Lord Samper's Library

  You can find these stories in Kings ‘Night Shift’ collection and they also have a habit of turning up in various editions of ‘Salem’s Lot’. I love ‘Night Shift’ (I always make sure that I have a copy on my shelves) and that’s where I read them this time. I was watching ‘Salem’s Lot’, last night; the more recent one and… Well, by ‘watching’, I should say that I dozed for chunks of it; only during the bits that weren’t worth keeping my eyes open for though ;o) No great loss, I’d always rank the book over both film adaptations. Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah :o) While I was watching ‘Salem’s Lot’, it got me thinking of a couple of King’s short stories that book-end the main event, these two. I thought that reading these stories would be a decent way to round off October and so, one quick search through the shelves later, here we are. Let me tell you about ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ and ‘One for the Road’. ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ Page Count: 35 Pages In which Charles Boone takes up residence in the Bo...

  Page Count: 190 Pages Most people go through phases of reading books by a particular author. Because I have to be different, I go through phases of ‘buying books by a particular author, leaving them on a shelf until I’ve forgotten I have them, and then reading them… eventually’. I wish I was like other people… ;o) Anyway… I was looking for some books to keep me company, while looking after the cats, and came across ‘Strange Eons’, doing a great job of being the ‘forgotten book at the bottom of a pile of slightly less forgotten books’. I’m always up for seeing what other writers make of Lovecraft’s Mythos, and I’ve enjoyed a large chunk of what I’ve read of Bloch, so it felt like just the right time to pick up ‘Strange Eons’ and finally give it a go, especially with Halloween right around the corner. And… When Albert Keith comes across a dusty old painting of a hideous, red-eyed, sharp-clawed creature in a dingy junk shop, he falls in love with it at first sight and buys it at a b...

I’ve been in and out of the ‘Boys’ omnibus editions, over the last few months, and what I’ve found is that if I leave it too long, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to stay on top of the story. That’s partly on me (chemo-brain…) but I’m also going to out on a limb and say that sometimes, it’s feels like Ennis is having so much fun poking fun, at superheroes, that the actual plot gets shunted to the sidelines and left to wonder just what it did wrong. Either way, the number of times I’ve found myself thinking, ‘this is cool, but why is it happening…’ I’ve had a little more time on my hands, this week, so thought I’d go for it and read Volumes 4 & 5, one after the other, and see if things made a little more sense. And… It did ;o) Vol 4. (Page Count: 328 Pages) So where are the real superheroes? The warriors for truth and justice, the defenders of the American way, the heroes who fight to make things right and ask for nothing in return? Hughie finds out when he meets the teenage ...

  Page Count: 144 Pages Yesterday was one of those days where I briefly hit heady heights (prep for an interview happening later today), stopped to use the bathroom and found a dead pigeon on the floor. Seriously, screw you ‘little cat’… If that wasn’t bad enough, ‘little cat’ saw her prize headed to the bin and we had a ‘moment’ where I had to stop her taking it under the bath. The sooner my ex-partner, and kids, come back from their week away, ‘little cat’ can be their problem again :o) Not a day for really getting to grips with the TBR pile then but that’s okay; once I’ve got the interview out of the way, maybe tonight will be a little easier. I did fancy a little reading time though (just nothing too heavy on the eyes) so settled for one of the ‘Doctor Who’ books that I’ve picked up recently. I actually watched ‘The Awakening’ last year and while it was okay, it wasn’t a story that I saw myself revisiting this soon. Not until I saw the cover art anyway, that changed my mind pr...

  Page Count: 183 Pages I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘Animal Horror’ so when I saw mention of ‘The Farm’ in ‘Paperbacks From Hell’ , I resolved to keep my eyes open for what I was reliably informed was a standout work. And then I saw how much second hand copies were selling for… I decided that I couldn’t spare both eyes for the search and kept just the one eye open instead ;o) Time went on and I’ll be honest, that eye started to droop a little. And then all of a sudden, some ‘behind the scenes’ rights negotiations concluded and ‘The Farm’ was available at a much more affordable price. I didn’t hang around grabbing a copy and once it arrived, I didn’t hang around getting stuck into it. The lethal, body-pulping pile-up on the winding Welsh mountain road was sickening enough. But the spillage of chemicals from the wrecked lorry, leaking through the hidden channels of the earth to contaminate the pond at Hobb’s Farm, miles away, produced an unimaginably more horrific effect. As the ...

  Page Count: 279 Pages Halloween approaches and across the land, charity shops are remembering that they’ve been keeping ‘that box of horror books’ since the beginning of last November, in readiness for this year’s ‘October 31st’. They don’t seem to realise that I’ll quite happily buy horror fiction whatever the time of year but… I’m trying to make the most of the ‘flurry of horror fiction’ in the meantime ;o) Old horror books have been popping up, here and there, and yesterday lunchtime, it was the turn of Richard Laymon’s ‘Beware!’ to catch my eye. Now, I’ve had what you’d call an ‘up and down’ reading experience with Laymon, for every ‘The Cellar’ there’s a ‘Flesh’ , but I’m a sucker for the cover art, on these books, so I was always going to pick up ‘Beware!’ And… The supermarket shouldn’t have been shut – it wasn’t normal for Elsie to quit early. But then it wasn’t normal for a meat cleaver to fly through the air by itself. Or for a guard dog, locked in overnight, to end up ...

Apologies for the ‘blogging silence’ yesterday; I’m looking after the cats, again, and yesterday was all about damage control… You see, ‘little cat’ lives for getting out of the house and having adventures but it was raining (hard) and she didn’t like that, choosing to blame it on ‘big cat’ who was already feeling out of sorts because her family are away for the next week. You can see where this ended up. Honestly, I thought looking after my girls was hard work, trying to keep ‘little cat’ amused etc is something else. Anyway… I did get a little reading under my belt but that’s for another day. While the cats are asleep, lets take a look at some movies that I’ve been watching over the last few days. One strangely disappointing, one surprisingly good and the last one? I’m still not sure… ‘V/H/S/Mixtape’ (2026) Over the last few years, horror streaming service ‘Shudder’ have been very kindly adding new entries to the ‘V/H/S’ franchise and this years instalment has arrived. I should say ‘...

You won’t see me ‘Trick or Treating’ this Halloween. My daughters are past that now and to be honest… If I want sweets and/or chocolate these days, I just go out and buy them; Halloween or not ;o) There are a couple of things that I do like to (try and) do over Halloween though and when I do, you’ll see it right here. That’s right, I’m talking ‘watching scary movies’ and ‘reading scary books’. And yep, I do that over the rest of the year but, you know… Anyway… It hasn’t been a bad week for reading, over here, but the week is almost done and so am I ;o) Just a couple of short stories for you today, one of them ‘really short’… ‘The History of the Necronomicon’ – H.P. Lovecraft Page Count: 2 Pages Seriously… I thought I was getting a four page tale, at least that’s what the contents page told me, but one of those pages was the title and the other was the blank page that came before the next story. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that but… Here we are. Anyway… ‘The History of the Necr...

  Page Count: 144 Pages It was back at the start of the year that I found myself taken by cover art showing a birds-eye view of a brown bear making her way through the woods, carrying a shovel and dragging a bloody sack behind her. Sometimes, your reading choices can be a little more interesting if you act on impulse and that’s how I came to read ‘Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees’; a strangely sweet tale of a bear just trying to juggle work, at the local hardware store, with her ‘other work’ as a serial killer. As you do ;o) You can read my full review over Here but here’s a couple of sentences that sum it up… I’ll swear at the TV pretty frequently but you won’t normally catch me swearing at a book, until I read ‘Beneath The Trees’ and said ‘fuck’ out loud, twice in the first chapter. Part murder-mystery, part ‘slasher’ and a thoughtful piece about the law of the jungle as seen through the eyes of a serial killer, all at the same time. I reckon I’ll be hard pressed to find anot...

It’s a slightly shamefaced Graeme who greets you today… After all my moaning and worry about having my teeth pulled, it turns out that yesterday’s appointment was just a prelude to the main event. A scan of my jaw (and the few teeth left in it), a little cleaning up and enough ‘laughing gas’ that there were actually a few moments that made me chuckle ;o) I wasn’t good for much, yesterday afternoon (honestly, I’m a little surprised I made it to the train station…), so I took it easy and read a couple of short stories that I’d been meaning to get to. Let me tell you about them… ‘The Distance In Their Eyes’ – Stephen Graham Jones (From ‘Predator: Eyes of the Demon’, Titan Books) Page Count: 12 Pages The ‘Predator: Eyes of the Demon’ anthology has been sat on a shelf for a while now and every time I go to pick it up… You know what happens next ;o) Anyway, my youngest daughter finally watched ‘Predator: Badlands’ the other day, really enjoyed it too, so I took that as a sign and chose ‘The...

  Page Count: 141 Pages It was only a few weeks ago that I read ‘Doctor Who and the Invasion of Time’ but it feels like a lot longer. Time slows down when you’re unemployed, sometimes that’s a good thing but sometimes, not so much :o( Anyway… It felt like a long time since I’d picked up a ‘Doctor Who’ book and a walk through Greenwich Market, the other day, turned up a copy of ‘The Claws of Axos’; a book that I hadn’t read since… Erm… sometime in the ‘eighties? I can’t remember exactly, lets just say that it has been a while. Either way, it felt like everything had come together and it was about time I had a re-read. So… That’s what I did. When I’m hunting books, I never ignore tracks and signs and… I’m always hunting books ;o) ‘Axos calling Earth, Axos calling Earth…’ The creatures stood before them, beautiful golden humanoids, offering friendship and their priceless Axonite, in return for… what? Only the Doctor remains suspicious. What is the real reason for the Axons’ sudden ar...

  Page Count: 412 Pages I actually have a copy of the ‘Ravenor Omnibus’ but the size of it makes it a little impractical for ‘commuter reading’, or any kind of reading that doesn’t involve a comfy chair and a free afternoon. I’m working on that by the way (the comfy chair, not the free afternoon, I have too many of those…) Where was I…? Oh, yes :o) The omnibus isn’t a book to be lugged around, in my bag, so when I happened upon a copy of ‘Ravenor, it very swiftly became my ‘commute reading’ and… Here we are ;o) I’ve needed to give my reading a little ‘jump-start’, just recently, and some ‘Warhammer 40K’ is always a good place to start. I’ll be honest, for large chunks of this read, I wondered if I should have picked another book but ultimately, it was worth the read. The storming tale of Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor and his band of lethal operatives conveys the grim far future from the ground level up as they investigate the trafficking of a dangerous substance within the Imperium. Wi...

Over the last eight years I've been lucky enough to be paid a yearly bonus; some of which went on books because of course it did ;o) Did I say 'some'? I meant to say... Erm... 'Some'...? Hush you, no judgment here ;o) Anyway... A few days ago, I got my last bonus from the old job. I didn't go crazy with it (you know, 'last bonus' and all that) but I did take myself for a little look round the Warhammer Store, on Tottenham Court Road, and managed to not only stay away from the cool looking models (for now) but come back with some cool looking books. Here they are... Apologies for the photo... Turns out that I'm not just missing the all round 'comfiness' of the comfy chair, I'm also missing the backdrop it provides for 'book pictures'. (Note to Self: Sort out a new comfy chair this week...) Part of the reason that I went in the Warhammer Store was that I wanted to give my reading a little 'shot in the arm' after a difficult ...

Just looking at the blog title here and there’s something quite pleasing (to me, anyway) about having two ‘Volume 4’s in the same title. Makes me feel like I’m actually making a little progress with the various series that I’m into and by extension, the TBR Pile. No! Don’t say anything, just leave me in blissful ignorance for a little longer… ;o) Anyway… Yesterday was a good day for getting called up about contract jobs (yes I know how that sounds, no I'm not changing it) and it was also a good day to put a little shine on my rusty old social skills. It wasn’t a good day for reading though… That’s becoming a little bit of a pattern and once again, I’m hoping to do something about that over the weekend. In the meantime, I did manage to find a little time for ‘Something is Killing the Children Volume 4’ and ‘Saga: Volume 4’ was already sitting patiently, waiting to be posted about, so… Lets get to it :o) ‘Saga: Volume 4’ – Vaughan, Staples (Image) Page Count: 144 Pages In this volume...

Well, not exactly forgotten, it's right at the corner of my eye whenever I'm working at my desk :o) But... It's also a shelf that's in a corner of my living room, just behind my TV, and is a little trickier to get to. If a book ends up on this shelf then, I'm a lot less likely to get to it than others. So, a kind of 'Forgotten Shelf' then but, my blog title sounds better ;o) A bookshelf is still a bookshelf though, forgotten or not, and just as deserving as a post here as the more accessible bookshelves that I've featured over the years. And that's where this post comes in. Lets take a look at 'The Forgotten Shelf' and see what's what... Not the best photo I've ever taken but hopefully you can make out the titles :o) Most of these books were unpacked straight onto this shelf and haven't been touched since, which is a shame really as they were all bought to be read. There are a couple here though that enjoyed a brief moment on this...

  Page Count: 248 Pages Everyone knows that there’s a new TV adaptation, of Stephen King’s ‘Carrie’, showing on Prime Video at the moment. Hardly anyone knows that there’s also a copy of ‘Carrie’ on one of my bookshelves that I haven’t got round to picking up. Which version did I get to first…? The page count gave it away ;o) I’d heard that the TV adaptation takes things in a slightly different direction and while I will get to it, yesterday seemed like the right time to go back to the source for a re-read (the first time in a long time) And I’ll be honest, I was at the point where I was thinking, ‘if I don’t read a novel now, I never will…’ ‘Carrie’ was a quick win ;o) It’s a lot more than that though… Carrie White has a gift – she can move things with her mind. To be invited to Prom Night by Tommy Ross is a dream come true for Carrie – the first step towards social acceptance by her high school colleagues. But events will take a decidedly macabre turn on that horrifying and endle...

Yep, it’s another ‘Bits & Pieces’ style post but that’s just what happens when what should have been a couple of hours job-hunting becomes a lot longer; thanks to my laptop deciding to play by its own rules and ‘take breaks’… You may see me actually finish a book this week, maybe… Oh well, fingers crossed for a better experience today ;o) Yesterday didn’t leave me with a lot of time for reading then but I did manage to read me some more ‘Conan’ and finally watch ‘Backrooms’ as well. And you know what? I’ll take that :o) ‘Backrooms’ (2026) When investigating powercuts in his store, struggling furniture salesman Clark finds an entrance into the Backrooms, a seemingly endless series of rooms and passages. Most of these are empty, others are less so… Now therapist Mary must find her way into the Backrooms and locate Clark, he doesn’t want to leave… My eldest daughter loves the lore around the ‘Backrooms’ and the plan was to go and see the movie at the cinema. We all know what happens t...

Another ‘I blinked and missed it’ kind of weekend… I’m not sure if it was something I ate, or my medication getting the better of me, but I felt pretty rough for most of Saturday (when I was awake, that is). Sunday… Sunday was mostly about my spending time with my kids but I did find some time, here and there, to have a little moan about the continued lack of a comfy chair in my living room. I really need to do something about that. Anyway… I did manage to get a little reading under my belt as well; not much but enough to feel like I hadn’t slacked off too much ;o) Let me tell you about some of that. Just a couple of comics for today but they’re both worth a look and definitely added to the ‘scary vibe’ that I’m aiming for this month… ‘Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees: Halloween Special’ – Various (ID Dark) Before I go any further… If you haven’t read the ‘Rites of Spring’ mini-series (collected or otherwise), you should definitely do that before reading this ‘One-Shot’ Halloween Sp...