Whats everyone reading?

[HOO-HAA]

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

I got this for 1.99 at The Works clothing down sale. Great deal for a hardback book.

Still too early to tell yet how good it is, but the first story, Willa, was interesting, although I guessed the twist. The second story The Gingerbread Girl is good so far, and kinda nasty.

I've heard it's his best work in years.

Have it in the house, myself, but haven't read any of it yet.

[SmallBlueThing]

Don't half envy you SBT - have you really never read Caves of Steel before?  You lucky beggar, what a treat!  The next two are great too, but after that you're on your own...

Funnily enough, I bought it for my mum donkey's years ago, as a random birthday present, with a really cool cover that I loved at the time. When I recently asked her for a lend (and found out she'd given it away years ago) I realised how much I regretted not reading it at the time, so picked up a 50p paperback edition in town, with a shit swirly mess cover I didn't like.

Sad to say, I started it the other night and didn't get very far. Now, there's nothing wrong with it at all, and I really think it was just overfamiliar. Decades of 2000AD have shown me mega-cities, moving walkways, robots who pass for men in a city full of robots that don't, procedural murder stories with mismatched partners, etc etc. Like I say, nothing about it I didn't like, just nothing that spurred me to go past forty pages or so. I jumped, and went to 'Jupiter' with Ben Bova; a writer who's previous work I've loved almost in entirety (aside from giving up on 'Mercury' for no good reason a while back- but I'll come back to that I'm sure).

I confess to being completely taken in by Bova's "Grand Tour of the Solar System" novels. I love the whole "New Morality" backstory- which scares me and makes me cross equally, and I love that Bova spins this against his main characters, who don't seem to usually be the kind of dry scientists the New Morality fears so much, instead being 'normal' people, with questions about Faith of many kinds. And, mostly, I love the Real Science behind them. I've learned more science in the last year, thanks to Brian Cox, Ben Bova and Arthur C Clarke, than I have in the previous forty.

So, anyway, I'll be on Jupiter for the next week or so, if anyone wants me.

SBT

[Richmond Clements]

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

I got this for 1.99 at The Works clothing down sale. Great deal for a hardback book.

Still too early to tell yet how good it is, but the first story, Willa, was interesting, although I guessed the twist. The second story The Gingerbread Girl is good so far, and kinda nasty.

I've heard it's his best work in years.

Have it in the house, myself, but haven't read any of it yet.

I love The Gingerbread Girl- one of his best short stories.

[Jared Katooie]

Currently reading Volume 3 of The Spectre. Only read a few, but they're pretty darn good.

It touches on intruiging moral and philosophical questions - with lots of gruesome killin's!

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Just polished off all my Swamp Thing trades. Pissed off that it's over now

[Colin YNWA]

Just finished the second half of Grimjack trades from IDW which is fantastic series and then read the 'Munden's Bar' trade which is a collection of short stories that appeared as a back up in 'Grimjack'. Its a fantastic collection and has a real 2000ad meets comix vibe to it. Aided by the fact that there's a brilliant Bolland short story rounding the collection off. I'd heartily recommend this book to anyone who is looking for something a little but different.

[HOO-HAA]

Just polished off all my Swamp Thing trades. Pissed off that it's over now

That's GRADE-A reading right there (if you're talking Moore's run)!...

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Yup, Moore's run. I'd only read the first trade before, but the whole thing is bloody brilliant. Should have rationed it out more

[Ignatzmonster]

Just polished off all my Swamp Thing trades. Pissed off that it's over now

Sorry Pop, but on the bright side it rereads great.

[Mike Carroll]

Just polished off all my Swamp Thing trades. Pissed off that it's over now

Sorry Pop, but on the bright side it rereads great.

They are great, aren't they? Still some of the best comics ever written!

I'd love to re-read my copies - the first Titan trades, in glorious black and white - but I lent them to a friend about, oh, five years ago. She's reading them at the rate of one a year... And this from a girl who claims to be an Alan Moore fan!

-- Mike

[Ignatzmonster]

Just polished off all my Swamp Thing trades. Pissed off that it's over now

Sorry Pop, but on the bright side it rereads great.

They are great, aren't they? Still some of the best comics ever written!

I'd love to re-read my copies - the first Titan trades, in glorious black and white - but I lent them to a friend about, oh, five years ago. She's reading them at the rate of one a year... And this from a girl who claims to be an Alan Moore fan!

-- Mike

That's some impressive rationing. She's not getting caught in pop1983's predicament, no sir! OOh I bet Bissette and Totleben look great in b&w.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Oooh, I'd love to see that B&W art too.

[Mikey]

I've been picking up the hardback editions as they come out and although I'd also love to see the pages in B&W, I reckon the colouring job is fantastic and doesn't detract from the line work at all. They are superb comics, no doubt!

M.

[SmallBlueThing]

Oh
  thank
       fuck
           for
              that!

FINALLY, I have finished reading The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis to the boys (as their bedtime story). Fifteen long chapters of the most hateful, dull, pissy, shitheaded prose and nasty-minded wank, of the kind that actually made me seethe with anger while reading every horrible sentence, every crap and overwritten cliche, every syllable of which dug into me like a tiny word-knife designed to suck all the fun out of reading. I want to fucking beat that self-important lion Aslan to death and stick his head on the wall of the special secret room I keep for dead literary characters of the fucking irritating persuasion. It's an old toilet, reeking of piss, and you get in by pushing through a hidden door in the back of a wardrobe. I like to think it's apt.

Is it too late to write an alternative series of follow-up novels, in which the Witch returns from the Northern lands, triumphant, and slaughters all the elves and fawns and satyrs, wades through their dismembered bloody corpses and stabs that bloody lion with a big sword?

ARGH! I have never been so cross with a book. Utter, utter, shit.

SBT

[HOO-HAA]

So... not a CS Lewis fan then, SBT?



Me neither. Pious twaddle the lot of it.

I did enjoy Screwtape Letters, mind, mainly because of how some stupid christians were said to have burned it ( ) but also because it gave me the distinct impression that Lewis wished he had chosen a more demonic path and had a bit of craic (as we say here in Belfast) during his life.