Book review: another five down

The year keeps rocketing towards its end. I keep trying to read more and get bogged down in the whole rocketing-towards-the-endness of things at present. You know how it is – everyone is busy at this point, and things don’t seem to get less hectic. I’m continuing to read Miss Macintosh, My Darling and Finnegans Wake and I’m hoping to have both of those finished before the end of the year, though the chances of the latter actually getting done diminishes with each day. Largely because I’m increasingly feeling like I ain’t got time for Jimmy Joyce’s bullshit on this one.

Yeah, you stop and thing about what you’ve done, you fart-fancying pirate.

Happily for my TBR list, I’ve been out of town for business and so have had a bit of time to read – hello, four-hour layover – during travel. So here’s another few reviews of what I’ve been working through.

(I seem to be continuing my exploration of both the built environment (and its fuck-ups), so it’s nice to know there’s some kind of theme at work.)

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Book review: cinq?

Not as quick as I’d hoped, but here’s another five book reviews.

I say ‘book’, but in this lot there’s just one physical book. The rest were audiobooks because the physical books I’ve been powering through are phonebook-sized volumes, and I’ve needed something shorter to break them up a bit.

(It’s an indicator of Books of Some Length when Paradise Lost is considered a quick read.)

Anyway, there’s nice range of stuff in here, and I’m quite pleased to have powered through them while driving, whether that be a) to Sydney and back or b) around the block on the mower.

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Book review: recommendations, rereleases and revision

Time for the first in a number of catch-up posts. Since I last wrote the reading has continued apace even as the reviewing has fallen off the cliff.

Fear not, though: I’m not going to subject you to dozens of recaps in one go. I figure five will be more than enough to be going on with (at least until I write up the next five, right?)

Right.

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Book reviews: holiday reads

I’m back. Not from outer space, but from the other side of the world where a nice holiday was had, and I purchased some eau de toilette that smells like a David Lynch movie or a murder weekend:

A calm yet confrontational scent that traces your neck like a sharp cold blade with buchu sulfur, metallic bloody notes and cold aldehydes. There is a feeling that something is going to happen with burnt rubber, cold cedar notes creating a concrete effect, combined with birch tar, leather and bay oil. Dying out on a cold, damp cellar smell with cedar atlas, dark musk and moss.

Pretty much.

I also bought two dozen-odd books from across the UK, lest you think I would be caught slacking on the purchasing front. In particular, I must laud Halcyon Books in Lewisham (£2 per book! Any book!) and Criminally Good Books in York (a murderer’s delight).

In addition I can recommend staying in the Bram Stoker-themed room at La Rosa in Whitby, close to the spot where old mate came up with Dracula. (It’s suitably atmospheric, and the proprietors are lovely.)

On with the reviews!

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Book reviews: pre-flight five

We’re about to go overseas for a month, and so I’m hoping that the next post here will be a recap of all the things I get through during fifty-odd hours of flights and however many hours of sitting in gardens.

HOWEVER that means that I need to clear my backlog of books read before I place myself at the tender mercies of security at the international terminal.

So let’s get to it, because fuck knows I’ve got a lot of pre-trip packing and organisation to get through.

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Book reviews: sharks, serendipity, ‘splosions, snapshots and spooks

Well, another five books have come and gone, so it’s time for my thoughts on the same. They run the gamut from experimental fiction to weird memoir and scientific history to gothic fantasy, so you can’t accuse me of being particularly genre-monogamous in the last little while, if that’s even a thing.

Anyway, let’s see what I read. Or heard. Or both.

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Book review: a few months’ worth, why not?

As is eternally the case, I’m behind on my book reviews. Way more behind than I’ve been in quite a while. This post is three times as long as the last one.

(TWENTY-FOUR BOOKS WHAT THE HELL MAN.)

I mean, I did get made permanent at my new job. I did go to Dark Mofo (aka Goth Schoolies), though this – depressingly – turned out to be much more lame than expected. And I did catch COVID after three years of avoiding the bloody thing, giving me further evidence that I should really stay the fuck home as much as possible.

(Which, to be fair, probably counts as my House Words.)

Indeed.

Point is, there’s been a bit on. And so with a meagre clutch of excuses, let’s get to the books I’ve been reading since I last graced your eyeballs.

(Mercifully, I’ve been doing a bit more reading which, if nothing else, makes me feel a bit better. YMMV, mind.)

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Book review: The Odyssey

The OdysseyThe Odyssey by Homer and Emily Wilson.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Giving Homer’s Odyssey five stars would seem a foregone conclusion, right? I mean, it’s the second-oldest extant work of Western literature (homeboy Homer also created the first) and it’s pretty much the definition of an epic tale. It gave James Joyce the basis for Ulysses (though there’s much less wanking in this version) and is something about which more people know a little, even if they don’t know its exact provenance. Angry cyclops? Sirens? A decades-long return, hamstrung by gods being utter dickheads? C’mon.

Crew: “Fuck you, Odysseus, we want to hear SirenFM too.”
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Book review: 100 Bullets: The Deluxe Edition Book II

100 Bullets: The Deluxe Edition Book II.100 Bullets: The Deluxe Edition Book II by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

It’s time for ghetto arsekickers, Italian-descent mobsters, the neon of gambling, the prick of the needle and the luck of the draw. It’s time for losers who think they’re winners, and winners who’ve got fuck-all. And it’s time for a briefcase of untraceable bullets.

Oh yeah. And cock-suckin’ birds.

Guess it’s time for another load of 100 Bullets then.

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Book review: Oishinbo: Sake

Oishinbo a la carte, Volume 2: Sake.Oishinbo a la carte, Volume 2: Sake by Tetsuya Kariya and Akira Hanasaki.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.

The second volume of selection from the manga series featuring battling gourmands steps it up a notch. Sure, the first one talked about Japanese food and what it means to consider Japanese cuisine, but this one not only has a more consistent storyline, but it’s also about something a lot of people would think is more important: booze.

Sake, to be specific.

Damn, son. 

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