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Round-up: January 2019

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Welcome to my new monthly round-up series. Each month I’ll take a look at what I’ve been reading and writing over the last month. I hope that these will be interspersed with book reviews and short stories. January didn’t feel like a particularly heavy reading month, but I finished four books so I’m technically ahead of schedule. I’d love to have enough time for reading to continue getting through a book a week, but based on previous years I’m looking to get through 40 books this year .   What I Finished Reading Free Speeches I got this one a few years ago as part of a Neil Gaiman rarities Humble Bundle. It was an interesting read, I didn’t really know about any of these issues facing the comic book industry. There was only a short piece in there by Gaiman, the rest were from others involved in the industry. I won’t write a full review for this one. 3 out of 5. An American Family by Jackson Baer I was given this free ebook in exchange for an honest review. I have yet
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Book Review: The Strain by David Lapham and Mike Huddleston

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I’m really enjoying expanding my reading sphere into comics and graphic novels. I still think I don’t have a proper appreciation for the artwork side of it, but I really like how quickly the story moves and different way you become involved with the characters through their dialogue and actions. After I started reading The Strain I realised that I’d seen the first season of TV show adaptation of this story. I enjoyed the show though, so I didn’t mind following along again. This story is another modern take on vampires and it pretty much ticks all the boxes. The end of the world, ancient creatures, rich old dudes trying to take advantage, stubborn authorities who don’t believe what’s really happening. It’s all there and mixed up together in the perfect amounts. I still feel as though I’m not doing justice to the artwork side of things. I really don’t have the knowledge to appreciate it properly. But if it does the job required and I can see what’s happening and I don’t get
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Book Review: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

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This book had been on my TBR list for quite a few years, so when I found out they were making a TV series adaptation I was actually kind of annoyed. I always want to read the book before I watch an adaptation, so I knew I was either going to have to bump this one up the list or watch the show without having read the book (inconceivable!), or spend an undetermined amount of time avoiding spoilers until I eventually got around to reading it. Despite it being the riskiest option I took the third path and tried to avoid spoilers. I’m pleased to say I mostly did. It’s harder to write a review of a book you really enjoyed, because all you want to say is “it was great, if you haven’t read it, you should”. I don’t like to discuss details of the plot for fear of spoilers, regardless of how long ago a book was published. Atwood has managed to build a dystopian world without bogging the story down with the politics. We’re told enough to know what the situation is and why, but there a
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Book Review: Emily the Strange: The Lost Days by Rob Reger

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I’d seen Emily merchandise on clothes, pencil cases and bags long before I ever knew she was a character from a book. I thought she was just this cute, kind of goth looking cartoon character. I’m still not really sure which came first, but expect this book came later. The book is in diary format, and when it starts we discover that writer of the diary has lost their memory. What we learn about her she is also learning for the first time. She likes to write lists, 13 items long and tries to have that quick-wit snark, but, to me, it just falls flat. Emily didn’t feel like a genuine character, she felt contrived, like a middle-aged man writing as hard as he could what he thought young teenage girls would like from an edgy, outcast character. The plot was bizarre, but not in a good way that gave you an other-worldly feeling or left you kind of unsettled. This was more just random weird things being slapped together. I don’t know enough about the background of the Emily franch
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Book Review: The Monarch of the Glen by Neil Gaiman

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I was hesitant when I discovered this was a continuation of the American Gods story. I always am when I have enjoyed a stand-alone book and then find out that there was more written later and it’s not a proper sequel. If it’s part of the story then why wasn’t it included in the book in the first place? It feels like an attempt to cash in on the success of the original, rather than for any artistic reason or for the sake of the story. I’ve been burned before, but I should have more faith in Gaiman by now.   It took me a little while to buy in. It didn’t immediately feel right to me that this is what Shadow is doing now. It didn’t seem to fit at first, but after thinking about possible alternatives it started to make more sense. I think Shadow is going to spend the rest of his days as a wanderer, never finding a place to call home, while gods old and new constantly try to use him for their own means. Poor Shadow. This novella was full of the things that made American Gods so
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Book Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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It took me a while to settle into the style and feel, but ultimately reading One Hundred Years of Solitude was a surreal experience. The town of Macondo and its inhabitants are hidden away from time. Everything that happened here could have happened in a year or a hundred years or a thousand years. The only way to you have of telling is the changing generations, the births, deaths and marriages, and even that isn’t always a reliable indicator. This feeling of time being suspended was enjoyable once you accepted it, and it felt like the book could go on forever because of it. When I realised that the names were going to be repeated I thought I was going to have a problem keeping straight who was who. It was written in such a way that whenever you started to wonder if you had confused one Aureliano with another there would be a reminder, by referring back to some previous event that happened to remind you which branch of the family tree was under discussion. The was no real over
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Book Review: The Way of the Fight by Georges St-Pierre

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Georges St-Pierre has always been one of my favourite fighters, ever since I first started following MMA. As long as he doesn’t decide to come out of retirement he will always remain one of the greatest fighters in the sport. I’m not entirely sure what I expected from this book. I didn’t know if it was going to be an autobiography or a training manual. It was really either. There was autobiographical stuff in there, but it wasn’t a story of his life. It wasn’t a training manual either. St-Pierre talked a lot about his training practices and his philosophy on how he trains, but there wasn’t any practical training material in there. I think I expected the book to be inspiring and motivational. Instead, it was just vaguely interesting. Georges St-Pierre is always very self-effacing and humble and his book was like that as well. Yes, he had to go through some hardships to get where he is, but he doesn’t make a big deal out of it. For him, it’s just what you have to do to be a wo
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