Freelance Flaneur: Alrightreads: authors A

Some books I've read; my incredible insights thereon; updated when I can be arsed.

Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London

****

Neverwhere with cops. There was enough humour to get me through, but too much going on for my distracted listening to take in. Maybe I'll find my literary series one day.

Aaron Aaronson, Postcards from the Wasteland

Read 2017

*

In the noisy self-published ebook marketplace, you're often left with no choice but to judge a flimsy digital tome by its cover, especially when its author refuses to distil his misanthropic manifesto into a user-friendly blurb. So what have we got to go on here?

A title that alludes to Eliot, but turns out to be a Bon Jovi album track. An author chasing alphabetical favouritism with what we can only assume is a non-de-plume. A felt-tip drawing that resembles nothing so much as that time Moe's Bar got a "weird for the sake of weird" postmodern facelift. That he didn't even bother to colour in. Turn over the digital leaves and see A.A. Aardvark's flair for fictional names continue with a protagonist called 'Nihil' wading through an unimaginatively-described dystopia, and these first impressions bear out.

Maybe it helps if you’re drinking along. And if you hate everything. The one positive is that at least all the animals come out unscathed.

Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Read 2015

It's the maths-fi book that someone was bound to write sooner or later, but I'm not sure that mixing in a weak satire of the class system was the best way to go about it. Abbott (the 'A' is for another Abbott) clearly put a lot of thought into what the 2D and 1D experience might look like (4D would have to wait for Heinlein), but I'm not really convinced. I'm not sure the extreme sexism can be fully excused as "satire" either. A kid's story would have been a better way to go about it – like Mr. Men or The Shoe People, but with polygons rather than temperaments or footwear.

Stacey Abbott, Angel

Read 2020

**

It's been long enough since I sped through the series without pausing to smell the putrescence that a retrospective was welcome, but stuffy academic overanalysis wasn't the best way to go about it. Maybe Grandreams put out an annual?

Dan Abnett, Doctor Who: The Silent Stars Go By

***

Not the most festive Christmas special, but some cracking carol puns.

Dan Abnett and I. N. J. Culbard, Brink, Book One

***

An intriguing apocalyptic overture, but I'll leave them to their miserable fate.

James Acaster, James Acaster's Classic Scrapes

Read 2018

****

Enough literature, it's been too long since I've read a stand-up comedian's attempt to convert their live material into prose. This doesn't seem to be the case here, which is more a thematically-skewed autobiography. You haven't heard all of them on WILTY.

James Acaster, Perfect Sound Whatever

Read 2020

***

A strange mix of a comedian's 2017 diary and eclectic album reviews. I didn't feel like bursting my synthwave bubble and checking out as many of the recommendations as I normally would, apart from the irresistibly bizarre ones like gospel black metal and the Flanders band. It never stopped being distracting that he pronounces "record" like an American.

James Acaster, James Acaster's Guide to Quitting Social Media

Switching from confessional memoir to fiction and persona in his third literary outing, I guess this makes it a debut novel. Shame it's on a subject I have no interest in and can't really relate to, and he's funnier when he's being himself.

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Read 2015

It's something you often find yourself wondering when you live in one of these places. Why was this allowed to happen and why aren't things getting any better? You know the answers really, and I can't say I found any revelations here beyond the bleeding obvious. They could have written an essay, but in their economic shrewdness, they realised that bulking it out with detailed analyses of various regimes across history would be more profitable. It's less harsh than I expected, laying the blame squarely on inept and corrupt governance rather than problematic cultures, which I'm not so sure about. At least they admit that a hot climate isn't an excuse.

Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

Read 2015

****

I won't have been alone in expecting this novel by an esteemed historian to present a speculative biography of London's renowned architect as he builds his rumoured occult churches on pentagram points around a tangibly authentic post-Fire London. It started out that way, convincing cursing and all, but I was a bit disoriented when successive chapters shifted to the present day and started following lonely children and depressing vagrants around. At the half-way point, it suddenly becomes a police procedural. I still enjoyed the disjointed style and spotting all the century-spanning parallels, but I'd rather have had the dingy historical. The Hawksmoor character isn't even called Hawksmoor; that name goes to someone completely different. There's postmodern and then there's just messing about.

Peter Ackroyd, Chatterton

Read 2019

***

While it's not actually a sequel to Hawksmoor, it's a similar pan-century investigation into the life, death and legacy of another enigmatic artist – here the tragic poet and literary prankster who arguably overreacted to his lack of instant acclaim by killing himself at 17... or did he? I'm not literary enough to find the mystery as compelling as its cast of over-educated eccentrics, who each have the most insufferable quirks.

Peter Ackroyd, London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets

Read 2015

****

Part of me would love to live in London and explore the hell out of it, but at some point I decided that wasn't my calling this time around and I'd leave it for some of the other lives (preferably a former one when it was better). Still, that doesn't mean I can't torture myself by reading about what I'm missing, embarking on a frustratingly fascinating subterranean odyssey from a bedroom 7,261 miles away and four storeys up.

Amir D. Aczel, The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity

Read 2015

****

With a title like that, you'd be forgiven for expecting this to be one of those pseudointellectual cheap shots pushing some New Ager's poorly thought out theory, founded on tenuous connections between ancient doctrine and misunderstood proper science. Personally, I was hoping for a non-fiction equivalent of that π film, but the Jewish mysticism only gets a single chapter. The rest is still approachably lightweight, the hard sums being made simpler for struggling GCSE-level mathematicians like me by presenting a concise history of the subject, all the classic thought experiments (tortoise; hotel; barber) and biographies of major ∞ scholars who usually ended up going insane. I don't understand anything any better than before I went in, but I enjoyed the infinite journey.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Read 2003, re-read 2005, 2017

*****

Normally I'd defer to seniority and insist that the radio series should be considered the definitive version, but this time I might have to concede to its novelisation. It's almost exactly the same as the first four radio episodes, but it picks the right one of multiple choice climaxes that keeps things cohesive rather than too loose and episodic.

I don't have much else to add that hasn't been said already. I didn't get any new insights out of this re-read, which was more like sticking a video on for the umpteenth time, but since the radio and TV series were fresher in my memory, it was the narrator's descriptions and digressions between the familiar dialogue that were the most entertaining this time.

Favourite bit?: When the narrator becomes concerned that we won't be able to handle the tension of an imminent scene, so spoils the major plot points and only leaves out the minor detail of who bruises their arm to maintain a smidgen of suspense. I could go on, but I'd be here all day.

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Read 2003, re-read 2005, 2017

*****

The first time I read it, this more ponderous and conspiratorial sequel was a bit of comedown after the hectic babel-fish-out-of-water madness of the first book. It was easily my least favourite of the original (actual) trilogy.

This time, I appreciated its shift in character focus to Zaphod, after the Earthman had his story in the first book. But it doesn't fully commit to that, and we end up in a satisfyingly symmetrical finale with Arthur and Ford instead, which is good too. The ensemble scenes in-between are still the best, although Adams didn't seem to share this sentiment, as the gang hardly ever gets back together after this one.

Not as good as the first one, because that was the first one. But considering most of this also originated in the first radio series, you could look at it more as a second half of the first one than a second one. Because this "trilogy" needed to be more complicated.

Favourite bit?: The Golgafrinchans setting up a row of useless phone boxes on prehistoric Earth just so the telephone sanitisers have something to keep them busy.

Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

Read 2003, re-read 2005, 2011, 2017

***

Sorry to disappoint my smugly contrarian teenage self, but I've come to the pathetically mainstream conclusion that this isn't possibly the best of the lot after all. Sell-out.

There are still a few classic bits in it, but after the coherent Restaurant, we've clearly ventured into unnecessary-but-nice sequel territory now, as Arthur and Ford find themselves unable to resist getting into more wacky scrapes across space and time. This is the first time I've read it since knowing it's based on a failed Doctor Who script that the boring bastards decided was too silly to make. Now I can't unsee Slartibartfast as a clumsy Tom Baker stand-in.

Favourite bit?: The revelation about flying: learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. One of those concepts like ghosts or the afterlife that I know is just someone's fanciful idea, but hold out a tiny, irrational glimmer of hope for anyway.

Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Read 2003, re-read 2005, 2017

****

I used to think of this series in terms of the classic original trilogy plus the two slightly disappointing later ones, but I always had the nagging suspicion that SLATFATF (great acronym) was a bit more grown-up than the previous books. Now that I've finally caught up, I appreciate it as a fine coda to the classic trilogy of four, before the still-disappointing other one. I much prefer it to the previous one.

It's primarily a rom-com, and a really good one, which is the first shock. It's mostly Earth-bound, which is another, and not only because that planet was supposed to have been demolished several books ago. There's a female character with more than a few functional lines of dialogue! It's not as frivolously zany any more, but it hasn't lost any of its wit, and with Ron McKenna the reluctant rain god and Wonko the Sane and his inside-out house, Adams hasn't lost the knack. Even if it was becoming notoriously torturous to get him to use it, to the point that he had to be besieged by his publishers until he bloody well delivered.

This is probably to blame for the less perfect(/Prefect) bits, namely the dull and distracting chapters with Ford that probably should have been consigned to the same bin as whatever hypothetical scenarios the other, entirely absent characters might have been involved in. But it all somehow meanders its way to a satisfying and surprisingly uplifting climax.

Favourite bit?: The willfully mood-shattering final line right after that emotional climax. "Luckily, there was a stall nearby where you could rent scooters from guys with green wings."

Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Read 2004, re-read 2005, 2017

*****

When Douglas Adams moved on from the Hitchhiker's Guide (at least for a while) and decided he wanted to write something new, he didn't hold back. Rebounding from the painfully squeezed-out and minimalist So Long..., the author treats himself to a massively indulgent, messy and explosive wank.

Dirk Gently's convoluted "investigation" is a lot less accessible than Arthur Dent's improbable galactic odyssey, and gratification is severely delayed. The book takes so long positioning all its seemingly incompatible playing pieces that the title character doesn't even show up until nearly half-way through. I started to doubt my hazy memories of this supposedly being one of the good ones (not that I'd fully understood or appreciated it the first time I read it). But have patience and you'll be rewarded with a masterpiece of insane genius.

Just be sure to at least read Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' the Wikipedia introduction to 'Kubla Khan' and to read this book at least twice, and you should have no problem wrapping your head around it. Though I'm still not sure exactly what's going on with Bach.

Favourite bit?: That it does explain what's going on with that sofa, eventually.

Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul

Read 2005, re-read 2017

***

The So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish of Dirk Gently, this is more stripped-down, domestic and comparatively normal than the first book, which isn't difficult. To go in the other direction would have risked all of our marbles (wish he had though). That's not to say it's entirely sane by any means, just that its Norse gods and ravenous Bugblatter-style beasts are more evenly balanced by mundane gripes about airports and pizza delivery.

After the impressive truancy of his debut, it only takes until chapter three for Dirk to show up this time, and getting to spend more time with the post-eccentric detective is the best thing about it. It's disappointing that his Watson didn't hang around, but his substitute ends up being Adams' most well-developed female character. Presumably, if The Salmon of Doubt had been completed as intended, it would have followed tradition and dispatched Kate most cruelly and efficiently in a horrific between-books accident.

Favourite bit?: Mr. Elwes, the mental patient whose speech has become inexplicably synchronised with Dustin Hoffman's. It has no bearing on the plot.

Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

Read 2009, re-read 2017

****

Adams' books are arguably best in audio form. He read nearly all of them himself, which is even better, but if you were going to listen to him narrate just one, it should be this wildlife travelogue memoir starring his actual self.

It's another radio series 'novelisation' that this time uses its extra breadth to go more in-depth, personal and scatterbrained, rather than contradicting itself and splitting off another Last Chance to See multiverse.

I found it insightful and affecting when I first read/listened to it, but listening again after travelling around and seeing more of the world, its creatures and its thoughtless overlords, I appreciate it a lot more. Even just for the cathartic travel frustrations.

Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, The Meaning of Liff / The Deeper Meaning of Liff

**

Great idea for a newspaper column, a whole book is overdoing it a bit. What do you mean you don't have to read it from cover to cover in one sitting?

It's less the sort of thing you'd buy yourself, more something you're likely to receive as a Christmas gift if you're known to be a fan of Douglas Adams, wit or just humour in general, that ends up in the charity shop when the appropriate gratitude period has passed.

Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

Read 2003, re-read 2005, 2017

**

The Douglas Adams bibliography isn't extensive to begin with, so it feels strange and ungrateful to debate whether we'd have been better off if his final book hadn't been written. But it's a rather dull, depressing and spiteful whimper for the Hitchhiker's series, which is all the worse since the previous book went out on such a high note.

I get the impression he wasn't in the best mood when he wrote/churned this one. Petty venting has been a foundation of the series ever since Arthur Dent lay down in front of a bulldozer, but it all comes out a lot more bitter this time. One character is ruthlessly dispatched off-page for no good reason, just when we were getting to know her. Ford's still having uninteresting B-stories to pad out the spare chapters, and Zaphod still isn't.

If he didn't want to write Hitchhiker's, couldn't he have done a third Dirk Gently or something else instead, rather than taking out his frustration on these characters? I didn't hate it, but there's nothing I could pin down as a highlight either.

Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

Read 2004, re-read 2015

****

I'd dipped in and out of this memorial miscellany a couple of times over the years, but this is the first time I fully committed and saw how some of the most (seemingly) arbitrary entries on quantum physics and imperfectly brewed cups of tea take on special significance when the same thought processes make their way into Adams' tragically incomplete final novel. It's not only moving, but educational too – whether you become a lifelong devotee of Bach or Procol Harum.

Faves: Half a Dirk Gently novel.

Worsties: Impenetrable 1980s Mac musings.

Emma Adams and Katy Halford, Unicorn and the Rainbow Poop / Rainbow Snow

Love unicorns? Love poo? These otherwise interchangeable fairytale stories have one major point of difference, but she doesn't yet have the social mores to find it outrageously funny.

Emma Adams and Mike Byrne, Who Pooed in My Loo?

The unicorn is just one of an imaginary parade. They know what they're doing. Hook, line and sinker. As if poo isn't enough of a draw already.

Emma Adams and Mike Byrne, The Unicorn Who Came to Breakfast

This "homage"/rip-off of the tiger book does nothing new half a century on, but we can't not read a unicorn book when we see it.

Guy Adams, Sherlock: The Casebook

Read 2015

***

It's smart-arse style over substance like everything Steven Moffat writes, so of course I love Sherlock. For the first two series anyway, before it went off the rails a bit, and that's where this happily-slightly-out-of-date companion finds us. The teen fan scrapbook bits are a bit embarrassing, but having just watched the series again, the extensive catalogue of canon references and nerdy Easter eggs was insightful. I've read/listened-to those original stories various times, but evidently not often enough.

Martin Adams, Sonic the Hedgehog in Robotnik's Laboratory

Read 1995

*

Proper novels were likely as cultured as this franchise got. It's a shame they were so dull, but at least there was the flipbook in the corner when you got bored. I think I forced myself to finish this eventually, but even as a barely-discerning fan, I didn't bother with the others.

Richard Adams, Watership Down

Read 2011

*****

I only caught a bit of the film as a kid – Farthing Wood was more my brand of animated animal cruelty – but this book about bunnies didn't feel childish at all. The perspective shift of having a rabbit's-eye view of the world is profound. Then it starts to get a bit grim.

Scott Adams, God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

Read 2015

***

I've never read Dilbert (has my life been meaningless?), so I didn't have any preconceptions to be shattered by Scott Adams' foray into pop philosophy. The dialogue itself is more of a monologue, with the reader surrogate mainly providing confused responses and being awed by how deep the writer surrogate is, but in spite of this occasional arrogance, flawed logic and patronising self-help deviations, it was another enjoyable ride. In his self-aggrandising introduction, Adams suggests that readers aged 22 will enjoy the full impact of his wisdom. That's fair – I was still reeling from the Hubble Deep Field and dabbling in ancient astronaut theories back then, so this probably would have blown me away.

Jean and Gareth Adamson, Topsy and Tim series

It's nice to have something grounded to offset all the unicorns, and reprinting 60+ years of titles adds period charm/stupidity. They could come up with more than the one activity at the end.

Charles Addams, Nightcrawlers

Read 2019

**

I was hoping for a lot more Addams Family from this collection, which were presumably used up in his previous five collections, though plenty could qualify as extended family. Other themes include giants, murderers, disgruntled spouses (crosses over with murderers) and good old-fashioned racism. Some are pretty funny when you spot the punchline skulking in the background, some probably made more sense half a century ago, most are groaners. Most interesting was seeing the original Uncle Knick-Knack gag.

Charles Addams, Happily Ever After: A Collection of Cartoons to Chill the Heart of Your Loved One

****

A generous spread of morbid funnies and impenetrable enigmas.

Dr. Caspar Addyman and Ania Simeone, Babies Laugh at Everything

A tad over-qualified for a toddler sound book.

Martine Agassi and Marieka Heinlen, Hands Are Not for Hitting

It's not like she's going around beating kids up, but prevention is better than cure, and children guilty until proven innocent.

Allan Ahlberg and André Amstutz, Funnybones: The Black Cat

Fun and dismemberment in the snow. This would have a very different atmosphere if they were realistically drawn.

Allan Ahlberg, The Night Train: Stories in Prose and Verse

****

Some bedtime keepers here, unless she turns out to be less easily impressed by the whimsically literal interpretation of figures of speech than I never fail to be.

Faves: 'Life Savings,' 'The Night Train'

Allan Ahlberg and Tony Ross, Happy Families: Miss Dirt the Dustman's Daughter

Gambling on the lottery is a safer bet than investment, kids.

Allan Ahlberg and Bruce Ingman, Alison Hubble

***

I'm always impressed when writers manage to make maths fun, and the lack of explanation or resolution for this kid's exponential doubling was bold, inviting more astute readers to extrapolate the apocalyptic horror to come.

Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Each Peach Pear Plum

***

Sequential nursery rhyme hide and seek that kept her interest. The gun-toting bear family and child endangerment should have been a clue to its vintage.

Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Funnybones

She never tires of A Dark, Dark Tale, so I chose this for the intro, but it drags on afterwards as the eviscerated duo while away the night bone idly.

Robert Aickman, Dark Entries: Curious and Macabre Ghost Stories

Read 2020

***

A mixed bag of vague strangeness in varied settings.

Faves: 'Choice of Weapons,' 'The Waiting Room.'

Worsties: 'The School Friend,' 'The View.'

Robert Aickman, Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories

Read 2016

****

It's always satisfying to discover a new cult-favourite weirdo. I'd hoped Aickman might be this year's China Miéville in that regard, but his refusal to embrace the genre labelling that will inevitably happen anyway means his original collections can be very inconsistent. The best ones are indefinably unnerving.

Faves: 'The Swords,' 'The Hospice.'

Worsties: 'The Real Road to the Church,' 'Pages from a Young Girl's Journal.'

Robert Aickman, The Wine-Dark Sea

****

Unconventional and usually unsettling stories, sometimes for want of a point.

Faves: The Wine-Dark Sea, The Fetch, The Inner Room

Joan Aiken, Dead Man's Lane

***

Moody adolescent introspection with hints of the uncanny for nascent goths who've outgrown Point Horror.

Fave: 'The End of Silence'

Diane Alber, Never Let a Unicorn Scribble!

And other forbidden pastimes to come, no doubt.

Jez Alborough, Hug

He's such a cheery chappie, we always forget that she's grown out of Bobo books and demands more from her reading than unadorned monosyllablic cries. This one's worse than most due to the neglect factor.

Jez Alborough, Tall

***

This repetition at least has the sense of vertical progress and a nice, unspoken message at the end that may be bogstandard, but could serve as a kind of Turing test if you suspect your storyteller may be an android.

Jez Alborough, Yes

***

She was pleased to find another Bobo book, but annoyed by the minimalist dialogue, asking "can you read it?" when I forgot to elaborate with stage directions.

Jez Alborough, My Friend Bear

Where's My Teddy? is one of the better entries in her bear anthology. This takes advantage of that affection and reconfigures the narrative to reassure lonely children. Outrageous.

Jez Alborough, Play

***

This one made an impression, since she randomly mentioned Bobo later in the day. We've read it many times since. Minimal vocabulary, high drama.

Naomi A. Alderman, Doctor Who: Borrowed Time

****

Smart and funny sci-fi corporate satire, like a time-travel Severance.

Paul Alexander, Red Dwarf Log No. 1996

Read 2020

*

An artefact I was required to get around to eventually, as a masochistic fan, my expectations were appropriately low for Red Dwarf's worst writer contriving unlikely in-character banter by riffing on or just repeating classic Grant Naylor dialogue. It's as if the worst parts of the Smegazine were treated to an undeserved festive hardback release to flog to trusting parents.

Paul Alexander, Red Dwarf Space Corps Survival Manual

I was in the market for Red Dwarf books when this was still in shops, but even as a less discerning primary school pupil, a quick flick through was enough to decide that my limited funds would be better spent elsewhere (and I was mainly looking at the flip book). The psychotic guidance could be funny on its own ("just think of it as biting your nails taken to its logical conclusion"), but having the Red Dwarf characters provide one-dimensional commentary isn't any funnier than the previous Christmas' lazy stocking stuffer.

Dante Alighieri, Inferno

Read 2004

***

I'd enjoyed Iced Earth's musical summary, so thought I should check out the original. It's not the most thrilling or atmospheric journey through the underworld, and you have to be a 14th-century Florentine to get the full effect, but it has its iconic moments. I saw Allen Mandelbaum's blank verse translation being praised as the best available, so went to the trouble of importing an obscure paperback rather than just reading whatever passable version of the public domain poem I could find for free online. When did I stop being a connoisseur?

Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio

Read 2004

***

I don't know which of the several rhyming translations I took down off the shelf of my university's library, but I was impressed by that achievement. No doubt it requires blasphemous corruption of the original Italian to make every new line rhyme, but it lightened the load on this uphill struggle.

I started Paradiso, but didn't get very far. Not my scene.

Angus Allen, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles Annual 1991

Read 1990

*

Home-grown TMNHT stuff always had a sense of unofficial, careless crapness about it, even when they were adapting proper episodes. Reprinting some of the Archie Adventures comics would have been better. This didn't even have puzzles!

Woody Allen, Getting Even

Read 2015

****

One of those legendary figures exalted by comedy writers and thought of a bit less fondly by anyone who knows anything about his weird personal life, this is my first encounter with Woody Allen in any medium (beyond parodies) (that I'm aware of). These short stories, memoirs and miscellanies are mostly funny, in a getting-on-for-historical post-modern 60s way, preoccupied with pompous aesthetes, philosophers and psychologists and having harmless fun with revolutionaries and the Third Reich. Being his first chronological collection rather than a best-of, there's the expected worthless filler that still adds variety.

Faves: 'Death Knocks,' 'Viva Vargas!,' Mr. Big.'

Worsties: 'A Look at Organized Crime,' 'Yes, But Can the Steam Engine Do This?'

Woody Allen, Without Feathers

Read 2015

****

"Should I marry W? Not if she won't tell me the other letters of her name."

The good stuff is pretty damn funny and the less good stuff is inoffensive. It's about equal to the first book.

Faves: 'Selections from the Allen Notebooks,' 'The Whore of Mensa.'

Worsties: 'Lovborg's Women Considered,' 'But Soft. Real Soft.'

Woody Allen, Side Effects

Read 2015

****

This was probably my favourite of the classic shorties trilogy. It's not so much that's he's perfected his style as the statistical likelihood that one of them would have a slightly higher hit rate than the others, and this happens to be that one. You could stick the whole lot on shuffle and it'd still be mostly side-splitting.

Faves: 'Remembering Needleman,' 'By Destiny Denied,' 'Fabrizio's: Criticism and Response,' 'Retribution.'

Worsties: 'The UFO Menace,' 'The Kugelmass Episode,' 'The Diet.'

Woody Allen, Mere Anarchy

Read 2015

***

After a gap of decades, the slightly perverted funnyman put out a fourth collection of shorts that are nowhere near as funny as they used to be and come off more like a tribute album. He's still stuck on the same themes – the arts scene, philosophy, restaurants – but to prove he isn't stuck in the past, there are stories about the internet, quantum theory and scientology too.

Faves: 'Sam, You Made the Pants Too Fragrant,' 'Caution, Falling Moguls,' 'Strung Out.'

Worsties: 'This Nib for Hire,' 'Calisthenics, Poison Ivy, Final Cut,' 'Sing, You Sacher Tortes.'

Dmitri Allicock, Green- Green Grass of Guyana: Thirty Two Poems

Read 2019

**

Our observational poet scrolls through his digital photos of rustic Guyanese life and describes what he sees in clichéd verse. It all adds up to quite a pleasant if amateur collage.

Marta Altés, Little Monkey

Titch with animals.

Eric Althoff and Toshihiro Kawamoto, Cowboy Bebop Anime Guide, Vol.001

One of many similarities between this acclaimed anime and Joss Whedon's Firefly is that I've never really got what the fuss is about, so I thought reading along might help me to find that enlightenment. Sadly, after a brief introduction that spells out some of the implicit backstory and cross-genre references, this immediately collapses into childish character profiles and a screencap storybook covering the first five of twenty-six episodes. I won't bother with the rest.

Mark A. Altman, Dan Mishkin, Charles Marshall, Gordon Purcell and Leonard Kirk, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Requiem

Read 2018

***

The young comic burns through writers at an alarming rate. A promising two-parter by Mark A. Altman gives us the first story that would actually have made a worthwhile episode, about a Bajoran Anne Frank, then he abandons us to tales of evil space dragons and juvenile japes.

Mark A. Altman and Rob Davis, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Hearts and Minds

Read 2018

****

There's something shady in the Gamma Quadrant playing the Klingons and Cardassians against each other and threatening a destabilising war. This is all very familiar, but this time it's the comic readers (and writer) who'll be sensing deja vu and borderline plagiarism as the TV show develops.

We're still on late-second-season knowledge, so things don't play out exactly the same (and there's no risk of upsetting the status quo in a licensed tie-in), but this does suggests DS9 was on an inevitable course to galactic conflict one way or another. Niners on a budget would have been well advised to favour this four-part miniseries over the main range issues released during the same period, which were a complete waste of time.

Mark A. Altman, Rob Davis and Trevor Goring, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Lightstorm / Terok Nor

Read 2018

****

A bumper-sized sideline that's once again a slightly higher standard than mainline DS9, so you wonder why they didn't just make this the regular comic instead. Oh yeah, $$$.

Mark A. Altman and Rob Davis, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Maquis – Soldier of Peace

Read 2018

***

The Maquis always felt a bit like a waste of time. The only really notable thing about that arc is that it built a bridge between the three '90s TV series, and that's superficially the most worthwhile thing about this one – that it came out around the same time Voyager started, and ties in very loosely in a way that might have seemed quite exciting and current at the time, while thankfully remaining DS9.

Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, The Deep Space Log Book: A Second Season Companion – The Essential Unofficial Guide

****

The official companion would prove to be worth the wait, but these serialised supplements would have filled in nicely along the way if they hadn't ended here. Behind-the-scenes trivia, candid interviews and informed reviews of a generally underappreciated season, certainly one of the six best anyway. With half a book to go, they (presumably) reprint some of their first season guide and look with bated optimism to the future.

Yoshitaka Amano, Dawn: The Worlds of Final Fantasy

***

Disappointingly only covering the early games that I never played, the lack of any text commentary for these doodles means I never knew what I was looking at, but it was still pretty nice.

Tiago Americo, My First Touch and Find: Beach

Another unseasonal beach book, combining textures and near-page-size flaps with minor puzzles. She unnecessarily tidied each flap before continuing, even though they turn like pages anyway, which was pleasing. Drop litter around her at your peril.

Heather Amery and Stephen Cartwright, Usborne Farmyard Tales: The Naughty Sheep

I'd forgotten that I had childhood experience of Usborne's Farmyard Tales series, whether this was mine or a brother's, and the realisation of this unmemorability persuaded me that my daughter needn't bother.

Heather Amery, Nicole Irving and Stephen Cartwright, The Usborne Internet-Linked First Thousand Words in French

Read 2020, re-read 2021

****

Pretentious, ma fille? Rather than trying to give her an aggressive headstart on a third language, this was just what I settled for when they didn't have the English version in stock, since the writing makes no difference when you can't read yet. And if she ever does end up learning French, it could help there too.

Heather Amery and Stephen Cartwright, The Usborne Book of Fairy Tales

Read 2020, re-read 2021

****

This seemed like a responsible edition of this mandatory library addition to get, satisfyingly unsanitised (within reason) and with dual narrative streams hopefully helping her along with she learns to read in a few years. As of now, it couldn't be of less interest.

Heather Amery and Stephen Cartwright, The Usborne Fairytale Jigsaw Book

***

She's grown into her fairy tales book now (and prefers the animal ones over the princesses, good on her). For want of More Fairy Tales, I thought this would make a nice interactive companion, even if buying second hand from a bulk seller there were inevitably missing pieces. I'll pretend it was her fault.

Heather Amery, Sam Taplin and Stephen Cartwright, Poppy and Sam's Lift-the-Flap Christmas

***

Either an authentic revisiting to Apple Tree Farm or a rebadged reprint, this was the only one of our festive reads that captured some of that spirit. We forgot to keep an eye out for the cat though, hope it was alright.

Heather Amery and Stephen Cartwright, Usborne First Reading: Farmyard Tales series

Read 2023–24

***

Boring, characterless old stories made enticing by reprinting them with loads of activities.

Martin Amis, Time's Arrow: or The Nature of the Offence

Read 2011

***

Red Dwarf's take on reverse chronology was funnier, and Vonnegut's was more concise, but Amis' novel is short enough that the gimmick doesn't get annoying. Though I can't help being a bit cynical that he chose the subject matter for his experiment with an eye to awards.

Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection

Read 2012

***

Another uneven collection of well-loved classics, criminally obscure gems and deservedly forgotten duds, this contains my all-time favourite 'The Emperor's New Clothes,' which I admire for its lauding of bold scepticism and independent thought combined with hilarious willies.

Maja Andersen, Once Upon A Time... There Was a Little Bird

It taught her (okay, us) some tree species and covered migration quite nicely. I skipped the dumb fable finale, which might be missing the point, but she wanted to read it four more times regardless.

Darran Anderson, Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson

Read 2020

**

It's a wild ride from concentration camp gravitas to old-school celeb goss before he remembers to get around to the album, and the writer failed to convince me that this sleazy singer whispering his pervy concept album in our ears deserves a critical rehabilitation. At least it was in French, so I couldn't understand it. No, that makes it worse.

Kevin J. Anderson, The X-Files: Ground Zero

Read 2015

**

I had the feeling that Anderson's Ruins was paranormally entertaining for a TV tie-in, and sure enough, this more conventional government conspiracy plot is strictly by the numbers. True to brief, it could have been a TV episode, if not a particularly memorable one, even with the mushroom clouds and overcast British Columbia coast standing in for the Asia-Pacific. Mulder and Scully aren't at their most charismatic, it felt like they were hardly even in the first half. So that's me suitably psyched up for the new mini-series then.

Kevin J. Anderson, The X-Files: Ruins

Read 2015

****

I can proudly claim to have been an X-phile right from the start, which might be a bit worrying considering I'd just turned nine at the time and really should have been in bed rather than watching liver-eating mutants climb out of the toilet. Luckily, it was the night of my mum's evening class and my dad didn't care.

Despite this history, I'd never read an X-Files novel before now, so chose the one that looked the most promising – Indiana Jones style adventures in Incan ruins with ancient aliens – and trusted that the master of the franchise tie-in wouldn't let me down on the authenticity front. It was extremely entertaining, right down to having the fictional ruined city Xitaclan start with an X, that's just classy.

Kevin J. Anderson, Michael Carabetta and Ralph McQuarrie, Star Wars Artbox: The Art of Ralph McQuarrie

Read 2014

***

A generous concession to the kids staring wistfully at expensive hardbacks in the bookshop, this features all the main stuff you'd want with minimal pages wasted on the interview. Shame about those tyrannical borders though.

Laura Ellen Anderson, I Don't Want to Be Quiet!

The conventional learning curve via Big Library propaganda. It's about a loud girl, so of course she finds it amusingly relatable.

Susan Anderson, You Write, They Pay: How to Build a Thriving Writing Business from NOTHING!: Third Edition

Read 2020

**

The unacknowledged, overarching demonstration of content self-marketing in action is more educational than the flimsy, occasionally outdated guidance it contains (such as still advocating spamming EzineArticles in 2015).

I twigged early on when she recommended hiring a $5,000 coach to help you explore your new career whim.

Giles Andreae and Lalalimola, Noodle Head

A "mature" expletive version could be quite funny.

Dudley Andrew and Carole Cavanaugh, Sanshô Dayû

***

BFI books permit authors to peter out at a pathetic page count when they ran out of things to say, but this one smartly splits the assignment between scholars who bring different expertise to the dissection of a grim folk tale. I favoured the musings on mathematical framing over the history and politics.

Geoff Andrew, 10

Read 2020

***

It's always good to go into films blind, but when the background is clearly more interesting than the content, to the point of distraction, you're better off skipping to the "what I was doing there..." and appreciating retrospectively on principle so you don't have to actually sit through the thing.

Scott Andrews, Uncharted Territory: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Farscape

Read 2004

**

From the Red Dwarf Programme Guide to the Nitpicker's Guides, I'd built up the idea that unofficial guides were more fun than stuffy authorised companions, with their impartial freedom to be opinionated and slag off bad episodes. Unfortunately, this one turned out to be pretty boring.

V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic

Read 2016

**

While she would have sneered at wimpy vampires, my imaginary early '80s teenage girl self doubtless would have boarded this pervy bandwagon. Judging by online reviews, you're not getting the full effect unless you're reading a dog-eared paperback stealthily traded between backpacks, and I can't say it was particularly affecting as an adult. I've spent a lot of my life cooped up indoors, that's no big deal. And at least these brothers and sisters get along, even if they arguably take things too far.

V.C. Andrews is one of the most inherently supernatural authors out there, still managing to pump out sequels decades after her death. We can safely assume that she actually wrote this first one, at least. If the others aren't similarly interminable, that'd be a dead giveaway.

Scott Anthony, Night Mail

Excessive postmortem of a vintage Post Office propaganda piece (evidently more detailed than many proper films are worth), though I could probably wax similarly tedious about some of my favourite adverts, if tasked with writing the book on the early-90s CIC Video Star Trek VHS trailer or something.

Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica

Read 2015

****

The age of the dinosaurs was three times longer than the time from dinosaurs to the present. In similarly barmy chronology, Jason and the Argonauts came about 500 years after The Odyssey – at least, in this definitive version of the old story. It's not the definitive version any longer, of course – it would take some pretty heavy-duty head trauma before I could read this in isolation from the well ace film, and satisfyingly, most of the key scenes are in there. You've got your bronze giant, pesky harpies, clashing rocks and fighting skeletons. Yes, the slow romance bits are in it too. Supposedly that's what makes it so interesting? Ray Harryhausen begs to differ.

Jacob M. Appel, Coulrophobia & Fata Morgana

Read 2017

****

I haven’t read any of voracious writer Jacob M. Appel's other short story collections, but if his fifth is anything to go by, he’s long since mastered the underappreciated craft of short-form storytelling. The fact that he isn't better known just goes to show how arbitrary fame's fickle finger is.

If you're a fan of the short story generally, Jacob M. Appel deserves your attention. Some tales are more meaningful than others, some teeter on the edge of absurdity without fully committing, and some may be a shade or two darker than you might prefer – but you're only ever a few pages away from an unconventional love story to lift your spirits.

Kirsty Applebaum and Sahar Haghgoo, Princess Minna: The Unicorn Mix-Up

Librarybait, the unicorn's in it for about three pages.

Arch-Traitor Bluefluke, The Psychonaut Field Manual

Read 2019

****

Interesting pragmatic infographics aimed at agnostic sceptics, though that excuse breaks down pretty rapidly when we move on from basic meditation to Tarot, doppelgängers and setting fire to a voodoo doll of yourself. As someone whose faith only stretches as far as the placebo effect, any psychonautic voyages I make are doomed to be short ones, and there was a slight sense I was being groomed to open a door to madness. It was mainly interesting for clarifying how Kabbalah scholars, yogis and Alan Moore worshipping a sock puppet are all basically tapping into the exact same thing. I kind of get it.

Mandy Archer and Martha Lightfoot, Busy Wheels: Fire Engine is Flashing

The fire brigade's diversity hiring needs some work.

Nathan Archer and Jeffrey Moy, Star Trek: Voyager – False Colors

Read 2000

*

When Wildstorm started releasing a new line of Trek comics, I finally fulfilled my destiny of becoming someone who buys the new releases of a comic book from a comic shop on a regular basis, regardless of quality. After this lavish but lacklustre Voyager short, I got half-way through a TNG four-parter before reconsidering my life and my limited finances.

John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke, The Mask

Read 1996, re-read 2015

*

This was my first encounter with "mature" comics (really not the appropriate term), when I first discovered the graphic novel section of Crewe Library a few years before I really should have. Nestled between all those enigmatic spines (I found the notion of Preacher amusing. What kind of superhero is that?) was this familiar typeface, and I eagerly flicked through what I realised must be the source material for that funny film I liked. It was quite different, and even though I wouldn't relish sitting through 90 minutes of Jim Carrey rubberface today, the original take is much worse. I stared at some of those ghoulish, ultraviolent images long enough for them to be burned into my memory, but I didn't actually hire it out or read it until now. I probably got out the next Narnia book instead. Smart kid.

Gina Arnold, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville

Read 2020

**

It's a shame this wasn't treated as a first draft to get the exhausted fan solidarity out of her system so she could write appreciatively about the album rather than spending most of the short book defending it against attitudes I didn't have. It was briefly promising when it got into direct parallels with the Rolling Stones album, but then that dredged up more negativity.

Peter Arnold, The Crystal Maze Mystery: The Crystal Thief

Read 1993-94

***

My mum was always good at choosing Christmas stocking fillers that kept me busy so she could get an extra couple of hours of sleep. These mildly cryptic puzzles were well done, even if I didn't understand the need to insert child audience surrogates and to come up with some contrived fantasy storyline rather than just having adults run around the familiar sets.

Peter Arnold, The Crystal Maze Puzzle Book

***

Repetitive variety of codes, riddles, wordsearches, mazes and other diversions to keep precocious '90s kids busy on Christmas morning, though sorely lacking in colour and roleplay.

Jason Arnopp, Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion

Black Mirror, Jr.

Ingela P. Arrhenius, Where's Mr Lion? / Mrs Queen? / The Narwhal? / Mr Pirate?

Read 2021-23

She's read various variations on these in the library and now has one in her collection, thanks to a slightly older cousin. It's beneath her too, but still makes her smile. Judging my daughter for reading below her level would be rather hypocritical.

Ingela P. Arrhenius, Where's the Unicorn?

***

Unicorns are everywhere when you start looking for them. This is a slight step up from the usual hide and seek by cobbling together the final product from other mythical creatures.

Aleksandra Artymowska, Alice in Wonderland: A Puzzle Adventure

****

Overcompensating upgrade of Baby's Treasure Hunt, it immediately had the sense of becoming a future surreal, nostalgic relic.

Allan Asherman, The Star Trek Compendium – Second Edition

Read 1997

****

Maybe TOS just summarises better than TNG? Whatever the reason, I found this much more readable than the dry TNG companion, getting through it on a family holiday because I'm just that fun. This edition was especially noteworthy for covering the obscure animated series that nearly all reference works avoided out of embarrassment. When they're not ruined by lazy animation, they really don't sound so bad.

Robert Ashton, Successful Copywriting in a Week: Second Edition

Read 2015

Since I'm committed to reading anyway, it seemed like the responsible thing to make some of these reads worthwhile and potentially useful for the day job. But most of those turned out to be a bigger waste of time than reading about frivolous bands, since at least with those I can motivate myself to bash out an article before the album finishes. This pointlessly gimmicky book combines amateur psychology with unrealistic examples, patronising quizzes and a surprising lack of focus on online writing until you notice it's been revised and updated from a 2003 core. Just write a new one.

Jeff Ashworth and Jasmine Kalle, The Game Master's Book of Random Encounters: 500+ Customizable Maps, Tables and Story Hooks to Create 5th Edition Adventures On Demand

****

A bit specific and limited to be of extensive practical use in our decidedly non-D&D RPG, I was still able to steal some basic frameworks and scenarios, and letting dice determine the order of rooms is a definite keeper. I'd have to come up with my own set of D100 tables to generate suitable characters for our game, which would defeat the purpose a bit.

Isaac Asimov, I, Robot

Read 2020

****

Charmingly retro and remarkably relevant for their vintage, today's sci-fi is still riffing on these philosophical, foreboding and occasionally funny tales. They also have practical value as troubleshooting guides for how to carefully phrase instructions during the brief period where we're still in control.

Faves: 'Reason,' 'Little Lost Robot,' 'Evidence.'

Worsties: 'Runaround,' 'Liar!,' 'The Evitable Conflict.'

Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Read 2020

****

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. A classic of space politics, though admittedly I prefer my feuding space empires to be differentiated by rubber forehead prosthetics and borderline racist parodies of historical cultures.

Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel

Read 2020

***

Asimov's paranoid future-noir buddy-cop case mainly served to diminish my appreciation for Philip K. Dick, so that's a shame. The technofear remains resonant, even if the overpopulation anxiety overcompensates a tad.

Isaac Asimov, The End of Eternity

Read 2020

*****

Not getting around to Asimov until embarrassingly late means I've still got a lot to look forward to. I'd always simplistically characterised him as the robot guy, I had no idea he'd written one of the all-time time travel classics. Just like when I first read Heinlein's time loop tales, it was a joy to find vintage sci-fi that's so up my mutable self-authoring space-time block universe.

Isaac Asimov, The Martian Way and Other Stories

Read 2019

***

I've avoided Asimov before now, unfairly assuming that the 'botz master might be too technically-minded for me. This minor collection only gets autistic in its final story, the others exploring human concerns and hang-ups in that classic extrapolative sci-fi way, with a twist ending that would make The Twilight Zone proud, not that it could possibly work on TV.

Faves: 'The Martian Way,' 'Youth.'

Worsties: 'The Deep,' 'Sucker Bait.'

Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves

Read 2020

***

The old timer shows the New Wave he's still relevant with this fresh take on alternate universes, alternative energy and the end times with creatively alien aliens. The hard chem-fi's too rich for my wimpy blood, but I admired its total rejection of the comfort zone.

Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

Read 2020

***

Misleadingly named after one of the leftover stories contained within (that implicitly weren't good enough to be anthologised while he was still alive), the disappointment continues when you see that these stories only make up the first third of the book, and only a handful really qualify as stories between the worthless skits. The rest is his expert writing insights that are probably helpful if you didn't give up on your dreams a long time ago.

Neville Astley, Peppa Pig: Peppa Loves Yoga

I thought she was bored of these books. She is; we didn't finish it.

Pete Astor, Richard Hell and the Voidoids' Blank Generation

Read 2020

**

Recapping the entire history of recorded music is apparently necessary for understanding these punk songs.

Mary Atkinson and Stuart Lynch, I'm a Reader!: Can You Do This?

Slightly tedious home summer school begins in earnest. If she's not literate by the start of Reception, the blame is all mine.

Nancy Atkinson, Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions

Read 2020

***

There are enough books about the moon landing, so this one gives a more balanced overview of the journey to the small step and at least a few of the 400,000 other people who contributed. As such, it's pretty boring and technical for the first half until we get to the tragedy and triumph.

David Attenborough, Life on Earth: 40th Anniversary Edition

Read 2019

****

A necessarily patronising guided walk through evolution down various remarkable and disgusting paths, the audiobook being read by Attenborough himself is a fair trade-off for not having the pics. But it can only ever be a second-rate substitute to watching the shows, so it's a bit redundant unless you're on a bus or something. Kangaroo gestation is insane.

Nick Attfield, Dinosaur Jr.'s You're Living All Over Me

Read 2019

***

I wasn't aware of these proto-grunge kids before, so this was an insightful and entertaining textual documentary to catch. Our chronicler takes an appropriately dismissive tone for the self-described "lazy" band, until he slips up and admits that it's a "great album" towards the end. I think that's going a bit far.

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?

Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

Read 2019

***

I trusted that the esteemed author had more up her sleeve than the futile rehabilitation of poorly-treated female characters from antiquity (especially when the text in question was surprisingly progressive for 2,800 years ago, according to some scholars). It had me worried for a while, but ended up being a worthwhile subversive supplement to Homer's institutionally sexist classic that doesn't outstay its welcome.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

Read 2019

***

Sequels are rarely necessary, but if you found the first book excessively grim and hopeless, Children of The Handmaid's Tale will provide some much-needed, hard-earned relief. Eventually.

Steven Atwood, Ravenward

Read 2016

**

The bloody first installment in Steven Atwood's Prophecy of Axain series feels less like a first act and more like an extended prologue to its more substantial sequel, The Book of Axain.

The political intrigue and unflinching melee combat should satisfy young adult readers who've already devoured the works of George R. R. Martin and are looking for their next epic fix in a vividly detailed world, right down to the tapestries and chamber pots. The standard fantasy elements are there – elves and orcs, magic rings, coffee in medieval times – but the emphasis is on the evil that men do in their thirst for power, and why it sometimes takes a woman to stop it.

Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola, Gotham by Gaslight

Read 2019

**

There isn't that much distance between Batman's debut and whatever the American equivalent of the Victorian period's called, but this preincarnation treatment was bound to happen sooner or later. It inevitably pits the steampunk crusader against Saucy Jack, but it restrains itself from indulging in too many historical cameos. Only because there are barely enough pages to even make a worthwhile mystery.

Corrinne Averiss and Rosalind Beardshaw, My Pet Star

***

A down-to-Earth animal version would have been nice enough, but why not make it magical?

The Rev W. Awdry (based on), Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends: Thomas Goes Fishing / James & the Troublesome Trucks / Thomas & Terence / James & the Tar Wagons

***

I don't remember Thomas and/or James being particular favourites, but I think these were the two books I had adapting episodes from the series (along with the Rev's original Henry the Green Engine, but that was too wordy for a preschooler). One of the pictures of James surrounded by foliage made me feel a kind of prelapsarian serenity in the same way as my parents' Vauxhall Chevette owner's manual.

Jonathan Aycliffe, The Matrix

Read 2018

****

Don't let the '90s setting, sceptical debunking and drug references fool you; this Edinburgh-set occult horror is a complete throwback, and I appreciated the sincere pastiche. Let others take up the burden of innovation.

The author's done his research to make his doomed scholars and forbidden tomes more plausible than Lovecraft's (or he's just better at making up convincing-sounding names), even if the narrator's obliviousness and abrupt descent from rational sociologist to gibbering acolyte are similarly laughable. That can all be excused by the foreboding creepiness that hangs over much of it, which I've rarely felt outside of childhood horror books.

Steve Aylett, The Crime Studio

****

Quick-fire scenes from a violent soap, defamiliarising genre and description.

Faves: 'Motorcrash,' 'Back and to the Left,' 'Ambient'

Steve Aylett, Bigot Hall: A Gothic Childhood

Read 2018

***

Lint is one of the funniest books I've ever read, but like Sheckley and many other writers, starting out with Aylett's most popular one was a foolish decision that was only going to cause downhill disappointment.

Another kooky, ooky sitcom, this is pretty funny in a satisfyingly sick and twisted way, coining idiosyncratic phrases all over the shop and never committing the sin of being realistic. It's begging for ghoulish doodles to accompany every thousand-word sketch in the family album, but white space is provided if you want to scrawl your own.

Fave: The one where the mad scientist wires his nervous system to the greenhouse so he can feel what's going on, inadvertently ensnaring the creature that haunts their nightmares.

Steve Aylett, Shamanspace

Read 2015

***

Well, that wasn't as funny as Lint. Aylett's ecclesiastical geometrypunk prose poem is grounded in thought-provoking ideas, but I'm not fond of its ravesplatter execution. It's the most heavy-going thing I've read this side of Ulysses, though condensed enough to basically be a short story. Maybe it's expected that you'll read it through again immediately once you've been brought up to speed by the appendix? I'm alright.

Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

***

The first Crime Studio movie, now with borderline incomprehensible cyberpunk trappings. The author's determined that every page will make you laugh and/or think, but the short stories were a lot easier to digest.

Steve Aylett, Toxicology: Stories

****

Scattered shells from the ongoing crime soap and more liberated experiments in satire, substances and something or other.

Faves: 'Jawbreaker,' 'Sampler,' 'The Idler'

Steve Aylett, Atom

I lost my grip and found nothing substantial in the elusive wiseguy conversations to grab onto. Not my favourite fictional detective.

Steve Aylett, Lint

Read 2015

****

For a comedy fan, I don't seem to read a lot of funny books. This is the first one in a very long time that's actually made me laugh out loud like a madman.

I won't bother reviewing it in-character, as if it's the true story of the (fictional) writer and counterculture hero it purports to be ('Steve Aylett's newest novel' on the front does ruin that a bit). Much of it is in the same vein as Garth Marenghi, Spinal Tap and Alan Partridge's autobiography, with the accuracy and genuine affection for the subject matter needed to make the legendary writer of trashy pulp sci-fi, rejected screenplays, demented kids' cartoons, nihilistic comics and inevitable concept albums almost believable.

Steve Aylett, Heart of the Original: Originality, Creativity, Individuality

Read 2020

**

Less a manifesto than an excuse for a joke book of one liners and a chance to vent about overrated authors. Speaking of which, it's all been downhill from Lint.

Russell Ayto, The Other Day I Met a Bear

This might be her first story to mention guns. Thanks, nursery!

Russell Ayto, Will You Be My Friend?

From disconcertingly sad to distastefully cocky.

David Baddiel, Time for Bed

Read 2004

****

When you've watched as much Baddiel & Skinner Unplanned as I did before there was YouTube to fill time, you won't be able to see past the author in this semi-autobiography. I took comfort in it as a fellow insomniac, the difference being that my problem went away as soon as I stopped drinking Coke all the time. I still relate to the needy cat bits.

Julian Baggini, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: And Ninety-Nine Other Thought Experiments

Read 2009, re-read 2014-15

****

Philosophy and morality for beginners (that's me), this is a neat collection of classic and contemporary paradoxes dealing with brains in vats and GM livestock at the end of the universe, all covered briefly with the aim of sparking further conversation.

Julian Baggini, The Duck That Won the Lottery: And 99 Other Bad Arguments

Read 2009

***

Baggini's back with more animal clickbait belying a thoughtful compilation of fallacies perpetuated by the media and old wives. Not all are obvious and not all have easy answers.

John John Bajet, Bedtime for Baby Shark: Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo

One of presumably endless themed variants. Acceptable to read to your toddler in the library (quietly, with appropriate shame) between flap books, but you wouldn't invite it into your home.

Samuel Bak, Your Move: New Paintings By Samuel Bak

Read 2020

***

Battered chess pieces strewn over surrealist landscapes with unhelpfully cryptic titles. Work it out for yourselves, but you'll have to squint when we start compressing more pictures onto each page towards the end because printing's expensive. Can he do Dizzy Dizzy Dinosaur next?

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

Read 2020

***

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.

Cozy Baker, Kaleidoscopes: Wonders of Wonder

Read 2020

***

As detailed an overview as you'd ever want on the history, art and therapeutic benefits of the mirrored tube. The best part is all the pretty pictures. The worst is the spiritual faff. The funniest is the introductory guide to the Internet.

Laura Baker and Chris Jevons, Not Another Unicorn Book

Has its sparkly rainbow cake and eats it. This generation's going to get so sick of meta.

J. G. Ballard, The Wind from Nowhere

Read 2020

***

The odd one out in Ballard's ecogeddon tetralogy, it feels as if he needed to get the Hollywood disaster movie out of his system, complete with screenplay-ready beats and stock characters, before he could start getting weird and constructing pyramids to inaugurate Hodgson's Night Land.

J. G. Ballard, The Drowned World

Read 2020

****

We skip well past the thrilling disaster movie this time to follow some jaded explorers seeking meaning in London's tropical lagoon, when they're not killing each other or fighting crocodiles. Discussions of evolutionary pseudobiology and ancestral memory in this setting seemingly wasn't trippy enough for the author, he had to write The Crystal World to remedy that.

J. G. Ballard, The Burning World (a.k.a. The Drought)

Read 2020

***

Reading Ballard's increasingly sadistic apocalypse porn back to back made the abruptly parched Earth even more affecting. His characters grow more believable with each one, which makes it even harder to disconnect. There's always a glimmer of hope at the end, at least. He's not a monster.

J. G. Ballard, The Crystal World

Read 2015

***

I haven't read any Ballard before, but even if I always assumed he was a woman, I was still aware that he isn't exactly best known for his early environmental apocalypse quartet, so I won't hold its mediocrity against him. Still, something drew me to this unimaginatively titled one – maybe it was the promise of a sparkling crystalline landscape taking me back to childhood Amiga games (again), or maybe I just fancied a boat ride through the jungle over a gritty urban drug debacle or whatever the more celebrated later stuff's about. I'll get to it eventually.

J. G. Ballard, Vermilion Sands

Read 2015

****

One of the more consistent short story collections I've read this year, and not only because the tales share a common setting on the dunes and coral towers of a decadent resort, during and past its prime. A novel would have been fine, but these shorts let us explore more sides of Ballard's idle future with its weird technologies, arts and other diversions. Being written in bursts of sporadic inspiration over 15 years probably helped too.

Faves: 'The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D,' 'Cry Hope, Cry Fury,' 'Venus Smiles.'

Worsties: 'Say Goodbye to the Wind,' 'Studio 5, The Stars.'

J. G. Ballard, High Rise

Read 2015

****

Daft humans, what are we like? Presumably inspired by his years among the vertical streets of Hong Kong, this is a delightfully scathing seventies social satire that regularly explains what it's doing so you don't even have to think about it yourself. That's considerate, you don't get that with Lord of the Flies. A slightly sick sense of humour is basically required if you're going to make it through and not get too distracted by the absurdity of how far these people devolve when they could (and do) step outside to the normal, non-apocalypsed world any time. It never manages to top the opening line, but that is a cracker.

J. G. Ballard, Kingdom Come

Read 2020

**

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

Wiesław Banach and Zdzisław Beksiński, Beksiński. Malarstwo/Painting

****

I'd lusted after a Beksiński book since he became my favourite weird/dark artist as a teen. I could have treated myself to more than a basic, budget release, but there's still plenty of good stuff here, in miniature.

Molly Bang, Picture This: Perception and Composition

Read 2020

****

Strips art down to the barest possible essentials of lines and geometry. The psychoanalysis may be open for debate and culturally specific, but it made a lot of sense.

Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

Read 2007

*****

I've never been much of a fan of FUFIOS (fucked-up for its own sake) literature, but the haunting isolation of the island setting and that downright weird bee clock justify the excess, even if they set expectations that would hound the writer for a long time until gore fans had to accept he'd got it out of his system. I was mainly happy to have a new favourite local writer. You don't get that when growing up in the middle of nowhere.

Iain Banks, Walking on Glass

Read 2015

*****

I've accidentally overloaded on the sci-fi, and I wasn't enthusiastic about continuing with Iain M's Culture books, so instead I turned to this curiosity. Coming out in the golden, early era between my two favourite Banks novels, I've never chanced across it in second hand book shops or libraries over the years, and there doesn't seem to be an audio version available either, so it's worth bothering to use my eyes for a change, goddammit.

Yes, it was good. Third fave? Maybe even second fave (Bridge fave).

Iain Banks, The Bridge

Read 2009–11

*****

Having lived and worked at the top of Edinburgh for a while, The Bridge is an evocative landmark. This laborious tribute to the engineering triumph was a worthwhile ordeal that took me a few years on and off to get through. That just meant I got to spend more time enjoying it. Or it might suggest that, despite loving it, I didn't actually like it? It's possible. Some of the best art is frustrating.

Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

Read 2015

***

I've read something like five Iain Banks books before (counting a couple of abandoned halfies in there), but for some reason I always avoided his 'proper,' branded sci-fi line, despite the more covertly sci-fi The Bridge being my favourite.

My instincts were basically on the mark, as this encapsulates all that's great and not so great about grand space opera – awe-inspiring descriptions of celestial phenomena and dizzying engineering marvels balanced out by less captivating characters and a story that keeps getting in the way of the tour around the fringes of Banks' 'Culture' universe. There are probably better stories to choose from if I ever fancy a return trip.

Iain Banks, Espedair Street

Read 2015

****

The first of Banks' self-described mainstream novels is still pleasantly full of Gothic trappings, but like everything produced after his bibliography's schizophrenic split, it feels somehow filtered, labelled, constrained. Make your own comparisons with the theme of faded rock stars and classic albums if you like. I was mainly appalled that there was an '80s Banks I still hadn't read.

Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games

Read 2015

****

A much more satisfying second round in Banks' painstakingly developed u-ish-topia, his concept of a post-scarcity, past-caring society filling the tediously trouble-free centuries with overly complex board games, technicolor drugs and back-and-forth sex changing is possibly prescient and gloriously '80s at the same time. The high-stakes games are rooted in classic strategy rather than sprites and bloops, which protects it against becoming laughably dated, and it simultaneously invites and deflates literary criticism by making the protagonist a literal pawn in a much larger, literal game. But is it just a game? Yes, read the title.

Iain Banks, Canal Dreams

Read 2012

***

The author's self-professed worst work, it's the clear nadir of his '80s heyday, but it still held my interest more than some of the later ones. When the melancholic and introspective voyage turns abruptly and excessively violent, my reaction was disappointment more than anything.

Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

Read 2015

***

Nice try – your tantalisingly juxtaposed reversi chapters superficially impressed this prog rock fan, but there's so much violence, manipulation and misery, reading it was just unpleasant. It's not like I could have inferred that from the title or anything.

Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art

Read 2020

****

There's no faulting Iain Banks' prolific writing ethic, but it's a shame he didn't write more stories of this length, or allowed the ones he did write to be swallowed and digested among other ideas in his monstrous novels.

Fave: 'Descendant'

Iain Banks, The Crow Road

Read 2009-20

****

Seeing the TV adaptation at a relatable age has always made me warmer to this one than his other post-80s books, even if I did leave it to cool for a decade before actually getting through it. By Banks' standards, this tale of murder, electrocuted parents and exploding grandparents is really chill.

Iain Banks, Complicity

Read 2018

****

I picked this up in a used bookshop almost three years ago, and since then it's only served as an occasional mouse mat, eagerly awaiting the next time I'd take a couple of long solo flights and finally have a reason to read printed paper rather than a screen.

It's got the usual violence, rape, bondage and murder that hasn't been shocking for a good few books now, but it's more engaging than most of those were, and maybe my favourite '90s (i.e. second-tier) Banks. It's got to be the author's most indulgent stand-in work too, from the Edinburgh specifics to his appreciation of retro strategy games, whisky and other substances.

Iain M. Banks, Against a Dark Background

Read 2020

***

It's been a few years since I dropped Banks sci-fi, but I'd hoped this unCultured standalone might make a fresh start. With an atheist god and a weapon with a sense of humour, there's a vein of sci-fi comedy running through this cyberpunk grail quest that I wish he'd embraced more fully, but it comes across more like an action cartoon for adults.

Iain M. Banks, Feersum Endjinn

Read 2020

****

Anyone like me who lamented the lack of off-putting experimental wank in Banks' mainstream novels after the '80s will find it alive and well in his sci-fi line. This was the first all-new one after he ran out of juvenile first drafts to rewrite, and after edging for so long, he earned the indulgent release. The Gothic megastructures and cheekily frustrating phonetic narration of the '80s are back, pushed to new extremes, updated with nostalgically '90s cyberpunk. Easily my favourite of his sci-fi books (so far) and encouragement to keep going.

Iain Banks, Whit, or, Isis Amongst the Unsaved

Read 2009

***

A closeted cultist enters the world in all its confusing sin, with surprisingly sympathetic results. Banks was mellowing out, but he hadn't lost his sense of humour. After an aborted journey down The Crow Road and stalling on The Bridge, this one kept me hooked all the way, even if it's not one of his best.

Iain M. Banks, Excession

Read 2020

***

I'd forgotten how dense and confounding the Culture books could be, and jumping back in half-way after a few years' absence, this chaotic scramble wasn't the smoothest return. But I love me an ancient geometric space enigma, so I had to deal with the alienation, tinged with the customary sadism.

Iain Banks, A Song of Stone

Read 2018

***

Banks' "mainstream" novels never shied away from being off-puttingly unpleasant, but he seems to be yearning for a Wasp Factory level of infamy here, only a lot more predictable. He wrote a better castle story in Walking on Glass, and Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick is a funnier take on the whole sordid business.

Iain M. Banks, Inversions

Read 2020

***

This Wolfeian slow-burning sci-fantasy would be a jarring interlude if you were exclusively following Banks' space opera, but it's a nice expansion of his broader palette, especially since the regular Culture books haven't exactly been gripping me. Now back to the madness, I guess.

Iain Banks, The Business

Read 2020

*

If you read the blurb hoping for a conspiracy thriller, or had forgotten that Banks' "mainstream" novels had any traces of the fanciful stripped out of them by the '90s, you'd probably be disappointed by this tediously humdrum romcom take on Chris Carter's Millennium.

Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward

Read 2020

***

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!

Iain Banks, Dead Air

Read 2018

**

Like Complicity, this is the story of an amoral local media figure who serves as a mouthpiece for the way Iain Banks sees things, and who gets caught up in an implausible cinematic thriller to keep things from getting too realistic.

There are some differences though. The author stand-in's monologues are now more tedious (even if he's basically right, I found myself siding with the interfering squares questioning the point of it all), his irresistibility to women comes off like wish fulfillment, the jeopardy's entirely his own fault, so he deserves what's coming to him, and Complicity wasn't turned around with ambitious haste to provocatively position itself as a landmark of Post-9/11 Literature.

Iain Banks, Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram

Read 2020

***

Iain Banks has an elaborate piss-up. I've read most of his books, but didn't know all that much about the man. He was keen to fill me in on the lot.

Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist

Read 2020

***

I enjoyed the epic cosmology and bestiary, shame we had to keep returning to the less interesting story and characters. I preferred it to most of the Culture books, but it might as well have been one, since they all talk exactly the same.

Iain Banks, The Steep Approach to Garbadale

Read 2020

*

This was his current novel when I started to read Iain Banks and really not the follow-up to The Wasp Factory I was looking for at 22, so I didn't make it very far on the first attempt. This time I only made it through for completism's sake. I can't be the only reader who audibly groaned every time the author vented his c.2007 politics in dialogue, though as a literary wanker, I was more disappointed by the lack of game metaphors.

Iain M. Banks, Matter

Read 2020

***

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.

Iain Banks, Transition

Read 2020

**

Iain [M.] Banks does Sliders as Quantum Leap, with more drugs, sadism and more of the same generally. Whatever happened to thin SF paperbacks?

Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail

Read 2020

**

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.

Iain Banks, Stonemouth

Read 2020

***

The Crow Road with low-key gangsters. I think he's writing my generation this time, but it's so far removed from my own experiences that it didn't register. I'm glad we got the more grimly-positive The Quarry to bow out on.

Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

Read 2020

**

The End by default rather than intent, this scientific rapture naturally pairs with The Quarry as unintended epitaphs you can have fun reading too much into. It's at least something to keep you engaged when the dreary mystery pastiche keeps dragging on.

Iain Banks, The Quarry

Read 2018

***

I didn't read all of the remaining intervening mainstream novels like I meant to this year, so I don't know if this one's uneventful minimalism is unusual by this point. Banks says he wrote it before knowing that life was imitating art, but context is everything in this peaceful epilogue.

Peter Barber ed, The Map Book

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.

Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volumes 1-6

Read 2017

****

Ranking Clive Barker's Books of Blood stories

Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

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.

Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

Read 2011

***

I can't remember if I watched Hellraiser before or after reading this short novella in around the same running time, but for gob-smackingly sickening practical effects and Doug Bradley's voice, I have to go with the film. Still a worthwhile supplement to the Books of Blood.

Clive Barker, Cabal

Read 2010, re-read 2021

****

This bumper Book of Blood is all the excessive '80s Clive Barker antics you could ask for, from splattering self-abasement to nauseating transformations with a delicious cheese topping. He'd get deeper, but never so much visceral fun. I haven't watched Nightbreed, I wouldn't want to tame my mental imagery like that.

Clive Barker, Imajica

Read 2015

****

My first successful attempt to get through one of Barker's big 'uns – I didn't make it past the first cassette of Weaveworld thanks to a dreary narrator – this dream-inspired odyssey is a very different beast to his usual nightmare-grounded offerings, and despite featuring an assortment of unpleasantness from dismemberment to AIDS, it's positively glowing compared to things like the Books of Blood and Cabal. Being more experienced in shaky sci-fi than outright fantasy, I did find it hard to let go at times when basic facts were given an unnecessary magic spin, such as zebras, crocodiles and dogs "obviously" not being of this Earth. Don't make me discuss the tree of life again, I have enough of that at home.

Clive Barker, Erik Saltzgaber, Mike Manley and Ricardo Villagrán, Weaveworld

Read 2015

***

I failed to make much headway into the novel when the audiobook narrator sent me off to sleep, so I had to settle for an impure third-party comic adaptation instead. Based on the first few pages, it seems to be fanatically loyal to the source – but that isn't always a good idea when you're condensing about 700 pages of text into less than 200 pages of drawings and dialogue bubbles. Whew, just let me get my breath back. <Imajica; >Galilee.

Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

Read 2011

****

I think this is Barker's only children's book. It's really good, in the vein of Gaiman's but better, and towards the top of the pile of books I would have loved to have impossibly read at ten. A shame he didn't concentrate more on these than the bloated fantasy epics.

Clive Barker, Galilee

Read 2015

***

Clive Barker's weird books are understandably off-putting to many readers, but for me, an avid fan of his vile and/or mystical excesses, this was the greatest challenge of all: an American family saga. Alright, there are still some gods and demi-gods knocking about in these family trees, and smatterings of perversion here and there, but it's all extremely toned down and borderline normal. And long, and bloated. And just not really up my dark alley. Although, if it had been written 20 years earlier, I could see it making a decent early '80s US TV miniseries. We might have to cut the necrophilia.

Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone

Read 2011

***

I'm sure there were other self-aware books before 2007, but the gimmick worked well with Barker's horror schtick and I enjoyed playing along and letting a bloody book own me. I had the physical book for this one, I don't imagine an audiobook would make much sense.

Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

Read 2015

****

"Surely a faster autopsy had never taken place."

The long-awaited non-cinematic sequel to The Hellbound Heart/Hellraiser doesn't mess about, plunging straight into a monstrous, perverse splatterfest. That's not the sort of thing I usually seek out, but it took me back to my gleefully morbidly adolescence and is often hilarious, whether intentionally or not.

Potentially scary, but only if you've never seen a horror film before.

Potentially arousing, if you're strange.

Scott Barker, Letters, Words, and Numbers: Wipe-Clean Workbook

***

I might not agree with their delineation of fives or insistent use of the Oxford comma in preschool book titles, but they've made these engaging enough that she makes it through a few repetitive pages at a time.

Wayne Douglas Barlowe, Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV

Read 2014, re-read 2018

*****

Barlowe's infernal and extraterrestrial art has made for decent desktop backgrounds in the past, but reading these extensive 'notes' to each painting – in the form of speculative evolutionary fiction tying all of these fantastical fauna together in an extensively detailed ecosystem – is really enriching context.

It's my favourite bit from Cosmos expaned to book length and rendered like the dinosaur paintings that captivated me as a child. First-rate sci-fi world-building and even better art, all done by the same guy.

Faves: Emperor Sea Strider, Groveback

Julian Barnes, Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art

Read 2019

***

The author knows his late-19th-to-mid-20th-century French painters, and these new and repurposed articles on individual works, careers, wider movements and the value of art in general make compelling cases that you don't have to agree with. More pics would have been nice, but you've got Google, haven't you?

Faves: Géricault, Redon, Magritte

Worsties: Braque, Oldenburg, Richer

Simon Barnes, Rewild Yourself: 23 Spellbinding Ways to Make Nature More Visible

Read 2019

*****

I've got big, humdrum plans to return to a life more ordinary in the new decade, so this UK-centric grimoire with instructions on how to appreciate what you've bloody got will be handy as well as inspiring.

Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris, A Polar Bear in the Snow

The cut-outs would be pretty enough to justify an author-illustrator project, but this ambient non-story requiring an independent writer is like when a singer doesn't even pick up an instrument.

Mac Barnett and Christian Robinson, Twenty Questions

***

Variably inspiring scenarios, may be useful for early detection of the criminally insane.

Zak Barouh and artists, My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – The Curse of the Statuettes

****

A satisfying blend of conventional Outback peril and sappy friendship lessons true to the source. Abridged into a more linear narrative for a four-year-old's attention span, but we can always play again when she's older and we're both more used to these things.

Zak Barouh and artists, My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – The Festival of Lights

****

This wasn't included in our Amazon bundle, so we couldn't play it in the proper sequence and at the level intended. But then we ran out of those books (until her birthday) and I found a download, so we didn't have to miss out on the dingy underground one.

The wordiness and multiple maps were off-putting at first, but it adds up to a nicely-realised subterranean world to explore. We failed to get what are no doubt delightful D&D references, but the Spellbound Dizzy vibes were strong.

Zak Barouh and artists, My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – The Official Movie Sourcebook

***

Not as much of a cash grab as it first appeared, this second hardback serves as an expansion of the efficient core rulebook for more advanced or jaded players that was luckily well served by the variety of new settings, races and equipment showing up in the film. It's a little advanced for our stumbling beginner level, but since we're rapidly depleting the premade adventures, it'll give us more to work with when crafting our own tales involving Seaponies, sky pirate parrots or Bubble Gum buying a car. And it's another pretty book on the shelf.

Zac Barouh and artists, My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – Melody of the Waves

*****

Maybe even better than the Halloween one, this (relatively) free-roaming adventure on the high (and musical) seas required less advance preparation while also encouraging improvisation as we sailed between various islands and dealt with other diversions according to a five-year-old's whims. We're both players and games masters at this point. She was also fully on board with the musical aspect, an authentic touch that I hadn't realised had been lacking in previous adventures.

Zak Barouh, Jack Cæsar, Mark Hulmes and artists, My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – The Compendium of Equestria

****

Feeling like a self-conscious wrap-up, this is the most interesting of the supplementary rulebooks with its encyclopaedia of settings and story launchpad ideas. There's also a handy toolkit for making it all work and they throw in a few new playable races for good measure, though a fair bit is recycled. There's also a short adventure at the end that looks completely unappealing, but we all roll a 1 sometimes.

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

Read 2020

***

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.

Mike W. Barr and Tom Sutton based on a screenplay by Harve Bennett, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Read 2019

***

I think I read somewhere that this comic adaptation followed an earlier edit of the film, but the economy of a 60-page abridgement makes it hard to tell whether the altered sequencing of events and extra dialogue are really residue, or just Mike Barr making the best use of space. Though one extra line finally clarified part of the plot that I'd never really understood for decades, so there might be something to it.

Mike W. Barr and Tom Sutton, Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga

Read 2020

****

The irreconcilable post-Star Trek II comic continuity catches up with Star Trek III and boldly extrapolates another knowingly doomed interregnum, but at least they'll get a couple of years out of it this time. The actual story was always going to be less notable than the retro vintage, but it's got the authentic feel of dark '80s action movie Star Trek that modern pastiches wouldn't.

Mike W. Barr, Gordon Purcell and Rob Davis, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Read 2018

***

Mike Barr is called on to kick off another 'Trek comic, and these first three instalments nail the tone and mediocrity of early DS9 perfectly. That's not even really a diss; sometimes, chasing a specific nostalgia is more important than quality.

Mike W. Barr, Len Strazewski, Gordon Purcell and Rob Davis, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Emancipation and Beyond

Read 2018

**

There's no rule that DS9 stories have to be depressing and frustratingly grey, but that's what Mike W. Barr saw in the series, which made the comic a lot more authentic to the source than I expected, even if that usually means they feel like they're indebted to specific first-season episodes. Unfortunately, he decided his work here was done, and the rest of the volume feels like reading the junior back half of Sonic the Comic.

Mike W. Barr, Laurie Sutton and Leonard Kirk, Star Trek DS9: The Looking Glass War

Read 2018

***

The two Malibu annuals finally saw the comic catch up with mid-series developments, but it still has to restrict plot development of its own to parallel universes (and not an established parallel universe, as fans might expect from the title, in case they use those again). The self-described Ultimate Annual falls a little short of that boast, but it's the better of the pair.

Ricardo Barreiro and Francisco Solano López, Young Witches, Vol. 1

Read 2015

*

Alan Moore's Lost Girls introduced me to the no-holds-barred world of smutty graphic novels, and this is even more desperately perverse. I wouldn't like to know the sort of person who finds these enthusiastic renderings of myriad degrading taboos arousing. The plot is only slightly less weak than in real porn (I imagine).

J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy (a.k.a. Peter Pan)

****

A random Disney film she's taken to, as a responsible parent I screened the source material to see how boring it would be as a future bedtime book. Fairly, but the psychoanalysis kept me interested, and it's less cynical escapism than Narnia.

Barroux, Where's the Starfish?

***

Mostly wordless (until he explains what it was that he was doing there in the postscript), she was a bit young to comprehend and appreciate its ecological message even with my commentary, but I enjoyed it.

David Prescott Barrows, A History of the Philippines

Read 2015

***

I could have gone for a more up-to-date and reliable text rather than risk filling my head with nonsense, but that would have meant missing out on the tragic and/or amusing irony of the fresh coloniser's perspective. An American's guide to history of the Philippines for the benefit of Filipino readers (those who've caught up with the newly imported English anyway), it doesn't waste time researching or speculating about what might have been going on in these islands before Magellan found them and pulls no punches with the recently ousted Spanish. What's most interesting is its optimism for the future of this nation crawling towards independence, compared favourably to Japan as a rising star of the East.

Dan Barry and Dan Spiegle, Indiana Jones: Thunder in the Orient

Read 2020

***

The first substantial Dark Horse original, and the longest, this develops the comics/games continuity that further volumes would disappointingly abandon, integrates education without feeling lecturing, and adds a depressing self-deprecating knife-wielding servant boy sidekick for... relatability?

Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory

Read 2005–06

****

This was recommended in the 'nice to have' section for my literary theory course, so nobody bought it until I saw it offloaded in a charity shop. It turned out to be much friendlier and more understandable than the big anthology, so Barry got passed around at essay time.

Fun fact: After giving up being vegetarian after a year, I had a guilty nightmare that I was microwaving the cat's head from the cover.

Byron Barton, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs

Insubstantial prehistoric overview, cute cutouts or no.

Diana Barton ed., Care Bears Annual

Read 1988

*

Whether it was '87 or '88, I was evidently a bit young for books when I ripped this to pieces, so it could remain this weird, weathered artifact in my grandparents' house for slightly older me to try to piece together. Or maybe I was showing how much I hated the Care Bears?

David Bassom, Creating Babylon 5

***

I was never going to be as immersed and obsessive about this series watched as an adult over a few months as if I'd tuned in for five years as a junior Trekkie, but I'm giving it my best shot. This bogstandard behind-the-scenes guide can stand in for the monthly magazine my mum was spared from buying.

Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye

Read 2015

**

Even fellow relentless reader Art Garfunkel, who exclusively reads "heavy sh*t," named Fifty Shades of Grey one of his favourite books of 2012, so I went a shade classier by reading absolutely filthy trash published ages ago. The vintage is where the classiness abruptly ends. I haven't done the background reading, but considering the kerfuffle that was made about Ulysses, this book presumably didn't have an easy ride, and this presumed notoriety is presumably why it shows up on those lists I look at when selecting odd and interesting books from the olden days. It doesn't deserve the company. It's exactly the sort of twisted shit the freak in my creative writing class (okay, the other freak) used to boldly submit, except Bataille is fixated on number ones and he was more partial to twos.

David Batchelor, The Luminous and the Grey

Read 2020

***

The artist's enthusiasm for vibrant colour is infectious, until he calms down and recounts the history and science of colour for a few dozen pages so it's just about long enough to be a book.

L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

****

The film is still definitive, but there's more of it in the book than I would have credited, which is a more violent and twisted take in general. Probably not one for bedtime stories.

Trevor Baxendale, Doctor Who: Decide Your Destiny – Claws of the Macra

I honestly expected more from a hack children's tie-in gamebook. Even the Sonic ones had a customisable character sheet. It's inevitably over quickly with that page count, and prone to inevitable errors, but it does at least give you that authentic sense of being the curious sucker in the opening minutes of an episode.

Mary K. Baxter, A Divine Revelation of Hell

Read 2020

*

Baxter's Inferno isn't troubling the classics in the literary department, but the insistent call to action after every derivative description places it more in the self-help field anyway. Which is strange, because following its guidance would make you an evil bigot too.

Stephen Baxter, Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice

Read 2018

***

Black-and-white Doctor Who collides with contemporaneous hard sci-fi in the Arthur C. Clarke mould, written by Clarke's frequent latter-day "collaborator" (i.e. the one who actually wrote Time Odyssey).

Baxter endeavours to tell a typically grandiose future tech tale in the style of a cheap sixties TV serial. These desires are fundamentally incompatible, but when the characters aren't explaining advanced sci-fi concepts or gazing at high-budget marvels of engineering, it's easy to imagine the cramped sets and guest cast putting on fake American accents to sound futuristic. It's a false-nostalgic treat, while the glow lasts.

Unfortunately, this authenticity extends to it being padded out with as much superfluous fluff as the old six-part serials. Was lumping future genius Zoe with babysitting duties while the men solve the sciencey problem some ironic period sexism too?

Clara Kern Bayliss ed, Philippine Folk-Tales

Read 2015

**

I was curious to learn some of the folk tales from my reluctant adoptive country, but this slapdash assortment cobbled together by visiting Americans more than 100 years ago wasn't the best place to start. To their credit, they made the effort to seek out traditional stories from various regions that seemed to be unsullied by colonial and Catholic influence, but the resulting 100-or-so tales just aren't all that. There are no worthwhile morals for today's young Filipinos to learn, with thieves being rewarded and menial slave labour being a desirable prospect for life. It's pretty racist too, from the occasional unflattering descriptions of dark-skinned people to the condescending attitude of the American curators to the Filipino bards, which includes sometimes leaving in their imperfect English phrasing verbatim because it's funny.

Faves: Trippy Bagobo stories about the Buso, a corpse-eating creature of dread that's terrified of cats.

Worsties: The ones where the storytellers get a little over-enthusiastic in their repulsive descriptions of "negresses," who always end up justly executed for minor misdemeanours.

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Read 2015

***

It's about time I got around to this one, and since I've already missed the chance for Mayall/Edmondson and Stewart/McKellen interpretations, there's no point waiting any longer.

'Salright.

Samuel Beckett, Endgame: A Play in One Act, Followed by Act Without Words, a Mime for One Player

Read 2019-20

**

Some plays work well on the page, where you can mull over the verse at your own pace. But when it's a minimalist play that largely relies on comic timing and chemistry, followed by an entirely visual silent piece, it didn't take long to realise I'd made a huge mistake.

David Bedford and Elaine Field, Ready for Reading: My Turn!

It's a Level 1 reader, so, you know, it wasn't gripping, but she liked it and we'll have more.

William Bee, Migloo's Weekend

***

Where's Wally with a somewhat intrusive story.

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

Read 2020

**

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.

Phoebe Beinstein and Robert Roper, Dora the Explorer: Dora and the Stuck Truck

Come on vámonos everybody let's go come on let's get to it I know that we can do it where are we going clap clap clap Play Park where are we going clap clap clap Play Park where are we going clap clap clap Play Park where are we going clap clap clap Play Park hahahahahaha Play Park.

John Bellairs, The House with a Clock in Its Walls

***

Better than Harry Potter, at least.

Teresa Bellon, My Little Green World: Rabbit

***

The genuinely educational facts and environmental advice are kind of at odds with the wheels and flaps, she didn't have the patience for that rubbish.

Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion: A Dreamer's Guide to the Award-winning Comics Series

Read 2019

****

I re-read Sandman again again intermittently over the past year, not bothering to document my thoughts since I already went overboard the first time. This giddy guide from a knowledgeable fan has extensive elaborations from Gaiman himself every few pages, demystifying the metamyth slightly but making me appreciate some of it even more. It was also interesting to get a snapshot of the contemporary consensus on what were seen as the most and least successful runs of the series, those 90s idiots.

A. H. Benjamin and Nick East, In a Minute, Mum

***

Dinos have crawled into her childhood earlier than expected, and this prehistoric sitcom was unintentionally appropriate for addressing her own insistence on "just few minutes."

Harry M. Benshoff, Dark Shadows

Read 2020

****

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.

Peter Bently and Ben Cort, The Shark in the Dark

Not the fun peep-through one, just a rip-off of Swimmy. She knew what was going on.

Peter Bently and Sarah Massini, A Recipe for Bedtime / Playtime

Read 2022-23

A bit too sickly cute even for the target demographic.

Peter Bently and Sernur Isik, Potion Commotion

A sub-Dahl magical caper, but it entertained her enough for several repeats. It bothered me that they didn't bother naming the cat.

Peter Bently and Sebastien Chebret, Whizzy Wheels Academy: Daisy the Digger

These own-brand Thomas books helped her take notice of construction vehicles out in the wild.

Peter Bently and Riko Sekiguchi, Where the Sea Meets the Sky

The kind of wordy, sappy one we only tolerate the once.

George Berguño, The Exorcist's Travelogue

***

Tall tales from across Eurasia and down the halls of time.

Faves: 'Flaubert's Alexandrine,' 'A Chronicle of Repentance'

Rick Berman and Michael Piller, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Bible (Revised)

Read 2020

**

Sadly not the first edition – which would be a lot more interesting in its formative brainstorming and more blatant Babylon 5 appropriation – but there are still a few little differences before they got to casting and production. The newfound freedom for interpersonal conflict is emphasised, now that Gene's dead, and in a show of faith in their prospective writers, the creators helpfully spell out what real-world allegories it is that they're doing there.

Rick Berman and Michael Piller & Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda, Star Trek: Voyager Bible & Technical Guide V1.0

Read 2020

Series bibles are usually interesting for how strange and stilted the familiar characters are described before being fleshed out, but these descriptions show more personality and interpersonal potential than the poorly-managed show would achieve. The dry technical guide that repeats and slightly modifies a TNG reference book is truer to the spirit of the series we'd get. Yeah, I've gone off Voyager a bit since I was twelve.

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, Enterprise Bible

Read 2020

*

If I'd got hold of these pages at the time, I would have been even less excited for the uninspired prequel I didn't bother watching than I was already. It ended up being an okay show, I guess, but when these outlines aren't shamelessly ripping off previous series, they're generic as hell. About the only original thing is the even more shameless decontamination titillation, which was evidently in there from the start.

Daniel Leonard Bernardi, Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future

Read 2006

***

When I spotted this in the university library, and realised I didn't have to write my final "English literature" dissertation on hard books after all, all those years wasted in front of the TV retroactively became worthwhile research, I tell myself. Bernardi's insightful book went into the pot with other sci-fi histories and sociological studies to produce this bastardisation. If I'd stayed on, maybe I would have produced something original eventually.

Alfred Bestall, Rupert: The Daily Express Annual (1964)

Read 2020

***

I had one or two Rupert annuals as a child, but don't remember ever feeling like reading them once I was able to, so I don't know if this one's typical of the form with its odd parallel prose and poetry streams for the same stories, origami tips and racist magic paintings. Apart from that part, it was quite nice.

Faves: 'Rupert and the Compass,' 'Rupert and the Dog-Roses.'

Worsties: 'Rupert and the Distant Music,' 'Rupert's Pleasure Island.'

Lauren Beukes, Zoo City

Read 2015

***

The only book I've read all year from the entirety of Africa, and it's a whitey doing a riff on Gaimany urban magic and Pullmany animal familiars. Brilliant, Dave. You couldn't have branched out a little bit? At least it's actually set in Johannesburg, and if it's largely indistinguishable from any other gritty metropolis, that's globalisation's fault, not mine. At least the author's a woman, so that's something...? I had a black friend once, honestly.

Rob Biddulph, Sunk!

You probably have to be more interested in pirates and/or penguins than either of us to really appreciate it.

Ambrose Bierce, Can Such Things Be?

Read 2015

***

Another album of vintage 'weird' tales, another time I regret not getting the best-of instead. Chambers was pre-Lovecraft and Bierce was (slightly) pre-Chambers, but at this point it's mainly still your run-of-the-mill ghost stories featuring archaic spoiled brats, and I've read enough of those to last several afterlives.

Faves: 'One Summer Night,' 'An Inhabitant of Carcosa.'

Worsties: 'The Moonlit Road,' 'Beyond the Wall.'

Ambrose Bierce, Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories

Read 2015

Insubstantial vignettes organised by theme, each is but a few pages long, yet they still manage to be a waste of time. The most cliched tales can at least be enjoyed on an unkind mocking level. I guess 'Owl Creek Bridge' was a one-off (not included).

Faves: The Ways of Ghosts, Some Haunted Houses.

Worsties: Soldier Folk, Mysterious Disappearances.

Marion Billet, Listen to the Baby Animals

***

We'd managed to avoid noisy books until now, thanks to them tending to be checked out of the library, but these authentic field recordings were less annoying than tinny nursery rhymes or character voices or something. I'm just surprised she only wanted to go two rounds before moving on, but they had others.

Marion Billet, Listen to the Seaside

She gives their introductory musical ones a spin on every library visit, but their ambient efforts are lacking compared to Usborne's. We've become connoisseurs of the medium.

Marion Billet, Listen to the Music by Mozart

Expose your baby to the magic mind-expanding programming of Mozart and see how they fare with the occasionally weird questions that are there because there had to be some text. Noisy books are her favourites, but even she didn't see the point of this one.

Marion Billet, Listen to the Carnival of the Animals

Read 2021, re-read 2022

***

This musical interpretation of animals' personalities for toddlers would be a bit disappointing if you thought you were getting more nature sounds, but as someone who loves the mimicry of 'A Lark Ascending' and Beethoven's Sixth (not so much Rimsky-Korsakov's, mind), I appreciated it. We'll be on Bowie's 'Peter and the Wolf' in no time.

Marion Billet, Listen to the Birds / Farm

The quizzes at the end are a nice upgrade for the new set, somewhat more challenging for the birds.

Anne Billson, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

There's no shortage of pop-scholarly paperbacks with interesting insights on the series, but this glorified recap summary isn't one of them.

Robert C. Bird, Andrei Rublev

Read 2020

**

The animal cruelty cut my tolerance of Tarkovsky's interminable biopic short, but it turns out I didn't miss much. This short book struggles to find much depth in a film its creator said not to bother dissecting, so retreats to historical background and summary.

Roberto Bisceglie, Loner: Core Rules (2nd Edition)

***

More a creative writing rule system than a game, I might give its dice tables a go if I need more help cobbling together scenarios for real games.

David Bishop, Randall D. Larson and John Freeman, Back to the Future Annual

***

Not bad for a Christmas cash-in, but basically the three-in-one souvenir magazine with some interesting behind-the-scenes nuggets padded by redundant plot summaries. In fairness, the last video wouldn't be out for a while.

Dennis Bjorklund, Seinfeld Reference: The Complete Encyclopedia with Biographies, Character Profiles & Episode Summaries

Read 2019

**

I was hoping for an insightful companion to fill me in on unnecessary trivia for every episode. I should have read the subtitle more carefully, I guess. It spends most of the page count assembling the characters' fictional biographies and most of the episode guide is taken up by credits. Despite the ebook's 2010 vintage, the behind-the-scenes sections haven't been updated since around the time the series ended, with no mention of racist rants in sight.

Malorie Blackman, Pig Heart Boy

Read 1998

***

Another Carnegie finalist, spending most of a Sunday forcing my way through this book aimed at younger children was voluntary homework I regretted signing up for, but it's a decent kids' story about dehumanising tabloids and accepting life's thankless struggle.

Stella Blackstone and Debbie Harter, Bear in a Square

A functional shapes refresher, or essential supplement if you keep forgetting the one you have at home doesn't even include the rectangle.

Algernon Blackwood, The Listener and Other Stories

Read 2015

****

I could tell I wasn't catching Algie at his best last time, and when he doesn't stifle his own potential by framing stories as cases for a Sherlock Holmes rip-off detective, he really shines. The hit rate is high in these nine tales, ranging from your traditional haunted houses and murder mysteries to existential elemental angst and spooky romance. There can only be so many Victorian/Edwardian public domain horror-themed short story collections out there, I'll get to them all eventually so I can give you the definitive ranking.

Faves: 'The Willows,' 'May Day Eve.'

Worsties: 'The Insanity of Jones,' 'Miss Slumbubble – and Claustrophobia.'

Algernon Blackwood, John Silence

Read 2015

****

"Have they the souls of night things...?"

I had a yearning for some vintage occult spookiness, and the investigations of this respected physician moonlighting as a psychic detective were just the ticket. The style is all over the place in these six tales – sometimes clients/patients bring their predicaments to Dr. Silence and his loyal secretary/scribe in the Holmes model, sometimes the doctor just shows up at the end to explain what's going on and scare away the ghoulies, mummies and fire elementals. As a bonus, it's also charmingly dated in its exploration of the consciousness-opening effects of cannabis and features some of the least subtle foreshadowing I've ever had the pleasure to be completely unsurprised by.

Faves: 'Ancient Sorceries' for Satanic sabbaths, bewitching French maidens and feline lycanthropy.

Worsties: 'The Camp of the Dog' for an uneventful camping trip in Sweden. Well, there's a werewolf.

Algernon Blackwood, Four Weird Tales

Read 2020

***

The first story was authentically nightmarish and shockingly nasty at the end, no doubt the result of the decades-later rewrite after the War desensitised everyone. The rest get worse as they go along, but the themes of mental illness and obsession are largely consistent.

Faves: 'The Insanity of Jones: A Study in Reincarnation.'

Worsties: The rest.

Quentin Blake, Zagazoo

Read 2020

***

A sort of lighter Eraserhead.

Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl: The Enormous Crocodile Finger Puppet Book

The character's a more natural fit for this gimmick than most, though don't expect a comfortable fit yourself without some degree of arachnodactyly. The ending's fun for kids, the rest is just superficial references for impatient fans.

Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl: Lift-the-Flap Hide and Seek

Nostalgia bait for parents that doesn't meaningfully prepare young readers for the classics. I've never seen shyer flaps, but maybe there was supposed to be an element of challenge there so toddlers would at least get something out of it.

William Blake, Poetical Sketches

***

This aptly-titled private chapbook is more juvenilia scrapbook than promising demo, but I liked the darker ones.

Faves: 'To Winter,' 'Fair Eleanor,' 'Mad Song'

William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul

Read 2004, re-read 2018, 2021

****

I was too innocent and inexperienced to really appreciate Blake's classic double album when required to study it for A-level, but he still left more of an impression than any of the poets I studied at university, Milton aside. Maybe it was the pretty pictures.

I get it now. Admittedly, some of the Songs of Innocence are overly infantile, dependent and Bible-thumping, but others paint mournfully nostalgic scenes before Experience comes stomping in with the weight of years. It's the fearful symmetry that makes it.

William Blake, The Illuminated Books, Volume 3: The Early Illuminated Books

Read 2015

****

Until I hopefully get more sentimental in my old age, Blake is the only poet I can dip into for pleasure, and this is the ideal mini-anthology for anyone who's already got the Songs under their belt and wants to devour the rest of the early material in its original form without being bogged down by the visionary/madman's hefty later works. I'm only listing this book for title's sake though, since I read its contents online courtesy of the University of Adelaide. They probably even used the same vibrant remasters for the plates – cheeky!

Faves: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Book of Thel

Worsties: Comparatively unimaginative opening salvos 'All Religions Are One' & 'There Is No Natural Religion' are only here for completion's sake.

William Blake, The Illuminated Books of William Blake, Volume 5: Milton, a Poem

Read 2015

**

Blake's attempt to join the ranks of Virgil, Dante and Milton with an epic poem of his own falls a chasm short of being a classic. It starts off deceptively artistically with the 'Jerusalem' hymn tucked away at the bottom of the preface, but after that the poetry makes way for a parade of proper nouns to further extrapolate on his weird mytharc. The art has taken a real back seat now, with naked men popping up every few plates or so. The supplementary one-pagers that barely pad out this collection aren't worth mentioning.

Faves: 'Milton, A Poem,' 'The Ghost of Abel.'

Worsties: 'On Homer's Poetry'/'On Virgil,' 'Laocoön.'

William Blake, The Illuminated Books of William Blake, Volume 6: The Urizen Books

Read 2015

***

Having achieved chart success with his Songs of Innocence and Experience, the artist-poet-sage let it all hang out and embarked on his indulgent, mystical, possibly mad phase. You'll quickly long for the easier pastoral poems. Unravelling the seditious metaphors of his revolutionary prophecies is probably an enjoyable intellectual exercise, if you have the patience, but his extensive reboot of Genesis is just weird. Even the art lets up towards the end, as he strives to cram more prophecy onto the plate.

Faves: The Continental Prophecies.

Worsties: 'The Book of Ahania,' 'The Book of Los.'

William Blake, Jerusalem. The Emanation of the Giant Albion

Read 2019

**

Blake's final prophetic book is typically heavygoing and rambling as he lays out his strange, heavily symbolic, obsessively-detailed take on Biblical mythology. Like all his later works, he's got so much to say that there's little room for paintings any more, but he paints some vivid scenes with his words, between the interminable lists of people and places. I think I've read all the Blake now.

James Blish, Star Trek: The Classic Episodes 2 & 3

Read 1997-98

****

Blish's very readable novelisations of the classic series must have been indispensable back in the 70s before videos came along. They were still useful in the 90s for this new fan who didn't want to wait through years of inconsistent BBC scheduling before he could get to see 'The Tholian Web' et al. I dipped in and out.

James Blish, Spock Must Die!

Read 2019

***

Blish knows his Trek, having novelised multiple episodes. His only original story is structurally spot-on, as well as directly reminiscent of all those episodes with evil doubles (at least four come to mind). As for the actual plot though, it's nuts – both in the exhaustively-justified technobabble and Kirk's reactions to it all, which jump to murder distressingly promptly. Uhura comes off well, but then, she isn't one of the white women plagued by ancestral guilt who are lusting after Spock as a gateway to black guys.

E. Veronica Bliss and Genevieve Edmonds, A Self-Determined Future with Asperger Syndrome: Solution Focused Approaches

Read 2015

**

I'm interested in learning more about AS since a family member was recently, belatedly diagnosed with it, and this looked like the most helpful (and least tedious) of the minority of works that didn't deal exclusively with kids. It's still mostly a manual for care workers though, with printable patronising questionnaires for subjects and occasional self-deprecating humour balancing out the self-congratulatory parts where they reaffirm how solution-focussed therapy (understanding, not 'fixing') is the best therapy. I should have just watched a documentary.

Geoffrey Block, Ives: Concord Sonata – Piano Sonata No. 2

Read 2020

***

An introduction to The Greatest American Composer™ for the benefit of non-Americans who won't have heard of him. Detailed insights into a guy tinkling up and down a piano and a comprehensive record of his "sophisticated borrowing."

Paula M. Block, Terry J. Erdmann and The Topps Company, Star Trek: The Original Topps Trading Card Series

****

Shallow retro fun. Presents every cheap and nasty card in all its muddy, error-riddled, Suluphobic glory with arguably undeserved commentary.

Judy Blume, Fudge-a-Mania

Read 1996

**

It feels like I must have seen the TV series for this to attract my attention in the library (though even then it's a bit strange, since I was only lukewarm to it at best), but I know I definitely read this before I saw its plot directly adapted in a feature-length special. For both those things to be true, BBC Genome listings say I must have read it in April '96. At least I was branching out from Sonic.

Nigel Blundell and Roger Boar, The World's Greatest UFO Mysteries

Read 1998

**

I was never a UFO nut, I just liked The X-Files. This was a decent collection of alt-tabloid nonsense picked up for a pound, but the least dipped into of my modest childhood paranormal library. Most of the photo reproductions were too poor quality to be of any use, but I guess that makes them more credible than the foolishly clear one they used for the cover.

Nigel Blundell and Roger Boar, The World's Greatest Ghosts

Read 1998

***

There were some genuinely spooky tales in there ('The Faces in the Floor' particularly), but not enough photos of alleged apparitions. The cover image, from a film adaptation of a debunked case, gives you an idea of the calibre of evidence you're dealing with.

Fred Blunt, Unicorn Not Wanted

***

Surprisingly good for a unicorn book, in her favoured genre of belligerent metafiction.

Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village

Read 2020

***

This oral history with poetic licence was the last chance to see some traditional industries before they were relegated to period dramas. I was expecting something sentimental and rose-tinted, but the old fellers' grim tales of the Great War liberating them from their farm shackles makes Monty Python's "third world" diss seem like an understatement if anything.

Enid Blyton, Noddy Goes to Toyland

Read 1994

***

The CBBC series arrived too late for me to be a Noddy obsessive, but I enjoyed pretending to be a child from the olden days when I picked up some of the vintage books in a market. I was surprised by the prominence of the Gollywogs, and it didn't take a lot of deduction to work out why we probably didn't see them on the telly.

Kees Boeke, Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps

Read 2020

***

Google Earth gone mental (they're probably working on it), this is a great idea that gets duller the further it gets from the familiar comfort zone (which is probably part of the point), then suddenly brightens up again before hitting the wall where knowledge ends. I would've got more out of it if the Hubble Deep Field hadn't already blown that part of my mind wide open.

Marianne Bogardt and Maxie Chambliss, The Pop Up Potty Book

***

Shameless propaganda. It's not all fun and games.

Emily Bolam, Crazy Farm: Mix and Match

We've overdone the animal noises by this point, but at least that's her Mastermind specialist subject sorted. This was an unadvertised bonus bilingual Welsh edition (I think that's the one where 'y' is a standalone word), so that should come in thematically-limited use if we cross the border.

Roberto Bolaño, By Night in Chile

Read 2015

***

Bolaño's 2666 is probably the longest book I've ever read – with my eyes rather than lazy audio, certainly – so I was relieved to see that they're not all so oppressively sprawling. This dying priest's confessional soliloquy is as meandering and introspective as the stuff I usually heap exaggerated praise on, but it falls short of Calvino or Joyce by being just too darned coherent.

Roberto Bolaño, 2666

Read 2011

***

Most readers probably know what they're getting into with this complex novel and can mentally prepare. When it was kindly offloaded on me by a fellow traveller who was presumably tired of lugging its weight around, all I knew was it was big, which I just considered good value. After stubbornly working through it in multiple hammock sessions, I left it in a Kuala Lumpur hostel where I clocked it again two years later, unloved by fellow travellers. I don't blame them. What a stupid thing to take on holiday.

Michael Bond and R. W. Alley, Paddington at the Rainbow's End

Read 2020, reread 2021-22

The easiest book from her Paddington set, it subtly teaches the colours of the rainbow, including its famous brown. I was never big on the bear, but formative grooming through bedroom decor was probably more influential than Jonathan Creek on my later duffle coat fixation.

Michael Bonifer and artists, The Art of Tron

***

The pictures are too small and optimised to make it a luxurious art book. It's more a general making-of that naturally emphasises the pioneering visuals, because what else is there?

Joe Bonomo, AC/DC's Highway to Hell

Read 2020

***

This celebration of raw simplicity gives up on futile in-depth analysis after the first song, instead inviting various voices to recount the background story of Satanic panic and self-destructive lifestyles.

Martin Bookspan, 101 Masterpieces of Music and Their Composers

Read 2015

**

This wasn't as insightful as my other listen-along experiences. While the music may be timeless, Bookspan's analysis (mainly biographical and unhelpfully alphabetical) is a bit old-fashioned, which isn't really his fault considering he wrote it almost 50 years ago. He attempts a few imaginative descriptions when a particularly cacophonous passage reminds him of a battle, or when he reckons a trilling instrument signifies birds, but it's all very conservative – even if he's convinced he's being a maverick by leaving out the Edvard Grieg one you like because his slightly more obscure selection is more worthy. Each entry ends with detailed recommendations of the best LP and cassette recordings to track down, I may have skipped over these completely obsolete bits.

Faves: The Russians.

Worsties: Handel?

Anne Booth and Åsa Gilland, I Send You a Hug

Vomitisation.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Universal History of Iniquity

These unreliable summary biographies are presumably proving some sort of point, because they're not entertaining yarns in their own right. It picks up at the end, when he starts summarising folk tales instead, but he can hardly get credit for that.

Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions

Read 2015, re-read 2021

*****

I've found that intimidatingly clever writers are usually worth the effort, and it's always a delight to find one who's right up my labyrinthine alley. The name is familiar, presumably more related to his brand of literary criticism than his self-conscious fictions, once pragmatically crammed and forgot. But unlike most people who dedicate their time to criticising other writers' works, he also wrote his own damn stories and earned that right. I'll have to work on that. As well as being genuinely original and imaginative, I'm also down with his fondness for brevity – summarising a non-existent novel, extraterrestrial encyclopaedia or impossibly complex game in a few dense pages rather than making us wade through 982 of them to get to the same points.

Faves: 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,' 'The Circular Ruins,' 'Death and the Compass.'

Worsties: 'The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim,' 'The Shape of the Sword,' 'Three Versions of Judas.'

Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

Read 2015, re-read 2021

***

That wasn't as mesmerising as his previous collection. The concise fantasy vignettes have largely been replaced with dull biographies, and rather than pondering over made-up encyclopaedias and pulp paperbacks, it's stuffy religious texts all the way.

Faves: 'The Immortal,' 'The Writing of the God,' 'The Aleph.'

Worsties: 'Story of the Warrior and the Captive,' 'A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829–1874),' 'The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths.'

Jorge Luis Borges, The Maker

Read 2015, re-read 2021

***

Looking at a list of notable Borges fictions, like the clickable bibliography at the bottom of Wikipedia, almost all of them come from the first two collections. There are barely any thought-provoking, atmospheric dream tales in this one, which is mostly comprised of tiny thoughts and sketches that he couldn't even be bothered to make into poems.

Faves: 'The Maker,' 'Parable of the Palace,' 'Borges and I.'

Worsties: The rest.

Jorge Luis Borges, Brodie's Report

A conscious regression to the humdrum biographies of his earliest writing, because that's what we read Borges for. Labyrinths is all the abridged bibliography you need.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand

*****

The search for illumination amicably surrenders to embrace the darkness.

Faves: 'There Are More Things,' 'The Mirror and the Mask,' 'The Book of Sand'

Jorge Luis Borges, Shakespeare's Memory

****

Twilight wisdom.

Faves: 'August 25, 1983,' 'Blue Tigers,' 'Shakespeare's Memory'

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).

John Bottomley and Lee Cosgrove, What If My Snot Glowed in the Dark?

Genuinely educational filth. Also covers poo, sick and all that good stuff.

Julie E. Bounford and Trevor Bounford, The Curious History of Mazes: 4,000 Years of Fascinating Twists and Turns with Over 100 Intriguing Puzzles to Solve

Read 2019

***

An edutaining wander through the history of mazes in mythology, pop culture and foliage, with frequent puzzle stops along the way. It's easy to follow, which isn't really in the spirit.

Tim Bowler, River Boy

Read 1998

****

This pleasant and atmospheric ghost story for kids was below my I'm-so-smart reading level when I let myself get roped into reading and discussing all the books that were up for the Carnegie medal that year. This was my favourite and it won, beating the pre-hype Harry Potter in a victory that must be eternally satisfying for the author.

Jacques Boyreau ed, Trash: The Graphic Genius of Xploitation Movie Posters

Read 2015

**

"How Much Snake Can One Woman Take..."

The seething contempt for contemporary Hollywood is funny and correct, but I don't share the love for garish, willfully offensive vintage publicity material, revealing an embarrassingly depraved side of humanity in public view before the internet came along and we could enjoy degrading porn and beheading videos in anonymity. The problem with these annotated scrapbooks is usually that the curator doesn't know when to shut up, but the opposite is the problem here. Though, to be fair, the succinct taglines usually tell you everything you need to know, and it's cute that some of the rarer posters have creases and rips.

Lynne Bradbury and John Lobban, Learning at Home: ABC

***

If it ain't broke, reprint. School books aren't exactly the height of nostalgia, but these old-school drawings are a welcome change from the usual clipart.

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (a.k.a The Silver Locusts)

Read 2019

***

As contrived fix-up novels go, this collection succeeds in fooling the reader into thinking they're reading an epic future history saga, rather than a collection of thematically similar and accidentally coherent short stories cobbled together. I admire it for that. Its over-familiar plots didn't really do it for me though.

Ray Bradbury, The Golden Apples of the Sun

Read 2020

****

Twenty-two tales of assorted quality and theme, but tending towards the classic and macabre.

Faves: 'The Fog Horn,' 'A Sound of Thunder,' 'Powerhouse.'

Worsties: 'The Flying Machine,' 'I See You Never,' 'The Big Black and White Game.'

Ray Bradbury, The October Country

Read 2016

****

I knew Bradbury was one of the pulp sci-fi greats, but I had no idea he could be so delightfully macabre too. Most of these murky tales imply the supernatural, but they're more concerned with examining our morbid fascinations and propensity to evil. There's also an unhealthy preoccupation with creepy carnivals, but when isn't there?

Faves: 'Skeleton,' 'The Small Assassin,' 'Jack-in-the-Box.'

Worsties: 'The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse,' 'The Lake,' 'Touched With Fire.'

Lynne Bradbury and Jon Davis, Santa Claus Has a Busy Night

Read 1991, re-read 2023

**

This uninspired visualisation of the impractical fable was mainly notable for educating me about Australian seasons being reversed. "Reversed" unless you happen to live in the southern hemisphere, of course, in which case this book was probably pretty patronising, but they're used to that.

John Braden, My Little Pony: The Night Before Christmas

Christmas enchantment and infant estrangement with the "Very Old Ponies," complete with authentic 80s cartoon character colouring errors.

Kathryn Bradley and Georgina Croll, A Friend Just Like Me

I didn't realise the subject matter until it came up, and that certainly makes it more worthwhile and important for its target audience, but it's otherwise just a lovey-dovey bear book.

Susannah Bradley, FunFax: Ghosts, Monsters and Legends

Read 1996

***

Despite the tacky presentation, this proved an informative primer to some urban legends and the paranormal canon. I don't know how one went about curating a FunFax, they were just notable for being the cheapest books in the shop.

Melvyn Bragg, The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet)

****

Celebration more than explanation, the irrelevant personal anecdotes were a welcome detour from the usual annotated synopsis.

Russell Brand, Revolution

Read 2015

**

My introduction to this manifesto was some scathing newspaper review or other (I can't find it now – there are quite a lot) that explained in detail how the writer had most of his facts wrong. So I had to read it after that, and like my favourite nonsense merchant David Icke, Brand's at least passionate in his apparent incorrectness. To the extent that I may have passed on a dubious fact or two when they piqued my imagination. What do I know?

Amanda Brandon and Mike Byrne, Unicorn Training: A Story About Patience and the Love for a Pet

'Lisa's Pony' via 'Bart's Dog Gets an F.'

Henrietta Branford, Fire, Bed and Bone

Read 1998

***

A rustic dog's-eye view of bleak English history, I think you need to know more about the context than I did for the pragmatic perspective to be effective. I was basically on the same page as the dog, no idea why the humans were behaving like that.

Leo Braudy, On the Waterfront

Read 2020

****

These short books are handy pointers to some great films I probably never would have got around to if I was relying on my formulaic tastes. This one fills in the important social and symbolic context for the ignorant, goes over the production, then hangs loose with jacket symbolism.

Tom Braunlich and Bill Muldowney, Official Player's Guide: Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game

***

I longed to play this acknowledged Magic: The Gathering rip-off back in the '90s, when I bought a Deep Space Nine set, but everyone I knew was into Pokémon cards or proper roleplaying.

Reading this introduction caused a recurrence of the quarter-century itch that I'll have to scratch one day, and maybe realise I just like looking at them after all.

Ian Breakwell, An Actor's Revenge

Read 2020

***

Kon Ichikawa's Cinemascope play offers plenty of symbolism and idiosyncratic oddness for the scholar to luxuriate in.

So why is this so bloody short?

Michelle Breen, Enchanting Mermaid Book & Model Set

Finally, after all the refunds and a return, a gift set arrived as more than just the boring book part, since it's glued in this time. The extras are just some cardboard, admittedly, but she seems to like her first cheapo playset. We might get around to reading the book one of these years.

Don Breithaupt, Steely Dan's Aja

Read 2020

**

The album/ensemble lends itself to technical jargon and elitism, so I won't hold this gushing snob's appraisal against it. It's the only book so far that's provided a glossary to help us plebs through, and you can look up some mainstream artists you like in the index to find out why you're wrong.

Jan Brett, The Twelve Days of Christmas

***

Nostalgically rendered with old-timey art that's younger than me.

Nicholas Briggs, Doctor Who: The Dalek Generation

***

Better than expected for another bloody Dalek story in an era not exactly renowned for them, if a bit of a downer.

Raymond Briggs, When the Wind Blows

Read 2020

****

Animating a comic always seemed like the most pointless of adaptations to me, but I'll go with the film for this one, not that I'd ever want to watch it again. I don't remember Briggs' comic panels being so cramped from childhood, maybe it's a Wagon Wheels® thing.

Rachel Bright, Love You Hoo

She's always drawn to owls, maybe we should get one. This was low on plot, high on sap.

Rachel Bright and Jim Field, The Squirrels Who Squabbled

***

Lovely autumn forest art made this a pleasant read. She asked who I thought would win, which showed engagement, but you'd think she'd have picked up on the trend by now.

David Brin, The Postman

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.

David Lee Brodbeck, Brahms: Symphony No. 1

***

Beethoven: The Next Generation.

Steffie Brocoli and Catherine Bidet, Through the Forest

****

A chill start on multiple-choice gamebooks. If we play it often enough, she might develop a lifelong aversion to the number 11.

Celeste Bronfman and Amy Mebberson, My Little Pony, Volume 4: Sister Switch

***

Recycles a plot that happened to other princess sisters in the previous generation, but she still wanted all five issues in a day. The kid loves comics, don't know where she gets it from.

Charlie Brooker, TV Go Home

Read 2010

****

Vintage internet comedy that horrifyingly turned out to be as prescient as Chris Morris' work. It's still the only place I've encountered my namesake in literature, starring in the classic Tetris the Movie. That doesn't even sound like a joke any more, does it? They probably made it.

Charlie Brooker, Unnovations

****

A glans-watering opulence of morbid, inappropriate and deranged essentials.

Charlie Brooker, Screen Burn / The Hell of It All

Read 2010

****

A decade on, I'm spared remembering the specifics of what Brooker was having a go at in his columns, just the general sense that I attended some really satisfying primal scream therapy.

Charlie Brooker, I Can Make You Hate

Read 2009-12

***

Where his earlier collected columns were time capsules of a recent past I'd mercifully missed for the most part, I was following along for this final volume in its awkward and frequently stressed-over transition from remorseless pop-culture critic to responsible establishment figure, middling satirist and dad. I'd have felt let down if he hadn't done made Black Mirror at the same time.

Charlie Brooker, Annabel Jones and Jason Arnopp, Inside Black Mirror: The Illustrated Oral History

Read 2019

****

Dispensing with old-school episode synopses, cast lists and other details you can get on IMDb, this gets straight to the meat of interviewing the writers, cast and crew about the 19 Black Mirror 'films' released to that point. The fairly even coverage means they won't get as deep into your favourites as you'd like, while giving that rubbish one more credit than it deserves. Brooker's always good value and candid about unused concepts and episode ideas if you fancy stealing them.

Bobbie Brooks and Carrie Hennon, Can You Tickle a Unicorn?

I should be grateful that she's so easily pleased, really.

Bobbie Brooks and Villie Karabatzia, Diggers

If your toddler's too wussy to play on a real building site.

Bobbie Brooks and Carrie Hennon, Go to Sleep, Sheep!

Take away the squashy squeaker and it may evaporate.

Daphne Brooks, Jeff Buckley's Grace

Read 2020

***

Since he only did the one album, the writer's excused this time for treating the album book as a biography. The subject's untimely death also justifies the emotional fangirling, before the abrupt shift to academic analysis later on. I'm rating the write-ups, not the music, but I still might have rated this one higher if it did anything for me.

Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Read 2018

***

I like a nice rustic historical from time to time. They don't have to involve monumental suffering, but that's usually how it goes.

The best thing about this pretend first-hand account of the Black Death is the author's eye (and nose) for detail. The worst is that she doesn't bother writing in an archaic style to help us pretend it's anything other than pretend. Presumably she didn't want to put off her readers and jeopardise her success, the wuss.

Christopher Brown, The Official Ghostbusters Training Manual: A Guide to Catching Ghosts

The corny conceit for a picture book, interesting merely for being early Ghostbusters merchandise for kids, before we became the prime targets and they really went to town. The Class Five Full Roaming Vapor was already tipped for breakout stardom. Winston does not feature.

Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

Read 2009

**

The insanely popular book that vexed literary snobs in the 2000s, I didn't have an axe to grind and was just hoping to enjoy a pulpy conspiracy thriller set in some familiar places. Unfortunately, it was pap.

Derren Brown, Tricks of the Mind

Read 2008

****

I don't think I've written anything about Derren Brown before, so you won't know how much I adore his stuff. Whether he's reinforcing rationality, helping people improve their lives or just bamboozling us and pretending to explain how, Derren's a global treasure. This isn't the ultimate sourcebook you might be hoping for, but it's got plenty of good advice for people smarter and more patient than me.

Jeff Brown, Flat Stanley

Read 1992

***

Stanley's condition wasn't gruesome or permanent enough to make a lasting impression on me, but teachers would bring out the Roald Dahls in due course.

Len Brown, Zina Saunders and artists, Mars Attacks: 50th Anniversary Collection

Read 2019

****

Save yourself the trouble and significant expense of collecting the rare vintage trading cards by picking up this Panini-style album that's already filled in for you. Covering the original 55-card saga in all its controversial and excessive violence, along with concept art and various minor resurgences across the decades, this is a commendably detailed and comprehensive retrospective. Probably more than it deserves, to be honest, but it's nice that people care.

Ruth Brown, A Dark, Dark Tale

****

She enjoyed this in an anthology, but it was worth upgrading to the full-size, unabridged, even creepier art.

Mike Brownlow and Simon Rickerty, Ten Little Pirates / Robots / Unicorns

Read 2022-23

They made more than ten variants of these if you fancy a tedious bedtime marathon.

Ken Bruen, The Devil

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.

Keith Brumpton and Roger Dinosaur, A Dinosaur's Book of Dinosaurs

Read 1993

***

A smart stocking filler that kept me from waking everyone else up for an hour, the pretense of a precocious child's hand-written book introducing his inconsistently anthoromorphic world appealed to my sensibilities, even if the romance angle didn't.

Keith Brumpton, Rudley Cabot in The Quest for the Golden Carrot

Read 1995

***

Another book I took out of the library as a child and can't remember anything about. It can't have been very good then, but I was easily pleased, especially by anthropomorphic cartoon animals. Three stars.

Steven Brust, To Reign in Hell

Read 2007

****

If I'd known how traditionally high fantasy this rewrite of the war in Heaven was going to get, I probably wouldn't have bothered, but it was good to spread my wings. Brust's colourful alt-theology of secular superhero angels is interesting, but his descriptions are always a few key details away from letting me know what exactly I'm looking at.

Steven Brust, Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille

Read 2018

**

Rather than tall tales, this is a comedy sci-fi romance novel about a folk band's adventures across time and space in a TARDIS-like bar that keeps being mysteriously targeted for arson. These barely curious Sliders would rather drink, jam and be merry than bother investigating what's going on, and this lack of interest was sadly infectious.

Stella Bruzzi, Seven Up

Read 2020

***

A nice celebration and fairly redundant analysis of the real-time period drama as it self-consciously entered the reality TV age.

Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

Read 2020

****

I still don't get why he's king of the travelogue, but this was an entertaining false-nostalgic primer for returning to Blighty, updating his '70s experiences to a '90s experience I was too young to be concerned about at the time. Presumably there have been some further changes since. Not giving the non-British audiobook narrator pronunciation notes was a major oversight.

Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island

Read 2020

**

Twenty years on, the veteran travel writer tours Britain again, but mainly moans about the internet, the young people today and other random targets and gets into pointless arguments with proprietors and other locals. Maybe this is what reading my travel blog was like.

Jonathan Buckley, Starve Acre

Read 2020

***

The hook of a child's certain death, with plenty of dramatic teases along the way, makes this the most unpleasant variation on the pseudonymous author's customary folk horror chords, as well as the slightest. It also feels the most like a film in waiting, if that sounds like the sort of thing you'd enjoy watching.

Scott Bukatman, Blade Runner

Read 2020

****

I haven't read Future Noir, but this made do as a lightweight substitute covering the production, symbolism 'n' shit, with a few production sketches thrown in. I don't know whether it stopped being amusingly verbose after the introduction or if I just got used to it.

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

Read 2015

***

I don't deserve to read beloved classics if I'm not going to appreciate them. Look David, this one's got the Devil and mythological beasties in, you like those. I even recognise the literary allusions and get the satire, which isn't always a given. I don't know what the rules are for liking things. Be better as a play.

Jon Burgerman, Rhyme Crime

***

The criminal aspect was appealing. Loads better than Oi Frog!

Jon Burgerman, Everybody Has Feelings

She found its tedious parade edutaining.

Thomas H. Burgoyne, The Light of Egypt, Volume Two: The Science of the Stars

Read 2015

*

It's not about Egypt all that much, but it was either this or The Stargate Conspiracy, and this pompous esoteric guide to astrology, alchemy, talismans and magic wands seemed the less crazy of the two. I'm not sure what I based that on.

Cerrie Burnell and Laura Ellen Anderson, Fairy Magic

***

You don't have to be deaf to discover the magical kindom, but it helps.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Read 2020

***

More ambiguously magical than I was expecting, I wouldn't have got much out of this as a boy, but I found it relaxing as a grown-up. For a vintage book, the attitudes aren't bad either.

John Burningham, Would You Rather...

I thought this'd be some frivolous fun, but making her choose between various horrible scenarios felt borderline abusive at two.

Charles Burns, Black Hole

Read 2015

****

One of the best indie comics I've ever read, I would have got even more out of it as an easily titillated teenager. Sex, drugs, gore, deformity and Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Burns knows just what buttons to push. There are also repeating motifs and other clever things to give cocky/lazy lit students the excuse to write their dissertations on comics rather than proper books (best of luck, I got away with writing about Star Trek). This coherence is especially impressive when you consider it was written over a decade of staggered releases. In the evenings, I like to imagine, making the most of a few precious hours hunched over the desk, fatigued after another soul-destroying day at the office. Don't spoil it by telling me he's a professional artist or something.

Donald Burrows, Handel: Messiah

Read 2020

**

Despite finding the archaic warbling falsetto inherently comical, I made it longer into the feature-length musical than I expected. This companion is less divinely inspired, being primarily concerned with setting the record straight about edits and performances over the 250-year history and filling out the page count by reprinting the lyrics. It only gets a point for bringing up the interesting Life of Brian-style controversy where a bunch of loud idiots preemptively decided Handel was a very naughty boy.

Jeffrey Burton and Zoe Waring, Twinkle, Twinkle, Unicorn

Yeah, it's just that.

Edward Buscombe, The Searchers

Read 2020

***

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.

George H. Bushnell, A Handful of Ghosts

Read 2007

***

Amateur campfire tales set in and around the University of St Andrews, written by one of its long-serving librarians to distract students from the war, this commemorative chapbook isn't going to trouble M. R. James' legacy, but it goes through all the familiar, comforting tropes.

Darcey Bussell, The Ballet Book

***

Lots of pain to come, it seems. But she likes the dresses, what can you do.

Jim Butcher, The Dresden Files

Read 2010

***

Primarily selected for audiobook availability, I don't know how many books James Marsters whispered in my ears as I explored Taiwan, but enough for them to blur together even at the time. Harry Dresden's no John Constantine. He isn't even a Harry D'Amour.

John Butt, Bach: Mass in B Minor

Summarising the state of scholarship on the elusive, impractical mass c.1991, this didn't succeed in illuminating Bach's wonders more than other things I've read, and some of those tried a lot harder. If you can graph it out symmetrically, it must be good, right?

Moira Butterfield, Stephen Koster, Brian Voakes and Geoff Dann, Barbie Story Treasury

She likes her Barbie ("Boobay") pencil case, so I thought I'd give her a book to aimlessly flip through in full acceptance that it would be appalling shite.

Moira Butterfield, Children Like Us: Homes Around the World

She prefers escapism over documentary.

Fiona Byrne, Robyn Newton, Kate Ward and Martina Hogan, Follow Me: Finger Mazes

****

She doesn't really get the mazes yet, but the wildlife Where's Wally entertains her in the meantime.

John Byrne, Star Trek: New Visions, Vol. 2

Read 2015

**

There's no shortage of ways for fans of classic 'Trek to see more of Kirk & co, but these photomontage tales awkwardly mashing up vintage screencaps and repetitive publicity stills with rubbish special effects are among the most authentic. It's an adorable project, but even if the writer's storytelling talents did match his Photoshop skills, the limited source material he's working with means this can never rise above shallow fan service.

Faves: 'A Scent of Ghosts.'

Worsties: 'Robot,' 'The Great Tribble Hunt,' 'Memorium.'

Richard Byrne, This Book Just Ate My Dog! / This Book Just Stole My Cat!

***

Interactive pet rescue, with alternative sequels pandering to animal racists.

Richard Byrne, This Book Is Out of Control

Needing to be able to read the buttons is an unfortunate age/development barrier for a picture book. We should stick to felt flaps until Reception, I guess.

Jack Caesar and artists, My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – The Bestiary of Equestria

***

This would be an essential reference for Games Masters, if only it were complete. I'll dip in and out for reference and to scribble down stats when needed, but it's mainly the double-page spread on creating your own critters and the supplementary material of new playable races, talents and quirks that's the most interesting.

Diana Cage, Lesbian Sex Bible: The New Guide to Sexual Love for Same-Sex Couples

Read 2015

***

I had a disproportionate amount of lesbian and/or experimental female friends in my previous life on the other side of the world, so I'm fully aware that women who like women come in all colours. Still, I have a nagging suspicion that these 'mainstream' models striking tender poses across the glossy pages may not take their work home with them. Perhaps market research suggested there was an alternative readership to account for, and that throwing in a few real lesbians might put them off? Me, I read it for the words and stuff.

Marc Cage, Aden Baker: Notoriety and Anonymity

Read 2017

***

The tragic, pathetic story of Aden Oliver Baker is a sadly familiar one. A grown-up problem child whose unchecked neuroses build to an exaggerated finale in a killing spree, and who leaves behind a self-pitying 'manifesto' that lays bear the dots that no one in their right mind would have thought to connect.

Whenever I read through detailed descriptions of footage that doesn't exist (Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves comes to mind), I wish I could just watch it instead. Making a real fake YouTube video would have been the more satisfying way to go. A lot more challenging and time-consuming too, which is presumably why we just get the script, but that still leaves the nagging feeling that we're reading a book that wishes it didn't have to be a book.

Martin Caidin, Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates

Read 2017

**

The odds were against the Martin Caidin era of Indy books, occupying as it does a suspiciously brief interlude between the more substantial MacGregor and McCoy epochs. Is that because he was a bad fit, or would he leave us wanting more? The star rating kills any suspense.

I went in unprejudiced. I was actually looking forward to a fresh start after MacGregor's run collapsed under its own eccentricity at the end, but this isn't even recognisable as Indiana Jones, and not only because he spends so much of it in kooky disguises. With its crack team of skilled caricatures and overly elaborate ruses, it's like Caidin got confused and thought he was writing Mission: Impossible. Where's the damn archaeology?

You could see the UFO stuff as foreshadowing the B-movie elements of Crystal Skull, if you're extremely generous.

Martin Caidin, Indiana Jones and the White Witch

Read 2017

**

After being allowed to indulge his aeronautical hobby last time, Caidin's reeled in to write something more on-brand in his second and final contribution to the series. It even explicitly ties in with Dance of the Giants as Indy once again finds himself involved with pagan magic and Arthurian legend.

Caidin's afterword reveals that pretty much everything that happens in the book is based on his own experiences and beliefs, which surprised me. He knows his stuff just like MacGregor, but where those earlier books were clearly written with passion for the subject matter, the stuffy, exposition-heavy dialogue here makes it sound like the author's learning along with us as he paraphrases his research book.

It's a sub-par adventure and the protagonist is Indiana Jones in name only, but it's a lot better than his other one.

James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

Read 2020

***

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.

James M. Cain, Double Indemnity

Read 2020

***

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.

Simon Callow, The Night of the Hunter

Read 2020

***

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.

Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Read 2018

****

Italo Calvino wrote one of my favourite books of 2015 (not that I can remember anything about it now) and another one that amazed me in concept, but less in execution.

This tale of mysteriously mute travellers telling their stories via Tarot cards, unreliably interpreted by our narrator, falls into the latter category. My enthusiasm for playing along with the digital Visconti-Sforza deck on tarot.com petered out after the first couple of yarns. Great idea though.

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Read 2015

****

He's being a smart-arse again, and naturally I love it. Though once I got over the innovative structure, the actual substance of these 50-odd city descriptions started to get a bit samey. It's not really about the content though – it's about the philosophy of architecture and social space, communication without language, lies, exploration and lots of other things probably. Smarter people than me have used it as a springboard for all kinds of creative projects... I'm going to read some comics now.

Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveller

Read 2015, re-read 2023

*****

The primary reason behind committing to a "funny foreigners" month, I'd really wanted to read this one for a while, but at the same time, really couldn't be bothered. It was every bit as brilliantly wanky and annoying as I'd hoped. I'm a strange man, but I'm well catered for.

John W. Campbell, Islands of Space

Read 2020

***

I don't know if these vintage sci-fi writers were following received wisdom that you had to focus on either plot or character at the expense of the other, or if that's just how it tended to come out. In its lengthy descriptions of future tech and exploration of slightly-differentiated new worlds and inferior civilisations, this is squarely in the former camp, with occasional moments of wonder. Sometimes travel's about the places, not the people.

Rod Campbell, Dear Zoo

Read 2020, re-read 2021-22

****

He didn't invent flap technology, but he obviously hit on a winner. This was the first time my daughter wanted a book on a perpetual loop, right from the first go, and this became more bearable when my mind wandered and I considered what was really going on, and how the zoo owners are clearly taking the piss out of this ungrateful brat before getting fed up and trying to help nature take its course.

Rod Campbell, Oh Dear!

Read 2020, re-read 2021

****

More fun with flaps on the farm, with wildlife that's probably as exotic as Dear Zoo's for city kids, but will become increasingly relatable to our little one now that we're raising her as a country bumpkin.

Rod Campbell, It's Mine

Read 2021, re-read 2022

****

I forgot we'd read this one before (getting it mixed up with a lesser latter-day remix), but she got more out of it now that her identification and reasoning abilities have caught up, even if it was unlikely to be an elephant in the tree. It's a shame some other little bastard had ripped the lion's mouth off, but she knows that score.

Rod Campbell, My Presents

Unadventurous and oddly sterile Dear Zoo genre swap. Each stock gift gets its own brand new sentence rather than just a changed adjective, so that's progress.

Rod Campbell, Farm 123

The laziest I've seen yet from the flapmaster. Variably elusive farmyard animals introducing elementary maths and differentiating juveniles from adults make it educational, but entertainment wise, there are no surprises when it's just going to be more chickens under there. Throw in a penguin or something.

Rod Campbell, Lift-the-Flap Nursery Book

Read 2020, re-read 2021-22

***

Rod Campbell's flap-based business model is still going strong in its fourth decade, this time adding unnecessary flaps to nursery rhymes and skill-free puzzles. They're always a reliable uninspired purchase at least, even if my daughter only seems to want 'Baa Baa Black Sheep (Flaps Mix)' again and again.

Rod Campbell, I'm Hungry

***

There's nothing wrong with this flaps 'n' felt book, it just didn't have much to offer at this point, even with its attempt at a shock interactive ending. She was more excited to re-read Dear Zoo, which she has at home and has read several zillion times.

Rod Campbell, Where's Teddy?

***

The domestic helper theme was relatable and she found the Junior Where's Wally satisfying. I contemplated the conspiracy that's halved board book page counts since the 80s.

Rod Campbell, Little Mouse

I don't know whether he's really continuing to churn these out or switched to ghostwriter-artists at some point, but we shouldn't keep falling for it either way. Admittedly, we didn't get the full interactive experience, since more heavy-handed readers broke most of the tabs.

Rod Campbell, Animal Rhymes

A few more originals and nursery rhymes that weren't culled from an earlier collection, which then ends more abruptly than those used to.

Rod Campbell, Look After Us

What might be a belated apology for Dear Zoo's thoughtless animal trafficking fails to pull off the same trick of only changing two words each time without becoming mind-numbingly tedious.

Albert Camus, The Stranger

Read 2015

****

It's all about death again, but more philosophical this time. What's the big deal about emotions anyway? The detached protagonist lies somewhere on the spectrum between that guy from American Psycho and Abed from Community. Half-way through, I realised this is what that provocatively titled Cure song is about.

Peter H. Cannon, Scream for Jeeves: A Parody

***

Not as funny as Alan Moore's weird brew, but it satisfied the craving.

Adam S. Cantwell, A Pallid Wave on Shores of Night

***

An enigmatic opera of primordial secrets and uplifting visions. If only it was a full album.

Fave: 'Moonpaths of the Departed'

Adam S. Cantwell, Orphans on Granite Tides

****

Excellent metaphysical cosmic horror historical conspiracy thriller.

Matthew Capala, SEO Like I'm 5: The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization (Second Edition)

Read 2015

****

I knew this wasn't going to be as relevant or potentially handy as a specific writing-focused guide would be, but after several years of blissful, willful ignorance about what's actually going on in the industry beyond my cog, I thought it was about time I caught up (as far as March 2015 anyway). The recent history of Google's algorithm updates was more interesting than the guide itself – I'd wondered why I was asked to produce considerably less worthless and disposable content after 2012, now I get it. I was also impressed that the guide took the stance that Google really was improving things rather than ruining everything by penalising rubbish, spammy results. I may miss the easy buxx from writing 20 desperately differentiated articles per day about car windshield repair or artificial turf, but the world's a better place

Diane Carey, Star Trek: The Next Generation – Ghost Ship

***

Early instalment weirdness has a special charm, and while these noble explorations beneath the surface of the poorly-defined ensemble would inevitably be contradicted in time, they didn't give her much to work with.

Diane Carey based on stories by David Gerrold, Ronald D. Moore and Rene Echevarria, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Trials and Tribble-ations

Read 1997

****

When I picked up this appealingly slim and cheap paperback in Ottakar's for a holiday read, I didn't twig at first that it was the novelisation of an actual episode that apparently existed. It was the syndicated 90s, that kind of indulgent fanwank didn't happen outside of novels – unless you were around for an anniversary. It took a year or so for the lax BBC schedule to get around to airing the episode, but the version I read and visualised was more exciting.

Mike Carey and artists, Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway

Read 2007

***

This is as far as I delved into the Sandman expanded universe. It was better than expected, but to draw in those Sandman readers it apes Gaiman even more than Gaiman was aping Moore. I didn't give it further chances to prove itself, there were too many other comics to read.

Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Read 1990, re-read 1997, 2004, 2020, 2021

*****

I don't know if this is the all time best picture book or if it's just the one my mind goes to out of familiarity, but it covers biology, counting, the days of the week and healthy eating, while also being colourful, interactive, funny and having a shock ending (if you're under five).

Eric Carle, The Tiny Seed

***

Following the speck kept her more engaged than I expected in a book that's distinctly more education than entertainment. I like the infinity loop, but unlikely we'd actually read it again.

Eric Carle, The Very Busy Spider

***

Another implicit invertebrate instructional. Excessively repetitive, but the farmyard parade might disguise it.

Eric Carle, From Head to Toe

A less raucous 'If You're Happy and You Know It' with borderline creepy animals. She obediently followed the instructions, but didn't ask to read it again. That's a fail.

Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar's Wild Animal Hide & Seek

What's he doing there? Ignoring what made the original innovative and borrowing from elsewhere, finger trails meet flaps to give blatant clues that I admittedly failed to pick up on at first as a grown literature graduate.

Eric Carle, A Day on the Farm with the Very Hungry Caterpillar

Introduces animals (or some of them at least – she was confused about the duck not getting any credit on the horse page). That's it. They're milking this a bit, aren't they?

Michael Carlin and Pablo Marcos, Star Trek: The Next Generation – Beginnings

Read 1997

***

Like most people, I expect, I was a bit disappointed that DC's first volume of TNG comics bore little relation to my new favourite TV series, having been rushed into production before any of the episodes were even ready. When this became clear (probably around the time Data started crying), disappointment gave way to ironic appreciation. They're probably among the worst Trek comics ever made, but also the only ones I've read multiple times.

Eric Stener Carlson, Muladona

****

Bedtime stories for cursed children.

Scott Carney, The Quick and Dirty Guide to Freelance Writing

Read 2020

It wasn't clear that this would focus on proper (i.e. feature) writing, nor that it would be more ideological than practical, but it was certainly quick, to read and to write, being a series of livestreamesque anecdotes illustrated by open-ended story examples with links to his more substantial books where you can buy the conclusions.

These short books may be mainly useful as self-evident self-marketing tools, but they're usually reliable for getting specific with the financial side too.

Daphne Carr, Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine

Read 2020

**

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.

Emily Carroll, Through the Woods

****

It didn't have the chance to haunt my own childhood, but it's more vicarious creeps to pass down if I really need to add one more to that precarious pile.

Faves: 'Our Neighbor's House,' 'His Face All Red.'

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Read 2020

****

I didn't see Disney's take until I was too old and sober to appreciate it. Going back to the sources was more rewarding, but it's probably a bit too tongue-twisting to make it onto the bedtime story list. We'll stick with Lovecraft.

Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

Read 2018

***

This is one of those books I never would have come across if I wasn't struggling to bulk out a flimsily connected reading batch, but that's one of the delights of doing this. Except when it's often not.

In this essay/proto-blog post/episode of the Patch Stop, the passionate author makes the straightforward case for exposing kids to nature and inspiring a lifelong appreciation for the everyday, even if you don't know your mosses from your lichens. Common-sense self-help that you already know, but like those people who never go outside to watch the humdrum meteor shower and only realise on their death bed that they probably should have bothered sometimes, it's a useful reminder.

Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Read 2004

***

Recommended prep for my literature course, although I don't think we ended up studying it, so I just got to enjoy reading some adult fairy tales that weren't nearly as scary, sexy or feminist as they could have been.

Carmen Carter, Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Devil's Heart

Read 2011

**

Space archaeology was one of TNG's more reliable sub-genres, but this doesn't add anything new to that field by combining it with the possession sub-genre, one of the worst. If it came out in 1989 or something I'd be more forgiving, but the series was already winding down.

Lou Carter and Nikki Dyson, Oscar the Hungry Unicorn / Eats Christmas / Eats Easter / And the New Babycorn / Eats Cake

Read 2022-23

She was particularly tickled by the incoherent fairy tale chomping oddysey, so luckily there are virtually limitless regurgitations to look forward to. No more for me, I'm full.

Andrew Cartmel, The Script Doctor: The Inside Story of Doctor Who 1986-89

***

Flippantly honest and unnecessarily detailed diary from the man who couldn't save the sinking ship, but proved it was worth salvaging.

Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

Read 2015

**

I didn't get much out of this classic hallucinogenic soul-searching memoir as it went along, with its daft regulations on where to sit and how to show your pipe the proper respect before you get to enjoy the good stuff like turning into a bird. I only really appreciated it afterwards, when I found out that the author got away with submitting it as his anthropology master's thesis. Respect.

Stephen Catanzarite, U2's Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall

Read 2020

*

Or, 'Sunday School, Bloody Sunday School.' A subtitle is our polite warning that normal album commentary will be suspended while someone presents their wacky theory, rant or fiction. This goes with the former, his puritanical Catholic reading of rock lyrics not being any more convincing than the average conspiracy theorist's dot connecting, and less entertaining.

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

Read 2020

****

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.

Alessio Cavatore and artists, Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts (6th Edition)

Read 2002

**

I didn't have the finances, the painting skill or the enthusiasm to collect Warhammer beyond a box of skeletons I never assembled, but I admired the art and the plagiarised lore. It's a shame the stats and tables kept interrupting that.

Nick Cave, The Death of Bunny Munro

Read 2011

***

Entertaining enough to read in one sitting on a beach, even if it's lacking the artistry of his song narratives through the handicap of quantity. We might have lost an album for this, but it's not like he wasn't incredibly prolific back then.

Nick Cave, Darcey Steinke and Janine Barrand, Stranger Than Kindness

Read 2020

*

I'm not obsessed enough a fan for this intimate exhibition of notebooks, photos, miscellanous junk and hoarded women's hair to be meaningful. Meanwhile, some random guy sits on the porch and rambles about Cave, Faulkner and Elvis.

Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow

Read 2015

***

Damned shame. If this was 150 pages shorter it would be one of the best short story collections I've ever read, but then the mytharc runs dry, the sun comes out and the pioneering cosmic horror and sci-fi are exchanged for bland Parisian romances. Chambers is hailed as one of the fathers of 'weird' fiction – well congratulations, I was suitably weirded out when your book decided it wanted to be something completely different half-way through.

Faves: First half.

Worsties: Second half.

Margot Channing, First Experiences: Jim Goes to Hospital

Goes a bit overboard on the details for recreational reading.

Bryan Charles, Pavement's Wowee Zowee

Read 2020

**

A narcissistic autobiography of how the author came to appreciate and write about the album, nagging its creators with inane questions in the process.

Craig Charles and Russell Bell, The Craig Charles Almanac of Total Knowledge

The predecessor to The Log met my expectations, and the transitions from Craig's observations to the completely different writing style of his co-writer were just as seamless. It was an Abandonedread until I realised I had enough shit comedy books to make a blog post, then I was contractually bound to finish the bastard.

Craig Charles and Russell Bell, The Log: A Dwarfer's Guide to Everything

Read 1997–98

**

Craig Charles poses for photos in biker gear, coincidentally looking almost like that character he plays in that sitcom he isn't legally allowed to name, while someone else writes vaguely sci-fi-themed observational comedy that gives way to traditional crude humour when he runs out of ideas. It's quite a mess, occasionally funny when I was twelve.

Katrina Charman and Nick Sharratt, Go, Go, Pirate Boat

Row, Row Your Boat, but with criminals.

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Abridged)

***

"This Nicholas anon leet flee a fart, / As greet as it had been a thonder-dent"

Historically indispensable, but the tales themselves aren't interesting enough to bother following the mandatory translations and annotations after a while. Graciously abridged, or I would've had to resort to an audiobook that would make even less sense.

Mike Chen and Angel Hernandez, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Dog of War

We don't need no stinking Borg in our Deep Space Nine, we've got our own things. No one sounds right either, even accounting for mind control. But I liked the First Contact-referencing cover, once I finally noticed.

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

Read 2020

***

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.

D. G. Chichester, Tracy Tormé and artists, Sliders

Some of the stories would have made better episodes than others, but the comic pandering makes it occasionally unreadable.

Tim Child and Dave Morris, Knightmare

***

For the first and possibly only time in the series, the novella's the more engaging, uneven half, a chronicle of bloody vengeance that only remembers it's supposed to be for children as it goes along. The cramped gamebook has one too many unnecessarily harsh mechanics to make it worth the constant restarts. Nasty!

Michael Chinery ed, Concise Field Guide to the Animals & Plants of Britain & Europe

****

I'm going to try to be more of an outdoors dad than I was an outdoor kid (not the greatest challenge), as much as work and not having a car allow, and I thought it would be nice to learn these things together. She prefers watching wildlife videos intended for cats, but this is usually a reasonable substitute. I enjoyed the League of Gentlemen reference too.

Michel Chion, Eyes Wide Shut

I remember liking this film, but this celebration of painstaking banality accidentally makes it sound like a load of shit.

Rachel Chlebowski, Pokémon: A Friend Like Pikachu!

The easiest Pokémon book I could find, I didn't think to check whether it actually had anything to offer beyond a weak excuse for a friendly monster gallery, but she at least appreciated the Team Rocket cameo.

Xanna Eve Chown, Dora the Explorer: Dora's Dance Show

***

Presumably based on an episode (with some weird and telling abridgements), the repetitive formula works well in book form, thankfully swapping some of the maddening call and response for physical actions that she was happy to perform twice over in public.

Agatha Christie, Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Read 2015

***

I didn't fancy dallying with Poirot or Marple (are those the only famous ones?), and accepted that whatever was left over would probably be more disposable by default. It is, but I did quite enjoy this side project replacing master sleuths with bumbling brats whose investigations into a seemingly staged suicide and cryptic last words mainly involve deceptive roleplay. The sub-Wooster man one was a bit annoying, I preferred the inappropriately morbid woman one.

Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile

Read 2015

***

I've only read one Poirot book before, and never watched him on TV, so I can't say whether this is archetypal or even an especially good example of the bilingual-apart-from-the-easiest-words Belgian sleuth. But I'll guess yes and no, respectively. I was trying to pay attention to who was who(m?), and who(m?) might have dunnit, but I didn't spot any of the clues and there's a satisfying dénouement (that means last bit). Less satisfying was how long it took for the promised death to arrive, about half way into the book, and the Egyptian setting only adds a superficial backdrop. Though Christie's irritated descriptions of the "infantile riff-raff" and "human cluster of flies" aggressively flogging worthless tat at every port do add a level of authenticity and are, unfortunately, timeless. I know that looks a teeny bit racist, but you just go there.

Jennifer Christie and Lyn Fletcher, My Little Pony: Pinkie Pie's Special Day

She's already got two parallel generations on the go, so I kept her away from older ponies for simplicity until she saw something appealing in this cover. I can't say I really get the crossover appeal of the later series, but it's Breaking Bad compared to this shite.

Simon Chun Kwan Chui, Book of the Wonders of the Galaxy

Read 2016

***

One of the most memorable sections of the classic documentary series Cosmos was when Carl Sagan took a break from educating us about planets and pulsars to imagine the types of exotic life forms that might have evolved in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. This is a whole book of just such speculations, based on the latest scientific understandings (I have to assume) and presented in ways that are easy to understand. Even if the extent of your scientific background is watching Cosmos.

Still, there's one crucial missing ingredient that's keeping this from being truly stellar. If the author could get the funds together to commission a fantasy artist to illustrate every one of these entries and bring out their glorious details, this guidebook would earn its place on coffee tables throughout the cosmos. Though it might be a bit awkward fitting it in your backpack.

Anne Civardi and Stephen Cartwright, Usborne First Experiences: Going to the Dentist

We try to find a new book on the subject every time her appointment comes up, even though they're always the same.

Ben Clanton, Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea / Narwhalicorn and Jelly / A Super Scary Narwhalloween

***

Another fun early-reader comic series, even if she favours the harder Phoebe and her conventional land unicorn.

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

Read 2020

**

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.

Steve Clark, The World of Jonathan Creek

****

A celebration of the classic era of a classic series that it turns out I knew next to nothing about, from its eclectic influences to alternative Creeks we were spared, with a particularly dark bonus mystery to solve at home. The only thing it gets wrong is never being updated.

Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End

Read 2020

****

'Guardian Angel' was a nice slice of heavy-handed colonial allegory and this is a very worthwhile expansion. Clarke hadn't yet learned to stretch out the revelations across a lucrative tetralogy, and while I normally prefer to leave some mysteries to mull over, getting full disclosure was satisfying, capped off with an emotionally confounding climax.

Arthur C. Clarke, Earthlight

Read 2020

***

I liked the short story a lot when I read all of those. This extended version must have added a lot by definition, but it didn't add anything to the experience. By taking so much longer to cover the same ground, it's easily the weaker version. Come on, you could fit loads of stories into that binding.

Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars

****

Your standard hero's quest turned star trek in an inspired far future setting that's so far down the line, and its machinations conveniently mysterious, that it doesn't come off as dated. I expect one of those streaming services will mount their own pointless adaptation of it one of these days, rather than having to come up with their own stories.

Arthur C. Clarke, The Deep Range

***

An improvement on the short story, the Stingray to his usual Thunderbirds makes a good case for aquatic SF. But I like space, me.

Arthur C. Clarke, A Fall of Moondust

***

Clarke writes a space disaster/rescue movie and does it properly, no matter how boring the result. It turns out more like 24-hour news coverage.

Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Read 2015

*****

I've never really understood why people get excited when one of their favourite books gets adapted for the screen. You already know what happens, and you know it isn't going to be as good as the version you're attached to. So I never bothered to check out this novel version of one of my favourite films – written simultaneously and released a little later – until now. I don't like it anywhere near as much, naturally, but it was an interesting alternative to watching it again, just this time. It would be a real challenge for the book to be more cryptic than the arty film, and you definitely shouldn't read Clarke's definitive interpretations of Kubrick's symbolism before you've come up with your own ideas. Even then, you're not under obligation to accept all of it.

Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama

Read 2003, re-read 2021

*****

Regrettably the last hard sci-fi book I read for a very long time as a teenager, thanks to a couple of abandoned SF Masterworks putting me off, Clarke's Dyson Cylinder awed me with its cosmic mystery, less so when the focus shifted to the relatably human. I shan't read the sequels, I don't want answers.

Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise

Read 2020

****

Earlier in his career, Clarke would have presented his space lift proposition via a concise short story, subsequently padded out to a less engaging cash-in novel. Later on, he would have got someone else to write it for him. This is the sweet spot where the elder sci-fi statesman was taking the time to explore the technicalities of his idea in detail, blended with literary pomp to scoop all the awards.

Arthur C. Clarke, The Ghost from the Grand Banks

Read 2020

**

I'm not sure why I was disappointed that a novel inspired by the discovery of the Titanic turned out to be a morbid tale of hubris, but however fitting, it wasn't very enjoyable.

Arthur C. Clarke, The Hammer of God

Read 2020

****

"Almost a millisecond of Arri Tech computer time had been devoted to the problem."

His last solo novel before he started licensing synopses to protogees, the world-building orientation that comprises the first two thirds of the novel before the compulsory drama shows that he never lost his enthusiasm for dreaming the utopia, he only learned to moderate his predictions slightly. We'll see in 2110.

Arthur C. Clarke, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

Read 2017

*****

Ranking Arthur C. Clarke's short stories

Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, Time's Eye

Read 2015

***

Having long ago squeezed his Space Odyssey franchise for all it was worth, the ageing Clarke embarked on A Time Odyssey in his last years of life... or let his young protégé do it for him and slapped his more lucrative name at the top. I have no basis for any of these accusations beyond general cynicism, but it's a pretty cynical book. The awe and enigma of 2001 are completely lacking in this nonsensical patchworking of eras, and as key historical figures are collected it ends up more like Bill & Ted, albeit considerably less triumphant.

Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl, The Last Theorem

Read 2020

***

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.

Jane Clarke and Britta Teckentrup, Leap Frog

***

Intimate day-glo jungle trek.

Stephanie Clarkson and Gwen Millward, Super Millie and the Super School Day

She was using me as a climbing frame by this point in library storytime, we didn't get much out of this one.

Dean Clarrain and artists, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Volumes 2-16

Read 1990-91, re-read 1994, 2015, 2017

***

Ranking the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics

John Cleland, Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

Read 2016

***

It might not be so scandalous in these days of 2 girls 1 cup and Efukt (I don't know about these things. I'm married now), but if Fanny & friends don't explore the more obscure recesses of the sexual spectrum, it's only because they haven't yet become so jaded to smut that those are required. The author does still feel pressure to up the ante with every encounter though, not least in the parade of ever more gargantuan male machines. It's totally dirty, but its exquisite descriptions of various lumps of gristle earn its place among the literary classics, so there. What are you going to do, criminally ban it for 200 years?

John Clift and Amanda Cuthbert, How to Grow Your Food: A Guide for Complete Beginners

Read 2015

***

Inspiring, but not as useful right now as it will be in a few months' time when I have my first garden. It's not like I'm going to remember all those stats. A nice little book, nostalgically British but not too temperate-centric, so I'll just ignore confusing foreign terms like "winter" and "frost" and hope for the best.

Faves: Neeps, tatties, salad leaves, all the herbs.

Worsties: All the fruit.

Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

Read 2020

****

My own false nostalgia for the 1980s doesn't share most of the touchstones that the 2010s revival was tapping, but it usually does the trick anyway. I found this laughable at first – the ultimate nerd fantasy of being rewarded for all those years spent playing games and watching movies, drowning in superficial references and paradoxically targeting the nostalgia of people too old to be reading it. It took about half the book before I realised those are the points he's making and that I didn't seem to be putting it down. He could've written a dry history of pop culture and tried to explain the appeal of crap graphics to kids, but he decided to show them instead.

Christopher Clouder and Janni Nicol, Creative Play the Steiner Waldorf Way: Expertise and Toy Projects for Your 2-4-year-old

I lack the practical skills to put most of these DIY guides to use, but there was some useful general play advice amid the wacky theories.

Daniel Clowes, Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron

Read 2015

**

I've quite enjoyed this self-published auteur's tales of dull people's directionless lives over the years, so I was interested to see how this early effort fared, set in a more surreal world of conspiracies, mutants and snuff films. Unfortunately, the story really doesn't pull together, which is probably entirely down to its serialised chapters being made up on the fly over the span of four years. At least he got it out of his system.

Daniel Clowes, Ghost World

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?

Daniel Clowes, David Boring

Read 2015

***

Something about this – I can't imagine what – gave me the impression that it would be back to mundane Ghost World/Wilson territory after the uncharacteristically action-packed Velvet Glove. As it turned out, there's an awful lot of murderous, apocalyptic action going on behind David's more humdrum quest for the perfect arse. This is probably technically Clowes' best, I just have a soft spot for his more authentically boring ones.

Daniel Clowes, Wilson

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.

Marion Cocklico, We're Going to the Doctor

Oh, deal with it.

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Read 2010

****

There's more depth and meaning to this modern fable than I chose to get out of it, content to enjoy the pastoral odyssey on the surface level. It felt nostalgically like the best bits of childhood Bible stories, before those were ruined by some people taking them way too seriously.

Aaron Cohen, Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace

Read 2020

**

This set of over-the-top cover songs live from church was apparently pretty important, but the story is told as uninterestingly as possible.

Andrew Cohen with Professor Brian Cox, The Planets

Read 2020

***

I didn't fancy sitting through another vain Brian Cox documentary, but getting a layman's update on what's going on out there every decade or so seems like a good idea. He only wrote the Mars chapter and let the other bloke write the rest, lazy.

Viviane Cohen and Colette David, Mr. Grumble

The French era remains sarcastically on brand with a bloody wizard doing it.

Viviane Cohen and Colette David, Little Miss Busy / Quick / Tidy / Brainy / Curious / Somersault

Read 2022-23

Learning that these were French translations made sense of their occasional off-brand strangeness.

Babette Cole, Bad Habits! (or The Taming of Lucretzia Crum)

Randomly given to us free at the charity shop when we bought a game. What was she trying to say?

Stephen Cole, Doctor Who: The Ring of Steel

***

The right balance of sincere cheese. It doesn't really suit this era, but it couldn't have known that yet.

Eoin Colfer, And Another Thing...

Read 2017

The only reason this money-grabbing estate-endorsed fan fiction is acceptable at all is that it follows on from the terminal downer of Mostly Harmless, which had spoiled the series a little already. It's like when they brought back The X-Files and Twin Peaks: the damage was already done back in the day, so don't worry about it. I could handle its existence. I was even prepared to enjoy it, unlikely as that seemed.

It's an affectionate but pointless imitation. Like many geek brand reprisals of recent years, it's more reliant on referencing things you know ("Wowbagger, whoo!" etc.) than making any memorable contributions of its own. We're lifted out of depression back into mania, and we slide backwards into the zany, zig-zagging style of the early books that Adams had decided to move on from 25 years earlier.

It would have been more interesting if they hadn't gone with the inevitably provocative Douglas Adams stand-in thing, and had let Colfer (and any other writers they wanted to invite along) write some Hitchhiker's stories in their own distinctive styles. Don't worry about fitting them into canon, we've got an abundance of canons.

Eoin Colfer and Chris Judge, Cloud Babies

Unexpectedly heavy and specific.

J. T. Colgan, Doctor Who: Dark Horizons

***

Long-winded, sanitised Viking shenanigans. The absence of regular companions in this post-Ponds stretch is good for continuity, but I missed having them around, almost like they exist for a reason.

Jenny Colgan, Doctor Who: Time Trips – Into the Nowhere

After her previous solo Doctor outing, this one overcompensates with grating banter talking all over the eerie ambiance.

Andrew Collins, Where Did It All Go Right?: Growing Up Normal in the 70s

Read 2011

**

I bought Andrew Collings's audiobook from a Collings and Herring live show, because I already had all of Richard's merch and I felt sorry for him. When I finally got around to listening to it, Andrew talking about his uneventful childhood in his Mr Bean voice passed some time, though I suspect that time would have passed regardless. I'm not the nostalgic demographic.

Leslie Colvin, Emma Speare and artists, The Usborne Living World Encyclopedia (Miniature Edition)

****

Alright, so we've just looked at some pictures and haven't home-schooled with it yet (if ever), but it looks comprehensive and well-organised for it. I don't think I noticed it was the mini version when including it in our big used book bonanza, but at least she can hold it.

Confucius, The Analects

Read 2015

***

Confucius say many wise and obvious things, but at least it's mainly about being mindful and behaved, so there are no problems here. The Master doesn't waste much time contemplating spiritual matters either, but he does like a good sing-song every now and then. 21st-century gweilo not feeling particularly enlightened however, as Bill & Ted taught him similar values when he was six. When it comes to time-honoured Chinese wisdom, it's a shame that more people prefer to seek out the ruthless lessons of Sun Tzu, based on how much I see his book around. This is, like, the contrasting binary opposite to that. If only there was an appropriate concept in Chinese philosophy for what I'm trying to say.

Jez Conolly, The Thing

Read 2020

***

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.

Jez Conolly and David Owain Bates, Dead of Night

Read 2020

***

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.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Read 2007, re-read 2022

****

Short enough to be spared from the skim-reading fate of Lord Jim, A Passage to India and many others I was supposed to read at university, this Stygian voyage was uncomfortable on multiple fronts, even if it wasn't as infernally psychedelic as I would have liked.

Martyn Conterio, Black Sunday

Read 2020

***

An over-appreciative tribute to stylish shlock and the spaghetti gothics, but positivity's to be encouraged. It goes on a bit with the unnecessary vampire lore to fill pages, but we all suffer for mandatory word counts sometimes.

David Conway and Charles Fuge, Who Woke the Animals?

Even the book gets bored of listing them after a while and skips to the end.

Gerry Conway, Gene Colan, Archie Goodwin, Gardner F. Fox and Marv Wolfman The Tomb of Dracula, Vol. 1

Read 2015

***

Superheroes were temporarily out of fashion in the early 70s, at least that's what whoever carried out Marvel's dubious market research seemed to think, leading to a brief era of experimentation. This one isn't in the same league as horror comics from dedicated publishers like EC and Warren, and thanks to the castrating Comics Code it can't ever get too nasty. But it's interesting to see how they stretch the concept into an ongoing series with recurring characters and a (rotting-)fleshed-out world, even if every single confrontation ends with the defeated count moodily flapping away. Like Hammer's Dracula films, these start out atmospheric and sinister and then sharply decline. It only takes until issue four before we're jumping through magic mirrors across space and time.

Faves: 'Dracula,' 'The Hell-Crawlers.'

Worsties: 'Through a Mirror Darkly,' 'Death from the Sea!'

Katie Cook and Andy Price, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Volume 1

****

Truer to form than the crazy Turtles comics I had at a similar age, though still with nicely distinctive art. I wouldn't mind getting through the whole run if she's game.

Nicholas Cook, Beethoven: Symphony No. 9

Read 2020

**

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.

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

Read 2020

****

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!

David Cooper, Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra

Read 2020

***

Prioritising style over substance, the author and other quoted scholars strive to visualise the complex architecture of the work, fractal or otherwise. I have no idea how this relates to what I'm listening to, but it all sounds clever.

Kim Cooper, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Read 2015

**

Great album, disappointing treatment. This freestyle series lets its critics do what the heck they like with their platform, and Kim Cooper takes the oral history route through this band/collective's brief life and pair of albums. The second half finally gets into the titular album's studio sessions and briefly analyses its weird lyrics, then it's over as abruptly as the band was.

Steven Cooper and Kevin Mahoney, Steven Moffat's Doctor Who 2012-2013: The Critical Fan's Guide to Matt Smith's Final Series (Unauthorized)

****

I enjoyed the excitable instant reactions, but could have done without the second opinions and their "of course" smart-arse referencing. It was more positive than I expected, no doubt partly for being caught in the anniversary fervour, but it was a welcome reminder after a decade's attrition that the tail end of this era was a bit better than I tend to remember. I'm looking forward to revisiting it through a child's eyes one day, when subjecting them to Daleks, Weeping Angels and the child actors from 'Nightmare in Silver' wouldn't constitute abuse.

Steven Cooper, Steven Moffat's Doctor Who 2014-2015: The Critical Fan's Guide to Peter Capaldi's Doctor (Unauthorized)

Read 2020

***

It's too soon for nostalgia or a proper rewatch, but worth taking some time out to appreciate a decent (if overly serious) era before my enthusiasm waned. As, seemingly, did this critical fan's, this being the last of his books.

Richard Corben, Den 1: Neverwhere

Read 2015

**

Unrelated to the Neil Gaiman/Lenny Henry project of the same name – I'm fairly sure those characters kept their kits on – this is about as absurd as nerdy wish fulfillment escapism gets. I was going to read something else from Corben, but when I learned about this swords, sorcery and sex "epic" in which well-endowed and politely shaved characters go around naked, bashing lizardmen's skulls in and getting sweaty together, I couldn't exactly resist. I was hoping for at least a little knowing irony or self-deprecating asides, but it seems we're supposed to treat the whole thing with reverence, which is difficult when the story's so rubbish. Corben's art is nice at least, if a little on the Claymation side. Den looks like Morph on steroids and Viagra.

Tracey Corderoy and Kate Leake, The Very Messy Mermaid

Rehabilitation after Mr Messy.

Tracey Corderoy and Tim Warnes, Now!

Relatable, but she's mostly over it.

James S. A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

Read 2020

***

Decent solar system building and distinctive characters to set up the series, but it mainly made me want to read some Firefly sequels instead.

Paul Cornell, Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Human Nature

Read 2019

****

Adapted as one of the best TV stories of the 2000s, the original novel is much the same, with the more expansive scope the format allows. Doctor Who is supposed to be on telly though, so the diluted telly one's better.

Katie Cottle, The Green Giant

I have the strangest craving for tinned peas.

Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Read 2007

**

The last book on my literature course, which had all been building up to this manifesto of entitled narcissism. What an anticlimax.

Kevin Courrier, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica

Read 2020

**

Rather than getting into the spirit and writing an avant-garde treatise, this is a disappointingly earnest appreciation and background to a boring album. The sincere comparison with the moon landing made me chuckle.

Jessica Courtney-Tickle, The Story Orchestra: Peter and the Wolf

***

Nicely fills the gap in the market for non-toddler, non-franchise sound books.

Lucy Cousins, Maisy Goes Swimming

***

Getting undressed is the fun part of swimming after all, and this simulator lets preschoolers experience the excitement at home, when the card isn't too stiff.

Lucy Cousins, What Can Rabbit Hear?

Read 2020, re-read 2021

I guess none of them are going to live up to her fish book (I've already been reliably cautioned that Maisy is "gash"). This is a pointless addition to the lift-the-flap canon, even directly copying some pages from Rod Campbell, but with more conservative hinging.

Lucy Cousins, Maisy's Bathtime and Maisy's Bus

Another book + game set, another generous refund when the rest failed to materialise. I may have stumbled upon a limited duration scam here, but I would've much preferred to receive the admittedly unlikely jigsaws. The stories are pretty rubbish on their own, but the first is darkly amusing in an Elsagate kind of way, enhanced by Maisy not having a voice of her own and wearing that unchanging smile.

Lucy Cousins, Good Morning, Maisy: Jigsaw Puzzle Book

She does all of her jigsaw books twice a day, so this was some cheap, dependable variety. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that some of the compositions with their identical poses and almost blank pieces are deliberately challenging rather than careless.

Lucy Cousins, Hooray for Fish!

Read 2020, re-read 2021

***

A bit extroverted for me (leave 'grumpy' fish alone, you have no idea what's going on in his life), but my daughter got increasingly into it with each telling, and its calculated ending seems to work. Though they missed the trick of making a Dad variant and making parents buy both.

Lucy Cousins, Peck Peck Peck

Read 2020, re-read 2021

The fish book ("feh" as it's known around here) was a grower, but this one hasn't caught on. She's a big fan of birds ("doo-doo"), but maybe it's too wordy, or maybe she's disappointed by the unoriginality of reusing Eric Carle's hole-punching idea from 50 years earlier. That's probably it.

Lucy Cousins, A Busy Day for Birds

****

Avian instructional brought to life at library storytime.

Lucy Cousins, Splish, Splash, Ducky!

***

It's basically 'what haven't I anthropomorphised by now?', but she knows what she's doing and their vibrance is comforting. It's no Hooray for Fish or even a Peck Peck Peck, but it's better than that uncanny creep Maisy.

Lucy Cousins, Little Fish and Mummy

I wonder if Lucy Cousins actually wrote these rhymes or they just had a ghostwriter come up with something adequate while they literally copy-pasted all the same images from the first book in different configurations. Lazy cash-in crap, but that's educational in itself.

Lucy Cousins, Little Fish and Friends: A Touch-and-Feel Book

The puny piscine swims through more genre shallows like a YouTube whore. I thought we'd done this one already, but there were some new fishy faces like the bumblebee fish amid the lazy reuse.

Lucy Cousins, Hello, Little Fish!: A Mirror Book

An abridgement with minor art variation and now-mandatory narcissistic finale, this would be fine if you hadn't read the original, but is pointless if you have. That said, she did insist on reading two identical Dear Zoos today, so maybe they're on to something.

Lucy Cousins, Little Fish's Ocean

The first of these cash-ins we've read that works as a proper sequel, with more new than recycled art as the relentless fish explores new depths, in the vertical rather than meaningful sense. Much too short, but panoramic flaps give you a bit more.

Lucy Cousins, A Good Place

***

It's nice that she's still bothering to come up with characters after all this time, though the lack of dramatic conflict between the open-minded refugees will make for a pretty dull ongoing series.

Lucy Cousins, Maisy's Circus Show

Someone else has a circus, there are her mates, go on, move them about. Do you still get anything out of this?

Merlin Coverley, Psychogeography

Read 2015

**

Reading this was pretty much an act of masochism on my part, as my contented flâneuring days seem to be behind me now that I live in a place where the art of walking has been rendered impractical and dangerous by factors such as non-existent urban planning, reckless traffic, pestering peddlers and prostitutes and the sun.

This light introduction to the literary, spiritual and political sides of psychogeography was mainly handy as a pointer towards some wandering novels I might like, though I don't think I'll be checking out Xavier de Maistre's A Journey Around My Room series any time soon. I get enough of that at home.

Merlin Coverley, Hauntology: Ghosts of Futures Past

****

Interesting exploration of vague spoop, though I was distracted by the audiobook narrator's insistence on doing stereotypical accents. I was waiting for an Indian academic to come up, but you'd be hard pressed to find a paler subject.

Bruce Coville, My Teacher Is an Alien

Read 1994

***

Between brothers, we had all four parts of this academic B-movie tetralogy, but I don't remember bothering past the first one. Compared to Bruce Coville's other alien series, it's pretty basic and maybe aimed at slightly younger readers who aren't already sneakily watching The X-Files past their bedtime.

Bruce Coville, Aliens Ate My Homework

Read 1996, re-read 2018

***

I'd already read Coville's unrelated but undeniably similar My Teacher Is an Alien, but hadn't found that interesting enough to continue with the series, so I doubt I would have bothered with this one if I hadn't already been drawn in by its compellingly stranger-looking sequel. Then been frustrated to find myself stuck on Earth for the duration as we spend time easing in the uncertain readers.

Even at 10, I found its kidbait title a bit patronising (not so for 'sneakers,' which was a cool American word like Sonic or the Toxic Crusaders would say), its relatable schoolyard stuff tedious and its humdrum villain plot an annoying distraction from getting to spend more time hanging out with the colourful ensemble and touring their cribs. They might be stock characters at the core, but it's the exotic flourishes that made them appealing back then and now, especially Phil the punning plant and his symbiotic cat-monkey thing. It's fair to say I didn't pick up on the gay couple the first time around.

There's no arguing with Coville's utopian outlook and moralising, which I could have done with paying more attention to back in the day, but there's also a nagging feeling that this whole exercise was just unsubtle marketing for an action figure range that never materialised.

Bruce Coville, I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X

Read 1995, re-read 2018

****

After that introductory prologue, we begin the trilogy and Rod's Hero's Journey proper. This psychedelic odyssey exploded my imagination as a child, so much that I ripped off its vivid descriptions of alien landscapes and Katherine Coville's character designs in my own juvenilia.

I was fresh from the Narnia books at the time, having enjoyed their imaginative detours more than their Warhammer battles, and if you strip away the technobabble, this tale of giant castles, mushroom houses and doors between worlds felt like a modern update. Rod's bratty cousin Elspeth is basically Eustace.

Bruce Coville, The Search for Snout (a.k.a. Aliens Stole My Dad)

Read 1996, re-read 2018

***

While either of the previous books could be enjoyed independently, we've reached the point where the series starts to take itself too seriously now and isn't concerned with winning over new acolytes. That's just one of several things it has in common with Search for Spock, one of several genre references that burgeoning sci-fi fans could retrospectively get as they grow up, but denied to British readers lest we embark on a quest for fags (actual reason for the title change. The new title isn't even accurate).

With its sombre tone, long pauses for exposition and more time-filling captures and escapes than an old Doctor Who serial, this isn't as much fun as the previous book, but the customary zaniness is still occasionally present courtesy of the bizarre evolution of Rod's pet and their travels through a monster's surprisingly accommodating digestive system. The cliffhanger ending's a memorable one too, but having let things precariously dangle for a couple of decades, it's probably time to ruin things back to normal now.

Bruce Coville, Aliens Stole My Body

Read 2018

****

I'd never read this finale before, which at least spared me from being annoyed by that cover. Should I ask someone to clarify what size and colours these creatures are supposed to be that I'm badly reproducing from black and white illustrations in a scene that doesn't take place in the story? Nah, they're probably tall and reddish aren't they.

Even without nostalgia to hold it up, this was one of the more satisfying entries in the series. Splitting up the cast was a good call now that it's got so crowded some are even having to share the same body, and I was impressed at how long that particular situation was played out. The heroic finale's inevitable but earned.

Sarah Coyle and Adam Walker-Parker, Pick a Story: A Pirate Alien Jungle Adventure

****

The interactive gamebook is alive and well, if obscure. There were still some surprises left multiple bedtimes later when she thought she'd done it all.

Sarah Coyle and Adam Walker-Parker, Pick a Story: A Dinosaur Unicorn Robot Adventure

****

She wanted to comprehensively exhaust the unicorn paths before bothering with the other lot.

Sarah Coyle and Adam Walker-Parker, Pick a Story: A Superhero Mermaid Dragon Adventure

***

The mermaids would have added value to the unicorns one, but they know what they're doing.

Sarah Coyle and Adam Walker-Parker, Pick a Story: A Monster Princess Shark Adventure

***

Not even close to exhausting the canon, though monsters and sharks makes it quite a toothy instalment.

Phillip Crandall, Andrew W.K.'s I Get Wet

Read 2020

***

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to party all day and night, but when I heard some of these headache-inducing shoutalongs on music channels back in the day, it didn't occur to me that their creator should be taken seriously as an artist. Seems like a nice chap, at least.

Michael Crichton, Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in AD 922

Read 2020

***

I liked the faux scholary commentary and the historical melting pot, but the plot wasn't any more interesting than an authentic saga would have been, without the anthropological value.

Michael Crichton, Sphere

Read 2020

***

This started out as an intriguing first contact procedural with a nice bunch of characters, before its screenplay colours came fully into bloom. Some of the science and maths in Jurassic Park still goes over my head as an adult, but this one's junior introductions to black holes, psychology and marine life just felt patronising.

Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

Read 1995, re-read 1996, 2019

****

I rarely read hard sci-fi books, so didn't mind that the interesting digressions on then-cutting-edge concepts in genetics, maths and computing came at a cost of the characters being stock templates. It doesn't capture the awe of the film, but it's a worthwhile supplement to fill in the background details more than may have strictly been necessary. I remember when Tim exclaiming "holy shit" was by far the naughtiest thing I'd ever read.

Michael Crichton, The Lost World

Read 2019

**

I was never sure if the inevitably lacklustre film sequel had actually been based on an inevitably lacklustre novel sequel, and apparently it only partly was. It's been a long time since I saw it, but I don't remember the plucky child adventurers making an appearance, and Hollywood decided to race-swap Sarah Harding in their wisdom because a diverse cast would have stretched credibility in an action film about dinosaurs in 1997.

Michael Crichton, Dragon Teeth

Read 2019

***

"We kept our hands on our pistol butts."

Dug up after the author's own extinction, there's no science fiction in this historical Bildungsroman, but its escalating action still has an eye to Hollywood. By going back to the dawn of paleontology, it works as a nice if strangely delayed prelude to his more famous dino books. Though I am slightly sceptical that they happened to chance upon a complete unpublished work on the author's most lucrative subject...

Lauren Crisp and Thomas Elliott, Noisy Animal Search and Find

***

The cover boasts of an extensive menagerie, but an arbitrary selection process decides which animals are honoured with sound. Humane hunting activities on every page add value if you bought the expensive book, but they're unlikely to get a look-in when you're working through the library's latest noises.

Lauren Crisp and Thomas Elliott, Noisy Digger

The most annoying of these so far. She liked making noises happen, but there isn't a child who'd prefer this weird, squashed hybrid over a noisy digger toy.

Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop

Read 2015

****

Having lately endured a few grating LibriVox readers too many, this is the first time I've chosen a book mainly for its narrator. Stephen Thorne is a comforting voice from my childhood, having read the Christmas story to me on one of my earliest books-on-tape, so it was just a bonus that the actual book happened to be really good too. Annoyingly good, actually, as I've already got several more mysteries lined up and now have a feeling they won't be as enjoyable as this quirky one. Thanks a lot, Crispin.

Gillian Cross, The Demon Headmaster / The Prime Minister's Brain / Hunky Parker is Watching You (a.k.a. Revenge of the Demon Headmaster)

Read 1996

***

I read these before they made the TV series, because I'm cool. Reading books about school is cool, right? Junior gothic sci-fi succour for Doctor Who's lost generation.

Gillian Cross, The Great Elephant Chase

Read 1995

**

Learning how to differentiate African and Indian elephants was my main takeaway from an otherwise dull rip-roaring adventure. Stick to the Demon Headmasters.

David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language: Second Edition

Read 2004-05

****

I'm not sure why I chose a three-pronged approach to university by studying English language, literature and creative writing, but the first of those got dropped at the end of the year for being too practical. In the meantime, this colourful and approachable guide was invaluable, even if its glossary of textspeak and emoticons was amusingly out of date even on publication, or just oddly informed.

Stan Cullimore, Sonic the Hedgehog: The Invisible Robotnik

Read 1996

**

I can't remember whether I persuaded my impressionable younger brother to choose this so I'd still get to read it or if I just didn't care about my non-existent reputation. I'd buy any tat graced by the blue streak during my unfashionably late and tragically old Sonicmania, even a picture book clearly aimed at much younger children like the worst parts of the comic. But it had the proper zones in from the games, so there was no point trying to reason with me.

Roald Dahl, The Gremlins

***

Surprisingly non-jingoistic World War II fantasy with mismatched but interesting Disney concept art.

Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach

Read 1995

****

I absorbed most of the Roald Dahls passively through school discussions and Jackanory, rather than sitting down and reading them, but I think this was the first one I gave a proper read. I got caught up in the dreamy psychedelic trip and might have finished it in one sitting.

Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

*****

The most glaring oversight from my childhood, which can only be down to school and library shelves not having a copy when I thought to look, but even today I was captivated by its psychedelic-industrial aesthetic and comestible body horror. Maybe his best, but I've still got gaps.

Roald Dahl, Twenty Nine Kisses from Roald Dahl

Read 2019

****

An omnibus of two original collections, this is about half of the short stories he wrote for adults. They're not all wickedly macabre with a comical twist, but those ones are generally the best.

Faves: 'Man from the South,' 'The Sound Machine,' 'William and Mary.'

Worsties: 'Mr. Feasey,' 'Mr. Hoddy,' 'Georgy Porgy.'

Roald Dahl, Fantastic Mr Fox

***

Lessons in pragmatism and subjective morality as a subterranean siege turns into a blow-out piss-up. This 'cider' sounds scrumptious!

Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Read 2019

**

I read assorted Dahls as a child, but didn't get around to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or the film, preferring instead to wait a couple of decades and read its comparatively obscure sequel at an inappropriate age. I doubtless would have got more out of its sub/pre-Hitchhiker's space wackiness back then, but the satire and relentless crap puns still would have been boring.

Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

Read 2020

***

A broad sampler from wartime autobiography to paranormal philanthropy, turtle-hugging wildlife conservation to sadistic animal cruelty and drab tales of vintage Britain. That should probably mean there's something for everyone, but none of it really got me going.

Fave: 'The Boy Who Talked with Animals'

Worstie: 'The Swan'

Roald Dahl, My Uncle Oswald

Read 2007

***

This whimsical and unexpectedly adult romp (rather, series of romps) feels like it's self-consciously reaching for the higher shelves of 'adult' classification, as if the author needed a release from all the repressed sexuality of his increasingly popular children's fiction, but he was still too much of a gentlemen to include much in the way of graphic description or recognised swear words.

Roald Dahl, The Twits

Read 2009

***

I heard this being touted as best Dahl, and didn't want to miss out even if I was a decade or so over the appropriate age. It's impressively nihilistic and relentless for a children's book, the eponymous ~~Twats~~ Twits coming across like an amalgamation of Harry Enfield's most loathsome characters. They get whats coming to them.

Roald Dahl, George's Marvellous Medicine

Read 1995, re-read 2022

****

Between school and Jackanory, I only had the vaguest memory of this one, but Quentin Blake's iconic scribblings brought it all back. An irresponsible delight and an approachable early read. Looking forward to it.

Roald Dahl, The BFG

*****

A timeless kidz' klazzik, even if some details have become charmingly retro now (though the Queen's still knocking about, as of time of writing). I might have read this one at school too, but any memories were overwhelmed by the Cosgrove Hall film, one of my earliest overwatched videos.

Roald Dahl, The Great Mouse Plot and Other Tales of Childhood

Read 1995, re-read 2021

***

The first and only memorable part of the author's childhood autobiography, at least I don't remember making it further when reading it in school, but I appreciated it more from this side. Perhaps an odd choice for your boxset's Dahl selection, but it ticks off a different genre.

Roald Dahl, The Witches

Read 1995, re-read 1996

*****

One of my favourite childhood books, I read it several times and found it properly creepy in places, with an emotionally complex finale that stretches the definition of a happy ending. The concept of child predators cloaking themselves as benevolent figures and charity organisations is the most disturbing part, because it's non-fiction.

Roald Dahl, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

***

Fun Learesque whimsy. Non-essential, but thoughtful filler for the omnibus.

Roald Dahl, Matilda

Read 2020

***

I might have read some or even all of this one as a child, it's one of the less memorable ones for being less ghoulish and comparatively humdrum until the second half, when the precocious prankster's "brain power" gets a sci-fi literalisation. It stands up well as an adult, even without nostalgia.

Roald Dahl, Esio Trot

****

This formerly mysterious late 'novel' turned out to be another shortie, a realist senior rom-com more in line with his adult tales where irresponsible deception is rewarded.

Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety

Read 1993

***

Released the year after his death, this will have been among the last of Dahl's works, not that I was aware of this trivia when enjoying appropriately ghoulish drawings of kids getting electrocuted and decapitated like Vyvyan in The Young Ones.

Roald Dahl, Rachel Godfrey and Catrin Morris, Ladybird Readers: James and the Giant Peach

These aren't the most gripping adaptations of the classics, but she still enjoyed it enough. The proper ones are waiting on the shelf.

Aboud Dandachi, The Doctor, The Eye Doctor and Me: Analogies and Parallels Between the World of Doctor Who and the Syrian Conflict

Read 2019

****

Being a literature graduate who contrived excuses to write essays on his favourite childhood sci-fi shows rather than hard books, I respected the very existence of this seemingly arbitrary mash-up, offering some critical appraisal of my favourite Doctor Who era while also giving me the excuse I still apparently need to learn about the more significant real-world events I wasn't paying so much attention to at the time. Reappraising escapist space adventures from the unfathomable perspective of a rebel turned refugee, this has the potential to kick off a whole movement of pop culture criticism under crisis.

Drew Daniel, Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats

Read 2020

***

The most apologetic entry in the series this side of the Celine Dion essay, the track-by-track analysis did seem particularly pointless this time around, but interviews with the band explain the sex magick connections and other depths that won't be apparent to normie squares who think it's just some boring noise or whatever.

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Read 2015

****

A book that wants to be a found footage horror film, mixed up in the sort of style-over-substance twaddle that I got away with throughout my creative writing degree so that I didn't have to come up with a plot and characters, the most successful aspect of this book is that it's genuinely eerie when it tries to be. If you did want to make the film, the shot-for-shot directions are all there for you in longing detail between the insane footnotes. If only he'd had the money.

Mark Z. Danielewski, The Fifty Year Sword

Read 2019

**

I don't fetishise physical objects, so fancy wooden packaging doesn't excuse this horror vignette being a really insubstantial release. Where are the rest of the stories? If you read a monochrome print-out that obscured the five-colour chorus, you'd miss nothing and be spared fruitless efforts to find meaning there.

Mark Z. Danielewski, The Familiar, Vol. 1: One Rainy Day in May

Read 2019

****

Even as a fan of wank for art's sake, this literary pilot episode was an uphill struggle for most of the first half until the semblance of connections started to become vaguely fuzzy across these disparate events happening to unrelated characters in different locations in real time (depending on your reading speed {and how much you've got going on in your life}). But don't all the best things start out quite annoying?

Spanning multiple genres and styles, some chapters are more welcome than others once those bespoke colours and typefaces become familiar.

Mark Z. Danielewski, The Familiar, Vol. 2: Into the Forest

Read 2019

****

There's more pretty word art in Vol. 2, which was the main motivation
to persevere. I'm not sure how he's going to keep raising the bar,
but I've already committed too much time to stop committing
more time now. My main worry is that the more pointless
and distracting side stories won't converge until Vol.
27.

Mark Z. Danielewski and Regina M. Gonzales, The Little Blue Kite

***

The Little Prince goes to art college. The artist gets a big credit on the last page, so it's totally fine that she's not credited on the cover and subsequently on websites, it's not as if the author set out to mislead probably.

Erich von Däniken, Signs of the Gods

Read 2011

**

The Swiss loon expands on his profitable theories. I was reading it for a laugh and possible travel tips rather than for revelation, but it's so inept that it just got on my nerves.

At least it's got some pics.

Colin Dann, The Animals of Farthing Wood

Read 2019

****

It was unlikely that reading the original children's novel as an adult was going to be as affecting as the classic cartoon was back in the '90s, but the adaptation turned out to be largely faithful. One improvement was gender-swapping some of the relentlessly male characters for a bit of balance, I don't know what Colin had against girls.

Bill Dare, Natural Selection

Read 2007

***

The comedy producer's debut novel about comedy producers looks down its nose at the populist rom-com genre. It just follows the exact same structure ironically or something.

Chris Darke, La Jetée

***

This delicate fetishisation of the anti-cinematic sci-fi curio sadly failed to conclude with the auteur deflatingly admitting that he just couldn't afford to make it move.

John Darnielle, Black Sabbath's Master of Reality

Read 2019

**

Likely the most lightweight and pointless entry in the 33⅓ series, the Mountain Goats guy eschews the customary technical analysis and oral history approaches to tell what's presumably a fictional story of an institutionalised teenager finding comfort in Black Sabbath. From this perspective, feelings, dubious folk tales and false assumptions rule over facts. You won't learn anything, but there probably wasn't that much to learn anyway.

Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire, D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths

Read 2011

*****

Concisely comprehensive (like I'm qualified to claim that), every home should have one. I would have held on to it for future reference, but my minimalist luggage left no room for sentimentality, so bookshelf swapsies continued.

René Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

Read 2015

***

The last book I read by this author was unfinished and drowned in allegory, but it still made more sense than this one. Maybe it all has meaning, or maybe he's a method writer and just stocked up on absinthe and took notes during his own trip through Hell. Simultaneously fascinating and a load of old wank.

René Daumal, Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing

Read 2015

****

With a title like that, you can't say you weren't warned. Abandon ship now or forever hold your tongue, you only have yourself to blame.

A strangely successful blend of Hindu-inspired philosophical rambling with harsh maritime/mountaineering realism, what really makes it work is the humour. It's one of the most eccentric things I've ever read.

Andrew Davenport, Teletubbies: This Little Teletubby

You need to have seen the classic sketch to read it properly. If I were one year old, I assume I would have appreciated the photofit art over drawings.

Andrew Davenport, Moon and Me: Tea Time!

Some TV tie-ins are capable of standing on their own when you don't have the context (we started blind on Peppa Pig), but what the hell is this?

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

Read 2020

***

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.

Peter David, Star Trek: New Frontier, Book One – House of Cards

The writer of some of the more worthwhile 'Trek comics, I thought I might as well finally get around to trying out his pioneering literary spin-off, not realising that the first book only amounts to a quarter of a pilot episode. It's more of the same if you need it, but doesn't especially persuade me to keep watching any more than the modern-day Treks.

Peter David and James W. Fry, Star Trek Comics Classics: Death Before Dishonor

Read 2020

****

One of the more worthwhile outcomes of Star Trek V's desperate overmarketing campaign (better than a marshmelon [sic] dispenser, anyway) was the resurrection of the DC comic, seemingly with orders from above to be less weird this time. You can see Peter David's bristling in his stubborn introduction of new supporting randomers to replace the old ones, but he follows the prime directive and comes up with a compelling, meandering serial that's true to the characters and the specific period. It would be annoying that the collection's page count cuts the story off before the conclusion if I was actually reading them in this archaic way and the covers weren't just for show.

Peter David, James W. Fry and Gordon Purcell, Star Trek Comics Classics: The Trial of James T. Kirk

Read 2020

****

It's been a pleasure to discover after 20-odd years of infrequent flipping that there are actually some good Star Trek comics out there after all, so it's a shame Peter David's run more or less ends here. The franchise would eventually embrace his serialised approach (and background soapiness, alas), and he's in the right mental space for the original cast's big-screen finale the following year. Stranger is that he also predicts the Seinfeld finale the best part of a decade early.

Peter David, Bill Mumy, J. Michael Straczynski, Howard Weinstein and artists, Star Trek Comics Classics: The Return of the Worthy

Read 2020

**

Peter David helps Bill "Lost in Space" Mumy to pen a vague tribute to his show I never saw before bowing out; J. Michael "Babylon 5" Straczynski makes his sole, unremarkable contribution to the Star Trek universe (Deep Space Nine plagiarism notwithstanding); and new regular Howard Weinstein bodes ill for the future of the series. There's a running theme of post-apocalyptic memoriam, so it's perhaps fitting that this was the last of these collections released. They arguably put out one too many already.

Matt Davids and artists, The Great Book of Random Tables: 120 D100 Random Tables for Fantasy Tabletop Role-Playing Games

***

Collects various slim rip-offs into a more substantial prompts compendium that's almost worth paying for, if it was more relevant for our needs at present.

Susanna Davidson and John Joven, The Hare and the Tortoise: An Aesop's Fable

Padded with superfluous animals, yet doesn't make space for activities at the end.

Zanna Davidson and Nuno Alexandre Vieira, Fairy Unicorns series

***

My four-year-old's first chapter books – paced at a chapter or two each bedtime – she was gripped by their generic fantasy adventure and eager to read more. It turns out this is a spin-off of the presumably completely different Fairy Ponies series, so we also have those adventures to look forward to when the unicorns run out, even if they don't have horns.

Becky Davies and Richard Merritt, I Want to Be... a Doctor / Ballerina

Read 2022-23

Variations on formulaic propaganda, this one equips you with some vocab and elementary anatomy, but you'd still better get some accredited training to be on the safe side.

Becky Davies and Jennica Lounsbury, Balloon to the Moon

This pretty picture book spectacularly failed as a soothing bedtime story as she talked over the top to make it less boring.

Benji Davies, Bizzy Bear: Ship's Captain

Interactive postcards of island life.

Gill Davies and Gill Guile, My Under the Sea Pop-Up Book

Hardly ripped at all. The accompanying rhyme (in poorly-aligned Comic Sans) is so bad, it even detracts value.

Nick Davies, Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media

Read 2015

***

Well, almost exclusively the British media, but it was still a noble project. When I lived there, I wasn't interested enough in the real world to read a book like this. It took moving to a country where politics and the media are sarcastically corrupt, inept and inhumane for me to start caring about things that matter, and when you're living in a place where tens of thousands of people die unnecessarily in natural disasters due to embezzled infrastructure funds, relief vessels are mercilessly taxed on arrival, Red Cross packages plastered with the local politician's mug and budding presidential candidates helicopter in and out to get their photo opportunity, it's a bit hard to care about your phones being tapped and other civil liberties chipped away. You've still got some libraries left, haven't you? It's really not that bad.

Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale

Read 2015

****

I wasn't going to read any more TV tie-ins this year (that didn't last long), but this looked more interesting than your cash-in YA novel or episode guide. A year-and-a-bit's worth of email correspondence offers candid insights into the creative mind – one of them, anyway – during what happened to be one of the better years of the maddeningly inconsistent but adorable show. For fans, it's also a treasure trove of characters and stories that didn't make it for various reasons. For non-fans... I don't really know why you'd bother. I don't have to sell this.

Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale – The Final Chapter (Book Two)

Read 2018

****

I'd figured this was the sequel to the entertaining archive of email and text correspondence between the former-minus-one Doctor Who showrunner and some other guy that I read a few years ago. Turns out it's a generous second edition of that same book, bulked out to double the length with another year of chat. So I didn't read the first half again, even if doing so would be more entertaining than rewatching most of the episodes it excites over in glorious anatomical detail. Revealing and insightful, I eagerly await Steven Moffat's tell-all.

Erik Davis, Led Zeppelin IV

Read 2015

***

It's never been my favourite album from Led (as everyone calls them). That would be the next couple. But with all its willful obfuscation, occult rumours and backmasking bullshit, it's probably the most interesting one to take a look at. Davis wisely focuses on the bigger picture rather than the nitty-gritty of musicianship. We're not dealing with prog here.

Jim Davis, Garfield at Large: His First Book

It turns out Garfield was never funny, but his obese origins make a bit more sense. Reading them back to back as unintended is a gruelling experience.

Jim Davis and friends, Garfield Annuals 1991–93

Read 1990-93

***

I didn't fully grasp the world-weary sarcasm and advanced vocabulary of the newspaper strips when I was pretending to be sick so my mum would read them to me, but they were better than the childish prose stories. The '93 book was the coveted prize after my dad taught me to swim on holiday, invaluable life skills evidently not being their own rewards.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Read 2009

****

An atheist Bible for those who grew up in faith and angrily rebelled, I didn't need any secularising and resented being told repeatedly that I had to read Dawkins' unholy book as if it was the required text for my lack of faith. I got around to it eventually, and it was a drag to learn the extent of the suffering that goes on in Their various names. I'm glad this was a big thing after all, it's probably relieved a bit of that suffering.

Gabby Dawnay and Alex Barrow, If I Had a Unicorn

Notable for incorpating the "also by the same author" page into the story.

N. J. Dawood, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

****

I wasn't fond of the public domain Arabian Nights anthology I read previously, but they picked out some delightfully morbid farces here, before it ta(i)led off.

Faves: 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,' 'The Tale of the Hunchback'

Delilah S. Dawson, Joe R. Lansdale, Keith Lansdale, Elena Casagrande and Silvia Califano, The X-Files: Case Files

****

A pair of tall tales more fun than nearly all of the TV revival.

Martin Day, Doctor Who: The Jade Pyramid

***

Ninjas and samurai are a glaring oversight of the TV adventures, now that you mention it, and that's enough novelty to see it through. Matt doesn't do the accents this time, for some reason.

Geeta Dayal, Brian Eno's Another Green World

Read 2019

***

This behind-the-scenes analysis of Eno's early ambience takes its chaotic cues from the same brainstorming cards used in the album's production. It's a nice gimmick that presumably helped to keep the energy up more than if they'd written it normally like a boring person.

Katie Daynes and Marta Alvarez Miguens, Usborne Lift-the-Flap Very First Questions and Answers: What's Inside Me?

***

She really wanted a gorier one from the big kid section, but was placated by flaps. Education wise, giving the guts faces wasn't particularly helpful.

Katie Daynes and Christine Pym, Usborne Lift-the-Flap First Questions and Answers: Where Do Animals Go in Winter?

Informative, even to an adult, but unengaging. Nice try, flaps.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

Read 2015

*****

One of the candidates for the first proper novel (others are a few hundred years older, but they're even more foreign, so don't get to count), this bona fide classic feels shockingly modern, even postmodern in its self-referential self-pitying and perpetual dallyings with sanity. For comparison, I find Dickens interminably archaic and he's over half-way closer to us. My fleeting acquaintance with this tale goes right back to asking my Grandad the identity of those funny-looking men on mismatched steeds in the nicotine-stained painting on his landing, and I'm glad I finally got round to reading it. I didn't even mind the excessive length this time, I just reasoned I was getting the full season's worth of misadventures.

Walter de la Mare and Carolina Rabei, Snow

Mismatched poetry and Christmas clipart.

Claire De Marco and Steve Brown, The Mermaid's Socks

A simple gag that early readers might recognise from The Little Mermaid. Generic Family Guy art, but they're supposed to be looking at the words.

Ana and Thiago de Moraes, The Night Bear

He's no BFG, I found it all a bit unsettling.

Oscar de Muriel, The Strings of Murder

Read 2015

***

I can't seem to avoid occult themes even when I try. Alright, so maybe avoiding covers featuring ominous, disembodied eyes would be a start.

My selection criterion for this one was that it's set in Edinburgh, which is always nice, even if it's Auld Reekie during the Victorian era when it apparently smelt like pish. Still, we get treated to the tourist experience as the city's familiar sights are viewed through the discriminating eyes of a stuffy Londoner, written by a Mexican. Beyond the nostalgic comfort of getting to hear terms like "ken," "hen" and "wifey" again, it doesn't add anything new to the mystery genre, but it does have just the sort of needlessly convoluted, completely insane solution that I always enjoy.

The Marquis de Sade, Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue

Read 2016

****

This feminised S&M (S, at least) reworking of the Book of Job is more than an exercise in literal sadism, as the uncomfortably teenage Justine's torturers are more verbose and philosophical than Fanny Hill's horny toads. I've no doubt the caged Marquis is making brilliantly incisive stabs at the regime throughout, but as I'm not at university any more I don't have to care about that and can just enjoy the horrific blue bits.

James Dean, Pete the Cat: Pete at the Beach / Train Trip / The Lost Tooth

All semblance of Pete's original story and personality increasingly wear away, but at least your kids are learning to read. I had Bangers & Mash.

Kimberley and James Dean, Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses / And the Perfect Pizza Party

Read 2023-24

Less charismatic than he thinks he is, she was bored by the repetition.

Roger Dean, Dominy Hamilton and Carla Capalbo, Roger Dean: Views

Read 2015

***

This is not the definitive Roger Dean collection, capturing the young artist when he was still just a few years out of art school and thus highlighting some charmingly mediocre filler that would have been pushed out of a fuller retrospective. His best-known album covers were already behind him, but it's a shame it can't include any of his misleadingly brilliant box art for rubbish computer games from later decades. There's slightly too much focus on Dean's impractical architecture visions and gloopy furniture that seemed like a great idea in the 1970s, but on the plus side there are plenty of double-page spreads for you to rip out and put on your wall.

Keith R.A. DeCandido, Farscape: House of Cards

***

"Make Liantac Great Again." A bogstandard filler episode that gives everyone something to do and is true to character. The other couple of novels supposedly failed in that basic requirement.

Keith R.A. DeCandido, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Gateways #4 – Demons of Air and Darkness

Read 2016

The crossover elements are more overpowering in this fourth book of six that you're allowed to read independently but are made to feel like a dick if you do. Quark's scenes are better than the main story again, and even though his cousin shows up, it doesn't descend into the lousy Ferengi family sitcom as those episodes often did. The Voyager elements dragged it down, mainly by reminding me that the series existed, and there's an overload of pointless cameos from That Character in That One Episode of TNG That Time whose names I recognise thanks to wasting so much of my formative years reading reference materials.

Jon Del Arroz, Star Realms: Rescue Run

***

I found the deckbuilding card game's sci-fi theme more amusingly generic than inspired, but at least one author felt compelled to set a suitably bogstandard space espionage thriller there. I'd still get a tingle when a familiar ship class or base was name-dropped, it's pathetic.

Ricardo Delgado, Age of Reptiles Omnibus, Vol. 1

Read 2019

***

I would've got more out of Delgado's silent film storyboards if I'd ~~read~~ looked at them at the time, at the height of Jurassic Park-fuelled Dinomania. I liked his scenic vistas the best, ominously pitting the pitiable reptiles against the indifferent forces of nature. The anthropomorphised action sequences were less enthralling.

Guy Delisle, Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

Read 2015

****

Being a cartoonist, this Guy preferred to write his perplexed travel blog in picture form. I don't know if he was going for the Tintin style or that's just how he doodles, but it works. From compulsory stratified sightseeing and suspiciously pristine enclaves to jittery day-to-day mannerisms and the endless fucking lying, it's a frank foreigner's-eye introduction to the absolutely insane Democratic People's Republic that favours resigned sarcasm over righteous anger. I might have been less generous.

Guy Delisle, Shenzhen

Read 2015

****

Another refreshingly sour travelogue, this time it's somewhere I've actually been, though I didn't stay long enough to pick up the dingy vibes the artist-chronicler did. Things probably would have been different if I'd seen more of real China for contrast, if crippling internet restrictions hadn't forced me back into cosy capitalism a few days later. My strongest memory is the aggressively overcrowded metro.

Guy Delisle, Burma Chronicles

Read 2015

***

Catching up with the artistic blogger's life a few years down the line, his extended excursions in the world's most depressing destinations are now dictated by the schedule of his NGO wife, and they're dragging a toddler around too. I've been to this quasi-hellhole, but as a tourist I had to stick to a rigid itinerary to make sure I'd actually have a bed every night, so I didn't get to see the real Burma/Myanmar. Seems it's basically Thailand, but worse. Or is that better?

Guy Delisle, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City

Read 2019

****

I read this Guy's three previous graphic travel blogs in 2015, but presumably ran out of months to fit the last one in. Better late than never. It's another city I've been to, although my cloistered visit barely scratched the surface of the depressing insanity and I didn't catch a war.

Guy's books would be valuable background reading if you're planning to visit any of these controversial locations, but since they might put you off bothering, they're probably best read as therapy aids during the recovery period.

Rusel DeMaria and Zach Meston, Sonic the Hedgehog 1 & 2: Sega's Official Player's Guide

****

About time I learned how to play these. Why are all the badniks gendered as male? Because they don't have ribbons and big eyelashes, I guess.

Kathryn Dennis, Snakes in Space

If Alan Partridge was pitching picture book ideas.

Bruce Dessau, The Official Red Dwarf Companion

Read 2000, re-read 2018

***

Having already dog-eared a Red Dwarf Programme Guide for a couple of years before finding this second-hand in the late 90s, this official but less thorough and outdated alternative (up to series five only and never updated) was mainly notable for all the behind-the-scenes photos. Reading again decades later, courtesy of an archive.org scan, it was mainly notable for all the little mistakes.

Bruce Dessau, Reeves & Mortimer

Read 2020

****

This illuminating if inevitably unreliable oral history of the second best '90s double act gets more in-depth with more people than a documentary would bother. The fact that it only gets as far as 1998 could be seen as a slight bummer, but that's what sequels are for.

Kevin J. H. Dettmar, Gang of Four's Entertainment!

Read 2020

***

A meandering mixtape of memories and erudite digressions that makes a good stab at untangling the borderline-incomprehensible debut from the Leeds-based neo-Marxist-Situationist post-punks.

Georgiana Deutsch and Ekaterina Trukhan, 10, 9, 8... Owls Up Late!: A Countdown to Bedtime

At least we don't count in base 12.

Georgiana Deutsch and Olivier Latyk, Race to the Rescue!

***

Raising the bar of noisy books by adding lights to celebrate the emergency services in several child-friendly situations. Better than Paw Patrol, but what isn't?

Joe Dever, Lone Wolf, Book 1: Flight from the Dark

Read 2014, re-read 2021

****

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 adventure that's ideal for newcomers to the format to get acquainted. Joe Dever's Prince of the Yolkfolk, if you will. Only rock hard.

Joe Dever, Lone Wolf, Book 2: Fire on the Water

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.

Joe Dever, Lone Wolf, Book 3: The Caverns of Kalte

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.

Joe Dever, Lone Wolf, Book 4: The Chasm of Doom

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.

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.

Joe Dever, Lone Wolf, Book 12: The Masters of Darkness

Read 2019

***

You wouldn't pick up a fantasy series at book 12, would you? Though if you were in a charity shop or hostel and desperate, you might. That's what happened to me when I discovered Joe Dever's decreasingly n00b-friendly gamebooks at book 11 before backtracking online, and the final book unsurprisingly isn't any easier to get into without the benefit of cumulative stat bonuses and items from previous adventures, despite what the blurb claims. I never got very far. Not the fairest assessment, but I wasn't having fun.

Paul Di Filippo, Waves and Smart Magma

***

Too adventurous in its posthuman ecopunk for this timid Star Trek kid, give me basic allegories and lumpy foreheads.

Philip K. Dick, Gather Yourselves Together

Read 2019

**

Even a bad Philip K. Dick book is usually worth reading for the throwaway ideas he packs in and Easter eggs reminding of better works. That's just one of many ways his debut novel fails to establish tradition. You can say that its vast emptiness mirrors the barren industrial setting, if you're feeling generous. There's some thoughtful amateur philosophising amid the tedious romance, but it's not worth the trouble of seeking out.

Philip K. Dick, Voices from the Street

Read 2019

**

Like many young writers, at least back then, part of Dick's learning curve was learning to cut down and not be so comprehensively dull. The semi-autobiographical character study is realistic but a chore to sit through for completion's sake. This failed novel didn't see generous publication for more than half a century, and he probably would've preferred it to stay that way.

Philip K. Dick, Vulcan's Hammer

Read 2019

**

Whether or not it was really the first sci-fi novel he wrote, as Wikipedia's dubious bibliography claims, this is clearly a less assured writer expanding his prescient short story about AIs stealing AIs' jobs by throwing in generic sci-fi action rather than idisyncratic oddities. The uncharacteristically straightforward and methodical plot is refreshing, but lightweight.

Philip K. Dick, Dr. Futurity

Read 2019

***

Heady themes like ethnic cleansing and euthenasia are the subjects of this early PKDystopia, dealt with in very trivial ways. Then our blacked-up hero goes on a pulpy time travel adventure featuring a literal time's arrow and it gets more fun.

Philip K. Dick, The Cosmic Puppets

Read 2019

***

Like a precognitive audition for The Twilight Zone, this short early novel of suburban cosmic horror has very few of what would become established as PKD tropes, helping it to stand out in the canon if not the genre.

Philip K. Dick, Solar Lottery (a.k.a. World of Chance)

Read 2019

***

The first distinctively PKD novel, its pot-luck dystopia is more satirical than credible, but could have been a classic with more recognition in the lottery of fame. The disparate plot strands don't pull together all that well, but that's the case for a lot of his books, even with experience. It's a lottery.

Philip K. Dick, Mary and the Giant

Read 2019

**

A worthwhile exercise in writing a three-dimensional female character – not that he'd put those lessons to use in most of his books – this unpleasant soap opera is less a waste of time than his other early 'mainstream' books, but only because it's shorter.

Philip K. Dick, The World Jones Made

Read 2019

***

A particularly dark and philosophical work exploring moral relativism and determinism, lightened somewhat by compulsory aliens because it's the fifties.

Philip K. Dick, Eye in the Sky

Read 2019

****

More conventionally trippy than his later works after PKD met LSD, this odyssey through the bespoke nightmare universes of diverse caricatures would've made a great miniseries and is the stand-out of his '50s novels. By literally getting into their headspace, the author lets rip on religious fundamentalism, McCarthyism, Marxism and other -isms in a warped contemporary setting without the usual veil of allegory.

Philip K. Dick, The Man Who Japed

Read 2019

***

The satirical fascist dystopia is slowly maturing, but not as tangible as they'll be later, feeling much like the contemporary '50s but with interstellar travel and borrowing from Bradbury. You can probably read more into this tale of futile rebellion than the author concerned himself with when bashing out words for food.

Philip K. Dick, The Broken Bubble (a.k.a. The Broken Bubble of Thisbe Holt)

Read 2019

*

Dick had written at least one sci-fi classic by this point and was on a roll, so to keep returning to this less fertile ground of contemporary California is just a waste of time, not to mention financially unwise. This tale of age-gap swingers is pervier than most, but with repetitive character types and situations, the non-sci-fi has ended up being even more formulaic than the dystopias, so not the change of pace you might expect. It might be more polished than the earlier ones, I was too bored to pay attention, but the goodwill's run out.

Philip K. Dick, Puttering About in a Small Land

Read 2019

*

If nothing else (I can't find much to appreciate), Dick's failed populist novels are a chronicle of the changing times, with the ubiquitous radio repair shop now offering TV repairs, more liberated sex talk and characters fussing over horror comics. The straying couples have children this time around, which might reflect Dick's own changing circumstances, I don't care enough to look it up.

Philip K. Dick, Time Out of Joint

Read 2019

****

Most of PKD's novels are too chaotic in their stream-of-consciousness padding to deploy premeditated twist endings, but this prescient Mandela Effect novelisation is a notably coherent exception. Seeming like a low-budget Eye in the Sky most of the way through, the reveal cements it as an early classic.

Philip K. Dick, In Milton Lumky Territory

Read 2019

***

Now that we've all got flying cars and android butlers, this tale of typewriters, small-town enterprise and pursuing the low-key American dream seems as exotic as the sci-fi worlds. More light-hearted and wholesome than his previous realist novels, this is one of the few that could serve as a welcome break in your chronological reading rather than a completist chore.

Philip K. Dick, Confessions of a Crap Artist

Read 2019

***

The best of Dick's non-SF novels, this was the only one that made it to print during his lifetime, and we wouldn't have been much worse off if the others had been left in a drawer. Loveable kook Jack Isidore is probably one of his best characters and a rare positive treatment of someone with mental illness, at least in the early PKD canon, especially in contrast to the self-destructive neurotypicals he cohabits with.

Philip K. Dick, The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike

Read 2019

**

A dark Californian Gothic tale of bitter rivalry, spousal abuse, race relations and remarkable skulls, this is one of his better realist novels, but we're back to being overlong and boring again.

Philip K. Dick, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland

Read 2019

*

I was hoping for more from the non-SF PKD apocrypha, but most have little going for them beyond providing a time capsule of American society and attitudes. By this point, the themes and characters feel recycled even more than in his most phoned-in dystopias. He wisely decided to concentrate on his more profitable genre strengths from now on.

Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

Read 2019

***

These multiple choice alternative histories are more credible and intricate than your average PKDystopia, and I was more interested in the setting than the political plot. Not sure why the occupying Japanese get the 'Jap' moniker while their Nazi buddies are more respectfully referred to as 'Germans' though.

Philip K. Dick, We Can Build You (a.k.a. The First in Our Family, a.k.a. A. Lincoln, Simulacrum)

Read 2019

***

Written well before Androids, but not printed for the best part of a decade, this is more or less the canonical Blade Runner origin story as the Rosen company dallies with simulacra slavery for the first time through the medium of novelty Civil War droids for the trivial amusement of off-world colonists, unaware of the dramatic irony of indentured Lincolns.

With existential andys, mood organs and delectably familiar names you can draw your own conclusions about, this almost reads like the very rough first draft of the more famous work before PKD realised there might be a better way to tell that story if he started over and turned this into a different story for the remaining 75% or so.

Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip (a.k.a. All We Marsmen)

Read 2019

****

A more cynical take on Bradbury's colonial Mars, with the focus narrowed to corrupt and paranoid bit players since this is Philip K. Dick. The outdated psychology is more distracting than the tech, but you can get over that initial awkwardness in time to enjoy things getting weird.

Philip K. Dick, Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb

Read 2019

***

This post-nuclear soap opera featuring talking animals and psychic cyborg thalidomides is more Thundarr than Threads, but more Twin Peaks than anything. Apart from Dick's own Deus Irae, which I would have recognised as a knock-off if I'd been reading these the right way around.

Philip K. Dick, The Game-Players of Titan

Read 2018-19

***

The game isn't the most important thing here, being more a gag to highlight the desolation and futility of life on this barren future Earth. The rules are simple, it's the plot that's complicated. Written during PKD's most prolific period, this might pack in more of his customary tropes than any other book. I'd think more highly of it if he hadn't kept going and improving.

Philip K. Dick, The Simulacra

Read 2019

**

One of the more outwardly satirical entries in the canon with its literal puppet presidents, though the fascist dystopia is too grim to permit chuckles. Because it was a short story stretched out to novel length, he throws in customary sci-fi digressions like telekenesis and time travel, with some extraterrestrial non sequiturs for good measure.

Philip K. Dick, The Crack in Space (a.k.a. Cantata-140)

Read 2019

****

Not one I've seen mentioned among the canonical favourites, I found it a more satisfying and sustained work than some of the more freeform novels Dick brainstormed out to the word count in the rest of the decade. The colonial and racist themes barely count as allegories, since they're explicitly called out, but they're more successful here than in his clumsier later attempts to cover similar ground. The imaginative solutions to the population crisis would have made a decent short story, but it's the twist involving a megalomaniacal space pimp that makes it one of the better novels.

Philip K. Dick, Now Wait for Last Year

Read 2019

***

One of the denser PKDs, its epic backdrop of intergalactic war and disorienting dalliances with simulacrams, simulations and sideways selves are let down by a miserable domestic dispute and the customary stream-of-consciousness plotting ending up more random than coherent this time.

Philip K. Dick, Clans of the Alphane Moon

Read 2019

**

I enjoy unhinged psychedelic PKD, so had high hopes for this tale set in an extraterrestrial madhouse that casts telepathic slime mould as a supporting character. Unfortunately, it falls back on simplistic caricatures of mental illness and our main story is another dull domestic dispute with no likeable side to root for.

Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Read 2019

****

Someone's taken LSD. Casually dropping satirical and ingenious ideas all over the place, this disorienting trip across space, time and mind would be one of Dick's best, if Ubik hadn't refined it.

Philip K. Dick, The Zap Gun (a.k.a. Project Plowshare)

Read 2019

***

This Cold War satire is possibly the 'zaniest' PKD outing, but it's no Robert Sheckley. Our everyday hero is a clairvoyant womanising comic artist, and that blend informs the style. I never fully got into it.

Philip K. Dick, The Penultimate Truth

Read 2019

***

Like many (most? all?) PKD novels expanded from short stories, I feel I'd rather be reading the concise originals than this weird mash-up. It's conventional for these things to go off the rails as the story gets developed/padded, but this lost me when it brought in bizarrely low-key time travel schemes and inexplicable immortality. The 1984 stuff's all good.

Philip K. Dick, The Unteleported Man

Read 2019

***

"A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!"

Don't believe everything you see in the brochure. Skilfully written to fit existing magazine art, PKD's shortest novel about a shady cover-up was later expanded/ruined as Lies, Inc.

Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, The Ganymede Takeover

Read 2019

**

The more toxic of PKD's two collaborations, this is the most overlooked of his 60s work, with good reason. What could have been a classic if problematic SF civil rights allegory is derailed by B-movie farce, atypical pew-pew action scenes and requisite perviness. The authors seemed to enjoy it, but they were bad for each other.

Philip K. Dick, Counter-Clock World

Read 2019

**

Like Red Dwarf's backwards universe, the internal logic and consistency of this world where you eat through your arse is way off, and even annoying if you're the sort of person who gets hung up on things like that. Not as annoying as the rambling theology and tedious misogyny of the main story though. The short story it's based on was probably a lot more tolerable.

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (a.k.a. Blade Runner)

Read 2003, re-read 2019

*****

I first read the book before I saw the film, which is the right way around to appreciate some of the unspoken context. I've never rated the core action story all that much, mainly loving the film for its visuals and soundtrack and the book for all the psychological gadgetry that was too zany to adapt, from the Theatre of the Absurd domestic opening with the mood organ to the literally manufactured entertainment. Stone-cold sci-fi classic.

Philip K. Dick, Nick and the Glimmung

Read 2019

***

Even by PKD standards, this is an odd one. A prequel to one of his strangest books, Galactic Pot-Healer, and more notably his only book for children, though initially buried and not exhumed until years after his death. A shame, as it's a successful experiment and I would have loved to have read his weird stuff as a kid. Maybe it somehow would have made a sort of sense back then.

Philip K. Dick, Ubik

Read 2019

*****

Traditionally, realising you're in a simulation is the beginning of the triumphant ending. Other times you clock it much sooner, but that information doesn't prove to be of much practical use. Mysterious, spooky and characteristically kooky, this is my favourite PKD [so far].

I bought the book as a teenager, after being impressed by Androids and seeing this recommended as another of the greats, but I didn't get far before inexplicably deciding it wasn't for me and eBaying it. Especially bizarre, since the phrase "I'll consult my dead wife" appears as early as page 2! I didn't deserve it.

Philip K. Dick, Galactic Pot-Healer

Read 2018

****

Starting out in familiar dystopian doldrums, but with a more sarcastically satirical bent, a fixer of broken pottery living in a broken future follows his predestined Hero's Journey to Sirius V, summoned by a senile elemental being to help raise a sunken cathedral up from the hellish depths. It's not one of PKD's most inspired or insightful tales, but I had fun.

Philip K. Dick, A Maze of Death

Read 2019

****

Like its similarly surreal predecessor Galactic Pot Healer, this is more LSD-inspired speculative spiritualism from what must be PKD's maddest era, even before the author started seeing visions from space that definitely weren't related to immersing himself in worlds of fortune-telling gelatinous cubes and other weird shit. Describing the mishmash of styles would make it sound unreadable, but it's held together by tension and the power of electric prayer.

Philip K. Dick, Our Friends from Frolix 8

Read 2019

**

This stratified dystopia's so generic by this point, it could be computer-generated. The characters are annoying rather than sympathetic and the customary casual sexism tips over into perviness. As a parable against tyranny, the happy ending has no practical application in real life.

Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Read 2019

****

Arrogant big-shot entertainer is mysteriously unpersoned and on the run in police-state America. I hadn't read this before, but I've more or less seen it adapted by every sci-fi show, including about half of the Twilight Zones beforehand, and I always enjoy the mystery.

Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

Read 2015, re-read 2021

**

I've been enjoying Dick's sci-fi-lite theological novels, but this similarly grounded tour through near-future-but-really-seventies drug culture didn't do it for me. I can tell it's more visceral and culturally significant, I guess I'm just more comfortable with the androids, virtual realities and zap guns after all. Pyew pyew, that's what I like.

Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny, Deus Irae

Read 2019

***

This complex satire of orthodoxy demands rapt attention and cross-referencing that I was too lazy to provide, what with finding it a bit boring in places and wanting to move on, but I'm glad I made the pilgrimage.

Zelazny's voice is clear in the more fantastical and theological digressions, which are some of the more interesting bits. It's also probably not a coincidence that it contains more bizarre and memorable imagery than your standard PKDystopia.

Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth (a.k.a. VALISystem A)

Read 2019

***

The graverobbed first draft of what would become VALIS (reworked as a film-within-the-more-interesting-book), this is less a hidden gem and more a biographical curiosity to see Dick struggling to deal with his own visions/hallucinations in semi-fictionalised form.

Unlike the tongue-in-cheek split personalities of VALIS, here the author cautiously offloads the mystical shit onto a stand-in character so he can remain upstanding and explicitly drug-free, until the sci-fi comes along to excuse things.

Philip K. Dick, VALIS

Read 2015

****

I read a little PKD as a teenager, but I came to the conclusion that, if I preferred what trashy Hollywood did with his stories over the books themselves, there was no point bothering to try out more. (This mainly hinged around the Schwarzenegger Total Recall, which is the pinnacle of Western cultural achievement as far as I'm concerned). When I learned about the heavy shift towards the philosophical in his later works, I decided to give him another go, especially as books like VALIS should technically be unfilmable. The first half is the author's personal research and theories disguised as fiction before the actual story kicks off, and courtesy of mental and chemical get-out clauses it's the sort of multi-faceted omnimusing that can be enjoyed by the specifically religious, wishy-washy and hellbound alike.

Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion

Read 2015

***

This is the official "sequel" to VALIS only as far as its theme and date of publication. We're now back with the trappings of trad SF, in the future with space, robots, syntha-wombs and stuff, but as the dying author is still working out what he believes, it's still preoccupied with Biblical lore. More unimaginatively literally this time around, as the infant god returns from space to fight the devil for the sake of humankind. The rapture isn't so enrapturing, and the author/narrator doesn't even play a dangerous game with his sanity by putting himself in it this time.

Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Read 2015

***

PKD was still contemplating the big questions in what would turn out to be his final book. Posthumously absorbed into the 'VALIS Trilogy,' its connection to VALIS is only a little more tenuous than its official sequel was, and while The Divine Invasion went full-on futuristic SF, this snaps back to unprecedented non-paranormal reality. Add a surprising female narrator – Dick's amends for (justified) criticism of old-time sexism – and this is far from a phoned-in whimper.

Philip K. Dick, Lies, Inc.

Read 2019

**

I need to refrain from making assumptions that I've read the maddest or trippiest Dick novel any time one turns out a bit weird, but it's surely justified here. The long-gestating expansion of his 60s novella The Unteleported Man, that PKD insisted was necessary but that never saw publication in his lifetime, the full version wasn't published until 20 years after his death. The new material is a literal acid trip that interrupts the decent story for half the book. I don't really know what to make of it, but it's no 2001.

Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

Read 2015

***

If you've committed to reading at least one 'proper' novel every once in a while to excuse the young adult books and comics, you might as well do it properly. Though if I'd done my research, I wouldn't have chosen this comparatively lightweight one (in tone if not in page count) which is more like a P. G. Wodehouse anthology chronicling some daft characters' various scrapes. I have a random memory rattling around in my brain of Frank Skinner acclaiming the book as being properly funny, maybe on Desert Island Discs or something, so that's the last time I follow his advice. It is funny at times, but if you're going to read a Dickens to show off and get absorbed in the lovely prose, starting here at the beginning isn't the best choice.

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy's Progress

The sarcastic, humanitarian commentary keeps this series of unfortunate exemplars from being truly depressing, but it's mainly interesting as an unreliable docudrama, with handy statistics to share as if they were facts. Even as one of his more reasonably-sized books, with a cast you can keep track of without a flowchart, it can't help itself from getting distracted. Such is the burden of omniscience.

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

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.

Charles Dickens, The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In

****

A New Year special rather than a Christmas book, there are similar supernatural apparitions and sentimental premonitions to its better-known predecessor, tempered by multiple-choice ambiguity courtesy of madness, dying hallucinations or plain old dreaming.

Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home

As slight as the eponymous chirper and as disproportionately chatty.

Charles Dickens, The Battle of Life: A Love Story

These get worse and less Christmassy each year.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Read 1999

***

The only Dickens I was ever required to read, these days I'd be more appreciative of the purple prose for its own sake, but the length would still make it an ordeal. I might even get less out of it, since at least I could put myself in Pip's shoes back when they were more likely to fit.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times: For These Times

***

The Shorter One / The Northern One, I still failed to get around to the least deterring Dickens for the longest time. Unsurprisingly, it turned out rather dreary and patronising.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Thanks to jigsaws, I might eventually get through this 7kg colossus omnibus after all, albeit spiritually in audiobooks. The tedious activity pairs perfectly with long-winded narratives brightened by colourful descriptions. The best of times, the worst of times.

Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Read 2019

***

Maybe I'll get into Dickens one day. I'd been meaning to read this one since reading Dan Simmons's pretend meta backstory Drood, and the recognition of names and parallel events still worked the wrong way around. It starts promisingly with an eloquent tour of opium dens, cloisters and graveyards, but then customarily fills up with characters and their tedious love quadrangles. The titular mystery is one of the least mysterious I've ever come across, so leaving it open-ended turned out to be more satisfying. RIP.

Rosie Dickins and Maria Cristina Lo Cascio, Usborne Stories of Unicorns

Vintage Ladybird vibes and weird beards.

Terrance Dicks, Doctor Who: The Eight Doctors

Read 2019

**

I've sometimes thought about embarking on one of these book ranges that tided over fans in the barren years, but there are far too many for my insufficient enthusiasm to bother with. I doubt I would've stuck with it beyond this false start to the Paul McGann post-movie era anyway, which wastes its pages on a tedious clip show rather than kicking its own thing off.

Marie-Anne Didierjean, Read It Yourself with Ladybird: The Princess and the Pea

Slightly more substantial than a flap book, but not a substitute for your treasury. The quiz section doesn't look especially challenging for kids who can already read it themselves.

J. M. Dillard, Star Trek: Mindshadow

Read 1998

***

A completely arbitrary selection for the only TOS novel I read all the way through, that's because it was arbitrarily given away free with Star Trek magazine one time. It turned out to be more interesting than the ones I'd deliberately selected from bookshop or library shelves and given up on after a chapter (Sarek, Crossover, et al.), so maybe there's a lesson there. Read what you're given?

J. M. Dillard based on the story by Rick Berman and Michael Piller, Star Trek: Insurrection

Read 1998

**

I didn't hate the film's guts like many people seemed to, though it's fair to say I wasn't awaiting its video release anywhere near as eagerly as the previous one. In that span, I'd graduated from junior to adult novelisation, how very grown up. This was only notable for including the deleted scenes, which was the right editing call in every case. Riker and Troi's library flirting remains one of the most cringeworthy scenes I've ever read.

Robert Dimery, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

Read 2015

***

I didn't bother to listen along this time, since that would have consumed too many precious days here on my deathbed. It's not like I haven't made many similar voyages through the presumed classics before over the years, so there weren't as many revelations this time around, but I gave a few more appealing weirdos a chance and it mostly paid off. That was mainly based on my existing assumptions of what I'd like though, rather than any persuasion from the reviewers, since their conservative write-ups are largely lacking in passion. If I want emotion and arrogance, maybe I should check out the 1000 worst of something next time? Though I did enjoy the desperate contextualising of introductions like:

"In November 1999, Berlin celebrated the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Wall, and Metallica unleashed an orchestral ode to joy." (The album has no connection to Berlin, they just noticed the month was ten years after another month).

Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

***

A gamer's gateway to reading, like adventure gamebooks didn't nail that in the 8-bit era.

Thomas Docherty, The Horse That Jumped

***

Pleasant dream fuel for bedtime.

Thomas Docherty, Into the Wild

Could have done with a few more imaginative zootech chimeras.

Laura Dockrill and Maria Karipidou, The Lipstick

Just try it and see if I'm as lenient.

Lynley Dodd, Slinky Malinki, Early Bird

Depressingly relatable.

Karen Dolby and Caroline Church, The Usborne Book of Young Puzzle Adventures

***

She's been enjoying the sequel omnibus a couple of years earlier than expected, so it's a shame these ones were mostly already done for her in biro. I'll optimistically assume the parents didn't check before they uselessly donated it.

Karen Dolby, Emma Fischel, Caroline Church, Daniel Howarth and Teri Gower, Usborne Young Puzzle Adventure Stories

Read 2021-22

****

More overtly vicarious second childhood curation purchased tellingly far in advance, I hope she enjoys these elementary story puzzles as much as I would have done. But I was too absorbed by animated franchises back then and didn't indulge in this sort of thing as much as I should have, bar a Crystal Maze Mystery and a Quiz Kids or two.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, The Gruffalo

****

After various spin-offs and cash-ins, it was nice to get a chance to read the actual story. Official finger puppets and activities kept her engaged at library storytime, let's see how they fare with non-franchised ones.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Monkey Puzzle

****

A good twist on an over-familiar but ever-reliable plot.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Tales from Acorn Wood: Postman Bear

***

Healthy competition for Pat that nicely incorporates elements of subtraction and deduction.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Tales from Acorn Wood: Fox's Socks

***

You're the one who somehow misplaced a sock in a grandfather clock and seemingly have no spares, so I can't muster any sympathy.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Tales from Acorn Wood: Rabbit's Nap

***

Peace at Last for wusses.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Tales from Acorn Wood: Hide-and-Seek Pig

***

Where's Spot with better aesthetics and personality.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, The Snail and the Whale

***

Ashamed that I didn't see the eco weepie twist coming even after all those viewings of Star Trek IV.

Julia Donaldson and Anna Currey, One Ted Falls Out of Bed

***

A counting book incorporating a plot is a nice change from numerical monotony. And it's about a teddy, which are always a hit, though make it about the child looking for their lost bear and you'd really win her over.

Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, Sharing a Shell

***

She was distracted by the artist's interpretation of the anemone as a kind of decapitated head. I think it's about divorce or something.

Julia Donaldson and Nick Sharratt, Chocolate Mousse for Greedy Goose

Phonics drilling via unhelpfully unfamiliar animals.

Julia Donaldson and Anna Currey, Rosie's Hat

***

Sweet story, nice drawings. The growing-up montage didn't make me tear up without jaunty music.

Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, The Princess and the Wizard

***

Repetitive but convincing modern fairy tale.

Julia Donaldson and Nick Sharratt, One Mole Digging a Hole

Eternally useful counting revision, she recognised most of the critters, except when the rhyme required obscure ones like doves. Too good for pigeons or seagulls, are you?

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Stick Man

***

It's only autumn, couldn't they wait a few weeks?

Julia Donaldson and Nick Sharratt, Toddle Waddle

***

She corrected some of the inaccurate sound effects on her own read-through.

Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, What the Ladybird Heard / Next / On Holiday / At the Seaside

Read 2022-23

***

Sensing a modern kidz's klassick, I told her this was my favourite of her library batch. She said it was the worst, because there were no unicorns in it. She got into them eventually.

Julia Donaldson and Karen George, Freddie and the Fairy

***

Reliably touching preschool fantasy.

Julia Donaldson and David Roberts, Jack and the Flumflum Tree

Julia Donaldson and her bloody refrains.

Julia Donaldson and Nick Sharratt, Animal Music

She likes animals and music, but this combination didn't impress. It didn't help that it can't use the actual names of most of the instruments because they're not convenient for the rhyme.

Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, The Singing Mermaid

***

Several shades darker than you'd expect from the glittery cover.

Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb, Paper Dolls

****

Probably her best book. I didn't almost cry over paper people.

Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, Sugarlump and the Unicorn

****

She picked this one out based on the cover, and it's not a bad glitter-embellished take on the old moral fable. We are so ready when a genie finally makes an appearance in real life.

Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, Princess Mirror-Belle and the Dragon Pox

***

A decent one-shot. I can't see the inevitable sequels having much to add, but maybe they'll surprise me.

Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb, The Everywhere Bear

****

A sweet adventure, apart from all the decapitated fish.

Julia Donaldson and artists, Julia Donaldson's Songbirds: Bob Bug and Other Stories

***

Time for the fun and unicorns to stop and the tedious alliterative learning to begin.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, The Gruffalo Puppet Book

This was my first run-in with the chap too, so this was a plush gateway for both of us. She was amused by the novelty for a few rounds, but when I suggested trying one of his other books without the interactive gimmick, she wasn't interested.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Tales from Acorn Wood: Opposites

Yes No again, overcomplicated with some semblance of plot.

Julia Donaldson and David Roberts, The Flying Bath

***

Good, clean fun.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, The Gruffalo / The Gruffalo's Child: A Push, Pull and Slide Book

This format isn't really suited to plot.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Tales from Acorn Wood: Cat's Cookbook

***

A cat and mouse learn how to conduct research. The foreboding undercurrent sadly came to naught when they ended up making macaroni cheese, but this is a pretty good series as they go.

Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, Who's At the Zoo?

A new lift-the-flap series in 2021. Innovate, you lazy cunts.

Julia Donaldson and Victoria Sandøy, The Christmas Pine

The inside story of the growth, murder and postmortem displaying of a plant. I hadn't noticed at the time that it was written by the official children's author general and thus a treasured classic.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Superworm Finger Puppet Book

I don't think I'm more prone to seeing innuendo than the average corrupted soul, but when a flesh-coloured finger puppet can't do any more than poke through a hole, stretch out and wiggle around, it feels as if this must have been a recurring discussion along the production line.

The gimmick completely overshadows the forgettable copy and illustrations, but she enjoyed playing with the willy. So much so that when I picked her brains trying to remember what we'd read earlier that day for this write-up, she remembered it instantly. I should take her to a risque joke shop, she'd have a field day.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Tales from Acorn Wood: Mole's Spectacles

Shamelessly Fox's Socks again, but I guess these aren't popular for their quality plots.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Let's Find the Smeds and the Smoos

An unusually cryptic spin on babies' felt flap books. A parody of the form, or just squeezing a successful author brand for every last drop? Who can say.

Julia Donaldson and Helen Oxbury, Welcome to the World

Predictable rhymes are a positive in this age bracket.

Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb, Who Lives Here?

***

Nice concept, if half as long as it should be.

Tommy Donbavand, Doctor Who: Shroud of Sorrow

I'd be tempted to single-mindedly obsess over the unwieldy franchise's 2010–13 ephemera if even its more promising novels weren't in the habit of tailing off unreadably as they go along. It wasn't worth my distracted attention after a while, but it started out well with a credibly cheesy horror plot, pop psychology analogy and subtle and less subtle anniversary nods. I should stick to the short stories.

Meryl Doney, Malcolm Doney and David Kent, Bible Stories for Children

Read 1990

****

My own Ladybird Bible was a bit heavygoing (literally, it was a slab), but my brother's was more accessible. Mainly for the vivid, expressive and occasionally ghoulish paintings that my inexperienced eyes couldn't distinguish from photos, despite the brush strokes. I got glasses at some point.

Kevin L. Donihe and Carlton Mellick III, Ocean of Lard

Read 2007

***

I didn't realise I was entering the bowel-upsetting realm of Bizarro fiction when I bought this as a semi-joke for someone who'd been nostalgically enjoying authentic Choose Your Own Adventures and [I] Give Yourself Goosebumpses, probably as an antidote to all the difficult study books. It was quite a funny parody, but we would have got more out of the real thing.

Emma Donoghue, Room

Read 2011

****

I don't normally read stories of harrowing childhood trauma, but at least this one isn't directly real, just more or less. I enjoyed the unique perspective at the start, so was disappointed when it went comparatively normal for a surprising percentage of book after, but that's just because I'm a monster. Looking back, the author made interesting decisions throughout.

Gustave Doré, The Doré Gallery: His 120 Greatest Illustrations

Read 2015

****

You know when you pick up a classic children's novel and flick through to look at the nice illustrations and intriguing captions of escapades you can look forward to later in the story? This is just those bits. The definitive engraver tasked himself with illustrating the greatest classics of literature, along with other works that didn't turn out to be so classic a century later. I'm not an expert, but a few of the best and best-known ones are weirdly skipped over, plus the one they chose for the cover is one of the least impressive and representative of the lot. This art is public domain and black and white, so I don't know why I assumed they'd care when churning this out for undeserved buxx and adding an introduction not much longer than this paragraph.

Faves: Don Quixote, Paradise Lost, Idylls of the King, The Divine Comedy... I want them all on my wall really.

Worsties: Perrault's Fairy Tales and Fables of La Fontaine. Maybe just because they're not as grimm.

Evan Dorkin based on the story by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Read 2019

***

It's not exactly a cinematic classic, but the Bill & Ted sequel was one of the defining films of my childhood and the one I'd most like to see in a restored director's cut, incorporating the various randomly deleted scenes that are still present in this premature comic version. It also fascinatingly suggests that Bill Sadler's Death was going to be an unwieldy skeleton of some kind, seemingly something of a last-minute decision after they'd got more important stuff like the costumes sorted. The adaptation was efficient, I get more of the references now than when I was six.

Madeline Dorr based on the story by Mike Werb, Doug Mahnke and John Arcudi, The Mask

Read 1995

**

Functional junior adaptation of the loud comedy film, with photos. Most notable in our house for that time my brother accidentally pissed on it, rendering its pages yellow and crinkly on the bookshelf after it had dried out in the immersion cupboard. Throwing it away wasn't an option.

Doug Dorst and J. J. Abrams, S.

Read 2019

***

A (fictional) cryptic classic with (fictional) handwritten correspondence trying to crack the code and the deeper mysteries of love, this had the potential to be incredible if there was more substance to back up the style. Between the unconvincing 'classic' text with its unsubtle ciphers and the angsty kids who succeed in decoding it while getting tangled up in their own convoluted conspiracy, all conveniently narrated for our benefit, the authentic presentation makes the suspension of disbelief even harder to maintain. The gimmicks wore thin after the first hundred pages or so, but it kept going. Lee and Herring's version was briefer and funnier.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Read 2015

***

Even the deepest treatise on morality and the human condition is going to seem a bit pedestrian when you're recovering from Joyce. I got more out of it knowing the depressing context – written shortly before Dostoevsky's death and in the aftermath of losing a child – and I'm sure it's rife with thoughtful quotes, but I guess after Ulysses I should have looked for something a bit more upbeat, dynamic and less specifically Christian. That said, I have an inexplicable fondness for miserable Tsarist Russia and always enjoy spending time there.

John Dougan, The Who Sell Out

Read 2020

***

The rock operas and youth angst speak for themselves, so this is quite rightly the album that could benefit from some explaining – a mission this chronicler embarks on to an overly digressive degree before finally getting around to the tunes.

Todd Downing, Gavin Downing and Steve Hartley, Red Dwarf A.I. Screen Extra Bits Book

These supplementary races, scenarios and items are fairly incompatible with our non-sci-fi-comedy RPG of choice, but I noted down the reminder that we could do a 'Bodyswap' story.

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

Read 2014, re-read 2020

***

The definitive origin story (that most of us come to retrospectively), I'd forgotten about the bizarre split that spends half of the novel following almost completely unrelated characters in a completely different setting with barely any relation to the plot before we finally get to the adventures of Jefferson Hope and the gang that we're all here for.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four

Read 2014, re-read 2021

**

Technically a superior sequel, I suppose, but the more laid-back padding made it feel more stretched out than its predecessor's gratuitous double feature, and not really deserving of the length. Its more intimate stakes for Watson could also be considered a plus, but feels off in light of all the episodic jumping around we're going to do. Basically, it's just a bit weird to do the movies before the show.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Read 2006, re-read 2014, 2021

*****

Tied with Paradise Lost for the number of versions owned over the years, a miniaturised facsimile of the first two collections was my go-to plane book for a few years, but it's luxurious to have these full-sized in a coffee table book to pore over with morning coffee.

Physically and thematically lighter than the novels, the Adventures are generally more enjoyable as a result, and Holmes' aloof arrogance now comes off as a funny character flaw rather than borderline insufferable. Plenty of classics, but 'The Red-Headed League' was always a favourite for its incredible overcomplication, and it's always refreshing when they get out to the country.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

*****

The earlier novels had their problems, but this rural gothic masterpiece gives the series much-needed room to stretch its legs and intellect after a few too many trivial shorts. It's the first time I'd read the original, but subconscious memories of variably subversive adaptations meant I was usually a step ahead of Watson. Or maybe I'm just a genius.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes

****

Unlike most weary franchise revivals, Holmes' reluctant resurrection is as good as the originals, meaning another mixed batch that starts out strong until the author exhausts the good ideas he's had in the interrim and starts to telegram it in before deciding to call it a day again, for real this time, definitely.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear

***

The final novel is a regrettable mirroring of the first, with the displaced denouement taking up half a book, but it holds together better. Where the first was lifted by the origin story, this has retrospective foreshadowing and the crowd-pleasing return of a classic baddie, just ignore the continuity gaffe.

Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow: Some Reminisces of Sherlock Holmes

****

The series enters its prestige specials era. With just one story every year or so, there's more pressure to be worth the wait and most fare admirably, dabbling in macabre horror and dark comedy to keep things impressively varied after so long.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Coming of the Fairies

Read 2015

**

I've long been seriously bugged and confused by how the creator of Sherlock Holmes could be so wholly taken in by the amateur photographic pranks of two teenage girls. After reading his (attempted) open-minded defence of the Cottingley photos and the existence of garden folk just outside our visual frequency range (David Icke says the same thing about the Reptilians), I've decided it's actually quite lovely, so he's off the hook. My scorn was instead redirected to his band of "experts" who pore over the exposures of paper cutouts to explain exactly why they can't be fakes and give their considered opinions on the evolution of fairies and goblins alongside the winged insects.

Arthur Conan Doyle, Tales of Terror and Mystery

Read 2015

***

"What an inconceivable fate for a civilised Englishman of the twentieth century!"

I knew there was more to Conan Doyle than Holmes, Prof. Challenger and an embarrassing defence of cardboard cut-out fairy photos, but this might be the first of his miscellany I've read. It's certainly his leftovers.

As the literal title attests, the two sides of this concept album are themed around 'terror' and 'mystery' respectively, with six tracks apiece. The horror is basically an imitation of his peers and the mysteries are sub-Sherlock, but each side has one pretty great track, one offensively bad one and middling filler. Your favourite genre cliches are well catered for, with this person turning out to be that person all along and characters diligently keeping their journals up-to-date right until their last breath rather than running away.

Faves: 'The Horror of the Heights,' 'The Lost Special.'

Worsties: 'The Case of Lady Sannox,' 'The Japanned Box.'

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Poison Belt and The Land of Mist

Read 2015

"Every great mind has its weaker side. It's a sort of reaction against all the good sense."

The off-the-rails follow-ups to The Lost World prove that sequels of diminishing returns have been around for a long time. There's also cause for concern when the dinosaur story is the most scientifically plausible entry in a series. The brief and apocalyptic second installment of Professor Challenger's adventures is at least another sci-fi tale, though grounded in absolute nonsense. The belated final volume has nothing to do with adventuring at all, as Doyle appropriates these characters as mouthpieces for his own spiritualist dogma. At least he didn't do it with Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

One collection too many doesn't do any harm to the legacy, though breaking down the wall to let Holmes narrate a couple himself is as disappointing as when Jeeves did it, even admitting himself that some of them are shite. No shit.

Malachy Doyle and Andrew Whitson, Molly and the Dolphins

Pretty irresponsible, but since we don't live on the coast with access to boats, it won't do any harm.

William Drabkin, Beethoven: Missa solemnis

Read 2020

***

A secular guide to the music and how it relates to the composer's other work (an oddity) and other masses (subverting the traditions of that square Haydn). It thankfully keeps the spiritual discussion to a brief consideration of the deified composer's authoritative scores, which are prone to sending less restrained Beethoven books into religious mania.

Chris Drake, UFO and Space 1999

Read 2020

***

Tackling two different series in less than 100 photo-dominated pages, this flimsy guide is true to the over-optimistic spirit of Gerry Anderson's live-action sci-fi shows, but it would've been smarter to stick to one or commit to either the production history or fictional profiles. It still made a decent primer to series I never really watched (and probably saved me from bothering), and his reliably horny descriptions any time a woman cropped up were amusing.

Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style

Read 2019

***

Reading about how to read and write right makes me feel productive. A veteran proofreader offers handy tips for those writing or proofing in American English, others can work it out. I got quite a few notes out of it. [AU: Are all the Trump digressions really necessary?]

Scout Driggs, Julie Driggs and Lyn Fletcher, My Little Pony: Pony Pop Stars

How can you play guitar with hooves? Ridiculous.

Eric Drooker, Flood!: A Novel in Pictures

Read 2020

***

Frans Masereel's woodcuts on drugs! I'll take a lesson from the text-free text and shut up.

Brianne Drouhard, Billie the Unicorn

Shop-brand My Little Pony adventure.

Diane Duane, Star Trek: The Wounded Sky

****

What fans want, but are rarely served by a Star Trek novel: cosmic wonder and adventure achieved through convincing technobabble with a strong grasp of character, though that part shouldn't be hard. It's also notably similar to some future episodes with experimental drives.

Diane Duane, Star Trek: The Next Generation – Dark Mirror

Read 1997

**

Doing a sequel to the famous mirror universe episode from the 60s wasn't necessary, but it was inevitable. So much so that Deep Space Nine would do it for real not long after, trampling over Diane Duane's continuity here. Unless they're two different alternate universes? Now you're just getting silly.

Eric Dubay and Kan Art, The Earth Plane

Read 2019

*

Indoctrinate your kids into the amazing world of Flat Earth truth with this really boring adventure featuring all your favourite misguided proofs from the zany side of YouTube. Remember – if you can't see something with your own eyes, from your limited and impractical vantage point, don't believe it! Unless you're generously interpreting your world view from a book written thousands of years ago, obviously.

David Duchovny, Holy Cow

Read 2020

**

Duchovny wrote at least one great X-Files episode back in the day, so I wasn't as surprised and suspicious as I'd be for the average celebrity fiction. If anything, I let my guard down. Kids might learn a thing or two, but Okja is less annoying.

Alex Dudok de Wit, Grave of the Fireflies

***

War = sad. There's not a lot to unpack there, so we're instead given the backstory.

Mike Dugdale, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Ultimate Quiz Book

"Ultimate" is overselling this blog post with ideas above its space station, but it put me through my paces, scoring a respectable 123/150 (though I dispute what counts as a two-parter, and the false claim that PKD's 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale' is a novel). There were also at least five typos, can't win 'em all.

Brad Dukes, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks

Read 2015

***

I recently had the pleasure of seriously creeping out my wife with a Twin Peaks rewatch, and I was itching to spend a little longer in that sinister world. I could have just wasted time on subreddits or reading a passionate blogger's desperate theories on numerology and colour symbolism, but instead headed behind-the-scenes to get the humdrum real story from the mouths of various spectral living room horses involved in the project. It was interesting, but it's fair to say the magic has been slightly ruined. Disappointingly, the book hardly even touches on the insane film.

Joyce Dunbar and Petr Horáček, Grumpy Duck

An instructional selected for entertainment purposes, it didn't really succeed on that basis.

Joyce Dunbar and Petr Horáček, Mister Boo!

Thankfully spares us the dead pet gotcha between his deterioration and preemptive replacement.

Polly Dunbar, Penguin

***

Another hand-me-down gift that should have longer waddly legs, though so far, she's lost interest each time and wandered off less than half way through. She's not really into delayed gratification.

Polly Dunbar, Something Fishy

I like to break out of the toddler stacks, but there's not much point reading this to someone who can't work out the unspoken scenario for themselves, and it's not a situation she'll experience. I'm not going through all that again. Still, a cat craving and graphically eating a fish helps that inevitable conversation along. Attenborough next.

Polly Dunbar, Red Red Red

Another handy, barely-camouflaged anger management manual.

Jody Duncan, The Making of The X-Files: Fight the Future

Read 1999

***

The X-Files film was a big deal, even if lagging a year behind on British terrestrial TV made it more confusing than it was already. This is a functional and disposable guide to how they did the effects and stuff, interspersed with photos of Gillian Anderson looking beautiful.

Lord Dunsany, A Dreamer's Tales

Read 2015

***

I don't know whether these tales, fables and vignettes actually came to the good Lord in his sleep, but some of them are dull and pointless enough for me to believe it. And there are suggestions that his recreational activities might have lent the imagination a helping hand here and there. The more dynamic episodes about battles and quests are set in pre-Tolkienesque fantasy worlds that are much like our world but with odder names. My favourites are the more atmospheric and distressing ones, naturally, taking us on guided tours of decaying cities and fretting about the afterlife.

Faves: 'The Madness of Andelsprutz,' 'Where the Tides Ebb and Flow.'

Worsties: 'Poor Old Bill,' 'The Day of the Poll.'

Lord Dunsany, Fifty-One Tales

Read 2015

**

I'm a big supporter of minimalism generally, and I was hoping that these tiny morsels would have the optimised quality of imagist poetry about them, but instead they tend to just abruptly fizzle out before making an impression. There's no consistency across these fables of farm animals, Greek gods, personified abstract concepts and ghosties. Did he just publish his notes?

Some faves: 'The Raft Builders,' 'The Unpasturable Fields,' 'Alone the Immortals,' 'The Reward,' 'Lobster Salad.'

Some worsties: 'The Hen,' 'The Prayer of the Flowers,' 'The Latest Thing,' 'Roses,' 'The Mist.'

Richard Dyer, Brief Encounter

Read 2020

***

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.

Jeremy Dyson and Mark Gatiss, The EsseX Files: To Basildon and Beyond

****

A finely observed and very funny spoof of exactly the sort of sensationalist supernatural schlock I was reading sincerely in 1997, though I would have enjoyed this one more. The chuckles do peter out as it goes along and the same joke carries on for a whole book, but I'm impressed that they bothered.

Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, The League of Gentlemen: A Local Book for Local People

****

This might have been in my collection from the time if they'd gone with less marketable packaging, but the unconvincingly literate Tubbs is merely our curator of precious paraphernalia and deeper local insights.

Alrightreads: authors A–D