Number 5 - Gideon Falls Vol 6- The End - Lemire et al

 

The black barn is back, the laughing man and his hideous hordes are closing in on our heroes. 

The artwork and fantastic layouts continue to blow my mind.  There's even a section in this one where everything turns upside down and we have to turn the book over to read it.  

You could argue that it's gimmicky but I thought it was a lovely touch. 

With multiverses, time travel, monsters from the deep, cockroach infested zombies, this has been a rollicking good read.  There's no mystery as to why this won so many awards the years it was published in comic form.

This copy ends with the written script of everything that came before.

If you like your fiction wibbly wobbly timey wimey (to borrow from Matt Smith's doctor) with high concept monsters and genius layouts, this is the series for you.

Number 4 - The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole - Sue Townsend

I first read this book in 1985 when I myself was nearly the same age as the titular hero. This has 70p written in pencil on the top of the first page inside, so it's easily possible that this is the very same copy that I read all those years ago.

I remember finding it very funny first time I read it, but I don't recall it being embarrassing laughing uncontrollably in public funny. 

That's the difference between reading this as a teenager, and reading this as an adult. This time round, I was sitting reading it on my lunch at work and several times dissolving in hysterical fits of giggles.

I have a less complicated relationship with the character this time too.  In 1985 I was skinny with dark hair and glasses - and liked to read a lot.  Especially after the tv show came out, the favoured insult from those so inclined was "Adrian Mole" in much the same way that kids matching that description now get called Harry Potter. That may have taken the shine off the books for me somewhat and may explain why I have still to read the other 4 Adrian books.

Top of the list of reasons why this was so much funnier this time is that I understand what the adults are talking about. Whilst I don't think I was quite as naïve as Adrian, I didn't get a lot of the little asides. The references to the books he's reading with some vastly wrong fact about the author - eg, reading a book "by some woman called Evelyn Waugh" or the biography of Kinsley Martin where he says it's strange that it doesn't mention that he wrote Lucky Jim.

Townsend captures the uncertainty of teenage life with total accuracy. You just know you wouldn't want Adrian anywhere near you, let alone in your close circle of friends.  He's irritating, self-absorbed, and obsessed with sex. He spreads chaos around him whether he means to or not (example Mr Braithwaite's letter). However we can't help but sympathise with him. Even though probably three quarters of his pain is imaginary, and most of the rest is self inflicted, we're privy to some of his most private thoughts and we can understand where he's coming from. And we know he does care about some things. 

I have a couple more of the rest of the series to track down - I want to get similar editions to this one if possible-  but I will be continuing the series sooner rather than later.

For quick easy, screamingly funny reads, this is a very difficult book to beat.

Number 3 - Wraith - Joe Hill & Charles Paul Wilson III

 

Now this was a lot of fun.  A graphic novel prequel to one of Joe Hill's prose novels.  There's a clue on the cover which one - that car number plate will ring a bell to most Joe Hill readers.

This tells the story of the creation of Christmasland and follows up with the misadventures of an unlucky group of people forced to visit.

A prison bus crashes and the three prisoners and two wardens are collected by Charlie Manx and taken to his kingdom.  One of the prisoners has links to Manx, knows he can help people to disappear, but doesn't know quite how it's achieved. When he calls Charlie for help, everyone on the bus regrets the decision sooner rather than later.

The story is brilliantly creepy. The characters are well drawn (in all definitions of the phrase) whether they're likeable or not.  We have two characters deserving of sympathy and several others we should rightly be scared of.  Who if any of them will survive? 

There's a demonic feel to the artwork which perfectly suits the subject matter.  Charlie Manx might  not be exactly what I imagined reading NOS4A2 but he's superbly realised here.  The devil children are pretty bloody scary creations.  The moon in Christmasland is one of the weirdest and most disturbing things I've seen in a graphic novel.   

From a visual point of view, the only disappointment is the double page spread with the maze, which, because this volume is very thick, we lose all the detail in the center of the picture.  Obviously this wouldn't have been a problem when the comic was released as a comic.

The script is right up there with the best that Hill has produced. 

This is a hellish difficult book to find at a reasonable price.  I got very lucky after months of searching to find it on eBay for cover price plus postage and I leaped at the chance (and that was still pricey - but this is a gorgeous looking hardback edition with nearly 200 pages of beautifully reproduced artwork and a damned good story). It might even be worth it to a Hill completist to shell out the big bucks for it. It's pretty much out of print, and the people who have copies seem to not want to let them go - and that should tell you something about the quality.

Best thing I've read so far this year. I admit that that would mean more if it wasn't just two weeks in and book number 3, but I suspect this could be a highlight of the year regardless.

So great book - good luck getting a physical copy. People who read on kindles might find it easier.

Number 2 - The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman

 This book has attracted a lot of attention and sold millions so it has to have something going for it.  Richard Osman is one of those faces you can't seem to get away from lately on tv, whether it's a show that he hosts or guest spotting on other celebrity shows.  It was only a matter of time before he put out a book.

Most celeb books turn out quite average overall, but the man giant that is Mr Osman is known for his brains as well as his height 

Side note - I genuinely was a contestant (with my mum) on Pointless a couple of years back, just before I started writing this blog. Before filming, Richard and Xander come over and talk to the contestants. I'm not particularly tall, but I'm not short either.  When Richard Osman came over to shake my hand I was on eye level with his nipples (which were covered by his suit obviously). He's easily the tallest guy I've ever met. He seemed very nice as well.  

Are his writing talents as towering as his physicality?

It has 50 separate reviews either on the cover or the first two pages. That's overkill surely. The fact that I agree with the majority is irrelevant. 

This is a very good and very funny (in places) crime thriller. The members of the murder club are nicely drawn (although the two men are kind of sidelined and the women do most of the heavy lifting in the case) and the supporting cast are equally good.

There's some great misdirection going on and plenty of twists and turns. However it does rely too much on withholding information from the reader to prevent the mystery fans from having any real chance at working it out. The final reveal was somewhat disappointing to me in the way it was done. I can't say more because - spoilers obviously.

I expected to read this in his voice.  It often happens when you know what the writer sounds like, but in this case that didn't happen at any point.  In fact the different characters' voices are well delineated and have their own distinct rhythms.

It certainly kept me amused and intrigued as to what would happen next.  It's much better than average, especially considering it's a debut novel.  The except from the second book looks very intriguing too.

Cosy crime novels like this aren't my usual thing.  I normally go for the grittier side of things. So, I'm not sure it's a classic, but its a damned good fun read.

In case anyone was wondering, Me and my mum didn't win on Pointless but we didn't show ourselves up and I even got two separate "Well played Marc" comments from Richard. 

Number 1 - The Dogs - Robert Calder

 

Thought I'd start the year with something better than Slob - which pretty much meant any other book I own...

I went for this subtle looking affair. Not sure when or where I got it, but it's been on my TBR for a while. 

I will start by saying it's a marked improvement on Slob.  Robert Calder apparently knows how to string a few sentences together which is an instant win in comparison.

This is basically Jaws with a pack of dogs instead of a shark.  Small town America, university lecturer finds an abandoned puppy in a service station and takes it home.  A hundred miles away, An experimental lab breeding attack dogs realise they're missing a pup from a highly valued litter.  Through some time bending narrative techniques, we find out how it found its way to the town of Covington.

A couple of years later, after an attack that strikes too close to home for Bauer, our central protagonist, the dog runs off into the mountains and joins a pack. From this point on, anyone who crosses their path is not safe.

I'm not going to say this is a work of art or brilliant in any capacity.  It fills time in quite happily, but I'm guessing i won't remember much about this book in a few weeks time. the writing is ok for the most part, but the sex scenes are excruciating. 

He also has an issue with his characters on the various sub plots never intersecting. if you want a character who's only purpose to the story is to die a horrible death, you should spend one chapter at most on them. Otherwise, you're leading the reader down an unsatisfying path.  If a character appears in 4 separate chapters, he goddamn needs to contribute to the storyline more than just being ripped to shreds in his final appearance. He needs to interact with the other characters, not just wander about in his own little story entirely distanced from the everyone else before dying.

This is particularly true if you use this character for what, even in the 80s when this was written, would have been an intensely triggering sequence in the book for a lot of readers. See last paragraph for more detail on this.  If you want to avoid spoilers, don't read the last paragraph.

Side note - i love the rats by James Herbert (and many other early Jmaes herbert books).  I like to see shreddies in a book - characters who pop in for a chapter and die horribly. But they should only appear for the length of time it takes to get to know and like them. If they're not going to interact with your lead cast, don't give them too many pages. if they're only there to die in a set piece, get on with it and kill them.

There are threads left dangling which are fairly irritating.  Bauer's marriage subplot is left hanging. the student he's unprofessionally friendly with just kind of fades out of the narrative. His other relationship plot is somewhat cringeworthy in every aspect (and that's not the one with the really bad sex scenes).

 Overall this is a competently written little potboiler.  You don't really feel sympathy for any of the characters or the dogs but it's entertaining enough that I wanted to get to the end.

a 4 or 5 out of 10.  As the back cover says, this is more tightly written than Jaws.  it is indeed a better book than Jaws. but that's not difficult. 

Spoilers - This book does contain graphic descriptions of dogfighting, including an 9 page chapter describing a meeting, most of which is one fight in gruesome detail.  I spotted the irony in the description of the death of the human character in that scene and the description of the injuries described in that chapter, but it still seems to be a character and scene inserted for no reason except to be edgy.  That character could have been removed from the book except for his final two pages without impacting the plot in the slightest.

Number 106 - Slob - Rex Miller

 

The last book started in 2021 - first finished this year.  What a sad way to end/start the year.

After 105 books with very few real stinkers, I have to pick this one off the shelf because it looked short enough to finish

I hadn't counted on it being such a difficult read. 

it's truly one of those books that when you put it down you can't pick it up again.

I don't know if I managed to find some kind of unedited and unformatted first draft but this was littered with grammar and formatting errors. Capital letters are used throughout where italics would make the point much better without shouting at the reader.  One page has a third of  the lines ending only halfway across the page, despite the 

sentences not actually

finishing at the end

of those lines, whole 

paragraphs that just weren't

formatted in the slightest.

If that wasn't bad enough, the book is overwritten to the point of parody. I don't know if Miller was aiming at a so bad it's funny prose, but he only managed the first part of the phrase if he was.

The plot, if I give it that much dignity, is a serial killer loose on and under the streets of Chicago. Known as either Chaingang or Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski, he's a 450lb monster, who, depending on the needs of the plot, either stinks so badly that people know he's there by the smell minutes before they see him, or he's able to quietly sneak up on them, He's simultaneously a genius and retarded and he's apparently killed more people than anyone else on the face of the planet.

Against him is the cop Jack Eichord.  Eichord is introduced in a chapter that starts with first person narrative. Miller gets bored of the first person voice after a few pages and slips back into the fourth-wall breaking omniscient third person that had been used in previous chapters and is used for the rest of the book.

Eichord is an ex-alcoholic and apparently a great detective.  Not that he does much detecting in this book.  he spends most of his time in a cringeworthy romance with the widow of one of Chaingang's first victims in Chicago. 

The chapters written from Chaingang's POV are written in a stream of consciousness that reads like a very slightly more literate version of Nickolaus Pacione (if you don't know who he is, google some of his writing - but probably best for your sanity if you don't. Suffice to say it's very very very bad indeed).  Even the Eichord chapters were scattered with casual racism and similarly dodgy material - one of his chapters begins in a bar with three pages of fellow cops trading racist jokes.

Most of the on the page killings are gratuitously misogynistic and rapey. If he kills a man, it's described very briefly. When women die, we're treated to torture, mutilation and rape first, all in the horribly overwritten style.

This is a writer trying his hardest to shock by writing gore and torture and generally just being edgy with no thought to how to frame a narrative or indeed a readable sentence.

I was very close to calling this my first DNF since I started this blog. I'm almost disappointed that I didn't . I'll leave you with a sample of his deathless prose, this describes the last moments of one of the many very poorly characterised shreddies.

Still and all, wouldn't that be the last straw? To be mugged out here on the street during his constitutional. Dying of goddamn cancer and get mugged. More than a body could stand. He decided to head back to the apartment and about that time a bright silver thing sliced out at him slashing out of nowhere and the phrase "nuncuperative will and testament" darted past his consciousness as he tried to curse this thing but the blood from his severed throat stopped this last obloquy of thought in a bright red, surprisingly hot spurt as his heart pumped valiantly pumping his life force out into the darkened street.