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A ‘Did Not Finish’… ‘The Babysitter Lives’ – Stephen Graham Jones (Titan Books)

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  Page Count: 242 Pages A ‘Did Not Finish’ is something that you hope you will never meet but the law of averages makes it pretty much inevitable that you will. The thing is though, the tricky little beasts are brilliant at disguising themselves as regular books… You never see the ambush coming until it’s too late for you to do anything about it. Before you even really know what’s happened, the cool looking book, that you thought you’d try, turned out to be a ‘Did Not Finish’ and you’re left looking for another book to read instead. Oh well, not the worst problem to have but infuriating at the same time, especially when you’ve had a rough day and fancied a quiet read. All of which is a slightly long-winded way of saying that I never thought I’d see the day where a book by Stephen Graham Jones ended up being a ‘Did Not Finish’ in its most devilish disguise yet. But here we are :o) The good news though, is that I think that it was more about me than any fault in the book itself. Some...
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‘The Gunslinger’ – Stephen King (Hodder)

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  Page Count: 238 Pages It has been an absolute age since I last read the ‘Dark Tower’ books (I was at least a couple of years away from my eldest daughter being born) so, seeing as none of the other books in the TBR pile were working for me, I figured it was about time I did something about that. I’m not setting myself any ‘reading goals’ or anything like that; I’m struggling with work deadlines (as it is) and I want this to be fun, not a chore. I’m just going to read along until Roland makes it to the top of the Dark Tower, even though I know what he finds once he gets there. Considering I picked up ‘The Gunslinger’ on Saturday and finished it the same day, well… It might not take that long to polish off the rest of the series. We shall see. Anyway… Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger, is a haunting figure. A loner, on a spellbinding journey into good and evil, in a desolate world which frighteningly mirrors our own. In his first step towards the powerful and mysterious Dark To...
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Books for the TBR Pile... 'Tiny Apocalypse' Edition

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Today's post is brought to you by 'Tiny Apocalypse', shown here (for context) with his compatriots 'Slim Apocalypse' and, erm... 'Slightly Dusty Apocalypse'... 'Slightly Dusty' will have a name-change very soon :o) 'Tiny' and 'Slim' (who actually has extendable legs, which is awesome) came home with me after yesterday's visit to the Hilly Fields Fair in Lewisham. I love the Fair, partly because they have a petting zoo but mostly because they have loads of stalls, that sell all sorts of stuff, and I'm a big fan of browsing. My daughter isn't as big a fan but she's only young, she'll learn ;o) There were a couple of book stalls and while there wasn't a lot there for the likes of me, I did pick up a couple of books. And because it's me, I also picked up another book on the way home ;o) Lets take a quick look... I did read 'The Wounded Land' , way back in the day, (even then, I had a habit of reading se...
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‘Doctor Who: The Invasion’ – Ian Marter (Target)

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  Page Count: 159 Pages Remember the really cool TBR pile that I made the other day …? Well, the plan is still to read them all but this week has been a tough one (insert usual stresses here) and after polishing off ‘Conan and the Living Plague’ , nothing else from the pile grabbed me and demanded to be read. It happens, I’m hoping that the weekend will be a little kinder and let me choose something. Anyway… In the meantime, it wasn’t like I was just going to read nothing at all ;o) And there is a small pile of unread ‘Doctor Who’ books for this kind of situation… I picked up ‘The Invasion’ a few weeks ago and so it was at the top of that pile, waiting to be read. And that’s exactly what I did. ‘The Invasion’ didn’t exactly make it easy for me but still ended up being a decent way to put a little space between me and the day I’d just had… Materialising in outer space, the TARDIS is immediately targetted by a missile fired from the dark side of the moon. Back on Earth, the newly for...
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‘Hellraiser’ (1987) and ‘Hellbound: Hellraiser 2’ (1988)

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  It was a lovely ‘late spring/early summer’ (I honestly don’t know when one ends and the other begins…) kind of evening, last night, so you can guess what I did after I’d dropped my daughter off with their Mum… The title, of the post, kind of gives the game away but still, give yourself a bonus point if your first thought was, ‘I bet he went straight home and watched the first two Hellraiser movies’. Because that’s exactly what I did ;o) I’m going through one of those phases where whatever book I pick up, it doesn’t work for me and I have to move onto something else (which kind of puts paid to that TBR Pile I put together the other day…) I know what I’m like, and I know what I like, so it’s not a case of every single book in the flat suddenly becoming a crap read. This is a reaction to work stress, mental stress and a couple of other stresses that I won’t mention here (all sprinkled with a little ADHD). I can’t concentrate on a book so on went the telly for a little ‘Hellraiser’, ...
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‘Preacher: Book One’ – Ennis, Dillon (DC, Vertigo)

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  Page Count: 352 Pages Just a quick one today, mostly because I’m shattered already (and today is going to be a busy one) but also because I’m 99% certain that I’m the last person to have read ‘Preacher’ and I don’t think I’m going to say anything that people don’t already know. Having said that though, I hadn’t read any ‘Preacher’, until the other day, and this blog helps me keep track of what I’ve read (amongst other things) so… Here we are. The other week, I had a rather nice scratch card win and there was a copy of ‘Preacher: Book One’ on the shelf in Waterstones. I’m not a hundred percent sure what happened next but all of a sudden, I was outside the shop and there was a copy of ‘Preacher: Book One’ in my bag. Funny how that seems to happen… It took me a while to get round to actually reading it but read it I did and… Merging with a bizarre spiritual force called Genesis, Texan Preacher Jesse Custer becomes completely disillusioned with the beliefs that he had dedicated his ...
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‘Conan And The Living Plague’ – John C. Hocking (Titan Books)

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  Page Count: 250 Pages After finishing ‘Conan And The Emerald Lotus’ a couple of weeks ago, I wasn’t in a mad rush to jump straight into ‘Conan And The Living Plague’. Nothing against ‘The Emerald Lotus’ but… Oh, just click Here and read my post if you haven’t already ;o) At the same time though, I can’t seem to leave a book unfinished at the moment and both of these books happen to be in the ‘City Of The Dead’ omnibus so… Here we are. Yesterday was a long one, what with one thing and another (and then another…) so after I’d turned my laptop off, I sat down and started reading. And… A Shemite wizard seeks to create a potion to use as a lethal weapon. Instead, he unwittingly unleashes a hideous monster on the city of Dulcine. Hired to loot the city of its treasures, Conan and his mercenary companions find themselves trapped in the depths of the city’s keep. To escape, they must defeat the creature and its plague wracked undead followers, then face otherworldly horrors beyond morta...
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