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.