Month: November 2018

Book review: Marquis de Sade: A Biography

Marquis de Sade: A Biography.Marquis de Sade: A Biography by Maurice Lever.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars.

So let’s have a think about what comes to mind when you think of the Marquis de Sade. You know, Donatien Alphonse François. The famous libertine with a fixation on all things anal. The atheist who shagged anything that moved and put anything that didn’t up his backside. The corrupter of youth, the writer of obscenities. The beloved of surrealists. The perennial prisoner. This guy:

I dunno, I always figured his portrait would have more bare arses in it. 

You’d think it would be something to do with sex that’d be the key driver of the guy’s story right?

Well, having read through all 600-odd pages of Maurice Lever’s biography, I gotta tell you that the sex shit is nothing. The real focus of ole DAF’s life was real estate.

I know, right? Mind blown. (more…)

Book review: Batman: Earth One, Volume 1

Batman: Earth One, Volume 1.Batman: Earth One, Volume 1 by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Lately I’ve been trying to get into reading more comic books. Yeah, mostly graphic novels but also some superhero stuff. Because when I was a kid, I never really read much of that stuff, apart from the occasional Phantom comic. Certainly, I had read a couple of Batman one-offs, but never anything extended.

There’s absolutely no way that this will go badly. 

So I decided to plunge back into the world of rich guy vigilantism with Geoff Johns’ reinvention of the caped crusader’s origins – and man, was I glad I did. (more…)

Book review: The Scarlet Gospels

The Scarlet Gospels.The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars.

I first began reading Clive Barker’s works when I was a teenager. They were sexy and gruesome and intriguing and I inhaled them. (This is around the time Cabal came out, for reference.) I thought they were edgy and sophisticated and a bit terrifying, especially as they introduced me to ideas I hadn’t really considered before.

I probably should have left it there, in my teenage years. Because slogging through The Scarlet Gospels felt a bit like looking at your old yearbook pictures. You know, the ones with the fucked haircut and a carriage informed by what you believed was cool before you realised cool is bullshit. (more…)

Book review: Clive Barker’s Hellraiser Omnibus Vol. 1

Clive Barker's Hellraiser Omnibus Vol. 1Clive Barker’s Hellraiser Omnibus Vol. 1 by Clive Barker.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.

I guess I must be a glutton for punishment? I mean, I recently reread The Hellbound Heart (and found it wanting, alas) after forcing myself to sit through all the movies in the Hellraiser series. So of course, it was only natural that the next cab off the cultural rank was almost 600 pages of comics set in the same world, eh?

Nag nag bloody nag. (Also, check out those guns!)

Thankfully, this collection wasn’t a waste of time or good suffering, which is probably a better deal than you’d get from a Cenobite drop-in.
(more…)

Book review: The Hellbound Heart

The Hellbound Heart.The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars.

I suppose polishing off a Gothic fancy where death plays love’s fiddle put me in mood for something a little more grim, so I decided to revisit Clive Barker’s novella of puzzles and bad dates, The Hellbound Heart.

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Steady on there, Frank. 

Jesus wept, indeed. (more…)

Book review: Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights.Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Let me in (ah) your window (oh ho ho ho).

C’mon, you were thinking it. I know you were. I was, the whole way through. As the introduction indicates, it’s a rare text that can not only birth film adaptations but also pop chart-toppers. (And accompanying dance routines.)

(more…)

So, I Did Another Thing.

Here’s a photo.
Boots, no cats
Yeah, it’s a pretty good one, right?

I took it during one of many long walks around the Cooks River, in an area known as the Greenway, which cuts through the Inner West of Sydney.

Turns out that I wasn’t the only one who thought it was OK. It was selected as the best adult community photography in the Greenway Art Prize last week, and I had to give a speech and everything.

I’m still pretty amazed, but there we are. It’ll now be part of an exhibition which will tour a couple of places with real artists’ work, so if you fancy, you can check it out in person.

Gosh.