Avengers: Endgame.

HERE BE SPOILERS. Avengers: Endgame is not a film you can talk about in detail without spoiling it for those who haven't seen it, so please don't read on if you get upset by spoilers. I MEAN IT. I don't yet know if I liked the whole film or not. I was very bored in … Continue reading Avengers: Endgame. →

Ben Aaronovitch, Lies Sleeping

Odd title, that. Who lies sleeping, exactly? It's the latest Peter Grant / Rivers of London novel, and I gobbled it up over three evenings. But though I enjoyed it, and it had (at the beginning) the potential to be one of the really rock-solid, hard-hitting novels in the series, like Broken Homes, for instance, … Continue reading Ben Aaronovitch, Lies Sleeping →

Comic books and Spider-Woman: a little rant

I heard an episode of the Double X Gabfest podcast the other day in which Noreen Malone of New York Magazine claimed that superhero movies were only made for teenage boys, or nerdy men, and that women didn't go to see them. (Even though she lives in Brooklyn! That just seems improbable.) Superhero movies are … Continue reading Comic books and Spider-Woman: a little rant →

The 1947 Club: Mistress Masham’s Repose by T H White

I reread this less-known novel by T H White for the #1947Club because I had a Folio Club edition that I’d never read. My paperback copy of Mistress Masham’s Repose fell apart through overuse many years ago, so I was very happy to find this large, illustrated, embossed edition in a fancy cardboard slipcase, lurking under … Continue reading The 1947 Club: Mistress Masham’s Repose by T H White →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: The amazing, pregnant Spiderwoman

It’s Graphic Novels week over on Vulpes Libris, and although I was planning to write about the 1970s comic strip version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, Spiderwoman jumped off a shelf and told me otherwise. Jessica Drew is pregnant, she’s still working but about to submit gracefully to maternity leave, and she’s spideytastic. Captain Marvel … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: The amazing, pregnant Spiderwoman →

Rampaging in the Pyrenees: Dornford Yates’s Adèle and Co.

Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is Y, and today’s author’s name really begins with M, but his pen-name, by which he was made famous from the 1920s, begins with Y. Dornford Yates was the pseudonym of Cecil William Mercer, and he was famous for two kinds of fiction. The first … Continue reading Rampaging in the Pyrenees: Dornford Yates’s Adèle and Co. →

Now Posting on Vulpes Libris: issue two of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London: Body Work

Part two of Ben Aaronovitch's interstitial comic Rivers of London: Body Work is out, and I review it over on Vulpes Libris. It's all about the Nightingale.

The magnificent Modesty Blaise

(Forgetfully and foolishly I seem to have written up this pod twice: here in Sept 2015, and here in January 2015. There are slight differences, but they're mostly the same. Sorry about that.) Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book's podcast scripts catch-up is O, and today’s author is the little-known cartoon strip writer, … Continue reading The magnificent Modesty Blaise →

Tove Jansson and the Moomins

Today’s letter is J in the Why I Really Like This Book podcast recap, and today’s author is Tove Jansson, the Finnish-Swedish artist and writer who died in 2001. She is most famous in Britain (I don’t know about other countries) for her children’s books and cartoon strips about the Moomins, which started to appear … Continue reading Tove Jansson and the Moomins →

British magic: Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London: Body Work

In my teenage years I collected Elfquest, and Grendel, and suffered with all my friends when issue 121 of the X-Men mysteriously failed to arrive in Britain in that dark, dark month just before my O-Grades. When I was a student I worked on Saturdays at Aberdeen’s science fiction bookshop, and read the week’s new comics when … Continue reading British magic: Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London: Body Work →