
The most notable trait of Grant without Naylor is a darker, crueller and just plain grosser streak. Remember the end of the 'Backwards' episode, where it was comedically implied that the Cat had reluctantly experienced reverse defecation? Grant tells us "something unspeakable happened" before going into unrequested anatomical detail anyway.
Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, Red Dwarf: Son of Soup – A Second Serving of the Least Worst Scripts
Rob Grant, Colony
Read 2015, re-read 2021
***
Rob Grant, Incompetence
Read 2004, re-read 2023
***
Rob Grant, Fat
Read 2015
***
Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall, The Quanderhorn Xperimentations
Read 2018
***
Kirk Walker Graves, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Read 2020
***
Emily Gravett, Monkey and Me
Emily Gravett, Dogs
Emily Gravett, Wolf Won't Bite!
Emily Gravett, Again!
Emily Gravett, Too Much Stuff!
Kes Gray and Nick Sharratt, Eat Your Peas
Kes Gray and Nick Sharratt, Really, Really
Kes Gray and Garry Parsons, Nuddy Ned / Nuddy Ned's Christmas
Kes Gray and Jim Field, Oi Frog! / Oi Cat!
Kes Gray and Garry Parsons, The Who's Whonicorn of Unicorns
Kes Gray and Garry Parsons, The Who's Whonicorn of Sing-Along Unicorns
David Grayson, Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 and 21
Read 2019
***
Tim Greaves, Vampyres: A Tribute to the Ultimate in Erotic Horror Cinema – Revised Edition
Read 2020
**
John Greco, Film Noir at Twenty Four Frames Per Second
Read 2019
**
Alex Green, The Stone Roses
Read 2020
***
Alison Green and Sharon Rentta, Mine!
Dan Green, Busy Day: Teacher
Rod Green, Victor & Hugo: Bunglers in Crime – The Big Nap
Read 1992
**
Roger Lancelyn Green, King Arthur's Court
Roger Lancelyn Green, Robin Hood and His Merry Men
Roger Lancelyn Green, Four Great Greek Myths
Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
Read 2015
****
Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
Read 2015
****
Brian Greene, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
Read 2015
*****
Brian Greene, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
Read 2020
***
Richard Greene, Holst: The Planets
Read 2020
****
Rosie Greening and Stuart Lynch, Do You Believe in Groovicorns?
Rosie Greening and Stuart Lynch, Never Touch a Hedgehog / Panda / Shark! / The Sharks! / The Bugs / Grumpy Bat!
Rosie Greening and Stuart Lynch, Never Touch a T. Rex
Jasper Griffin, Homer: The Odyssey
Read 2020
**
Dai Griffiths, Radiohead's OK Computer
Read 2020
****
The Brothers Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales (a.k.a. Children's and Household Tales)
Read 2012
****
Sally Grindley and Peter Utton, It's the Troll!
Winston Groom, Gump & Co.
Read 2019
****
I have a lot of affection for the film, but never read the novel (which is evidently crazier). This curiously-unfilmed sequel is a fitting expansion of the modern fable, taking us through another decade or so of alt-history.
Forrest's idiosyncratic narration keeps a brisk pace as he tumbles haplessly between famous scandals and crises, makes and breaks his fortune several times over in line with the American Dream and runs into various famous faces along the way, including a young Tom Hanks. You can virtually see the flowchart as one major historical event hooks loosely into the next, but the more cliched and unlikely the saga gets, the more it made me laugh.
Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, Captains' Logs Supplemental: The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages
Read 1998
***
Joe Gross, Fugazi's In on the Kill Taker
Nigel Gross and Jon Sutherland, Sonic the Hedgehog Adventure Gamebooks: Sonic v. Zonic / The Zone Zapper
Read 1995-96
Grant's further splitting of the multimedia multiverse came out later than Naylor's take, but it's a more direct and conservative continuation of the second novel, since he didn't have the same vested interest in exploring new directions for the series.
The solo project is a lot less obvious this time, mainly because it incorporates Grant Naylor scripts more directly, riffing on the same general era as the other book, but tactfully opting for different episodes. Some of the most popular, as it happens, though the whole 'Gunmen' sequence feels as randomly shoehorned as 'Future Echoes' did in the first book.
That's not to say Rob Grant fails to make his voice heard, though anyone desperate for confirmation of their childishly simplified theory that Rob wrote the sci-fi and Doug wrote the jokes won't find their evidence here.
The most notable trait of Grant without Naylor is a darker, crueller and just plain grosser streak. Remember the end of the 'Backwards' episode, where it was comedically implied that the Cat had reluctantly experienced reverse defecation? Grant tells us "something unspeakable happened" before going into unrequested anatomical detail anyway.
Read 2022
****
There's more method to this batch's seasoned selections, but they might as well have released a big book (or two).
Read 2015, re-read 2021
***
I'd unfairly dismissed the ex-Red Dwarf writer's subsequent sci-fi comedy project in the past due to idiotic fan entitlement and what might have been a bad audiobook abridgement, but reappraisal of Backwards made me want to give it a proper try. It was funny after all, if more sadistic than strictly necessary.
Read 2004, re-read 2023
***
I can't remember why I didn't review this at the time. Maybe I was too much of a sheltered kid to really get it, or didn't want to admit I felt let down. The re-read revealed a glut of tedious middle-aged moaning that might have once been mistaken for worldly wisdom, but there's still a pretty good mystery hook if you have the requisite stomach for our Rob.
Rob Grant, Fat
Read 2015
***
When bitching about how Red Dwarf's never been as good since Rob Grant left the writing partnership, you have to be a fair bastard and recognise that most of Grant's subsequent solo output has been at least as bad. He seemed to find a new calling in novels – I remember liking Incompetence when I read it as a (slightly) less picky teenager – but this next book isn't as good (though not Dark Ages or Strangerers bad). When it comes to satirising the obesity "epidemic" and the misanthropic culture that would come up with terms like that, let's just say Mr. Grant knows whereof he speaks (he made Red Dwarf, you dick! Have some respect). By writing three different stories and weakly tying them together, he's sympathetic to the fat without letting them off too lightly. It's sometimes funny too, but mainly when I imagine Norman Lovett's Holly narrating it.
Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall, The Quanderhorn Xperimentations
Read 2018
***
I had realistically average expectations for Rob "Formerly of Red Dwarf" Grant and Andrew "Never Watched Your Sitcoms" Marshall's cross-format sci-fi parody, and was relieved when it didn't turn out to be actually bad. That was all I asked.
Compared to the radio series, the novel has more introspection and observations from multiple viewpoints, but it's mainly just the scripts reformatted into proper sentences. That means it's a relentless sequence of six distinct, equally-portioned escapades running into each other, generally improving as it goes on. Your basic novelisation.
Read 2020
***
I normally listen along with these, but it was too distracting, the guy didn't shut up, so I just trusted that this twitterpated analysis was accurate and the problem must be with me. When he's not topping up a supreme narcissist's ego, there's an interesting essay on the digital world we live in.
Read 2022
**
A limited parade of animals with a repetitive refrain. It has the whiff of being scientifically formulated to appeal to the youngest audience, but she wasn't particularly impressed.
Read 2022
***
That took some searching. A list of opposites with handy unnaturally-selected illustrative examples, some re-worded for her vocabulary. It's probably better if you love dogs. They're alright.
Read 2022
*
The Three Little Pigs are malicious and overconfident in victory in this sequel to tame versions where the wolf doesn't get boiled alive. It follows suit by ending before the bloodbath, but that also leaves it open for further sequels, can't wait.
Read 2022
***
I enjoyed the meta gimmick of the disintegrating bedtime story and related to the exhausted parent, but leaving the anger unresolved was a downer. Still, I wouldn't mind reading it Again.
Read 2022
****
If this is really the first time a self-destructive hoarding fable's been told with magpies, we've got a modern classic on our hands.
Read 2022
***
A fun scene. She immediately requested broccoli for dinner so she could play it. She's better at the interactive lessons than I am.
Read 2023
**
No comeuppance for the little sod.
Read 2022
**
A bit heavy on the innuendo, but she's spared from knowing what those look like yet.
Read 2023
**
This relentless parade of animal rhymes felt twice as long as it was. The series has tons of merchandise, even its own Top Trumps. I don't get it.
Read 2023
**
Well done, you found lots of rymes for 'u-'. It gets a point for the stinky poo, on behalf of the kids.
Read 2023
*
My fault for forgetting how bad the original was. Are these notes all for nothing?
Read 2019
***
In-depth analysis of two pleasant but non-gripping pieces that quite correctly isn't dumbed down to my comprehension level.
Tim Greaves, Vampyres: A Tribute to the Ultimate in Erotic Horror Cinema – Revised Edition
Read 2020**
This flimsy fan tribute shows that if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish modest goals unremarkably, apart from tracking people down before Google. Still, I enjoyed the contrast of his over-the-top adulation for the best British horror film ever made and the creators' cynicism about their exploitative low-budget money spinner.
Read 2019
**
Guy knows his noir, but I'm confused about why he only included a fraction of the reviews written on this subject for his blog, when he could have easily made it a proper length and better value.
Read 2020
***
What I mainly like about these books is being able to listen and read along in real time (preferably neither lingering for too long after), so I appreciated the meaty (stony?) song-by-song guide to the cocky Mancs' ecstasy choons, even if it didn't convert me.
Read 2022
**
The brutal ending caught me off guard and confused the message somewhat.
Read 2023
**
Some unconventional flap actions, which is the least they can do after 40 years of the form.
Read 1992
**
The tertiary spin-off of Danger Mouse via Duckula was my underdog favourite from Cosgrove Hall, so I was excited to snap this up at a school book fair, but it proved a bit of a slog, as these junior novels tended to. Some of the other books were written by series co-writer Jimmy "Victor" Hibbert, but I didn't know to look for that.
Read 2021
**
It was educational to get the (retold) origin story (I never twigged that there were two different swords), then there's another random violent caper. Merlin's prophetic spoilers keep things from ever getting too dramatic or having any sense of autonomy. Foreigners had better stories.
Read 2021
**
Fracas in the foliage with the distant dullness of folk tales. Green was this set's go-to reteller for all the old myths, but at least some of the others were decent stories in the first place.
Roger Lancelyn Green, Four Great Greek Myths
Read 2021
****
Ancient tales that never get old, this swift sampler actually did its job of whetting the appetite for the full book, but I'll probably stick with the D'aulaires.
Fave: 'Perseus the Gorgon-slayer'
****
The patient layman's introduction to string theory annoyingly takes us through a not-brief-enough history of gravity and quantum theory before we get past Einstein and on to something new. It's almost like they didn't know I'd already had all those lessons several times this year, or like people are allowed to skip introductory chapters. When it does get to the good stuff, Greene explains the crazy, convincing nonsense with his customary clarity, even if his analogies are less zany this time and thereby less effective.
Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
****
While his other books grasped a crazy, compelling theory by the strings and rode with it, this one is much more general (its subject is all of space and time, how much more general can you get?) It's less captivating as a result, and meant I had to sit through the thirteenth-or-so history of Newton, Einstein and the other guys this year. The alternative would be to pick up something on advanced quantum theory, but I struggle enough with the layman's stuff.
Brian Greene, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
Read 2015
*****
Finally, a layman-level cutting-edge science book that doesn't talk down (only as much as I need it to) or annoyingly keep bringing up religion just to smack down the easy target. There's a dedicated genre for that, just concentrate on your proper science please. The subject here is multiple universes (inc. string theory and yer quantum), going off on experimental tangents all over the place while always remaining grounded in the maths rather than waxing philosophical or brainstorming SyFy miniseries ideas. Greene's analogies of Pringles, Swiss cheese and Eric Cartmans are weak jokes, but they're memorable, and weak jokes are welcome as a mind-cleansing sorbet every so often. Most impressive of all, I actually wanted to read this again to try to bring my comprehension up another 10% (from 10%), but he has other books.
Read 2020
***
I found Bry's books on string theory and parallel universes fascinating as they soared over my head, though his book concerning the entirety of everything was a bit much. This latest one covers everything again and more, which is just getting silly.
Richard Greene, Holst: The Planets
Read 2020****
Reclaiming these influential tunes from the vulgar public domain to the world of proper music, without being snobby about it, this fittingly accessible reading of the horoscope illuminates the astrological themes, recounts its origin and reception and handily catalogues the instruments and forms used. It's missing the seemingly compulsory chapter on its film score legacy, but you get enough of that in tiresome YouTube comments. Now who's being snobby?
Read 2022
*
More swatch book than story.
Read 2023
**
The zany typefaces make it hard to read the words, but that's the least important part. It's all a bit mean generally.
Read 2023
***
Like the Grover and pigeon books with dinosaurs. She loves being told off.
Read 2020
**
I was up for a celebration and refresher, but got lectures on form, translations and other uninteresting topics instead. Not his fault; my misunderstanding about the nature of this series.
Read 2020
****
It'll be hard for other writers of this listen-along series to top this obsessive effort. I still don't 'get' the album, even after his comprehensive analysis for expert and idiot alike, but his wider comparison of what makes a great vinyl vs. CD album was a revelation I probably should have had at some point.
The Brothers Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales (a.k.a. Children's and Household Tales)Read 2012
****
Childhood favourites ('The Four Musicians'), perplexing morality plays ('The Fisherman and His Wife') and hidden comedy classics where ludicrously patient talking animals help people out for no clear reason ('The Golden Bird'). Plus occasional duds.
Read 2023
**
A superfluous expansion, but at least it's got flaps.
Read 2019
****
I have a lot of affection for the film, but never read the novel (which is evidently crazier). This curiously-unfilmed sequel is a fitting expansion of the modern fable, taking us through another decade or so of alt-history.Forrest's idiosyncratic narration keeps a brisk pace as he tumbles haplessly between famous scandals and crises, makes and breaks his fortune several times over in line with the American Dream and runs into various famous faces along the way, including a young Tom Hanks. You can virtually see the flowchart as one major historical event hooks loosely into the next, but the more cliched and unlikely the saga gets, the more it made me laugh.
Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, Captains' Logs Supplemental: The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages
***
If you can get past the cheap and nasty presentation that avoids mentioning the name of the franchise and can only use photos of the actors and not their characters, this is a decent exploration of the then-ongoing Deep Space Nine and Voyager that was more up-to-date and insightful than any official guides at the time. Obsolete now, of course, unless you happen to be specifically interested in the 90s spin-offs as far as 1996.
Read 2023
***
Thoughtfully gets the musicians themselves to explain what they were doing there.
Read 1995-96
**
You wouldn't think that a video game franchise based around running fast and jumping would be a perfect fit for the slow and contemplative gamebook format. You'd be right. They could have at least done some play testing to make sure kids wouldn't end up trapped in impossibly labyrinths. Good thing I kept my finger in the previous page as a makeshift starpost.
Paul Groves and Edward McLachlan, Bangers & Mash: Eggs Is Eggs / Ghost Boast
***
My first primary school was down with the kids by using the original Bangers & Mash educational books to teach us to read. I can't remember what those books were like, but I obviously couldn't get enough of the cheeky chimps if I was going extracurricular too. I liked the ghost one a lot, but only got the other for completism's sake, they went from cheeky to infanticidal dicks in that one.
Read 2022
***
We headed straight for the library's 'big feelings' shelf after a particularly bad session at home. This had some helpful if obvious suggestions. A good case of nominative determinism too, if that's the author's real name.
Read 2015
I'm certain there are better versions of Wales' historic epic out there than this archaic Victorian one, which doesn't even seem to get the names right. It's one of the less well-known takes on the Arthurian legend (well, only less well-known if you're not Welsh I guess), which presents quite a different king and doesn't include a lot of the pop culture tropes that come later. What it does include is plenty of knights, giants, dwarfs and easily impressed damsels doing their respective things.
Ensley F. Guffey and K. Dale Koontz, Wanna Cook?: The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking BadRead 2020
****
A deep appreciation of the modern classic that clarifies and corrects some of the chemistry to an almost suspicious degree. That's just good value. If you're reading along on a first watch, the episode guide is spoiler-free, with enough trivia to keep you occupied before your next fix.
Read 2021
***
Rather than going over the production yet again, this companion mainly concerns itself with themes and allusions. Comprehensive coverage of the entire franchise is the main thing this has going for it, but page limit and personal interest mean that coverage can only be fleeting.
Read 2015
No demonologist should be without this valuable who's whom of the underworld, according to the worryingly non-objective introductions. The exhaustive entries themselves are more balanced in disclosing their myriad and often contradictory sources, so you can choose how much you want to believe in the various demons, fallen angels and djinni from Abaddon to Zotz when searching for a name for your black metal band, joined by celebrity exorcists, sorcerers and proven frauds. There are plenty of lovely old etchings, but as educational as it was, I still feel a Top Trumps version would have been superior.
Faves: Belphegor, the personification of misogyny who appears in the form of a phallus and offers you his excrement, Despite all this, he is repulsed by sex. There's a complex character for you.
Worsties: Rhyx Axesbuth, who causes piles. Prhyk.
Read 2022-23
***
Little Miss Benn in Narnia. This would surely be an iconic modern children's series if it had any originality about it.
Read 2003
**
Our English teacher would spend a disproportionate amount of the year making us provide the collaborative audiobook to novels she liked, then rush through the more traditional academic texts when deadlines approached. I wasn't into this one, it's like a boring Twin Peaks.
H
Read 1996
**
I had the choice between all of Mark Haddon's Agent Z books, but rather than risk experiencing something new, I bought the one I'd already seen on TV. That's like those people who buy an album and skip straight to the single they like. It was interesting for comparing and contrasting the adaptation process, I suppose. Idiot.
Read 2011
****
I'm obscure-90s enough to know Mark Haddon from Agent Z, but this was the worthier work. We could all benefit from understanding people on the Spectrum more, even if it's via a kids' novel written by an NT.
Adele J. Haft, Jane G. White and Robert J. White, The Key to The Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages
**
Academics at the Department of Classical and Oriental Studies combine their respective powers to guide us through the semiotic labyrinth. The general introduction and conclusion are good, and the translations probably useful footnotes if you're reading along rather than picking this up eight years later in the over-optimistic hope that it might rekindle the musty magic, but spending most of the book reconstructing the author's historical research as a dull A-Z is just a waste of paper.
Read 2015
**
I'm no closer to finding the great Filipino novel, or even a fairly decent one. Being a close-to-the-bone satire on the nation's shallow, oblivious elite, while giving the criminal dregs at the bottom more sympathy than they're due, I just spent an uncomfortable amount of time in the company of various worst kinds of people.
Jennifer Hallissy, The Write Start: A Guide to Nurturing Writing at Every Stage, from Scribbling to Forming Letters and Writing Stories
**
Naturally, this is going to be a focal area at the expense of other development (as soon as she stops viewing stationery as confectionery), but this primer was largely useless. You'd get as much from skimming the chapter headings as you would reading on and having their concepts and activities patronisingly explained to you.
Read 2023
**
Her random selections aren't constrained by social constructs.
Read 2024
**
Stop going on about fairy tales then, if you're so bored of them.
Read 1992-2021
***
The cartoon was my first space saga, and I had the first issue of the reprint comic that I'd suspected was some kind of obscure origin, though admittedly its satirical scattershots at bureaucracy, consumerism and activism went over my head at seven. It's still mainly noteworthy for its iconic and eminently toy-friendly designs.
Read 2023
**
Pretty paperback music box.
Read 2020
**
Shorter than these usually are, there wasn't too much to say about the frantic hammering that reminded me of my own freestyling compositions on my daughter's baby piano app (not to brag or anything). It was amusing to read about the diverse and detailed narratives people have hallucinated in there.
Read 2021-22
****
Nostalgia bait and quality is too much of an ask, but this tribute to a generation's childhood Batman lands on the right side of worthwhile. If only.
Read 2017
****
Ranking Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest
Read 2017
****
The Continental Op: The Motion Picture didn't blow the earlier stories out of the water for me. Being longer, it simply had more chances to impress and didn't put a foot wrong, even if I prefer the shorter form personally. So, you know, well done.
There are familiar Op staples throughout, though unlike some of his pulp contemporaries, Hammett doesn't pad things out by recycling plots from earlier stories that Black Mask subscribers have already read. It's atypical in fact, forsaking the relatable realism of San Francisco for sensational superlatives in 'Poisonville,' where even the weather's grim.
There are familiar Op staples throughout, though unlike some of his pulp contemporaries, Hammett doesn't pad things out by recycling plots from earlier stories that Black Mask subscribers have already read. It's atypical in fact, forsaking the relatable realism of San Francisco for sensational superlatives in 'Poisonville,' where even the weather's grim.
Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse
Read 2017
***
I was looking forward to liking this one more than the other novel and going against popular consensus. But I can't be contrary out of stubbornness alone.
This reads more like a cobbled together first novel than something you'd expect after the confident Red Harvest. There's enough story to fill one of his customary novellas, but everything's seriously slowed down to stretch it out to four times the length.
It's not even all that compelling. Hammett isn't about to go all supernatural on us when he's built his career on stark realism.
This reads more like a cobbled together first novel than something you'd expect after the confident Red Harvest. There's enough story to fill one of his customary novellas, but everything's seriously slowed down to stretch it out to four times the length.
It's not even all that compelling. Hammett isn't about to go all supernatural on us when he's built his career on stark realism.
Read 2021
**
I hadn't made it far into this nonsense nightmare without a walkthrough. He provides the background and clarifies the visual foreign puns and other elusive things, but a person who's so enthusiastic about this shit isn't someone you really want to spend even a stingy page count with.
Read 2015
***
This uncomfortably intimate portrait of a starving yet workshy and unhelpfully principled writer, aimlessly wandering the streets and becoming increasingly imbalanced, must have been pretty shocking at the time. It's still funny and distressing, but my, it's an ordeal.
Read 1993-96, re-read 2023
****
Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
Read 2020
*****
Gerth Hansen and Ralph Whitlock, When Animals Die
Read 1998
**
Kunio Hara, Joe Hisaishi's Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro
Robin Hardy, Cowboys for Christ: On May Day
Read 2009
****
István Hargittai, The DNA Doctor: Candid Conversations with James D Watson
Read 2016
**
Adam Hargreaves, Mr. Rude
Adam Hargreaves, Little Miss Bad / Whoops / Inventor / Brave
Adam Hargreaves, Little Miss Trouble and the Mermaid / Little Miss Stubborn and the Unicorn / Little Miss Shy and the Fairy Godmother / Little Miss Sunshine and the Three Bears
Adam Hargreaves, Mr. Men at the Park / On Holiday
Roger Hargreaves, Mr. Men
Roger Hargreaves, Little Miss Bossy / Tiny
Ina Rae Hark, Star Trek
Sam Harper and Chris Jevons, 101 Bums
Joe Harris and Michael Walsh, The X-Files: Season 10, Volume 1
Read 2014
**
Joe Harris and Colin Lorimer, Millennium
Read 2019
***
John Harris and Ron Tiner, Mass: The Art of John Harris
Rolf Harris, Rolf's Cartoon Club
Read 1993
**
M. John Harrison, Light
Read 2020
**
Harry Harrison, Deathworld
Read 2020
***
Harry Harrison, You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat: An Interactive Game Book
Read 2020
*
Caryl Hart and Rosalind Beardshaw, When a Dragon Meets a Baby
Joe Harvard, The Velvet Underground & Nico
Read 2020
****
Jeff Harvey, Ghostbusters: Book of Shapes
Edward T. Haslam, Dr. Mary's Monkey: How the Unsolved Murder of a Doctor, a Secret Laboratory in New Orleans and Cancer-Causing Monkey Viruses are Linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK Assassination and Emerging Global Epidemics
Read 2016
**
Gill Hasson, How to Deal with Difficult People: Smart Tactics for Overcoming the Problem People in Your Life
Read 2020
***
Constance V. Hatch and Walter Howarth, Batman: Funhouse of Fear
Read 1989, re-read 2017
*****
Denny Hatch, Write Everything Right!
Read 2016
***
Such an arrogant book is setting itself up for a fall. "The world's highest-paid writers" (oh là là!) didn't teach me much beyond the bleeding obvious or that doesn't show up in every brand's TOV guidelines, but I took a few notes. Reminders mainly.
David Hately, David
Read 1990
*
David Hately and Tim Clark based on the children's story by Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Read 1989
****
David Hately, Ghostbusters II: The Book of the Film
Read 1990
***
Callista J. Hawkes, Spurtacus: A Choose Your Own Erotic Story
Katie Haworth and Laura Hughes, Terrible Tim!
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Read 2015
***
Stephen Hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell
Read 2015
***
Tony Hawks, Round Ireland with a Fridge
Tony Hawks, Playing the Moldovans at Tennis
Philip Hawthorn and Kim Blundell, The Usborne Book of Easy Piano Tunes
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
Read 2016
****
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment and Other Stories
Read 2016
***
Ethan Hayden, Sigur Rós' ( )
Read 2020
**
Mo Hayder, Pig Island
Read 2020
****
Sarah Hayes and Inga Moore, Away in a Manger
Read 1991
*****
Teresa Heapy and Katie Cleminson, Loved to Bits
Stephen E. Hefling, Mahler: Das Lied Von Der Erde
Patricia Hegarty, Unicorn: A Magical Book of Colours
Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth
Read 2019
****
Robert A. Heinlein, The Door into Summer
Read 2020
***
Robert A. Heinlein, The Menace from Earth
Read 2015
****
Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Read 2015
****
Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast
Read 2015
****
Robert A. Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice
Read 2015
***
Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
Read 2019
**
Robert A. Heinlein, The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein
Read 2015
*****
Faves: '"—And He Built a Crooked House,"' 'Waldo,' 'The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag,' '"—All You Zombies—"'
Worsties: That's not fair. I guess 'Magic, Inc.'
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Suspiria
Read 2020
***
Richard Henderson, Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle
Read 2020
***
Glenn Hendler, David Bowie's Diamond Dogs
Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet, Supertato
Sue Hendra, Paul Linnet and Nick East, Simon Sock
Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet, Snowball
Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet, Oh, Christmas Tree!
Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet, Alan the Bear: Bedtime / Party Time
Kevin Henkes, Waiting
Marjoke Henrichs, No! Said Rabbit
Mike Henson and Jorge Martin, Parp!
James Hepokoski, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5
Read 2020
***
Amelia Hepworth and Cani Chen, Hello Farm!: A High Contrast Book for Babies
Frank Herbert, Dune
Read 2016
****
Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
Read 2016
****
Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
Read 2016
**
Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
Read 2010, re-read 2016
***
Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune
Read 2016
**
Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
Read 2016
**
Frank Herbert, Eye
Read 2019
**
Faves: 'Try to Remember,' 'By the Book,' 'Seed Stock.'
Worsties: 'The Dragon in the Sea,' 'The Road to Dune,' 'Frogs and Scientists.'
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 1: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets / Tintin in the Congo
Read 2015
***
Hergé, Tintin in America
Read 2019
**
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaoh
Read 2020
****
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Blue Lotus
Read 2020
***
"Seventy-seven suffering Samurais!"
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Broken Ear
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Black Island
Read 2020
****
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: King Ottokar's Sceptre
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Crab with the Golden Claws
Read 2020
****
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Shooting Star
Read 2020
**
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Seven Crystal Balls
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Land of Black Gold
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Destination Moon
Read 2020
****
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon
Read 2020
****
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Calculus Affair
Read 2020
****
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Red Sea Sharks
Read 2020
**
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin in Tibet
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Castafiore Emerald
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Flight 714 to Sydney (a.k.a. Flight 714)
Read 2020
***
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin and the Picaros
Read 2020
**
Hergé and Yves Rodier, The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin and Alph-Art
Read 2020
***
Richard Herring, Talking Cock
Read 2004
****
Richard Herring, Bye Bye Balham: Warming Up Vol 1
Read 2009
****
Richard Herring, How Not to Grow Up: A Coming of Age Memoir. Sort of.
Read 2010
***
Richard Herring, Can I Have My Ball Back?: A Memoir of Masculinity, Mortality and My Right Testicle
Katie Hewat and Geraldine Rodriguez, The Wizard of Oz
Read 2020
Diane Jackson Hill and Giuseppe Poli, Baby Band
Read 1989, re-read 2022
Eric Hill, Spot's Birthday Party
Eric Hill, Spot Goes on Holiday
Eric Hill, Spot Goes to the Circus
Eric Hill, Spot on the Farm
Read 1987
**
Eric Hill, Spot Goes to the Park
Eric Hill, Spot's Big Lift-the-Flap Book
Eric Hill, Who's There, Spot?
"Eric Hill," What's That Sound, Spot?
Harry Hill and friends, Harry Hill Fun Book
Linda G. Hill, All Good Stories
Read 2017
**
Daily writing prompts can be fantastic motivation for overcoming writer's block (or more often, writer's ennui) and for getting yourself into a routine. They're more for the writer's benefit than the reader’s, but a good writer can still turn the self-help exercise into something worth reading.
Worth reading on a blog, anyway. You wouldn't want to pay for it. Beyond the technical achievement, it feels like the minimum of thought went into filling the spaces between those 26 immovable letters. Writers love to write stories about writers writing stories, but this reader's read too many.
Peter Hill, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring
Susan Hill, The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story
Read 2019
*****
Susan Hill, The Mist in the Mirror: A Ghost Story
Read 2020
***
Susan Hill, Dolly: A Ghost Story
Read 2020
***
Tom Hill, Donna Friedman and Chris Reccardi, Pat the Stimpy: The Nitty Gritty Touchy Smelly Book
Geoffrey Himes, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A.
Read 2020
***
Nigel Hinton, Buddy
Read 1999
****
Daisy Hirst, I Like Trains
Jane Hissey, Old Bear: A Pop-up Book
Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
Read 2015
***
Christopher Hitchens, Arguably: Essays
Read 2015
****
Read 2023
Leigh Hodgkinson, Goldilocks and the Three Potties
Rob Hodgson, Is That You, Little Puppy?
William Hope Hodgson, The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Vol. 1-5
Read 2017
***
Ranking the William Hope Hodgson stories
William Hope Hodgson, The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"
Read 2017
****
William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland
Read 2015, re-read 2017
****
William Hope Hodgson, The Ghost Pirates
Read 2015, re-read 2017
***
William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land
Read 2015, re-read 2017
**
William Hope Hodgson, Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder
Read 2016
***
Faves: 'The Gateway of the Monster,' 'The House Among the Laurels.'
Worsties: 'The Horse of the Invisible,' 'The Searcher of the End House' (there's not much between any of these, it just makes it look like I'm paying attention).
Syd Hoff, Danny and the Dinosaur
David Hofstede, Planet of the Apes: An Unofficial Companion
Read 2020
****
Katharine Holabird and Helen Craig, Angelina Ballerina: Dancing Day
Stewart Holden ed, The Scrabble Players' Handbook
Read 2015
****
Patrick Holleman, Reverse Design: Final Fantasy VII
Read 2019
***
Peter Holman, Dowland: Lachrimae (1604)
Read 2020
***
Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
Read 2018
****
Lauren Holowaty, Peppa Pig: I Love You, Mummy Pig! / Daddy Pig!
Homer, The Odyssey
Read 2015, re-read 2023
****
All the rip-roaring seafaring adventure was there as expected, but it's also bloody psychedelic and bizarrely 'modern,' even featuring female gods criticising Olympus' sexist double standards. Forget your Bible or preferred religious text – every home should have a Bumper Book of Greek Myths and Legends by law.
Morag Hood and Ella Okstad, Sophie Johnson, Unicorn Expert
Nicky Hooks and Sharon Burnett, Red Dwarf Quiz Book
Read 2020
***
Anne Hooper, Anne Hooper's Kama Sutra: Classic Lovemaking Techniques Reinterpreted for Today's Lovers
Read 2006
***
A wholesome picture book for shy or giggly couples looking to sprinkle mild spice, I won't have been alone in not bothering to read the modernised mysticism and instead trying to decipher what these busy Aryan models were non-explicitly getting up to.
Vera Hopewell, Dennis the Dragon
Read 1991
**
Tim Hopgood, Walter's Wonderful Web
David Hopkins, Reading Paradise Lost
Read 2020
***
Petr Horáček, Lift the Flap: Who Is Sleeping?
Petr Horáček, The Perfect Present
Alex Horne, Taskmaster: 220 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People
Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes
Read 2015
*
Anthony Horowitz, Mindgame
Read 2015
***
Harry Horse, A Friend for Little Bear
Elizabeth Jane Howard, Three Miles Up and Other Strange Stories
John Howard, Numbered as Sand or the Stars
Robert E. Howard, The Complete Chronicles of Conan
Read 2017
****
Ranking Robert E. Howard's Conan stories
Robert E. Howard, The Hour of the Dragon (a.k.a. Conan the Conqueror)
Read 2015, re-read 2017
****
Robert E. Howard, The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Read 2015
***
The Conan creator isn't best known for his horror works, but when you're dealing with a writer this prolific (even with his early suicide), there's still enough obscure material to fill multiple themed volumes. With 37 stories, 19 poems and assorted fragments, this one is far from comprehensive, so I wonder why they even bothered to include the less brilliant early stuff with stock werewolves, vampires and mummies when they could have spent more time on his more distinctive Southern Gothic nightmares.
I would point out that this features all the unpleasant racism you might expect from the period, but that's not really fair. There's loads more of it.
Faves: 'The Valley of the Lost,' 'Pigeons from Hell.'
Worsties: Inconsequential fragments and the boxing/racism double punch of 'The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux.'
Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons, Red Dwarf Programme Guide: Second Revised Edition
Read 1998–2000
****
Daniel and Heidi Howarth, Little Hedgehog's Big Day
Peter Howarth, The Cambridge Introduction to Modernist Poetry
Read 2019
***
Mainly providing the biographical context that threatens to ruin the classics if anything, this was a handy starting point to making my selections, even if I wussed out of The Cantos.
Read 2021-23
Jack Hughes, Steggie's Stammer
Rhys H. Hughes, Romance with Capsicum (and Other Piquant Assignations)
Read 2020
***
Fave: 'Romance with Capsicum'
Rhys Hughes, Worming the Harpy and Other Bitter Pills
Read 2020
****
Rhys H. Hughes, Rawhead & Bloody Bones and Elusive Plato
Read 2020
***
Rhys Hughes, The Smell of Telescopes
Read 2020
*****
Rhys Hughes, Stories from a Lost Anthology
Read 2020
*****
Rhys Hughes, Nowhere Near Milkwood
Read 2020
****
Fave: 'Pyramids of the Purple Atom'
Rhys Hughes, Journeys Beyond Advice
Read 2020
****
Rhys Hughes, The Percolated Stars: An Astro-Caffeine Romp in Three Cups Featuring Batavus Droogstoppel Merchant and Scientist and Bourgeois Monster – One Lump or Two?
Read 2020
****
Fave: 'Ultima Thule'
Rhys Hughes, The Skeleton of Contention
Read 2020
***
Fave: 'The Innumerable Chambers of the Heart'
Rhys Hughes, Engelbrecht Again!
Read 2020
***
Fave: 'Surfing the Solar Wind'
Rhys Hughes, Madonna Park
Read 2020
**
Fave: 'The Big Lick'
Rhys Hughes, Plutonian Parodies
Read 2020
***
Fave: 'Poe Pie'
Rhys Hughes, Twisthorn Bellow
Read 2020
**
Fave: 'The Wings of Phœbus'
Rhys Hughes, The Astral Disruptor
Rhys Hughes, The Phantom Festival
Rhys Hughes, Link Arms with Toads!
Read 2020
****
Fave: 'Castle Cesare'
Rhys Hughes, The Polo Match
Rhys Hughes, Flash in the Pantheon
Read 2020
***
Fave: 'Stale Air'
Rhys Hughes, Young Tales of the Old Cosmos
Read 2020
**
Fave: 'The Pink Giant'
Rhys H. Hughes, The World Idiot and Other Absurdlings
Read 2020
****
Fave: 'The Macroscopic Teapot'
Rhys Hughes, The Mermaid Variations: A Miniature Trilogy
Read 2020
***
Rhys Hughes, The Truth Spinner: The Complete Adventures of Castor Jenkins
Read 2020
***
Fave: 'Flying Saucer Harmonies'
Rhys Hughes, Ten Tributes to Calvino
Read 2020
****
Fave: 'Climbing the Tallest Tree in the World'
Rhys Hughes, The Further Fangs of Suet Pudding
Rhys Hughes, The Just Not So Stories
Read 2020
*****
Fave: 'The Pastel Whimsy'
Rhys Hughes, The Young Dictator
Read 2020
***
Rhys Hughes, Captains Stupendous: Or the Fantastical Family Faraway
Read 2020
***
Rhys Hughes, Orpheus on the Underground and Other Stories
Read 2020
****
Fave: 'The Great Me'
Rhys Hughes, Less Lonely Planet (Tales of Here, There & Happenstance)
Read 2020
****
I thought "the stories in this book were written in strict chronological order" was just a funny statement, until I realised he was (also) talking about the arrangement. Before we reach the story cycle proper, these tales that take place in places (a handily vague theme) take us through the various ages of Rhys Hughes: from weird rom-com and dark fantasy pastiche (with recurring pub's-skeleton-chandelier motif) to self-deprecating experiments and self-conscious homage, finally finding a home for early gems like 'Troubleroot' that inexplicably passed by previous collections. Meanwhile, oft-anthologised shorties flash past with the familiar frequency of adverts.
Fave: 'The Impregnable Fortress'
Rhys Hughes, Mirrors in the Deluge
Read 2020
****
Fave: 'The Soft Landing'
Rhys Hughes, The Million Word Storybook: Female Edition
Rhys Hughes, The Brothel Creeper: Stories of Sexual and Spiritual Tension
Read 2020
***
Fave: 'The Sickness of Satan'
Rhys Hughes, Sangria in the Sangraal, or Tucked Away in Aragon
Read 2020
****
Fave: 'The Shapes Down There'
Rhys Hughes, Yee-Haw: Weirdly Western Poems
Rhys Hughes, Lovecraft's Chin
Read 2024
Read 2024
Ted Hughes, The Iron Man: A Children's Story in Five Nights
Read 1995
****
Ted Hughes, The Iron Woman
Read 1995
**
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris)
Read 2018
****
Andrew Hultkrans, Love's Forever Changes
Read 2020
***
Rob Hume, RSPB Complete Birds of Britain and Europe
Read 2015
****
Faves: Owls.
Worsties: Seagulls. Don't miss you.
Andrew Michael Hurley, The Loney
Read 2017
****
So it wasn't the 21st-century Hill of Dreams or Wicker Man that I'd been misleadingly self-hyping (Robin Hardy wrote that himself and it was serviceable). But as present-day Gothic goes, it couldn't really be better.
Really, I'd have been content with any old cliched story playing out against those grey, nostalgic Lancashire backdrops, but the academic author keeps things grounded and any paranormal goings-on are never more than implicit. He still pulls out every goth gimmick he can get away with.
My main gripe is that he didn't write it about 15 years earlier, when I was still imaginative and impressionable enough for it to really get under my skin.
Andrew Michael Hurley, Devil's Day
Read 2018
****
Paul Hurley, Nantwich History Tour
Paul Huson, The Devil's Picturebook: The Compleat Guide to Tarot Cards: Their Origins and Their Usage
Read 2020
***
Pat Hutchins, Rosie's Walk
Pat Hutchins, Don't Forget the Bacon!
Read 1990, re-read 2022
***
Pamela Hutchinson, Pandora's Box (Die Buchse der Pandora)
Read 2020
***
Tim Hutchinson, Life in a Castle: A 3-dimensional Carousel
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Read 2003
***
Armando Iannucci, The Audacity of Hype
Read 2010
***
David Icke, Children of the Matrix
Read 2008
***
David Icke, The Perception Deception: Or... It's ALL Bollocks – Yes, ALL of It
****
Read 2015
Eric Idle, The Road to Mars
Read 2007
***
Robin Ince, Robin Ince's Bad Book Club: One Man's Quest to Uncover the Books That Time Forgot
Read 2010
***
Robin Ince, I'm a Joke and So Are You: A Comedian's Take on What Makes Us Human
Read 2020
****
Gary Indiana, Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom
Read 2020
**
Sam Inglis, Neil Young's Harvest
Read 2020
**
Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson, The Flatey Enigma
Read 2015
**
Mick Inkpen, The Blue Balloon
Mick Inkpen, Kipper's Little Friends
John Irving, Mozart: The 'Haydn' Quartets
Read 2020
***
Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci
Read 2018
****
Fave: Lady with an Ermine > Mona Lisa.
Tony Isabella, Bob Ingersoll and Aaron Lopresti, Star Trek: All of Me
Read 2000
***
Even as a 90s 'Trek kid, I tended to enjoy the classic series the most in print (presumably those writers were more likely to be familiar with the older series, and the field's more level today?), and this was my favourite of the early Wildstorm releases before I outgrew comics for a few years, in favour of more mature art forms like Blink-182. It does the usual thing of mashing up stock TOS tropes with unrealistically high-budget visuals, but it's satisfyingly on form.
Yasmeen Ismail and Jenni Desmond, Joy
Junji Ito, Uzumaki
Read 2015
*****
Junji Ito, Gyo
Read 2015
****
Junji Ito, New Voices in the Dark
Read 2015
***
Junji Ito, Black Paradox
Read 2015
***
Kevin Jackson, Withnail & I
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery or, The Adventures of James Harris
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Read 2016
*****
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Read 2018
*****
Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Read 2015
***
I wasn't expecting this sci-fi stretching of the fantasy gamebook format to be all that good when rounding out my genre trilogy, but I was hoping it would be a good retrofuturistic wheeze at least. Finding out that it was straight-up Star Trek fan fiction with the proper nouns changed was a bit disappointing, but it's an easy shorthand (and light years better than the official gamebooks they put out). You can even recruit subordinate siblings to handle the tedious dice rolls of your away team if they want to feel useful and you need someone to blame.
Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson's Sorcery!: The Shamutanti Hills
Read 2020
****
Steve Jackson, The Sorcery Spell Book
Read 2020
**
Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson's Sorcery!: Kharé – Cityport of Traps
Read 2020
***
I used to see these gamebooks in Oracle Books about 25 years ago, when they were already a decade out of date, but would've been right up my street. Alas, unadventurous 10-year-old me plumped for Sonic gamebooks instead, only to wind up trapped in a poorly playtested maze every time. Served me right.
Timothy L. Jackson, Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique)
Pat Jacobs, Pet Pals: Hamsters
Tim Jacobus, Goosebumps Postcard Book
Read 1998
***
Read 2021
M. R. James, Complete Ghost Stories
Read 2010, re-read 2017
****
Ranking the M. R. James short stories
M. R. James, The Five Jars
Read 2020
**
Simon James, Dear Greenpeace
Anne Jankéliowitch and Delphine Chedru, Animals at Night: A Glow-in-the-Dark Book
Bill Janovitz, The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street
Read 2020
**
Tove Jansson, Moomintrolls and Friends
Heather Jarman, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Mission Gamma #2 – This Gray Spirit
Read 2016
**
Jarvis, Tropical Terry
Oliver Jeffers, Lost and Found
Paul Jennings, Three Quirky Tails
Jay Jericho, 666 Phenomenon
Read 2020
*
Pedro Jiménez, English-Bisaya Grammar in Twenty-Eight Lessons
Read 2019
***
Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mœbius, The Incal
Read 2015
****
Crockett Johnson, Harold and the Purple Crayon
Read 2020
*****
Crockett Johnson, The Adventures of Harold and the Purple Crayon: Four Magical Stories
Crockett Johnson, Harold at the North Pole
Brian Joines and Bachan, Bill & Ted Go to Hell
Read 2015
**
Not the coveted comic adaptation of the second film – before its provisional title was changed and featuring all those deleted scenes – but an uninspired mash-up sequel to the duology. At least it sets a very low bar for Bill & Ted 3 to excel against.
Kent Jones, L'Argent
Read 2020
**
Naomi and James Jones. The Odd Fish
Peter Jones, Solar Wind
Terry Jones, The Dragon on the Roof
Terry Jones and Douglas Adams, Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic
Read 2015
*
Terry Jones and Alan Ereira, Terry Jones' Barbarians: An Alternative Roman History
Read 2015
***
Timothy Jones, Beethoven: The 'Moonlight' and Other Sonatas, Op. 27 and Op. 31
Read 2019
**
Read 2020
Robert Jordan, Conan the Invincible
Read 2017
***
Robert Jordan, Conan the Defender
Read 2017
****
Robert Jordan, Conan the Unconquered
Read 2017
**
Robert Jordan, Conan the Triumphant
Read 2017
***
Robert Jordan, Conan the Magnificent
Read 2017
***
Robert Jordan, Conan the Destroyer
Read 2017
*
Robert Jordan, Conan the Victorious
Read 2017
***
F. Sionil José, Dusk
Read 2015
***
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Read 2007
***
James Joyce, Ulysses
Read 2007, re-read 2015
*****
Carl G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
Read 2015
**
Carl G. Jung, Joseph L. Henderson, Aniela Jaffé, Jolande Jacobi and Marie-Louise von Franz, Man and His Symbols
Read 2019
***
Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Read 2020
**
Katarzyna Kaczan-Borowska and Barbara Galińska, My Little Pony: Tajemniczy gość
Eiko Kadono, Kiki's Delivery Service
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Read 2016
***
I'm surprised I never properly read this one either. I did try to tackle it in the original German once, which probably put me off. It's less challenging having Benedict Cumberbatch read it to me like I'm blind or a child.
It seems that people have interpreted its metaphor for the socially repulsive, downtrodden Other all over the place, but that doesn't make any sense unless those minorities are associated with climbing up the walls. He's an insect, you idiots. Did you really not get that?
Franz Kafka, The Trial
Read 2015
***
Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
Read 2015
***
Bobbi Katz and Isidre Mones, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Don't Do Drugs! – A Rap Song
Adam Kay and Henry Paker, Amy Gets Eaten
John Keats, The Complete Poems
Read 2015
***
I know, I can't imagine me sitting down to read Romantic poetry either. I never studied Keats or his kin in any depth, so it was basically a random choice and an attempt to enjoy some pleasant verse without the burden of dissecting it, beyond choosing a couple of faves. It wasn't exactly my cup of tea, but at their best, the pastoral poems fed my (falsely) nostalgic escapism as I was carried along by the flowery currents. I'm not a poet, my metaphors don't have to work. At their worst, the extended adaptations of Greek myths just made me wish I was reading the originals. Like a Kurt Cobain of yesteryear, Keats' popularity may partly rest on his tragic early death, since there's not much of real substance here, but that could just be because I'm soulless or something. To make things more interesting, take a drink every time he mentions 'pinions.'
Faves: Lamia and pretty pastoral ones.
Worsties: Endymion, Otho the Great.
John A. Keel, Strange Creatures from Time and Space
Read 2015
***
Edward Kelsey and Colin Petty adapted from five television scripts by Leonard Starr, ThunderCats – Ho: The Movie
Read 1991
*
A. L. Kennedy, Doctor Who: The Drosten's Curse
Read 2018
***
It's foolish to get your hopes up when tie-in merchandise is set in the period of a series that happens to be your favourite, especially when it's a pastiche 40 years down the line.
Kennedy's Tom Baker horror story is as heartfelt and informed as her predecessors' were, her Tom Baker's spot-on, and she's got a nice turn of phrase like Adams and Moffat that keeps this story of a psychic monster lurking under a golf course appropriately light-hearted. It just comes off feeling more like one of those later Williams-era Gothic revivals than a classic from the Hinchcliffe years.
I almost lasted four books before my reviews descended to incomprehensible jargon, could have been worse.
Jack Kent, There's No Such Thing as a Dragon
Read 1991, re-read 1996, 2022
*****
Mark Kermode, Silent Running
Judith Kerr, The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Judith Kerr, Mog and the Baby
Read 1989, re-read 2021
**
Judith Kerr, The Adventures of Mog
Judith Kerr, Mog and Bunny
Judith Kerr, Mog and Barnaby
Judith Kerr, One Night in the Zoo
Michael Kerrigan and artists, Asian Art
Karl Kesel and Paul Guinan, Indiana Jones and the Sargasso Pirates
Read 2020
****
Craig R. Key, Iniquitous
Read 2017
***
Craig R. Key's third novel has been on the review circuit for a few months now, being sent out for free to readers in exchange for an honest write-up. You can never be sure exactly what you're getting into in these situations, but I feel like this unflinching crime thriller should have been issued with the ebook equivalent of a Parental Advisory sticker.
Its sheer relentless bleakness is actually quite impressive, as it means the story doesn't take all the obvious turns you'd expect if you've read or watched more supernatural detective fiction than is good for you. When it comes to other aspects though, you're going to need a spare biro if you're working through the whole cliche checklist.
Read 2020
Susan Kiernan-Lewis, Murder in the South of France
Read 2016
***
Maggie Newberry finds herself in a transatlantic plot of murder, child abduction and sexy Frenchmen. Oh là là!
If that sounds like your glass of Cabernet, you might want to stop reading before you hit the end of the third chapter. That's when the spell breaks and we swap the cafes and cathedrals of the French Riviera for the dingy apartment blocks and polluted skies of crime-strewn Atlanta, Georgia, where going back to the daily grind is the least of Maggie's woes. We can look forward to her detective chops getting ever more finely honed in subsequent books as more of her family, friends and co-workers are ruthlessly culled in the name of our entertainment.
Michael Kilgarriff and David Mostyn, 3001 Jokes
Read 1994
**
Jane Killick, Babylon 5: Signs and Portents
Jane Killick, Babylon 5: Point of No Return
Jane Killick, Babylon 5: No Surrender, No Retreat
Jane Killick, Babylon 5: The Wheel of Fire
Stephen King, Carrie
Read 2020
*****
Stephen King, The Shining
Read 2002
****
Stephen King, Night Shift
Read 2020
***
Faves: 'Jerusalem's Lot,' 'Night Surf,' 'Sometimes They Come Back.'
Worsties: 'I Am the Doorway,' 'Battleground,' 'The Man Who Loved Flowers.'
Stephen King, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
Stephen King, Doctor Sleep
Read 2016
***
Dick King-Smith, The Sheep-Pig
Read 1994
***
Read 2012
*****
Lee treats his classic comeback quadrilogy with the ironic reverence it genuinely deserves.
Stewart Lee (and angry commenters), Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011-2016
Read 2016
****
Generically-faced funnyman chronicles the downfall of Western civilisation, egged on by irate commenters (their valuable views included for balance) to become increasingly annoying and borderline incomprehensible as he goes along.
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/stewart-lee
Stewart Lee, March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019
Read 2019
***
Tony Lee and artists, Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor Archives, Volume 1
Barbara Lehman, The Red Book
Fritz Leiber, The Big Time
Read 2015
**
Stanisław Lem, Solaris
Read 2015
***
Stanisław Lem, Mortal Engines
Read 2015
***
Faves: 'The Three Electroknights,' 'Automatthew's Friend.'
Worsties: 'Uranium Earpieces,' 'The Hunt.'
Mathew Lemay, Elliott Smith's XO
Read 2020
***
Jeff Lemire, Sweet Tooth, Volume 1: Out of the Deep Woods
Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino, Gideon Falls, Book 1: The Legend of the Black Barn
Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino, Gideon Falls, Book 2: The Eater of All Things
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Read 2016
**
Dan LeRoy, The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique
Read 2020
*
Jonathan Lethem, Talking Heads' Fear of Music
Read 2020
***
Marianne Tatom Letts, Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely
Read 2015
***
Jean-Louis Leutrat, L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad)
Read 2020
**
David Levin, Superman: The Story
Read 1991
***
Ira Levin, Rosemary's Baby
Read 2020
*****
Ira Levin, The Boys from Brazil
Read 2011
***
James A. Levine, Get Up ! Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It
Read 2015
***
C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
Read 2015
***
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Read 2009, re-read 2015
****
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Read 2015
***
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Read 2005
****
C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia
Read 2005
***
C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Read 1995, re-read 2005
*****
C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
Read 2005
*****
C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
Read 1995, re-read 2005
***
C. S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
Read 1995, re-read 2005
*****
C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle
Read 2005
***
Jon E. Lewis, The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups: The 100 Most Terrifying Conspiracies of All Time
Read 2015
***
Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Monk
John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field
Read 2020
****
Amanda Li, Pirate Pete and Princess Polly: Please and Thank You
Brenda Li, I Turned My Mom into a Unicorn
Suzanne Liandrat-Guigues, Red River
Read 2020
**
Lucy Lidell, The Book of Massage: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Eastern and Western Techniques
Read 2015
***
Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory
Read 2016
****
Faves: 'Vastarien,' 'The Last Feast of Harlequin,' 'In the Shadow of Another World,' 'The Glamour,' 'The Clown Puppet.'
Worsties: 'Les Fleurs,' 'Dream of a Mannikin,' 'Masquerade of a Dead Sword,' 'Conversations in a Dead Language.'
Amber Lily and Richard Merritt, Little Unicorn Learns to Dance
Amber Lily, Let's Find Dog
Amber Lily and Maaike Boot, Seek and Find Little Unicorn: Baby's first lift-the-flap book
Limmy, Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny: My Autobiography
Read 2019
***
Marvin Lin, Radiohead's Kid A
Read 2020
***
Astrid Lindgren, The Amazing Pippi Longstocking
Kristyna Litten, Ori's Stars
Richard Littler, Discovering Scarfolk: For Tourists & Other Trespassers
Richard Littler, The Scarfolk Annual
Eric Litwin and James Dean, Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes
Eric Litwin and James Dean, Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons
Penelope Lively, Lost Dog and Other Stories
Ian Livingstone, Fighting Fantasy: Deathtrap Dungeon
Samantha Lizzio, Peppa Pig: Peppa Is Kind
David Llewellyn, Doctor Who: Night of the Humans
Robert Llewellyn, The Man in the Rubber Mask
Read 2015
****
Clare Lloyd, Kitty Glavin and Elle Ward, Pop-Up Peekaboo!: Unicorn
Rebecca Lloyd, Mercy and Other Stories
Read 2020
***
Fave: 'The Stone'
Rebecca Lloyd, Seven Strange Stories
Read 2020
***
Fave: 'Jack Werrett, the Flood Man'
Rosamund Lloyd and Spencer Wilson, Don't Mix Up My Dinosaur
Sam Lloyd, Mr. Pusskins / Mr. Pusskins and Little Whiskers / Best in Show
Sam Lloyd, Boris Babysits!
Sam Lloyd, Happy Birthday, Boris!
Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette, Snowpiercer, Vol. 1: The Escape
Read 2020
****
Arnold Lobel, Frog and Toad Are Friends
Arnold Lobel, Frog and Toad All Year
Jo Lodge, Roar! Roar! I'm a Dinosaur! / Snap! Snap! I'm a Crocodile! / Chomp! Chomp! I'm a Shark!
Jo Lodge, The Googlies: Time for Bed, Panda / Tiger at the Beach
Jo Lodge, Hide-and-Seek Stories: Out in Space
Jack London, The Call of the Wild
Read 2019
****
Peter Longden, First Picture Book: Toys
Read 2023
Elias Lönnrot, Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes
Read 2015
****
Faves: The First Väinämöinen Cycle
Worsties: Ilmarinen's Wedding
Karen Lord, The Best of All Possible Worlds
Read 2015
**
Walter Lord, A Night to Remember
Read 2020
*****
Walter Lord, The Night Lives On
Read 2020
****
Simon Louvish, It's a Gift
H. P. Lovecraft, The Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft, Vol. 1 & 2
Read 2008-16
****
Ranking the H. P. Lovecraft stories
H. P. Lovecraft and S. T. Joshi, The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft
Read 2008
*****
Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (a.k.a. Apollo 13)
Read 2020
***
Nathan Lowell, Quarter Share
Read 2020
**
Brian Lowry and Sarah Stegall, Trust No One: The Official Third Season Guide to The X-Files
Read 1998
***
****
Despite clearly being an Orwellian plot to normalise the surveillance state, these were always fun and the high-effort art was admirable. Fantastic Journey was the first I read/played, the underwater level was a cheeky get.
Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
Read 2020*****
This is the best writing guide I've read, comprehensively summarising the most important grammar rules and readability tips with plenty of practical examples specific to marketers, for a change. Some of the SEO/social specifics will gradually lose their relevance each year without a new edition every once in a while, but you can double check those. A bigger problem is that its generalised title gives no indication it's a Content Marketing Bible, otherwise I could've read it years ago and saved a lot of time.
Gerth Hansen and Ralph Whitlock, When Animals Die
Read 1998
**
Spotted in the school library, this appealed when I was going through a juvenile "lol gore" phase (thankfully without internet access) and the combination of its sincere tone, photos of bereaved children and their dead birds and the inappropriate context of me reading it for a laugh in "silent" reading sessions made me audibly amused, leading to my form tutor advising that I bring in something more appropriate for my age next time.
Read 2024
***
Unavoidably a celebration of the joyful film as much as its inextricable and sometimes somewhat strange music.
Read 2009
****
The Wicker Man is one of my favourite horror films (slash police procedural folk musical mystery), so I was chuffed to find out its director had written a sequel. It's not the most inventive or eloquent novel in the world, but I had a good time.
István Hargittai, The DNA Doctor: Candid Conversations with James D Watson
**
This obscure compendium of interview transcripts bulked out with the author's amateur photo collection is probably the best example of a book I wouldn't have read if I hadn't been narrowing down candidates for a stupidly-themed 'Doctober' reading month and decided I might as well try to learn something.
Should have just gone with Doctor Who.
Should have just gone with Doctor Who.
Read 2022
**
Authentically drab revival.
Read 2021-22
**
Her enthusiasm is warming me to the endless, repetitive churn.
Read 2022-23
**
Don't bother coming up with new ones any more, just stick unicorns and stuff in.
Read 2022-23
**
My gut instinct is to avoid the cash-in franchising of the once-collectable series, but it's not like the originals were all that good anyway. With the benefit of hindsight and market research, these are probably better, and she sat through it. Go crazy.
Read c.1989-2023
***
I didn't have all of them. I wasn't too fussed. Some of them were okay. Mr. Bounce was probably the best.
Read 2022-23
**
He's not really bothering with these, even comparatively.
Read 2022
****
An OG critical fan realistically reviews and contrasts the franchise (to 2008), with the bizarrely rare focus on who was actually writing it. It avoids the films entirely, in humorously literal compliance with the TV Classics banner worthy of Data.
Read 2023
*
More unicorn-teasing filth.
Read 2014**
One of the briefer expanded universes out there, a proper (a.k.a. TV) season 10 would come along within a couple of years to usurp this new continuity, although both incarnations inevitably had some ideas and pathetic resurrections in common. The first few issues didn't inspire me to carry on; these compare to the 90s comics much as the modern show does to the classics. Joe Harris is no Stefan Petrucha.
Joe Harris and Colin Lorimer, MillenniumRead 2019
***
The X-Files' brooding sibling show went out on a whimper when it was cancelled by Fox right before the actual millennium. There's not much of a legacy to spoil there, and this brief reprise is as authentically on brand as it is unnecessary, leaving things as vague and unresolved as ever and concentrating on mood over substance. Frank Black's back, but I doubt we'll be hearing any more from him.
Read 2023
****
Vertigo-inducing megastructures and overpromising home computer analogies offset by serene vistas.
Faves: 'Drunkard's Walk,' 'Astropolis,' 'The Age of Pussyfoot,' 'Mass: The Building of FTL1'
Read 1993
**
That aged well. I remember this seeming out of date even when my parents presumably picked it up for cheap. A nice reminder of the series, but no fascinating insights. An Art Attack book would have been better, not least for the legacy.
Read 2020
**
If Iain M. Banks had written his juvenile novels a few decades later, and actually had them published rather than rewriting them once he got better, I imagine they'd be something like this. Deciding not to take its horny cyberpunk melange too seriously was the only way to get through.
Read 2020
***
It's no Dune, but this action-packed survival story in a superlatively harsh setting would've made a fun watered-down Saturday morning cartoon.
Harry Harrison, You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat: An Interactive Game BookRead 2020
*
So lazy and contemptuous of the "interactive" format – with its perpetual loops, arbitrary reasoning and forced choices – it might actually be a pisstake.
Read 2023
**
That'll teach you to be racist about dragons.
Read 2020
****
Covering the relevant background, production, legacy and individual songs while debunking myths, this is as comprehensive an album celebration as you could ask for, filtered by what the writer happens to find interesting.
Read 2022
*
An imperfect primer aimed at pathetic parents who will only teach their kids if they get some semblance of nostalgia out of it. No, you're not having fucking Paw Patrol!
**
I'm not going to criticise this terminally paranoid alternative history for being bananas, because it's not like I didn't know exactly what I was getting into. But it was less entertaining than I'd hoped. I was disappointed that it took a dry, anecdotal route rather than getting up in my face with passionate revolutionary rhetoric. We know they're not telling us everything, big deal.
Read 2020
***
No jaw-dropping revelations in this matter-of-fact guide for the socially underdeveloped, but some consolation that my customary self-deplatforming detox is sometimes the best solution, especially when I could be hanging out with a happy baby instead.
Constance V. Hatch and Walter Howarth, Batman: Funhouse of Fear
*****
I may not have had any Batman comics as a kid, but I did have this Ladybird book (+ tape) that I read over and over, and can now enjoy again thanks to YouTube curators. The Killing Joke Junior, it doesn't get as introspective about the Batman-Joker co-dependence, being more preoccupied with booby traps, but for its target audience it's a perfect Batman story in its own way.
Read 2016
***
Such an arrogant book is setting itself up for a fall. "The world's highest-paid writers" (oh là là!) didn't teach me much beyond the bleeding obvious or that doesn't show up in every brand's TOV guidelines, but I took a few notes. Reminders mainly.
David Hately, David
Read 1990*
Along with all the film adaptations, Ladybird's First Bible Stories range seemed to spell the decline of the once iconic publisher in the '80s by swapping their distinctive painted art for patronising simplicity. I didn't feel any vicarious glory from this guy sharing my name. I don't think I was the target audience, I liked Toitles.
Read 1989
****
This slightly odd version was my only exposure to the world of Beatrix Potter growing up, so at least I didn't miss out completely. I still don't know whether these photo were made on spec or from some stop-motion adaptation of the time, but they're iconic by default.
Read 1990
***
The already juniorfied sequel is made more comprehensible for its target audience, omitting the mild innuendo that was for the parents. I've seen the film a few times, before and after, but my memory goes straight to the creepy screencaps of slime beasts, demonic baby-snatchers and the silent walk of Titanic victims.
Read 2024
**
An authentic slavery simulator, particularly in the way it teases you with the illusion of choice. They don't care if you've got a headache.
Read 2023
**
She's not into bad boys.
Read 2015
***
I mainly knew this book as a cheap target that 90s comedians liked to poke fun at, presumably for being a popular book with some complicated ideas in. It certainly is drier than you'd hope from an astrophysics book for non-scientists – I didn't spot a crap joke until chapter nine! – but it's no more challenging than the other mainstream books I've read dealing with similar matters. Still quite challenging then, but the stuff about spaghettification is pretty exciting. The worst part about this was the audiobook narrator, who mispronounces terms that even I know, doesn't say "quark" correctly even when he's saying the sentence that explains how it should be said, and takes a worried pause before attempting every hard word or foreign name. Next time I read a Hawking book, I'll just copy the text into a computer speech... great, Dave, you went there.
Stephen Hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell
Read 2015
Taking heed of the constructive criticism for his first pop cosmology book, Hawking gets to the good stuff quicker and makes complex concepts easier to understand with colourful illustrations. Not in the audiobook version, obviously, but my brother had this book so I'd flicked through it a couple of times in the past without making it very far into the words. Though far enough that I could rejoice when reunited with the legendary (to me, anyway) "airline food" gag as Hawking tries out awkward observational comedy, setting the gold standard for lame jokes sprucing up serious science books for ever after.
Read 2003-23
****
A slow start led to me abandoning this as a teenager, which was hardly in the spirit. Once it finally got underway, I was along for the stupid ride, having listened to enough Unbelievable Truth to hear the audiobook in my head.
Read 2023
****
Makes my own first-world problems when travelling look almost reasonable.
Read 2022
****
A nice selection, helpfully arranged for aspiring grade one learners, even those approaching middle age.
Read 2016
****
I related to the architectural focus, since we're currently building a house (right, like I've hammered a single nail myself). I also appreciated the open-minded narrator who's sceptical about the fanciful superstitions built up around the real macabre happenings, but still baits us with an undeniable pattern. It hardly even mattered that as a non-Christian I find its core tenet of ancestral guilt being passed down the generations offensive.
With its richly symbolic prose, it's not a book you can passively listen to while playing Slam Tilt, and after falling asleep and having to find my place twice in chapter one, it became a book for lazy mornings rather than atmospheric nights. It wasn't because I was scared, right?
With its richly symbolic prose, it's not a book you can passively listen to while playing Slam Tilt, and after falling asleep and having to find my place twice in chapter one, it became a book for lazy mornings rather than atmospheric nights. It wasn't because I was scared, right?
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment and Other Stories
Read 2016
***
If you think I sought out this obscure reshuffling of the author's public domain works rather than one of his standard collections just so I could justify it as a Doctober, you would be cynical and correct.
I shouldn't have bothered though, as it turns out my impression of Hawthorne being an early horror writer in the vein of his contemporary Poe was mistaken. There are plenty of supernatural elements, but he's more concerned with hokey allegories and condemning New England Puritan killjoys than scaring the shit out of his readers. If only some cheapo publishing house had thought to throw together a Poe compilation headlined by 'The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,' I'd have been sorted.
I shouldn't have bothered though, as it turns out my impression of Hawthorne being an early horror writer in the vein of his contemporary Poe was mistaken. There are plenty of supernatural elements, but he's more concerned with hokey allegories and condemning New England Puritan killjoys than scaring the shit out of his readers. If only some cheapo publishing house had thought to throw together a Poe compilation headlined by 'The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,' I'd have been sorted.
Faves: 'Young Goodman Brown,' 'Earth's Holocaust,' 'The Artist of the Beautiful.'
Worsties: 'The Gentle Boy,' 'The May-Pole of Merry Mount,' 'Wakefield.'
Read 2020
**
A book about an unpronounceable album of untitled songs sung in a nonsense language risks being somewhat pretentious. This writer avoids the elite music snobbery route by taking a bold and boring linguistics approach, only getting around to the music in an abstract fashion towards the end. Useful for coursework, not that language students are going to find it categorised in their section.
Read 2020
****
Starting out as your basic but morbidly fun marauding monster investigation/debunking, this becomes more interesting when the mystery's seemingly solved before the halfway point and the horror gives way to sympathetic drama. For long enough that you let your guard down.
Sarah Hayes and Inga Moore, Away in a MangerRead 1991
*****
The Nativity abridged with a mind to shoehorning in several carols along the way. I wasn't big on the songs, but diligently reading along to the cassette and absorbing the atmospheric Bethelemen scenery was a favourite pastime over a few festive seasons. It's a shame that didn't result in my internal monologue sounding like Stephen Thorne.
Read 2022
**
I didn't expect a pun on teddy dismemberment. She didn't seem disturbed, I guess we'll only notice any effects in the long term.
Read 2021
***
Whether the font was smaller or he just had more worth writing about as he drew links across the symphography, this seemed more substantial than these usually are, even without the unnecessary chapter-length digression on reception.
Read 2022
**
If they like the aesthetics of My Little Pony, but it's all a bit fast yet, this could be a barely adequate supplement, simplifying the characterisation somewhat.
Read 2019
****
I haven't read much of Heinlein's main sequence, preferring his quirkier outlands, but these assorted tales from the colonial neighbourhood make a good primer for the novels, probably.
Faves: 'The Black Pits of Luna,' '"It's Great to Be Back!",' 'Logic of Empire.'
Worsties: 'Delilah and the Space-Rigger,' 'Space Jockey,' 'The Long Watch.'
Faves: 'The Black Pits of Luna,' '"It's Great to Be Back!",' 'Logic of Empire.'
Worsties: 'Delilah and the Space-Rigger,' 'Space Jockey,' 'The Long Watch.'
Read 2020
***
Less piss-takingly complex than my favourite Heinlein time travel stories, but still satisfyingly tidy and I was still left with that familiar unpleasant aftertaste by the end, the dirty get. Pete the cat was the best character.
Robert A. Heinlein, The Menace from Earth
Read 2015
****
'By His Bootstraps' was already one of my favourite short stories ever. I didn't expect the rest to come close, but this is still golden age Heinlein so it's largely great. If there was any method to the seeming randomness of this collection, it could be the author or his editor striving to cover all the sci-fi bases. This is a diverse bunch in theme as well as tone, ranging from The Road-style environmental apocalypse to a silly sketch that might as well be signed off with a muted trumpet.
Faves: 'By His Bootstraps,' 'Goldfish Bowl.'
Worsties: 'Columbus Was a Dope,' 'Sky Lift.'
Faves: 'By His Bootstraps,' 'Goldfish Bowl.'
Worsties: 'Columbus Was a Dope,' 'Sky Lift.'
Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
****
I think this is the first full-length novel I've read from Heinlein, and I might have to stick to his short stories. It starts out all fun with a self-aware computer learning to tell jokes, but then the opening credits roll and things get all downbeat with the lunar uprising. He's clearly a master – the futuristic technology isn't distractingly dated, the dismal world is well fleshed-out and the characters are better than you'd probably expect from vintage SF. I guess I just need my bloody revolutionary allegories to be funnier.
Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast
****
Heinlein's self-indulgent, self-referential, self-parodying '80s period isn't most people's favourite, but being a philistine, I'm more at home with its awkward comedy and quantum misunderstandings than the more grimly satirical '50s and '60s. Powered by pulp cliches, this is a rip-roaring transuniverse adventure by an author who could do better, but has earned the right not to give a shit.
Robert A. Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice
Read 2015
Late period Heinlein discovers the many worlds theory and takes a disappointingly humdrum, TV-budget-friendly approach by occasionally swapping aeroplanes for zeppelins and having currency exchange rates fluctuate between realities. It's all part of the psychological torture of a modern-day Job, and a random woman he meets who gets dragged along and literally put through hell because Heinlein has to have his weaknesses. It gets better later on, when it switches to a proper theological satire with pen-pushing angels and devils livin' it up, but it's mainly all an excuse to rile up the Evangelicals. Come on, they're asking for it.
Read 2019
**
By the end of his illustrious career, Heinlein was mainly writing for himself and established fans who still cared. I've read some of the shared universe books that this one references, but that didn't lend any goodwill to this pervy retro farce. It doesn't take itself seriously, but it's never actually funny either.
Robert A. Heinlein, The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein
Read 2015
*****
This is two vintage collections of novellas and short stories taped together rather than a deliberate attempt at a greatest hits, but when you're dealing with the SF master, any random assortment is going to be steeped in classics. I still haven't read all that much Heinlein – even less of his contemporaries – but despite this poor research, I'm still confident that he's the number one. And if he isn't, I've got even more to look forward to.
Faves: '"—And He Built a Crooked House,"' 'Waldo,' 'The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag,' '"—All You Zombies—"'
Worsties: That's not fair. I guess 'Magic, Inc.'
Read 2020
***
Dario Argento's overwhelming sensory kaleidoscope isn't big on substance. This short book extracts what it can, though seems to spend most of its time on digressions.
Read 2020
***
Appropriate adulation for the cult artist's weird debut that stood apart but probably did 1968 better than the amateurs. It could've gone a lot deeper into the technical side rather than continuing the biography, but maybe you shouldn't ruin everything through overanalysis.
Read 2022
***
Not the most obvious one to spotlight, but a revealing dissection of the chaos that helped me appreciate it more, even if comes off more dissertation than celebration.
Read 2022
***
She doesn't have the basis for superhero parodies and puns yet. I hope it doesn't make her suspicious of peas.
Read 2024
**
She got the gist when reading it to me.
Read 2022
**
Not really any applicable lessons, unless we get into metaphor.
Read 2022
***
A Christmas tree with attitude. Makes a change from the usual festive fluff.
Read 2022
***
Bit unfair that Alan gets a name while his giraffe and robot mates don't, but you get your money's worth in flaps and the objective narration leaves space for discussion.
Read 2022
***
The picture book equivalent of a gentle music box. Likely to be favoured in the rotation for the therapeutic benefits.
Read 2023
**
Did she recognise herself? Yes. Will it make a difference? Will it f—, said Daddy.
Read 2023
**
The virtual flap journey through a building-in-a-book could have been a classic, but perhaps I was expecting too much from a board book about farts.
Read 2020
***
It's 1914 and Europe is thrown into tumult by the war between the liberal-bourgeous modernists and young radicals with their New "Music." One Finn can't be bothered to keep up any more, so writes some accessible music about swans.
Read 2023
*
She's taking the piss now. Day-glo orange does my head in.
Read 2016
****
It's not like I didn't already know how this riches-to-Jesus story was going to go down, but even if I hadn't, Herbert insists on spoiling things anyway with his frequent intertextual interruptions and prophetic spoilers. His universe-building is very nicely done though, throwing us in at the deep end with zany terminology we're expected to commit to memory (my brother's paperbacks came with a glossary, the audiobooks don't) and filling in the history tastefully as we need it. Since I wasn't coming to this untainted, my mental Paul, Gurney and Feyd were played by Kyle MacLachlan, Patrick Stewart and Sting respectively, despite the audiobook narrator's best efforts to make everyone sound exactly the same and equally uninterested in what's going on.
Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
Read 2016
****
Now that your basic Hero's Journey is out of the way, things can take a turn for the sinister and weird. I have no idea yet how well this series is going to hold together in its later extremities, but this is a properly good, justified sequel that spends its entire (more manageable) length bogged down in the consequences of the first, leaving the slate only slighter cleaner by the end. It turns out that letting a fickle, fragile universe think you're the Messiah wasn't the recipe for a happy ending after all. You don't need second sight to predict some of the likely plot points, but if you expected things like the resurrection of a minor character from the first book as an assassin and a living Wikipedia dwarf, I'd be worried about you.
Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
Read 2016
Since the story was basically complete, with no pressing loose ends to tie up, it's time to start again with a Next Generation revamp... but one that still squeezes in as many old, dead characters as possible and again spends most of its time stranded on this one, poxy planet with these spoiled elites rather than exploring more of the Duniverse. It's like Frank Herbert's writing his own fan fiction, even before incest comes on the scene and we're treated to such delectably raunchy descriptions as "an adult beef swelling in his loins." Woof, woof.
Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
Read 2010, re-read 2016
***
Herbert loosens up slightly and we're catapulted millennia into the further future to see what the hell became of the man-worm god emperor, get inside his omniscient head and explore his beneficent tyranny. This has got to be up there with the strangest sequels in history, and a welcome step in a creative direction after its predictable predecessor. I'd actually read this one before, while wandering aimlessly in Taiwan, but my enjoyment had been hindered by awful audiobook narration. Since I couldn't find a superior version, I had to settle for that same narrator again and it didn't seem so bad this time, which can only mean I've been desensitised by the good amateurs at Librivox.
Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune
Read 2016
We're firmly in the realm of pointless, forgotten sequels by this point – Dune's Battle for the Planet of the Apes or Hellraiser: Inferno. On the bright side, we finally ditch the dynasty and get off that bloody planet (for most of it), though the story is still the customary blend of devious machinations, religious satire and unsexy erotica (a clasping vagina makes an appearance). Despite the climactic ending, it's the first of the sequels that doesn't feel like Herbert's final word on the subject, as he finally realised he'd be churning out Dunes until he died. Which wouldn't be very long, as it turned out.
Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
Read 2016
And so the Dune saga ends, seemingly half-way through Herbert's endgame, or at least his latest trilogy. Like he wouldn't have found more excuses to keep cracking them out if he'd lived. Even if I was in love with the story (or even paying attention), I doubt I'd bother with the "official" sequels and prequels authorised and supposedly co-written by the Herbert estate, even though it's obviously prolific franchise whore Kevin J. Anderson who really writes them. I don't care enough to even pretend to be angry about that.
Read 2019
**
A mixed bag that tended towards boring and unlikeable. I at least respected that he refrained from naming the collection after the Dune 'story,' which amounts to a short encyclopaedia article.
Faves: 'Try to Remember,' 'By the Book,' 'Seed Stock.'
Worsties: 'The Dragon in the Sea,' 'The Road to Dune,' 'Frogs and Scientists.'
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 1: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets / Tintin in the Congo
Read 2015
***
If your introduction to Tintin was the 90s cartoon or those new films that I haven't seen but am assuming don't include racism and gleeful animal murder, going back to the source material can be a little shocking. And, as long as you approach it with the right frame of mind, extremely funny. I love the concept of a newspaper comic strip sending one of its reporters (and his dog) on exciting and educational adventures around the world, but considering the young cartoonist wasn't particularly well-travelled himself, that education is based entirely on preconceived notions coloured by institutional xenophobia. The Soviets probably deserved it, so there's nothing to stop you enjoying the rip-roaring first story. Things only get uncomfortable in the second, when Tintin gets carried around by gollywog toys and slaughters helpless wildlife for fun.
Hergé, Tintin in America
**
Fresh from his racist hunting holiday in the Congo, the intrepid reporter sets his sights on cleaning up Chicago's gangland with a detour via Red Indian country. It's an interesting period piece of the time, but it's mainly a tedious catalogue of death-defying escapes from suffocation, drowning, lynching, freefall, burial, explosion, high-speed collision, industrial mincing and various bullets, nearly all thanks to sheer luck more than wits. Sometimes the dog helped.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Cigars of the PharaohRead 2020
****
Introducing the supporting cast, ancient history and exotic mysticism, this finally feels like the Tintin I vaguely remember from the cartoon, but authentically unsanitised with guns, drugs and mummified murder victims intact. The downside of this vintage is that the locals suddenly transform into gollywogs when you travel south of Cairo.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Blue Lotus
Read 2020
***"Seventy-seven suffering Samurais!"
The opium plot continues from the previous book, but you'd be forgiven for forgetting what's supposed to be going on as Tintin dons another cunning disguise, gets captured and escapes enough times to fill out the serial. It's interesting to see a work of this vintage being sympathetic to foreigners by sending up racist expats, taking the time to debunk urban legends about the Chinese and having Thomson & Thompson fail to blend in with their stereotypical Fu Manchu cosplay. Those untrustworthy Japanese are a different matter and get what's coming to 'em.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Broken Ear
Read 2020***
Oh yeah, I forgot Tintin was a journalist. This starts promisingly as he investigates the theft and forgery of a museum piece (no commentary on it being plundered heritage in the first place, alas), then the generic South American adventure is stretched out with the familiar cycle of imprisonment and lucky escapes. Tintin blacks up at one point, and the villains are so racist that they don't even spot him as a grotesque caricature. I'll pretend that's the point Hergé was making, anyway.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Black Island
Read 2020****
Non-stop action, slapstick and horror as Tintin recklessly pursues trigger-happy counterfeiters from Belgium to remotest Scotland. With him, as always, is Snowy, who's alternately reliable or a liability depending on how pissed he's got. I thought I must have been reading an updated reprint when a television showed up, but it turns out they're older than I thought.
Read 2020
***
The repetition of death-defying strokes of luck and revolving jail cells is getting to me now – about half of these being basically exactly the same story in different, sometimes fictional locales – but at least the running gags are starting to pay off, namely the pratfalls of the Thom(p)son Twins. Maybe it should be about them.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Crab with the Golden Claws
Read 2020****
Notably introducing Captain Haddock – who's hopefully got over his drunken, racist rampages now – this thrilling pursuit by smuggling ship, camel and speedboat is one of the more cinematic entries, helped by some nice full-page scenes cutting down on the repetitive plot beats (though Tintin still gets twatted over the head several times). It might've been better off without the dénouement that draws attention to how nonsensical those clues were, it's not like we remembered by the end anyway.
Read 2020
**
It's been long enough since the unambiguous Eastern mysticism that I was taken aback by the exploding mushrooms and giant spiders in Tintin's first sci-fi adventure. But before we get there, there's a nautical wacky race to run against unseen dastardly opponents to fill out the sagging middle.
Read 2020
***
Perhaps with an eye to animated features, or just making sure the next book sells, this is all setup as Hergé structures his first real two-parter to delay gratification (though the less gripping pickpocket B-plot is resolved, quite anticlimactically).
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure
Read 2020***
The Nelvana gang's finally together as Professor Calculus from Cigars of the Pharaoh is reintroduced, though the lingering side-effects of the date-rape drug mean he and Tintin don't recognise each other. After the foreboding flashbacks and ill omens, this turns out to be a surprisingly leisurely trezer hunt as Hergé makes the strange decision to keep it free from time pressure or jeopardy, save for an ineffectual shark or two.
Read 2020
***
Ramping up the pratfalls to help distract his fellow Belgians during Nazi occupation, the background that saw this serial interrupted in the middle is more interesting than the customarily stalling setup to an action-packed part two, but the nightmare sequence was nicely creepy.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun
Read 2020***
More or less a clip show of previous death-defying entanglements relocated to the Andes and the Amazon, I saw the ending coming miles away, but maybe because I'd seen it on the cartoon. Wartime delays almost excuse the author forgetting to address the mystery carried over from the previous book until the last couple of pages, resolved with customary disinterest.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Land of Black Gold
Read 2020***
The least enjoyable of these since the feet-finding early days, the conspiracy plot and attempted suicide are grim and the action and setting mainly remind of earlier, better adventures, with the added "bonus" of bringing back a random former adversary to be the generic villain. The annoying kid was actually the best part, since at least he shook things up a bit.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Destination Moon
Read 2020****
Recent stories had become repetitive and formulaic, so Hergé throws in a Moonraker to keep us on our toes. As this is aiming for more realism than Wallace & Gromit, we have to sit through some dull chemistry lessons before we can get to the silver-age sci-fi, but the sense of countdown makes it a page-turner more than the dawdling espionage plot.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon
Read 2020****
It looks like the weird outlier of the series on the back covers, and it probably is, but a whole book of build-up and attempted scientific accuracy like those serious '50s space films sell it. I was more aware of the serial cliffhangers than I've been before, maybe because they felt more manufactured than usual or because there were some literal cliffhangers in there. I like how specifically dated these ones are, and Hergé's enthusiasm for history in the making comes through in his astronomical renderings and exhausting walls of dialogue.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Calculus Affair
Read 2020****
Very much the For Your Eyes Only after they went all Moonraker (except a quarter of a century ahead of time), this merry cross-country kidnapping chase is one of the more realistic entries and one that would lend itself to filming without too much trouble, save a few expensive stunts. I don't think the art's been this detailed before either, the busier panels being like something out of Mœbius or Where's Wally.
Read 2020
**
Getting too comfortable in their ambiguous Batman & Robin-style lives of leisure, Tintin & the Captain reliably find themselves in another adventure that moralises about slavery while simultaneously being the most racist one since Tintin in the Congo. There's a sense of faded latter days now, or maybe I'm just bored.
Read 2020
***
Cutting down on the ensemble and the comic cutaways, this late entry felt like a retro throwback, comparisons further encouraged by the return of a character from 25 real-time years ago who naturally hasn't aged like the rest of them. Keeping the politics vague makes the shifting context less glaring than it could have been.
Read 2020
***
A well-earned staycation from the relentless globetrotting and occasional space travel, Tintin's Lwaxana Troi episode is more domestic sitcom than fiendish mystery, but non-Francophone foreigners will be a couple of pages behind.
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Flight 714 to Sydney (a.k.a. Flight 714)
Read 2020***
Tintin's been around so long that we've seen the evolution of leisure travel from long-winded trains and boats to supersonic round-the-world flights. The return of the self-described most evil villain makes this one of the meaner ones, until we head underground and things take an unexpected sci-fi turn that beats Erich von Däniken to the punch. It's not that weird for the series, but the fortuitous ending's no doubt infamous.
Read 2020
**
You wait eight years for another Tintin story and it's just a duller sequel/self-remake of one of the more depressing books. Whether he wrote it to get some politics off his chest, to pay the inland revenue or just for something to do, the enthusiasm isn't there. I don't remember the dog even being in it.
Hergé and Yves Rodier, The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin and Alph-Art
Read 2020***
Hergé's death left our bequiffed hero trapped forever in a ghoulish Edgar Allan Poe-style cliffhanger, unless you opt for one of the multiple choice fan continuations. Rodier's reconstruction is a decent forgery, but an obvious step down when you've been reading along. The excessive cameos are forgivable considering, and it's nice to see Tintin being a journalist again for the first time in about half a century.
Read 2004
****
Richard Herring's non-sexist, no-homo male answer to The Vagina Monologues was adapted from a stand-up show, but it's so comprehensive and borderline academic that you wouldn't know it. Find comfort and horror in the cock survey of the average Lee and Herring fan.
Richard Herring, Bye Bye Balham: Warming Up Vol 1
Read 2009****
Richard Herring's daily blog had only been going for six years (now sixteen and counting) when he overambitiously decided to start publishing it in book form. The vanity project was shelved as presumably unprofitable after two books / one year, but it was a nice excuse to revisit that formative period when Warming Up was a conscious daily writing exercise, trying to extract humour from a specific thought or event rather than just being an intrusive diary. Warning: Includes number plate spotting.
Read 2010
***
If you caught Richard's stand-up show Oh Fuck, I'm 40 a few years back and were curious about what happened next, it involves a champagne bottle going where the sun doesn't shine, among other things. He comes out of the other side eventually.
Read 2023
****
The sensitive sequel to Talking Cock didn't go with the more obvious title.
Read 2022
***
Shelved for future reference when it came with a jigsaw, she's watched the film now, so can enjoy another distractingly alternative take on what she knows (though any confusion seems limited to needing a reminder that Yellow Lion and Brown Lion are the same person). Nice drawings, at least.
Nigel Hicks, This Is the Philippines
**
As expected, and frankly hoped for, a highly selective and irresponsibly rose-tinted presentation of the nation that housed me for the best part of the last decade (the glowing preface is from the Secretary of Tourism, so you know it's reliable), so our daughter can grow up with the romantic ideal of where she comes from without being exposed to the depressing side that was the main reason behind the migration in the first place. Now we're going to watch This Is England for balance.
Read 2023
*
I don't know what her reasoning was for choosing this one at preschool, but she realised she'd made an error in judgement even before I finally convinced her to get it over with.
Eric Hill, Where's Spot?
****
Straightforward hide and seek with no thematic mucking about. Even as a child, I remember coming to this debut later on and noting the early designs of what would eventually turn out to be Spot's mates, which I appreciate haven't been 'remastered' to bring them in line. As in rip-off Dear Zoo (two years later), older readers can find enjoyment in the unspoken backstory of what all these deadly jungle animals are doing hiding out in a house and why there are no people in sight.
Read 2022
**
The same bloody thing again, except Spot is seeking this time, in an incredible twist. You can tell it's an early one, as most of the friends are still off-model.
Read 2022
**
The ominous danger of the first book ramps up with an aggro hippo that Spot's dad seems indifferent to. I don't want to go to the beach, daddy.
Read 2021
***
This old-school tyke hasn't caught on like the Mr. Men, but she still picked him off the shelf, maybe recognising him from that story she always skips in the treasuries. This was a more entertaining escapade than most at least, complete with inappropriately death-defying stunts.
Read 1987
**
My dad's a farmer, so maybe this was to show some solidarity, even if the story's no more eventful than your average Spot 12-pager. I was sure he was talking to a horse in a stable on the cover, but I can't find that version, or maybe I just couldn't tell my animals apart. Some farmer I'd make.
Read 2022
***
By this point in the run, the flaps are arbitrary, but he's toned down the anxiety. Though when Spot's ball lands on an elephant's newspaper, I had an unpleasant flashback of an aggro beach hippo.
Read 2023
***
Economically if tediously ticks off various subjects rather than spreading them across a Little Library boxset. Surely the most boring Spot book though.
Read 2021
*
I think we read this one before and it failed to register, what with it being such a generic, pointless revival. Money for old rope, I guess. She obediently lifted all the flaps and was neither surprised nor impressed by their contents.
Read 2022
*
Trying to identify this online, it seems the library got the most limited of the various variations, though she still wanted to read it five times and her attempts to say 'saxophone' were funny.
Read 2021
**
A pastiche of children's annuals that's indistinguishable at times, while still being as authentically perplexing as the show that I've never been able to decide whether I actually like. Likely to have soured a few millennial Christmases, I enjoyed the post-its page anyway.
Read 2017
**Daily writing prompts can be fantastic motivation for overcoming writer's block (or more often, writer's ennui) and for getting yourself into a routine. They're more for the writer's benefit than the reader’s, but a good writer can still turn the self-help exercise into something worth reading.
Worth reading on a blog, anyway. You wouldn't want to pay for it. Beyond the technical achievement, it feels like the minimum of thought went into filling the spaces between those 26 immovable letters. Writers love to write stories about writers writing stories, but this reader's read too many.
Read 2021
***
Such a comprehensive look at the polarising ballet, its origins, form and behind-the-scenes and before-the-pit drama that it's a shame I'm not obsessed with it, really.
Read 2019
*****
Such a perfect pastiche of the best Gothic novels that it comes out definitive, without the serialised padding that puts me off bothering with most of the authentic classics. If you can't tell your story in under 200 pages, not interested.
Read 2020
***
Step through the mist to find yourself back in gaslit times, when idle moochers would write absurdly digressive novel-length letters and people with nothing better to do would read them in one sitting. Hill's the master of the style, but I think I'll go back to short stories.
Read 2020
***
I appreciate that this authentic gothic pastiche didn't commit itself to period padding, feeling more like a film where we're not forced to spend more time with these neurotic kids than we have to for the story. It's still a bit too long to maintain a consistent atmosphere or spookiness, mind.
Read 2022
***
Flimsy 4D fun, even if you have to use your imagination.
Read 2020
***
I've never paid much attention to lyrics outside of Nick Cave, so it's gratifying when these books cover the laboured songwriting process and get inside the writer's head rather than just recounting humdrum studio anecdotes. If that's too deep for rock 'n' roll journalism, he ends with a ranked discography, good man.
Read 1999
****
On my own time I favoured the escapism of space stories over grim social realism, but this was one of the better books I was required to read, sequenced in the curriculum to steal much of Mockingbird's thunder.
Read 2021
***
A nicely detailed train ride that celebrates the minutiae of the experience rather than the hardware. Her own choo-choo craze was less intense.
Read 2021
*****
I don't know if I was ever read this story or just absorbed it passively through the early education ether, but it's very nice and this pop-up/slider/wheel adaptation is more impressive than it was required to be, even if she just obsesses over the one page.
Read 2015
***
I didn't know much about her story, but now I know the other side of the story. I figure enough people only know the first side of the story, so I'm doing my bit to balance out the ignorance.
Read 2015
****
A diverse assortment of essays on politics, religion, history, literature and why women apparently aren't funny, I learned a lot of things and – more importantly – gained received opinions that I can confidently pass off as my own. Just don't ask any follow-up questions.
Thomas Hodge and artists, VHS Video Cover Art: 1980s to Early 1990s
***
Not as awesome as hoped, but still sometimes funny.
Faves: Gremloids, Berserker, The Death Dealer, The Stuff, The Wailing
Read 2022
**
She doesn't need the encouragement or instructions any more, but poo and wee are timeless.
Read 2022
**
Where do they get their crazy ideas from!? It is Where's Spot again again, with less exotic animals along the way, but she had fun and read it through herself afterwards, so maybe originality is overrated.
Read 2017
***
Ranking the William Hope Hodgson stories
William Hope Hodgson, The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"
Read 2017
****
Hodgson's "first" novel (supposedly, some or all of the other novels were written before it, shyly unpublished) follows the proud tradition of pulp authors recycling their short stories for a feature-length mash-up. At least in the first half, as the plucky shipwreck survivors fend off various abominations of nature before they find other survivors and it becomes a heroic adventure yarn.
This repetition isn't really annoying, as this is just one of many crews unlucky enough to wind up in these godforsaken regions (timeline-wise, this comes first). The archaic style Hodgson commits to for the whole thing is more palatable than The Night Land's.
This repetition isn't really annoying, as this is just one of many crews unlucky enough to wind up in these godforsaken regions (timeline-wise, this comes first). The archaic style Hodgson commits to for the whole thing is more palatable than The Night Land's.
William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland
****
I knew this was supposed to be a massively influential work of uncanny cosmic weirdness, but it wasn't doing much for me with its pig men and overly detailed journals within overly detailed journals. Until time went into flux and the chronicler found himself trapped on a dizzying astral voyage around the dying sun into the post-solar system. Then it hit the spot. Mm, yeah, that's good.
Read 2015, re-read 2017
***
It's not the most eventful ghost story of all time, but it's up there with the most atmospheric. Set sail for ambiguous apparitions, paradoxical weather, cabin fever, creaking timbers and an excess of shadows.
William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land
Read 2015, re-read 2017
Another hugely influential work from the writer most of us haven't even heard of, this time in the realm of the dying Earth nightmare dystopia. Literally, as we start out exploring The Night Land in a fellow's prophetic dreams before Hodgson correctly decides that it's more interesting to abandon the rubbish framing and just go there. We probably spend too long there, to be honest, but the extended length does rub in the hopelessness of it all. There is some attempted levity about the enduring power of love, but come on, the sun's gone out and the night creatures are closing in. We're fucked.
William Hope Hodgson, Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder
Read 2016
I don't know which paranormal detective came first – Carnacki or Algernon Blackwood's John Silence – but they both came after Holmes, so it doesn't really matter. Carnacki's the more limited of the two, as his specific spirit fixation means he doesn't have time for werewolves, wendigos and the like, and the only variety in these investigations of haunted houses and castles is that sometimes the all-too-corporeal culprits are literally unmasked in a Scooby Doo ending and Carnacki looks ridiculous for taking it all seriously. The rest of the time it's ghosts.
Faves: 'The Gateway of the Monster,' 'The House Among the Laurels.'
Worsties: 'The Horse of the Invisible,' 'The Searcher of the End House' (there's not much between any of these, it just makes it look like I'm paying attention).
Read 2022
***
This vintage easy-reader kept her attention as it lumbered from one fun situation to the next. Why didn't my school have this?
Read 2020****
An overly comprehensive, occasionally opinionated guide to the first 30 years of the unlikely franchise. I didn't know much of the trivia from the films, let alone the original novel, TV series (live action and animated), comics, water pistols and everything else. The funniest part is the composite timeline where the Earth gets destroyed but fresh batches of astronauts continue to land on its surface for several decades regardless.
Read 2024
*
Self-explanatory. Hope this series doesn't catch on.
Read 2015
****
The guys know Scrabble. This comprehensive guide written by the champs is the sort of thing some twat would try to sell on his blog for $30, but they're offering it for free, which is nice of them. (And since they are Scrabble fans, you can trust the spelling and grammar are above the typical e-book standard). Unlike my usual download-n-delete "virtual library books" (yes, that's how I justify piracy) I'll keep hold of it – primarily for its handy lists of the two- and three-letter words, but it's full of good stuff. Most of it will already be intuitive if you've wasted as much of your life playing the nerd's game as I have, but there'll be lots of new things to think about if you hadn't thought to take your fun displacement activity deadly seriously before.
Read 2019
***
I've never revisited FF7 since my youth, mostly because I can't work out ISOs and emulators, so this po-faced analysis of storytelling and game mechanics with screencaps was a nice trip down memory lane, if boring.
Read 2020
***
How to play and dance along to Renaissance music that was considered old-fashioned even at the time. It's strange that they feel they have to date these older books in the series, as if regular readers are going to recoil at the extra vintage like a teenager to a black and white film.
Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
Read 2018
Learning who these men and woman were was illuminating, but the most entertaining parts were the ballooning and the Tahitian travelogue. I should go back to some of those reckless colonial journals, they seem like a depressing hoot.
Audiobook narrator Gildart Jackson is a keeper, almost on the Stephen Thorne/Derek Jacobi level, except he hasn't done the compulsory turn in Doctor Who yet.
Audiobook narrator Gildart Jackson is a keeper, almost on the Stephen Thorne/Derek Jacobi level, except he hasn't done the compulsory turn in Doctor Who yet.
Read 2022
**
Secretly communicate your affection for Peppa-reading parents in your life. Only a few more years of this, I'll be fine.
Read 2015, re-read 2023
****
All the rip-roaring seafaring adventure was there as expected, but it's also bloody psychedelic and bizarrely 'modern,' even featuring female gods criticising Olympus' sexist double standards. Forget your Bible or preferred religious text – every home should have a Bumper Book of Greek Myths and Legends by law.
2018 / Library book / 32 pages / UK/Norway
**
She picked up on the unspoken supernatural aspect. But then, she was probably staring at that unicorn the whole time.
Read 2020
***
When these fans got the green light to write the official quiz book for their favourite programme, they didn't half arse it. There are far too many sections of far too many inane questions for anyone to really bother getting through, but the crosswords, word searches and other puzzles would pass the time on a commute. It fortuitously catches the franchise immediately before its decline, so you don't have to slog through the post-Grant years to brush up on your Kochanski laundry trivia. The only really interesting part was brief questionnaires filled in by the cast and creators that give some insights into their personalities circa 1994.
Anne Hooper, Anne Hooper's Kama Sutra: Classic Lovemaking Techniques Reinterpreted for Today's LoversRead 2006
***
A wholesome picture book for shy or giggly couples looking to sprinkle mild spice, I won't have been alone in not bothering to read the modernised mysticism and instead trying to decipher what these busy Aryan models were non-explicitly getting up to.
Read 1991
**
I can't say I thought too deeply at five about this rhyming parable of a dragon boy who's discriminated against for breathing water rather than fire (or something like that). He conforms in the end anyway, and turns out to be best after all. That's just the hare and the tortoise, isn't it?
Read 2022
**
It could have explained the relationship between geometry and structural integrity better, but maybe that's asking a bit much from a spider picture book.
Read 2020
***
For students, a self-consciously short summary of the main themes with handy quotes from the text and across critical history to make your essay a piece of piss. For postlapsarian graduates, a nice celebration of the text on its own terms without bringing too much theology or politics into it, apart from some gender reassessment because it's the 2010s.
Read 2022
**
A: Several random animals. This was part of library storytime, she wouldn't choose this babyish stuff for herself any more. Push and pull tabs are where it's at, granddad.
Read 2023
*
Soppy fluff, at least he resisted the purr pun.
Read 2022
****
I'm too busy, old and antisocial to consider putting these to use, but twenty-two-year-old me might have been up for it, and I might end up running the gauntlet anyway when my child's old enough, so I appreciate it on their behalfs.
Read 2015
*
As someone who used to fill his leisure time with aimless walking back when this blog's title was actually relevant, I admire the intent behind this book, encouraging people to walk and pay attention to their surroundings. But this really is just someone describing their walks around the block, being rapturously amazed by the ordinary (that cover has been misleadingly Photoshopped; there's not one mention of a giant squirrel) and spinning off on tangents to briefly outline various matters of psychology, horticulture and other fields, because this has to stretch to 300 pages. This is a useful exercise to do for yourself as a writer, but not to bore other people with. You'll be telling us about your dreams next, or blogging about every single time you step outside... the... oh.
Anthony Horowitz, Mindgame
Read 2015
***
I've felt a strange and unearned affinity for Anthony Horowitz ever since I found out he was responsible for Crime Traveller, the most fascinatingly poor BBC Saturday evening drama ever, and this is similarly flawed but enjoyable.
It's set in a mental hospital, so you already know what the shocking twists are going to be. More interesting are the stage directions explaining that props and scenery will be subtly altered over time while our attention is distracted, something that would be interesting to experience live but, of course, is completely lost on the page.
It's set in a mental hospital, so you already know what the shocking twists are going to be. More interesting are the stage directions explaining that props and scenery will be subtly altered over time while our attention is distracted, something that would be interesting to experience live but, of course, is completely lost on the page.
Read 2023
**
The materialism message is fine, but it's weird that the more imminent survival crisis is left unresolved.
Read 2022
***
Haunting journeys via various modes of transport.
Faves: 'Left Luggage,' 'Mr Wrong'
Read 2022
**
Money literally talks. This would have been an interesting experiment in a longer collection of tales, but didn't feel especially deserving of the boutique release.
Read 2017
****
Ranking Robert E. Howard's Conan stories
Robert E. Howard, The Hour of the Dragon (a.k.a. Conan the Conqueror)
Read 2015, re-read 2017
****
The only proper-length novel featuring Robert E. Howard's most enduring creation, this didn't feel as far removed from the (weirdly excellent) Schwarzenegger film as I feared. The older King Conan is a lot more talkative than Arnie's younger brute, as he would be, and the magic elements have that same sinister atmosphere rather than the fairy tale fluff of the pathetic sequel. We are invited to consider Conan's bulging muscles and sweat-slicked mane on occasion, but it's balanced out by similarly detailed descriptions of glistening warrior women heaving beneath their breast plates, if that's the sort of thing that worries you. Originally serialised, it knows how to keep you coming back for more – how could I resist such tantalising chapter titles as 'From What Hell Have You Crawled?' and 'He Has Slain the Sacred Son of Set!'
Robert E. Howard, The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Read 2015
***
I would point out that this features all the unpleasant racism you might expect from the period, but that's not really fair. There's loads more of it.
Faves: 'The Valley of the Lost,' 'Pigeons from Hell.'
Worsties: Inconsequential fragments and the boxing/racism double punch of 'The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux.'
Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons, Red Dwarf Programme Guide: Second Revised Edition
Read 1998–2000****
No doubt my most dog-eared and well-thumbed book, this was the first Red Dwarf reference I had, at a time when I'd seen less than half of the episodes, and was how I first "watched" the rest – marvelling at the complexity of 'The Inquisitor' and 'Stasis Leak' and finding the episodes slightly disappointing compared to my imagined hype when I finally saw them a year or two later. Absolutely indispensable for a while, the A-Z section was a waste of paper though.
Read 2022
**
With unrelatable concerns and a misleadingly archaic uniform, this wasn't particularly helpful.
Read 2019
***
Mainly providing the biographical context that threatens to ruin the classics if anything, this was a handy starting point to making my selections, even if I wussed out of The Cantos.
Yu-hsuan Huang, Sing Along With Me!: Happy Birthday / Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush / This Is the Way We Go to School / Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star / A Sailor Went to Sea / Etc.
**
Screen-free DIY YouTube or a musical interval at the library. My instinct is to criticise a book that stretches a sixteen-word song across almost as many pages, but she finds these pleasing, and that's probably more important.
Read 2022
***
She's not insecure about her speech and found this enjoyably relatable, or maybe she just liked the dino friends.
Read 2020***
This promising demo would be stronger if he'd left out the early filler, but it's interesting to see his style develop from uncharacteristically predictable twists through zany personifications to finally end up in familiar musty attics and the delicious punning of the title track. There's an occasional theme of over-optimistic yearning for distant or absent women, but maybe that's just how guys start out writing generally.
Fave: 'Romance with Capsicum'
Rhys Hughes, Worming the Harpy and Other Bitter Pills
****
If Thomas Ligotti was into puns. A little less refined if you're riding the story cycle backwards, and the stories featuring specific public domain characters are less distinctive than his home-brewed stock mix, but I'm happy for all the expansion packs I can get. He threatens to rouse the would-be writer in me like no one else, but he's so prolific that there's no need for a rubbish tribute act.
Fave: 'A Carpet Seldom Found'
Fave: 'A Carpet Seldom Found'
Rhys H. Hughes, Rawhead & Bloody Bones and Elusive PlatoRead 2020
***
Two tonally-incoherent novellas from his mock-gothic days, seemingly conjoined out of practicality, they're at least ordered the right way around; the relentless joke-book-standard groaners of the first tale reassuring readers that the second story's over-the-top perverse sadism and body horror is all in good fun, theoretically.
Rhys Hughes, The Smell of Telescopes
Read 2020*****
Setting myself moronic reading themes pays off every now and then; I probably never would have come across this obscure oddity from a new favourite writer without it. These twenty-six tales of Weird Wales share the occasional irrepressible character, but they're mainly linked by recurring preoccupations and a consistent tone that can't help itself from regularly deflating the unnerving atmosphere with exquisite puns and convoluted twists. Too many faves to bother listing.
Rhys Hughes, Stories from a Lost Anthology
Read 2020*****
More accessible in their twisted magical (sur)realism than show-off genre pastiches this time around, though still a slave to the irresistible pun. This usurped his previous collection to become my new favourite anachronistic Book of the Year until some of the later stories let the side down by outrageously not making me laugh, but that padding doesn't diminish the stupendous ones. I was always preemptively disappointed that Neil Gaiman's short stories weren't exactly like this.
Fave: 'Jellydämmerung!'
Fave: 'Jellydämmerung!'
Rhys Hughes, Nowhere Near Milkwood
Read 2020****
A purpose-grafted 'membrane' helps to forge sympathetic connections between the other two distinct story cycles written over a decade, but this still holds together less well than the earlier books that already cultivated his miscellaneous best. Like Arthur C. Clarke's Tales from the White Hart, the tavern tales come off as lightweight filler between the deeper probings into kooky strangeness.
Fave: 'Pyramids of the Purple Atom'
Rhys Hughes, Journeys Beyond Advice
Read 2020****
These longer-winded wanderings through the dark were my first departure from what I imagine are the core Tartarus Press gospels, so the increased length and decreased levity were as disappointing initially as when any favourite band dares to deviate from their template, but there were a couple of classics along the meandering way that made the endeavour worthwhile. We arrived back in familiar territory before the end, though the self-fan tribute was overcompensating a little.
Fave: 'The Singularity Spectres'
Fave: 'The Singularity Spectres'
Rhys Hughes, The Percolated Stars: An Astro-Caffeine Romp in Three Cups Featuring Batavus Droogstoppel Merchant and Scientist and Bourgeois Monster – One Lump or Two?
****
Episodic adventures become a de facto novel when the third story concocts continuity twixt its predecessors and then just doesn't stop. The first voyage into Earth's inner microcosmos is one of my favourite things he's written, layering insanities like a hilarious lasagne. The globetrotting sequel and brothel intermission considerably less so.
Fave: 'Ultima Thule'
Read 2020
***
This nine-song E.P. digs up a few oldies that weren't interesting enough to go on the albums and throws in a couple of contemporary shorts for relevance and contrast, offering a condensed time lapse from uncharacteristically awful puns to singular logical absurdities. If you'd picked this up at a reading, it would have occupied you on the bus home.
Fave: 'The Innumerable Chambers of the Heart'
Rhys Hughes, Engelbrecht Again!
Read 2020***
A fanfic sequel I didn't really need, the influence of Richardson's Engelbrechts on the author's style was clear when reading the originals, but he gets a bit carried away with the boundary-pushing as his cumulative story cycle gains meta momentum and the exploits increasingly drag. It was quite annoying even as a fan, so I don't know how other readers would fare.
Fave: 'Surfing the Solar Wind'
Rhys Hughes, Madonna Park
Read 2020**
I don't seek out the ephemeral obscuria of favourite artists for the purpose of deflating the impeccable image I've built up from their curated works (that'll teach you to be good!), but it's usually a consequence of that damned curiosity. He put out this average-sinking sextet, so it's fair game. The cat house one was great, but some of them were just nasty.
Fave: 'The Big Lick'
Rhys Hughes, Plutonian ParodiesRead 2020
***
Well-observed, deliberately annoying takes on three dead authors, noticeably less reverential than his usual tributes to authors he actually admires. I don't know whether the culinary connections were intended or he was just writing when hungry/thirsty.
Fave: 'Poe Pie'
Read 2020
**
The first story about the sun giving itself skin cancer was funny, but the stream-of-consciousness exploits of a xenophobic mad scientist and his cartoon character creations got less rewarding as they went on, scraping the barrel of porn puns at one point.
Fave: 'The Wings of Phœbus'
Read 2021, re-read 2024
*****
Invert your mind and join Absurdity Investigator Sampietro Mischief as he cracks the case of the disappearing sky. Likely one of Hughes' finest tales, though I've admittedly only read 600 or so.
Read 2021, re-read 2024
****
The emotive exploration of a music festival's festival.
Read 2020****
Intended as a sort of self-titled showcase of the author's non-patented, not-totally-clear 'Romanti-Cynical' style, this wasn't one of my favourite collections, and far from his funniest, but there's a vaguely Gothic consistency I appreciated. It's also impressive how he keeps getting his past selves to write new stories, how deep is that well?
Fave: 'Castle Cesare'
Read 2021, re-read 2024
****
I'm literate enough to get at least some of the references.
***
100 flash fictions under 1000 words, randomly sequenced to keep recurring characters, preoccupations and experiments from getting too repetitive. I'm always up for a quickie, the sillier the better, but I prefer these in their native habitats – providing light relief between more labourious journeys to the punchline.
Fave: 'Stale Air'
Rhys Hughes, Young Tales of the Old Cosmos
Read 2020**
This uncharacteristically banal story cycle of personified celestial bodies and predictable Milky Way puns isn't strong or substantial enough to stand alone, so I don't know why he didn't incorporate it into The World Idiot or something. A couple of subsequent anthologies have taken the bullet and sunk their averages in the process.
Fave: 'The Pink Giant'
Rhys H. Hughes, The World Idiot and Other Absurdlings
Read 2020****
If you were new to Rhys Hughes, this would be a cracking sampler. If you've been following along, it's odd. The new stories and obscure magazine/chapbook reprints are conventionally good, but the other half reappropriates from some of his best-known collections where those stories already worked perfectly by design. It's as if Pink Floyd had plonked some Dark Side of the Moon tracks onto Momentary Lapse of Reason to make it better. Maybe they were out of print at the time.
Fave: 'The Macroscopic Teapot'
Rhys Hughes, The Mermaid Variations: A Miniature Trilogy
Read 2020***
One of his shorter story cycles, I was bewitched by the sensory evocation of the beginning that threatened to explore new realms of serious romantic fantasy, but then the confidence falters and we're dragged back into the gravitational pull of his customary style, dredging up an unpleasant Key Stage 3 tutor side of me that questioned whether he has to make everything funny. By the second story he's self-flagellating and can't really be arsed to carry on, but it's not as if he could waste the opportunity of lunar seas once that had come to him.
Read 2020
***
A well-read fibber's tall tales and extraordinary excuses, some funnier than others.
Fave: 'Flying Saucer Harmonies'
Rhys Hughes, Ten Tributes to Calvino
Read 2020
****
"I'm a tautology lover, therefore I love tautologies."
I've abandoned as many Calvino books as I've made it through, knowing my place. I hadn't noticed that these were tributes when some of them snuck into earlier collections, but in their mathematical precision and self-awareness, it makes sense. More sense than I could make of the Cosmicomics.
I've abandoned as many Calvino books as I've made it through, knowing my place. I hadn't noticed that these were tributes when some of them snuck into earlier collections, but in their mathematical precision and self-awareness, it makes sense. More sense than I could make of the Cosmicomics.
Fave: 'Climbing the Tallest Tree in the World'
Read 2022
**
This double sequel to two books from different authors that I haven't read likely wouldn't make any more sense if I had. Seemingly purpose-scribbled as free bonus content, it's unfettered by such conventional demands. He probably had fun writing it, that's the main thing.
*****
A recurring theme of mythological figures from antiquity to the Apollo missions may have informed these selections, but that's as characteristic generally as the inspired inversions and pun traps (hopes that I'd built up an immunity were dashed when he sprung the "re-tail outlet"). He'd be taken a lot more seriously if he took himself seriously, but that wouldn't be anywhere near as good.
Fave: 'The Pastel Whimsy'
Read 2020
***
An aspirational children's novel for young psychopaths reliably goes off the rails when a vegan turns out to be from Vega and the horizons of conquest extend across galaxies, the afterlife and cyberspace. Someone should film these, I dare them.
Read 2020
***
My short-story-spoiled attention span tends to drift off during longer works, but the author does his best to reel me back in when this uncharacteristically straight tour through various historical pastiches abruptly goes bananas, around the time the narrator becomes an undead skeleton.
Rhys Hughes, Orpheus on the Underground and Other Stories
Read 2020****
A reunion with the publishing house that gave him his first breaks, the early stories feel obediently compromised for the traditional tastes of the Tartarus Press audience. Once they've been sufficiently groomed, he introduces more outlandish protagonists like bicycle-centaurs and a maudlin bridge.
Fave: 'The Great Me'
Rhys Hughes, Less Lonely Planet (Tales of Here, There & Happenstance)
Read 2020
****
I thought "the stories in this book were written in strict chronological order" was just a funny statement, until I realised he was (also) talking about the arrangement. Before we reach the story cycle proper, these tales that take place in places (a handily vague theme) take us through the various ages of Rhys Hughes: from weird rom-com and dark fantasy pastiche (with recurring pub's-skeleton-chandelier motif) to self-deprecating experiments and self-conscious homage, finally finding a home for early gems like 'Troubleroot' that inexplicably passed by previous collections. Meanwhile, oft-anthologised shorties flash past with the familiar frequency of adverts.Fave: 'The Impregnable Fortress'
Rhys Hughes, Mirrors in the Deluge
Read 2020****
Another random assortment of tales concerning myriad humans, mechanical beings and mythological lifeforms (mirrors/opposites don't crop up quite often enough to be a convenient theme – it's almost as if he's just collecting some stories he's happened to write along the way!), these trend shorter and lighter than most, and I was more conscious than usual of the pun titles leading the way, though I was probably swayed by the confessional introduction there. You can always tell when I'm enjoying a Rhys Hughes story; I scold it aloud.
Fave: 'The Soft Landing'
Read 2020-21
*****
This moreish 'sampler' of 365 daily stories doesn't exist in the real world, but it's a keeper on the virtual shelves until the author one day completes his projected 1,000-story cycle and releases the comprehensive girder-length hardback. A writer normally has to die before they put out a collection this generous.
Read 2020***
Non-comprehensively collecting the stories the author would probably least like his mum to read, they're not all rapey, but enough of them are to make it his least palatable collection. Including the whimsical Fanny Fables seems irrelevant until the author succumbs to temptation and enters his story and character at the end, there it is.
Fave: 'The Sickness of Satan'
Read 2020
****
Short tales inspired by a nice place he visited, featuring sentient clouds, God and other mythological creatures and jarring sci-fi interruptions.
Fave: 'The Shapes Down There'
Read 2023
**
I'm fond of his pun-fixated fiction,
but converted to verse, I am averse.
Read 2023
**
Relentless chin-based debasement as commentary on bigotry, in the form of crap poetry.
Rhys Hughes, Dabbler in Drabbles, Volume One: 100 Short Stories
***
What to do with yourself after completing a decades-long 1,000-story cycle than commit to doing it again over the course of a year, albeit in miniature. As ever, these brief sketches are mainly based around variably terrible puns that he somehow – astonishingly – hadn't done yet.
Faves: 'Ghost Skeletons,' 'The Watering Can,' 'Ice Monster'
Rhys Hughes, Dabbler in Drabbles, Volume Two: 200 Short Stories
***
Recurring characters and themes accumulate to several-hundred-word epics amid the briefer studies, which can be quite thoughtful when they're not being silly, though all the filler doesn't bode well for the incrementally longer sequels.
Faves: 'History and Time,' 'The Check-up'/'Pulled Muscle,' 'Drawing Straws'
Read 1995
****
Our school was crazy for Ted Hughes' poetic sci-fi pacifism classic. At the time I enjoyed its Godzilla-style action on a superficial level, but it's also got allegorical depth that would make Rod Serling proud.
Read 1995
**
As a child with OCD tendencies, I remember being irked by the assymetry of this being significantly longer than The Iron Man, meaning I didn't get to spend as much time with that better book. Its environmental messages are more heavy-handed, but this was the 90s, I was used to it.
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris)
****
When I studied literature at university, my choice of modules was mainly dictated by avoiding overlong and clichéd Romantic and Victorian novels like cholera. I've tried to read Dickens a couple of times since, but even in passive audiobook form it's been a chore. But this one – which seemed to be a Gothic quasi-horror story largely set in a cathedral – was intriguing enough to commit to. I don't mind being bored when it's atmospheric.
It's absurdly padded with digressive essays on the decline of Gothic architecture, the barbarism of medieval justice and other opinionated topics that really belong in supplementary journals where students writing essays about the novel can track them down, rather than interrupting the already dawdling story every other chapter for the rest of us, and Hugo's innovative subversion of convention is cancelled out by his reliance on fairy-tale coincidence elsewhere, but the surprisingly grim ending tipped it in my favour. I haven't seen Disney's version, but I'm going to guess they didn't close on the cradling skeletons motif.
It's absurdly padded with digressive essays on the decline of Gothic architecture, the barbarism of medieval justice and other opinionated topics that really belong in supplementary journals where students writing essays about the novel can track them down, rather than interrupting the already dawdling story every other chapter for the rest of us, and Hugo's innovative subversion of convention is cancelled out by his reliance on fairy-tale coincidence elsewhere, but the surprisingly grim ending tipped it in my favour. I haven't seen Disney's version, but I'm going to guess they didn't close on the cradling skeletons motif.
Read 2020
***
The music barely gets a look-in in this paean to paranoid psychedelic prophet Arthur Lee. Probably best digested on the same aperitif you're pairing the album with, but be prepared for things to get heavy.
Rob Hume, RSPB Complete Birds of Britain and Europe
Read 2015
****
I don't know much about birds, or even particularly like them, but as an extension of the environment they carry a lot of cosy nostalgia for that faraway temperate land. During my final year of university, I didn't realise how fortunate I was to be walking along a canal every day on the way to the bus stop, watching the ducklings appear in the spring and grow increasingly less adorable week by week. As a child growing up next to a farm, I couldn't have imagined that one day I'd pine for that annoyingly repetitive "whoo-whoo, whoo" call outside the window every night.
This is a book all about birds. It's dense with stats and colourful pictures, basically perfect, but with 800 species to deal with it gets repetitive pretty quickly. They could have snuck in the occasional frog or lion to keep us on our toes.
This is a book all about birds. It's dense with stats and colourful pictures, basically perfect, but with 800 species to deal with it gets repetitive pretty quickly. They could have snuck in the occasional frog or lion to keep us on our toes.
Faves: Owls.
Worsties: Seagulls. Don't miss you.
Andrew Michael Hurley, The Loney
Read 2017
So it wasn't the 21st-century Hill of Dreams or Wicker Man that I'd been misleadingly self-hyping (Robin Hardy wrote that himself and it was serviceable). But as present-day Gothic goes, it couldn't really be better.
Really, I'd have been content with any old cliched story playing out against those grey, nostalgic Lancashire backdrops, but the academic author keeps things grounded and any paranormal goings-on are never more than implicit. He still pulls out every goth gimmick he can get away with.
My main gripe is that he didn't write it about 15 years earlier, when I was still imaginative and impressionable enough for it to really get under my skin.
Andrew Michael Hurley, Devil's Day
Read 2018
****
That's more like it. Hurley's popular debut novel was a superb Gothic revival fringed by a bleak coastline, but this follow-up ventures deeper into the unforgiving landscape and is one of the scariest books I've read in memory.
A Devil isn't required to explain the various atrocities and general grim hopelessness, but the option's there if you prefer the comfort of laying the blame on the Owd Feller to the alternative. Full of nature and seasonal symbolism to keep lapsed English lit students happy, while crying.
A Devil isn't required to explain the various atrocities and general grim hopelessness, but the option's there if you prefer the comfort of laying the blame on the Owd Feller to the alternative. Full of nature and seasonal symbolism to keep lapsed English lit students happy, while crying.
Read 2020
***
A roughly linear walk from Acton through the town centre to just past my house, this isn't necessary trivia, but it's satisfying to put names and stories to what would otherwise have been background architecture so I can feel more connected to my new home from the onset, and I'll get to appear casually omniscient when I hand the knowledge down.
Read 2020
***
Comprehensive context for the pretty playing cards, but not much in the way of divination tips, if that's your thing. The rules seem flexible to the point of being meaningless.
Read 2023
***
The pictures tell more than the words. The first book her preschool assigned to her (really to me), I had to pay special attention to make sure we were getting it. Maybe I'll check the SparkNotes.
Pat Hutchins, Don't Forget the Bacon!Read 1990, re-read 2022
***
I hadn't encountered this classic picture book since that reading session in my first year of school. That I could still remember it so clearly shows how effective it was, or maybe I was just obeying the title.
Read 2020
***
A more thorough overview than these books usually manage, even if it can't escape the gravitational pull of its star, as is the fate of all commentaries and internet comments about this work.
Read 2023
****
More accordion than book, it took until the second "read" for me to realise it folded all the way around.
Read 2003
***
The first time I got to choose what I wanted to study and write about, I'm disappointed in myself for staying sensible and not analysing Red Dwarf or Blackadder or something, but at least I went sci-fi. Old, academic sci-fi that people have already studied in depth in Googlable articles, so I didn't have to do as much work. This one was more of a slog than I expected though.
I
Read 2010
***
The Armando Iannucci Shows offered occasionally awe-striking insights into the thought processes of one of the world's top satirists, or just his sense of humour. His newspaper columns are good reading, but don't reach those same heights. Maybe the voice and face are required.
Read 2008
***
I enjoy David Icke's postmodern sci-fi, and this was the funniest looking of his books I saw in Edinburgh Central Library. It wasn't the first time he wrote about Reptilians, the Illuminati and all that jazz, and it wouldn't be the last, but a Keanu Reeves action film inspired him to regurgitate his messages again for red-pilled newcomers.
David Icke, The Perception Deception: Or... It's ALL Bollocks – Yes, ALL of It
****
Read 2015
Whatever you think about David Icke (he's beyond caring), after reading one of his gargantuan books or sitting through a 10-hour live lecture, you won't have any doubt that he passionately believes in the omniconspiracy and his duty to wake us up before it's too late. Even if you don't necessarily believe a single thing he has to say about the holographic universe (that's the new stuff) and reptilian Archon bloodlines manipulating every facet of our so-called lives (classic), it makes for a cracking and imaginative read. In the first half at least, before it gets more mainstream-alternative in the second with GM foods, vaccinations, chemtrails and mind-melting Wi-Fi, but you have to admire his commitment to not leaving any stones unturned.
I went through my phase of reading Icke for scornful laughs, but now I really like the guy and approach his obsessive-compulsive dot-connecting as very satisfying science fiction, casting the real public figures we hate as blood-drinking, child-molesting alien parasites. SUE HIM IF IT'S NOT TRUE.
I went through my phase of reading Icke for scornful laughs, but now I really like the guy and approach his obsessive-compulsive dot-connecting as very satisfying science fiction, casting the real public figures we hate as blood-drinking, child-molesting alien parasites. SUE HIM IF IT'S NOT TRUE.
Read 2007
***
In this odd assortment of psychoanalysis, cyberpunk spy thriller, social satire and clinical essay on the nature of comedy, the most self-satisfied Python gets some things off his chest and postulates the end of the road for his profession as computers steal comedians' jobs. It's thoughtful at times, shame it couldn't be funny too.
Robin Ince, Robin Ince's Bad Book Club: One Man's Quest to Uncover the Books That Time ForgotRead 2010
***
It's enjoyable to hear/read Robin Ince talk too fast about anything he's interested in, but his passion for collecting crap isn't as rewarding as his rambles about life, the universe and everything elsewhere, unless you share his ironic appreciation for real-life Garth Marenghis.
Read 2020
****
Robin Ince attempts to discover, via covert autobiography, what makes comedians tick, while repeatedly reminding us that the pathetic data available is inadequate to draw any conclusions.
Read 2020
**
A balanced defence of the film for absolute psychos. In fairness, the historical parallels and murderous context you couldn't make up are begging for analysis. Once that's done, he pointlessly recaps the film to make the book thicker, as happens with most of these.
Read 2020
**
An uninterested history and backhanded compliments about the pleb favourite, giving way to liner notes cataloguing personnel and versions when he runs out of things to say. Why didn't he write about something he actually cared about?
Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson, The Flatey Enigma
**
It would be fair and accurate to deem this an Icelandic Da Vinci Code, though I don't know whether the author was cynically riding that wave or Dan Brown stole the thunder of his life's work. The extracts from and obsessions over a fictional cryptic book also felt like a Borges short expanded to novel length with requisite character banter. I would have preferred the 15-page version.
Read 2022
****
This '90s next-generation flap book is the best we've read together for a good while. If it had been in my own nostalgia, I would have passed it down sooner. It's a shame the big flap was all ripped to ruin her experience. Little bastards.
Read 2022
***
Balances the fun of interfering with nature and the intellectual fulfilment of researching etymology.
Read 2020
***
With six works to get through, the writer doesn't spend too much time on the background to this falsely modest usurping before speeding through the forms, themes and theories. Not being able to get too deep and technical makes this more approachable to laymen than most of these books, even if we still need a glossary.
Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci
Read 2018
****
This best-selling biographer knows how to economise a life and its works just right. I could do with less of the former, really – reading about the visionary genius murdering animals so he could draw them better and buggering teenage apprentices in his downtime is complex characterisation I didn't crave. I was here for the painting commentary and flying machines.
Fave: Lady with an Ermine > Mona Lisa.
Tony Isabella, Bob Ingersoll and Aaron Lopresti, Star Trek: All of Me
Read 2000***
Even as a 90s 'Trek kid, I tended to enjoy the classic series the most in print (presumably those writers were more likely to be familiar with the older series, and the field's more level today?), and this was my favourite of the early Wildstorm releases before I outgrew comics for a few years, in favour of more mature art forms like Blink-182. It does the usual thing of mashing up stock TOS tropes with unrealistically high-budget visuals, but it's satisfyingly on form.
Read 2021
**
A bouncy, lively, annoying rhyme with a pause in the middle where the kitty generously gets hurt so you can catch your breath. Cute, but she prefers the Boo Boo Song.
Read 2015
*****
Like Marvel comics, I hadn't read a Manga before either, despite apparently having a reputation as the guy who watched animé in his lunch breaks at the office (it was Battlestar Galactica, philistines!) But this isn't the type of Manga filled with punchable round faces or impractical robots (though there are occasional tentacle-like appendages). Instead, it's a beautifully rendered tale of a creepy coastal town lethally hooked on spirals, and the most unsettling and creatively gruesome horror I've read since 28 books ago. You won't want to flush the toilet again! (What do you mean 'again?') When I watched the original Ring, I pledged to seek out more of this fascinating Japanese horror. I look forward to a third installment in another decade or so.
Junji Ito, Gyo
****
Perambulating marine life isn't exactly a stroke of surreal genius like Uzumaki's freaky shit with the spirals, but the horror's more intense and relentless this time around. The walking, reeking fish are disturbing enough if you've always found the dead-eyed stares and stench of fish markets distasteful, then he brings out the urban sharks and all bets are off.
Junji Ito, New Voices in the Dark
Read 2015
***
I'm always interested in checking out the short fiction of writers whose extended stuff I've liked, and a couple of these short Mangas are similar enough to Uzumaki in exotic creepiness. Other have more of a Twilight Zone vibe, which is fun but nothing special. One concludes with the non-ironic revelation that it was all a dream. As an irrelevant personal note, this is only the second Manga book I've ever read and evidently the first whose translation to English didn't also involve switching the order of the panels from right-to-left to left-to-right. Took me six pages to work that out.
Faves: 'Anything But a Ghost,' 'Splatter Film.'
Worsties: 'Soichi's Front,' 'Library of Illusions.'
Faves: 'Anything But a Ghost,' 'Splatter Film.'
Worsties: 'Soichi's Front,' 'Library of Illusions.'
Junji Ito, Black Paradox
***
I've already worked through his popular ones, so it's fair enough that the rest of the catalogue isn't going to be as inspired, scary or comfortably translated. The premise is still worryingly original, unless he's just ripping off an obscure Japanese fairy tale about soul gems entering our world through portals in disembodied birthmarks, stomachs and brain tumours.
J
Read 2020
***
Another BFI writer taking the redundant novelisation route, it's at least interspersed with the making of and relevant autobiographical details, though the books he sources from are presumably better for that.
Read 2021
****
They're not all melancholy scenes of neurotic housewives struggling stoically against the mundane darkness of humanity, but enough of them are.
Faves: 'The Demon Lover,' 'The Renegade,' 'The Lottery.'
Read 2016
*****
And I thought Librivox readers were dodgy. This is the strangest audiobook experience I've ever had, as I opted out of curiosity for an amateur whispered version on YouTube apparently intended to cause literal eargasms. I'm not sure how my wife would feel if she knew another woman was whispering into my ears in bed while she slept, but I can confirm that it didn't have the effect intended, mainly as I was too distracted by the unpleasant saliva-swilling that accompanied every soft syllable. I switched to the David Warner version by chapter three.
As for the actual book, it's American gothic perfected. Not that that stopped them from carrying on.
As for the actual book, it's American gothic perfected. Not that that stopped them from carrying on.
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
*****
What if Wednesday Addams was a real person? What if American Psycho was palatable? What if a classic Gothic novel had a reasonable page count?
Shirley Jackson's final novel should be required reading for adolescent goth girls everywhere, and for grown men who are adolescent goth girls at heart.
Shirley Jackson's final novel should be required reading for adolescent goth girls everywhere, and for grown men who are adolescent goth girls at heart.
Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Read 2015
I didn't play any of the Fighting Fantasy series as a kid. I took a glance at them one time, but preferred the comforting mediocrity of kids' TV branding for my gamebooks. Unsurprisingly, this is stronger than those Knightmare and Sonic ones – for a start, someone bothered to check that the numbers all match up on both ends and you won't get trapped in perpetual looping glitches – but it's nowhere near the standard of Joe Dever's properly ace Lone Wolf series. It's more fun than Gazza Shinks, but so is a urinary tract infection.
Steve Jackson, Fighting Fantasy: Starship Traveller
Read 2021
***
These mini episodes aren't especially compelling, but the arena's large enough to welcome return treks to seek out new varieties of premature death every time like a maddening arcade game.
Read 2020
****
This is already shaping up to be one of the great gamebook series. Less childish (comparatively) than the parent Fighting Fantasy series and more akin to Lone Wolf, its USP is a spell system that requires buying a companion book to properly get to grips with (crafty), before you proceed to buy the three sequels to finish the game. There's also an unusual realist streak that punishes players for treating it like a video game and not making time for dinner and naps, while at the same time offering a deus ex machina continue screen if you get in a real pickle. I completed it on the fourth try, there are more feindish books out there.
Read 2020
**
The crafty add-on that makes Steve's gamebooks that much less frustrating, this is a nice idea, even if it's all riffs on the standards, but would've been more useful condensed into a quick reference card like we all made anyway.
Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson's Sorcery!: Kharé – Cityport of Traps
Read 2020***
It didn't take long for my measly progress from the first book to be wiped out unsportingly, but it's not like I wasn't warned by the title. This wretched hive of scum and villainy is a more depressing setting than the forests and plains of the first book, and some of the more convoluted battles are as fun as a maths lesson, so I lost enthusiasm by the time I'd used up a standard video game batch of lives. It's a good series if you're prepared to put in the trial and error needed to commit a route to memory, or failing that, cheat.
Steve Jackson, Fighting Fantasy: House of Hell
Read 2021
****
This horror-themed one would have been particularly affecting for playing into my recurring haunted house nightmares, and wandering the wallpapered labyrinth, opening foreboding doors against my better judgement, brought that all back. Even if it's just retheming the usual dungeons with four-poster chambers of horrors, it does the trick for me.
This was an indulgent purchase for myself, but now it's high on the list of things I'm looking forward to scaring the shit out of my daughter with in the future.
Read 2023
**
Obsessively decodes and contextualises the gayness of the symphony, sidelining the unfortunate paedo-incest angle.
Read 2023
***
I may have got myself more excited by the modest daydream than she was before conceding it's probably better to wait a few years, at least so I don't have to do everything.
Read 1998
***
I only ever read two Goosebumps books and this was one of them, if gazing at vibrant paintings counts as 'reading.' I make the rules here. Look, it says 'book' in the title.
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
***
I own three bloody versions of this in my otherwise efficient anthology bookcase, so I was going to bump into it sooner or later after bailing out previously. A certified classic of gothic psychological haunted house horror, it should theoretically be a favourite, if it wasn't dragged down by dullness. I might reevaluate it the next time we cross paths. The original illustrations would've helped, facsimile editions have spoiled me.
Read 2010, re-read 2017
****
Ranking the M. R. James short stories
Read 2020
**
The celebrated ghost story teller's less popular novel, this was supposedly written for children, but I don't know how bored they'd have to be, even a century ago, to keep reading this uneventful saga of idle gentry hanging around in the woods with his imaginary friends.
Read 1991, re-read 2021
***
I'd forgotten about the unremarkable story itself, it was more memorable for introducing the concept of environmentalism and the act of letter writing.
Read 2024
***
The gimmick overpowered the educational angle. It's not like you can read it with the lights off, anyway.
Read 2020
**
Makes an emotional case for this being the best rock album, up to that point anyway. Since it's not exactly an obscure position, he doesn't get defensive about it like some writers, but nor does he contribute much that hasn't been told already in the more substantial works he quotes from.
Read 2021
****
I quite enjoyed the '90s cartoon, but moderate affection and curiosity didn't get me very far when I tried one of the books back then. From an interfering parent's perspective, they're wholesomely nightmarish and timeless, but you need the illustrations.
Fave: 'The Secret of the Hattifatteners'
Read 2016
Splitting up a large and ungainly cast is often an effective strategy for making sure every character stays relevant and gets their screen/page-time, but not so much when they're divided along apartheid lines. Now half the story is Starfleet do-gooders trekking around pretending like it's Voyager while the aliens are left behind to deal with their unrelatable political and religious schisms. And when you keep bringing back forgotten characters who were in that one episode back in season two, it only makes it more irritating when major players like O'Brien, Garak and Odo continue to fail to show up.
Read 2023
**
Features an eel rather than a predictable shark, so that's something.
Read 2022
***
Friendship and reckless adventure on the high seas. She didn't pay much attention with all the kids running around, maybe I should start actually checking these books out.
Read 2021
**
The first is the quirkiest, in its bizarro body horror. The others play with overly familiar concepts predictably, but kids will be less jaded.
Fave: 'The Copy'
Read 2020
*
A small sample of Satanic numerology in American pop culture and corporate logos featuring swirls and circles that you can superimpose some sixes onto if you're an absolute nutcase. He runs out of examples surprisingly soon, so leaves us to ponder some other random numbers and symbols with little to no commentary, his call for us to investigate for ourselves being a handy excuse for laziness.
Pedro Jiménez, English-Bisaya Grammar in Twenty-Eight Lessons
Read 2019
***
An archaic guide written by a non-native speaker of either language to help the new wave of American priests communicate with their re-colonised flocks after the handover, I can't say I approached this in good faith to learn my wife's language, clearly hoping instead for some offensive white supremacist condescension with shades of Father Ted. To Padre Pedro's credit, it's hardly quotable at all and mainly just useful. Even a century later, since this regional dialect doesn't get a lot of coverage. If you're not a priest, I expect you can buy a differently specialist modern ebook from some sexpat's blog or other.
Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mœbius, The Incal
Read 2015
Rebounding from the colossal failure of his attempted Dune adaptation, Jodorowsky went full-on crazy with another unfilmable sci-fi epic, but this time he was happy to let Mœbius' stunning storyboards stand as the finished product. These intricate panels feel more like concept art from a making-of book than a comic, which might be because I wasn't focussed too much on the fairly weak, weird, awkwardly translated story. In the tradition of Metropolis and Blade Runner, you can bask in the dystopia without worrying too much about what's going on. It's just missing a haunting synthesiser score.
Read 2020
*****
I never realised Penny Crayon was a bare-faced rip-off. This is just great, so minimalist and elemental that I couldn't help myself from mentally (in both senses) filling in all the white space with speculations. What is the significance of purple? Why nine pies?????????
Read 2020-21
****
The original story was the most impressive kidz' klassik I checked out on a baby's behalf before we started reading together. She still couldn't be less interested in Harold's duochromatic dreamscapes, so I got on with the cash-in sequels myself. None of them were really worth reading, as expected, but I will insist on these value multipacks.
Read 2022
**
This festive cash-in sequel doesn't add anything, but probably made some kids happy.
Brian Joines and Bachan, Bill & Ted Go to HellRead 2015
**
Not the coveted comic adaptation of the second film – before its provisional title was changed and featuring all those deleted scenes – but an uninspired mash-up sequel to the duology. At least it sets a very low bar for Bill & Ted 3 to excel against.
Read 2020
**
I had a lot to learn about impassive French cinema, but Kent wasn't the best teacher, with his excessive comparisons to other films I hadn't seen for every point made followed by basic summary of the story I'd just watched. Though I did learn that lingering shots of the back of vehicles are actually good and not boring.
Read 2023
**
A bit cute for an eco parable. Daddy, can we make some odd fish in the lake?
Read 2023
***
Fantastic beasts, impractical space bikinis and other flights of fancy.
Faves: 'By the Pricking of My Thumb,' 'The Killer Mice,' 'The Venus Trap,' 'Telempath'
Read 2021
**
A bit of a letdown, but so were his other pre/post-Python projects generally. They're not especially funny, you're better off reading some proper folk tales for a bit of culture.
Fave: 'The Dragon on the Roof'
Read 2015
*
It might not be the absolute worst book I've read this year, but considering the talent involved, it's certainly the biggest let-down. Going in, I was already a bit suspicious about a novel based on a 90s computer game (presumably much more enjoyable) based on a brief aside from one of the Hitchhiker's books, desperately tagging on Douglas Adams' name as if (real author) Terry Jones wasn't already appealing enough. Maybe there was a reason for that. He may have had a hand in some of the finest comedies of all time, but this cheap Douglas Adams knock-off isn't among them. The only really funny thing about it is that it's available to read online in alphabetical order, if you are completely insane.
Terry Jones and Alan Ereira, Terry Jones' Barbarians: An Alternative Roman History
Read 2015
***
I've been seriously lacking non-fiction this month, so despite not having seen the accompanying TV series like most enthusiastic people who picked up this book at the time, I trusted Terry J to be entertaining and didn't mind too much if his passionate anti-Roman propaganda had its occasional historical flaws. I can't say I've studied the period in much detail since writing my own, unpublished work on the subject back in Mrs Clarke's class (complete with slightly ripped Roman shield cover), so if I did come away with a misleadingly positive view of those plucky barbarian underdogs, at least that should help a little to offset the glowing reviews those dickhead Romans have been getting over the centuries for their plagiarised accomplishments. Absolute knobs.
Read 2019
**
Structural and contextual analysis of the famous one and four others I can imagine Tom playing as Jerry torments him inside the piano. It's as in-depth as you can probably get, but non-musicians won't get anything out of it, whatever the blurb claims.
Jo Joof, A Baby's First Word Book of Numbers
*
Copy-pasting the same image with a minor modification ten times and using Comic Sans makes for the laziest excuse for a book I've ever read. One of eBay's used booksellers sent this by mistake and refunded our missing item without wanting this back – that's how empirically worthless it is. It turns out the baby quite likes it though. I suppose it's not really aimed at me.
Read 2017
***
I would have enjoyed this first book more if I'd actually read it first, and if I hadn't been tarnished by the knowledge of how quickly Jordan rushed it to deadline. But even with its uninspired Dungeons & Dragons plot and A-to-B chapter padding, it's still entertaining escapism if you consider yourself too old for cartoons and fool yourself into thinking that violence and nudity makes this any more mature.
If I cared more about the purity of Howard's legacy, I'd presumably complain about Jordan's teenage Conan being out of character (he doesn't seem incompatible with 'Tower of the Elephant' to me) and about the generic lizardmen breaking the realism of this magical fantasy world (there were abhuman creatures in Howard's stories, but that was usually just his racism getting out of hand).
There's necromancy, gore, tits and bottled homunculi. If I was about 12, I'd really like it. What more can I ask?
If I cared more about the purity of Howard's legacy, I'd presumably complain about Jordan's teenage Conan being out of character (he doesn't seem incompatible with 'Tower of the Elephant' to me) and about the generic lizardmen breaking the realism of this magical fantasy world (there were abhuman creatures in Howard's stories, but that was usually just his racism getting out of hand).
There's necromancy, gore, tits and bottled homunculi. If I was about 12, I'd really like it. What more can I ask?
Read 2017
****
Because this hack author didn't have the foresight to title his novels in alphabetical order, I got mixed up and read this second book first. It turned out to be the superior introduction to Jordan's long-form, boobtastic take on the franchise, even if I had to keep reminding myself who the various named characters are. It's cartoonish pulp, but you still need to pay attention.
It holds together better than Howard's only novel-length Conan story, The Hour of the Dragon, but it's not up to his best medium-length tales like 'The People of the Black Circle' or even most of the concise ones. Its basic plot of dark sorcery and treason could have been over and done in 20 pages rather than 200, but the 'padding' of gratuitous brawls, ubiquitously naked wenches and multi-sensory tours of seedy dives, filthy slums and insultingly ornate palaces is what makes it worthwhile.
It holds together better than Howard's only novel-length Conan story, The Hour of the Dragon, but it's not up to his best medium-length tales like 'The People of the Black Circle' or even most of the concise ones. Its basic plot of dark sorcery and treason could have been over and done in 20 pages rather than 200, but the 'padding' of gratuitous brawls, ubiquitously naked wenches and multi-sensory tours of seedy dives, filthy slums and insultingly ornate palaces is what makes it worthwhile.
Read 2017
**
One of the things I liked most about Howard's Conan stories was their variety, randomly dipping in and out of Conan's life to see how he was getting on at different stages in his impressively diverse career portfolio. Jordan's stories have been mired in the desert so far, with the young thief Conan pitted against wizard after wizard, but this shakes things up in the second half when Conan gets on a boat and heads to a land of witches and demons. Then fights another wizard as usual.
What mainly holds it back from being one of the good ones is its insufferable Mary Sue character, a spoiled princess whom Conan instructs in the ways of war and love, then has to rescue as usual. A female audience surrogate doesn't even make sense, since no woman would ever read this... oh, hang on, this is like Playgirl really being for gay men, isn't it? I'm slow sometimes.
What mainly holds it back from being one of the good ones is its insufferable Mary Sue character, a spoiled princess whom Conan instructs in the ways of war and love, then has to rescue as usual. A female audience surrogate doesn't even make sense, since no woman would ever read this... oh, hang on, this is like Playgirl really being for gay men, isn't it? I'm slow sometimes.
Read 2017
***
Unlike Howard, who jumped all over the timeline, Jordan wrote his repetitive Conan stories at a near-real-time pace that left him plenty of space to keep churning them out for years to come. Maybe things would have been different if he'd known he was already half-way through by this point.
In book four, the young Conan finally progresses from thief to general, while his attitude to wenches takes a more regressive path that Howard purists should appreciate. It's not like this wasn't knowingly, outrageously sexist back in 1983. You can be incensed by it or laugh it off. Presumably, it was required reading on the Manowar tour bus.
It's another city-bound tale like Defender, with a power-hungry, demon-worshipping villainess predicting Destroyer, another good girl who likes a bit of rough like Unconquered, and more subtle, insidious evil than the cartoony displays of Invicible. More of the same then.
In book four, the young Conan finally progresses from thief to general, while his attitude to wenches takes a more regressive path that Howard purists should appreciate. It's not like this wasn't knowingly, outrageously sexist back in 1983. You can be incensed by it or laugh it off. Presumably, it was required reading on the Manowar tour bus.
It's another city-bound tale like Defender, with a power-hungry, demon-worshipping villainess predicting Destroyer, another good girl who likes a bit of rough like Unconquered, and more subtle, insidious evil than the cartoony displays of Invicible. More of the same then.
Robert Jordan, Conan the Magnificent
Read 2017
***
Five books in, this is almost exactly the same old thing again again again again with Conan thieving in Shadizar, stumbling upon a feud with an evil, demon-summoning wizard and bedding a couple of feisty, buxom women while he decides which one he likes better. There's no rush.
If you were only going to read one of these books – which is the best approach, really – this is probably the easiest jumping-on point, as Jordan doesn't bother to bring back any of his recurring characters when ever-so-slightly-differentiated substitutes will do. The fire-breathing demon is a bit more satisfying than the various incorporeal ones that just disappear when Conan breaks a staff, even if this fleshier one only takes marginally longer to kill.
If you were only going to read one of these books – which is the best approach, really – this is probably the easiest jumping-on point, as Jordan doesn't bother to bring back any of his recurring characters when ever-so-slightly-differentiated substitutes will do. The fire-breathing demon is a bit more satisfying than the various incorporeal ones that just disappear when Conan breaks a staff, even if this fleshier one only takes marginally longer to kill.
Robert Jordan, Conan the Destroyer
Read 2017
I was already insecure about wasting my time reading trash, but reading a dreary novelisation of a film I never even liked is a new low.
Jordan tries to rehabilitate the children's fantasy film into the Conan Canon as much as possible by changing some ethnicities and place names, but he's still stuck with the inescapable contradictory continuity and, you know, the story. The biggest advantage of a printed version is that it avoids the woeful casting of the film, but those characters are still there, and if you've seen the film you won't be able to shake the mental image of Conan's inexplicable Keith-Chegwin-alike assistant.
This isn't embellished as much as it is tediously padded, so while there are a couple of (off-screen) sex scenes that weren't in the original, the women keep their kits on for the most part. Even the fight scenes are considerably toned down. When you strip the excessive sex and violence from Robert Jordan's Conan, there's not much left.
Jordan tries to rehabilitate the children's fantasy film into the Conan Canon as much as possible by changing some ethnicities and place names, but he's still stuck with the inescapable contradictory continuity and, you know, the story. The biggest advantage of a printed version is that it avoids the woeful casting of the film, but those characters are still there, and if you've seen the film you won't be able to shake the mental image of Conan's inexplicable Keith-Chegwin-alike assistant.
This isn't embellished as much as it is tediously padded, so while there are a couple of (off-screen) sex scenes that weren't in the original, the women keep their kits on for the most part. Even the fight scenes are considerably toned down. When you strip the excessive sex and violence from Robert Jordan's Conan, there's not much left.
Read 2017
***
I don't know whether Jordan knew this would be his final Conan book before the brief Arnie-fuelled surge of interest died down. It's not like I've been left yearning for more, but it's a bit annoying that he waited this long to change things up a little, even if that mainly involves progressing from Diablo II'sArabian/desert-themed Act II to Indian/jungle-themed Act III.
It's mainly just a palette swap, as Conan & co. deal with the same bandits, soldiers, evil wizards and their evil demons that they always do, all the way to the abrupt anticlimax. The ticking-clock jeopardy of Conan's poisoning doesn't exactly make things more tense when you know there's no way he's going to die, but Robert E. Howard ruined that tension right back at the start when he introduced Conan as a middle-aged king.
It's mainly just a palette swap, as Conan & co. deal with the same bandits, soldiers, evil wizards and their evil demons that they always do, all the way to the abrupt anticlimax. The ticking-clock jeopardy of Conan's poisoning doesn't exactly make things more tense when you know there's no way he's going to die, but Robert E. Howard ruined that tension right back at the start when he introduced Conan as a middle-aged king.
F. Sionil José, Dusk
Read 2015
***
A nostalgic step back in time to the latter days of Spanish colonial Philippines – which can't help being pretty bleak too, for obvious reasons – this seems to be one of a few popular candidates for the national novel (in the English language anyway). It's the first Philippine entertainment I've digested properly in over two years of living here, and the pastoral escape is a pleasant antidote to what seems to be a garish and vapid entertainment industry in general, so well done on that at least. It's also satisfying that it champions little people dealing with the everyday tribulations of horrific, inhumane oppression rather than folk heroes, and my only real problem was that I couldn't get on board with these characters' deeply-held superstitions or values in general. It's not like I identified more with the tyrant soldiers, I'm just not in it. I'm just fundamentally incompatible with the country I live in, no problem.
Read 2007
***
I'm not very interested in autobiographies, but make it semi-fictionalised and muck around with the prose and I'll pay attention. I found this a nice read, despite it doing its best to be annoying. You'll have to try harder next time, give it your best shot.
James Joyce, Ulysses
Read 2007, re-read 2015
*****
It's been called the book that people read to look intelligent rather than to actually enjoy, but it's so damn impressive, I don't even mind that a lot of it is (intentionally – how could it not be?) tedious and impenetrable. It certainly didn't have the effect of making me feel clever or worthy as I resorted to SparkNotes summaries to ground me before every chapter, like when I played through most of Monkey Island 2 with the walkthrough (for shame). So I didn't have the authentic bewildered experience, but since I'm a sucker for pompous literary parallels just for the sake of it (it helped that I read The Odyssey recently), I feel I got the maximum kick out of it. Anyway, sod off, those stream-of-consciousness sequences are probably the most realistic and intimate characterisation there's ever been. It's not my favourite novel ever, but it might be the best.
Carl G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
**
Is there really such a thing as coincidence? Of course there is, what's wrong with you? But Jung argues that, just sometimes, there might be more to it. He makes an interesting case that's even convincing until he starts to make grievous statistical errors, apologetically highlighted in the footnotes but not corrected. Well, he was getting on a bit. The big omission from these trustworthy accounts of recurring numbers and meaningful symbols is how many times a day those things didn't happen.
Carl G. Jung, Joseph L. Henderson, Aniela Jaffé, Jolande Jacobi and Marie-Louise von Franz, Man and His Symbols
Read 2019
***
I was sceptical about Jung's credibility after reading his frivolous synchronicity book, but this collaborative summary of his life's work on dream imagery and mythic archetypes all sounds reasonable, if stretched in the way literature fans appreciate. He could be right about religion being helpful – regardless of whether it's true – for helping people impose meaning on their lives and preventing civilisation at large from going nuts, but not everyone's brain works like that. Especially when we've just been reminded about the variety of mutually incompatible systems out there. Just pick one, I'm sure you'll get it right.
Read 2020
**
Starting out like a similarly quirky Alice in Wonderland for boys, this quickly grew tiresome without comparable iconic imagery (I didn't see the illustrations, admittedly). This is coming from someone who normally considers puns the highest form of wit.
K
Read 2024
**
It doesn't look like this story, whatever it's about, was ever released in English, but fortunately the library had the Polish version for 25p so our collection can be worryingly comprehensive.
Read 2024
****
Not as good as the film, but some fun deleted scenes and illuminating context for minor details.
Read 2016
***I'm surprised I never properly read this one either. I did try to tackle it in the original German once, which probably put me off. It's less challenging having Benedict Cumberbatch read it to me like I'm blind or a child.
It seems that people have interpreted its metaphor for the socially repulsive, downtrodden Other all over the place, but that doesn't make any sense unless those minorities are associated with climbing up the walls. He's an insect, you idiots. Did you really not get that?
Read 2015
***
I'm now qualified to accurately describe this country's pointless, nonsensical, willfully time-wasting bureaucracy as Kafkaesque. They won't know what I'm talking about, they don't read. Admittedly, even my degree-honed lit crit cred wasn't enough to really crack this one, it's like The Prisoner without the fun bits.
Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
Read 2015
When you've been sufficiently schooled up in basic brain cartography by your Robert Winston, it's time to get a bit imaginative with Dr. Kaku's space-time theory of consciousness and confident predictions about bodily augmentation, memory downloads, telepathy, AI revolutions and energy beings. There are enough references to mainstream sci-fi films and TV to keep this firmly on the layman's side of things, which is appreciated, but as far as making an already awe-inspiring subject even more captivating and poetic, he's no Carl Sagan.
Read 2021
*
It would be easy to mock this well-meaning cringefest, so I'll just point out that the characters have their action figure skin tones, which I found mildly interesting. At least it's American and not Fleetway or Grandreams having a crack go.
Read 2023
***
A gonzo introduction to the digestive system.
Read 2015
***
Faves: Lamia and pretty pastoral ones.
Worsties: Endymion, Otho the Great.
John A. Keel, Strange Creatures from Time and Space
Read 2015
***
A classic guide to pretend creatures that's not really aimed at me, but is totally aimed at me when I was 12 and spent lunchtimes scrutinising UFO photos in the school library with Sam. I read this for imaginative escapism and quirky human interest, so it's a bit frustrating that our intrepid investigator never gets over his bitterness for the "so-called 'scientists'" who keep rejecting his barmy notions. Before proceeding to demonstrate exactly why they're doing that in cases of Sasquatches, Mothmen and UFOnauts that almost entirely rely on witness testimonies, sometimes from centuries past. I especially liked the witness who failed the lie detector "on purpose" because Men in Black threatened him on the drive there. He's still in the book.
Edward Kelsey and Colin Petty adapted from five television scripts by Leonard Starr, ThunderCats – Ho: The Movie
*
Ghostbusters II managed to squeeze into a 30-odd-page book, so I was disappointed when this turned out to be an adaptation of only the first bit of a TV miniseries. The fast-paced, athletic show didn't translate particularly well to print anyway, you couldn't even hear the guitar solos.
A. L. Kennedy, Doctor Who: The Drosten's Curse
Read 2018
***
It's foolish to get your hopes up when tie-in merchandise is set in the period of a series that happens to be your favourite, especially when it's a pastiche 40 years down the line.Kennedy's Tom Baker horror story is as heartfelt and informed as her predecessors' were, her Tom Baker's spot-on, and she's got a nice turn of phrase like Adams and Moffat that keeps this story of a psychic monster lurking under a golf course appropriately light-hearted. It just comes off feeling more like one of those later Williams-era Gothic revivals than a classic from the Hinchcliffe years.
I almost lasted four books before my reviews descended to incomprehensible jargon, could have been worse.
Read 1991, re-read 1996, 2022
*****
Well done for getting the message aimed at five-year-olds, grown-ups, but you have to live by it too.
Read 2023
***
Having previously attempted to novelise the film in his teens, its biggest fan now turns to summarising its Making-of feature, which is quite the story.
Read 2021
****
A kidz' klassic that passed me by, this freeloading feline is no Very Hungry Caterpillar, but more inviting to endless rereading than the Peppa Pigs.
Read 1989, re-read 2021
**
A neglectful childminder leaves a cat and a baby to their own devices, with potentially lethal consequences. I probably should have read some other Mog books first before subverting the status quo like this, rookie toddler mistake.
Read 2021
***
I had Mog and the Baby (collected herein), and remembered it with vague nostalgic fondness, but I was never as into it as she is. "Bebby" is the current go-to nappy-changing story, as she relates to its anonymous antagonist. She'll go nuts for Baby's Day Out.
Read 2023
**
Running out of ideas by this point, but at least she handles her own lazy sequels.
Read 2021
***
This bandwagon-jumping latecomer would have been easier to follow a year ago than her vintage storybook, but she always liked the baby one. The flap gimmick's integrated well and means it can avoid the pseudo comic panels of some of the books.
Read 2021
***
Its magical narrative take on counting might be a bit distracting as their main numbers book, and frankly irresponsible as their main wildlife book, but it doesn't hurt as a refresher.
Read 2020
**
The first quarter's good, before scenic paintings make way for boring crockery and trinkets. If I'd wanted a book of landscape scrolls, I probably should have been more specific than an overview of the entire artistic output of the world's largest continent.
Read 2020
****
The Dark Horse comics finally picked up at the end with this scurvy serial introducing memorable rogues, but all the readers who'd abandoned ship during earlier mediocre exploits weren't to know that, and the series couldn't avoid cancellation.
Craig R. Key, Iniquitous
Read 2017
***
Its sheer relentless bleakness is actually quite impressive, as it means the story doesn't take all the obvious turns you'd expect if you've read or watched more supernatural detective fiction than is good for you. When it comes to other aspects though, you're going to need a spare biro if you're working through the whole cliche checklist.
Dan Kieran, Sam Jordison and contributors, The Idler Book of Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK
***
These user-generated travelogues go for the edgy suicide joke a few times too often, but it's mainly lighthearted cynicism that's made all the funnier when local MPs and tourist boards take it deadly seriously and provide offended defences. The unpopularity contest will inevitably miss out some of your own regional 'favourites,' but a later version put Stoke in the top 10, so I can't complain.
Read 2016
***
If that sounds like your glass of Cabernet, you might want to stop reading before you hit the end of the third chapter. That's when the spell breaks and we swap the cafes and cathedrals of the French Riviera for the dingy apartment blocks and polluted skies of crime-strewn Atlanta, Georgia, where going back to the daily grind is the least of Maggie's woes. We can look forward to her detective chops getting ever more finely honed in subsequent books as more of her family, friends and co-workers are ruthlessly culled in the name of our entertainment.
Michael Kilgarriff and David Mostyn, 3001 Jokes
Read 1994
**
This fat tome seemed to offer exceptional value for its budget price when spotted in a holiday bookshop. I found a few of them funny ("do you mind if I throw him a bit?"), and I liked the drawings, so it was probably worth it, but the hit rate was incredibly low. This young sceptic did try to count up the jokes one time to see if there were really as many as claimed, but I didn't make it very far. We had a Mega Drive and stuff.
Read 2021
***
Combining illuminating interviews with the opinionated commentary of an astute fan blog, these season-by-season, episode-by-episode guides could have been the perfect companions to watching the series for the first time, if only they'd been published in real time without the irresistible hindsight of four years' worth of spoilers. Maybe I'll save up the others to reminisce with some Jovian sunspots when it's all over.
Jane Killick, Babylon 5: The Coming of Shadows
Read 2021
***
These seasonal guides are less in-depth than they appear when you add up all the blank space, overlong synopses of episodes we've seen and needlessly repeated main cast lists for 22 episodes, and serialising them just a few months apart makes it seem like they're squeezing fans for more than a comprehensive companion would allow. Maybe I was more cynical this time around because of the uninspiring foreword that focuses squarely on the series' economic efficiency.
Read 2021
***
As these introductory chapters continue to check off random themes in turn (this time: special effects), these are looking more and more like a full series companion the author was working on that was released slightly prematurely and split down the seasons to bank on the partwork subscription model. They should've included parts of a Starfury or glow-in-the-dark Londo with each one to make them more collectable.
Read 2021
***
My other episode guide ran out and someone else loaned this out from the Internet Archive part way through, leaving me to go it alone and catch up later without even having had various shocking events carelessly spoiled. Turns out that would have been quite a good approach all along. This damned show, I'll have to go on a recovery programme of sitcoms for a year.
Read 2021
***
A largely episodic victory lap makes reading about individual instalments more worthwhile than doing it in batches, and the interviews have the same reflective finality as the season. I wonder where she filed the specials.
Read 2020
*****
I saw the (evidently faithful) film at the right age for it to make an impression, though too young to appreciate what a classic coming-of-age fable it is. King's normally too long-winded for me, but his insecure first novel pulls out the Dracula-style epistolary trick to stretch it just right.
Read 2002
****
"Read a book" was the entirety of my summer homework to prepare for A-level, so I thought I'd better go for a proper one. The first ebook I ever read (Word doc on CRT monitor), and the only novel I'd read recreationally for years that wasn't based on a TV programme (I hadn't seen the film yet), I thought it was pretty good, but ended up basing my coursework on different books instead.
Read 2020
***
A good value mixed assortment of gore, monsters, humour, harsh realism and Twilight Zones, just largely not my thing.
Faves: 'Jerusalem's Lot,' 'Night Surf,' 'Sometimes They Come Back.'
Worsties: 'I Am the Doorway,' 'Battleground,' 'The Man Who Loved Flowers.'
Read 2022
***
I don't know how much this vacant, violent monomyth cycle was the writer's pet project to keep him entertained between more commercial projects, but that's how it comes across. It teases and rewards with mysteries as it goes on, but not enough for me to stick out the whole thing.
***
The only Stephen King I'd previously read was The Shining, half a life ago, so this belated sequel seemed like a fitting follow-up, even if I did impulsively pre-judge that it would be embarrassing washed-up schlock, since that tends to be the case with belated sequels generally. As it turns out, it was solid but forgettable. I might have preferred the schlock, to be honest. At least it would have been shorter.
Read 1994
***
This lacked the heart of Charlotte's Web, all the jeopardy stemming from the brutal realities of agriculture as our porcine hero has to demonstrate his economic worth to avert his bacon, but it was still suspenseful, I suppose.
Dick King-Smith, The Clockwork Mouse
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
Read 2020
****
Michael Klastorin and Sally Hibbin, Back to the Future: The Official Book of the Complete Movie Trilogy
Read 2002
***
Richard A. Knaak, Diablo: Legacy of Blood
Read 2019
***
Nigel Kneale, Tomato Cain and Other Stories
Selma Knight and Emma Levey, Oxford Reading Tree Word Sparks: Adventure Mouse – Pip's Scarf
Gustav Kobbé, How to Appreciate Music
Read 2016
***
Dan Kois, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's Facing Future
Read 2020
***
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Read 2019
***
Tina Konstant, Ten Rules of Copywriting: Bullet Guide
Read 2015
**
Benjamin M. Korstvedt, Bruckner: Symphony No. 8
Read 2020
**
Lana Kortchik, Savaged Lands
Read 2016
***
The tragic backdrop to this historical romance is as familiar to readers as the timeless family and relationship dramas playing out in front, but by telling the story from the lesser-heard perspective of Russian-born Ukrainian emigres (and a second-class Hungarian Nazi to boot), Savaged Lands justifies its addition to the atlas of World War II fiction.
Being several generations removed, it’s not as gut-wrenching as first-hand memoirs written by people who lived through those times, but nor is it as difficult to recover from.
Read 2021
Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian
Read 2015
***
Jim Kraft and Mike Fentz, Garfield's Tales of Mystery
Read 1993
***
Peter Krämer, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Read 2020
***
Jeffrey Kranz, Before You Write Another Blog Post: A Content Strategy Guide for Corporate Bloggers
Read 2016
***
Despite it being more specifically relevant to my day job than general copywriting guides, I didn't take a single note from this one, which means I didn't learn anything new that I considered worth remembering.
I apparently rated it average though, so you might get something out of it.
Trish Kuffner, The Toddler's Busy Book: 365 Creative Games and Activities to Keep Your 1 ½- to 3-Year-Old Busy
Robert Kurson, Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon
Read 2020
****
Charles Kurts and artists, These Are the Voyages: A Three-Dimensional Star Trek Album
Read 1999
****
Marie Kyprianou, No More Tantrums
Minna Lacey and Peter Allen, The Usborne Big Book of the Body
Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium
Read 2014, re-read 2015
*****
If you've ever read a novel set in medieval times (e.g. The Pillars of the Earth) and wished the author would spend more time exploring the humdrum lives of farmers and wretched peasants without getting distracted by exciting stuff like battles all the time, this book gives you the chance to immerse yourself in a 3D 1000AD based on information gleaned from tatty work calendars, wills and coprolites. If you listen to the audiobook in one go like I did, you might also get to enjoy hearing Derek Jacobi's warm tones narrate everything you read over the next few days.
Melissa Lagonegro, Elizabeth Tate and Caroline LaVelle Egan, Disney's The Princess and the Frog: Kiss the Frog
Nick Lambert, Cheshire Walks with Children : Circular Walks for Parents and Children
David Land, Phil Amara and Francisco Ruiz Velasco, Diablo: Tales of Sanctuary
Marcia Landy, Monty Python's Flying Circus
Read 2020
***
Read 2021
Michael Lane, The Definitive Guide to Building an Energy Efficient House
Read 2015
***
Andrew Lang ed, The Arabian Nights Entertainments
Read 2015
**
Faves: The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor (it's no Odyssey).
Worsties: Most of the rest.
Jeffrey Lang & David Weddle, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Section 31 #3 – Abyss
Read 2016
***
Suzanne Lang and Max Lang, Grumpy Monkey
Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
Read 2003
*
David LaRochelle and Jeremy Tankard, It's a Tiger!
Ana Martín Larrañaga, Opposites
Read 2021
Gary Larson, The Complete Far Side
Jane Launchbury, Monster Stories for Bedtime
Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom
Read 2019
***
Colin Lawson, Brahms: Clarinet Quintet
Read 2020
**
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Uncle Silas
Read 2015
****
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly
Read 2015
****
Faves: 'Green Tea,' 'Carmilla.'
Worsties: 'The Room in the Dragon Volant.'
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
Read 2020
***
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
Read 2016
***
Tim Lebbon, Alien: Out of the Shadows
Read 2020
***
Elaine Lee, Will Simpson and Dan Spiegle, Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny
Read 2020
**
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Read 2002
****
Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and a whole bunch of artists, Son of Origins of Marvel Comics
Read 2015
***
Faves: 'The Wonder of the Watcher,' 'The Origin of the Silver Surfer.'
Worsties: 'X-Men,' 'Iron Man is Born.'
Stan Lee and Mœbius, Silver Surfer: Parable
Read 2020
**
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby et al, Bring Back the Bad Guys
Read 2015
**
Faves: 'Gangwar!', 'Dragon Doom!'
Worsties: 'Gold Rush!', 'Kang, the Conqueror!'
Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, Lee & Herring's Fist of Fun
Read 1999, re-read 2004
*****
Stewart Lee, The Perfect Fool
Read 2004
****
Stewart Lee, How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian / The 'If You Prefer a Milder Comedian Please Ask For One' EP
Read 2021
**
Crap 20th century fables that anthropomorphise all the individuality out of animals and propagate paleo myths, with a dash of racism for good measure.
Fave: 'A Narrow Squeak'
Read 2020
****
Too anthropomorphic to be educational about animal behaviour or historic Indian culture, but still a nice pastiche of fables and folklore that contains enough action to keep kids entertained, as long as they can handle a little death and capital punishment.
Read 2002
***
At just 79 pages, this isn't a Future Noir level of comprehensive depth, but there's still lots of nice behind-the-scenes trivia and pics, as well as a convoluted timeline map that blew my teenage mind.
Read 2019
***
I never paid that much attention to the storyline when hacking 'n' slashing through the Diablo games, but the setting seemed like a fertile ground for derivative dark fantasies. This elaborate prequel to Act II Quest 5 is largely generic, but tailored more specifically towards the lore than a copy-paste of proper nouns would achieve. It's also a bit like The Wrong Trousers.
Read 2023-24
***
A diverse assortment of Manx produce, but a disappointing debut for one of the first great TV writers.
Faves: 'Chains,' 'Curphey's Follower,' 'The Pond'
Read 2023
*
The Oxford Reading Tree logo gives me the vaguest nostalgia. This isn't really reading, skipping straight to literary theory.
Read 2016
***
"It is better for art to err on the side of originality – provided it is not bizarre or freakish – than on the side of subserviency to tradition."
It's a bit of an oldie, but fair play – he did write the book I was literally searching for. Besides, the vintage means I got to enjoy some haughty condescension, mild racism and spending time in a world where Wagner and the "Neo Russians" are cutting edge, rather than being lumped with centuries of forefathers as Classic FM. I may be a little closer to knowing how to appreciate music, but there's no rush. That's what old age is for. And now I know how to tastefully decorate my pianoforte without looking uncouth.
It's a bit of an oldie, but fair play – he did write the book I was literally searching for. Besides, the vintage means I got to enjoy some haughty condescension, mild racism and spending time in a world where Wagner and the "Neo Russians" are cutting edge, rather than being lumped with centuries of forefathers as Classic FM. I may be a little closer to knowing how to appreciate music, but there's no rush. That's what old age is for. And now I know how to tastefully decorate my pianoforte without looking uncouth.
Read 2020
***
A concise and comprehensive overview of a singer who's apparently better than the other singers they have. I don't get it, but I'm strange.
Read 2019
***
Nothing I found especially shocking or stirring here, which probably just speaks to my disillusionment generally. The parts where the author describes her travel adventures would have been better and less out of place in a documentary.
Tina Konstant, Ten Rules of Copywriting: Bullet Guide
Read 2015
**
I didn't learn anything new, but content-wise it's a reliable introduction to the 'art.' Actual examples would have been more useful than general anecdotes, and I would have gone with '10 Rules' rather than 'Ten Rules,' so we disagree at word one, but apart from that. Format-wise, the widescreen joke book layout and '90s clipart funnies don't exactly shout 'authority.'
Read 2020
**
The case for this unappreciated composer's unpopular, technically unplayable symphony actually being good seems to hinge solely on it being clever. That's enough to convince me sometimes, admittedly, but I didn't care for it.
Lana Kortchik, Savaged Lands
Read 2016
***The tragic backdrop to this historical romance is as familiar to readers as the timeless family and relationship dramas playing out in front, but by telling the story from the lesser-heard perspective of Russian-born Ukrainian emigres (and a second-class Hungarian Nazi to boot), Savaged Lands justifies its addition to the atlas of World War II fiction.
Being several generations removed, it’s not as gut-wrenching as first-hand memoirs written by people who lived through those times, but nor is it as difficult to recover from.
Amy Sky Koster, Olaf's Frozen Adventure
*
I related to her excitement at seeing a familiar character bursting out from the library stacks and braced myself for her first lame franchising disappointment. I felt borderline abusive reading the story aloud, but you can't let them squint through bubblewrap forever. It's only in writing this that I learned it wasn't just some stocking-filling fluff, but the storybook of an actual animated film that many parents have to sit through. There but for the grace of God.
Read 2015
***
I like to make things hard on myself, hence committing to reading a load of books in a bookworm-unfriendly country. They do have bookshops here, but the classics section of the main national chain is depressingly tiny. They seemed more interested in selling bags. After scouring a couple of used book shops (your donations to charity shops on the other side of the world somehow end up here but they don't let me donate books in person for free, work that one out), the only tome I could find with a worthwhile page count that looked in any way appealing was this one. Even if it turned out to be more Dan Brown than Bram Stoker, in no way as "terrifying" as that multitude of review quotes promised, and a bit too full of the author showing off her extensive research by having the characters do the same research, I enjoyed the travelogue aspect at least. Now to find some way to humanely get rid of it.
Read 1993
***
A famously apathetic cat isn't the most natural fit for the detective genre, but I was too distracted by the lovely cover to care. I even let them have a free full-page advert in Doctor Disguise Book 7 so I had an excuse to copy it out.
Read 2020
***
It was a bit optimistic to hope for a fresh take, but this wasn't any meatier than a Wikipedia page, complete with several pages of synopsis for a film that most people reading this will probably have seen.
Jeffrey Kranz, Before You Write Another Blog Post: A Content Strategy Guide for Corporate Bloggers
***
Despite it being more specifically relevant to my day job than general copywriting guides, I didn't take a single note from this one, which means I didn't learn anything new that I considered worth remembering.
I apparently rated it average though, so you might get something out of it.
Read 2022
***
You'd think websites would be better, but having these variably obvious variations ("hide a bean bag," "hide a bear"...) all in one heap is convenient, even if the excessive padding requires a lot of skimming.
Read 2020
****
Oral history as omniscient narrative, this is an immersive account of a voyage that would be more legendary if the sequel hadn't stolen its thunder.
Charles Kurts and artists, These Are the Voyages: A Three-Dimensional Star Trek Album
Read 1999****
An immaculately designed pop-up book with a snazzy hologram cover, I couldn't resist buying this when I saw it on sale in a shop, but somehow felt a bit childish doing so. Because reading unimaginative, authorised fanfic novels is somehow more respectable than appreciating clever art. Deep Space Nine and the wormhole were especially impressive.
Read 2022
***
One of the more relatable behavioural programming books we've tried out, but what do I know.
L
Read 2023
***
Glimpsing a muscled skeleton cover on the library shelves, she was curious to know more, so I found the least unsettling option for summer preschool.
Read 2014, re-read 2015
If you've ever read a novel set in medieval times (e.g. The Pillars of the Earth) and wished the author would spend more time exploring the humdrum lives of farmers and wretched peasants without getting distracted by exciting stuff like battles all the time, this book gives you the chance to immerse yourself in a 3D 1000AD based on information gleaned from tatty work calendars, wills and coprolites. If you listen to the audiobook in one go like I did, you might also get to enjoy hearing Derek Jacobi's warm tones narrate everything you read over the next few days.
Read 2022
**
Economised for reading learners, irritatingly stilted for storytime. Just watch the damn clips.
Read 2020
****
A quarter-century's vintage will no doubt lead to some confusion when we get out and about, but these places probably don't change all that much. Though if I do get us lost and they have to send out the helicopters, this will be why. He includes routes for buggies, so there's no excuse to dawdle.
Read 2021
***
An anthology of generic shorts dedicated to most of the character classes, with enough monster cameos and other references to satiate fans, if not particularly enthral them. The mini production gallery at the end was the best part, mind.
Read 2020
***
The series was clever, groundbreaking and resonant enough to earn a stuffy academic analysis, but this is mainly just someone summarising and categorising the jokes (and sometimes getting things wrong). Monty Python described matter-of-factly is still funny though.
Andy Lane, The Babylon File: The Definitive Unauthorised Guide to J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5
****
I took far too long to get around to this landmark series (after a couple of false starts over the decades), and making most of the journey in the company of the retro book I would have actually had at the time helped with the '90s immersion. As an unauthorised guide it's nicely opinionated, even if he's pretty crazy at times (such as calling the genuinely upsetting racial violence analogue "a fun and lightweight episode"), and free to be respectfully cheeky. Seeing the dots connected across the first 3.5 years helped get me through the rough patches.
Read 2015
That's enough annoying fun, time for some practical responsibility. I thought I should refresh my knowledge of sustainable building and renewable energy gained through years of writing about those things now that we're building a damn house. I basically wanted a website in book form, so this plain language, heavily sponsored guide was fit for purpose. The stuff about heating wasn't particularly useful for the tropical reader, but I'm grateful for the potentially life-saving reminder that we'll have to ask the builders to not use asbestos please. This place will have to find some other way to kill me.
Andrew Lang ed, The Arabian Nights Entertainments
Read 2015
**
I wimped out from reading the complete One Thousand and One Nights in a later, thicker, more authentic translation – it may not actually contain 1,001 stories, but more than the 30-odd hand-picked by Andrew Lang and translated second-hand from the French translation in this flawed version that helped to cement the pop culture Aladdin and Sinbad, for better or worse. I guess I just wasn't in the mood for archaic fairy tales this month, or I'm just racist against Arabs (that must be it), because I had less tolerance for these obscenely powerful and wealthy characters I was supposed to root for as they casually mention the slaves they own, half-heartedly order executions and slaughter elephants. They're generous to the poor though, who sometimes get a free meal as long as they're prepared to listen captivated to their host's self-congratulatory and obviously made-up stories, so that's nice.
Faves: The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor (it's no Odyssey).
Worsties: Most of the rest.
Jeffrey Lang & David Weddle, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Section 31 #3 – Abyss
Read 2016
"Season eight" takes a couple of thematic detours courtesy of Pocket Books' summer crossover series, but the shifts in tone and character focus aren't any more jarring than is customary for episode threes anyway. As doom-laden and bloody as this story of genetic engineering and jungle combat is, it was fun to fly out on a random mission again and leave most of those story threads dangling for a while. Even if this is the third time they've done this same story with Bashir, even if it includes a B-story about Ewoks, I can't deny that it's a treat to be getting new (15 years old) DS9. I'm getting through these books a lot quicker than ones I supposedly liked better.
Read 2022
*
I'd taken this uninventive and uninteresting animal fable to be some kind of self-published vanity, but turns out it's from Random House. Some folks get the breaks.
Read 2003
*
Poetry has its work cut out to satisfy me generally, and this miserable prick couldn't be bothered. Which might be surprising, considering we share similar zest and optimism for life.
Read 2022
**
She wasn't interested in doing the actions, I'm less persuasive than Dora.
Read 2022
**
An impulse purchase for 49p, even though her board book shelf is already full to donating point. Words don't make for the funnest slide reveals, but they'll be here when she learns to read, unless they won't.
Gary Larson, The Far Side
****
My experience of the medium being limited to Garfield and Charles Addams, these daily cartoons were a lot funnier than I expected and excused when they're not. Alternately philosophical, surreal for its own sake and inappropriately dark for a mass morning audience, the sense of world building is even more incentive to carry on.
Read 2021
****
They're not all winners, but I'd like to see anyone churn better. Gets a bit wearying after the first few years though.
Read 1994
*
This random storybook my brother had was only noteworthy for a couple of illustrations. One of them I ripped off for my own projects, the other made me feel sick.
Read 2019
***
Salvaging one of Lovecraft's most infamous stories to make the daft racist spin in his grave is all in good fun, but while this ends up being a decently horrific tale in the Clive Barker mould, it doesn't touch Providence.
Read 2020
**
Representing the favourite instrument of the under-10s, our chronicler endeavours to find the magic at the heart of this working through clinical dissection and the exhumation of dead clarinetists. It's not clear whether he thinks he succeeds.
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Uncle Silas
Read 2015
****
I've been on a bit of a Gothic kick recently, finally getting around to tackling some of those bulky novels whose length alone made me opt out of the Victorian literature module altogether as a lazy student. When I found out that a writer I already respected as the originator of lesbian vampire fiction also wrote the first locked room mystery, my hopes of a Hammer Horror Jonathan Creek were set a bit too high. It takes a third of the book for the story to even start to get anywhere, but it was an atmospheric ride. And what do you know, the young lady isn't even a complete airhead, which is always a pleasant surprise in these classics. I was only slightly disappointed that she didn't lez up with any vampire countesses.
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly
Read 2015
****
Serialised novels were where the money was at, but it's a shame Le Fanu didn't write more short, spooky stories as he was one of the best at it. 'Carmilla' is already on the curriculum for vampire purists and horny teenage goths (even if you don't get softcore Ingrid Pitt in this version), and most of the rest is pretty great too, generally replacing tiresome white lady spectres with more creative and ambiguous apparitions. I wonder why this edition opted for such a dull cover then? She just looks bored.
Faves: 'Green Tea,' 'Carmilla.'
Worsties: 'The Room in the Dragon Volant.'
Read 2020
***
This mildly subversive fantasy saga might have absorbed me if I'd read it at ten, but today it's only the world-building that did anything for me.
It's better than Harry Potter, but that's a low bar.
It's better than Harry Potter, but that's a low bar.
Read 2016
***
A dreamer reluctantly screws with reality every time he has a kip, and his mildly nefarious psychiatrist hatches a plan to abuse this miracle for his own ends. Condensed to 25 minutes, it would have made a great Twilight Zone, which could have lost the distracting romance plot too. Broads, right?
Read 2020
***
I knew better, but curiosity got the better of me, and there was a chance these interquels would explore new possibilities rather than just doing Alien again again again. Not this time.
Read 2020
**
This tedious sequel to The Last Crusade reunites Jones & Junior without the chemistry as they race Nazis and Oirish stereotypes around the humdrum British Isles in search of another holy relic that's an open goal for Freudian innuendos, if that's your thing.
Read 2002
****
A worthy classic and all, but read in school at sixteen – too old to relate to the characters and too soon to appreciate children's literature nostalgically – I felt a bit patronised by the kid's-eye view when the grown-up story was clearly more interesting.
Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and a whole bunch of artists, Son of Origins of Marvel Comics
Read 2015
***
I don't think I've read a Marvel Comic before (excepting licensed stuff like Count Duckula and Beavis and Butt-Head). They just didn't seem as fond of letting British writers create dark metafictional shit as D.C. did, which is the sole reason I'll be drafted to that side in the inevitable war. Stan Lee seems like a fun guy though, and while there's not much to enjoy in the early-60s tales beyond an appreciation of vintage art, non-ironic cliches and bigotry, things take a welcome turn later in the decade when the psychedelic space age arrives. I don't know if I've embarked on any life-long friendships here, but it was inevitable that I'd be drawn to the intergalactic weirdos at the back rather than the blander mainstream of caucasian males differentiated mainly by hair colour (that's not fair, Tony Stark also has a moustache).
Faves: 'The Wonder of the Watcher,' 'The Origin of the Silver Surfer.'
Worsties: 'X-Men,' 'Iron Man is Born.'
Read 2020
**
A post-Dark Knight gritty prestige miniseries drafting in a respected artist from adult comics was promising in principle.
I forgot Marvel was crap.
I forgot Marvel was crap.
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby et al, Bring Back the Bad Guys
Read 2015
**
After non-ironically enjoying the more exotic, spacey side of Marvel's Son of Origins collection I found out there was a tertiary Grandson of Origins, but it wasn't the anthology of further obscurities I'd been hoping for, so I opted for these villainous debuts instead (again it's the sloppy second volume). I think I've scratched this particular alt-childhood itch beyond the medical recommendation now, even if it is tirelessly entertaining to read the long and involved dialogues these mortal enemies somehow manage to fit inside split-second manoeuvres.
Faves: 'Gangwar!', 'Dragon Doom!'
Worsties: 'Gold Rush!', 'Kang, the Conqueror!'
Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, Lee & Herring's Fist of Fun
*****
The most unexpected library find since discovering Red Dwarf had novels, this high-effort TV tie-in became a Bible of sorts, whether it was providing amusement in tough times or inspiration for creative writing work at university where I shamelessly ripped it off.
Read it here. NOW.
Read it here. NOW.
Read 2004
****
A fascinating artefact from Lee's millennial hiatus, this debut novel amalgamates disparate influences from his trips across America and other experiences and observations more succinctly summarised in his stand-up. Subsequently disowned by the author as a "bad novel," it is a bit of a mess, but I liked it. I am an insufferable fanboy though, so don't listen to me.
Read 2012
*****
Lee treats his classic comeback quadrilogy with the ironic reverence it genuinely deserves.
Stewart Lee (and angry commenters), Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011-2016
Read 2016****
Generically-faced funnyman chronicles the downfall of Western civilisation, egged on by irate commenters (their valuable views included for balance) to become increasingly annoying and borderline incomprehensible as he goes along.
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/stewart-lee
Stewart Lee, March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019
***
As much as I'll always venerate Lee, I've never followed his journalism with much enthusiasm. I enjoy his antagonistically weird style, but preferred the previous, more varied assortment over this one's dogged theme. Padding it out with a stand-up transcript creates the problem that an intervening show has been skipped over in the chronicles. When are you going to annotate Carpet Remnant World, mate?
Read 2022
***
Contemporary adventures from the time when I was most immersed in the silly show, reading these is primarily an exercise in nostalgia, and Tony Lee crucially remembers that it's a sitcom. The art's all over the place and a bit uncanny.
Read 2022
****
She didn't really get or appreciate this wordless magical tribute to shared reading, but I thought it was lovely anyway.
**
Explaining the mechanics of a time war, e.g. how that can possibly work at all, can be a challenge for the writer and the reader. This first-hand chronicle from the pages of Galaxy Magazine largely avoids that by setting the non-action entirely in a chill-out lounge away from the front. This deliberate dullness is then made artificially exciting when a bomb is discovered. It skirts on the fringe of almost being a glimmer of something great, but it's mainly boring.
Stanisław Lem, Solaris
Read 2015
***
I like my aliens alien and unfathomable, and Solaris from Solaris is welcome among the ranks of the aliens from Alien, the 2001s from 2001 and those Lovecraft things. A lot of 60s sci-fi is off-puttingly dated, but I didn't have that problem here at all, largely thanks to it being grounded in philosophy and communication rather than "futuristic" gadgets. Still, it's not something you'd read for a moving character study, as the meddling humans and their solid hallucinations feel like they're mainly there to satisfy the novel criteria and leave the possibility of film rights open. This is primarily Lem's postulations about what sort of weirdness we can expect out there and how we'll never be ready until we stop being so damn sapiens-centric. Presumably there was a heavy-hitting Cold War message at the time too. I don't know, that was ages ago.
Stanisław Lem, Mortal Engines
Read 2015
***
It doesn't take long for this techno-treasury of pseudo-fables to get repetitive and a bit annoying, but it's only when it gives way to more regular novellas in the second half that I realised how much I'd been enjoying them. It's more style than substance, with only a few stories rising above generic tales of miserly kings, crafty sages, electroknights and antimatter beasts when Lem crafts a new mythology or has fun with the format. It's probably more enjoyable today than it was at the time, thanks to the cute retro factor of wind-up robots and punch-card computers.
Faves: 'The Three Electroknights,' 'Automatthew's Friend.'
Worsties: 'Uranium Earpieces,' 'The Hunt.'
Read 2020
***
A nice counterpart to the Celine Dion book in the series, this reclaims the dead artist's album from semiautobiographical gossip by obsessing all over it as a piece of art. I'd love for this level of attention to be lavished on an album I actually care about.
Read 2022
**
Dystopian Farthing Wood, with guns. I'd planned to read the whole story, but couldn't really be bothered.
Read 2022
****
The sombre sibling to Kris Straub's Broodhollow, its bare-faced Twin Peaks tribute act and generic sci-fi/horror mythology are excused by exceptional art.
Read 2022
***
The formerly eerie mystery collapses into a dimension-hopping zombie survival quest and even the art falls back on old tricks.
Read 2016
There's no denying its sci-fi credentials. It's in space, it dallies with concepts like the bending of space-time, post-three-dimensional geometry and a conformist dystopia, but at its heart this children's adventure book is still rooted in the magical fantasy tradition of C. S. Lewis and E. Nesbit, down to its similarly insufferable brats. It feels distinctly less magical than Narnia, but admittedly I am 30 now. I wouldn't have minded it when I was 10, though I preferred my juvenile space voyages trippier and less overtly Christian. I could deal with Narnia's crucified lion imagery, but name-dropping your Lord and Saviour is a bit exclusive.
Read 2020
*
It's not badly written, and he has a good crack at cataloguing all the theft at the end, but hanging around with these dickheads beforehand wasn't a fulfilling experience. If only I was allowed to skip some of these.
Read 2020
***
A treatise on the art disco punks is inevitably going to provoke chapter titles like 'Is Fear of Music a Text?' It is now. Paced well for listening along, with leeway for stumbling over sentences or skimming analogies.
Marianne Tatom Letts, Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely
***
I love sinking my teeth into a delicious concept album, but when they're a bit elusive and annoying (Kid A and Amnesiac here), I enjoy having them explained to me by someone qualified. I don't know this writer's background, but her desperate dot-connecting and leaps of faith are worthy of the great conspiracy theorists. Is this what too much Radiohead does to people?
Read 2020
**
I liked this dreamy film, but I was capable of deciphering it without these banal insights and context. Maybe I've read so many of these BFI books that I've graduated from film school now.
Read 1991
***
Superman's origin story retold for five-year-olds, as opposed to... oh yeah. Since Superman's only Superman at the end, this was by far the lesser sibling to Batman: Funhouse of Fear.
Read 2020
*****
There are lots of gaps in my horror history, but this update of the haunted house mystery feels like a major milestone. Having a baby of my own made it especially affecting as it went along (I was a callous psychopath before, obviously), and the technically horrific ending was quite the relief.
Read 2011
***
I'm more used to reading this type of old-school Nazi sci-fi thriller in the guise of a well-meaning pastiche from writers who grew up on them, so it was fun to experience the authentic article. It saw me through a long border-crossing bus journey.
James A. Levine, Get Up ! Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It
Read 2015***
I might as well read something that could actually be good for me, and even though I'm not sure how far to trust the Doc's 40 years of dedicated anti-chair research, there's still enough in here to make me feel pretty terrible about my sedentary life these days. And even more resentful that I've ended up trapped in a pedestrian-hostile country where there's literally nowhere to go. I used to read 100% of my audiobooks on the move – look at them all. I've long known that the Philippines is going to kill me, it just remains to be seen how.
Read 2015
***
Allied with Wells' scientific romances rather than its contemporary pulp sci-fi, this tale of spiritual Martians and greedy Earthmen is colourful and uncomplicated. The Christian message is more subtle than in Narnia. At no point does a lion get crucified and turn into a lamb, for instance.
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Read 2009, re-read 2015
****
This is a bit of a shortie, but I think I'm excused. Part of this exercise is to expose myself to different points of view rather than cruising around inside my comfort zone of books with colourful nebulae on their covers, so this time I dipped my toes into fundamentalist puritanical Christianity. That's not really such a stretch – Paradise Lost is probably my favourite book of all time – and C. S. Lewis' non-Narnia classic is also very entertaining, especially the emphatic audio recording by John Cleese. The wholesome Christian morals weren't exactly subtle in the Narnia books either, but while I found those scenes of lion-lambs annoying and patronising as an atheist child, these glimpses into the allegorical machinations of Satan and all his little wizards can be enjoyed whether or not you live under the fear of divine tyranny.
Read 2015
***
Lewis' reply to Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell is less captivating, partly because he wasn't under the illusion that this allegorical bus journey was a real thing that was actually happening. He makes interesting arguments, but his enlightened spirits just came across as annoying. Guess I'm fated for the dreary grey city then.
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
****
I never owned this one as a child. You'd think I'd have at least borrowed the core Narnia text from the library around the time I read most of the others, but I don't remember doing so. I'm just fascinating and anti-establishment, I suppose. Coming to it as a (borderline) adult and literature student, I found the religious and mythic parallels interesting and not overdone as they would be subsequently, and there was more violence than I was expecting. I belatedly decided it was an essential children's classic, even if I apparently couldn't be arsed with it myself.
Read 2005
***
I was staying at someone's house and she had the Narnia books; what's an underdeveloped manchild to do? Especially when I'd never read some of them. I even had this one as a kid, paired with Dawn Treader like the BBC series, but I didn't get far before switching to the more appealing quest book. I don't blame me, it's pretty grim for the most part and doesn't add much to the mythos.
C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn TreaderRead 1995, re-read 2005
*****
The first Narnia book I read and probably my favourite, it's the fresh take that was needed after the first mediocre sequel with less violence, a semi-rebooted cast and a rip-roaring voyage mining other cultures' mythologies, before Christianity returns with a vengeance for a weird ending. It's not as bad as what Christians have to put up with when reading Pullman, so I'll let Lewis off.
Read 2005
*****
Gloomy, squelchy and maybe even scary, this is another refreshing take on the series, another candidate for best of the bunch and another one I had on my bookshelf as a kid but inexplicably never read until it was too late and I grew out of it. Fortunately, I grew back into it. It took four books for the strongest character to show up in the form of Jill Pole, and Eustace has come a long way since the last one.
C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
Read 1995, re-read 2005***
The oddest duck in the Narnia series, this book-length footnote to a story mentioned by an owl in the previous book (written earlier, but published later) needn't have existed at all, but then the world would be marginally worse off. It's the dullest book of the series, and feels much longer than it needs to be, but I made it all the way through as a kid when I didn't read most of the others, so it must have done something right. My verdict on re-reading at 19 was that its portrayal of desert folk wasn't particularly racist. He saved that up for the finale.
Read 1995, re-read 2005
*****
Maybe the most enchanting thing I read as a child, this is one for that very short list of prequels that surpass the original, though maybe that comes down to whether you're more of a fantasy or sci-fi kid. For Aslan's sake, follow publication order rather than chronological order and don't tell your kids to read this one first.
C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle
***
Revelation to Magician's Genesis, the controversial ending to Narnia has some pretty major problems, from the violence to the inexcusable racism and old-man sexism, but at the end of my last read-through I decided, for all that, it was still "an enjoyable romp." So there you go. It was the only one to be recognised with a prize, but I think that was the same celebratory deal as the last Lord of the Rings film getting all the belated awards.
Jon E. Lewis, The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups: The 100 Most Terrifying Conspiracies of All Time
Read 2015
***
I didn't learn much new – tellingly, it was only some of the more down-to-earth and probably true ones that I hadn't heard before – but this is still a pretty comprehensive compendium for anyone getting started on the stupid path or needing quick reference material for an X-Files reboot. It's all pretty brief, but I like that the writer gives his opinions by rating the plausibility of each wacky theory and occasionally lets his true beliefs slip through, which are perhaps too controversially sane and anti-anti-Semitic for some readers.
Faves: Hollow Earth, Reptilians, Nazi moon base, all that entertaining nonsense.
Worsties: David Kelly, 9/11, all that depressing real stuff.
Read 2023-24
****
Always go to the source. Deserving of a cobwebbed throne in the Gothic pantheon, though less inviting to return visits than most.
Read 2020
****
A charming memoir of living intimately with the land, when he's not shooting bunnies and googling historical facts and literary quotes to show off. Probably written as much to celebrate the rustic life as to keep delicate city folk away, points taken.
Read 2022
**
Inconsistent manners instructional. The button was broken, but we knew the drill.
Read 2024
***
The predictable consequences of metamorphosis.
Read 2020
**
The K-pop-style fangirling over Howard Hawks is unusual for a semi-academic text, and by focusing on the imaginary cleverness of lasso circles and parallel line imagery, this doesn't really cut into the meat of the troubling colonial-capitalist classic.
Lucy Lidell, The Book of Massage: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Eastern and Western Techniques
Read 2015
***
I've never been into massage (or "massage"), but my wife requires it to survive, so the least I could do is learn some actual techniques. Most of it's just intuition anyway – unless you really don't like your partner – but this step-by-step guide seems reliable and easy to follow. And it's easy to just ignore the occasional slips into mumbo-jumbo if phrases like "the healing energy" and "an excess of ki" make you consider putting it down. Later it gets into shiatsu, which seems a bit silly, and reflexology (come on!), but the first third should prove handy for the long term. It gets a bonus point on behalf of all those pre-internet 80s/90s teenagers whose parents owned this book and had an acceptable source of boob imagery in the house. Some of them aren't even drawings!
Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory
Read 2016
****
I only knew Ligotti from a weird spoken word E.P. he did with Current 93, but it turns out he's one of the most distinctive and consistent nightmare scribes this side of Lovecraft. After the uneven first book in this bumper compendium anyway, when he cannily picks out the themes that worked (eerie dreamscapes, desolate streets, cobwebs 'n' moonshine) and doesn't look back. Most of these atmospheric vignettes don't run much over 10 pages, the perfect presomnial apéritif.
Faves: 'Vastarien,' 'The Last Feast of Harlequin,' 'In the Shadow of Another World,' 'The Glamour,' 'The Clown Puppet.'
Worsties: 'Les Fleurs,' 'Dream of a Mannikin,' 'Masquerade of a Dead Sword,' 'Conversations in a Dead Language.'
Read 2023
**
Standard sermon with the standard fantasy critters and an inexplicable aversion to green.
Read 2022
*
Forty years on from Spot and bringing nothing to the table. It amused her, but she even enjoys advertising clipart.
Read 2022
*
It's not the book's fault that she's too big for it, but its assortment of girly stuff is a bit desperate.
Read 2019***
I only properly checked out Limmy a couple of years ago, and the combination of impressive lo-fi self-production and nostalgic Scottish aggro (even if it's the wrong coast) made him an instant favourite. It helped that he's very funny. This candid backstory is less funny, what with all the despair and everything, but that's okay. Though I found myself more interested in the behind-the-scenes insights, which says a lot about my interest in people's lives and why I don't normally read biographies.
Read 2020
***
It's a Radiohead fan writing about post-1995 Radiohead, so a straight making-of or track-by-track musical analysis are off the cards as we explore the loftier philosophical ramifications of some musicians mucking about with technology.
Read 2021
***
Currently her favourite of this unreadable set for featuring 'Mummy' on the cover, apparently, these humdrum exploits of a self-sufficient, anti-establishment, upbeat orphan will be worth a try when she's old enough to be corrupted.
Read 2024
***
She may have a one-track mind, but this cosmic neomyth had a pretty enough cover to break through.
Read 2023
****
The exhibits are strong enough to be gratuitously reprinted on their own, without a narrative desperately tying it all together.
Read 2023
***
Personalising the hauntological nightmare takes something away.
Read 2022
**
This could have been a good introduction to colour mixing, if it covered more than what they already know from applying colour to blank page. The song's shit as well.
Read 2023
**
More on form than most of the spin-offs, presumably there are ABC and shapes versions to complete the boxset.
Read 2021
***
I wouldn't want to read the full-length book set in this shared domestic microcosm, but it was nice to visit from several vantage points, and the fanciful anthropomorphs behave more like animals this time.
Fave: 'Sam and the Honda Ride'
Read 2021
*****
It's Knightmare, it's great. The gamebook was the peak literary movement, why am I wasting my time on schmoes like Dickens and Shakespeare? Some of these are available as apps, but that's hardly in the spirit. Second-hand scribbled-on paperbacks won't set you back too much.
Read 2022
**
A pathetic story with a nice, clear message. I was never highbrow anyway.
Read 2023
****
A comfortingly familiar sci-fi scrapheap provides some inter-episode levelling up for Amy.
Read 2015
****
Now you too can experience the vicarious thrills of being encased in plaster and sweaty rubber for 12 hour periods! This is really two volumes in one, as our eponymous masked hero wrote a hefty update to his 20-year-old memoir that doubled its length to bring us up to the present day. In true Red Dwarf fashion, the older stuff's the best, especially for offering the only really detailed account of what went on with the failed American pilot. But the sudden shift in tone as the writer ages 20 years between chapters adds another interesting element, as priapic anecdotes morph into Prius preoccupation. There you go – it is possible to write about 'Dwarf without clumsily forcing a "smeg" in there. Oh, smeg.
Read 2022
*
Watching someone else open and close a pop-up book on YouTube is a pathetic substitute, but this is already a pathetic book. She saw right through the own-brand pony proxies.
Read 2020
***
Good, old-fashioned gothic horrors and melancholy romances, this had the haunting spirit of those vintage compilations I'd get through on cross-country coach journeys, only more forgettable.
Fave: 'The Stone'
Rebecca Lloyd, Seven Strange StoriesRead 2020
***
Another author content to keep the gothic tradition alive for unambitious subscribers without doing anything interesting with it. To expect readers to consider these tales of rural hauntings and fleshier apparitions 'strange' would be optimistic even a century ago. Nothing personal, just hitting the inevitable ennui of brand loyalty.
Fave: 'Jack Werrett, the Flood Man'
Read 2023
**
Some variety if not hilarity in what the rotating parts represent, and some representation for feathers.
Read 2022
**
Not the most loveable picture book cat. Harry the Dirty Dog if you don't like dogs.
Read 2023
***
The velcro critter on the library's copy was flabbergastingly still attached. It's enough to make you question reality.
Read 2023
**
Complete with irresistible hand puppet, it's a good start on reclaiming the name.
Read 2020
****
Like Galactica's convoy or Ballard's high-rise laid on its side with wheels attached, you could tell all sorts of pertinent stories in this inspired setting, now the introduction's out of the way. I guess that means I'll be watching the series then. '80s comics were the best.
Read 2022
****
Better than The Wind in the Willows. These humdrum amphibian antics made her smile and she kept wanting to wade further.
Read 2022
***
Seasonal churn, but I'm glad she seems to enjoy them.
Read 2022
**
Producing so many minor variations on the same book to cater for kids' differing taste in predators is evidently a good business model.
Read 2021/23
**
Fooling toddlers into reading themed glossaries through googly eyes. Well played.
Read 2023
***
Alien hide and seek gave this more plot and purpose than these things usually have.
Jack London, The Call of the WildRead 2019
****
I didn't dwell on what brutal messages the author might have been imparting; just enjoyed the fusion between harsh realism and sentimental myth-making and a pragmatic brevity that more novels should embrace.
Read 1988
**
An illustrated roll call of traditional toddler toys up to the '80s, including several I satisfyingly had or had at least played with. The depiction of bubbles and balloon reflections would prove remarkably influential.
Abie Longstaff and Lauren Beard, The Fairytale Hairdresser: Or How Rapunzel Got Her Prince! (a.k.a. The Fairytale Hairdresser and Rapunzel) / And the Little Mermaid / Beauty and the Beast / Red Riding Hood / The Princess and the Pea
**
Nicely detailed art with plenty of references. The hairdressing side was less welcome, but hardly unexpected.
Read 2015
For most non-Finns, the path to the country's national epic usually begins with Tolkien or 1990s folk metal bands. I was never really a fan of Tolkien.
I fancied reading something frosty and Scandinavian on my journey through the world's archaic classics, and this compendium of tragic tales was more appealing than a gratuitously violent Viking saga. There's still plenty of sword-wielding violence, obviously, but it's mainly about these heroes' failed efforts to snag decent wives, who only occasionally turn out to be their sisters.
This fused medley of tales from across the centuries (and maybe millennia) was set in stone in the mid-19th century, so it's a lot easier on the reader than the more authentically ancient equivalents. Though just as the high seas psychedelia of The Odyssey was interrupted by lots of annoying palace dawdling, these eagle-riding escapades are still prone to lengthy, several-chapters-long digressions on the roles and etiquette of wives and husbands respectively.
Faves: The First Väinämöinen Cycle
Worsties: Ilmarinen's Wedding
Read 2015
**
This positive discrimination of 'funny foreigners month' delivered a few pleasant surprises that I wouldn't have come across if I wasn't being so geographically pedantic, but that was usually when I focused on a region's strengths. Alas, I fancied a bit of sci-fi and the Caribbean isn't exactly on the map for that. Supposedly there are only three established writers, and this one didn't impress me in the slightest.
Read 2020
*****
Skipping the scene-setting preamble to get straight to the good bit, this real-time reconstruction (the audiobook gets it bang on at 2 hours and 45 minutes from iceberg to last gulp) aims for comprehensive multi-angle omniscience without being sensationalist, letting the hubris speak for itself.
Read 2020
****
Cashing in on the grave defiling, this is a worthwhile expansion beyond the scope of his earlier book that analyses the origin story and legacy and debunks stubborn myths like a spoilsport.
Read 2021
*
A brief biography of W. C. Fields, whom we're presumably supposed to be bowled over by as he pratfalls between laboured comedy skits, these recapped verbatim and illustrated by page-using screencaps, because there's just not that much to say, really.
****
Ranking the H. P. Lovecraft stories
H. P. Lovecraft and S. T. Joshi, The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft
Read 2008*****
Lovecraft is overrated by horror fans, and he doesn't have that many really great stories, so any collection is going to be uneven. But then I remembered I used to have this, which includes his three best* works (Dunwich, Mountains, Colour), plus another one I could do with reading again (Rats), all guaranteed racism-free, plus handy footnotes. You can't ask for much more in a standard paperback. I didn't read them all at the time, finding his shorter ones more approachable than these titans, but I caught up eventually.
* According to some scholars.
* According to some scholars.
Read 2020
***
Maybe the pervading sense of disappointment and failure held me back from appreciating the ingenuity, but Robert Kurson's Apollo 8 book was my preferred Lovell adventure.
Read 2020
**
How does this star-trekking bildungsroman set itself apart in the flooded genre? By immersing readers in the daily grind and petty trading that makes your reading breaks more of a chore than your actual work. One for the folks who spend their leisure time grinding imaginary wealth on the fringes of online games rather than actually playing them.
Brian Lowry and Sarah Stegall, Trust No One: The Official Third Season Guide to The X-Files
***
I watched The X-Files from the start, when I was arguably too young, but I wasn't obsessive enough to collect in-depth guides to each respective season. This was the only one I flicked through back then, which was when I first realised how dense the mythology had become even at this early stage. I hadn't really been paying attention, I preferred the less complicated beastie episodes.
Mina Loy, Lunar Baedeker
Read 2019
***
The Futurists are as time-bound as any other forward-thinking movement, but this pacy, dehumanising onslaught with sexual cynicism that makes The Waste Land look prudish makes Mina Loy the modernest Modernist I've met, even if she's still fixated on the classics.
David M. Lubin, Titanic
John Lucarotti, Doctor Who: Marco Polo
Read 2015
***
The first consistently decent serial of Doctor Who as also the first pure historical story and the first to really live up to Sydney Newman's hopes of a genuinely educational adventure, making up for that earlier rubbish with the cavemen. Unfortunately, it also has the dubious distinction of being the first story that you can't actually watch, unless you found some old tapes in a dusty cupboard in Nigeria and you're holding out on us.
I didn't fancy sitting through a photo reconstruction or trying to work out what was going on by audio alone, so went with the novelisation written 20 years later by the original writer. Apparently it's mostly the same. I didn't get to see their adorable attempts to realise mountain and desert landscapes in the studio, but the cliffhanger fade-outs are tangible.
Matt Lucas and Scott Coello, Thank You, Baked Potato
Petr Ludwig, The End of Procrastination: How to Stop Postponing and Live a Fulfilled Life
Read 2020
***
Zeth Lundy, Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life
Read 2020
**
Annabelle Lynch, Big Cats
Brian Lynch, Joss Whedon and artists, Angel: After the Fall
Read 2019
***
David Lynch, The Angriest Dog in the World
Jennifer Lynch, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer
Read 2015
***
Stephanie C. Lyons-Keeley & Wayne J. Keeley, Deadraiser, Part 1: Horror in Jordan's Bank
Read 2017
***
Read 2019
***
The Futurists are as time-bound as any other forward-thinking movement, but this pacy, dehumanising onslaught with sexual cynicism that makes The Waste Land look prudish makes Mina Loy the modernest Modernist I've met, even if she's still fixated on the classics.
Read 2023
***
Unexpected academic nostalgia.
Read 2015
***
I didn't fancy sitting through a photo reconstruction or trying to work out what was going on by audio alone, so went with the novelisation written 20 years later by the original writer. Apparently it's mostly the same. I didn't get to see their adorable attempts to realise mountain and desert landscapes in the studio, but the cliffhanger fade-outs are tangible.
Read 2021
**
Already a strange artefact that future generations may have trouble distinguishing from parody, I felt bad for rating a helpful instruction manual that presumably raised some much-needed funds based on its actual quality, but it's saved by some stay-at-home activities at the end.
Read 2020
***
I think my procrastination's under control, but these scientifically-backed self-help tips are good to know. Now back to work, I guess.
Read 2020
**
A thematically segmented overview of the grandiose hip hop sampler, spoiled by irrelevant snobbery towards certain bands and entire genres. Half of these books read like they're written by the same person under colourful pseudonyms, or maybe they all grew up reading the same music mag.
Read 2022
**
I'll keep an eye out for more Tadpole Learners, dispensing wildlife facts with large, friendly letters and not sugar-coating the nasty parts. She found it a bit lacking in narrative though, so provided her own.
***
I've never craved more Buffy, but its brother show quit while it was ahead and was ripe for ruining. This speculative sixth season exceeded my admittedly quite low expectations at first by going down some characteristically dark and unexpected avenues, that would have made for a worthy "proper" year with the polish that would have entailed, until it wimped out with a truly pathetic ending to liberate future writers from pesky consequences.
Read 2023
*
Makes Garfield look like side-splitting high art.
Read 2015
***
Speaking of cheap TV cash-ins that are better than expected, I finally got around to reading this hot-a-quarter-of-a-century-ago Twin Peaks apocrypha, apparently written by David Lynch's daughter (not sure why I'm sceptical about that) for daddy's strange show. A smart piece of merchandising, the scandalous diary was a major prop in the series – I can't remember if some of these entries were reproduced from the scripts, but most of it's new and really not bad. Not quite strong enough to stand on its own if you'd never seen the series – you'd just assume Laura was insane without the apparitions of scruffy men, reversed dwarfs and lounge horses to back her up – but as far as capturing the voice of a troubled teenage girl, it feels authentic. Like I'd know about that.
Free from TV censorship, it's pretty raunchy too. I liked to imagine those baby boomer mums and aunts feeling flushed and phoning each other after the kids were tucked up in bed.
Stephanie C. Lyons-Keeley & Wayne J. Keeley, Deadraiser, Part 1: Horror in Jordan's Bank
Read 2017
***
You know what you're getting with a title like Deadraiser. It's a name that owes less to the gothic literary tradition and more to the secluded horror section of a defunct video store, lurking on the shelves among other morbidly fascinating titles that you know your parents aren't going to let you rent.
If you're eagerly anticipating buckets of blood and decapitations, you won't be disappointed. Genre cliches like a backwoods town, creepy graveyard, foreboding nightmares, deformed monster and sacrificed maidens? All present and accounted for.
Despite all the knowing references to Stephen King, Freddy Krueger and the like from our pop-cultured protagonist, this feels like a pure celebration of the authors' shared love of horror rather than a tongue-in-cheek parody. I'll even let them off for giving a clearly suspicious character a nudge-wink name that makes the final "twist" obvious almost from the start.
If you're eagerly anticipating buckets of blood and decapitations, you won't be disappointed. Genre cliches like a backwoods town, creepy graveyard, foreboding nightmares, deformed monster and sacrificed maidens? All present and accounted for.
Despite all the knowing references to Stephen King, Freddy Krueger and the like from our pop-cultured protagonist, this feels like a pure celebration of the authors' shared love of horror rather than a tongue-in-cheek parody. I'll even let them off for giving a clearly suspicious character a nudge-wink name that makes the final "twist" obvious almost from the start.
