Sometimes you buy a book and decide not to read it yet as you know it will be a special treat for you the day you finally crack it open and peek inside.
Originally published in 2002 and purchased by me as a hardcover book back in 2010, Mike Mignola's The Amazing Screw-On Head is a fun little story about an Abraham Lincoln-era robot who can screw his head (think of a lightbulb) on to a variety of robot bodies in order to best serve the U.S. Administration and save the world from a number of villains set on destroying the world.
The comic is strange, funny, and clearly related thematically to Mignola's much more famous Hellboy, but works to create a strange world in which the fate of existence is left up to a robot and fighting a villain called Emperor Zombie.
All I can say after reading this tasty little gem this morning is "Thanks 2010 Bookmonkey!"
What a delightful little book.
Scott Oden's Memnon examines the era of Alexander the Great, but from an outsider's point of view. Memnon of Rhodes was the commander of a group of Greek mercenaries who served the Persian King and is largely thought to have been the empire's best chance against Alexander the Great increasing power as he grew from controlling Macedonia to all of Greece and eventually most of the Ancient World.
The story follows Memnon as a young man in Rhodes, desperate to see his fortune in war, through his own rise to power under his brother Mentor and eventually as the last, best hope of the Persian Empire in the face of Alexander.
I've always been a fan of familiar stories being told from a different point of view and Memnon did not disappoint. Although I wish the book had been a little shorter, the structure was well done and Alexander takes on a very different look when he's eyeing your land as his next conquest.
A really interesting read.
Going into this book I actually had no idea who Kim Philby was, or indeed what was ultimately betrayed. I read it as it was a book club selection made by my friend Ron, and having already decided to read it, I didn't see any need to go any further into researching the book (which I'll often do if I'm deciding whether or not to read something new).
Little did I know at the time, I had already read a book in which Philby was a main character only a few years previously, so when the aspects of his story started coming out to me, I had the delicious feeling of things falling into place as I moved along.
If, like me, you are unfamiliar with Philby, he was a Russian spy who began working undercover in British intelligence during the Second World War aiding in the Allied effort, but secretly reporting everything he had witnessed, acted on, and read over to his handlers in Moscow.
I don't actually want to get into how long it took to uncover him, or exactly how the discovery of his actions came about, as the book was much more engrossing for me to not know, wondering every time that his number appeared to come up if this would be the time he would finally be caught.
Ben MacIntyre's book is incredibly well-researched, a great example of how non-fiction can be truly engrossing, and a surprising look at just how much a well-placed spy can get away with in a culture that is unwilling to even theorize about a spy in their own midst.
Ok, so no surprise, I really really loved Guillermo Del Toro's 2017 film The Shape of Water.
Focusing on the relationship between a woman (Sally Hawkins) and an aquatic creature being studied at a Baltimore research facility in the early '60s, the film clearly borrows some inspiration from the classic 1954 film The Creature from the Black Lagoon, but is such an engrossing look at a relationship unlike any I had ever seen before that I have a little trouble describing it.
Honestly, do yourself a favour and go see this if you've got the time, because honestly, it is simply a delight to see, mixing the mundane with the fantastic and the hopeful with the horrific.
While browsing through a bookstore a year and a half ago I had the delight of discovering author Grady Hendrix, who's book My Best Friend's Exorcism was both a delightful look at high school in the eighties and a really effective horror novel focusing on demonic possession. Last year I read his earlier work Horrorstör which, although not quite as good as exorcism was still a fun read and had some really great moments of tension as his characters worked their way through a haunted IKEA-style store. In some ways it reminded me of China Mieville's 2005 short story "The Ball Room", both in subject matter and high tension.
Then last year I found Hendrix's nonfiction work Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction and was simply blown away. The book covers the boom of Horror paperbacks that started in the late sixties with Rosemary's Baby and ended in 1988 with Silence of the Lambs (which re branded Horror as Thriller).
The book includes everything from monsters and Satan through to V.C. Andrews and apocalypses, and although Stephen King and Anne Rice (who dominate the Horror section in any bookstore), the book is a treasure trove of the crazy stories that were published over these two decades and as a long-time horror fan I wasn't sure if I was more delighted when Hendrix examined books I loved or introduced me to titles (and series) I had never heard of before.
A really fascinating read and the cover art of these stories is well displayed and makes for a great book to dig into or just browse through.
Charles de Lint's most recent series moves away from Newford and into a small coastal town in California called Santa Feliz. Under My Skin follows Josh Saunders, a young man simply trying to make his way through high school when one day he transforms into a wildcat during a fight with his stepfather.
Over the last six months this strange phenomena has been plaguing the town and a heightened police presence is in effect with a threat of a potential quarantine just around the corner. Called Wildlings, these effected teens seem to have the ability to change shape and no one seems to be aware of their purpose beyond being a potential threat.
As with similar stories about the secret lives of teens (the X-Men immediately spring to mind), Josh has to quickly disguise his new abilities and attempt to make sense of the strange new society he is quickly becoming part of, with new friends and foes appearing in his life while one of his best friends may be hiding something herself.
As a YA book it was a lot of fun, and has me interested to see where the author will go with this action/adventure story about a young man in over his head that combines elements of fantasy, science fiction, and a little horror.
My first theatre film of 2018 was Insidious: The Last Key and in the end I had some mixed feelings about it.
The Good: Lin Shaye's performance as parapsychologist Elise Rainer is consistently the best part of these films. Honestly, I'm thrilled to see any franchise with a female lead older than 40, regardless of genre and her brave, yet troubled character makes each film the franchise much more emotionally involved than I have any right to expect.
In addition, although yes, the film does have a few jump scares and fake outs, (the lack of which were a huge part of why I loved the first film in the series), much of the best stuff happens on the astral plane (called "the further" in the film series), and that exploration is a really interesting journey that I don't see very often in haunted house films.
The Bad: The film suffers from working as a joining piece, stretching in between the events of Insidious Chapter 3 and the first film in the series. In many ways there are sequences in this film that I wish had been done different (specifically one taking place in the further and an early sequence with a six or seven year old Elise) but I'll shy away from specifics to avoid spoilers.
In the end the film is a functional conclusion to the series and was a fun filmgoing experience, but would not be for newcomers and suffers from a need to reinforce the franchise, rather than telling its own story.
