A curmudgeon writes.
So there’s been a bit of a thing floating around the Internet in the last couple of days where people choose a favourite game from each year they’ve been alive. Some years were tough, but I’m reasonably happy with my choices – for now. Continue reading “Pick a year, pick a game”
The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Zombies! Death! Mystery! Haiti! THE UNKNOWABLE! All of these are perennially interesting to the whitest of the white – me, for example – and Davis’ book, a tale of the search for potions to make and unmake a zombie, is no exception. It’s interesting, but dryness (and occasional self-insertion) can make it tough going.
The cover of this edition is not a design which offers confidence in the book’s contents. It features a screaming Bill Pullman and a coffin, a tie-in with the frankly shithouse film of the same name. The film that’s loosely based on the source in the same way that I can loosely be called a virtuoso because I can play a three-chord banger as long as it doesn’t involve odd barre positions. Continue reading “Book review: The Serpent and the Rainbow”
Use Your Words: A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach to Writing by Catherine Deveny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Catherine Deveny is a writer, comic and general shit-stirrer. She’s a dyslexic atheist who sees CAPS LOCK as COCK SLAP and is by her own admission pretty lazy. She’s also authored a bunch of books, shows and columns, and manages to get shit done with alarming regularity. Use Your Words is an excellent distillation of her work ethic, and a rarity in the world of writing-help books: something that’s useful without being bone dry or coming across as some kind of pan-pipe backed recruitment ad for a writing cult. Continue reading “Book review: Use Your Words: A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach to Writing”
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s almost a fool’s errand to review Frankenstein. The book’s been so firmly ensconced in the literary canon for so long that it can’t be dislodged, and the story of its inception – spooky story competition with Byron, Percy Shelley, Polidori – is almost so doused in writerly name-dropping as to be something you couldn’t make up.
But hey, I’ve never shied away from a fool’s errand so away we go. Continue reading “Book review: Frankenstein”
The Business by Iain Banks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
You know those books that you read and enjoy while you’re reading them, but when you’re finished you struggle – even when it’s only days later – to recall much about them?
The Business is one of those books. Continue reading “Book review: The Business”
Gardener to the King by Frédéric Richaud
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In this brief work, Frédéric Richaud manages to encapsulate the world of the Sun King and the rising tide of discontent between the French classes by way of… gardening?
Versailles is the focal point of this work, an expression of Royal dominance over the land. There’s plenty of information about the place itself, and there’s a distinct feeling that the abode – we begin just prior to court moving there from the Louvre – is itself a character. It’s treated with as much authorial love as any of the major figures in the work. Continue reading “Book review: Gardener to the King”
The Ladybird Book of the Zombie Apocalypse by Jason Hazeley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is going to be a short review, which is fitting as the book is short. An amuse l’œil, if you like.
It pretty much does what you’d expect from the title: it’s a pisstake of the Ladybird books, a series of books aimed at improving kids’ reading abilities. Widely used in the ’60s and ’70s, these books covered all sorts of topics and were illustrated in a very painterly manner. Continue reading “Book review: The Ladybird Book of the Zombie Apocalypse”
When I was a teenager my parents and uncle delighted in calling me Gunna. Gunna Martin. At first, I thought this was kind of cool, because as a kid I’d loved a book called Drummer Hoff, but apparently it was Not A Good Thing.
It was Not A Good Thing because it referred to my inability to do things in a timely fashion. Mowing. Picking up the dog shit. Cleaning my room. Homework. Anything that didn’t involve pissing time away, most likely. And so whenever anyone reached the point of extremity, out it came: Gunna Martin, that’s you. Continue reading “Gunna, get it?”
Discovering Scarfolk by Richard Littler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Scarfolk. That name! One to be uttered alongside Derry, Maine. Or R’lyeh. A place where that creepy clown from the television test pattern lives. A place where brutalist architecture never died, where clothing is all artificial material, everything has a fried egg in it, and the world is viewed through builders’ tea, smeared glasses and an obsidian doorway into another world. Continue reading “Book review: Discovering Scarfolk”
So I was farting around on Twitter – what else do you do on there? – and I came across this image.
So I figured I’d do it. I worked the first post up and someone commented, saying you could crank out the whole month in a day, if you had a mind.
I don’t have much of a mind, but I do have bookshelves requiring filling that I desperately need distraction from, so I did all 30 days (why not 28 or 31?) in one go.
And here they are. Continue reading “A compressed month of memesongs”
Yeah nah. 