gavin said:
The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman
I wasn't a massive fan to be honest. I really like his other two kids' books, Coraline and The Graveyard Book, but this one just didn't hit the same spot for me. Maybe “kids’ book” isn’t accurate, but it’s not quite an adult book either; it seems to lie somewhere in between the two. The villain seems to almost be a rehash of Coraline’s Other Mother character.
I got Stardust for free the other week and really enjoyed it as a bit of light reading. It had an excerpt form The Ocean at the End of the Lane at the back and it was quite intriguing - the kind of thing I tend to like. I wasn't massively taken with Good Omens though and Stardust was enjoyable, but very lite - so I don't know if I'll bother with any more of his now :lol:
gavin said:
Hunger Games Trilogy – Suzanne Collins
I read the first book ages ago and only got around to finishing off the third a few weeks ago. The books get progressively weaker really. I got quite caught up in the first one, but just didn’t care by the end. It’s probably not a good thing that the success of the series will mean we get subjected to all kind of Divergent and Maze Runner crap for years to come. Better than sparkly f**king vampires I guess.
Yeah, I got them all cheap too and piled through them. Agreed, they start really good, but then she loses it a bit and doesn't seem to know what to do other than try and repeat the themes in a ham-fisted manner. I appreciate her making Katniss a strong female character and not just at the whims of the men and stuff, but she is actually genuinely unlike-able and more so as the books go on. Sometimes she's good, then it's like Collins realises she may be straying into sappy territory and puts on the brakes again.
gavin said:
The Wasp Factory– Iain Banks
Brilliant. Genuinely disturbing, but sooooooooo good. I loved it. I've really got to try more of his stuff.
Everyone always goes on about his stuff, I'll have to try some.
As I've been doing reading-lite, I also finished:
Ready Player One
Trashy distopian future novel that wins because it's so full of pop culture and cheese. It's badly written, but fun enough
The Wolves of London - Mark Morris
Really looking forward to this as I loved Mark Morris for years. he's a very straightforward, but highly imaginative British fantasy-horror author. His stuff tends to mirror real life - he captures the day to day mundane really well. Then he explodes that by pushing ordinary dull people into extraordinary situations.
This time it was really disappointing. The basic premise is kind of okay, but it's not brilliant. It's badly written though and just a bit bland. It's the flow of the text is really odd. It's like three pages of stuff happening, then a line of "it was a good job I'd put the dog in the kennels as otherwise it would have been sad" - because the dog is a vital plot point later on and you may have been wondering what was happening to it while he was out getting pissed up. It's the first of a trilogy, so it has a chance to improve, but "meh" so far.
His Dark Materials
Just started Northern Lights. I've been meaning to read it for years as I actually quite like the film. The book is "okay", but it's similar to Morris' above - it flows badly at times, but generally, it's a good page turner.
They all make a nice break from reading my way through (once again)
The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
The books are completely indescribable, with stories built in an almost cyclopean manner that cover a range of mental and other-worldly horrors in an American Gothic revival across the early 20th century. The writing is deliberately archaic, often to the detriment of the tale, with recurring themes of madness driven by nightmare creatures in an ever expanding mythos.
Some tales are woeful, but worth reading for the glimpses they offer into the mythos Lovecraft developed. Others offer much, but give little beyond what have no become famous line (The Call of Cthulhu is a very poor tale, but has kind of become the cornerstone of the entire love of everything Cthluhu). Then there are some fantastic stories, particularly as Lovecraft ages. The novellas in particular are a great read and you can see their influence spread right across the horror genre.
My favourite story though is a poetic tale of a wandering minstrel who has forgotten his past. It's a really nice, almost faery tale and creates a wonderful kind of medieval atmosphere.
Hard going though, the lot of them :lol:
