It seems the right time to talk about this book after my long rambling review of X-Men: First Class. My love of the X-Men might have had some impact in my enjoyment of the film, but that doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the books I read as a teenager nor…
Simon Pegg is one-third of the creative team (along with Jessica Hynes nee Stevenson and Edgar Wright) of Spaced, my favourite sitcom. He's the same age as me, we attended the same university at the same time (I was a scientist, however, and so our paths would never have crossed),…
Written by Bill Willingham, with illustrations by Steve Leialoha Fables has been a great comic book since the first issue, so I was looking forward to Willingham's prose story set in the Fables universe. It concerns characters we haven't seen in the comic book: Bo Peep and Peter Piper, and…
By Justin Cronin One of the great things about the internet: it was because of an item I skimmed on io9.com that led to me picking up this book. I hadn't heard of the author before, and I'm not a great fan of reading hardback books, but I was intrigued…
By Douglas Coupland I'm not a big fan of Coupland (I've read Microserfs, but can't actually remember it) but my girlfriend likes his stuff, and we had this in the house but I hadn't read it, so it joined the list of books to be read (we are in a…
I have surprised myself today: in doing this blog for over 5 years, I have never written of my love of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. This is surprising considering I've been buying them now for nearly 20 years; I remember even misguidedly putting it on an early CV (in the…
By Walter Mosley I remember seeing, and enjoying, the film adaptation of this book when it first came out; among a cast that included Denzel Washington as Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins, Jennifer Beals as Daphne Monet and Tom Sizemore as DeWitt Albright, I remember it particularly for the first time I’d…
I first saw Jack Dee live in the small bar at the top of the Union Building of the University of Bristol over 20 years ago, with a small handful of other people. The few of us who were there enjoyed his wonderfully deadpan style, so it was no surprise…
By Richard Herring I have been aware of Richard Herring since the Fist Of Fun days; I read his daily blog, I follow him on Twitter, I listen to his podcast with Andrew Collins and have been to one of his live shows (The Twelve Tasks of Hercules Terrace). I…
It's Only A Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive by Mark Kermode From talking about films a lot, to talking about someone who talks about films a lot for a living. In talking about podcasts I listen to, I haven't mentioned the podcast of Mark Kermode's film reviews…