Whats everyone reading?

[Sefton Disney]

Well, I like to keep my options open! :-)

[Mardroid]

As far as GNs are concerned I got America from the library yesterday. A nice surprise. I've seen quite a bit of recommendation for that collection as a 'classic' in the Dredd timeline. And of course connected to America Beeny, who I've seen in the comics, her being in fairly recent progs and all.

I liked it. Can certainly see why it has it's classic status. Not the first time I've seen stories from the point of view of the citizens but the way it was handled was interesting, taking a first person narration and for both Dredd and Bennett Beeny as it did. And daring actually to be quite touching in places too! (As well as disturbing. [spoiler]Bennett's fate was certainly a twist, and a slightly freaky one at that. Yet touching too...[/spoiler] )

Dredd certainly seemed harder than he is in the current strips, albeit he had his reasons. I liked America Beeny's description of him in Cadet: "You're not bad. You're just what the system made you."

And finding an ethical reason for America Jara's acts of terrorism (evil though they were) added dimension. A lot of villains in Dredd stories tend to be rather one dimensional, which isn't a bad thing for comedy strips, etc, but this more complex take is welcome.

It had the sequels Fading of the Light and Cadet too. Good stories. Part of me feels that America fits better without the second sequel though (something Wagner even referred to in his introduction.) Leading to America Beeny though, I agree with his conclusion.

Oh, and it was amusing to see Beeny treat Dredd like a perp. Heh.

Lovely art too. Colin MacNeil was artist for all stories, yet it's interesting to see the difference in style when others had colour duties. Mind you the first story is described as 'painted.' I'm not sure if that means literal oils or watercolours were used or  whether it's just a style using the usual inks.

The female faces look a bit masculine though. [spoiler]Which I guess makes sense considering Jara and Bennett(Senior)'s ending.[/spoiler]

As for other GN's I picked up Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin and The Dead Boy Detectives. I've yet to read them.

As for other books, I'm currently reading Sergei Lukyanenko's The Night Watch. I rather liked the film (The Day Watch not so much. That seemed way pretentious with the driving up flats rubbish... good though it looked) I haven't got far yet, but so far so good. I actually picked up the other books in the series too (The Day Watch and The Twilight Watch. They had the sequel book too, but I thought that was enough for now.)

For some reason the library stored them in separate places. General fiction and Science Fiction. If I hadn't accessed the computer I wouldn't have known the first and last books were in the library. (I gravitate towards the sci-fi and GN sections as you can imagine.)

[Sefton Disney]

I remember thinking Fading of the Light was a bit of a misfire when it ran in the Megazine, but when I read the three collected stories back-to-back, I thought it worked wonderfully as the "second chapter" leading into Cadet. It's interesting how much a story can be altered by context.

[locustsofdeath!]

Read "The Space Beagle" by Van Vogt...interesting golden age era sci-fi - made more interesting in that two of the tales, 'Discord in Scarlet' and 'The Black Destroyer' heavily influenced "Alien". One of the aliens captures the crew members one by one to lay its eggs in them. Good stuff.

[TordelBack]

Just re-read the Firekind EE, prior to rehoming it.  Feck that's good stuff, as neat a SF story as you'd read anywhere, a sort of Ursula Le Guin meets China Mieville meets Poul Anderson thingie, with Paul Marshall's best-ever art.  Is John Smith 2000AD's most under-appreciated writer?

[Zarjazzer]

Hardboiled Cthulhu -short story compilation by various authors. Ten-tacular so far.

[Roger Godpleton]

Started on Dan Simmons (Ilium) thanks to the recommendations of you fine people. I'm enjoying it so far, but some of his writing seems a tad dodgy ("Achilles is relatively stupid - a sort of infinitely more handsome Arnold Schwarzenegger".)

Also reading the newest George Pelecanos. Haven't read a single thing by him that wasn't completely absorbing.

[TordelBack]

"Achilles is relatively stupid - a sort of infinitely more handsome Arnold Schwarzenegger"

So this is the novelisation of that Troy movie?  

(You know, the one in which Menelaus dies and Helen escapes, and they do not, as you might have reasonably have expected, return to Sparta together).

[Sefton Disney]

Zarjazzer - what's the title of the Cthulhu compilation? It sounds like just my cup of ichorous, blasphemous tea!

[Kerrin]

Hardboiled Cthulhu is the title Sefton, Amazon have got it here,http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hardboiled-Cthulhu-Two-Fisted-Tentacled-Terror/dp/0975922971/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249510382&sr=8-1, though so have others I expect. Quite tempted by this myself.

How do you do that nifty thing so the link just appears as a blue word of your choice as opposed to the full URL?

[Dandontdare]

How do you do that nifty thing so the link just appears as a blue word of your choice as opposed to the full URL?

Wake explained this to me some time ago - the text you type BETWEEN the brackets is what shows up but if you put an = sign and the copied link after the word URL and inside the first brackets, it works, eg:
url=paste copied link here]type text you want it to appear as here[/url]
(I've removed the very first bracket so that it doesn't actually reformat it as a link)

[Sefton Disney]

Thanks, Zarjazzer - apologies for the misunderstanding. I'll keep an eye out for that one. I recently stumbled across a book in Taunton Library, The New Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. It's not precisely Lovecraftian, but it might well appeal to you. It's published by Tachyon.

[Mikey]

Last thing I finished was 'Heart of Empire' by the estimable Bryan Talbot. Absolutley stunning colour work, but IMO overall a lighter read than the Adventures of Luther Arkwright. [spoiler]In 'Heart...' the realtively quick dispatch, when it came,of the Vatican assassin didn't really work for me- the book starts with him and I expected,indeed hoped,he'd be there for the duration as I got the impression the whole story may hinge on the Vatican's attempt to conquer Britain etc[/spoiler].

M.

[Kerrin]

Thanks, Zarjazzer - apologies for the misunderstanding. I'll keep an eye out for that one. I recently stumbled across a book in Taunton Library, The New Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. It's not precisely Lovecraftian, but it might well appeal to you. It's published by Tachyon.

Also newish but of a distinctly Lovecraftian bent are Charles Stross' novels "The Jennifer Morgue" and "The Atrocity Archives". They're good fun, set in the present day and concern the adventures of a guy who works for what is effectively the Ministry of Cthulhu Affairs. There's also a short story set in the same reality in Stross' latest collection of short fiction "Wireless". Another brilliant Scottish SF writer.

[satchmo]

Just got Darwyn Cooke's Parker today, I'm going to start it later. It's gorgeous.