I'm seriously considering a ban for anyone talking about Fopp bargins on these boards!

I managed to pick up a copy of Unseen Academicals for £5.99 in WHSmiths yesterday, because my monthly magazine bill topped £15.00.

Bought this today. I AM EXCITED.

Like his previous two books, is it just re-prints of his online blogs.

Yep, but I haven't too much of his blog this year. Plus these are great for my dreary commute!

I always find they're a good format to dip into to and from work. First one in hardback i think. May go to his signing session on Monday. I'll wear my flat cap. I know how fond he is of them.

Yeah, it can be annoying.


In other news, today I picked up

Scarfe: Drawing Blood - 45 Years of Gerald Scarfe Uncesnsored...signed by Scarfe himself (down from £40 to £10)
Terence Donovan: The Photographs (down from £50 to £10)


from Fopp

I put this on my christmas list and I'm really, really hoping I get one. Barnes and Noble nook

Why, you . . .

Just started Rameau's Nephew & D'Alembert's Dream by Denis Diderot last night.

Do you get a Cranny with it or is that sold seperately?

No, the Cranny will be an add-on that comes out later in 2010.

I'm very, very tempted to stick around down here an extra couple days so I can go to this.

It's my hands-down favourite of Moore's books.

Pocket would want you to be there.

You are both evil and correct.

I do need to read another Moore. I've been stuck on Inkheart for about 2 months. It's turned into a bit of slog. Perhaps I shouldn't have watched the film first.

I finished After the Quake, by Haruki Murakami this evening - a wonderful piece of writing.

Murakami is fast becoming my favourite author.

Coincidentally, I've just finished Birthday Stories, an anthology collection that was edited by Murakami and which features a short story by him. The collection, as the name would suggest, consists of stories about birthdays or the events of which happen on a birthday. For the most part the stories are, not dour, but certainly downbeat as many of them are meditations on aging, times gone by and lost promises, such as in "Close to the Water's Edge" by Claire Keegan, in which a young man reminisces about his grandmother on the day of his 19th birthday, or "Timothy's Birthday" by William Trevor, in which a young man decides not to visit his parents on his birthday, sending a friend instead. There are moments of levity, though, as demonstrated by Ethan Canin's "Angel of Mercy, Angel of Wrath", which is a slightly farcical tale of an old woman being pestered by two birds when they fly into her house. Others, like "Forever Overhead" by David Foster Wallace, display a more elegiac approach as they depict childhood excitement and adolescent unease from the vantage point of an adult.

Murakami's own contribution to the collection, "Birthday Girl", is a suitably light and slightly obtuse story about a waitress who has to fill in for her boss when he is ill. It's a slight story but it manages to pack in a lot of the tropes and themes of Murakami's other work, specifically the hectic pace of Japanese life and the slim divider between reality and dreams, and makes for a pleasant ending to the collection.

The differing tones of the stories and the disparate styles of the authors prevent the collection from ever really coalescing into a coherent whole but this is not Murakami's aim; he sets out to collect together works by some of his favourite writers, around a loose theme, in the hope of introducing new readers to works of literature that he loves and, in that regard, it is very successful.

I bought my secret santa from another forum an American print of Jean Valjean published in 1897, she is Les Mis mad so hopefully she will like it. I doubt it is worth anything though, it cost me £2.

I bought The Book Thief by Markus Zusak today. I understand it's meant to be very good - has anyone else here read it?

I have, and I absolutely adored it. It's beautifully written, and quite unlike anything I've ever read before or have read since.

Plus it restored my faith in literature after reading Twi-shite.

Yes, and it's good.

I treated myself to a reduced copy of The Night Watch by Sarah Waters on my way back from the Doctor's last week, and I'm trying to read it as slowly as possible, to savour it. I enjoyed the prose of Tipping the Velvet, but found the characterisation quite lacking, this is much better, and the domestic setting of the aftermath and duration of WWII is very interesting. I already don't want it to end.

Splendid. Thanks!

Have started reading it today.

GB84 by David Peace

After completing a work as gargantuan as his Red Riding Quartet, it'd be understandable if David Peace wanted to take some time off or try his hand at something lighter. Instead, he delves right back into the murky world of recent British history to deliver up this dense, complex and violent account of the miner's strike, as told through the eyes of several characters involved; Neil Fontaine, a handler for the mysterious character known only as 'The Jew', a man with no scruples who does anything to please the Prime Minister; Terry Winters, the Chief Executive for the NUM who is engaged in an affair with a woman named Diane; The Mechanic, an army-trained specialist who is hired by the government to attack miners; and Malcolm Morris, a surveillance expert whose work is driving him increasingly insane.

Like the best of Peace's work, the book strives for a poetic style that is suggestive rather than descriptive, intending to evoke the time and the atmosphere rather than rigourously recreating iit in detail. Having not been alive when the strike was going on, I can't attest to the veracity of his version of events (which, like Alan Moore's 'From Hell', is more of a dramatic rendering of the more conspiracy theory-led narratives of the strike than a strict and academic recreation) but it is a hell of a lot of fun to delve into his version of Britain in 1984 as the English Civil War is reborn as a battle of capital and labour, people and party, good and evil, love and hate.

It lacks the raw power and laser-sharp focus of the Red Riding Quartet, and in an attempt to tell so vast a story it winds up being much more diffuse than that series, but it's still a great read.

I'm reading it at the moment and I've had a lot of trouble getting into it but now I am I'm really enjoying it.

Sarah loves it but I've got halfway through it twice and just lost interest. Not that its a bad book. I'll have to attempt it again in a few years I think.

I'm currently reading Carter Beats the Devil and really enjoying it so far

Recently finished Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist in which the dead from the last 3 months in Stockholm all mysteriously come back to "life". More interesting than entertaining, and certainly not as satisfying as Let The Right One In.

I was ina cheap book shop today and bought the first two 'His Dark Materials' book (it was 2 for a fiver).

Will I enjoy them? I've purposely avoided seeing the film, so please be wary of spoilers.

I'm betting you will. They're surprisingly sophisticated, and there's really very little not to enjoy.

Unless you're Catholic.

They are very enjoyable. I wouldn't mind reading them again.

It took me three years, on and off, but I've finally finished Don Quixote. I tried reading it first in late 2006, but had to set it aside because I was researching my dissertation and didn't have the time to commit to a book of that scope. Then I tried again in 2008 when I had a week off work but only got marginally further in when I had to go back to work and started working 30 consecutive 12 and a half hour days, by the end of which I really wasn't in any fit state to read anything, and with the dawning of a new year fast approaching I steeled myself and decided to finish it before New Year's Eve, which I achieved with a week to spare.

It's such a seminal work that I don't really feel I can say anything about it of any real substance, but I'll say this much; I was surprised by how well the humour holds up, and I was incredibly surprised by the reflexivity of Part 2, in which Don Quixote discovers that he has found renown across Spain thanks to a book written about his adventures.

Finished The Night Watch over Christmas week, it was engrossing and I really enjoyed it - though the continued ambiguity about Duncan grated a little at times. It was nice to see Sarah Waters exploring the world outside lesbianism - Reggie and Viv's relationship was particularly affecting.
I'd definitely recommend it.

Someone stole my copy of Don Quixote when I was at college, I thought it would be safe left in the drama room as none of the actors could be arsed reading their scripts let alone an actual book... I think it was Hugh the lecturer as he kept eyeing it when I was reading it, the dog!

I'm currently reading Toast by Nigel Slater which is basically an autobiography of his childhood set around different foods. It's really easy to read and very enjoyable. I have a big pile of books to read after seeing my brother last week so I need to start on them soon.

I'm awaiting the arrival of 2 Ryu Murakami books, I saw the film Audition (most of) years ago and never realised it was originally a novel, which was finally released in English this year, so I've bought the book. Also bought 'In the Miso soup' after a couple of people raved about it, which lead to me finding out about the Audition book.

Last week I read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. It was a very inventive and intriguing science fiction novel about a human (or human-like) alien arriving on a planet inhabited entirely by hermaphrodites who are only capable of having sex at specific times of the month. Ostensibly an adventure story about clashing cultures built around the envoy Henly Ai's attempts to get the rival countries of the world to join the Ekumen - a league of planets intent on spreading and gaining knowledge - LeGuin uses the differences between Ai and the inhabitants of Winter to ask questions about sex and gender and how these shape different societies. She doesn't sacrifice excitement or characters for her intellectual interests, though, as her characters are well-formed and their relationships are suitably (sometimes bafflingly) complex, whilst the last half of the book is essentially one long chase sequence across the harsh cold terrain of the planet. Really very good.

I'm most of the way through Wil Wheaton's Just A Geek - it's a very honest look at his journey through his late twenties as a struggling actor who used to be famous, accepting Trek and becoming a writer. I'm a huge fan of his, both from his Trek days and of his current writing/acting/blogging work, and a lot of the frustrations he describes as an actor totally struck home with me.

My Wheaton crush has grown. Oh dear.

That sounds really good.

You might find "The Death and Life of Miguel De Cervantes" by Stephen Marlowe interesting. It's a fictional biography of Cervantes full of swashbuckling, romance and derring do.



I too was in the dark about this. Until, that is, I saw the hardback in Foppa few weeks back for £2. Result

Nice, I got both books for under a tenner at Amazon.

Where is Fopp in London by the way? The only one I've been to is in Reading (muchos Items bought there!), and I'm not sure that's even there anymore.

Its along Shaftsbury Avenue on the opposite side of the road to the huge costumers "Angels". Where Shaftsbury Avenue crosses over Charing Cross Rd.

Ahh cheers, I'll pop down there when I'm in the area next then!

I highly recommend it. I also recommend reading his blog and listening to his weekly podcast.

Just arrived, the two books I bought with my christmas Amazon voucher:
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (looking forward to a reread)
Shaun Of The Dead Graphic Novel by Chris Ryall and Zach Howard

Just bought, a couple of comic books:
The Mammoth Book Of Horror Comics
The Mammoth Book Of Zombie Comics

Didn't mention earlier, the book I was given for Christmas:
The Princess Bride by William Goldman (next on my reread list)

I love Christmas. When's the next one?

Just the name of that podcast has intrigued me.

Ooh, apparently The Evolutionary Void will be out in September. I hope so.

He's in tomrrow night's Big Bang Theory.

It's funny, you should give it a listen.


It already aired over here, I've seen it - it's brilliant. He plays what he calls 'a delightfully evil version of myself'. Him and Sheldon have a great scene.

A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham

I watched the film and enjoyed it, so I thought I'd give the book a read. I'm very glad I did as it was beautifully written.

I ordered The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and it arrived yesterday, but I can't read it until Monday because of my exams. Grr.