Cut...

Cut is a horror graphic novel from Dark Horse comics, with story by company founder Mike Richardson and Todd Herman and Al Milgrom on pencil artwork and inks respectively. The first thing you notice about this book is its size: published in the “digest” comicbook format, Cut is small enough to fit in your pocket and runs to around 115 pages.

The plot? Glad you asked:20-something Megan wakes up to find herself held prisoner in a strange abandoned house. But who – or what – has kidnapped her?

In brief, Cut is a solid but unexceptional horror story. The creative team have done a fantastic job of creating a real atmosphere of terror throughout without resorting to the Hollywood horror staples of explicit violence and gore. There's only one full page splash that I can remember, and the writer saved it up to ensure it had the most impact: unlike many comic book full page shots, the page is entirely justified. (I'm thinking here of the typical monthly DC or Marvel titles, where you only get 22 pages of story to keep you going until the next issue, and sometimes anywhere from 3-5 of those can be full page “impact” shots – they look great but are nearly always style over substance and you end up getting less bang for your buck).

Special credit has to go to the art and colours team who work their magic to create deep, moody scenes – reminiscent of Dark Horse favourite Hellboy, or British artist Kevin Walker – punctuated with a handful of brighter scenes, flashing back to before the horror began. Although it doesn't rely on cheap visual tricks, the heroine of the piece does spend the second half of the story topless, admittedly for a (flimsy) narrative reason. (For the curious amongst you, Megan takes her sweater off and hangs it out of the window in order to collect some water from the rain to sustain herself).

Ultimately Cut felt to me like it was lacking in the story department: the plot could use a bit more meat on its shambling narrative bones. On the other hand, the ending does leave you wanting more from the story which, in horror, is not always a bad thing. My problem with the book was that it all feels slightly inconsequential – and I can't make much further comment without ruining the twists of this short graphic novel...

The Dark Horse comics website offers up a 15 page preview of the book here.

The Big City

The City and The City, China Miéville (2009)

This is a very strange, original novel: a modern police procedural/thriller story set in a different world from our own. The City and the City is also slow-moving at times and difficult to follow – I very nearly gave up on reading it. I’m very glad I didn’t though: once it picks up the pace, this book doesn’t let up and even led to my discovery of that rarest of things, a New Favourite Author in China Miéville.

The story takes place in Beszel and Ul Qoma, two cities that super-impose one another. It’s not an easy concept to grasp, but the genius of the novel lies in this one idea. The two cities apparently occupy the same physical space, perhaps in different dimensions or simply co-existing with one another with very complicated and “cross-hatching” boundaries. I can’t remember if it’s ever made explicit quite what the arrangement is. Crucially, the citizens of each city have trained themselves not to see occupants of their neighbour city, even if they are mere metres away or – perhaps even in oncoming traffic. In this bizarre world, the ultimate crime is to see across the border and react to what you see – to commit an act of breach. The fragile balance between the two states is policed by the all-seeing secret police force of the same name.

In the city of Beszel, Inspector Tyador Borlu has a murder to solve. The case will take him across the border to Ul Qoma as he unravels the mystery of a person murdered in one state and discovered in the over, with great care taken not to “breach” in the process.

This was my first introduction to China Miéville, my New Favourite Writer. Miéville looks a bit like Grant Morrison in his photo in the book jacket and is fond of describing his work as “weird fiction”, a term coined to describe the worlds of shadowy menace conjured up by the likes of HP Lovecraft and Arthur Machen.

I would describe the books I’ve read so far (stay tuned for a review of Kraken) as “urban fantasy”, as Miéville shows his Londoner stripes proudly and reclaims the cityscape as a magical battleground – as opposed to the pastoral fantasy worlds of JR Tolkien and other sword and sorcery epics. Reviewers have tellingly commented on Miéville’s approach to genre: western, crime, horror, fantasy, science fiction – he treats them all like a giant pic’n’mix selection. [As an interesting aside, I found The City and the City in the Crime section of my library]

His latest novel Embassytown was published last month and I’ll be eagerly devouring it as soon as a copy arrives in my local library!

Rapid-fire round-up

Isn't the internet great? Just when I've got a couple of new posts up and running, Blogger.com decides it will remove all the recent posts as a crucial part in some pressing "maintenance". When they finally reinstate said pieces of writing, all comments, as well as any half-drafted new entries have vanished into the cyber-ether, or wherever it is that still-born pieces of writing go to quietly die.

That'll teach me not to back up my work.

Oh well, on with the reviews. I've still got 16 or so books to write up until I get to what I'm reading currently. At this rate, I'm not going to be able to remember enough about them to do them any justice, so here's my rapid-fire round-up of a few of them:

Fables Volume 4: The Mean Seasons, Bill Willingham and various artists


Ah, Fables. I haven't read nearly enough of this warm-hearted fairytale series. This is quintessential Vertigo comics, with well-known character in not so familiar settings. (Come to think of it, there's a certain thematic resonance with Angela Carter here). The central conceit behind Fables is endearingly simple - (which roughly translates as: wish I'd thought of it first!)... All the fairytale characters and magical creatures have been driven from their Homelands by an unknown Adversary, hell-bent on enslaving all those Red Riding Hoods and happy families of bears. Luckily, they managed to open a portal and escape into our world, the world of the Mundanes, and now live happily in central Manhattan. I've read a couple of books of Fables and it never disappoints. At times it's a thriller, at times a love story but Bill Willingham always writes a witty and engaging story.

In this volume, the Fables community are recovering from the aftermath of an attack and Snow White's baby is finally born.

Psttt: You can read issue 1 online here

Love and Rockets: Ghost of Hoppers, by Jaime Hernandez (2005)

Maggie's back in this recent Love and Rockets compilation. My first foray into the world created by the Hernandez brothers, this graphic album looks like a French Bande Dessinée collection in its similar presentation as an annual. The black and white artwork is beautiful, but Maggie's world has been around for 20 or so years now, which means this wasn't the best book to start with. Don't get me wrong: Superman, Batman et all have been around for 70 years or so, and I can still read those. Ghost of Hoppers is a story based heavily on nostalgia for the lead character's past; Maggie mourns for her fiery youth and reflects on how she's grown up. Unfortunately a lot of this was lost on me since I haven't read any earlier volumes of this long-running series.

I originally found this in the library as part of a Q Week display and planned to do a special post about LGBT characters in graphic fiction. As you can see, that didn't quite happen but is definitely a post for another time. See also: Stuck Rubber Baby, which I'll be reading and reviewing very soon. (As an aside though, American mainstream comics are still limited in their portrayal of gay/bisexual characters - this isn't a slur on representation of sexuality in comics though, Mexican/Jewish/Hispanic/Asian characters are heavily under-represented too. But isn't it interesting that mainstream comics contain a handful of lesbian characters, whereas virtually no gay males? Who'd have thought it, eh? What with the typical portrayal of women in superhero comics, that the audience would find lesbian characters more palatable. To be fair, I should mention that there was a bit of a furore when Kate Kane was first published as a lesbian superhero...)

JSA: Black Adam and Isis, Geoff Johns

This is the last volume of Geoff Johns's run on the JSA title. Once again, not the best place to dive in at: in the wake of a big storyline the Justice Society reassembles and welcomes some new members. Meanwhile, Black Adam (last seen instigating World War 3 in the pages of the year-long epic 52) attacks the Marvel family and resurrects his goddess girlfriend, Isis. I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did, but it helps that I'd already read a bit of JSA and was vaguely familiar with some of the characters (there are LOTS). As such this is really not one I'd recommend to newcomers to the title or comics in general because there's so much back-story to absorb. You really need to have some knowledge of the DC Universe and its roster of characters to get something out of this one. If the last couple of sentences made your eyes glaze over, this isn't you.

Having said that, the covers are fantastic. Alex Ross does a great job throughout the series - just check out the above image of Black Adam, looking more evil and smug than Piers Morgan and Donald Trump combined. Now that's a villain!

The Road to El Dororo

It's hard to get within a mile of any manga without hearing the name Osamu Tezuka. Nicknamed "The godfather of manga" he's revered by comics fans across the globe and wrote and drew a staggering 150,000-plus pages of comics art. In the world of Eastern comics he's referred to with the same breathlessness that critics reserve for Will Eisner in the West, and lauded for reinvigorating and popularising the form of sequential art. He's best known over here for creating Astroboy - which recently lurched onto cinema screens to very little applause, (but as we all know, it's wrong to judge a book by its Hollywood adaptation). The other well-known work by him is his 8-volume retelling of the life of the Buddha. He died in 1989 and this is my first run-in with his work:

Dororo, Volume 3, Osamu Tezuka


The edition I found in the library is published by Vertical Inc., America and is a lovely little book which deserves special commendation for resisting an Americanized cover in favour of a more traditional style. And if that makes no sense to you at all, then check out the cover below:





There's no way that's a US graphic novel, everything about it screams manga. Although this is my first Tezuka read, Dororo is not my first encounter with manga. Whilst I would never claim myself to be an expert (or otaku if we're going to be pedantic about it), I've read a bit of the Blade of the Immortal samurai series and lapped up Junji Ito's surreal horror masterpieces. So I'm already used to reading right-to-left, which can be something of a stumbling block for first time readers. This is no reason to avoid manga though, since it takes no time at all to get used to.


Dororo is the story of two friends: the childish Dororo who seeks his father's buried treasure, and the wandering samurai Hyakkimaru. I'm a little hazy with the backstory (I jumped in at Volume 3, the last book) but Hyakkimaru has had parts of his body stolen by 48 demons. He must find and defeat them individually in order to regain his human body.


The book is divided into episodes rather than traditional chapters or issues. Along the way the two characters face off against bandits, rogue samurai and even a possessed horse. Dororo is a madcap adventure with a heart. Young Dororo may be childlike and naive, but he constantly fights against the injustices of sengoku-era Japan: rice taxes, dictatorship and the general trampling of the poor underfoot by the rich and powerful.


What struck me the most about Dororo was the incredible energy and expression in Tezuka's drawings. The cartoonish style of the illustrations fits the story perfectly. It's a very fast-paced story, but at times it can feel a bit inconsequential. The characters remain unchanged by their experiences and can seem a little wooden. The plot runs the risk of degenerating into a comfortable cycle: the two characters meet a demon, slay the demon, move on and repeat. The ending in particular feels slightly rushed. I don't want to ruin it for you, but there's no real conclusion and the story just fizzles out (although the anime based on the books has a definite ending, according to Wikipedia).

I don't want to discredit Dororo at all but, despite Tezuka's clear mastery of the form and playful sense of humour, it was a little disappointing. Although as I've already stated, I only read Volume 3 and this probably accounts for a lot of the problems I had with the book.

In other news, I'm doing well with my current reading and can't wait to get up-to-date with my reviews/reading diary. I've finished 3 books in the last week (albeit 2 very short ones - but they were proper ones, without pictures and everything!) as well as the usual haul of comics. Today I've turned the final page on Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. Whilst I can't wait to do a full write-up on it, I can only urge you all to go out and read it now: truly brilliant if a little bewildering!

The Night Book-Mobile

So it’s now May and my last update to this blog is dated... February. Oops. And my intentions were so good!

I’d like to try and get this blog going again – I’ve been reading lots since I’ve last written and I’ve got some new ideas about my own reading patterns to get down. I think I’ve stopped writing here because I’ve been afraid of doing justice to the books I’ve read. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m writing for my own pleasure, not submitting reviews to The Times Literary Supplement. So stay tuned for reviews of H. P. Lovecraft and China Miéville (my new favourite author). First up though, I have a few pages of notes from graphic novels I read back in February that

I’m going to type up. So let’s start with...

The Night Book-Mobile, by Audrey Niffenegger

The Night Book-Mobile is a graphic novel, originally serialised in The Guardian, from the author of The Time Traveller’s Wife. Nothing about it is conventional – from the oversized format (it sticks out on the shelves like a child’s picture book, with a short, wide shape rather than the traditional comic book size) to the lovingly painted interior art and spidery handwritten lettering. At the risk of sounding trite, it’s clearly a very personal book for the author. As if that wasn’t enough, a quote on the cover calls the book “a treasure”. And it’s from Neil Gaiman. That’s right folks: this book comes with the Gaiman seal of approval.

Short enough to read in one sitting, The Night Book-Mobile is a fable of a constant reader and her love of books. As it’s so short, I’m reluctant to give too much away about the plot, but it starts when the main character finds her own personal book-mobile, a mobile library that contains every book she’s ever read. Ultimately, it’s a bittersweet and thought-provoking meditation on why we spend our time reading when we could be out living our lives. Why choose to live vicariously, through the imaginations of others, often long-dead authors.

These are questions that many readers will have thought about at one time or another – and perhaps even have had to justify themselves in the face of such accusations - what's the point in reading? it's all make-believe anyway, isn't it just unnecessary escapism? (I know this reader has spent a lot of time puzzling out the kind of concerns that this author has).

The Night Book-Mobile is well worth reading and re-reading: ask your library to order it in! This story will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

...and as an update, you can read the whole thing online. It's all available on the Guardian website here. So now you can no excuse not to experience this little treasure. [A Google search also brings up many other reviews, each more informative and exciting to read than this - damn you, Google!]

Paradise Lost

Next up in my binge of graphic novels: Strangers in Paradise Volume 19: Ever After by Terry Moore. This is the last volume in a long-running series published (mainly) by Abstract Studios. Except that's not the whole story: Terry Moore wrote, drew, lettered and published every issue of this black and white comic himself. That's an impressive feat for anyone, but when you take into consideration that Strangers ran monthly for 14 years and 90 issues... well, hats off to Mr Moore.

This was the first volume I'd read and although it's not advisable to plunge into a story in its final chapter, I still loved Ever After. I think it's testament to Moore's writing that I can read a volume of stories that resolves the fates of several characters that I have no prior perspective on, and still find it really enjoyable. It's easy enough to pick up bits of the backstory, or at least enough to enjoy the events of this volume without realising the full significance of the events.

So... this book begins in the wake of the death of a major character and an affair revealed. The issues collected here are all concerned with how the death (which I presume is shown in Volume 18) affects the lives of those who remain, as well as detailling the last days of David, whose life is slowly consumed by his cancer.

I don't want to reveal too many details of the plot, but Francine, Katchoo and David are forced to make some hard decisions here that redefine their relationships with one another. Apart from that, you'll have to seek this book out yourself to see if they all manage to live happily ever after!

Overall, Ever After is a very humane story with believable characters and witty writing. The issues in this volume really pack an emotional punch and I'm looking forward to going back to the start to find out how it all began.

Vimanarama!

After finishing one novel a week for the first few weeks of 2011 (reviews up soon), I've taken a break from reading novels this past week or so. For the first time in a while, I've taken time out to just read graphic novels and comics.

Now to those who know me, that may not sound like such a break from my usual schedule. But I've usually got a novel (or two) on the go whilst I read other stuff. This is the first time I've really just plunged into graphic novels for a little while. And in the past week, I've read 3 very different books.

And not a cape or a spandex outfit in sight...

First up is Vimanarama, by Grant Morrison with art from Philip Bond. This title, easier to type than to pronounce, collects a 3-issue mini-series published by Vertigo comics. The story

centres on Ali, a young man from Bradford fretting over his upcoming arranged marriage and the tribulations of running his father's grocery shop. This is Grant Morrison's script though, and it doesn't take long for Ali to discover a bizarre underworld beneath the shop and re-awaken 5,000 year old Indian demons that threaten to destroy the world as we know it. Worst still, they've completely disrupted business at the grocery store. Ali's only chance to save everything he loves is to call upon a strange team of Indian superheroes, the Ultra-Hadeen.

Vimanarama is a strange mix of everyday, human drama and off-the-wall mythology. I'm not very knowledgeable about Indian folklore, so it's hard for me to comment on how well Morrison transforms the legends of the Ultra-Hadeen, the Ramas and the vimanas. To be honest, I couldn't tell you how much he's made up himself and what was already extant.

The artwork by Philip Bond is fantastically clear: he's at ease depicting Ali on his bicycle as much as drawing the race of evil demons. The writing is very sharp and witty, but ultimately I found this book a bit dissatisfying. Morrison's work is notoriously hard to follow, and I spent a lot of my time scratching my head and wondering why things were happening. Perhaps it would've worked better if it had been expanded into another issue. In the end, Vimanarama is a bit dissatisfying, but not without its charm.

The Sopranos

And secondly, a review I wrote for the Sopranos Season 1 DVD boxset. I know this blog is called The Reader, but it's still for my thoughts on stories of all shapes and sizes. So my second review of the day was originally posted on DooYoo here on 14/1/10. I'm still watching the Sopranos, and have just finished with Season 5. But it's still never as good as it was in the beginning.

It's hard to believe that these episodes are a decade old now, but if you missed The Sopranos on TV, then you can still enjoy the episodes here for the first time. A DVD boxset seems the best way to view the show, as you'll find yourself getting slowly addicted to this fantastic gangster drama that's not "really" about gangsters.

The strength of the Sopranos lies in its central character, the monstrous yet empathetic Tony Soprano. Tony has a family to feed, a mistress to entertain, an elderly mother to look after and a stressful all-hours job - the twist is that he earns his money from criminal activities, and comes from a generation of men that don't like to talk about his personal problems. Just as Tony has his biological family to take care of, he also has loyalties to his brotherhood of fellow earners in the "Waste Management business", as he euphemistically calls his occupation. The real drama comes when his two worlds collide - his cantankerous Uncle Junior is the gang's official leader, yet Tony must undercut him to ensure his own survival.

There are some brilliant performances here from old hands from mobster movies, as well as Steve Van Zandt (of the E Street Band fame!), but James Gandolfini ultimately shines as the formidable ball of anger that is Tony Soprano. This is a criminal drama with a heart, about personal problems, psychiatry and family headaches as well as the seedy crime world that Tony and his colleagues thrive in. As Season 1, this boxset also serves to set up an epic storyline in the overall, continuing drama - although (arguably) later seasons are not as tightly plotted or as well-written as this first offering.

The Island of Dr Moreau

I don't know if I'll have enough time this weekend to do a proper post, so I'm going to repost a couple of reviews that I originally wrote for Dooyoo.co.uk. First up is The Island of Dr Moreau, by H. G. Wells (1896).

The following was originally posted on 25/4/10 at http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/printed-books/the-island-of-dr-moreau-h-g-wells/1436326/

I've been on a 19th century fiction kick recently and I've enjoyed reading lots of books that I've been hearing about for years, but for some reason or other have passed me by. Originally published in 1896, The Island of Dr Moreau is the latest short novel I've managed to polish off on my morning commute. This novel is part of Well's contributions to early science-fiction, along with War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, etc. and bears a lot in common with Shelley's Frankenstein, in that the central message is a warning against the dangers of scientific exploration left unchecked by ethical concerns.

However, The Island of Dr Moreau is far from a "straight" science fiction novel (if such a thing exists!) and Wells skillfully blends elements of mystery, adventure and horror to make a story that is ultimately about survival. The story begins when a shipwrecked biologist, Edward Prendick, is rescued from his dinghy and taken aboard a ship carrying a mysterious cargo of animals. His saviour, Montgomery, is accompanied by a faithful man-servant who has something very bestial about him. When Prendick arrives at the island of the title and finally meets Dr Moreau, he meets similarly bizarre creatures and starts to question the experiments that he is conducting on his isolated research base. Soon enough, Prendick sets out to discover the island for himself and stumbles upon more of the island's secrets...

To reveal much more of the plot would be to ruin the reader's enjoyment of the novel, so I'd best pass over onto comments on the novel. A|lthough this is a good yarn and keeps you gripped from start to finish, I couldn't help but feel that there's something missing. At some level, the story feels a bit lack-lustre. This could be because, over the years, Wells's novel has been so revered and referenced (it even has a Simpsons episode devoted to parodying it) that it's difficult to live up to the reader's expectations. Similarly, as is the case of many classic mystery novels, the average reader will already have some knowledge of the essential twists which would have delighted its initial audience.

My other criticism would be that the central character isn't very developed: despite proclaiming himself a biologist, he shows very little specialist knowledge throughout the novel and could easily have held any profession. This is in direct contrast to other books of a contemporary time, such as Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, in which the sheer volume of scientific observation can be overwhelming.

Still, this is a short enough novel to read in a few sittings and is definitely worth the effort. The story makes the reader ask what separates animals (beasts) from humans, and shares many concerns with contemporary horror.

What I Read in 2010 part 2: The Comics

Apart from reading novels and short stories, I get through a lot of graphic novels and comic books too. In fact, for the last couple of years I may have read more graphic novels and traditional ones since they're less time-consuming and (generally) less taxing. Digesting the information from a picture is instantaneous, whereas it takes real concentration to decode a page and a half of landscape description - one of my pet hates - so when I'm exhausted, on a bus or simply with a screaming baby, I often plump for the graphic novel.

Anyway, here's a list of (what I can remember anyway) of the books I've read in 2010:

Batman: Face the Face, James Robinson and Leonard Clark - which I reviewed here

Batman: Private Casebook, Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen

Jar of Fools, Jason Lutes

Batman: Hush, by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee. This one's an insanely popular Batman title that ran for a year originally (12 issues). If you ask me, the story's a bit overrated and a lot of it is a big excuse to trot out a series of guest stars as Loeb (sometime writer of TV's Heroes and producer of Lost) enjoys playing in the DC toybox a little too much. However, it's still a great read and Jim Lee's artwork is sublime.

Transmetropolitan Volumes 3: Year of the Bastard and 4: The New Scum by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. Transmetropolitan is Warren Ellis's career-defining work of journalism, politics, sci-fi, pill-popping and two-headed cats. It's alternately rude, violent, heart-wrenching and hilarious - a very provocative read.

Starman: Sins of the Father, James Robinson and Tony Harris

Catwoman: Dark End of the Street, by Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke. Brubaker is one of the writers responsible for making crime fiction clever and cool again in the world of comics, and Darwyn Cooke's moody artwork suits the scripts perfectly in this revamp of Catwoman for a new era. This volume strips back all the superheroics that you'd expect from a supporting character in a Batman book and sends Selina Kyle off in a new direction of gritty crime and, of course, catburgling. A great place to start reading the character!

The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye, by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore

Parker: The Hunter, Darwyn Cooke. This is the only official adaptation of Richard Stark's Parker series of crime novels. The story's well-known and has been adapted into various films (notably Mel Gibson's Payback). Parker is a man with nothing to lose, looking for revenge on the criminals who double-crossed him.

I've mentioned above my appreciation for Darwyn Cooke's unique style of artwork, but it really has to been seen to be believed, so have a look here, here and here. It's moody and not quite black and white - they're shades of blacks, blues and greys to reflect the morality of the characters. I would say this is one for fans of Sin City, but I don't want to put off readers who found the film/book series's dialogue a bit silly. Parker is much more believable, albeit terse and film noir to the bone.

One of my pet-hates in comics is the tendency to obscure the artwork with massive amounts of writing in captions and word balloons. Yes, the speech is important, but when you get more white space with letters in it than actual pictures, it slows the pace of the strip right down and starts to ruin the reading experience. (There's always an exception of course, as readers of The Walking Dead will know! More on that in a later post.) So in The Hunter, there are large sections of exposition in captions, but they never threaten the flow of the story. In fact, pages of the book read almost as prose with the artwork being shunted to one side. But again, for some reason, Cooke makes it work.

Similarly, there are parts that this really doesn't feel like a "comic" as such. Something about the lettering and panel arrangements makes it feel like something a lot more original - it's not trapped in the ever popular grid that plagues comic layouts and it's not quite the right format (size-wize) for an American comic. If anything, it feels like a novel with its dust-jacket and hardback.

This is the one graphic novel I would recommend to everyone, including people who don't ordinarily dip into comics or graphic novels. As for me, I'm eagerly looking forward to reading the sequel, The Outfit, that I received for Christmas!

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, by Bill Willingham and various artists. An original Fables graphic novel that stands outside of the ongoing series.

...and I'm going to have to leave this post to be completed later. It's ran on long enough! I'd love to know if anyone's read any of these, and if they have any thoughts, feelings, recommendations. Hopefully soon I'll get to writing about what I'm reading now.

What I Read In 2010

Well, when I set this blog up a little while ago, I joked that I'd do well to make it to a 3rd post. I'm not laughing so much now - a year on and no updates. That calls for a New Year's Resolution, I think...

So this isn't as much a blog post proper as a list of everything I've read last year - and considering how busy I've been with baby, work, graduation and everything else that's happened, it's more than I'd expected.

Also in the past 12 months I've returned to reading novels again. I'm a bit of a lazy reader (see the above distractions!) so I'd got into the habit of reading mainly short stories and graphic novels, without concentrating on any one thing to get through a whole chunk of a novel. But this year I've read a few more. It feels like it's the first time I've read novels for years, but considering I've recently finished a 3 year English Literature course, perhaps it's more appropriate so say it's the first time I've completed a novel of my own choosing in quite a while.

Another theme I've seen in my reading is science-fiction: being a big comic book fan, a lot of people assume that an interest in sci-fi comes as a given, but really - beyond the capes and time machines - I'd never really experienced much sci-fi until this year.

Anyway, here's the list...

The Island of Dr Moreau, H G Wells (1896)

The 39 Steps, John Buchan (1915)

The Seeds of Time, John Wyndham (1959)

The Divine Invasion, Philip K Dick (1982)

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keys (1966)

Carnacki, The Ghost Finder, William Hope Hodgson (1913)

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman (1974)

20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill (2008)

The Vesuvius Club, Mark Gatiss (2005)

Beginners, or What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver (2010/1981)

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley (2009)

I, Zombie, Al Ewing (2008)

Love and Mr Lewisham, H G Wells (1900)

Couples, John Updike (1968)

And that's just the novels, I haven't included any graphic novels, single issue comic books or short stories (although 20th Century Ghosts, Beginners and The Seeds of Time are all short story collections). I've done my best to read across a range of genres, times and authors and I think I've done a good job - lots of classic sci-fi, but also a few contemporary authors, some crime novels and even some capital L literature crept in there too. Plus I'd bet that this is the only list this year where a turn of the century novel by HG Wells will be placed next to I, Zombie.

Interestingly, on an Amazon search for I, Zombie, the next item on the list is a novel called I Kissed A Zombie And I Liked It. Don't believe me? See for yourself here. That one didn't make my list.

Maybe next year.