Lord Samper's Library

Well, that's another 'Loki Wednesday' that I've missed... I got to re-watch an old favourite of mine, last night, though so I'm not too fussed. You can have my thoughts on 'Loki' tomorrow instead ;o) In the meantime... Thanks to various Twitter folk who voted on what I'd be watching yesterday evening. I had a suspicion, proved correct, that I wouldn't get much reading done last night so declared it a 'Movie Night' instead. For a while, it looked like Twitter was pointing me in the direction of 'Doctor Who: The Movie' but some last minute voting saw a hard fought and narrow victory for the 1988 version of 'The Blob' instead, for which I'm very grateful (nothing against 'Doctor Who: The Movie', it's just been a while since I last watched 'The Blob' and I love this movie). I first came across 'The Blob' in the college library (far too long ago now...) where I should have been working but was wo

I love my Kindle but it does make every trip to Amazon a little minefield of books that I never quite manage to negotiate. Daughter's birthday coming up? Get yourself something while you're buying something for her. You may as well, it's only a couple of quid. Sometimes I think I should just give Amazon my wallet and have done with it. I was after drain cleaner, the other day, and Amazon did it's 'you liked this book so why not try this book next trick?' That 'next book' was something like Book 8 or 9 in William Meikle's 'S-Squad' series and I thought to myself, 'you know what, why not...?' I thought I'd do it properly though and start at Book 1... It was supposed to be a simple mission. A suspected Russian spy boat is in trouble in Canadian waters. Investigate and report are the orders. But when Captain John Banks and his squad arrive, it is to find an empty vessel, and a scene of bloody mayhem. Soon they are in a fight for the

As a kid, my fantasy reading was directed mainly by whatever I could find cheap in various markets, on various summer holidays. Norwich Market used to have a book stall with what looked like mountains of old books where I'd spend ages trying to get the most amount of books out of the least amount of money... We've all had to do that, one time or another ;o) I can't quite remember whether it was a market stall, or strange seaside bookshop, where I found 'Werenight' for the first time; it made enough of an impression though that when I saw a copy a few weeks ago , I had to buy it again and I knew it would likely feature here at some point. What I didn't know, until I did a little Googling, was that Eric Iverson is actually none other than Harry Turtledove. I've never got on with Turtledove's alternate history books (nothing to do with the books, more me not enjoying the sub-genre as a whole) so I can now finally say that I've finished one of his book

This week's 'Books for the TBR Pile' is brought to you by this little guy, lurking on my DVD shelf and constantly on the lookout for tricksy Hobbitses... I don't normally buy Funko Pops anymore (although I will quite happily pretend I never said that if I see a Pinhead Pop anywhere...) but I saw this little guy shoved up a corner, in the Lewisham Traid shop, and couldn't help myself... I had to have him, I suspect he will be my 'desk buddy' starting on Monday, we'll see ;o) But you didn't come here just to see what new toy I bought this week (unless you did... bloody good timing there!) It's Sunday and that means we're all about the books here.Well, the books that found their way back to mine, you know what I mean. It's a bit of a 'cheat post' today as I already got all excited about two of the books and posted pics, on Twitter, literally the second I'd unwrapped them. If you didn't see them on Twitter though, here they ar

I love these Doctor Who box sets as I can now watch stories (well, a few stories at a time...) in order and make it look like I knew what I was doing the whole time... ;o)  'Logopolis' is one of those stories where I remember watching it, as a kid, but can't remember much, from that time, other than the ending. To be fair, it was a pretty big deal, at the time, as Tom Baker made his final appearance, as the Doctor, and passed the baton onto Peter Davison. As a child of five and a bit, this was the first time I'd seen the Doctor regenerate, I didn't even know that the Doctor did regenerate until I saw it happen. It totally blew my mind and then I was really upset at there being no more Tom Baker. Luckily, Peter Davison became a favourite Doctor of mine but that's another story. 'Logopolis' was far more than just the regeneration at the end though, right? Of course it was, a bit of a 'tale of two halves' though... The Doctor and Adric head to Ear

This last week has been a week for many things (mostly involving work) but it hasn't really the best week for getting a lot of reading done. I did read 'The Water' but looking back over the last few days, the posts tell the tale of a chap shattered after work and not up for an awful lot other than watching some telly. Which is fine but there are an awful lot of books sitting unread in my place. So... I wanted to read at least one book by the end of the week but it had to be something fairly slim other wise it wasn't happening. I know I've moaned, in the past, about the Marvel 'Conan' books being a little too slender but this round time I knew this could really work for me. 'Exodus' is a very recent purchase and normally I'd have made it wait its turn but last night needed a short, sharp shot of 'Conan' so the book went straight to the front of the queue. And I'm glad it did... Celebrate 50 years of Conan comics with all new tales b

With three episodes left after this one, the chances of me finally managing to post a 'Loki Post' on an actual Wednesday are growing less and less. To be fair though, I do have a day job and yesterday was one of those days... You know what I mean. Nothing major, just loads and loads to get done and not an awful lot of time to do it in. So, you get the 'Loki Post' today instead and that's ok because we've all seen it now and we don't have to worry about spoilers now, do we? You haven't seen it...? That's fair enough but this sentence is pretty much your last chance to duck out before things get spoilery. If you're still here, it's on you if you get spoiled... You're sure? Lets go then. The 'other Loki Variant' has been found... For all of about a minute and a half before she goes off to continue her mission to find the Time Keepers and... I don't know, she just needs to find them first. Loki is in hot pursuit though but what a

After reading Brian O'Gorman's 'Spiders' books and having the best time in the process (seriously, read my reviews for 'Dawn' , 'Day' and 'Night of the Spiders' ), my week was absolutely made when Brian O'Gorman offered me a copy of 'Water' to feature here. Funnily enough, I'd had my eye on 'Water' for my next read; I love zombies and the blurb promised a different spin that sounded intriguing. Of course I said yes, of course I did :o) I settled down for a read last night and since I finished, having been trying to think of what to say other than 'fucking hell that was bleak'... Because it was, it really was, but it was a brilliant bit of sci-fi horror all at the same time. I'll try and be a bit clearer, bear with me... Hurndell. A small village in the middle of the High Peak. The ideal place for holiday makers because of its old-fashioned look and the amazing, picturesque Barrington Reservoir. But that peac

The plan, for last night, was to catch up on a little reading (well, a lot of reading; 'Wrath' is good but slow going at the moment...) and maybe finally write that review I'd been putting off since last week. That was the plan anyway, it turned out that the rest of yesterday had something to say about that... Nothing particularly bad, just really draining and I was probably running on half empty to start with... ;o) To cut a long story short, by the time I got round to switching off the work laptop, I was shattered and not in the mood for a book at all. What's a Graeme to do in this situation? Well, when he has a new 'Classic Doctor Who' box set to get started on, that question pretty much answers itself ;o) So, a little bit earlier than normal then but last night was actually the best time to sit down and watch 'The Keeper of Traken'; a story where I remembered the ending but very little else. To be fair, I'd only been five for a few months and a

Apologies for the lack of post yesterday... It was 'Father's Day' and there were about a million things to do that were more important, all of which involved hanging out with my two daughters (playing card games and recreating the 'vomit reflex', my youngest daughter has a 'gross science' kit...) It was all good and it also gives me the opportunity to say that this post was brought to you by the most awesome 'Father's Day' socks ever... Check it out, 'The Shining' in sock form! :o) All the idea of my youngest daughter, the little weirdo... A belated 'Happy Father's Day' to any Dads reading this, I hope you had a good one. It's not just about the socks though, payday happened and you know what that means? Yep... I did a little 'Charity Shop Crawl', I went to Waterstones and paid Amazon a visit as well. Here's what I managed to find... I saw 'Locke and Key' in the British Heart Foundation shop a few days

This is going to be a shorter post than normal, today was really busy and there's not much left of it! Well, here goes... 'Planet of the Spiders' is another one of those stories where I'd only ever read the book (thank you mobile library at the top of the street...) and never got round to seeing it on TV. To be fair, it's older than I am so the odds of catching it on the telly were never going to be good. These days though...? Give me a payday and I can pretty much watch whatever I want, whenever I want. So I did and 'Planet of the Spiders' ended up being a lot of fun. At a Tibetan retreat in the English countryside, a group of men are using ancient meditation rituals to tap into a mysterious alien power. They unwittingly create a bridgehead between Earth and Metebelis 3, a planet where the ‘Two Legs’ are oppressed by giant spiders. The creatures are desperate to recover the blue jewel that the Doctor gave to Jo Grant as a wedding gift. Now the Doctor must

You know how it is.. You get to the end of a tough week and all you want to do is watch a bit of horror and just unwind a little bit, get some space between work and the weekend. That was my plan anyway after switching off my work laptop. Amazon Prime had been throwing adverts my away about this 'lost' George Romero film (filmed in 1973 and only just being released now) that Shudder was airing. Now I'm more of a 'Romero Zombie Film' guy than any of his other movies, I wasn't all that keen on 'The Crazies' and I still haven't seen 'Martin' (amongst many other of his movies. 'The Amusement Park' was right there in front of me though, and it was only fifty four minutes long so I thought I may as well give it a go. Having watched 'The Amusement Park', I now need something else to help me unwind... It's a bloody good bit of film but it does not make for easy watching. An elderly gentleman goes for what he assumes will be an or

Two episodes into 'Loki' and it's clear that the goal now is to actually post an episode review on Wednesdays, just like everybody else does. I don't think #LokiThursdays will ever trend if I'm being absolutely honest with myself... I can't remember what delayed me last week but I do know that this week, it was really important that all my 'Spiders' reviews ran one after the other, No, me neither but it worked and here we are, doing this on a Thursday. Lets see what happens next week... 'Glorious Purpose' was, of course, glorious so how did 'The Variant' measure up? Well, more of the same is never a bad thing when it's Loki but I wasn't so sure this time round. I'm going to try and avoid the big spoiler but everything else is fair game here so if you haven't seen 'The Variant' yet, you might want to come back once you have ;o) For everyone else though... The hunt is on for the 'Loki Variant' and the TVA ar

If you've seen my posts, over the last couple of days, you already know that I've been enjoying the absolute hell out of Brian O'Gorman's 'Spiders' series, 'giant creature' books that just revel in what they are and are all the more fun for it. If you haven't seen my posts, I've got you covered ;o) Here are my reviews for 'Dawn of the Spiders' and 'Day of the Spiders' . Again, I was in no mood to hang about, after finishing 'Day', so jumped straight into 'Night of the Spiders' and polished it off yesterday, in between bouts of trying to get work done (working from home is great but difficult, all at the same time...) One thing that I didn't mention about 'Day of the Spiders' is that two things happened, towards the end, that really set things up to go either way in 'Night'. It was so finely balanced that I was desperate to see how it all concluded. And now I have, and it was awesome. The city

After having such a great time with 'Dawn of the Spiders' (Click Here for the review or just, you know, scroll down a bit...), I didn't hang around with getting started on 'Day of the Spiders'. Which proved to be a little awkward seeing as I had a whole day of work to get through at the same time. I was desperate to see how it all continued though so I managed with the help of my lunch break and a large chunk of yesterday evening ;o)  How did it continue though and did it all work? Keep reading and I'll get to it. Five years after Newtown went up in flames, everything has returned to an uneasy calm, until a little girl by the name of Lottie Richmond is killed in her back garden. Braden Benson has been on the frontline of journalism for most of his adult life. He has enjoyed some success, but that one big headline payoff has always eluded him. He decides to hang up his notepad in favour of spending more time with his neglected family, that is until a spate of gr

Very much like the huge spider that lives in my bathroom, Brian O' Gorman's 'Spiders' books have a habit of jumping out at me (in my 'Amazon Recommendations') when I least expect it. I would have eventually got round to reading them anyway (because, well... giant spiders) but it was Alex' great post on 'self published SFF' that gave me the nudge to finally get on and do it. And I'm really glad I did. I'll get on with the 'why', in a minute, but having finished 'Dawn of the Spiders', I went straight out and grabbed 'Day of the Spiders' and 'Night of the Spiders' too. That should tell you something, now let me tell you about 'Dawn of the Spiders'... A virus designed to control the burgeoning spider population causes them to mutate into overgrown, venomous killers. A large horde of the spiders take over the small village of Newtown, killing all but two of its residents. Laurence Johnson and Chloe Jones

It's that time of the month where my bank account starts to look really sorry for itself and I'm counting down the days until payday (this Friday, you won't be surprised to learn that I'm really looking forward to it). Book hunting never stops though, not even at the wrong end of the month. I just have to be a little creative about where I look is all :o) I generally can't pass a charity shop without looking in it and there is always a bargain or two to be had. Sometimes, someone else will go looking for books for me (which was unexpected but very welcome). Let me show you what came my way this week...  Normally, it's just me on the hunt for books and, well... That's just the way it should be really. But sometimes... My ex-partner, and the kids, were in Plymouth (for half term) and I got a video call asking if I fancied any books from a box of books outside a shop on the Barbican. I'm looking for new reads, that I wouldn't normally read, more and mor