Lord Samper's Library

  Page Count: 256 Pages Long ago, there lived a Graeme who was having a pretty rough time and bought loads of comic books to cheer himself up. Some tough lessons, about the transient nature of money, followed but the comic books stuck around for a little longer so, things (kind of) balanced out ;o) One of those comic books was the collected ‘Old Man Logan’ and it was an awesome read (yes, I was that Graeme, in case you hadn’t worked it out). Thanks to the aforementioned transient nature of money, and the need for more, I had to get rid of my old copy but a couple of weeks ago, I saw another copy for sale and figured that it was time to pay ‘Old Man Logan’ another visit. When eBay is full of overpriced second hand copies, it’s nice to see Marvel do the decent thing and publish a new edition. Or, more likely, see an opportunity to make more money. Either way, I have a new book so I’m happy :o) A future world savaged and sundered by super villains, the United States ain’t what it used...

  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...

  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...

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...

  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...

  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’, ...