A curmudgeon writes.
Ultra-Gash Inferno by Suehiro Maruo.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars.
So, I’ve read a couple of Suehiro Maruo titles before. You know, extreme ero-guro (don’t google that, frankly) manga that pushes boundaries and buttons.
I’m not easily shocked, and I knew what to expect, so I figured this one should be more of the same: perhaps not great, but interesting nonetheless.
Continue reading “Book review: Ultra-Gash Inferno”I’ve realised that there’s been a lot of time since my last post about what I’ve been playing, games-wise.
Blame it on 2020, or blame it on my laziness. Either works.
Still, I should have a bit of a hack at what’s been getting in my eyeballs since I last wrote. Which was, er, for my what-I-liked-in-2019 post.
Yikes.
Let’s catch up on ten months of gaming, shall we?
Continue reading “Ten months, thirty games?”
In Search of Lost Time Volume III: The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
Do you like parties? I don’t mean goon-in-the-backyard, sausage sandwich kind of parties. I mean the sort of parties which involve military officers, pomp and pecking order. You know, society wankfests that lumber on intolerably despite the apparent desire of everyone else to be anywhere else?
The Blaze of Obscurity by Clive James.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
Well, here we are. This is the final volume in Clive James’s Unreliable Memoirs series. It’s the fifth book wherein the éminence grise (or should that be éminence chauve?) describes his continued ascent through the land of the crystal bucket. With The Blaze of Obscurity, the Australian writer moves from being about the box to being mostly on it. It’s where shows began to be prefaced with his name, not just his image.
Continue reading “Book review: The Blaze of Obscurity”From now on, in this book, I will try to leave my name out of the title of the shows, thus to circumvent the twin fears of wasting space and sounding more than necessarily like a self-glorifying pantaloon.
No Logo by Naomi Klein.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
This is one of those books – like Infinite Jest or Manufacturing Consent that I would’ve been much better off reading when it came out, or when I was in my 20s. (Whichever was earlier.)
Reading it today, I can only think that my mind would’ve been blown a lot more comprehensively if I’d encountered the ideas within before precision-strike ads and ‘unbranded’ clothing were such a part of daily life.
Continue reading “Book review: No Logo”
Shiver by Junji Ito.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.
If you’ve read any Junji Ito before, you’ll be pretty aware of the sort of things you’re going to get in Shiver, a collection of his best work, gathered together and presented with brief commentary from the creepmaster himself.
If you’ve not read any Ito before, you might well want a stiff drink or a change of undies. ‘Cause shit’s going to get weird.
Continue reading “Book review: Shiver”
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.
Having recently read Bare-Faced Messiah, the landmark biography of L. Ron Hubbard, I was already aware of how much dickbaggery was behind Scientology.
What I was unprepared for was how much dickbaggery persists in Scientology. That’s where Lawrence Wright’s book excels: highlighting exactly how fucked up the current organisation is. And how much of that is down to one guy.
Continue reading “Book review: Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief”
Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell Miller.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.
I know, you know how dodgy L. Ron Hubbard was. He’s the progenitor of both Scientology and the cinematic dreadlock abortion that was Battlefield Earth.
But do you really know how shitty he was?
The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov (tr. Angela Rodel).
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
Until now, I’d never read a Bulgarian novel. I mean, knowingly. I’ve a couple of Canetti on my shelf, awaiting cracking, but until I checked out Wikipedia’s list of Bulgarian writers, I didn’t even know he was Bulgarian.
Nothing against Bulgaria, mind. It just hadn’t occurred to me. I know, I’m probably missing out on a lot.
Continue reading “Book review: The Physics of Sorrow”
The Cook by Harry Kressing.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.
I imagine this novel to take place in some kind of weird Mad Men universe. It’s that drinks-before-dinner, hired-help-run-the-show kind of world where there’s precise demarcation between what’s meant to happen and those it’s meant to happen to. Think of it like Upstairs, Downstairs only with Betty Draper and you’re probably about right.
Naturally, this clockwork world goes to shit the moment the titular character shows up.
Continue reading “Book review: The Cook”
Yeah nah. 