This week I have been reading...

Saga 02 - 8/10

Witchblade 155 - 7/10

Red Sonja 65 - 9/10

The Walking Dead 96 - 9/10

2000AD 1778 (digital as week behind paper) - 8/10 [but the current Dredd saga is 10/10]

Danger Girl Revolver 03 - 7/10

Vampirella 16 8/10

What about the rest of you?

Mostly?

Differential equations and image processing algorithms. Damned university coursework.

That said, there's that Battlefield 3 book by Andy McNab that's waiting for me to get the time to start on it. It's been waiting for the last three months.

Books

I'm currently reading What Are You Looking At? by Will Gompertz, which is about modern art.

The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stoss

Well, I'm...

… probably prejudiced (blush). I tend to spend rather too much time re-reading (Editors sort of insist :-P), or looking at what I just wrote and wondering if I need therapy (the jury’s still out :-P ).

However, recently I have in fact been readin. Reading words wot I didn't actually write. Here are three of them. Well, not three words :-):

DOWN HOME – Gail Roughton

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0099WA05A

CHILDREN OF HAMELIN – Theresa Sinclair

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RYSLSK

BEAST OF BURDEN – Angela Robbins

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AC6VEZW

Declaration of Interest: I know Ms Roughton and Ms Robbins, though I’ve never met either. Anti-Declaration: I bought and paid for copies of all three of the above without talking to any of the authors, and of my own choice and free will :-).

Without going into full review mode, DOWN HOME isn’t my usual Sci-Fi/ Fantasy side of the street. It’s a combination of Deep South flavour and mystery/ thriller type fare. But while (with apologies to Charlie Daniels) I don’t drive a pickup truck, I’m more than partial to a little fried chicken on occasion. Down Home provided it, if only metaphorically :-). I started reading it while fixing my rather sick PC, and realised a few hours later the damn machine still wasn’t fixed – but that I’d just read a pretty good book, so it wasn’t all bad :-).

CHILDREN OF HAMELIN is a little different. Actually, it's a lot different, or I found it so at least. I told someone recently I like writers who surprise me, and Ms Sinclair certainly managed that. Yes, it’s a re-telling of the Pied Piper story, but from a totally different perspective and with a remarkably strong Voice. And I was fine thinking that as I read it. Then the Lady Theresa did it to me. Having told me a tale I’d rather enjoyed, from an engaging point of view I hadn’t seen before, she switched my head-space over. She told it to me again – but from a totally different view. Books in first person aren’t uncommon. Books in two first-persons, showing the same events from the perspectives of two very different personalities, rather less so. For me, it worked. A lot :-).

And BEAST OF BURDEN. I don’t read a lot of YA (Young Adult) – but this one I read. It’s Ms Robbins first book, and it mixes Egyptian and Norse myth backgrounds. It’s YA, so there has to be a cute girl and guy who’s either cute or the one you hated not being when you were at school (depending on your gender and preferences). And yes, theyhave classic boy-girl conflicts. Heck, they fight like cat and dog. Which isn’t really that surprising, since one’s a werewolf (but there’s no Twilight here – and no vampires), and she’s a cougar, even if she’s a bit young for the role :-).

Heh. It’s OK. I’ll shut up now… and go read something else :-).

Damned university coursework.