Whats everyone reading?

[Daveycandlish]

Anyone else read this?



Batman may be known as the dark knight but I find it's a bit too dark for me sometimes.
This? This is great!

[hippynumber1]

Read "Catcher In The Rye" yesterday for the fourth time.

Astonishingly good book and had a profound affect on my teenage self.

I loathe and detest everything about 'Catcher in the Rye'...although I can see why your teenage self might enjoy it.  Just started 'And the Ass Saw the Angel' by Mr Nick Cave. A phenominal writer...

[hippynumber1]

*Phenomenal 

[Simon Beigh]

Read "Catcher In The Rye" yesterday for the fourth time.

Astonishingly good book and had a profound affect on my teenage self.

I loathe and detest everything about 'Catcher in the Rye'...although I can see why your teenage self might enjoy it.

Read it for English GCSE. It has prostitutes in it. Nuff said...

[Professor Bear]

I've yet to read this, and I'm unacquainted with Captain Britain, but I've read good things about this. I've liked most of Alan Moore's stuff (although there's plenty I haven't read*) so I'll probably like thus.

I thought it was a hoot, but like Marshall Law it's became a blueprint for so many comics you kind of see where a lot of it is going way ahead of time.

Also a word of advice going in: if you finish it thinking "I would like to read more Captain Britain" immediately file that thought away in the crazy box, because it's all downhill for the character after that.

[Greg M.]

Anyone else read this?



Batman may be known as the dark knight but I find it's a bit too dark for me sometimes.
This? This is great!

I was thinking about it, Davey - I'm a fan of Jeff Parker, and it seemed a fun premise, but at the same time, I don't have any special attachment to the tv series (nor any special dislike thereof, either.) Worth a go irrespective, or do you need to be invested in West 'n' Ward for it to work?

[Daveycandlish]

It's a fun comic and you don't get many of them these days.
It's cheesily miscoloured as if the layers aren't lined up properly - just as old newsprint comics often were (obviously this is printed on the glossy stuff, as they all are nowadays).
If you read the caption boxes in the same voice used to narrate the openings of the TV series, it really works.
The novelty might wear off quickly but I enjoyed it (and they've tried to capture the look of the actors portraying the different characters rather than go for the comic characters as they are now, which really helps).

It's worth a punt.

[O Lucky Stevie!]

Read "Catcher In The Rye" yesterday for the fourth time.

Astonishingly good book and had a profound affect on my teenage self.

I loathe and detest everything about 'Catcher in the Rye'...although I can see why your teenage self might enjoy it. 

Stevie read this in his 20s & was... underwhelmed. Perhaps if he hadn't already read Salinger's ISHO far-superior short stories previous. Or Nemesis the Warlock from the age of 12 onwards...

Whilst a re-read a couple of years ago revealed to be a finely wrought character piece, Holden Caulfield is just too damaged & self-sabotaging to supplant the Glass family in Stevie's affections. Franny & Zooey especially.

Read it for English GCSE. It has prostitutes in it. Nuff said...

Speaking off which, have just finished a brace of Chester Brown from the small, grown up Graphic Novel section at the library. That's the one on the end of the same shelves as Literature/Classics, with SF/Fantasy on the reverse. Not to be confused with the much larger Graphic Novel collection in the Children's section in the far corner.

First up his bongo buying memoir The Playboy. Forget Billy Batson & Peter Parker chums, here's a protagonist that a large section of the comics readership can relate to.

Perhaps not so much with Paying For It. Pretty much every one of Brown's visits to a prostitute are recounted  with the same devastating frankness as The Playboy. Although any squirming in one's seat (ahem) arises from not remembered nervousness of being busted with bramble bounty but the contemplation of how anyone could have sex in what are often contrived, mostly decidedly unerotic situations. Thought provoking stuff. The (ahem ahem) pay off is a real kicker.

Also highly recommended is Sir Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud . Despite the constant presence of a copy upon the library shelves of Stevie's youth he has taken so long to actually get around to this because  A for Andromeda felt like Barry Letts had handed it back with a polite, "Nice mate but... errrm, you forgot to include UNIT & The Doctor."

This, however, is simply phenomenal. Think John Wyndham being granted the perspicaciousness of Wells & visionary power of Stapledon & you're not far off the mark. One can hear both Stephen Baxter & Gregory Benford frantically scribbling notes at the turn of every page.

[Dark Jimbo]

Think John Wyndham being granted the perspicaciousness of Wells & visionary power of Stapledon & you're not far off the mark.

SOLD!

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Fear the Alien-Warhammer short stories where close encounters of other worldly species are strictly of the Chain sword wielding kind .

[I, Cosh]

Think John Wyndham being granted the perspicaciousness of Wells & visionary power of Stapledon & you're not far off the mark.

SOLD!

Self-quoting may be most narcissistic of acts, but some years ago the young Cosh had this to say about the book.

...The tagline on the typically stylish Penguin jacket is "Science fiction by a scientist" and it could be seen as a deliberate attempt to demonstrate the appropriate, British way to respond to a mysterious extraterrestrial threat to life on Earth. Not terribly much happens and the characters are all essentially passive. Assumptions are made and conclusions extrapolated from them. Sometimes these are correct but, more often, something totally different happens and our boffins have to figure out why, never forgetting to remind us that that's okay as they were working from the most reasonable premise the first time. Stacks of people die offstage and nobody really minds too much; technological advances are made through a combination of Great British ingenuity and international co-operation across pointlessly obstructive political divisions.

Fred takes time out to have a few mildly amusing digs at amateur astronomers, academic rivalries and political meddling in science (why the Brits work far better than the Yanks) while everyone drinks plenty of tea. There's the odd shag and a funny Russian and it's all written in the pleasantly detached tone one would associate with a senior civil servant of the period interrupting your normal wireless programming to announce an impending nuclear strike. Good fun for fans of British sc-fi.

[Colin YNWA]

Sometimes I hate being a thicko pleb, as it stops me enjoying the genre-defying genius that is the final few issues of Batman Incorporated. 

Yeah it must be a shame as having FINALLY got around to reading it is was wonderful. Fittingly a comic with the themes that you have pointed out and seen, yet seem to have failed so miserably to find a home in your heart for, that its inspired me to go back and read the whole thing again. To relive the whole unending circle now its 'complete'. Alas this will have to get to the bottom of the read pile but I can't wait to get to it.

Of course it couldn't resolve everything, of course it had to be so gloriously open ended and I thought it did this with some fantastically tantalizing stuff that must be so tempting for others to jump on. I hope they do, but mainly wish they wouldn't. But as Morrison knows whatever the rights and wrongs of it at some point someone will. I love the way he nods his head to the continuing tale outside his own and the very thing he's set off with. It all happened and it all will, it all fits together for whomever has read it and whatever they've read. An endless tale, told in endless ways that even when its feeding on itself all fits together into one lovely singular tale (the temptation for puns is hard to resist)

One theme I've not seen discussed much, though I may have missed it (or over read the theme being there, but it seems so clear to me... but I do have a track record of getting this type of thing 'wrong') is the fantastic way he took the whole Daredevil vs. Elektra Frank Miller love affair thing to its logical Morrisonesque conclusion. With the DD Elektra thing Miller introduced the idea of what real superhero passion would be like, how destructive. Yet Miller did it at peak of grim and gritty realistic superhero stuff, you could say its Zenith. It continued long after Miller's DD but his realisation in DD could be argued to be the peak. Whatever, I'm getting distracted. So yeah two opposing forces, one good, one assassin, their star crossed love clashing in the most dramatic ways. In Morrison's version though their love near destroys a city, brings a world to its knees. What a wonderful way to express the whole of Morrison's take on the Superhero genera. He pays loving tribute to the past, while blowing it out the water with the most Kirby inspired realisation of their magnificent scale and new Gods meladrama.

Just glorious stuff. Cann't wait to read it all again and get lost in its never ending themes and ideas.

[Mabs]

Instructions by Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess, a children's book I read with my son. You can find my review/ verdict on it here;

http://nexuswookie.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/instructions-by-neil-gaiman-book-review/

[Simon Beigh]

Talking of reading with children, I'm reading Harry 20 On The High Rock with my 9 year old. I said we would read one episode a night, but I was begged for a second tonight and then a third... It's safe to say he is enjoying it!

I read them in the old Megs I'm going through at the moment, and thought he might like the story, and I was right... Highly recommended!

[Colin YNWA]

I used to be a bit split on Si Spurrier. Lobster Random I absolutely love, one of my all time favourites, Bec and Kawl I really didn't like. Harry Kipling never fully bought into, From Grace was a little gem. Couldn't quite get to grips with him as a writer. These days as he seems to have moved increasingly to the US market he's becomign one of my firm favourites. I've talked elsewhere about how much I'm loving his Six gun Gorilla and I recently finally got around to picking up all the issues of X-Men Legacy for a very good price on eBay (well all but the last two that were in my LCS) and its a bloomin' gem of a comic. I've not seen it discussed much here (might have missed it?) but is anyone else reading this? If not I can't recommend it highly enough to fans of his better 2000ad work.

While it may be firmly based in the world of the X-Men and all that brings with it I can say with confidence that you don't need to be versed in X-Men legend as I'm not, not having read any really since Claremont's first run way back when and not even being about to make my way through that when I tried to re-read it a few years back. It sets its stall out there but gives you all the information you need to make firm headway into this gloriously imaginative exploration of a young man, his struggles with himself and his only fragility. A young man dealing withe his relationship with his recently dead father, who happens to be a political leader (Prof. X) and what that leds him to value and need from his life. Its quite superb stuff wonderfully realised, mind its all in the eyes really, or lack there of...