Lord Samper's Library

So, I’m back at my ex-partner’s place, looking after house and cats while her and my daughters are away. And… I don’t want to jinx it but here goes… I think I may have finally got the hang of this cat-sitting business :o) Cat Number 1 still isn’t too keen on me but knows that ‘Graeme = Being Fed’ so I’m tolerated. Cat Number 2… I’m pretty sure I saw her, from the bathroom window, trying to catch a sparrow, the little psycho. And just to clarify… If I see her with a bird, that bird will be rescued. Anyway, the cats being cats, yesterday was quite a nice one actually. While they were doing their thing, I did mine; that being just sitting there and working my way through a couple of comic books that I’ve been meaning to get to. One re-read, one ‘first time read’. Today will be more of the same :o) While I do that, have some quick thoughts on yesterday’s comic book reading… ‘The Walking Dead: Volume 3, Safety Behind Bars’ – Kirkman, Adlard, Rathburn (Image) Page Count: 136 Pages Last week...

The last few weeks have actually been better, for reading, than I thought. Go me :o) Scroll back and you’ll see that I’ve managed to get a few books, and short stories etc, under my belt. What I haven’t done though, is mention the comic books that I’ve also read in that time. This post will be where I remedy that ;o) Just some quick thoughts today though. I’ve got a bit of a day to get through and I need to save a little energy for ‘Walking Dead Night’ with my eldest daughter (seriously, the chemotherapy has me falling asleep at the drop of a hat, don’t want to do that tonight!) Also, a couple of these books didn’t exactly leave me with a lot to say about them, see if you can guess which ones they are… ‘Everything Dead & Dying’ – Brombal, Phillips, Martin, Bidikar (Image) Page Count: 176 Pages Jack Chandler is the sole survivor of the zombie apocalypse in his rural farming community, but rather than eliminate them, he has chosen to continue living alongside the undead ― including t...

I really almost did... :o)  Reading has kind of stalled over the last few days (mostly work but I’ve also developed an annoying habit of falling asleep the second I turn my work laptop off…) I’ve got no plans for today so hopefully I’ll be able to do something about that, fingers crossed ;o) In the meantime? I’ve had better luck staying awake for movies over the last week (although I still managed to sleep through a good chunk of ‘Shin Godzilla’, dammit) so let me quickly tell you about some of those… ‘Rammbock: Berlin Undead’ (2010) For better or worse, I’ve never been what you’d call an ambitious man but I do have things that I want to do, one of those being to watch as many zombie movies as I possibly can. Not your ‘standard ambition’ but it gets me through the day ;o) Anyway… ‘Rammbock’ is a zombie movie that I seemed to keep finding in various ‘zombie movies you should watch’ YouTube videos but never managed to track down the film itself. That changed the other day when it su...

Last night, I turned off my work laptop and settled down in my chair, ready to get stuck into ‘Old Moon Quarterly Vol. 8’ and… The next thing I knew, I’d woken up and it was far too late to read anything, let alone post about it here. I should clarify, it wasn’t ‘Old Moon Quarterly’ that sent me to sleep, it had just been a really long day. I’m getting old... Luckily for today’s post, I’ve got a few more movies under my belt and they weren’t bad ones either. That made for a nice change ;o) ‘Dark Match’ (2024) A small time wrestling company accepts a well paying gig in a backwoods town, only to find that they’ve been hired by a mysterious cult leader with his own plans for their match… The other night, I was having one of those evenings where I really wanted to watch something but it was taking far too long to make my mind up so… I figured I’d give ‘Dark Match’ a go, otherwise I’d watch nothing at all. And… A few days later, I’m still not a hundred percent sure what the point of it was...

I spent a large chunk of yesterday trying not to fall asleep at my desk so I didn’t even try to read anything last night, know your limits and all that… ;o) Nope. I sat down, in the comfy chair, instead and watched a couple of movies; mostly because that was all I was good for but also because I’ve gone through a spell of watching disappointing films, just recently, and I really wanted to break that streak (it had gone on far too long). And you know what? You can consider the ‘Bad Movie Streak’ well and truly broken :o) A zombie movie is more or less guaranteed to always do that (apart from if it’s ‘Hard Rock Zombies’) but there was still room for another movie that I was pleasantly surprised by. Lets start with the zombie movie. ‘We Bury The Dead’ (2025) After an experimental EMP weapon is accidentally detonated off the coast of Tasmania, the populace of the island is utterly wiped out and the Australian government mounts a massive clear up operation with volunteers flown in to collec...

I’ve been more about the books just recently but at the same time, the flat has been a little quiet as well so in the evenings, I’ve had a few movies playing, just for a bit of background noise (and also to drown out the singing from the pub over the road…) The movies weren’t brilliant but that’s ok; I wasn’t after ‘brilliant’, just something to occupy my eyes when I wasn’t reading ;o) Even so, I still managed to find a movie that I really shouldn’t have bothered with. Lets start with that one first… ‘Evilution’ (2008) When an alien life form resurrects the dead and turns them on the human race, a young scientist must fight to contain the catastrophe and eradicate the alien menace. One of those films where I wish I’d paid a little more attention, just so I knew what was going on, but at the same time, it was so dull that my attention kept sliding. That will teach me for insisting on watching every single zombie movie I find… :o) All I’ll say is… If the young scientist really wanted to ...

  Page Count: 472 Pages Just over a couple of weeks ago, I picked up Keith Rosson’s ‘Fever House’ for a read and… Well, you can read my review over Here , if you like, or if not, lets just say that once I got going, I couldn’t put the book down until I’d finished. That should tell you all you need to know ;o) Well, it took me a couple of weeks to get round to it but there was never any doubt about my reading ‘The Devil By Name’. After sorting out hospital appointments, and bank card issues, yesterday, I settled down for a read and… No one expected the apocalypse would be broadcast via phone call; anyone who managed to survive that doomsday call has a harrowing answer to the question, "Where were you when the Message came through?” Five years after the event that drove most of the global population to madness, the world is overrun with the ‘fevered’ - once-human, zombielike creatures drawn indiscriminately to violence and murder. In a campaign to restabilize the country, the mass...

  Page Count: 154 Pages Now here’s a book that would have been on the ol’ TBR Pile for three years, next month, if I hadn’t picked it up yesterday… That’s not the longest a book has spent on the pile but is a little embarrassing; having said that though, there’s only a limited window to read Christmas fiction and if you miss that, it’s another year before you can try again ;o) It took me a little while then but I got there in the end! I didn’t want to wait another year so I thought I’d get in a little early this time (30th November falls within the ‘window’, please tell me it isn’t just me who is like this…) This will be a quicker post, than normal as I’ve got a couple of hospital appointments today and also, well… the page count is a big clue ;o) Here goes… When Christmas supply warehouse manager Jimmy tries to help new employee Tommy find a last-minute gift for his girlfriend, they accidentally unleash a long-forgotten and very seasonal genetic experiment with a taste for human f...

  Page Count: 515 Pages After reading a couple of reviews for ‘Coffin Moon’, I was keen to find out, for myself, what Keith Rosson was all about. I couldn’t quite stretch to a hard-back copy of ‘Coffin Moon’ (that has since changed) so I thought I’d start with ‘Fever House’ and see where the journey took me. I’d already polished off a few chapters and as yesterday was a quiet one, I took the opportunity to sit in the comfy chair and see how far I could get with the rest of the book. The next thing I knew, it was the evening and I was finishing the last few pages. I can’t remember the last time that happened so that should really tell you all you need to know but that wouldn’t make for much of a post here. Lets see if I can go a little deeper than just a sentence… ;o) A small-time criminal. A has-been rock star. A shadowy government agency. And a severed hand whose dark powers threaten to destroy them all. When leg-breaker Hutch Holtz rolls up to a rundown apartment complex in Por...

I managed to get a fair bit read this last week, mostly related to the last couple of books of the ‘Siege of Terra’ series. Yep, I’m reading ‘Era of Ruin’ now but that’s just mopping up the last little bits of story; the main feature is well and truly done now (I still have some gaps to fill in but, you know what I mean) and even though I knew the broad strokes of the tale, I’m not quite sure how I feel about the whole thing. I’ll see if I can get my thoughts in order for a post tomorrow. In the meantime, this has also been a week of watching movies (sick-leave is doing me so much good…) and that’s what I’m here to talk about right now. I’m hoping the title of the post has you a little intrigued but, I’m going to start with something completely different ;o) This last week, I watched… Every Single ‘Scream’ movie. Apparently, ‘Scream 7’ isn’t too far away so I thought that this last week was as good a time as any to have go through the franchise again, ‘Scream 6’ being a first time view...

Bit of an odd day yesterday… I had a day all to myself which was cool (natural loner and all that ) but also awkward, at the same time, as I can be pretty bad at spending time in my own company (because apparently, I’m that much of a loner...) I’ll get there but yesterday, all I was good for was sitting in front of the telly and watching horror movies. I’ve got a couple of books on the go, at the moment, but nothing close enough to finishing that I can post about. While I try and solve that, let me quickly tell you about those movies… ‘Brain Dead’ (2007) No, not that ‘Brain Dead’ or the ‘Brain Dead’ that sometimes goes by ‘Dead Alive’; this is the ‘Brain Dead’ where two students, a pastor and his assistant are held hostage by two escaped convicts in a cabin, while murderous zombies prowl outside. ‘Brain Dead’ very much sits in the ‘low budget movie’ end of the scale but is still a hell of a lot of fun, staying well clear of creating any suspense and going full on with the practical eff...

It has been a bit of a week, what with one thing and another, and one of those things was having to have my kids pet rabbit put down on Friday afternoon. I’m a ‘dog person’ normally but Cupcake was the closest you could get to a dog in rabbit form :o) She was always up for having a fuss made of her and when I looked after my ex partner’s house, Cupcake would come and sit by my feet all day while I was working. She wouldn’t take any nonsense from the cat either. Until the arthritis got too much that is. She wasn’t really my pet but I’ll miss her anyway. Anyway… Yesterday wasn’t really a day for reading; more a day for sitting in front of the telly and letting movies happen to me :o) Actually, so was Friday night, come to think of it. Let me tell you about some of the movies that I watched… ‘Empire of the Ants’ (1977) A shady land-developer takes prospective investors on a tour of her latest business opportunity, unaware that radioactive waste has leaked and caused the local ant populati...

It hasn't been a bad week for reading, fingers crossed for more of the same next week. Lets see how it goes. Work is still intense but I've got a days leave on Tuesday, for my birthday, and a chunk of that will definitely be spent reading in the comfy chair :o)  For now, lets catch up with a couple of movies that I've watched over the last week. Two movies, with one thing in common; a moment where I did a little double-take and said to myself, "did I really just watch that?" And the answer was 'yes, I really did', although for one movie, I really wished that I hadn't... 'Humanoids from the Deep' (1980)  When mutated salmon starts walking on two legs, the residents of a fishing town find out that neither sea nor land is safe... Especially if you're a lady in a bikini. The residents must fight back to stand any chance of survival. 'Humanoids' also goes by the name of 'Monster' (for its original European and Japanese release) b...

Taking a spot of annual leave is great, I should really do it more often. I’m no longer looking after my ex’s cat (both the cat and I are very pleased about that) and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my daughters; can’t ask for a lot more than that from a week off ;o) One thing I haven’t been able to do though is get much reading done. It’s the same old story (no pun intended, unless you liked it…) I’ve got a few books on the go but I haven’t been able to make much headway on any of them. We’ll see if that improves, over the rest of the week, but for now, lets take a look at the films I’ve watched instead. Bit of a mixed bag this time round but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Here goes… ‘Zombeez’ (2023) When bee hives start dying off and dead bodies start appearing in a small Florida town, the local coroner is forced to team up with the apiologist who left her at the altar years ago, to try and solve this deadly mystery. It’s well known, in these parts, that if a movie has ‘zomb...

  Page Count: 179 Pages It has been a rough couple of months, for reasons that I’ve touched upon (in a recent post) and a few that I’ve deliberately left unsaid; because books are far more interesting to people who stop by here (and that’s the way it should be). That’s the main reason it has taken me a while to get round to books that I really should have picked up a lot earlier. That and the fact that it’s far too easy to distract me at the moment, another book usually does the trick ;o) I’ve had a hankering for a little Sword & Sorcery, just recently, and I’ll never say no to a book with zombies in it. It seemed like the best thing to do then was combine the two and read Brian Keene’s latest foray into zombie fiction, with an added ‘Fantasy Twist’. Or is that the other way round? Either way, I’m glad I finally got round to reading ‘Island of the Dead’. Einar, an enslaved barbarian, plots his escape from a war galley transporting troops and a mysterious weapon to far enemy sho...

My reading kind of tailed off towards the end of the week (yet again, I've ended up with four or five books on the go but am struggling to get into any of them) but when I've been able to stay awake for long enough, I have managed to watch a few more movies. And this is the post where I tell you all about them ;o) Quick thoughts today, I've got a few things that I need to get done, one of which is try and catch up on my sleep... 'The Coffee Table' (2022) A couple buy a new coffee table for the flat; by the end of the day, three people will be dead. These events are all connected... Well, damn... I saw 'The Coffee Table' on Shudder and naturally assumed that it would be a movie about a possessed coffee table. I think it's a fair assumption to make...  Gentle reader , 'The Coffee Table' is not about a possessed piece of furniture...  'The Coffee Table' is a very good film (as tense as hell) but not one that I'd easily recommend, due to ...