It's a bit strange to keep a compulsive checklist of everything you read, but even stranger to arbitrarily start doing that at 29 years old, so there are gaping gaps in bibliographies. ("I see you enjoyed that obscure C-tier Alan Moore spin-off slightly more than you expected to. Tell me, have you read 'Watchmen'?")
If I've done a book fair and square, and can remember it well enough to write a pithy comment for posterity, I can add it to the big list. Here are some books I read in the year or two before I started keeping track.
I could keep backtracking all the way to undocumented childhood favourites, but that would be insane. So I probably will.
2013
Various, The Flamingo Anthology of Fantastic Literature: Black WaterRead 2013–
*****
Thick anthologies of strange stories were good travelling companions on long bus journeys, but this was the best one I read, bought in a second-hand bookshop in Sydney. It's also the one that ended up being a permanent addition to my "library", which still consists of the two physical books I happened to have on me when I settled down.
Read 2013
**
Less bleak than The Road, less harrowing than The Handmaid's Tale, duller than most things I've read. I'm not sure why I stuck with it all the way, especially since I hadn't discovered the mercy of 1.5x playback for boring audiobooks yet.
Read 2013
***
I got off to a bad start with David Mitchell, unreasonably holding it against the Bruiser performer that he happened to have the same face as someone I didn't really like at school. After I left school, and saw him in better things, I grew to appreciate him as a national treasure. This book was fine, I guess, but he's not as good when there aren't other people around to incredulously react to.
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.
Read 2013
***
Black Sabbath have always been one of my faves, but while I was never interested in watching a staged reality show chronicling the hilarious deterioration of their former singer, this autobiography of his crazier days was a laugh. The audiobook being read in the first person by Frank Skinner was a bit confusing though.
Read 2013
***
The brevity of the Books of Blood and Barker's novellas is part of their appeal. His first full-length novel feels slack coming off those, without the depth that would earn ever more extravagant page counts later, but that won't be a problem if you're arriving here from Stephen King or something.
Read 2013
*****
This is one I'd like to re-read, but then I'd feel obligated to continue with all the unnecessary sequels, so better leave it. Memorable vistas and a sequence of stylistically varied sci-fi short stories with a strong connective spine like an old Amicus anthology. Was there one about a goldfish? I liked that one best, if so.
Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Read 2013, re-read 2019****
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 2013
****
Not his most accomplished work, but I enjoyed its freeform, scatterbrained pulp feel. A full Vonnegut re-read would be an enlightening experience to connect the dots, but it's been over a decade and I haven't even finished the first round yet.
Read 2013
****
One for the pile of books I admired but wouldn't want to put myself through again, Wikipedia's categorisation of "dark humour, metafiction" makes it sound a lot more whimsical than I remember the experience being. Even if it's pretend, we can learn a lot from it, and the narrator helpfully flags up the various lessons as they occur to him.
Scott and David Tipton, Tony Lee and J.K. Woodward, Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation²
Read 2013*
It was the anniversary year, alright? If I'd have known that frivolous reading was going to come back to haunt me, I would have spared myself the inevitable disappointment. Not that I was expecting quality, but the awkward franchise mash-up was impossible to resist. Next time, maybe hook up baddies that aren't exactly the same things in different packaging, only with slightly different catchphrases.
Read 2013
*****
I was raised on the Muppet reading, but the original is arguably even more definitive. I considered making it an annual reading tradition, but I guess every 28 years will do.
Joe Dever, Lone Wolf, Book 11: The Prisoners of Time
Read 2013****
Second-hand bookshops around these parts usually have a pretty dismal selection, but you sometimes get lucky when a nerd dies or something. This was the first of Joe Dever's brilliant gamebooks I played, and coming in so late to the twelve-part series, I was severely handicapped. It might be possible for a noob to complete this without loaded dice or just pretending you have the Sommerswerd from book 2, but I didn't manage it.
Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery (Il Cimitero di Praga)
2013–14
An ingenious forgery about one of the most famous and poisonous forgeries of all time. This riffs on similar themes of contagious conspiracies and shadowy doppelgängers to Eco's earlier novels, 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). 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.
2014
Read 1994, re-read 2014
***
Lone Wolf got me seeking out this nostalgic favourite, which was my introduction to adventure gamebooks when I bought it from a book fair at primary school. It's beginner stuff with maybe an error or two, but the game portion stands up. It's let down by the boring prose half that I didn't bother to read for 20 years. It wasn't worth the wait.
Joe Dever, Lone Wolf, Book 1: Flight from the DarkRead 2014
****
I was thrilled to find out that the Lone Wolf books are all available to play free and legally online at Project Aon, and played through a couple that way before incredibly chancing across the next few in real life. This first outing is a comparatively short and simple adventure that's ideal for newcomers to the format to get acquainted. Joe Dever's Prince of the Yolkfolk, if you will.
Read 2014
*****
Longer and richer than the first book, this seafaring second outing is some of the most fun I've ever had reading, and probably in life generally. The frustration of dying and having to start over quite a lot just made it more satisfying in the end. Maybe I'll try out one of those "video games" some time.
Read 2014
***
He's written about the real-life horrors of Dresden and Hiroshima, but I found this satirical speculative evolution to be Vonnegut's most disturbing book, partly because he presents our devolution back into marine life as a good thing and partly because he might be right.
Read 2014
*****
This silent graphic novel is one of the most affecting books I've ever "read." I can relate to the alienating experience of arriving in a strange land, and it helped me to imagine what the experience might be like for people who are struggling with that out of necessity rather than entitled leisure. Actually, this shouldn't even be on this list, because I could re-read it look at the pictures endlessly.
Read 2008
***
I wasn't a cynical teenage American girl in the 90s, but now I kinda feel like I was. Enjoyed hanging out. There are no ghosts, it's like a metaphor or something?
Read 2014
****
This moaning misanthrope's misadventures are my favourite Clowes work that I've read, which might be revealing. It's nice to get some representation.
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.
Read 2014
***
Nostalgic solace is the only reason to read Star Trek comics. If you're hoping for them to actually be any good, you're just going to be disappointed. These were absolutely fine.
Read 2011, re-read 2014
****
Maps aren't very interesting, but seeing them evolve over time as technology and knowledge improves, stifling superstitions are let go and entire continents pop up out of nowhere is fascinating. And sad when you remember what happened next in those places.
Hieronymus Bosch and Carl Linfert, Bosch
Read 2014, re-read 2015
****
Bosch is the best, but the flimsy paperback isn't the best medium for his vast and complex triptychs. That would be the jigsaw.
Faves: 'The Hay Wain,' 'The Temptations of Saint Anthony,' 'The Last Judgement' (I), 'The Garden of Delights.'
Worsties: 'Ecce Homo' (II), 'The Last Judgement' (II), 'Christ Carrying the Cross,' 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony' (all probably not even by him).
Arturo Graf, The Art of Devil
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 2014, re-read 2015
****
Bosch is the best, but the flimsy paperback isn't the best medium for his vast and complex triptychs. That would be the jigsaw.
Faves: 'The Hay Wain,' 'The Temptations of Saint Anthony,' 'The Last Judgement' (I), 'The Garden of Delights.'
Worsties: 'Ecce Homo' (II), 'The Last Judgement' (II), 'Christ Carrying the Cross,' 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony' (all probably not even by him).
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 2014
**
You'd be forgiven for thinking the author invented the idea of adult choose-your-own-adventures, based on the hyperbolic blurb she wrote for herself. Maybe she was the first to combine it with vapid chick lit though.
Read 2014
****
I'd been through most or all the Holmes stories in dramatised form with Clive Merrison and his various Watsons, but at some point I figured I should really read them properly from the top. That didn't last long. The debut is one of the best though, and my favourite of the novels.
Read 2014
***
Holmes' overly convoluted second case demonstrates why short stories and dramatised abridgements were the right way to go. The dénouement shouldn't last half a book.
Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days (Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours)
Read 2014***
I enjoyed listening to many of Verne's Extraordinary Voyages on my own slightly less adventurous travels, but most of them were through the medium of Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie's Alien Voices dramatisations. This was the first one I read (listened to) in the original (translated) form, and it was nicely episodic, even if I couldn't get Holmes and Watson out of my head, as ever. At least I wasn't thinking of anthropomorphic animals.
Read 2007, re-read 2014, 2017
*****
There's plenty of Alan Moore I still haven't read five years on, but it's good to wade through the swamp again every few years for more formative goodness.
Read 2014
*****
One of many great things about these books is the diverse settings, even if that mainly involves going through the standard climate zones of every video game. This is the Ice Cap Zone one, its twinkly ice cavern aesthetic and memorable villain combining to make it my favourite of the series that I read.
Read 2014
***
Although indisputably the most excellently-titled book of the series, and among books generally (even if it really needs an exclamation mark to cap it off), I found this to be something of a disappointingly generic lull between stand-out adventures. No doubt I'd remember it more fondly if it was the first one I played, but I've been spoiled now.
Joe Dever, Lone Wolf, Book 5: Shadow on the Sand
Read 2014****
A Middle East analogue and desert setting make this another superficially memorable outing in the dependable series, as does the split structure that gives you slightly more game. The end of Act I in the larger scheme of things, this was also the last of the series I played. I lost my stats and couldn't be bothered to start over, but I'd also had enough of fun for a while. Back to passive novels where they can sort things out without relying on me all the time.
Read 2014
***
Not as enjoyable as his less grounded works, but its world-weary and delirious protagonists were pleasant company. I missed out on Vonnegut's doodles in the audiobook version, but the narrator was fittingly old and cranky, at least.
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Read 2014
****
I almost read this when comparing dystopias for a GCSE English essay, before swapping Atwood for the more impressively obscure Zamyatin. That's probably for the best, as my cloistered upbringing in a nearly-all-white, all-boys secular school meant it would have gone over my head. (Especially since that essay mainly amounted to trivially plotting Huxley, Orwell and Zamyatin along a shared-universe timeline anyway).
I finally got around to it during a care-free week in the paradise of Bali, for the sake of cosmic balance. Like Orwell, Atwood's extrapolating on past and present rather than predicting. How's that progress coming along?
I finally got around to it during a care-free week in the paradise of Bali, for the sake of cosmic balance. Like Orwell, Atwood's extrapolating on past and present rather than predicting. How's that progress coming along?
Read 2008, re-read 2014
****
For some reason, I remembered this being noticeably on the short side. Maybe it just flies past. A classic of apocalyptic anthropology with plenty to untangle, I could give it another spin.
Read 2014
**
Remember before you got comfortable with ebooks, when you had to settle for what was on the shelf? I take issue with my defence at the time that "it was the least unappealing thing I could identify in the only bookshop on the island," but maybe things really were that dire. More tragically, this was the sequel to a mediocre juvenile fantasy I'd already read a few years earlier. I came back for more! I am the problem.
Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (a.k.a. Das Parfum – Die Geschichte eines Mörders)
*****
I've never paid much attention to my sense of smell, as you'll know if you've ever been around me, so this was a fascinating olfactory exploration of revolutionary France. Feat. death.
I'm not the biggest fan of glorifying psycho killers, fictional or otherwise, but this novel has serious style.
I'm not the biggest fan of glorifying psycho killers, fictional or otherwise, but this novel has serious style.
Read 2014
*****
The other physical book on my bookshelf (a.k.a. in a drawer), this misleadingly-named collection (at least my version) collects the Adventures, Memoirs and the first two novels, complete with the original illustrations, all efficiently crammed into two-column newsprint. I'm not the biggest Holmes fan, but that's a keeper. Mainly read on planes.
Read 2014, re-read 2015
**
A short release later listened to again as part of the Twelve Doctors, Twelve Stories collection, or maybe I skipped it, I slotted this in at the chronologically appropriate place when going through all the Paul McGann Big Finishes, which made the lack of characterisation more pronounced. He reminded me more of the short-lived Richard E. Grant Doctor than anything, maybe Scarrow got his Withnail & I mixed up.
Read 2014
****
This apocalyptic ambience is nonish by nature, so I can't remember any differences between the book and the film. It's one of those films I mainly think of for its nice soundtrack anyway, so the film wins.
Read 2014
***
I'm not in the habit of reading crime series, especially not jumping in at book 8, but this was the least German option on a hotel bookshelf, and it did fine. Supposedly the only time the Jack Taylor series gets randomly and unambigously supernatural, that must have seemed pretty strange for regular readers, but it was more up my street than a run-of-the-mill case would have been.
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Read 2014*****
I need to give this a re-read some time, as I can't remember much at all about the (boring?) bulk of the book after Harker's captivating journal ends, which means I either stopped paying attention and let the prestigious full-cast audiobook drone on or it was just really unmemorable. It still gets full marks for the early chapters regardless, which is some of my favourite writing ever.
Read 2014
***
I don't remember why I started listening to these audiobooks, but I made it through a few (4? 5? 6?) before the audacious joke of them all being variations on exactly the same thing stopped being funny. Maybe you have to push on and it eventually gets funny again, like a Stewart Lee routine.
Cormac McCarthy, Child of GodRead 2014
***
When you enjoy Gothic trappings so much, you have to put up with some visceral unpleasantness every now and then. The literary wanker in me appreciated this story of dark corruption personified, but shame about the necrophilia. I'll stick with coy Victorian horror if it's alright with you.
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 2014
****
I like Phaidon's bite-sized art tasters. This one's hindered by its fair focus on times before art was any good, but it gets better as it goes along. If the pictures are too small or the squashed desciptions aren't enough for you – you're on the internet, you twat. Get a wallpaper.
Read 2014
*****
Probably my favourite Ronson book, because he's drawn to some of the same kooks I was fascinated by as a nipper, back before I realised the ramifications of angry delusion. Grouping Islamic extremists with conspiracy shock jocks is way ahead of its time, and he's fairer to mostly harmless David Icke than most.
Read 2014
****
I haven't watched the accompanying documentaty Ronson made, but maybe I should, since I can't fully get past his jovial journalism to accept that these are real words spoken by adults at high levels of the world's most powerful military. Then it gets darker and sadly easier to believe.
Read 2014
***
Usurping Paul McGann as the underdog Doctor, the John Hurt incarnation is the easiest to comprehensively collect, if you have a completist personality but want to keep things manageable. This novel was better than expected, and despite being based in the comprehensible fringes of the Time War out of sane necessity, it added to rather than diminished that arch part of the continuity. Much better than Big Finish's bland take.
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
*
I was excited by the potential of new era of Doctor Who, and decided I might as well follow along with the book releases this time around, since I wasn't doing much else. I made it through two books before giving up on a third out of apathy. Expanded universes are a mug's game.
Read 2014
**
A noble effort to impose non-canonical order on a fictional universe that's doomed to create more problems than it solves, I'd always been curious to check this out and eventually caved. It's all nicely laid out and colourful, but it didn't make me feel anything. They're just making it up.
Joe Harris and Michael Walsh, The X-Files: Season 10, Volume 1
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.
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.
Read 2014, re-read 2019
*****
Same bat books, same bat opinions.
Read 2007, re-read 2014
*****
The second Alan Moore I read (after V for Vendetta) and the first to blow my socks off, this is one of his best, which by extension means it's among the finest things ever written (with loads of great art as a bonus). There's a lot going on in these 12 meticulous issues, whether you're a fan of traditional superheroes and prepared to have your world torn apart or you're here for the literary wank.
