Whats everyone reading?

[Jade Falcon]

Reading A Song for the Dying by Stuart McBride.  I'd read all of his Logan McRae books, and now I'm starting his Ash Henderson ones.  Very different character so far.

[Colin YNWA]

currently reading 'Trail of the Catwoman' by Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker.
Have read a fair bit of Brubaker but first book for me by Cooke.
They work well as a team, did they work on any other books together?

Don't know if he did any other work with Brubaker but I can certainly recommend some of Cooke's solo work. New Frontiers is as good as folks say - and folks say its very good. He also had a very good 12 issue run on DCs The Spirit - which is probably as that character has been outside of the Matt Wagner run - since Eisner of course.

I also recommend the work he did with Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti on Jonah Hex he did a good few issue across there run on the title - and All Star Western as it became and its probably the best stuff artistically in that series after the wonderful Jordi Bernet (I bet I regret saying that when I think of some of the artists who did the odd issue or two!).

I've seen folks rave about his adaptions of Parker, but I have to say I found these pretty unpleasent and hard going, I suspect due to the source material.

His art is just wonderful so anything he draw - and he did a lot more good stuff than those I've referenced - is worth checking out.

[Sean SD]

currently reading 'Trail of the Catwoman' by Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker.
Have read a fair bit of Brubaker but first book for me by Cooke.
They work well as a team, did they work on any other books together?

Don't know if he did any other work with Brubaker but I can certainly recommend some of Cooke's solo work. New Frontiers is as good as folks say - and folks say its very good. He also had a very good 12 issue run on DCs The Spirit - which is probably as that character has been outside of the Matt Wagner run - since Eisner of course.

I also recommend the work he did with Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti on Jonah Hex he did a good few issue across there run on the title - and All Star Western as it became and its probably the best stuff artistically in that series after the wonderful Jordi Bernet (I bet I regret saying that when I think of some of the artists who did the odd issue or two!).

I've seen folks rave about his adaptions of Parker, but I have to say I found these pretty unpleasent and hard going, I suspect due to the source material.

His art is just wonderful so anything he draw - and he did a lot more good stuff than those I've referenced - is worth checking out.

Cheers Colin
I keep hearing about Parker which I will have to check out.
Didn't know about All Star Western so thanks for that tip.

Incidentally, a run of All Star Western led me to Lawless which led me to being a prog and Meg subscriber 

[Colin YNWA]

Incidentally, a run of All Star Western led me to Lawless which led me to being a prog and Meg subscriber 

Wow that's a fantastic trail and a very interesting one. Lawless is a powerful wonder.

Darwyn Cook did the final issue - 34

He also did issues 33, 50 (double sized) of the previous Jonah Hex series - must admit I thought he did more - mind these are absolutely fantastic, particularly 33 as I recall. The whole Jonah Hex into All Star Western series is sublime and one of my favourite comic runs.

[Barrington Boots]

I am now on book 40 of the Horus Heresy series. The end is in sight!

I'd quite like to be able to say I've read the whole series during all the COVID shutdown stuff, so I've stopped alternating them with other books and I'm going for it. It's not exactly a sweries awash with likeable characters though, so we'll see how long that lasts.

[pictsy]

I am now on book 40 of the Horus Heresy series. The end is in sight!

I'd quite like to be able to say I've read the whole series during all the COVID shutdown stuff, so I've stopped alternating them with other books and I'm going for it. It's not exactly a sweries awash with likeable characters though, so we'll see how long that lasts.

How has the madness not set in?  That much grim-dark silliness surely can't be healthy.

What order did you decide to read them in?

[Barrington Boots]

There's a suggested reading order - essentially the order of publication. It is relentlessly grim and has, in places, been a real slog and some of the books have been dire. The overall story is good though, even though we already know the ending.

[Smith]

Thing really slow down after Fulgrim, don't they?

[Barrington Boots]

They do.. I suspect that's the point where somebody thought hang on, we can spin this out for a lot of books.
Let's start by including Istvaan from about 20 different points of view.

[zombemybabynow]

The tome that is: Fables compendium 1

fantastic

[pictsy]

There's a suggested reading order - essentially the order of publication. It is relentlessly grim and has, in places, been a real slog and some of the books have been dire. The overall story is good though, even though we already know the ending.

I've been using the time-line tree thing so I can have more of an in-universe chronological reading experience.  I haven't got far into the series. Just seven books so far (I think) in about eight years.  I find the books over-written with unnecessary filler.  The content is also all kinds of problematic.  So I only read a book now and again.

[TordelBack]

Fables is a good example of a great comic where you really really need to mentally partition authorial politics and real world analogies from the fiction to enjoy it. But it's a grand and influential read, and I manage.

I've been reading a lot more from my so-called professional field lately, and still in a fairly dire place with my mental health,  so my recreational reading has been heavily comfort-based: a lot of genre schlock and reliable re-reads. But there have been some recent new entrants


Tombland by CJ Sansom. To date the last Shardlake book,  but for my money one of the very best. Taking a leaf from his Spanish Civil War novel Winter in Madrid, and an obvious despair with contemporary UK politics, this is a Norfolk  murder mystery taking place within a superbly detailed account of Kett's Rebellion of 1549. I find Sansom's style very easy, but he goes all-in on social history and the geography of Norwich here, and it more than makes up for his sometimes frustratingly shallow characters (noble intent + hamartia + dark secret or venal + arrogant + cruel, take your pick, everyone is one or the other). Shardlake himself remains an engaging narrator, but his descent into despair and disillusionment as these books progress seem to closely mirror the author's own (see above for solution).

Stars and Bars by William Boyd.  A rare disappointment from the reliable Boyd, a sort of mishmash of Elmore Leonard and Updike, with one of the most unsympathetic protagonists I've come across. Aren't Americans funny, and the southern ones most of all, and oh how their hick antics expose the dull uptight Englishman. If only he could could realize that to laugh at one's own absurdity is the greatest gift the colonials can bestow.  Ah-hah hah-hah. No thanks.

The Blackwater Lighthouse,  by Colm Tóbín. How mesmerising to see the times and places you grew up so perfectly, insightfully drawn. Set between early '90s suburban Dublin and '70s Wexford coast, this is a short, brilliant novel about four generations of a family and the threads both good and bad that run between them, with a sideline about AIDS and the Irish gay community. I couldn't escape the feeling that several of the characters were closely based on people I know, but in reality it was just the pinsharp accuracy of the portrayals. Highest of recommendations.

[Barrington Boots]

I've been using the time-line tree thing so I can have more of an in-universe chronological reading experience.  I haven't got far into the series. Just seven books so far (I think) in about eight years.  I find the books over-written with unnecessary filler.  The content is also all kinds of problematic.  So I only read a book now and again.

I suspect a wise choice Pictsy, as having read 39 and a half dystopian books where whole planets worth of people get killed in horrible ways and even the good guys are 99% bastards during a global pandemic probably hasn't been helpful.

There's a myriad of criticisms one could level at the series but over-written is absolutely the best description of them. I'm still going to finish though: "I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er" as the great man wrote.

[Smith]

They do.. I suspect that's the point where somebody thought hang on, we can spin this out for a lot of books.
Let's start by including Istvaan from about 20 different points of view.

Galaxy in flames/Flight of the Eisenstein did that first,but it felt very complimentary. So ofc that trick gets overused.
However,I felt Fulgrim really abridged Drop Site Massacre,and First Heretic did a better job at it.

[pictsy]

The Drop Site Massacre was in The First Heretic?  Wow, that book is even more forgettable than I thought.