Posts

Books for the TBR Pile... 'It is far too hot now' Edition

Image
Apologies for the blogging silence over the last couple of days... In the end, it just got so hot that I had to focus my energy on getting work done and just park the blog for a little bit. When I wasn't working, I was either taking a nap or watching the 'Chucky' TV show (better than I thought it would be); once I'm done with the third season, I'll see about getting a post up here ;o) And then it got to yesterday afternoon and I realised that I'd pretty much been stuck in the house for a couple of days (it's hot inside and out but 'inside' is a lot more comfortable). Greenwich is only down the road from mine so I figured I'd pop out and find a couple of bookshops with decent air-conditioning, or a big ol' fan up a corner. Yep, I bought books... I'd try and come up with a decent (and humorous) excuse but it is far too hot for that as well. It was the least I could do... ;o) Just a short one today as, well... You can see the photo ;o) '...

'Slither' (2006), 'Dolly' (2026) and 'Revenge' (2017)

Image
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that while it's never too cold to curl up with a good book (or I'm assuming, a bad one), it can definitely be too warm. Well, we're in the middle of another heat-wave over here and yep, I've got very little reading under my belt this week. I mean, I have managed a couple of books but you should see the pile of books where I've either read a few pages or picked the book up, only to put it straight back down again. Oh well, there's always next week etc ;o) So, what have I been doing in the meantime? I've been watching movies of course ;o) Nothing too demanding (no surprise there...), just good fun to watch, that's all I'm good for at the moment. Lets take a quick look at them then... 'Slither' (2006) Something falls out of the sky and crashes in the woods outside Wheelsy, South Carolina; local resident Grant Grant finds it but it also finds him... Soon, local pets are going missing and then, the residents of Wheelsy...

‘Wolverine : Old Man Logan’ – Millar, McNiven (Marvel)

Image
  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...

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

Image
  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...

‘The Gunslinger’ – Stephen King (Hodder)

Image
  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...

Books for the TBR Pile... 'Tiny Apocalypse' Edition

Image
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...

‘Doctor Who: The Invasion’ – Ian Marter (Target)

Image
  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...