Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Intense and interesting. Full of fun facts and quite a lot of humour, but ultimately very dark and quite shocking. I wasn't sure how it would fill 200 pages with one long, mostly uneventful, lifeboat journey, but it did. I was gripped throughout (I suppose it had a tiger as well). The main thing that impressed me was the feat of balancing the tone and fitting humour and optimism into this very dark story. Certainly recommended. Although it didn't make me believe in God as the blurb promised.

Batman: No Man's Land - Devin K. Grayson & Bob Gale

A great slice of Batman fun in which Gotham's population is reduced to a few stragglers who form clans and go around fighting each other and marking their territory with spray paint. As it turned out, a great follow-up to High Rise. The characters don't spend too much time waxing philosophical (or sociological) about their situation, and when they do it's well-written and interesting. And the Joker stabs someone in the neck with a fork.

High-Rise - J.G. Ballard

A dark sort of social experiment in novel form, written in an unsettlingly matter-of-fact style without much authorial comment at all. It's masterful the way it unfolds increasing levels of violence and depravity, moving imperceptibly through stages of regression until the high0rise residents are living as savages. There's a strain of humour in it too, which simultaneously stops it becoming too grim or po-faced but serves to make the really horrific bits all the more shocking. A very powerful book.

The Killing Joke - Alan Moore & Brian Bolland

Loved it. The Joker's origin story took me by surprise and worked very well as a window into his psyche without making him any less enigmatic or terrifying. Also loved the bit at the end where he acknowledges (in an obscure way) that what he's doing is wrong and for a moment shows regret, and then he makes a joke and Batman laughs at it. For a few panels they are brought together, not reconciled but not in conflict either. It's a gen of a book, short and sharp and confidently crafted.

Hero - Wing Shing Ma

Graphic novel adaptation of one of my favourite films. Very well executed and, for a fan of the film, nice to own. I certainly wouldn't recommend reading it instead of seeing the film though. It seems a little empty with the beautiful fight scenes rendered as a handful of still images, although the art is good. I seriously wonder how much point there is in adapting things to comic form. There seems to be a craze for it at the moment and I just don't think it necessarily adds much. But yes, as a person who doesn't foresee ever reaching the point of having seen the film Hero "enough times", this is a very lovely book to have on my shelf.

Phonogram: Rue Brittania - Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie

A very good, very clever comic written by the type of person you would want to punch if you knew them in person. This is made clear in the glossary of Britpop at the back, which is almost as informative an interesting as it is arrogant and condescending, but not quite. Ok, Britpop was never my thing, especially viewed as something set up in opposition to the soul-shaking musical phenomenon of grunge, and of course it irks me to see Radiohead dismissed as "experimental rock for people who don't listen to experimental rock" so yeah, I'm biased on the music front. As a comic it's just the right length to let its brilliant premise sustain it (magic powered by music, mages who centre their personalities on and thus draw power from musical scenes) so I can't slag it off even though I really want to.

Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd

SPOILERS!! (sort of)

An extremely dense and difficult book. The kind of book I didn't particularly enjoy reading but am glad I did read, because I got something from it that I know I couldn't get anywhere else. It's hard to find anything to say. Should I try and interpret the story as a story at all? Or just focus on ideas? Even then it's obscure. I think it's a book all about outsiders. Dyer and Hawksmoor are united by their outsider status. If I had to go for a literal interpretation of the story and to solve the mystery (ha!) I'd say Hawksmoor was a reincarnation (or something) of Dyer, and was the murderer. But that doesn't really matter. "Poet's novel" is right.