1992 / Ebook / 69 pages / India
****
It's always more interesting to get a proper writer's take on a film than a jobbing critic's, along with their personal insights that invite you to consider different interpretations and audiences. I wasn't so interested in the bit of fiction at the end, but the essay was coming up a bit short.
2007 / Ebook / 230 pages / UK
***
More resolutely traditional, ornamental ghost stories with a somewhat tonally misleading contents page.
Fave: 'Mr Poo-Poo'
Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail
2010 / Audiobook / 604 pages / UK
**
Up to his usual standard, but I'm just reading these to get it over with now, and I wasn't enthused about a bumper-sized one. With its VR war games and afterlife, this is more what I expected The Player of Games to be like, and was glad when it wasn't. You can jump in on any of these novels, because all the same things gets explained ad nauseam, as ever.
Charlie Sweatpants, Zombie Simpsons: How the Best Show Ever Became the Broadcasting Undead
2012 / Ebook / 81 pages / USA
**
I'd figured that the series' millennial decline was a combination of exhausting the concept, losing the best writers and the end of my own nostalgia. Fortunately, this short book was here to educate me in the writer's objective opinions. Even if he's right, he's the sort of tirelessly, tiresomely negative fan you'd leave a forum to get away from and detox your online activity, but since his forum was specifically founded on beating a dead Simpsons, I should have known what I was getting into. Move on. At least it's not a twelve-part "video essay."
Ensley F. Guffey and K. Dale Koontz, Wanna Cook?: The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad
2014 / Ebook / 433 pages / USA
****
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.
