Whats everyone reading?

[Demon Chicken]

I've started re-reading Robin Hobb's "solider son" trilogy, mainly since I haven't worked up the courage to try and tackle the original HC Anderson kiddie stories in the original Danish yet.

[Zarjazzer]

Finished Blood Royal by Jonathan Green almost breathless such is the books unflagging pace. Bought a book Twilight of Kerberos -Engines of the Apocalypse (what a happy title) by Mike Wild. I really got it cos of th cover which I liked and who was it done by?

Why a certain Mr Greg Staples...

He'll go far that boy mark my words young uns!

[HOO-HAA]

Finished Richard Matheson's Earthbound. Good ghost story despite the somewhat clumsy erotica lumped in. I must admit it's only the second Matheson book I have read (I am Legend, of course, being the first) but I find his style of writing very accessible and his characters to be well developed. I have Hellhouse on the 'to read' pile but may leave it a while as I just watched the movie adaptation last night. 

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

H P Lovecraft Omnibus 3: The haunter in the Dark.

It's just as well I'm reading it on the bog as I'm pooing myself with terror. Very racist but it was a different age Mr Lovecraft grew up in.

[puggdogg]

Judge Dredd Eclipse

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Nation by Terry Pratchett, so far it's a bit different to his discworld stuff

[SmallBlueThing]

HOO-HAA: Hell House is magnificent. I devoured it shortly after first seeing the movie in the mid nineties, and it started a love affair with matheson that continues to this day.
Move it to the top of the pile!
Im ploughing through the Sinister Dexters i bought from mongoose in the sale, and i can honestly say that the strip is up in my top five of things tharg has run. Downlode, as a city, is- for me- even more evocative than mc1, and i get the same sense of 'knowing it' from abnett's work as i do from china mieville's London, or novels like Pedido Street Station.
On my phone, cant check, but what other trades have rebellion put out beyond the first three dc ones?
SBT

[puggdogg]

Nation by Terry Pratchett, so far it's a bit different to his discworld stuff

Nation was the first non-DW book I've read by Pratchett. I liked it quite a bit but not as much as some others. I think Good Omens is his best non-DW book.

Pratchett is my favourite author. My second daughters middle name is Pratchett.

[HdE]

Been reading Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan over the last few days.

Just finished the arc with the oh-so-memorable Stomponato the dog. The culmination of his character arc made me cry with laughter!

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Loved Transmetropolitan, there's rumours kicking about that none other than Patrick Stewart wants to make it into a movie

[ghostpockets]

A new city means a new library, and this one has a monster crop of graphic novels (or bande dessinée as they are called in these parts). They haven't got any 2000ad trades in yet, but I was surprised and heartened to see a complete run of Charley's War on the shelves. I lugged home a healthy crop of genius today and am making steady progeess through them already. If you'll entertain me I will regale ye with my take on what I read so far.

Art Speigelman's In The Shadow of No Towers essentially recounts his experience of and reaction to 9/11. This is more akin to his Breakdowns book than Maus and the first half is just as ingenious. Unfortunately the second half is merely reprints of old newspaper strips from the 1900s which are tenuously linked Art's earlier strips (earlier in the book I mean, not time. He is not as far as I know a time traveller). They are great and all, especially the page depicting the Kinder Kids sailing away from New York in their tin bath, but I wanted real art... um, I mean Art. This was a deceptively slim volume, deceptive in the fact that all the pages are thick cardboard giving it the outward appearance of a hefty tome, and left me wanting more. Annoyingly in the introduction Art describes strips that he had wanted to do but hadn't the time/inclination for. All in all a very nice book for your coffee table but far less fulfilling than his earlier works.

Chester Brown's The Playboy, an early effort by a local genie arse of my adopted city. Canada is a breeding ground for these alternative comix autobiography types it seems. This book could have easily been subtitled Confessions of a Teenage Wanker. Twas enjoyable but not a stone cold classic, I have taken one of his later efforts out as well and have higher hopes for that.

I am about half way through Doug Tenapel's Ghostopolis, great cartoony stuff from the creator of Earthworm Jim. Already enjoying this a lot. There is a hilarious sequence detailing a battle between a skeletal horse and a fossilised velociraptor which is worth the admission price alone (and I'm just renting it so am really winning ).

I have another six books that I shall be wading through over the next week so I expect I shall be back to chat about them soon. Huzzah!

[Dandontdare]

I am about half way through Doug Tenapel's Ghostopolis, great cartoony stuff from the creator of Earthworm Jim.

Just googled this as I didn't think I'd heard of him, but it turns out I HAVE read one of his books - Black Cherry - an insane and very enjoyable story of gangsters, priests and aliens. I'll have to seek out the rest of his stuff - any recommdations?

[Strontium Jimmy]

'Anathem' by Neal Stephenson. Not many writers could produce a story about an order of monk-like characters who live in seclusion and mainly research, ponder and discuss mathematics, cosmology and the like their whole lives and make this entertaining.

[TordelBack]

'Anathem' by Neal Stephenson.

Absolutely loved Anathem start to finish.  A huge and very rewarding read, and not remotely as difficult as some reviewers made out at the time.

For myself, I'm still struggling manfully through my father-in-law's mound of castoffs.  S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire was as predicted The Tower Kingset in Oregon, but grud help me I loved it.  It takes a refreshingly explicit anthropic viewpoint, whereby the 1% of the population who survive this inexplicable apocalypse are by definition those with odd conjunctions of appropriate skills and attitudes, and further that belief spreads through necessity.  Offputtingly this means that Tolkien LARP'ers, historical re-enactors, pagan hippies and craft blacksmiths will inherit the Earth, but it's all done so briskly and good-naturedly that I've put the sequel on my Christmas list.  

Recommended, with the caveat that there's a lot of earth goddess worshipping and harvest festivals in between the mounted archery and cannibal cook-outs.

Next on the heap is The Eternity Artifact my first-ever L. E. Modesitt Jr. book, an author I always thought was female while avoiding (her) vast acres of shelf space in every bookshop that has a SF section,  but it turns out that it's a bloke called Leland who is indeed more prolific that Pratchett.  I'm halfway through, but so far this is a pretty good pastiche of a later Clarke novel, using four disparate narrators on an intergalactic archaeological expedition of huge political importance, and I'm quite keen to see how it plays out.  

Unfortunately the writing is painful, especially when Leland tries to make his narrators distinctive by either using an online thesaurus on every single word (for the Academic, who we are repeatedly told is Wordy) or dropping random pronouns (for the Pilot, who we are repeatedly told is Terse).   The editing is also non-existant - there's a major typo every couple of pages, and a page-and-half long speech by a politico is repeated verbatim when two different narrators expereince it.  The fact that there's also an awful lot of long repetitive pre-flight checklists suggests to me that Leland has his eye on the page count.  Still, it's holding my interest.

[SmallBlueThing]

'The Only Good Dalek', by justin richards and mike coilins- first in potentially a new range of hardback bbc dr who graphic novels. 128 pages, £12.99 (or £9.99 from waterstones).
Havent actually started it yet, but i bought this to support the form, if not the execution. I dont know quite what to say about the art other than i really liked mike collins's slaine back in the day. But as i say, i havent read yet, and am hoping that it flows well. But! it has ogrons and space battles and jungle planets in it! that's MY dr who. Sadly, it's also got the current dimwit and his blank companion, so it's not. I may go through it later with a pen and turn all the pictures of the new boy into pertwee (wouldnt be too hard actually) and then give it a go.
Be interested to see what others make of this...
SBT