Lord Samper's Library

It's been a 'bit of a week' and to be honest, I'll be glad to see the back of it. Good job it's Friday then ;o)  With various bits and pieces going on (mostly around tying up loose ends at work before I leave), my reading hasn't exactly hit a brick wall but it has slowed right down with the usual dose of 'inability to focus' and so on. I'll get it back though, I always do. In the meantime, and while I'm trying to figure out which pieces of work can be completed/handed over, I thought I'd revisit a series of posts that I haven't touched since March last year . Yep, it's time once again for me to show off a couple of shelves and see if I can come up with some 'interesting facts' about them. It might even remind me to actually read some of these books. Wish me luck...  Not so much a 'shelfie' then, I lost the final remaining shelf (in the move) so this is more of a... I don't know... It's wooden and it holds books...

It’s been a tough couple of days, kind of a mixture of ‘Summer Holidays Stuff’ and getting things in order before my job comes to an end. I’ve still got four weeks to go but I think it’s going to go quicker than I expect. Anyway… My reading has understandably taken a hit then but you know me. The reading may slow down a bit but it never stops, not entirely ;o) I’ve got anthologies all over the flat, full of short stories that will keep me ticking over, but this time, I picked up my phone and went for a couple of tales from the ‘Horus Heresy’. Well... One tale from the Heresy, one from a little bit beforehand. One that I really got into and one, one that I couldn’t quite see the point of. Lets start with that one first… ‘The Wolf of Ash and Fire’ – Graham McNeill (Black Library) Page Count: 43 Pages Horus Lupercal, ever the favoured son of the Emperor of Mankind, stands ready to lead his Legion against the Ork-held planetoid of Gorro. After nearly two centuries of warfare in the name o...

  Page Count: 152 Pages. Another ‘shorter’ post for today… All of a sudden, work has become about handing over to the people who will stay on after I leave; kind of obvious really but the need to get it done has kicked up a notch. On top of that, I’ve also got my two daughters coming round so today is going to be about juggling stuff and seeing how long I can keep it all in the air. Definitely a ‘short post day’ then, you understand ;o) Last night felt like a good time then to pick up the next instalment of ‘Saga’ and keep moving forwards on what will hopefully be a full readthrough of the whole series. A nice short read for what ended up what felt like a short evening. Thanks to her star-crossed parents Marko and Alana, newborn baby Hazel has already survived lethal assassins, rampaging armies, and alien monstrosities, but in the cold vastness of outer space, the little girl encounters something truly frightening: her grandparents! Collects Issues #7-12 The ‘volume number’ is a r...

I love going to the cinema but these days (what with the cost, my being a grumpy middle-aged man and oh yes, my job coming to an end), I don’t go as often as I’d like. Basically, if I am going to go, it has to be the kind of movie where you can’t imagine watching it on the TV without having seen it in the cinema first. You know what I mean ;o) I’ve been pretty excited about the new ‘Masters of the Universe’ film but it didn’t quite meet the threshold for a cinema trip; don’t ask me how I came to that decision, it just didn’t. What I wasn’t expecting though was for the movie to end up on Prime (and free to watch) quite so quickly… I don’t follow the numbers too closely but I had heard that the movie didn’t do too well at the box office; was Amazon trying to claw a little extra revenue back by dropping it into Prime early? Or was I just overthinking it when I could have been watching the movie…? Either way, I thought I’d give ‘Masters of the Universe’ a go, so that’s what I did last nigh...

  Page Count: 253 Pages (I didn’t read them all though, not this time) Before I kick this post off, I just want to start off by saying that I’m pretty proud of myself over here :o) Yep, I’ve made it through ten days of ‘cat-sitting’ without mistakenly calling out the emergency vet; you’d think that’s a low bar to aim for but it’s a surprisingly easy one for me to miss completely. And ‘Cat Number One’ really knows how to hold a grudge. Anyway, lets actually talk about the book, shall we…? ;o) When I’m trawling charity shop bookshelves, I will invariably grab any Black Library book that I come across, especially the older ones that seem to go for an absolute fortune on eBay. If you don’t take a chance right there, you might not get another one; it’s either that or I just really want to buy a book (any book…), both reasons are valid as far as I’m concerned ;o) Now a lot of the time, this approach will more or less guarantee me a decent read but every now and then, I get one that doesn...

We all know that I've spent the last week looking after my ex-wife's cats (at time of writing, only for a few more hours...) but what people may not know is that I've also spent the last week fighting a secret war. A secret war that I must always fight, if only because I've never managed to land the decisive blow. And this last week was no exception... Yep, it's summer and I've spent the week squaring off against at least one mosquito (likely more) that is quite literally out for my blood. The end result? A very fat, content mosquito and me heading out to find something to stop my legs looking like pepperoni pizza ;o) I couldn't sort that problem out but, no surprise to anyone, I ended up buying a few books instead. Of course I did... ;o) Presented by, well... I haven't named him yet but he was happy to carry on in the meantime. Anyway... As seems to be the rule these days, all three books were found in Greenwich Oxfam :o) I've always meant to read J...

I'll be honest... After the news about my job, on Tuesday, my brain is (a little bit) scrambled right now and I'm just trying to make it to the weekend. Luckily for me, it's Friday ;o) There may be a 'short story post' later, lets just see how work goes in the meantime, but for now, here's the official trailer for the new 'Resident Evil' - out in September. It's looking more and more like a real departure from the Mila Jovovich movies but, I'm feeling pretty optimistic...

  Page Count: 376 Pages Just a quick one today as I’m trying to wrestle work into shape before I head out of the door; oh yes, and try to sort my CV out as well. Fun times :o) This is the furthest I’ve ever made it into ‘The Boys’ though (at least until I can make it back to my flat and grab Volume Three) so I wanted to get something posted here before I have to get to grips with the other stuff. So, with that said… Desperate to understand the world that he’s now a part of, Hughie turns to the man behind it all – the bizarre figure known only as The Legend. Sixty years of the Vought-American corporation’s superhero agenda for America are soon revealed, with the worst of the secret of all beginning on 09/11/01. As Hughie’s affair with the beautiful young Annie January blossoms into love, The Boys take a run at Vought’s number one franchise, the G-Men, but neither they, G-Force, G-Coast, G-Style, G-Wiz nor the G-Nomads are about to give up their slice of the G-Pie. For the worst...

  Page Count: 367 Pages Excuse me while I vent, just a little bit… Yesterday was a crappy one; in the morning I found out that my teams function is being outsourced and my job will come to an end at the beginning of September. To be honest, I did see it coming but I didn’t see it coming yesterday morning :o( Life just got a little more complicated and I’m not sure what this will mean for the blog. I suspect I’ll be trying to strike a balance between job-hunting and letting off steam here by talking about books and stuff. We’ll see how it goes… Thanks for bearing with me, ‘normal service’ will now resume. Sorry about that :o) Anyway… While I’ve seen ‘Ringu’ and ‘The Ring’ (1 & 2), I’ve never come across any of the books that the films were based on; until the other day :o) I was passing through Greenwich, saw ‘Ring’ in Waterstones and thought to myself, ‘it’s now or never, isn’t it?’ So… Doomed to die, one way out, one week to find it. The body of a young girl is found at her ho...

  Page Count: 123 Pages. Ooh, I’m not going to enjoy writing this post… Not because of anything to do with the book itself; more to do with the fact that I was over three quarters done with this post on Sunday night, only for my laptop to crash and lose the whole lot. I mean, yes, I should have saved a copy but that’s besides the point ;o) Anyway… I actually managed to get some reading under my belt, over the weekend, and ‘Doctor Who and the Underworld’ was what I like to call ‘the straightforward one’. Well compared to the more involved ‘Ring’ and whatever the hell was happening in ‘The Boys Omnibus Volume 2’… Yep, it was straightforward and that’s just what this Graeme needed (you’ll hear no apologies from me!) And it was fun too, let me tell you a bit about it… Exploring the very edge of the known universe, the Doctor, Leela and K9 discover a group of astronauts searching for the lost gene bank of the Minyan race. During this perilous voyage, the astronauts’ craft plunges into t...

I know... A 'trailer post' followed by 'another trailer post...' Hear me out though :o)  I had a 'Doctor Who' post all written last night, right up until the point where my laptop crashed and lost it completely. I really wish I'd hit 'Save', just once... Anyway, I thought I'd have another go at writing it today but one of the cats brought a live sparrow into the house so my time was taken up 'sparrow rescuing' instead. Luckily, the cat is a bit stupid so the sparrow is fine :o) I'd pretty much given up on a blog post for today, at that point, until I was going through YouTube, over lunch, and saw that the 'Doomsday' trailer had just landed. It's looking pretty good, don't you think? Right, a little more work and then I'll see if I can remember what I wrote in that 'Doctor Who' post... 

Almost five years ago, I read James Murray and Darren Wearmouth's 'Don't Move' and, well... You can read my thoughts over Here but one of the things that I said about the book was that it was 'Definitely written with a movie in mind' (talking about the ending in particular but, the whole book really). Well... I'm not saying that anyone else outside of a few regular visitors, and some AI Bots, read my review but... Here's a trailer and all of a sudden, I'm really excited :o) 'Don't Move' will be in cinemas in September. In the meantime, do give the book a go if you get the chance; if you like 'giant spider horror', 'Don't Move' has you covered.

Sorry it has been quiet here these past couple of days… I’ll be honest, the mixture of medication that I’m on (and the heat) left me absolutely shattered and in no fit state for work, or blogging. So, I did neither :o) Took a couple of days off sick (back into work on Monday) and didn’t even think about blogging. I have been up to other things, mostly cat-sitting (the girls and my ex-partner are away) and all the ‘fun’ that entails – no pun intended ;o) At the time of writing, the cat ‘most likely to do a runner’ is snoozing on a chair; the cat ‘most likely to snooze on a chair’ legged it after dinner and hasn’t been seen since. I’ve got another week of this :o) What I also have though is access to my ex-partner’s Disney+ account and I’ll be using it, over the week, to catch up on, well… I don’t know :o) Any recommendations? I do know that I am way behind with my ‘MCU watching’ so yesterday, I figured I’d put a little dent in that list and... ‘Thunderbolts*’ (2025) When a group of spec...

  Page Count: 124 Pages So yesterday was sick leave (nothing serious, don’t worry) and I spent the day in my trusty comfy chair, working my way through ‘Todd and the Book of Pure Evil’ (funnier than I thought it would be). Luckily for this post, I also spent a chunk of my time reading ‘Doctor Who and the Monster of Peladon’; a book that I haven’t read since, erm… a long time ago. Yep, this is one of those posts where I end up feeling really quite old… Anyway, a re-read then but it had been so long that it felt like I was coming to the book for the first time. Let me tell you about it… Fifty years after his first visit to Peladon, the Doctor returns to find that Queen Thalira has inherited a troubled kingdom from her father. Membership of the Galactic Federation was expected to bring peace and prosperity to the planet, but the spirit of the sacred monster Aggedor is once more spreading terror and death. The Doctor uncovers a treacherous plot to steal the mineral wealth of Peladon, a...

  Page Count: 405 pages After a ‘not so great’ experience with ‘Domain’, I really needed my next read to be a decent one, that’s what led me back to ‘Carnage Unending’; an anthology that I’d started reading, about a month ago(ish) but had somehow found its way way to the bottom of a pile of books on my desk. It’s funny how that seems to happen fairly regularly at the moment… Anyway :o) I figured a little ‘Warhammer 40k’ reading would be a safe bet and I’d already read a fair chunk of 'Carnage Unending' so it would be a fairly quick read as well. As it turned out… Both of these were true, to a point. I’m not going to go into my usual ‘something for everyone’ spiel (oh, hang on…) but lets just say that for me, ‘Carnage Unending’ was a decent palate cleanser after ‘Domain’ with a varied set of tales from the sides of ‘Imperium’ and ‘Ork’. The other thing I realised is that after a ‘negative read’, I am much less inclined to stick with a story if it’s not doing it for me. I’m sure ...

  Page Count: 482 Pages (I skimmed a lot of pages though, that should tell you something right away…) Now here’s a book that I first read at high school and my latest copy has been sat on my bookshelf since August last year, waiting patiently to be read (in the way that only a book can). The last time I read it was back in 2014 and to be honest, I didn’t particularly enjoy it . It has been a few years though, and the other two books have featured here so… It felt like time to round things off and have the full trilogy feature on the blog. I know, sometimes that's all it takes for me to decide on my next read ;o) Still not keen on it though, at least I can say I’ve (re)read all three books now. The long dreaded nuclear conflict. The city torn apart, shattered, its people destroyed or mutilated beyond hope. For just a few, survival is possible only beneath the wrecked streets – if there is time to avoid the slow-descending poisonous ashes, But below, the rats, demonic offspring of th...

I’ve spent the last week, or two, working my way through a rewatch of the ‘Slasher’ series and it has been great. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go into great detail here because, well… There are already posts here that do just that, I’ll link to them at the bottom of the post ;o) And that’s what led me to this post… I was (re)watching ‘Slasher: Ripper’ and realised that I’d never posted about it here. Being the kind of guy who ‘has to get the whole set’, that’s where this post comes in. And while I was watching ‘Ripper’, I found out that ‘Hell Motel’ has loose connections to the series so I gave that a go as well. While I’m hanging out with my daughters today, have a read and see what I thought of these two shows; both were good but I enjoyed one more than the other… ‘Slasher: Ripper’ (2023) It’s 1904 and the upper-class of Toronto are left reeling when one of their own is brutally murdered by a killer known only as ‘The Widow’. Detective Kenneth Rijkers must find the killer and his in...

  Page Count: 144 Pages It wasn’t just ‘Doctor Who’ books that I bought, in Greenwich, the other day. I don’t normally go into ‘Casbah Records’ but I saw a little sign, saying ‘books for sale’, and figured… Just this once :o) ‘Turf’ is one of those titles where I see #1 in ‘Forbidden Planet’ and think to myself, ‘I’ll pick up a copy next time’. The next thing I know, it’s years later and I’ve just found a really nice looking collected edition (still wrapped up in the plastic) in a Greenwich Record Shop. I thought to myself, ‘if I don’t read it now, I’ll have retired by the time I next remember to read it…’ So, that’s what I did. New York, 1929: The height of prohibition. Gangs fall like bloody dominos as the mysterious Dragonmir family fights to rule the city and begin to wake the Old One – a gigantic sleeping vampire buried in the roots of their mansion. But an unlikely alliance between tough guy Eddie Falco and an alien gun-runner leads to an uneasy stalemate. Meanwhile, a strong...

  Page Count: 346 Pages I’m not much for ‘reading resolutions’ these days; I don’t have anything against them, they just don’t seem to work for me and I’ll be honest, I’d rather enjoy my reading than feel all guilty about not finishing a book that I didn’t want to read but thought I should. That’s me anyway, good luck with your reading resolutions if you have any ;o) One thing I am trying to do though, this year, is to read more of the books that have been sat on my bookshelves for way too long. Books that I wanted to read but somehow never got round to because… Well, I ended up buying more books. I know :o) ‘Genefather’ is one of those books and I have been hankering for a little more ‘Warhammer 40k’, in my reading... It didn’t take a lot to put two and two together and make ‘Genefather’ my next read… In the hope of taming the Great Rift that divides the galaxy in two, Archmagos Belisarius Cawl invites representatives from across the Imperium to the artificial world of Pontus Aver...

Doesn’t that title look like the kind of football scoreline where the losing side ends up promising to refund their supporters for the cost of tickets and travel…? ;o) Sorry, yesterday was a busy one as well as being far too hot to be so busy. The kind of day where you go for a hospital appointment and the nurse taking your blood pressure asks if it’s normally that low. For the record, the nurse tried taking it again but the second one was worse and she decided to just stick with the first reading… Anyway :o) By the time I made it home last night, I wasn’t much use for anything but these two comics were waiting for me so I was able to end the day on a fairly decent note; one comfy chair and a couple of comics that I’d been looking forward to finally reading. Let me tell you a bit about them… ‘Conan the Barbarian’ #31 – Zub, Braithwaite, Rodriguez (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures) Remember when I said that I really needed to go back and find a copy of #29 , just to find out exactly why ...

  Page Count: 126 Pages I really shouldn’t have gone to Greenwich Market at the weekend, it’s not like I don’t have enough books to read at home…;o) I was going a little stir crazy though so off I went and of course I ended up coming home with a couple of ‘Doctor Who’ books, ‘Warriors of the Deep’ and ‘The Monster of Peladon’ (amongst other things). Oh well… Anyway, after ‘one of those days’ at work, I was more or less in the mood for some comfort reading and (finally) settled on ‘Warriors of the Deep’; a TV serial that nobody else seems to like, apart from me . I’m awkward like that ;o) I’d never read the book though, and it has been a while since I watched the TV serial, so last night I settled down for the kind of read that doesn’t come round all that often. ‘The book that you haven’t read but kind of half-know the story’… When the TARDIS materialises on Earth in the year 2084, the Doctor meets an old enemy – the Sea Devils. Once the masters of this planet, they are now forced t...

  Page Count: 355 Pages Is it now a ‘Monday Tradition’ to apologise for the ‘blogging silence’ of the last couple of days? Well, lets leave it another couple of weeks, and we’ll see, but it’s starting to look that way isn’t it…? ;o) I’d just about run out of energy by Friday and needed a couple of days to recharge. So that’s exactly what this Graeme did and I don’t regret a second of it. I spent most of the time re-watching seasons of ‘Slasher’ but I did get a little reading under my belt as well, of course I did :o) I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Ronald Malfi’s two novella collections and I was in the mood for some short stories ove the weekend. ‘We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone’ felt like an opportunity to have the ‘best of both worlds’ and… Twenty haunting stories from the Bram Stoker Award nominated, and bestselling author of Come With Me. A man leaves rehab and tries to make a new life for himself, only to find the past closing in on him. A married couple on holiday have a biz...