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.

Locke and Key vol. 4 - Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

Still excellent. Still not hufely keen on this style of art but I can see that it's done well, with lots of details and highly expressive faces. The story is moving forward too, and reading this one made me retrospectively realise that vol. 3 was mostly padding. It's a common thing in TV and comics that try and tell a definite story in an indefinite episodic format. Once you've noticed it you can't unnotice it and not many things are more off-putting in a work of fiction. But this is one story that seems to be back on track.

Dark Tower Comics vol. 3-4 - Robin Furth & Jae Lee

Honestly, disappointing. I'm getting sick of Jae Lee's refusal to draw backgrounds. His characters are quite good realisations of the original characters, but they act everything out in front of a big blur of smoke and colours and the occasional table. Given that these are fantasy stories set in a richly imagined and (in King's prose) deeply detailed world, Lee's style is completely wrong for this project. And the writing is underwhelming, and the story is unnecessarily different from the one established in the novel. Bit of a shame, really.

The Wind Through the Keyhole - Stephen King

Wonderful to return to Midworld. It's a good book even by King's standards and I like the story within a story within a story format. Also nice to see more of Gilead-that-was and get to know some characters from those days - like taciturn badass-in-training Jamie DeCurry. The central story dragged a bit during the quest section, I thought, and as always with fantasy some of the conceits appealed to me more than others. But good fun. Latest on the film and/or TV adaptation is that they want Russel Crowe as Roland. Please no.

How I Escaped My Certain Fate - Stewart Lee

A very entertaining and thought-provoking book. As well as autobiographical chapters it contains transcripts of some of his stand-up shows, annotated with thousands of words of footnotes where he explains all the jokes and analyses himself, sometimes very critically. His views on comedy and art are interesting and he's obviously very intelligent, but fairly arrogant too, and his repeated admissions of and apologies for this arrogance don't help. The fact that he has made a career on such a narrow, non-mainstream, intellectual approach in an industry full of bullshit and greed (like any other) is very encouraging.

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness

A kids' or "young adults'" book about a boy whose mum is dying of cancer and a Swamp Thing-style tree monster. It's very powerful and mostly well-written, except for the annoying habit of breaking up lines for emphasis.
Like this.
Which is a cheap trick.
Even when used sparingly - and here it isn't. Also feels a little... not didactic, exactly, but a bit messagey. A bit "here's the answer, kids!" But a well-crafted, tightly structured bit of fiction, definitely.

River Out of Eden - Richard Dawkins

Enlightening and brilliantly written as always. It got a bit technical in places and I had some trouble understanding bit of it, but as usual the emphasis is on principles and concepts, not details and numbers. He's a master of making science exciting and  inspirational; one or two early passages about how we're all descended from the tiny minority of the most successful ancestors really affected me. One thing I can't understand is how he hasn't devoted a book to the evolution of the human brain, and thus of ideals and values and ways of transcending the pitiless dumb indifference of natural selection (something he talks about a lot). This strikes me as almost as momentous an event as the origin of life itself.

Leviathan - Paul Auster

To be honest, a bit disappointing compared to his others. A bit of a slog. The intricacy and complexity of the story is impressive, but another word for "intricate and complex" would be "convoluted". Excellent characters though, and some interesting ideas. Also, the entire story, almost, is told in "wide angle" mode - summaries covering lots of time rather than moment-by-moment scenes. Despite the book's other faults, this works perfectly well. Auster is yet another great writer you have to denounce if you believe totally in the "show don't tell" rule.

Stories - Neil Gaiman & Al Sarantonio

Really good stories, mostly. It's nice to get a collection by established, successful writers because when you want to read something more by one of them they are easy to find, unlike the writers who appear in compilations of promising newcomers. I will definitely be on the lookout for Joyce Carol Oates and Michael Moorcock now (previously just names I had heard). One or two of the stories here were kind of lame, but the majority have that solid, rich, fulfilling feeling a short story should have. Inspired me just in time for Bridport.

Dark Rain - Mat Johnson & Simon Gane

Another excellent graphic novel. This is the story of a bank heist during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. It's a good story well-told, and well drawn too, in (mostly) black and white, with lots of detail but without ever becoming cluttered or hard to take in (even when depicting the detritus and chaos). I like the way it keeps musings, mourning and tributes and all the other things you'd expect in a story about this incident, to a minimum. It's there but it's never allowed to get in the way of the story. It remains a story.

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

Took me more than a month to read, which should say something. As sci-fi it is brilliant. It's brilliantly imagined. The amount of work that went into researching, imagining and plotting it must have been phenomenal. But it's not very well written. Maybe I'm just spoiled on Auster and King lately, but I kept running into characters "forcing back anger" or being "flooded with relief". Lazy. And wordy, undisciplined sentences. I think that's why it took me so long. In the end it was worth it though. By the climax of the last hundred or so pages, I was finally invested.

A Taste of Chlorine - Bastien Vives

A very simple but very engaging story with beautiful, beautiful artwork. Very little dialogue. There are whole scenes without dialogue and sections of 10 or 20 pages without any text, so you're just looking at the pictures and taking in what's happening. There's a bit of an art to this. The ending is rather mysterious. I'm not sure if I'm missing something or not, which is slightly frustrating. Anyway, this is a very good example of simple, minimalist, stripped down visual storytelling.

Batman: Year One - Frank Miller & David Mazzuchelli

Very good and beautifully drawn, but perhaps a little underwhelming. Probably just because it's such a familiar story by now. After the epic crash-bang-wallop of the Nolan films - and the attendant excitement in the run-up to the third one - it's hard not to be underwhelmed by a fairly simple version of the story without much fanfare (much current fanfare, anyway). It is very well-written though, and it's easy to see how it's influenced the Nolan films' scripts. Also, I like the placing of Gordon in a more central role than usual. He makes a good, relatable counter-protagonist to Batman.

Locke and Key Vol. 1 to 3 - Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

Best comic to have come out in the last few years, surely (ok, I don't read that many). Very reminiscent of Hill's dad, and not just because it's about a haunted house in New England. It's got that perfect balance between human drama and supernatural shenanigans. The characters are, without exception, deep and relateable. Themes of childhood and adolescence (kids and teenagers are running the show while the adults struggle along as best they can) shine through with just the right emphasis between the awesome, magic-imbued action scenes. Can't wait for the next one!

Wolverine: Old Man Logan - Mark Millar & Steve McNiven

A comic set in a bleak future where most of the Marvel heroes are dead and the villains are in charge, and Wolverine has vowed never to extend his claws again. It's very well-written. I think I'd appreciate it more if I was more familiar with Marvel characters (this is the same reason I'm not excited about the Avengers film in cinemas now). It did make me sort of resent comic continuity a bit. X-Men is a great premise until you clutter it up with all the non-mutant heroes and villains, and isn't Batman kind of redundant in a world that also contains Superman?

Orwell's Victory - Christopher Hitchens

Very interesting, very well-written and thorough, and very one-sided (but that's alright). It paints a good portrait of a fascinating person, and defends him as a heroic cultural and intellectual figure. This defence sounds strained only in one or two places. Many critics (especially leftists who criticised Orwell for all sorts of things) get Hitch-slapped in the process. I'm left wanting to read an actual biography of him. His life seems to have consisted entirely of hard times. If he had lived longer his legacy might not be so powerful.

Hard Times - Charles Dickens

Excellent. Much shorter, less of a sprawling, complex narrative than most of Dickens, but no worse for that. The story has a nice shape to it, with threads being laid down and taken up again later. Some excellent characters, especially, Mr. Bounderby, who I would think was the inspiration for The Big Lebowski, except that it seems more likely that both characters were inspired by real life examples. The prose is darkly beautiful here and there.

Voice of the Fire - Alan Moore

SPOILERS AGAIN!

No idea how it took me so long. All wonderful stories, and tantalisingly linked so that I was half disappointed  by the final one being non-fiction as opposed to an apocalyptic drawing-together of everything up to that point (the other half was thrilled at the very idea of the author coming out from behind the curtain and going "here I am!" How many other authors could pull that off?) Could write a whole essay on this book; no room. First story remained my favourite.

Man In The Dark - Paul Auster

SPOILER WARNING!!

Austerrific, what else is there to say? (Also, writing this one book later so memory of specifics not great). All very self-reflective; stories within stories, etc. The revelation of how the son died was devastatingly powerful, despite the fact that I had guessed 30 or so pages in advance. The way he approaches the subjects he writes about (war, in this case) is so original and unexpected that you barely realise what it's all about until after you've finished reading it.

Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski

Not sure what to write, how to express it. This is what the word "masterpiece" was invented for, I think. It speaks to me like few books ever have. The misanthropy, the disinterest and apathy, uncertainty about the future, everything about Hank Chinaski is me at my worst. He's me if I let that side take over. And it speaks in such a unique voice. Every sentence and word is just perfect and alive and heavy with meaning. I'll die happy if I ever write something half as good as this.