My idea of rich is that you can buy every book you ever want without looking at the price and you’re never around assholes. That’s the two things to really fight for in life.” John Waters Except that I agree with Anthony Burgess that the preferred spelling is ‘arse’.
Stealing from the Guardian as I do from time to time, I see that in their regular “The Books that Made Me”, William Gibson, under the heading “The book I think is most underrated” nominates, “Jack Womack’s Random Acts of Senseless Violence. A near future that chillingly predicted the foulest possible outcome of our past […]
Oh dear Lord, now that I’ve typed his name up there, I feel like I will be expected to write a literary essay, coupled with genre pop culture street cred, and we all know that isn’t going to happen. ‘Chronic City’ was the first novel of his I read. What was this and why hadn’t […]
Just came across the latest / last volume of Dave Hutchinson’s “Fractured Europe sequence” – well, that’s how they describe it on The Book Depository, where it is available for pre-order. The timing is perfect – a big chunk of my book collection returns home on Wednesday, including the previous volumes of this series, so […]
This from the SMH last weekend (the Saturday SMH is the only newspaper I buy anymore, for the occasional nugget like this, but their review section is becoming so dire I may give up on newspapers altogether): “My memory bank is not my brain: its my book collection. I can’t do without it. When I […]
John le Carre’s 5th novel is 50 years old, but the world it describes is only yesterday, a modern world with the only discrepancies the make of cars, or whether everyone has a boilerman enter their home to start the morning. In their concerns and the way they live their lives, the folk described don’t […]
Heart on my sleeve when it comes to this book review … Just read this on Tor.com, and I get it completely: Lately, it’s really difficult to be enthusiastic about books. Perhaps I’ve read too many of them. Perhaps—though less likely—I haven’t read enough, and if I read a few more, the enthusiasm will come […]
“Kostaki looked up at the church door. While they were paying attention to Kichijiro, it had been pulled inward. “In ghost stories, doors creak. A door opening silently is more sinister.” Anno Dracula 1899: One Thousand Monsters by Kim Newman
Dear Mr Kim Newman, I am very glad at all the Anno Dracula books, even though years ago I had to work hard to track down the original so now I have two, and I keep telling myself no, you don’t have to have the paperback of Johnny Alucard to go with the others just […]
The scariest day of the year is approaching fast. Will he…? Won’t she … ? Don’t they …? Should I …? is it legal to … ? I’d remove Valentine’s day from the calendar, except my powers don’t extend quite that far … yet. The gifts are tacky and / or market forced upon us, […]
Nobody is looking 