Marvel Zombies

By Robert Kirkman.

Whilst this isn't the only book I have read since I last did one of these book bloglets. It is the most recent one beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. K.

Now I quite enjoy superhero movies and games. I have even read a couple of graphic novels. This however I found to be utterly terrible. Truly just the worst kind of thing. Maybe it's because, Shaun of the Dead aside I find zombies rather tedious topics.

This was just overly violent, gore splattered and totally uninteresting. The characters feel rather flat and stereotypical, the whole thing just feels poor.

There we go. A negative review. Next time, hopefully more positive. Also it will be a non alphabook.

Sheer ineptness

Right, I have ignored this blog for an age.

This is due to a number of factors. First I am inept. This has been established elsewhere on this blog. Secondly, I have been busy at Edinburgh festival and working. These two take up time.

I shall keep this one simple. I have put the A-Z thing on hold. I got annoyed with Rudyard Kipling. This was enough to make me pause and read some stuff I wanted to. These include, the Great Gatsby, some more Conan Doyle (aided by the brilliant Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss series).

I am also learning the clarinet (this shall be a mid-week blog topic).

I submitted a story to the Oxfam story writing competition, not heard anything yet. Apparently a judge is on holiday.

Not sure what else to say. Like I said, inept.

Who Murdered Chaucer?

By Terry Jones (The Terry Jones)


Yes, it is a book by the Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. However, that doesn't mean that this is a book that is utterly irreverent, silly and outright nonsense. Oh, no, Mr Jones and his co-authors instead take this book down a very interesting route.

Geoff (as I will call him) did just disappear around the year 1400 with no real explanation of where he went, no funeral, no will etc. For a man of his fame at this time it is highly unusual. So, Mr Jones et all follow the theory that he could possibly have been murdered. Now, this book isn't a simple, examine the evidence of who had the motive, means etc. It instead takes in a much wider scope. Looking at the political situation of the time, the whole nine yards as it were. This makes for very interesting reading as it teaches me some aspects of medieval history that I was largely unaware of.

Once the whole scene is set, the authors then don't go onto the suspects but do look at reasons WHY Chaucer could have been viewed as dangerous by the newly established Henry 4. (It seems that the A-level text of the Canterbury Tales is an incredibly shocking, salacious piece of work for its time).

They also don't argue solely for the murder line and do look at some interesting evidence that Chaucer MAY have lived past the year 1400, and also that he could easily have just taken a tumble off a ladder whilst white-washing. (they don't specify the white-washing part, I added that).

Now, they do suggest a candidate at the end of it all. Thereby not cheating the reader of a solution to this potential crime. I would reveal who it was but then you wouldn't have to read the book.

Overall, reading a piece of non-fiction has made a rather nice change to the otherwise fiction heavy challenge thus far. I rather enjoyed this book, the writing style was rather light but informative and not too heavy and dry in comparison to some non-fiction writers.

In other news, I am moving on from the guitar to the clarinet. A different instrument I know. Will blog more on it later in the week.

A Single Man

By Christopher Isherwood.

Now I know that you can see the words "Now A Major Motion Picture" atop the book in this photo. So you're probably thinking, oh he's seen the film and now wants to read the book. Well, I am afraid you are mistaken. Not seen the film, although after reading this book I am even more uncertain. I am of course curious to see if they have got the sheer emotion of it all transferred onto the screen. I sincerely hope that they do, because this book is quite simply wonderful.

Long time readers may remember me talking about my love for the likes of Bennett, Fitzgerald and Wodehouse and the sheer joy of their language and the characters they create. Well, Mr Isherwood can happily join their ranks. Some of the language he uses here is simply wonderful, utterly picturesque, maybe a little too so at times but the rest of it it is an utter joy to read.

Now I don't want to go giving the plot away, that's not my job, I am a not a blurb (as an edited line from the Prisoner goes). However sufficied to say it follows a lot of those universal themes that all good successful books do. When reading you really feel to connect with George despite the fact he is what a lot of us aren't. Unless, of course there are a number of you who are English professors living in 1960's America, who are gay, in their sixties and have recently lost a loved one. If you, hello and I hope you are well. Heck, that seems rude, so I hope those of you who don't fit into that very small category are also well.

The book itself clearly has some heavily autobiographical tones. That is very apparent to those who are aware of the basics of Isherwood and his life. However, you can feel really connected with the character. When George feels upset, you feel rather down yourself. The sense of isolation of being a single man who doesn't fit in with the world around him leaps out of the page and you find yourself feeling sorry for George. It also offers some interesting insight into one mans view of a world that was very different from the one I was born into.

As the book progresses and you get to know George more, you really do begin to like him more and more. Because it is all told from his perspective, a true first person, you get to see the world as he sees it. Feel the actions he feels.

The books is also about growing old, something that I really am yet to feel. The book really does take a very bleak approach on it all. An acceptance of death and a feeling that, rather than just a hey it happens. More a, it happens and it can be rather bally horrible. This makes you look at death and the whole aging process in a whole new light.

I'm not sure what else to say but read this and just revel in the sheer wonderfulness of how it is written.

Crocodile Tears

By Anthony Horowitz.

Another kids book, well I say kids, this is what some class as a young adult. Now, I came to the series fairly late on. I decided to give them a try after reading the Young Bond series and rather liking them, so I thought I would give what are considered to be a very good series of books a perusal.

I have to say I was very impressed. OK, so they are a very fantasy based concept, teen super spy. That is what makes it quite fun. Real escapism. They are very well written I have to say, now, the snob would add the dread words "for a kids book" to the end of that particular sentence. However I won't because I am not a snob. Now I am not saying that they are utterly brilliantly fantastically literature for all ages. However, they are written in a very clear, thrilling and yet in such a way that doesn't talk down to its audience. Which is what all good books aimed at younger readers intend to do.

Now, this book is the EIGHTH in the series. Now, many books do struggle with maintaining the series over such a long period. The James Bond series dipped around book 4 as did the Young Bond, they did however pick up again. This series did have that point and that was a couple of books ago. However this book really is a return to form. It is a good, page turning thrilling read. However it isn't all action, the book also educates. It for example has given me some rather useful little facts about GM crops and poisonous creatures. Whilst I wouldn't claim to be an expert on these, I now know more than I did.

Overall, you can feel that the series is beginning to wind down. There is in fact only one book left for Alex and then another one following another character to come. You really do get this feeling as you read the book. Characters do seem to be changing and the whole thing feels to be growing as a series. Definitely a nice little book.

Carter Beats The Devil

By Glen David Gold

This is my thirtieth post. The big 3-0. Not sure what else to say but, crikey!

That bit of useless trivia aside, I shall now move on to what this current blogule is actually about. The book pictured opposite. My letter, G. He, like F. Scott Fitzgerald is a brilliant example of the letter he represents as both his first and surname begins with the letter in question.

Now this book is primarily about a magician, automatically a winner for me, I used to love magic when I was a kid. I still do to some extent and have recently got a couple of magic books out of the library to learn some basic close up magic. I also love the brilliant TV series Jonathan Creek. It is also set in a period I like, the 1920's so already it is on to a winner.

However the book isn't purely about a magician in the Golden Age of magic. It is also a good thriller. Set against a backdrop of suspect assasination, we are treated to what can only be described as a real rollercoaster thriller.

This book is really, truly great stuff, the kind of thing I would ideally like to myself. It is funny, clever and a real page turning book.

Some twists are obvious I must say, however this aside, there are some real puzzles that make you think. Overall this is one of my favourite books I have read so far, to be honest, they all pretty good, I may have to set out to read something particularly bad to balance it all out.

The Rich Boy

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

OK, a much quicker turnaround for a post this time. As all good followers of the alphabet will know, after my previous post, which was about the letter E I would of course next be posting about the letter F next.

So, as the more aggressive types say, "What the F?"


Well, the F is F. Scott Fitzgerald. Now, I have never read anything by this chap before so he is the first of the many NEW AUTHORS, who I have come across in the course of this challenge. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect in my reading of this collection of some of Fitzy's short stories.

They are each linked by the process of unobtainable love. A subject I personally wouldn't normally read books about. However, these books are set in a period I quite like, as evidenced by love of people such as Wodehouse. Now Fitzy presents this world in a very different way to how Pelham does. His world isn't always the eternal, humorous summer of Wodehouse. His is just as beautiful in the use of language and the situations seen. Different but in a good way.

The stories themselves are very good and feature the universal feel of love and chasing that unobtainable partner. These are themes that everyone can readily identify with. They aren't presented in an overly sentimental, cloying way that makes you want to slap those in love in a desperate bid to restore sense.

Instead Fitzgerald presents people as what they are. Human. Now, that may seem a somewhat redundant sentence but allow me to explain. I mean that they are simple, flawed and at the same time simple wonderfully beautiful and Fitzgerald really does present this in his writing. He makes everyone recognisable without making them a character type. You read what he writes and see the type of person that he describes clearly.

In summary, Fitzgerald is so far one of my favourites, along with Bond and Conan Doyle for his sheer representation of character and his use of language. I want to read more, even though the loveliness of the language is rather depressingly unobtainable for me just yet.

The Bachae

By Euripides

Right! Yes! OK. Sorry, really, frightfully sorry about the sheer lack of a blog here. Basically I am useless. I just haven't bothered with one for the best part of a week due to sheer silliness and laziness. Needless to say, I am still here.

Ok. So whilst I have been away what have I done? Well, I started one book by a writer beginning with E and gave up. Yes, I gave up. Packed in. Couldn't be bothered with it. (It was George Elliot, in case you wondered). So instead I went out of my usual comfort zone and went totaly and utterly mad in my choice. I chose Euripides. The Ancient Greek playwright.

Now I don't usually read plays, let alone Greek ones, ancient or otherwise. So this was a somewhat bold choice for me.

Now, before I go on I need to get jokes out of the way.

What's a Greek Urn?
About 50 drachma (Euros) a week

Right, terrible humour aside. The book itself.

Hard going in places definitely. Keeping track of it all, with my limited knowledge of Greek mythology was hard. However it did teach me some very interesting stuff, so it was good in that respect. The one I read was a collection of four plays. Three of which I rather enjoyed. The other I found rather tedious.

There was some good overall themes in the plays and they felt rather modern, despite their age. The trick with reading a play, to yourself is that you have to read it in the multiple voices in your head. This is quite easy if you can create voices and visualise characters in your head.

OK, so. Views? I rather liked it overall and may read some more plays as part of my project. Whether or not they will be Greek ones remains to be seen.

Last Bus to Woodstock

By Colin Dexter

Another book by a man who has two names that are first names. He joins a list of such luminaries that are too numerous to mention. He follows, what many see as a tough act to follow in the crime novel stakes. ACD may not have originated the detective genre but he typifies it oh so many ways.

He created the detective with silly first name and some kind of addiction coupled with the partner who asks all the questions we want to hear. Where the two differ is in their choice of narrator, for ACD, we have Watson, dear old Watson. For Col, we get a general third person type.

Now this difference is for me what makes the two so very different. As mentioned in my previous blogule, I love the use of Watson, he makes the Holmes books for me. His little biases and everything make the books that little more human. Reading this I felt more reviewed from the story. I never felt the way about Morse and Lewis the way I did about Holmes and Watson. I cared for the two Victorians, here I felt less love for the two characters. At times it was more frustration than affection. Morse just seemed too much of a clichéd old school detective. Hard drinking, slightly lecherous. Like Gene Hunt but without the one liners. So here, the detached nature of a third person narrator didn't sell the book for me.

This isn't to say that the book is terrible. Oh no far from it! Yes the book is flawed, it's a first novel, one expects it. The characters are still fairly rough. Anyway, these points aside. The book itself is quite good for a crime novel. Plenty of the usual twists and turns in the plot, which as everyone knows is how you do a crime novel. The scene setting that The Dex employs is nice and vivid, not being familiar with the area around Oxford I could picture it all well enough. So for imagery, plot and characters The Dex does well. Now for some people that may be enough but for me personally, there has to be some heart and I just didn't get it with this.

The Valley of Fear.

By Arthur Conan Doyle (Sir)

OK, let's get this off the bat straight away. I quite simply love Sherlock Holmes and old Arthur come to think of it. So this is in some ways a love song for the two as well as a reflection on the whole book.

Now I have dipped in and out of the Holmes cannon at various points in my reading, err... "career". Can I call it a career? Yes I can dammit! So really I have often viewed him as a good comfort read, the literary equivalent of cake. If ever I'm stuck for something to read, I'll read a Holmes, whether short story of a full blown novel. They are my go to books when I am not feeling in the mood to be entertained by Terry Pratchett.

Yes, anyway, talk of comfort reading aside. What did I think of this particular side of the Conan Doyle canon? Well....

I really like the narrative style that ACD (good abbreviation?) uses. The use of Watson as a narrator, ever so slightly unreliable as he may be is a good one. He is the equivalent of the companion in Doctor Who. There to ask all the right questions. Without him to humanise Holmes and to explain how the man is how is, Holmes would be an entirely un-likeable swine. The way that the stories are themselves treated as stories being related to us as actual stories rather than just a record of events helps the feel of them. You don't feel to be suffering the "and then this happened" curse that can sometime be a trap that one falls into. Here Watson often uses some artistic license to give us some facts before they occur in the actual chronology of the book. His acknowledgement of these facts helps make the whole thing feel more like a story.

As I have already said, I view Holmes as a real comfort read. The methods of detection and their explanation and the sheer simple enjoyment of how the crime is easily revealed to a trained eye and mind is what makes it such jolly good fun. One can simply pick it up, read the story and not feel to have been overloaded with drama, shattering events or have a moral jammed down your throat. ACD doesn't preach, he just tells a story, plain and simple.

For me, the book was a nice light, not quite in the Paddington vein, which was about the sheer simplicity and enjoyment of the small things in life. Instead, whilst Holmes is about the small things and how they relate to the big things. Here the small things all make one nice glorious picture of enjoyment. A crime that can be solved and the game of getting there to be thrilled and savoured.

Paddinton Helps Out

BY MICHAEL BOND

So, as promised here is my next A-Z review. The lucky book in question features a great fictional bear and all round good egg. Paddington is brilliant and quite simply one of my favourite childrens characters. He is a great role model because he always tries his best in any situation. This particular series of stories sees Paddington getting into his usual series of misadventures with the laundrette and cooking a meal.

For me this book is largely what reading is all about. It's about fun and the sheer enjoyment of literature, the joy of his mishaps and the polite way he tries to just be helpful. If you ever want to read one of those books that can just make you smile as you read it and just lighten your mood read Paddington.

Blogday Friday: Let's Blog!

It's That Time Again (ITTA), not to be confused with It's That Man Again (ITMA), that was a radio shop. This ISN'T. It's my latest blogule. As it is Friday it's time for The Hop. The Hop is of course the section of the week where I don't talk about any of my current projects. Briefly though I have done my first A-Z review thing. I have read my second book for the project and that will be up tomorrow, with luck. I'm going to treat you a to a special piece of information, revealed here for the first time ever. THE NAMES OF THE NEXT THREE AUTHORS!!!
h
B. Michael Bond
C. Arthur Conan Doyle
D. Colin DexterEither on
Right, on with the Hop. This is the section of the week where I talk about another blog. Either one that I have discovered through the Hop or one I am already following before hand. This week, the accolade goes to Baja Greenawalt's Cozy Book Nook. The layout of the site is nice and the photo at the top is great. It's also got some great reviews and a bit about rhyming slang and has some a little about Australian history. Which is nice.

First ABC: Rememberance of The Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch

Here it is, the first in what will be my new series of regular(ish) updates about books what I am reading.

A as the more alphabetical amongst us know is the first letter of the English alphabet so it is obviously the place for me to start. The A in this instance is Aaranovitch.

So, the basics first. The book is a TV tie-in from the series that I collect. It's basically a novelisation of the TV episode of the same name. Now there are two schools of thought when it comes to TV adaptations, you either do a very bare bones type up of the script with some very straightforward and to be frank rather dull linking bits where people don't speak.

OR

and this, thankfully is the option that Aaranovitch has taken. You take the script, maintaining the lines and events but you add an entire plethora of additional stuff to it, thus giving you something MORE than what you got with the original TV story.

Aaranovitch takes the daleks, previously just blobs in cases with nothing more interesting to say than "Exterminate" and things of that ilk and really adds something to them. Whilst I wouldn't say he gives them personalities, he gives them some real depth. The sense with which they refer to the Special Weapons Dalek (The Abomination as they call it) gives a real sense of internal racism and fear within an individual dalek faction. He also adds some additional character development notes that take the story and really flesh it out, making an other wise good Doctor Who tale and making it a really solid tale.

Throughout the story we keep getting undercurrents of the past that lead up to the events in the story, background information on some of the characters that never appeared in the televised version. All in all, this is really a very enjoyable book. Short but packs a lot of information.

The book makes you feel slightly more involved in the story because you get to experience a lot of internal thoughts of the characters.

As mentioned elsewhere. I am trying to improve my reviewing technique. So hopefully the next few will be a marked improvement on this.

Blogday Friday: Change My Dear...

OK, loverly people. I told you yesterday that I would have some exciting news.


Firstly, I have joined the rather lovely Book Blogger Hop. This exciting and rather awesome site is a great community you should visit its home.

However my own exciting news is the launch of the replacement for WAR. Those of you with cryptology degrees and eyes may have deduced that it was something to do with the alphabet. You would be 100% correct in such a deduction. Basically, as mentioned elsewhere in the blog I love reading and read lots. However I often find myself at the end of one book looking for another one to do. So whilst in a bookshop I hit upon the rather fun idea of an A to Z reading project.

Basically, this involves me reading a book by an author whose surname begins with each letter of the alphabet. Simple huh? 26 letters in the alphabet = 26 books. WRONG! That is merely the tip of a very funky iceberg. I intend to revisit each letter on several occasions. The more observant of you may have noticed that no author has just one letter in their surname, they have several. So this is the deal. Once I have read A-Z once I go back to the start and read an author with a DIFFERENT surname beginning with A and so on. I will then post the reviews here on this lovely blog with all the other usual stuff, MFEW, TYISC and the occasional WAR.

Ok, news out the way. Back to The Hop. It needs capitalising I think. Part of the bit with The Hop (capitals again) is that you get to discover a lot of other blogs about books. This will be the first of many I suggest to try.

I couldn't help but love the fact that this particualr blog has a feature about favourite bookmarks! I love bookmarks! They are brilliant, some are so wonderful creative and good to look at. Some are just so OTT with all the unnecessary stuff on them. They are quite simply lovely. They also help you keep your place in the book. Which can't be a bad thing. So, visit Entomology of a Bookworm and see some nice bookmarks and more.

Is it the end? Has the moment been prepared for?

OK, after yesterdays rather maudlin post full of apologies and the like I feel a second post is in order.

First a quick writing update. Long time readers will know that I entered a couple of writing opportunity things for Big Finish a while ago. Well I haven't heard anything yet BUT they are perilously close to announcing the fortunate winners. I'm no kidding when I say that my heart rate has shot up whilst listening to that bit of news I am so nervous about it. Apparently the audio entries are down to 12 finalists who will be sent off to the BBC for approval on the stories, checking they are not going to do anything like it soon. The short stories have been selected and are currently sat in an office somewhere at the BBC awaiting approval. Hopefully I will have some very positive news on all this soon. Fingers crossed!!

Alas the guitar has had to be put on hold for a week as I have sprained my elbow! Yes, slightly foolishly I have injured myself! Rather spectacularly done I may add. Basically I am a fencer and whilst leading a warm-up session at my local club I fell over. Not once but twice! The first time into a wall and the second on the floor. So my playing has to be put on hold whilst I recover.
Now, on with the news. I think WAR may be put on a back burner, too much aggression ain't good for you etc. However I am pleased to offer you a teaser for a new feature set to be announced tomorrow.

Below is a cryptic teaser.