Lord Samper's Library

Thank goodness that week is over, 'double thank goodness' that this weekend is a long weekend... It hasn't been a bad week but there has been rather a lot of it so I'm glad to see the back of it to be honest ;o) I've got a busy weekend lined up but not that busy. Should be fun actually :o)  But you're not here for that and you've done really well, letting me ramble when you want to see what the ol' book haul looks like this week. Not too bad as it happens :o) I had a little wander through Lewisham, one lunchtime, and it was like the charity shops knew I was in the area and had put all their best books out... I love a lunch break like that ;o) All of the following for just over six quid... The British Heart Foundation Shop... Apologies for the photo, not one of my best but you can make the books out ;o) I'm way behind on my 'Joe Abercrombie Reading' and 'Sharp Ends' is one of those books that I've yet to read so it was another case...

My journey to read all of Guy N. Smith’s horror fiction continues and I’ve had to delve pretty deep into eBay to find a copy of ‘The Undead’. Actually, to be honest, I wasn’t even looking for a copy, I just saw it and had to jump on it before someone else did. After slogging my way through ‘The Book of Ptath’, I thought I’d treat myself and round off the week with a little dip into my ‘Guy N. Smith TBR Pile’, ‘The Undead’ was at the top of the pile so that’s what I went with (because sometimes it really is that simple)… Ron Halestrom is a new author, one successful book behind him, who moves into a new home with his family, to write more. But naturally, Gabor House has a dark secret which is trying to drive them away. Two hundred years before, it was the old manor house: home to the Mainwarings, owners of much of the locality. Young children had been going missing, but it took their own daughter Isobel's disappearance for them to send out a search party. They find Bemorra, the lo...

So my ex-wife, and my daughters, were on holiday in Plymouth and I get a call from her. “Graeme, we're in a great second hand bookshop, on the Barbican, and I've found a book with the most ridiculous cover I've ever seen, I bought it for you.” She knows me :o) I love me some old school SFF cover art and now I'm not so embarrassed about reading these books on the bus, the cornier the cover art the better as far as I'm concerned. You've seen it, I'll let you make your own minds up. Me though, I was up for the read and it wasn't just the cover art either. There is a lot of early SFF that I've still to read and I'd never read anything by A.E. van Vogt, until now that is. And it was only a hundred and fifty seven pages long, I could polish that off over a couple of days on the bus to and from work. Couldn't I...? Well, that's what I thought... 200,000,000 years A.D. The old continents of Earth have long since disappeared. The population is n...

It feels like ages since I last did a 'Doctor Who' post (actually, it's only been a few weeks ) so while I try and find a little time to watch 'Moon Knight', today, lets take a look at 'City of Death'; one of those stories that has stuck in my head to the point where I was positive that I'd already posted about it here. I went back and checked and... nope, no post here. That's 'City of Death' for me, a really memorable story that always has me thinking that I watched it more recently than I actually did. Lets talk about that... Whilst on holiday in Paris, the Doctor and Romana discover that something is amiss with time. Who is conducting the secret time experiments, and what connects them to the Mona Lisa? The answers lead them to discover a secret that has been hidden for the last four hundred million years... Half the reason that I do these posts is that it's a great excuse to watch some old favourite 'Doctor Who' stories, as ...

I'm still not a hundred percent sure how this works as I thought Marvel had the rights to 'Conan'. And then another part of me is like, 'dude, stop questioning it, just sit back and enjoy the fact that there's more Conan...' ;o) So that is exactly what I decided to do with Volume 1 of 'The Cimmerian'. I'd already read 'Beyond the Black River' so was pretty sure that I'd be in for a quality and... you know what...? BY CROM! Robert E. Howard's famous Cimmerian UNCENSORED! For the first time, Robert E. Howard's Conan is brought to life uncensored! Discover the true Conan, unrestrained, violent, and sexual. Read the story as he intended! The Cimmerian Vol 1 includes two complete stories, Queen of the Black Coast, and Red Nails, plus bonus material, in one hardcover collection! In Queen of the Black Coast, Conan seeks refuge on a merchant ship, after being pursued for killing a judge. But soon after setting sail, the Cimmerian and hi...

This will be a quick post today, mostly because of work but also… Well, you’ll see 😉 If you were frequenting these parts, around June last year, you would have seen me having the absolute best time reading Brian O’Gorman’s ‘Spiders’ trilogy (reviews Here , Here and Here ), followed up by ‘The Water’ , a horrifying piece of alien invasion/zombie fiction. And as quickly as that, I was a fan and looking out for anything else by O’Gorman. There are a few of his books that I still need to read but the one I had my eye open for was ‘The Smog’ and a couple of weeks ago, I was finally able to pop a copy onto my Kindle. Kindle reading is usually reserved for the bus ride home (as I have a habit of finishing my paperback read over lunch) and that’s just what I did with ‘The Smog’ over a couple of bus rides. Let me tell you about it. Welcome to the town of Gorton. This is a town low on excitement and high on hard work and doing your bit for the community. Many people in Gorton work at Meado...

I really did buy far too many books over the Easter Holiday (and when I was meant to be catching up with what was already on the TBR Pile, so no change there then...), so many in fact that I figured I'd show them all off over two posts instead of one because seriously, how many pictures of books do you actually want to see in a post...? Oh, really..? Well, maybe I'll throw it all in one post, next time round but for now, here's 'Part 2' of  what I bought on holiday (Part 1 can be found over Here ). This week's books come courtesy of a couple of well stocked (maybe not that well stocked now...) charity shops in Ipswich town centre. Worth a look if you happen to be in the area, there's not a lot else to do in Ipswich town centre any more... :o( The Samaritan's Shop (Carr Street) The SFF shelves weren't as well stocked as they have been but I still managed to come out with a few treasures ;o) The Robert Rankin pretty much brought itself and is now insur...

Don't get me wrong, I love my job (and it still surprises me that I'd say that about any job...) but when things kick off, it can all get intense very, very quickly... So it was then that I got to the end of the day (yesterday) and realised that I was too wiped out to even pick a book up, let alone read anything. Luckily for me, I've got a Prime Video watch list that is just brimming over with a whole bunch of stuff, that I keep meaning to watch, and... Here I am :o) Let me tell you about what I watched and how at least one movie was verging on awful but that was ok... 'Battle: Los Angeles' (2011) A squad of U.S. Marines becomes the last line of defense against a global invasion... Is that enough blurb to carry an entire film for an hour and fifty six minutes? The answer is a resounding 'Nope' but 'Battle: Los Angeles' goes ahead and does it anyway and the result is pretty much what you'd expect; about fifteen minutes worth of plot that gets s...

Sometimes, all you want is a bit of comfort reading and that’s never a bad thing if it feels like the rest of the world is against you a bit 😊 Sometimes you don’t want to have to think too much about what you’re reading, you want something familiar that will do the heavy lifting for you and all you have to do is sit there and enjoy the ride. That was where I was last week (and if I’m honest, most of this week as well) and in times like these, I will invariably dig out a David Gemmell book, get nice and comfortable, and settle down for a few hours of quality comfort reading. That’s what I did with ‘Winter Warriors’ last week, let me tell you all about it… The prophecy was clear: upon the death of three kings, the world will be plunged into chaos, and all the cast-out demons of history will return to bring blood and horror to the world. Two of the kings are dead.  The third, about to be born, is hunted by  the Demon Riders of the Krayakin, Lords of the Undead. All the terri...

‘The Bowmen’ and ‘The Soldier’s Rest’ can be found in the collection ‘The White People and Other Weird Stories’. I’m always keen to read more ‘Weird Fiction’ as it appears to be a fairly loose definition taking in a lot of genres that perhaps didn’t have a name of their own back in the day. ‘This barbarian fellow fighting monsters in a made up world… bit weird isn’t it?’ 😉 Okay, maybe it didn’t work quite like that but it’s still interesting to see what got lumped in under ‘Weird’ because no-one really knew where to put it. I’d heard that Arthur Machen was a person to read more of, if you wanted to read Weird Fiction’, and as usual, it’s taken me a little while to get round to it but here I am 😊 And also as usual, I had no idea where to start so thought I’d go for a ‘little taster’ and tackle the two shortest stories, in the collection, first… Perhaps because of the limited space to work with (I believe these stories were originally published in newspapers?), ‘The Bowmen’ and ‘T...

I’m cutting it fine (today has been another one of those days…) but I finally managed to find a little time to get caught up on ‘Moon Knight’ 😊 I didn’t even try to watch it last week (the kids were on holiday so the second I got any time spare, I pretty much fell asleep) so it’s a ‘double feature’ this week. I even managed to keep myself spoiler-free, which I never normally do, so was really keen to see just what had happened while I was away. As it happened… I’ll get to that in a second but before I do… Here’s your regular reminder that I don’t do plot re-caps here. Oh no, not when I’ve got an early start tomorrow. If that’s what you’re after, I’d visit Tor.com if I were you. They’ve got great re-caps for ‘The Friendly Type’ and ‘The Tomb’ , you’re welcome 😉 And if you’re still here, let’s go… I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I was going to enjoy ‘The Friendly Type’ with heart to hearts and a little detective work looking like the order of the day. I know… I’m not coming across...

In the spirit of 'catching up', today is going to be a 'two post day'. Well, that's the plan anyway, we'll see... I've got a bit of a 'Marvel Backlog' to contend with here and where better to start doing something about it than with 'No Way Home'? You know, that film you've all seen apart from me. Even my eldest daughter managed to see it before me so when I grabbed her the DVD, for her birthday, I figured there was no excuse to put it off any longer and grabbed a copy for myself as well. And yes, I know I could have just had it on Prime Video... I've got the rest of them on DVD so why stop there? That's my thinking anyway... ;o) I figure I've left it long enough for everyone else to have watched 'No Way Home' so be warned that there will be spoilers cropping up here and there. If you're still with me, lets go... For the first time in the cinematic history of Spider-Man, our friendly neighbourhood hero's id...

Yep, that's right... If you hadn't guessed already, I'm back from my 'blogging break' and ready to have another go at this here blog ;o) It was just what I needed by the way, I wouldn't say that I read all that much though but more on that in a second.  Hope you guys all had a good break as well. I got up to a few things that I really enjoyed but would leave you all thinking, 'why did he just tell us that?' I won't go into all that then ;o) Lets just say that I spent a lot of time with my daughters so reading time was at a bit of a premium. What happened a lot more was book shopping, because of course it did... So much for eating into the backlog! I actually bought so many books that I'm going to have to show them all over two posts instead of the usual one. I know, I've got a problem... ;o) This post will show some 'payday shopping', and a lucky eBay find, but will concentrate on the first time that I've ever gone round a booksho...

Nothing major, I'm on leave this week and I'm aiming to spend more time with my kids than reading, that's all. Although, having said that, they're quite partial to a good book as well so...  ;o) Also, if I'm being completely honest, the last couple of weeks have been a slog and I'm not enjoying the blog as much as I want to so... Lets give it a few days. I'll be back after Easter (probably) but in the meantime, there are loads of posts here that you can read if you haven't already. Like this one , or these , and this one too . And all the rest... Back soon ;o)

I came to Stephen King a little later than everyone else; when I was a kid, I was more about sneaking James Herbert books off the library shelves and trying to find all the gory stuff. When I finally got round to it though, I never looked back. I love a bit of Stephen King, if anyone is the 'American Tolkien', it's him (but that's a post for another day, maybe). If there's anything better than a Stephen King book, it's a 'big, fat Stephen King book' that you can get lost in for days so it's no surprise that my two favourites are 'It' and 'The Stand'. Having just spent the last two days binging on the TV show, I'm itching to pick the book up again so don't be too surprised if you see a 'The Stand' post soon. In the meantime though, I've just spent all that time watching the show so I might as well tell you all about that first ;o) Fair warning time, I'm aiming for impartial but I'm a fan at the same time ...

The last couple of weeks have been murder but I've finally got there; I'm on leave for the next ten days and I have to tell you, it feels good :o) I won't go into all the gory details but lets just say that I've earned this break and I'm going to make the most of it. It's mostly going to be hanging out with my kids, while they're on Easter Holiday, but there will definitely be time for some reading as well. That's the plan anyway, we'll see how it pans out ;o) In the meantime though... There hasn't been a lot of book buying, over the last week, but some happened, of course it did. A couple of 'damn, I'd better jump on that' eBay purchases and a 'I need to go back and read the first book'. Lets take a look at them, shall we? I don't normally see copies of 'The Pluto Pact' knocking around, at a decent price, on eBay so when I saw this copy, I jumped right on it before anyone else did. It's in pretty good shape as...

Just a quick one today as I’m trying to get everything all squared away before I go on leave next week and there’s a fair bit to do… I’m actually wondering whether it would just be easier to stay at work to be honest 😉  Anyway, while I’m here… I haven’t read all the ‘Gotrek’ books but have always enjoyed the ones that I did manage to pick up. They all work along the same premise (Gotrek seeks a mighty doom but never quite finds it) but that’s ok, sometimes ‘more of the same’ is just what I want from a book. I originally thought that Gotrek died with the rest of the Old World but found out that he somehow made it into the Age of Sigmar’s ‘Mortal Realms’ so it was only a matter of time before I got round to picking up his travels again. Gotrek’s new adventures actually begin in ‘Realmslayer’ but that’s an audiobook, and I’m not so good with them, so I moved onto ‘Ghoulslayer’ instead and went from there… In the bleak, haunted underworld of Shyish, a vengeful Slayer seeks the Lor...

So last week I was in the process of hitting a big reading slump and tackled that by picking up some comfort reading, albeit comfort reading that I’d never read before (If that makes any sense? You know what I mean). You’ve already seen my review for ‘They Came And Ate Us’ , which ended up being just the book that I needed last week, and now we’re onto the next book on that list… I love ‘Predator’ movies (yep, even that one, I love them all) but have never dug too deeply into the ‘book tie-in’ side of the franchise; I did read ‘South China Sea’ a long time ago but that’s about it really. When I saw ‘Concrete Jungle’ in the Brockley bookshop, I figured ‘why not?’ and promptly made it a ‘comfort reading goal’. I finished ‘Concrete Jungle’ last night and, well… Let me tell you all about it. With record-breaking heat come frayed nerves and a rising crime rate. New York City detectives Rasche and Schaefer are assigned to look into the most brutal murders they’ve ever seen – flayed bod...