Alrightreads: M

Michael Jan Friedman, Peter David and Pablo Marcos, Star Trek: The Modala Imperative

1991 (collected 1992) / Ecomics / 192 pages / USA/Peru

**

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.

John Whenham, Monteverdi: Vespers (1610)

1997 / Ebook / 152 pages / UK

*

It was stirring to hear something so ancient (at least in approximated form), but breaking it down extinguished rather than illuminated. The reconstructed history and arguments over authenticity were similarly unenlightening to the point of pointlessness, then he wastes a lot of paper reprinting all the lyrics in case you fancy some karaoke.

Iain M. Banks, Matter

2008 / Audiobook / 593 pages / UK

***

This is increasingly a series where reading along can be less rewarding than taking them individually. Densely packed with a series' worth of concepts and characters, this is disappointingly samey at the same time, largely feeling like an inverted Inversions that foregrounds and overexplains the sci-fi.

Rhys Hughes, Madonna Park

1990-2009 (collected 2009) / Ebook / 20 pages / UK

**

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'

Rebecca Lloyd, Mercy and Other Stories

2002-14 (collected 2014) / Ebook / 220 pages / New Zealand

***

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'

Alrightreads: Love

Richard Dyer, Brief Encounter

1993 / Ebook / 72 pages / UK

***

Whether it succeeds in reclaiming the "impossibly dated," frightfully English, institutionally sexist picture for modern audiences is down to the individual, but it revealed depths that I wouldn't have thought to notice through my own prejudices.

Rhys H. Hughes, Romance with Capsicum (and Other Piquant Assignations)

1989-94 (collected 1995) / Ebook / 80 pages / UK

***

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'

LD Beghtol, The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs: A Field Guide

2006 / Ebook / 157 pages / USA

**

Half inane lyrics glossary, half song-by-song thoughts and interpretations by the band, author Peter Straub and others. Maybe works as a nice companion piece if you're the sort of person who digs ukulele ballad triple albums in the first place.

Fiona Stafford, Reading Romantic Poetry

2012 / Ebook / 249 pages / UK

****

Not primarily concerned with optimising for students, this takes a sweeping overview of works I appreciate more in the academic context than when they're cut loose to work out on my own. Though reading analysis of descriptions of nature does rub in that I should get out more.

Mark Valentine, Haunted by Books

1997-2015 (collected 2015) / Ebook / 296 pages / UK

***

I appreciate the boundless freedom of digital books, but Tartarus Press is the lone siren that threatens to lure me back to the financially ruinous rocks of sensory reading. It's probably because my phone's ebook reader background matches the delicious creamy hue of their covers that I imagine I can smell them. This one has interesting introductions to the sort of obscure writers the publisher likes to exhume, but I'd have preferred a feature-length account of the book-collecting adventures.

Alrightreads: Lost

J. Meade Falkner, The Lost Stradivarius

1895 / Audiobook / 296 pages / UK

***

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.

Slavoj Žižek, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway

2000 / Ebook / 56 pages / Slovenia

**

Well, that's certainly cleared that up.


Rhys Hughes, Stories from a Lost Anthology

1995-2002 (collected 2002) / Ebook / 304 pages / UK

*****

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!

Nikki Stafford, Finding Lost: The Unofficial Guide

2006 / Ebook / 373 pages / USA

***

A little more restrained than the follow-ups, since it needs to get introductions and cast profiles out of the way, but this was the classic era for freeform speculation (seasons one and two) and it's nice to get back into that headspace. She was always overzealous with the numbers-spotting, but it gave her something to do between seasons.

David Hopkins, Reading Paradise Lost

2012 / Ebook / 94 pages / UK

***

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.

Alrightreads: Last

Hergé and Yves Rodier, The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin and Alph-Art (Tintin et l'alph-art)

1986 / Ecomics / 64 pages / Belgium/Canada

***

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.

Anthony Pople, Berg: Violin Concerto

1991 / Ebook / 132 pages / UK

***

I'm grateful to now be less clueless about the transition from tradition to vague modernity in this branch of the arts, but I'm still too much of a novice to get Berg, even with a companion guiding me through the tangled forest.

Jean-Louis Leutrat, L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad)

2001 / Ebook / 72 pages / France

**

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.

Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl, The Last Theorem

2008 / Audiobook / 311 pages / UK/USA

***

A non-essential but fittingly-titled epilogue to Clarke's bibliography (his co-author would manage another), it's another practical roadmap from the brink of destruction to utopia, just come up with the technical details yourselves. The only new colours in the palette are Pohl's passion for maths and Clarke's for young Sri Lankan homoerotic play, but let's not dwell on that.

Jordan Ferguson, J Dilla's Donuts

2014 / Ebook / 152 pages / Canada

***

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.

Alrightreads: L

Kenneth Hamilton, Liszt: Sonata in B Minor

1996 / Ebook / 89 pages / UK

**

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.

Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward

2000 / Audiobook / 357 pages / UK

***

One of the better and more accessible Culture books, with its minimalist drama playing out against a gradually expanding background and classic sci-fi extrapolation of relatable human concerns, namely PTSD and other consequences of war, even if it's pyew-pyew star wars with supernovae gigadeaths. But don't worry, SF fans, it's also got mind tampering, AI ghosts and shit. That's what we like!

M. John Harrison, Light

2002 / Audiobook / 320 pages / UK

**

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.

Colin Meloy, The Replacements' Let It Be

2004 / Audiobook / 118 pages / USA

**

Likely the 33⅓ book that has the least to do with the featured album (though there are other contenders), it's instead a Decemberist's photographic nostalgia about growing up as a teenage rock fan in the '80s. He could've claimed any number of albums under this vague umbrella, so bad luck for Replacements fans, I guess.

John Gaskin, The Long Retreating Day: Tales of Twilight and Borderlands

2003-06 (collected 2006) / Ebook / 205 pages / UK

***

"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.

Fave: 'Road Closed'

Alrightreads: Kings

Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: King Ottokar's Sceptre (Le Sceptre d'Ottokar)

1938-39 (collected 1939) / Ecomics / 62 pages / Belgium

***

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.

Stephen King, Carrie

1974 / Audiobook / 199 pages / USA

*****

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.

Monty Python, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book)

1977 / Ebook / pages / UK

****

"Found them? The cocoanut is a tropical fruit. It's not indigenous to these temperate areas."

This mandatory tie-in book turned out to be surprisingly candid, even throwing in receipts at the end to show off what they achieved on a shoestring. An incomplete and quite insane early draft script is presented for our consideration (all mentions of horses scribbled out as they realised their limitations) along with a later shooting script (still with handwritten improvements and entire scenes excised). It would've blown my mind if I hadn't known about most of this already, but there were plenty of unseen gags and alternate dialogue to enjoy. They actually find the Grail for one, appropriately anticlimactically.

Michaelangelo Matos, Prince's Sign o' the Times

2004 / Audiobook / 121 pages / USA

***

I related to the tales of the junior critic ranking and rating to bring order to the world, and this has a sense of closure about it as a lifelong Prince fan celebrates his favourite release without being fawning, certainly less than it would be today.

D.X. Ferris, Slayer's Reign in Blood

2008 / Ebook / 153 pages / USA

****

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.

Alrightreads: Killings

James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

1934 / Audiobook / 188 pages / USA

***

I was annoyed when I thought we were supposed to root for the racist homewrecking murderer, but when he arrogantly hatches a plot for the "perfect" murder, you can look forward to divine justice prevailing where the legal system fails.

Frank Miller, Ronin

1983-84 (collected 1987) / Ecomics / 302 pages / USA

***

Most notable as the progenitor of The Dark Knight and Ninja Turtles, Miller's cross-cultural cyberpunk revenge fable was excessively violent and weird for this wuss.


Peter David, Tom Sutton and Gordon Purcell, Star Trek: Who Killed Captain Kirk?

1988 (collected 1993) / Ecomics / 208 pages / USA

***

It was Malcolm McDowell, wasn't it? I don't know if Peter David beaming into the series with elaborate issue-long literary puns and a Starfleet soap opera directly contributed to the comic being put on hiatus before a blander relaunch, but this is all a bit barmy.

Stefan Petrucha and Charles Adlard, The X-Files: Project Aquarius

1995-96 (collected 1996) / Ecomics / 151 pages / USA/UK

****

Petrucha's run of the classic comic is still probably the best of this franchise's expanded universes, but he doesn't half masturbate over his own conspiracy here (once again preempting the TV series by a year or two). The stand-alone story with its trepanning serial killer is the best of the bunch and would have made a legendary episode.

Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose, Killing Marketing: How Innovative Businesses Are Turning Marketing Cost Into Profit

2017 / Ebook / 272 pages / USA

***

Revealing insights on how big brands have been reaping the long-term rewards of content marketing while you've managed the occasional reluctant blog post and wondered why no one's reading your plagiarised crap. If these predictions are right, it's comforting to know that my job's probably relatively safe, even if I need to up my game sometimes.

Alrightreads: K

Guy N. Smith, Killer Crabs

1978 / Ebook / 160 pages / UK

**

'You stupid over sexed wench!' he hissed. 'You never seen anything like what's going on out there, and all you can think of doing is tossing yourself off!'

This didn't tickle me as much as the other Guy N. Smith horror porn I've read. Maybe it was the fetishised rape scene that rubbed me the wrong way, or the exotic sunny setting that made it too easy to visualise as a legitimate off-Hollywood B-movie. He sets up the foreboding menace well, I'll give him that.

Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson's Sorcery!: Kharé – Cityport of Traps

1984 / Ebook / 288 pages / UK

***

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.

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

1987 / Ebook / 192 pages / USA

**

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.

J. G. Ballard, Kingdom Come

2006 / Audiobook / 280 pages / UK

**

The mallsoft version of High-Rise is less entertaining in its heavy-handed satire. It's no Dawn of the Dead.

Marvin Lin, Radiohead's Kid A

2010 / Ebook / 149 pages / USA

***

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.

Alrightreads: Johnnies

Graham Reynolds, Constable's England

1983 / Ebook / 184 pages / UK

****

The armchair exhibition couldn't get its hands on the famous ones, but the rest are conveniently organised by location, tracking down specific vantage points 150 years later for inevitably depressing art tours.

Faves: 'Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead Heath' (1825), 'Hadleigh Castle,' 'Helmingham Dell' (1830).

Peter Holman, Dowland: Lachrimae (1604)

1995 / Ebook / 120 pages / UK

***

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.

Edward Buscombe, The Searchers

2000 / Ebook / 80 pages / UK

***

Run the text through a natural speech program and crank up the speed so it finishes in just under two hours and you've got a near-real-time audio commentary, so you can admire the scenery while learning why the rest of it's apparently any good.

Sean Nelson, Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark

2006 / Ebook / 118 pages / USA

***

A personal interpretation of lyrics and themes that tries not to speculate on what the artist meant, but can't help retrospectively ascribing specific spacetime context that's likely imaginary, like how I imagined this was written by a chick until I just clocked the name.

Tony Tost, Johnny Cash's American Recordings

2011 / Ebook / 224 pages / USA

***

This exegesis of Cash folklore explores the deep meanings of an old man playing cover songs in the corner semi-convincingly. It seems more substantial than most of these books, but that could just be the abundance of chapters leaving a lot of white space.

Alrightreads: Jimmies

Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Black Island (L'Île noire)

1937 (collected 1938) / Ecomics / 62 pages / Belgium

****

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.

Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond, The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)

1988 / Ebook / 78 pages / UK

****

Part bemused boast from the duo not best known for their novelty Doctor Who single, part temporarily useful guide for achieving your own shallow success, but mainly a gonzo exposé of a stupid system at the end of taste.

R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn: The Hebrides and Other Overtures

1993 / Ebook / 132 pages / USA

**

A few passes over Junior Beethoven's precocious trilogy picked out some nice features of the faux-Scottish landscape, but didn't inspire me to visit again.

John M. Perry, The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland

2004 / Ebook / 132 pages / UK

***

A short but interesting summary of the baggy, premature swan song. With chapters devoted to specific aspects of production, performance and reception before the track-by-track listen-along, it's everything I want from these books structurally, but so brief that it felt like I was only getting the preview.

Mike W. Barr and Tom Sutton, Star Trek Comics Classics: To Boldly Go

1984 (collected 2005) / Ecomics / 160 pages / USA

***

You wouldn't read Star Trek comics for the quality of the stories, but they sometimes make charming time capsules of a very specific vintage. This new series extrapolating a post-Wrath of Khan status quo was outdated and consigned to the alternate universe bin by Search for Spock around the time the first issues hit the shelves. The stories themselves are mainly interesting for their general predictions of future 'Trek, amid all the repetitive throwbacks.