NextRead

I haven’t really. I’m out of the swing of posting but then I’ve had a couple of things on my mind that you don’t want boring with. Except to say that I’m older than I was last time I posted. I’m now 29! What does this mean? Well I’ve blown my chances at winning an Eric Gregory Award for poets under 30. It also means I had some wonderful gifts, namely a lovely new iPod nano, that I immediately bought For the Birds to try on it. And I’ve been playing the new The Simpons Game and that cheered me up no end.

Apart from that I have been ploughing through Fool Moon by Jim Butcher. I’ve been putting that one off for a while as after watching the TV series I thought it was going to be similar to one of the episodes. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s a complex and well thought out book. Who knew there was more than one type of werewolf?

I got to see 30 Days of Night as a birthday treat. It might have worked as a comic (though I’ve never read it so I couldn’t tell you) but it doesn’t work as a film. It mostly has to do with how time works and how they cope and partly to how the vampires go from superhuman to more human and back again for no other reason than to make the plot work. Shame.

More DRM stuff. Well not DRM as such but galleycat is reporting that Marvel and DC have teamed up against people who scan and share their comic books without permission. Fair enough. But what’s the alternative to fans who want to read all those hard to get issues of their favourite characters well Marvel has the answer. They’ve launched Marvel Digital and from that trial issues on-line it’s pretty damned impressive and not that expensive when I consider my old comic habit. Now when are DC going to do something similar?

Gods Behaving Badly might be making it’s way to the small screen via Ben Stiller’s production company. You can find a link here.

The highly energetic Book Swede has been showing off some of Orbit’s New Year Releases. I’m loving the cover for Halting State by Charles Stross, another good looking book on my TBR pile. And more Charles Stross news comes from The Genre Files reminding me that a fantasy story called The Family Trade is out now.

Speaking of fellow bloggers the Grumpy Old Bookman is taking a well deserved rest. Dovgreyreader isn’t that well read it seems having reading only 9 out of 100 books chosen as ‘hidden gems’ by the people behind World Book Day. She’s much more cultured and read then I with 0 of 100 read.

Fantasy Book Critic has reviewed The Solaris Book of New Fantasy which says, ‘I hope that Solaris will continue producing these anthologies for years to come…’. Can’t get a better recommendation than that.

Tia over at Fantasy Debut has announced a policy update. The reason I mention it is that she’s limited her time and energy to books from major publishers and prominent independents, which is, I’d suggest, a good place to go if you want to support new writers. Why? Well from my little experiment this year on focusing on debut writers there are some wonderful writers out there that we need to see more of and they need sales in order to have their second, third, fourth novels come to light. And the more sales they generate the more risks publishers will take with new authors. It’s a good circle.

I’m not knocking POD books as I’ve recently had a my hand in helping a wonderfully received book come into physical form but I might be suggesting that the risks of not getting 100% value for money might be a bit higher than a book from a more established source.

Book blogs are a wonderful source of finding books you’re never likely to hear about any other way and Mr John Self has made another appear on my ‘must by soon’ list by introducing me to, A Mysterious Affair of Style by Gilbert Adair and his earlier title The Act of Roger Murgatroyd.

And that’s it for this update. More soon.

Tags: reading lists