NextRead

Most excitingly is that I’m off to see Hamlet, which is good as I booked it in January and now I finally get to go. Not bad for forward planning. The Royal Shakespeare Company production has Patrick Stewart and David Tennant in it. So I get to be a bit of a fan boy as they are both wonderful people as well as actors. On the way back I’m going to stop by Cadbury World to get a Wispa T-Shirt to go with my Wispa mug.

Last night was mostly spent form filling, as has today, so not much reading progress though I am being haunted by the stories in Just After Sunset by Stephen King, which can only be a good thing.

Oh and my Absolute Sandman Vol. 2 replacement arrived. Still a little bashed but nothing like the first one. That’s international shipping for you but why do they insist on putting in a sack as well?

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist has a new feature: Ad Lib Column. This one is by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Graeme has an alternative view of The Night Sessions.

Plus his review of The Clockwork King of Orl by Mike Wild. I do actually want to read this though Graeme might have slightly lower tolerence level than me

I Quit! Not me but the SF Diplomat. Sometimes you just got to move on.

Bookgeeks has a review of The Name of the Wind. I’m bored of hearing that it’s hard to make a fantasy debut as it doesn’t look like there is any shortage of debuts in this area. I’ve had The Blade Itself, The Lies of Loch Lamera and this one on the shelves for ages and I’m honestly thinking after Path of Revenge that this brand of fantasy just aint’t me!

…. I’ve read The Ghost Brigades, loved it but struggling to write the review. I think I’m in passive mode this week as I’ve been reading, reading and reading, but not writing or looking at the web/pc/etc.

So hopefully review soon.

Oh and I bought The Steel Remains so I can find out what all the hoo-ha is about!

To get a sneakie preview about what Young Matt, as he is known in this parish is all about, I’d have a look at his blog HERE and then pop along to the quite wicked One Book blog, where he has waxed but never waned about his own favourite book..

Be warned, this boy is gonna be a star.

the blueblog: Young Person Alert.

Too right! Please click through and check out the links. It’s a bit of a shamless plug for a friend of mine but every little helps!

Tags: link

I must admit that at the moment this looks like it could be my literary book of the year. It might be the only literary book I’ve read so far, I could be wrong about that, but it’s going to be hard to beat.

At an English Boys Private School children are going missing, they are dreaming and then disapearing but no one knows where they’ve gone. Miller mixes in war, fantasy, violence and emotion into what is turning into a clever read. Though I’m reserving judgement until I’ve finished the second half.

Things I like so far are the narrative voice and way that Miller is telling his story. It wasn’t what I was expecting and it’s not going in the direction I thought it would. The focus has shifted from Timothy, the focus for the first section, to his father. Each is building a picture from different angles. I’m looking forward to how he’s going to mix them all together. The voice as in the tone and style is very accomplished that I’m surprised that this is a debut as it is confident as a pro.

Fingers crossed for the second half.

Tags: debut, first thoughts

I just did a rough count on the number of books mentioned by Fantasy Book Critic in his May Spotlight. Why am I counting books you might ask? It is a slightly strange thing to be doing on a Saturday. But this Saturday I’ve been making lists. List of books. Lots of books and I haven’t really finished yet. Seeing as a big part of this blog is promotion both of books, authors, and other book blogs where you can find out about more books.

At the moment I’ve counted 31 books that have been or will be released in the UK that take my fancy. That’s one a day? And it can take me anything from a couple of days to a couple of weeks or longer to read a book. So there are always choices to make. And for someone who walks into a shop what are they supposed to choose?

I’m not sure why but this has me slightly disturbed. What books am I missing out on whilst trying to catch up with the massive flow of books that has already passed and those that are yet to come? I guess that’s why people stick within their comfort zone as it is quicker and easier to read someone or a genre that you are familiar with than challenge yourself to read heavy sci-fi when you’ve only really read urban fantasy….

Anyway, I’ll have a post shortly with my picks for May and I hope that you find a few that you’ll want to spend time with and give a good home to.

Sorry for the unexpected silence. Normal service will resume soon.

That blogger would be me, btw I can’t help it I have a few ideas about what I want to write about but the idea’s don’t seem to land in anything resembling a coherent post so you’re going to get a ramble, sorry.

I see the old vs new debate has flared up again (and no it’s not the PC vs Mac thing).  The new is me. A blogger who happens to post reviews. There a very good post on Vulpes Libris about the whole thing (thanks to . Susan Hill has it bang on when she says that we (for the most part) are unedited, undisciplined (we don’t review to release dates), and sloppy. I try not to be but without an editor it’s hard to get everything polished though I do try to get reviews done to release dates if I have a book far enough in advance.

On the plus side because we are raw and our reactions are little bit freer, or that’s how I find it.  The other thing is that the books that I read about on blogs rarely appear in national publications though SFX, and Deathray magazine do a sterling job in the space available.  John Self said somewhere that his reviews have mellowed a bit as he knows that his review might be read by the author and doesn’t want to be too negative.

That’s funny as sometimes I want to write xxx really should step away from the keyboard and then have their fingers chopped off. Though I don’t ever write that. What would be the point? Whoever it was didn’t work for me but it obviously worked for the people produced it so it’s not the right book for me. There are books that aren’t perfect but well worth reading like Debatable Space by Philip Palmer because you know that as they progress they’ll get better and what they’ve written already is pretty good.

I do wonder if all this positivity can be confusing? I’m a bit a of a cheerleader I admit. I do tend to gush, and I’ve written about that before. But then I think that I’m giving readers of this blog a better idea of what a book is about and whether it’s the type of book for them than if I hadn’t written the review and even if I don’t get chance to do a review I might mention a book that sparks your interest and you can follow the links or look it up on google (or any other search engine of your choice). So in the end I’m not to worried about the gushing as long as it comes over as genuine (which it is)

OK, changing subject but sticking with old vs new. This time I’m thinking of books vs books or more exact glue-bound paper vs electronic screen read words. This is because publisher are giving PDFs away for free, free, free. This is quick a sensible idea to see if people find this a good way of read. I don’t. I can’t imagine anything more uncomfortable than reading and entire novel glued to a screen, maybe I’ll change my mind when I see a Kindle, Sony Reader, etc in the flesh but until then I’ll stick to my TBR pile of books. Though strangely I do by PDFs of non-fiction like Zen to Done, How to be a Freelance Rockstar, 2dArtist Magazine, and boring web-related textbooks. The types of books that don’t need to be read from beginning to end and don’t need undivided attention.

Moving on, I had a look at the outermost level of my bookshelves the other day and got slightly disturbed by the number of supernatural, detective, urban fantastical titles there are. I wonder what sort of impression that gives out? I need to get some more straight titles on there pronto.  But I can’t see that happening that soon as much as I do like the odd literary tale I’m more captivated by the extra-ordinary.

And I’d better now

Well November isn’t naughty but I feel I’ve been a little after looking at last months post on the blog. I did a very poor show on the reading and I had high hopes for that but I got a little distracted with playing with Corel Painter and Photoshop ( I’m blogging a little about it here). Though mostly I felt a little bit burn out.

I’m almost recharged but taking it easy with more familiar or at least less taxing reading. I’ve just started on Fool Moon by Jim Butcher. It’s the second of a series of stories about Chicago’s only Wizard in the phone book and it’s the books that the TV series The Dresden Files were based on (which has also been cruelly cancelled). Only six pages in but I’m hooked already. And the good news is that I’ve got another 8 at least to look forward to. I love episodic books that are more self-contained than some of the more immersive fantasy.

I’ve still got loads that I want to read soon and some review copies that I need to get on with before they start gathering dust.

Starting with the thinner ones there is Jeanette Winterson’s non-scifi scifi The Stone Gods which has been generating a lot of interest though I’m yet to read a review.

Something more interesting, in terms of it being a debut and being more up my street, is Once Bitten, Twice Shy. It already has some great reviews here and here.

I also want to get to read another slow burning but still buzzing Gents by Warwick Collins though it falls in the literary fiction category.

Flipping back to debuts we have Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn which has a quote from Stephen King, ‘a terrific debut, relentlessly creepy’. You can’t get a much better quote than that now can you.

Still with thin books it’s The Devil in Amber by Mark Gatiss. Gatiss has recently appeared as Dr Lazarus in the third season of Dr Who as well as a fabulous actor he is also a screen and novel writer. This is his second non-series novel and a sequel to The Vesuvius Club. I’ve had this one gathering dust since July
Almost the last thin book and sticking with the Urban Fantasy theme from Once Bitten is No Dominion, Charlie Huston’s follow-up to Already Dead.

The actual last thin book, well books but I might only choose one, is a book from the Future Classics Promotion. I’m deciding whether to start with Blood Music by Greg Bear or Schild’s Ladder by Greg Egan. I want to read the others at some point too but at the moment I’m sticking with the thin ones.

Actually I’m going to end it there for now. I have more books to blog about but I’ll let you absorb those first

I’m moving servers and there may be problems in transit. I’ve turned the comments off on the old server so they don’t go into the either.

I’m working on a superpost which I’m hoping to get up tomorrow with a bit of luck. Until then keep reading.