Warren Ellis takes a look at the history of comics using the metaphor of Jack Kirby’s Robot Head as the central metaphor and anchor for his free-associating path through the topic. That doesn’t do the book justice, though. I don’t think any description ever will. Because one of the things that unifies Ellis’ disparate project […]
So here’s the thing about my reading habits: I tend to do things in lots of four. On novel by a male writer, one novel by a female writer, one non-fiction book, one short story collection or anthology. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule; ebooks tend to fall outside this reading pattern at the moment, since […]
Last night I started reading Laura van den Berg’s short story collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, which became one of those books that you start reading at a reasonable hour and stop reading in the wee hours of the morning, many hours after you planned on going […]
Very random attack of insomnia last night, especially since there wasn’t any of the usual triggers that set off my sleeplessness. In the old days I used to welcome such things, since I could just wander off and do other things and sleep in the day afterwards, but I am now a working man with […]
This morning I got up and, lacking sufficient motivation to get ready for the dayjob, put PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me on the stereo so I could dance around the house to the track 50′ Queenie while still in my pajamas. There are certainly worse ways to start your day, even if it does mean you’re […]
I started reading The Maltese Falcon yesterday, which is one of those books I’ve been meaning to read forever without getting around to it. I lay the blame entirely on the film, which is awesome and fulfilling in a way that the other big hardboiled-to-noir adaptation* never really manages, and thus makes it easier to […]
If this were a sane and sensible world there would be someone out there pressuring Dirk Flinthart to re-release his suburban Brisbane noir novella, Brotherly Love. I mean, dude, how is this ever out of print? More importantly, why has it been out of print for over a decade? Why do I need to acquire it […]
So I’ve been trying to read Edgar Rice Burroughs A Prince of Mars for over a month now. It…ah…it isn’t going at all well. So not well, in fact, that I actually put together a photograph of the book, the Spokesbear and my frowny-face of extreme displeasure as an illustrative aid, but that plan was […]
So yesterday I had a cyst the size of a walnut removed from my scalp, which served as the catalyst for the rather enthusiastic bandage job posted last night. The combination of restless nerves, a long wait in the surgery, and the complete inability to sleep due to the bandages constricting my jaw meant I […]
“You read The Lathe of Heaven?” To his credit, the Spokesbear manages to say this without making it sound like an accusation. Of course, he immediately proceeds to sniff the cover like one of the drug dogs you see at the airport, which kind of undoes his momentary attack of self-control. “You don’t like Le […]
