Alrightreads: Noir

Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Land of Black Gold (Tintin au pays de l'or noir)

1948-1950 (collected 1950) / Ecomics / 64 pages / Belgium

***

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.

Uwe Ommer, Black Ladies

1995 / Ebook / 180 pages / Germany

***

Art.

Michael Eaton, Chinatown

1997 / Ebook / 79 pages / UK

****

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.

Steven Sanders, Miami Vice

2010 / Ebook / 136 pages / USA

***

A readable academic analysis of the substance underpinning the considerable style, with useful historicopsychogeographical context of how art and life imitated each other. I'd almost given up on the show, but this encouraged me to hop back in the speedboat.

Jason A. Wyckoff, Black Horse and Other Strange Stories

2012 / Ebook / 242 pages / USA

***

Diversifying from the publisher's usual Edwardian affectations, these contemporary American supernatural tales instead draw from the murky well of home-grown traditions, from Lovecraft to The X-Files. An 'average' rating by me in rough comparison to the entirety of literature, but for a first collection, the author should be pleased with himself.

Fave: 'The Night of His Sister's Engagement'

Alrightreads: No

Rhys Hughes, Nowhere Near Milkwood

1991-2002 (collected 2002) / Ebook / 264 pages / UK

****

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'

Leslie Patricelli, No No Yes Yes

2008 / Ebook / 24 pages / USA

**

I'm approaching this modern-day board book without the nostalgia of having growing up cheering on its cheeky hero, but since it can't be bothered with the most basic plot segues to connect these vignettes, it's just a colourful attempt at a training aid. (I'll up the rating if it turns out to be a godsend).

Elizabeth Pantley, The No-Cry Nap Solution: Guaranteed Gentle Ways to Solve All Your Naptime Problems

2008 / Ebook / 244 pages / USA

***

Useful tables of stats and troubleshooting Q&As bulked out with testimonials, explanations of why sleep is important and other blog posts. It might prove helpful. I should probably apply it to myself.

Various, The X-Files: Trust No One

2015 / Audiobook / 360 pages / Various

***

These retrospective fanfics from professional writers meet the bare minimum requirement of being credible cases, but only a few are as entertaining as the average episode. Small-town sheriff's departments, missing teens and ambiguous monsters feature appropriately heavily and there are even a couple of Skinner stories when the fictional Mulder and Scully are busy, but I wouldn't say this project was really worth the effort of putting together. But enough about the TV revival!!!!!1

Fave: Kevin J. Anderson's 'Statues'


Will Coombe, 3 Months to No.1: The No-Nonsense SEO Playbook for Getting Your Website Found on Google, 2nd Edition

2017 (updated 2019) / Ebook / 250 pages / UK

****

Correct (as far as I understand it), up-to-date, realistic advice about what actually matters and what your local violin refurbishing business doesn't really need to bother with. Combine its practical twelve-week plan with a how-to-write guide or hire an SEO copywriter today!

Alrightreads: Nines

Nicholas Cook, Beethoven: Symphony No. 9

1993 / Ebook / 144 pages / UK

**

Assuming that anyone reading this will already be familiar enough with the composer's obstinate epilogue to not require a general overview (snort!), the writer sticks to the boring details, quoting other people's gushing reactions so he can remain stoically intimidated.

Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Mœbius 9: Stel

1994 / Ecomic / 84 pages / France

***

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!

Rhys Hughes, The Skeleton of Contention

1993-2004 (collected 2004) / Ebook / 36 pages / UK

***

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'

Worstie: 'Primate Suspect'

Daphne Carr, Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine

2011 / Ebook / 179 pages / USA

**

A bunch of random Nine Inch Nails fans talk about what Trent Reznor means to them before we close on an extended plug for Hot Topic apparel. This has no value.

Michael Piller, Fade In: The Making of Star Trek Insurrection – A Textbook on Screenwriting from Within the Star Trek Universe

1999 (published 2016) / Ebook / 271 pages / USA

****

I don't know whether this is the most comprehensively documented 'Trek film, but between this introspective writer's journey, the general making-of book, covering the directing in Star Trek: Action!, the souvenir magazine and following the production in real time, it's the one I'm the most disproportionately familiar with behind the scenes. Piller intended this more as a guide for fellow writers than a 'Trek reference book, but it ended up being among the most interesting of the latter, from its insider insights (too honest for publication in his lifetime) to how much llama rental would cost you in 1998.

Alrightreads: Nights

Walter Lord, A Night to Remember

1955 / Audiobook / 260 pages / USA

*****

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.

Stephen King, Night Shift

1968-78 (collected 1978) / Audiobook / 336 pages / USA

***

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.'


John Rozum, Kevin J. Anderson, Gordon Purcell and Charles Adlard, The X-Files: Night Lights

1996 (collected 1997) / 128 pages / USA/UK

***

Rozum's X-Files is less convoluted than Petrucha's (almost like it was on request) and conservatively truer to the series and the characters, the eponymous two-parter making a decent run-of-the-mill not-episode. Which is more than can be said for X-Files novelist Kevin J. Anderson's cheesetastic guest spot where some people cosplaying as Mulder and Scully mumble unconvincing external monologues.

Simon Callow, The Night of the Hunter

2001 / Ebook / 79 pages / UK

***

Some useful insights on the kid's-eye fairy tale approach, when he isn't fawning over the director, recounting the plot we've already watched or providing the comprehensive drama-free production history.

Jez Conolly and David Owain Bates, Dead of Night

2015 / Ebook / 120 pages / UK

***

A balanced study of the various tales, when it's not going overboard on positioning the film within the entire history of horror and psychoanalysis.

Alrightreads: N

Arthur Machen, N

1935 (published 2010) / Audiobook / 39 pages / UK

***

A nice little phantasmagoric walking tour of Londons, though I don't see the point of extracting a story from readily-available collections, beyond helping out readers with their alphabetical odysseys. (Did he write X at any point?)

Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill, Nemesis the Warlock: Book One

1981 (collected 1983) / Ecomics / 95 pages / UK

***

This Gothic dystopian sci-fantasy saga of an ambiguously benevolent omnipotent armoured goat mage and his space speedboat was eerily familiar. Possibly a preincarnation memory from towards the end of my previous life, or I could just be thinking of Warhammer 40,000, which is a complete rip-off.

Phil Farrand, The Nitpicker's Guide for Classic Trekkers

1994 / Ebook / 393 pages / USA

****

The dodgier Next Generation episodes proved the most enjoyable to rip apart in his previous book, so I coveted this fabled prequel volume 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 an entertaining 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.

Matthew Gasteier, Nas' Illmatic

2009 / Ebook / 114 pages / USA

***

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."

Nicole Fenton and Kate Kiefer Lee, Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose

2014 / Ebook / 192 pages / USA

****

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.

Alrightreads: Myths

Stephen Prickett and Robert Barnes, The Bible

1991 / Ebook / 156 pages / UK

****

More weekday school than Sunday school, careful disclaimers are required before they feel free to present a neutrally-atheist analysis of the popular committee-composite classic as literature. It's a good summary for the length.

Pat McGreal and Dave Rawson, Indiana Jones and the Golden Fleece

1994 / Ecomics / 48 pages / USA

**

Half the length of the standard Dark Horse serial, the clockwork plotting shows through more when it's compressed. Our hero getting emasculated by a spunky, pregnant dame is at least something different before the customary astounding supernatural denouement, brushed off like he sees that sort of thing every day, since he does.

Rhys Hughes, The Just Not So Stories

2009-13 (collected 2013) / Ebook / 232 pages / UK

*****

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'

Shira Chess and Eric Newsom, Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology

2014 / Ebook / 146 pages / USA

***

A robotically dry academic study isn't exactly in the spirit of the open-source enterprise, but it serves as a functional history and I'm always up for some wishful psychoanalysis and desperate dot connecting.

Peter Turner, The Blair Witch Project

2015 / Ebook / 110 pages / UK

***

There's nothing fans won't know already about the inhumane production that's more interesting than the film itself, much of it repeated again across the chapters when he runs out of trivia, but it was a nostalgic trip back into the woods.

Alrightreads: My

Spike Milligan, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall

1971 / Audiobook / 146 pages / UK

****

Finding the humour in bloody awful times, or when too elusive, making it up. I need to get around to The Goon Show one of these decades.

Mike McGonigal, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless

2006 / Ebook / 128 pages / USA

**

It always feels a bit like a cheat, not to mention intrusive, when these writers pester the musicians themselves to give the inside story in their own words and make their lightweight book more authoritative. But considering the poor show when he tries to describe the wall of sound himself, it was probably for the best.

Unknown, illustrated by Gaby Hanson, My Favourite Nursery Rhymes

Collected 2006 / Physical book / 18 pages / UK

***

The cheapest one on the shopping app with the nicest art, finding out it was a sturdy board book when it arrived was a bonus. Though a bit annoying that they rounded the page corners but didn't do the same to the sharp covers. And including deep cuts like 'Little Betty Blue' and 'I Love Little Pussy' stretches the definition of 'favourite' like a premature greatest hits album, it's not as if they'd run out.

Unknown, My First Learning Book: 123 / abc / Shapes / Colours

2019 / Cloth books / 48 pages / France/China

****

I was planning to get her a Ladybird boxset at some point (I only had their Colours book back in the '80s, so I'm still not sure what a square is), but these rip-offs were better for an early start, since they're made from chewable, washable cloth. Considering the general originality on display here, I'll assume LakaRose didn't invent the medium, but I don't need to get too cynical, since they do the job and I appreciated the angloform spelling. If this is too innocent and wholesome for you, you can speculate about the stupid reasons why the pig from earlier editions was replaced with a pink cat.

Louis Theroux, Gotta Get Theroux This: My Life and Strange Times in Television

2019 / Audiobook / 416 pages / UK

****

Of all the strange souls Louis has encountered on his travels, the biggest weirdo turns out to be: hims... actually, probably the Reverend who thought he was channeling 'Korton.' He was a freak.

Alrightreads: Moon

Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: Destination Moon (Objectif Lune)

1950-1952 (collected 1953) / Ecomics / 62 pages / Belgium

****

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 (On a marché sur la Lune)

1952-1953 (collected 1954) / Ecomics / 62 pages / Belgium

****

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.

Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (a.k.a. Apollo 13)

1994 / Audiobook / 378 pages / USA

***

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.

Amanda Petrusich, Nick Drake's Pink Moon

2007 / Ebook / 120 pages / USA

**

I was pleased that romanticising the artist's death didn't overshadow the music discussion as much as might be expected. I was less pleased by the final third being an extended car advert.

Bryan Waterman, Television's Marquee Moon

2011 / Ebook / 222 pages / USA

****

Detailed build-up and breakdown of a classic album and interesting deconstruction of punk origin myths, even if he does makes the 'tell a vision' pun twice.

Alrightreads: Monsters

Jon Stone and Michael J. Smollin, The Monster at the End of This Book

1971 / Ebook / 24 pages / USA

****

I wonder if there's a stranger Sesame Street tie-in than this metafictional antibook that makes the reader culpable for lovable, furry old Grover's escalating distress, passionately evoked in the nightmarish art. It definitely shouldn't exist, but I'm glad I got around to it eventually, though only after mistaking Clive Barker's Mister B. Gone for being original.

John Rozum, Charles Adlard and Gordon Purcell, The X-Files: Internal Affairs

1996 (collected 1997) / Ecomics / 128 pages / USA/UK

**

With fewer stories than average and quality below average, the comics cleverly foreshadowed the decline of the TV show. Titan Books' pun title summing up these domestic cases of madness and live organ transplant reimbursement is better than the contents.

Tim Greaves, Vampyres: A Tribute to the Ultimate in Erotic Horror Cinema – Revised Edition

1996 (updated 2003) / Ebook / 67 pages / UK

**

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.

Harry M. Benshoff, Dark Shadows

2011 / Ebook / 130 pages / USA

****

I'd long been mildly curious about the serious Munsters/Addams, and this was a decent overview of which stolen plots worked, what's so bad it's good and the more significant legacy. I could probably still get sucked in if I allowed it, but I'll leave the remaining 1,220 episodes for the time being.

Jez Conolly, The Thing

2013 / Ebook / 107 pages / UK

***

Hypothesises the smartness driving the paranoid sausagefest splatterfest. Interesting until he runs out of worthwhile topics and falls back on the history of monsters and stuff, but his brief summary of Alien as "essentially one long tracking shot through a dangerous birth canal" gets a round of applause.

Alrightreads: Money

Ezra Pound, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

1920 / Ebook / 32 pages / USA

**

Only notable for making Eliot's epic look a little less inventive, this less quotable, more self-absorbed, insufferably élite epitaph for the cultural wasteland didn't work for me. I only liked the bit at the end where he dies and we get some peace. I don't think he's showing off, just refusing to dumb down. It's elaborate old-school Twitter.

Fave: Mauberley IV.

James M. Cain, Double Indemnity

1936 (collected 1943) / Audiobook / 115 pages / USA

***

So similar to The Postman Always Rings Twice in its mariticidal ruminations that the authorities should probably have a bit of a preventive chat with the author, this time swapping an impossibly cryptic title for an enjoyably crap 1990s-2000s action movie banner.

Christopher S. Claremont and Adam T. Hughes, Star Trek: Debt of Honor

1992 / Ecomic / 96 pages / USA

**

A rare standalone Graphic Novel from the DC days that sets itself apart from your common-as-muck comics through the sort of 'prestige' art that's now the standard in licensed works and a grand scope that spans the uniform-coded chronology and felt like it was taking place in real time considering how many sessions it took me to get through. The phonetic transcription of all 'non-standard' accents had something to do with that.

Michael T. Fournier, Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime

2007 / Ebook / 106 pages / USA

***

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.

Charm Baker, Shut Up and Write!: Step-by-Step Guide How to Get Paid to Write Within a Week

2016 / Ebook / 97 pages / USA

***

Despite the crap cover, this isn't a flimsy promotional tool for an extortionate online course, like these usually are, but actually contains good (presumably), practical advice as the writer streamlines the specific route she took to financial independence that she wants you to repeat for your own benefit. That's nice. I should probably take it up on a few things when work slows down, but it's a bit proactive for me. My own repeatable guide would be recklessly laid-back.