Lord Samper's Library

  Page Count: 190 Pages Most people go through phases of reading books by a particular author. Because I have to be different, I go through phases of ‘buying books by a particular author, leaving them on a shelf until I’ve forgotten I have them, and then reading them… eventually’. I wish I was like other people… ;o) Anyway… I was looking for some books to keep me company, while looking after the cats, and came across ‘Strange Eons’, doing a great job of being the ‘forgotten book at the bottom of a pile of slightly less forgotten books’. I’m always up for seeing what other writers make of Lovecraft’s Mythos, and I’ve enjoyed a large chunk of what I’ve read of Bloch, so it felt like just the right time to pick up ‘Strange Eons’ and finally give it a go, especially with Halloween right around the corner. And… When Albert Keith comes across a dusty old painting of a hideous, red-eyed, sharp-clawed creature in a dingy junk shop, he falls in love with it at first sight and buys it at a b...

I’ve been in and out of the ‘Boys’ omnibus editions, over the last few months, and what I’ve found is that if I leave it too long, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to stay on top of the story. That’s partly on me (chemo-brain…) but I’m also going to out on a limb and say that sometimes, it’s feels like Ennis is having so much fun poking fun, at superheroes, that the actual plot gets shunted to the sidelines and left to wonder just what it did wrong. Either way, the number of times I’ve found myself thinking, ‘this is cool, but why is it happening…’ I’ve had a little more time on my hands, this week, so thought I’d go for it and read Volumes 4 & 5, one after the other, and see if things made a little more sense. And… It did ;o) Vol 4. (Page Count: 328 Pages) So where are the real superheroes? The warriors for truth and justice, the defenders of the American way, the heroes who fight to make things right and ask for nothing in return? Hughie finds out when he meets the teenage ...

  Page Count: 144 Pages Yesterday was one of those days where I briefly hit heady heights (prep for an interview happening later today), stopped to use the bathroom and found a dead pigeon on the floor. Seriously, screw you ‘little cat’… If that wasn’t bad enough, ‘little cat’ saw her prize headed to the bin and we had a ‘moment’ where I had to stop her taking it under the bath. The sooner my ex-partner, and kids, come back from their week away, ‘little cat’ can be their problem again :o) Not a day for really getting to grips with the TBR pile then but that’s okay; once I’ve got the interview out of the way, maybe tonight will be a little easier. I did fancy a little reading time though (just nothing too heavy on the eyes) so settled for one of the ‘Doctor Who’ books that I’ve picked up recently. I actually watched ‘The Awakening’ last year and while it was okay, it wasn’t a story that I saw myself revisiting this soon. Not until I saw the cover art anyway, that changed my mind pr...

  Page Count: 183 Pages I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘Animal Horror’ so when I saw mention of ‘The Farm’ in ‘Paperbacks From Hell’ , I resolved to keep my eyes open for what I was reliably informed was a standout work. And then I saw how much second hand copies were selling for… I decided that I couldn’t spare both eyes for the search and kept just the one eye open instead ;o) Time went on and I’ll be honest, that eye started to droop a little. And then all of a sudden, some ‘behind the scenes’ rights negotiations concluded and ‘The Farm’ was available at a much more affordable price. I didn’t hang around grabbing a copy and once it arrived, I didn’t hang around getting stuck into it. The lethal, body-pulping pile-up on the winding Welsh mountain road was sickening enough. But the spillage of chemicals from the wrecked lorry, leaking through the hidden channels of the earth to contaminate the pond at Hobb’s Farm, miles away, produced an unimaginably more horrific effect. As the ...

  Page Count: 279 Pages Halloween approaches and across the land, charity shops are remembering that they’ve been keeping ‘that box of horror books’ since the beginning of last November, in readiness for this year’s ‘October 31st’. They don’t seem to realise that I’ll quite happily buy horror fiction whatever the time of year but… I’m trying to make the most of the ‘flurry of horror fiction’ in the meantime ;o) Old horror books have been popping up, here and there, and yesterday lunchtime, it was the turn of Richard Laymon’s ‘Beware!’ to catch my eye. Now, I’ve had what you’d call an ‘up and down’ reading experience with Laymon, for every ‘The Cellar’ there’s a ‘Flesh’ , but I’m a sucker for the cover art, on these books, so I was always going to pick up ‘Beware!’ And… The supermarket shouldn’t have been shut – it wasn’t normal for Elsie to quit early. But then it wasn’t normal for a meat cleaver to fly through the air by itself. Or for a guard dog, locked in overnight, to end up ...

Apologies for the ‘blogging silence’ yesterday; I’m looking after the cats, again, and yesterday was all about damage control… You see, ‘little cat’ lives for getting out of the house and having adventures but it was raining (hard) and she didn’t like that, choosing to blame it on ‘big cat’ who was already feeling out of sorts because her family are away for the next week. You can see where this ended up. Honestly, I thought looking after my girls was hard work, trying to keep ‘little cat’ amused etc is something else. Anyway… I did get a little reading under my belt but that’s for another day. While the cats are asleep, lets take a look at some movies that I’ve been watching over the last few days. One strangely disappointing, one surprisingly good and the last one? I’m still not sure… ‘V/H/S/Mixtape’ (2026) Over the last few years, horror streaming service ‘Shudder’ have been very kindly adding new entries to the ‘V/H/S’ franchise and this years instalment has arrived. I should say ‘...