The Hobbit

It's the first time I've read this through, after having tried to read it off the back of The Lord of the Rings a number of years ago and having given up on it for being far too twee and simple after the Sauron smack-down Uber epic.

I did enjoy it, especially the battle at the end, but I have to say: Epic Fail, Smaug!

It's hard to see how Jackson and Co are going to be able to make a film that is both faithful to the original material and at the same time consistent with the previous films.

I can't say I'm looking forward to all the singing . . .

I read Dracular when I was twelve and even then I thought it absolutely amazing. It's been a while (probably two years or so) since I last picked it up, actually. Hmmm.



I've just bought this and I've yet to start it. Never the right moment, and all that...

Does Scott Pilgrim 6 count as a book? If so, I read it and it's awesome. Going to reread the whole series this weekend.

My copy arrives tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it.

I really need to read them. Money is my main enemy here. Can I borrow them off you when you're finished, Pete?

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour

Excellent. So much better than I expected (and I had high expectations as it was). Rounds off the series beautifully. And I even guessed that the extra life he picked up would come in handy (though I guess plenty of people thought of that).

Like Pete, I may re-read the series.

Well, since I know a guy at the publisher I'll see if we can't scare the series up for you. Once he gets back from ComicCon that is.

Oooh! I wouldn't want to presume to ask him because he's so nice that he'd probably say yes, even if it was rude of me. He invited me to SDCC, which was nice, but wasn't generous enough to stump up for the plane fare.

Yes.

I re-read World War Z this past weekend. It's just as good the second time around.

Finished The Lovely Bones...

Very good indeed, although I wasn't too sure about some parts towards the end.

Now got an Iain Pears book and Starter for Ten to read.

Far over the Misty Mountains cold,
Through dungeons deep and caverns old.
We must away ere break of day,
To seek the pale enchanted gold

I have a feeling they won't sing that quite so often in the movie.

I keep meaning to buy Scott Pilgrim, and they are on offer in Forbidden Planet. Shoud I read them, or wait till I've seen the film?

I finished this the other day and the section I highlighted is probably the truest thing that could be said about it. I went in expecting it to be a wry, interesting book about the influence that pop culture has had on the life of someone who now writes obsessively about pop culture, and it was, but I was not expecting it to be as dark and candid as it gets at points. It's very much a book about, to paraphrase Morrissey, the songs/films/books that saved Rabin's life, as he escaped poverty, depression, a stay in a mental hospital, being shephered between foster families after his M.S. suffering father could no longer care for him, and a poisonous relationship through the pieces of art that meant the world to him.

Each chapter starts with Rabin ruminating on a particular pop cultural artifact that holds some significance for him - ranging from The Great Gatsby to In Utero to The Simpsons episode "Homer's Enemy" - which then provides him with a jumping off point to discuss a different period in his life. For example, in writing about The Great Gatsby, which he describes as not only the greatest American novel but also the greatest novel about America, he uses the character of Gatsby - a man who runs from his past in order to rebuild him in a new image - as a mirror of himself when he was sent to live with a rich foster family and tried to create a new persona for himself (who he dubbed "Nathan Rockwell") in order to fit in with his new family.

A really fascinating book that offers a candid look at depression and the real, tangible power that art has to save lives.

Yesterday I finished The Day of the Jack Russell by Colin Bateman.

It's the follow up to a great book called "Mystery Man" and is actually better.

Mystery Man set up the story of our nameless hero, a hypochondriac who runs a crime/thriller bookshop, who ends up doing private detective work after the real private detective next door to his shop disappears. Kind of Bernard Black with a lot more neuroses.

This time it all starts when an airline boss comes for his help after his billboard is defaced with a giant cock sprayed on his head, and from there escalates with the police and even MI5 getting involved. Adding to the funny is his assistant Jeff and on-off girlfriend Alison who is now pregnant with his baby and manages to use that in every argument, and dilemma he has. And his disabled Mum who is shown a lot more here and is actually pretty funny.

An improvement on an already great first book, and I hope he's writing more.

"So's your face..."

Android Karenina, because if you're going to milk a cow, make sure you milk it dry . . .

(I've not read this, I hasten to add!).

Read them!

Read them immediately. The film will probably be good, but it can't capture all that is wonderful and brilliant about six books!

This is Watchmen the comic vs Watchmen the film, people

I've not read any of these "reworkings" (mainly because I've heard they're crap) but there seems to be quite a few about.

Even though I don't think that books should be written based on puns first, Android Karenina is a great title.

When was this out? I've read everything CB has written since Divorcing Jack came out (that must be over 15 books in asmany years) and enjoyed all of them. I do hate the way he now calls himself just "Bateman". When he became that, in the same book they seemed to censor the swearing. I nearly gave up on him. Fortunately the censorship went




Having read Pride Prejudice & Zombies I can report that it was utter shit. The Austen was good. Why ruin it.


Never Trust a Rabbit by Jeremy Dyson. A nice little collection of, as expected, dark short stories.

Trautmann's Journey by Catrine Clay. For those of you that don't know Bert Trautmann was a Nazi paratrooper who became a POW in England at the end of the war, then became a much sought after goalkeeper, his career peaking with an FA Cup win with Manchester City where he played the last 15 minutes with a broken neck (and kept a clean sheet)!
The broken neck incident is probably what Trautmann was most famous for, but it is almost a footnote in this book. What we have is a very interesting document of Bert's life before the war - the rise of Nazism in Germany, his rise in the Hitler Youth; during the war - fighting both in Russia, and then Europe at the end of the war; and after the war - his time as a POW and beyond. The post war stories are quite moving and rather surprising. The forgiveness shown to, and acceptance of, the German POWs in England was really quite amazing. A good book, about a great man caught up in momentous times.

Ha, I shall avoid those zombie/android reworking books then.

As for Colin Bateman I've only read his two "mystery man" novels but will certainly be going back and reading his older books (I hear the Dan Starkey ones are great). I think Jack Russell came out earlier in the year.

Tonight I am going to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass... as a bedtime story... to my partner...
He has never read them!

Well, on your heads be it! I've ordered the first two Scott Pilgrim books from Amazon.

Good man.

I finished reading Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon the other day, which was a beautifully written and very funny novel about a weekend in the life of Grady Tripp, a formerly modestly successful author trying to juggle a wife, a pregnant mistress, a suicidal pupil, a chaotic agent, a tuba and a dead dog, all the while being crushed the weight of his latest novel, Wonder Boys, a 2,000-plus page mess that he's invested seven years of his life writing, and which he could easily spend another seven on. Chabon gleefully zips from one misfortune to the next, detailing all the ways in which Tripp's world starts to crumble with sharp comic timing and delightful turns of phrase, whilst also giving an insight into the mid-life crisis of a man lost in his own story. It's a very funny book about the very serious subject of writing, or "the midnight disease" as Tripp calls it, and the way in which writers can sometimes allow their fiction to destroy their reality.

It's not quite as good as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which is still one of the best books I've ever read, but it is damn close.

I've also started working my way through the complete Sherlock Holmes. My aim is to read a novel or short story in between other books, and I finished A Study in Scarlet, which I remember reading a few years ago but I had forgotten most of it. It was great; brethless writing, great characters and a compelling mystery that manages to span decades and continents without ever feeling like a portentous work.

I intend to read the Scott Pilgrim books and Through the Looking Glass as soon as I can. I think I spied the former on my laptop somewhere.

I have currently been reading American Gods, which I keep meaning to get back to but have now started A Study in Scarlet as I have always wanted to read Sherlock Holmes books but never got around to it and have been reminded by the movie and TV series that it must be done.

A Study in Scarlet is great, and watching the first episode of Sherlock made it extra fun because I could see how Steven Moffat played around with the basic elements of the story.

Have you seen the film version of Wonder Boyswith Downey Jr., Tobey Maguire and Michael Douglas in it? I remember watching it a few years ago and thought it was excellent. Is the book better/worse than the adaptation?

Kavalier and Clay is really good. Incredible scope, and one of the only books where the final third left me pining for the glory days of the opening half. A really great read, if a little long in places.

I saw it on TV years ago and I loved it. They're quite different in terms of events, from what I remember. (Ellie is probably more of an authority on it than I am.) The book is richer and deeper, as is often the case with adaptations, but they both suit the medium in which the story is being told. If i'd read the book first, I don't think I would have imagined Michael Douglas as Tripp. Downey Jr. as Crabtree is pretty much spot on, though.

Yeah, as you say, Ed, both are very good. As you'd expect, there are bits in the book that have been omitted for the movie (a whole aspect of the plot, in fact), so the book's got more going on. You should definitely read it, Luke, it's superb.

Is that all the stuff with Emily's family at the farmhouse? Because I couldn't remember that happening in the film.

I'll be interested to know what you think of that, I read it last year and it took me a while to get into and I think I missed a lot of the subtleties of it.

Yep, that's it.

Shame that they had to cut it from the film since it's one of the best bits of the book. At the same time, it would probably have slowed the middle of the film down a lot.

Some excellent recommendations to take with me to the library next time I go. Thanks folks.

Starter For Ten

Very funny. An excellent and speedy read.

The Raphael Affair

Still reading it, but I'm not sure about Iain Pears. It's a bit, well, cliched. Will keep ploughing on.

I really enjoyed that book, right up to the end, which I didn't like at all. I didn't like the way Brian ran away from what happened, that he didn't take responsibility for his actions.

M*A*S*H

Before the film and the TV series, there was the book by Richard Hooker.

An interesting read, especially if you like the film or TV series, as you can see the origins of a lot of the stories and characters, but this is interesting and amusing read in its own right. This isn't an anti-war novel or a satire, in the same vein as Slaughterhouse 5 or Catch-22, it is the story of how people cope in the harshest of conditions, what they do to survive and of the friendships such conditions can forge.

Top stuff.

I think I was a bit more indifferent towards him at the end. I wasn't sure about either of his friends from home and I thought he was struggling to work out who he was, which is more or less decided in the last chapter or so.

Finished The Raphael Affair. I don't like art capers.

Now got:
The Understudy - David Nicholls
The Big Bounce - Elmore Leonard
A Lighthearted Look At Murder - Mark Watson

Will see how they get on. I quite wanted some Raymond Chandler but my ickle old liberry didn't have any.

I certainly didn't like him by the end of the book, I just didn't think he had any integrity. The film has the ending I would have liked the book to have had.

If you liked Nicholls' writing though, I can recommend One Day.

A good shout, but that was the firs tone I read. I liked it before it went a bit Cold Feet at the end.

He can write a very good snarkily attractive woman character.

^ Yes, Emma is a great character.

Just finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo which was un-put-downable from the start although I felt the end lacked the spark of the majority of the book.

The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton, is it all nanonics and datavise etc?

Finished it already. Top notch.

And another sarky and sexy female character throughout. Well worth a read.

I finally opened my copy of that after you mentioned it and I finished it today. Really great. I'd forgotten just how good a writer Chandler is. He had such a command of dialogue and really managed to create a world and mood without a wasted word. The story was good, but as ever with Chandler the story isn't as important as the way in which it effects Marlowe and the other characters. At least after The Big Sleep he learned how to tie up loose ends a bit more neatly.

I've now started 'Salem's Lot. I'm not too far into it, but the combination of creepy town and writer with a tragic past suggests it's going to be classic King.

I was going to get The Big Sleep today as the online library catalogue suggested my local branch had a copy in stock, but they were sadly mistaken.

Instead I got On The Road by Jack Kerouac and The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.

After reading a spot of Elmore Leonard, I had a hankering for some old school Americana. I nearly picked up Huckleberry Finn but decided against it.

I'm enjoying The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so far, even when it waffled a bit at the beginning about financial journalism and libel etc.

It is hugely over-descriptive in some parts but you get used to it, I've just started the second book which seems to be as good as the first.

I finished 'salem's Lot by Stephen King a few days ago and, whilst I enjoyed it, I thought it was a book which showcased both the best and worst of King's writing in one neat little package. On the one hand, his breathless storytelling and fascination with small time life was great, and the idea of a vampire showing up in a sleepy New England town and taking it over is as good an example of his trick of setting ordinary people against extraordinary situations as I've yet encountered, but at the same time there were points when the actual plot stopped the book dead for me. Some of the storytelling is incredibly clunky, and there was at least one point where a major character's death felt less an attempt to raise the stakes (hoho) of the story than just because they had served their purpose and he couldn't think of anything else to do with them. Also, his obsession with describing the life of Jerusalem's Lot and its people added a texture to the book, but also slowed the pace down hugely. I gather this is partly because when he wrote the book initially he intended to make the Great American Novel with vampires, so his overlong and florid descriptions of town life are leftover from that, but the story could have been less panoramic in its focus and it would have only benefitted.

Anyway, I did really like it, I just didn't think it was as good as some of his other books. I'm now about two-thirds of the way through Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, which I'm loving so far.

I agree on Salem's Lot. Best and worse of King. Excellent character studies especially the smart kid and the writer. But overly verbose at times. I love it that his vampires are deadly and weird and disgusting. But magenetic too. The gruesome stakings are something I definately see in True Blood. I think the TV show owes a lot to this book.

I read The Other Hand by Chris Cleave the other week. It was a good read with interesting characters (I especially liked Little Bee), though I felt the blurb and note from the editor hyped it up too much.