Pawnee, by Leslie Knope

4 stars

If you're a fan of Parks & Recreation (and if you're not, do yourself a favour and watch it) then you'll find a lot to love in this jaunt through Pawnee in the company of The Author (and my imaginary BFF) Leslie Knope.

Find out about the dodgy history of the home of Sweetums and feral raccoons, the culinary delights of JJ's Diner (don't forget to try the waffles) and the former names of Mouse Rat. Snigger quite a bit through Ron's cabin and April's college diaries. Just don't leave the book on your bathroom floor once you're done - Leslie worked really hard on this, you guys.

Deadpool Vol1: Dead Presidents, by Posehn, Duggan & Moore

4 stars

A disillusioned necromancer, saddened at the state of modern America, raises all of America’s dead presidents with the aim of saving his country. Unfortunately, it turns out that the deceased leaders think that what America really needs saving from is Americans, and they set about cleansing the country with aplomb. SHIELD is struck with scandal from the start, when Captain America makes the headlines for decapitating Harry Truman, and realises it can’t afford to pit its popular heroes against dead patriots. Instead of superheroes, what they really need is a scumbag. And so there’s really only one guy for the job.

Fabulously drawn, my second adventure with Deadpool was just as fun as my previous and prompted at least one snort (and often more) from me per page. I’m looking forward to hanging out with him much more often in the future.

Gossip From The Forest, by Sara Maitland

4 stars

I've long had a fascination with the woods. For me, a large part of their appeal comes from how they spark my imagination (which is heavily influenced by the fairytales with which I grew up). Therefore feeling as though it was written especially for me, Sara Maitland's lovely book look at precisely these things - forests and fairytales - taking in their tangled histories and how they have inspired and influenced one another.

Above: Venford - just one of the magical spots that can be found in my, er, neck of the woods
(courtesy of NikNak - for more from his Flickr stream click here.

Each chapter focused on a different forest at a different time of the year, and a different element of forestry and fairytale theme. Reading during my lunch breaks, each felt like I'd just taken my own refreshing stroll through the woods (I also learnt rather a lot, and now can't stop noticing pollarded trees). Even better were the retellings of well known fairytales that ended each stroll and that showed each tale in a fresh light.

A delight nearly every step of the way (with a star deducted simply due to some editing mistakes present in my copy), I highly recommend Gossip From The Forest to any fellow nemophiles.

Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut

5 stars

Narrated by the ghost of a man killed during the building of the Bahia de Darwin cruise ship, Galapagos is an absurd, original and funny look at the evolution of man, from the perspective of a million years into our future.

Detailing the tiny accidents, coincidences and circumstances (mostly caused by humanity's troublesome big brains) that led to the few passengers booked on to the 'Nature Cruise of the Century' during a financial crash getting trapped on a Galapagos island and unwittingly becoming the ancestors from which the future human race evolved, once again Vonnegut packed more wit, perception and ideas into a page than most manage in an entire book.

Filled with wonderful observations from our ghost and interjections from Mandarax (an invention of one of the Darwin's passengers that's almost a primitive Hitchhikers Guide), Galapagos was yet another of his works that makes me wish I could kiss Vonnegut's magnificent big brain. Instead I settled for highlighting all of the parts that delighted me, and now my copy is basically one big highlight.

Deadpool Killustrated, by Cullen Bunn

4.5 stars

I’ve always been a sucker for smart-mouthed psychos, and so Deadpool seems my exact flavour of super-powered catnip. Having recently had a major wibble on viewing the trailer for the new film and being far too impatient to wait until February to get my teeth into it, I decided it was high time that I check him out in graphic novel format. My local bookstore offered a few variations, so I went with this, in which Deadpool takes on the classics. It was the perfect introduction for me.

Deadpool’s particular brand of crazy means that he’s aware that he’s a fictional character, living in a fictional world. Sick of it all, by the opening of this book he’s already slaughtered the entire Marvel universe and knows that there’s no such thing as dead when a writer can simply resurrect you, and so he hits upon an idea – to kill the very idea of superheroes. And so he goes to the source – the classic characters of literature who inspired their tight-clad alter egos. Which is how we find him going after Moby Dick (Midge would love him forever should she read this), Tom Sawyer, the Musketeers, the Little Mermaid, Ebeneezer Scrooge, monsters from Greek myth and more, and we find me cackling with glee while rubbing my hands together at the anticipation of the fun I’m going to have inhaling more of his work.

More please!

The Robber Bridegroom, by the Brothers Grimm

4 stars

This little collection of seven tales from the Brothers Grimm – The Master Huntsman, The Robber Bridegroom, The Devil’s Three Golden Hairs, The Six Servants, The Bremen Town Band, Snowwhite, and Lazy Harry – has definitely whet my whistle to read a bigger collection of their work.

The tales I remember from my childhood were occasionally grim, but I don’t remember them being as grisly as this – or as funny. I also seem to remember them having some sort of moral, but I’ll be blowed if I can think of what the morals of Lazy Harry and the Bremen Town Band were.

Taking in greedy, arrogant kings, lucky young men, unlucky princesses, clever animals, proud queens, forbidding forests, foul murderers, cannibalism, the Devil and his grandma, and dense young ladies who won’t listen when you tell them not to open the door to anyone, I can’t help but think that had the Brothers Grimm been around today they’d have probably been frogmarched from the offices of children’s publishers and targeted by a Daily Mail campaign.

As it is, someone needs to get on with adapting these older versions for film. I’d happily throw money at the chance to watch that.

Generation of Swine, by Hunter S. Thompson

4 stars

A long overdue re-read that was just as entertaining as the first time around, I started A Generation of Swine on my birthday as a little treat to myself. The time between then and now has been heavily slanted towards work, but the format of the book - articles written for the San Francisco Examiner between '86 and '88 - made it the perfect reading material to fit into my often very short lunch breaks.

A Generation of Swine is a brilliant time capsule, bringing back many of the things that were on our (but especially American) minds in the late '80s: AIDS, the War on Drugs, Ghaddafi, acid rain and the Iran/Contra affair as well as the Presidential campaign for '88, showing that while we may have pretty short memories the world has always been an insanely corrupt and often frightening place, and that the only thing that's really changed are the names of the players and how its documented. For me, Hunter S. Thompson is a huge loss from amongst the best of those documentarians, someone who's miles better than most even when he's not at his peak. 

Never better than when he's at his most vitriolic, the Iran/Contra scandal and the Presidential campaign would give him plenty of material - especially when it came to George Bush Snr:

 "...a truly evil man, a truthless monster with the brains of a king rat and the soul of a cockroach, is about to be sworn in as President of the United States for the next four years...And he will bring his whole gang with him, a mean network of lawyers and salesmen and pimps who will loot the national treasury, warp the laws, mock the rules and stay awake twenty-two hours a day looking for at least one reason to declare war, officially, on some hapless tribe in the Sahara or heathen fanatic like the Ayatollah Khomeini."

 Based on this little jaunt through the decade of "Huge brains, small necks, weak muscles and fat wallets...", I think it might be high time for a re-read of all his other books too.

The Surgeon's Mate, by Patrick O'Brian

4 stars

Another fabulous instalment in the continued adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and his BFF Dr Stephen Maturin that I hugely enjoyed, even if it was sadly interrupted by too much work and a new downstairs neighbour who likes to scream things that make no sense at regular intervals.

Having long been at sea, on landing in Nova Scotia Captain Aubrey has found himself having an ill-advised fling with a young flibbertigibbet who, as soon as he finally gets himself home again, is writing copious notes full of declarations of love and pregnancy, along with pleas for cash. He’s also up to the neck in legal business thanks to the sorry decision of becoming involved with a dodgy businessman. Meanwhile, Stephen is giving lectures to the Institut in Paris and finding a place there for the knocked up Diana Villiers – now considered an enemy alien thanks to her dalliance with the American Johnson. It’s just as well then that orders have arrived for Captain Aubrey to sail with Stephen on a most important mission – repatriating some Catalan soldiers who have been hitherto working for the French. Which is made especially difficult by bad weather, a missing chronometer, deadly bays, French ships eager to capture them, French captains eager to torture Stephen, and incarceration in imposing French prisons.

Of course, Jack and my beloved Stephen aren’t the sort to let that sort of thing get them down, and the book is as much of a riot as its predecessors. Once again, their friendship is the glue that holds this all together and I got a good deal of entertainment over Jack’s fretting for Stephen, whether he be on a dangerous spying mission or ill-advisedly clambering among the crosstrees with an equally clumsy lubber (and Jack’s reaction to Stephen and Jagiello’s little jaunt made me snort so hard that my cats scarpered).

I’m now seven books in to this wonderful series and the quality is as high as ever – and it now seems that I’m even becoming comfortable with the naval language that previously flummoxed me (check me out, knowing what a crosstree is! I never thought that would happen). These books are my treat to myself whenever I need picking up a bit – so if my neighbour continues to scream nonsense at me whenever she sees me, prepare to see much more of these popping up on my feed.

Prince Lestat, by Anne Rice

4 stars

It’s been some time since we last saw Lestat, acting strangely unlike himself in Blood Canticle (as if Lestat would ever say cool or dude. Although she wouldn’t say that either, I’m laying the blame for this solely at the door of the infinitely dislikeable Rowan Mayfair, who also unfortunately starred in that outing). It pleases me to say that not only is Lestat back, but this time it really is the Lestat we know and love, in all his lion-maned, arrogant and lace bedecked glory. And Rowan’s not even mentioned.

Catching up with not just my beloved but a host of other vampires besides, Prince Lestat finds the vampire world in an uproar – a mysterious voice is goading vampires into destroying one another and the Sacred Core, which animates all vampires and currently resides in the brain of the ancient and mute Mekare, is under threat. The vampires need a leader to take control – now who might that leader be, I wonder?

After the last few books in the Vampire Chronicles and the lacklustre second outing in the Wolf Gift Chronicles, I must admit I was a little nervous about this one, which is probably why I put off reading it for so long. Happily, I needn’t have worried. Aside from enjoying Lestat as much as I ever have, I also enjoyed the fleshing out of the pasts of some of the unnamed vampires from previous entries which brought to the fore Anne’s skill at embedding a sense of history in her characters – even if I couldn’t help but snigger every time one of them waxed poetic about how wonderfully complex and profound they found the previous Vampire Chronicles (which exist in this world as they were all ‘written’ by our vampires) and if the central mysteries (who is The Voice, and who started the Talamasca) were easily solved, I still found them satisfying.

The only minus for me was the story of Rose and Viktor, which didn’t really add anything new (she’s such a beautiful, delicate, battered flower and he’s….well, he’s really pretty too) other than giving Anne an option for a new series starring Lestat v2. Not that I wouldn’t read the shit out of that too, but for now they simply felt superfluous.

If you’re new to the world of the Vampire Chronicles, I really wouldn’t recommend starting here (although handy previouslies are provided throughout the text, you’d still be missing out on a lot of the backstories to these characters, as well as the two best books in the series) but if you’re a long-time fan, you’ll eat Lestat’s story up with a spoon.

The Fortune of War, by Patrick O'Brian

4.5 stars

At this point, reading the Aubrey/Maturin series has become more pleasurable than slipping into a hot bath on a cold night, although the predicaments they've lately found themselves facing are much less pleasant.

Having survived the disasters of Desolation Island, the long-presumed dead crew of the Leopard have limped into safe harbour and are now bound for home (and a better ship). But they've got to get there first - something that won't be happening for a while if the events of this book are anything to go by. First, the ship that's sailing them to their new command burns to cinders leaving the men to take to the cutters in the hopes of rescue...rescue which is a long time coming and, when it finally appears, takes the form of an American ship. 

Which is unfortunate, as war has been declared between the United Kingdom and the States, and some of Maturin's previous activities are making life extremely difficult for my favourite BFFF's who are now suspected of being spies. Nor is the war going so well for the entire Royal Navy, who are getting their teeth repeatedly kicked in by a foe they'd assumed they could easily vanquish. 

Not that that's going to keep my boys down for long...

Filled with intrigue, intelligence, astonishing sea battles and hints of the changes to come to seafaring - the men are already muttering darkly and wholeheartedly dissaproving of rumoured steam-powered boats - this entry was as perfect as all those that have preceded it. I can hardly wait for my next trip to sea with them.

Tousle Me - A New Adult Parody, by Lucy V. Morgan

3 stars

"God damn my unpredictably violent and possessive tendencies." His voice cracks. "Damn them to hell."

If you've ever found yourself yelling at a New Adult book like a deranged person before going on a Like spree amongst its snarkiest, most GIF-laden reviews, and if you generally spend far more time on Goodreads than is probably good for you, then Tousle Me may well be just up your street. It was right up mine.

Featuring all the things we know and love to hate (or just plain hate) about the genre - ridiculous names, virginal and constantly confused heroine with poor alcohol tolerance, cage-fighting, ex-rock star, billionaire, 100% a dick romantic hero with fudge sundae tousled hair, slightly less attractive and slut-shamed best friend, Dark Pasts, thriller subplots, misunderstandings that keep the sex from happening yet - this made me snort my appreciation rather often. And while it may have been juuust a smidge overlong, this didn't detract from my overall enjoyment.

So go on - you know you want it...

God Is Dead - Vol 1, by Jonathan Hickman

3.5 stars

I love the idea behind this graphic novel, with the old gods returning to Earth (this time, it's personal!) to claim dominion over mankind, which they turn out to be rather good at.

As the remaining human population gets mostly sacrificed and the gods start a Battle Royale for control over all, a small band of people known as The Collective have gone underground, looking for a way to fight back.

While I enjoyed the way the gods were depicted, I have to admit that one of the humans made my shit start to ever so slightly itch - The Collective, made up of pudgy scientists, skinny nerds, old men and the physically impaired, also happens to have a girl in it. A girl who, of course, has breasts bigger than her own head which are forever straining to free themselves from the strip of material she wears across them, and who finds pudgy scientists with whom she's had little interaction or chemistry insanely arousing. 

Sigh.

Storm, by Tim Minchin

5 stars

Tim Minchin's Storm is the response I wish I could give whenever anyone around me starts banging on about homeopathy, psychics, auras, or worrying about when The Rapture is due to start, instead of the oh-so-mature eye-rolling and proclamations of 'Yeah, well Gandalf says...' that I usually tend to indulge in.

A brilliant beat-style ode to critical thinking that works just as well in graphic novel form as it does when performed, with the wonderful illustrations flowing as well as the words and underscoring Minchin's arguments well, if you've not yet encountered Storm you can do so here:

For iPhone/iPad click here.

Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell

4.5 stars

Rainbow Rowell first made me wibble with Eleanor and Park. Fangirl has just proved that wasn't a fluke.

A fan of the Harry Potter-like Simon Snow, Cath is just starting out at college. Anxious and insecure, she's away from the father she's taken care of since her mother left and her identical twin, Wren, has decided she doesn't want to room with her. Left with an intimidating roommate, Reagan, whose easygoing boyfriend Levi is always in their room even when Reagan's not, Cath isn't getting to spend as much time as she'd like on her fanfiction (the fans of which do not include her Fiction Writing professor, who thinks it's for bottom-feeders).

And so Cath is slowly drawn out of the comfortable worlds, both real and imaginary, that she ordinarily inhabits.

At first my stratospheric expectations following Eleanor and Park worked unfairly against this, and I was all set to find Cath irritating (especially early on whenever exhibiting any of the traits I have in common with her) but by the time the wonderful Reagan (who I have a total girlcrush on, by the way) had decided to be Cath's new best friend I was won over (and then totally pushed off into the wibbles by the time Levi started yelling at her stories).

It's rare that I find books with romances at their centres so engrossing, but something about the way Rowell writes about falling in love for the first time hits me in my squishy place Every. Damn. Time.

I'm going to make sure I have some on back-up for whenever I need to sigh wistfully for a while.

Desolation Island, by Patrick O'Brian

5 stars

We've now reached the fifth book in Patrick O'Brian's fantastic Aubrey/Maturin series and I'll admit that, by this point, I am no longer a regular reader but have lost all objectivity and become a squealing fangirl.

Desolation Island finds lucky Jack Aubrey installed once more in Ashgrove Cottage. He's not so lucky on land however, and is being bilked out of his rapidly dwindling Mauritius Command prize-money by grasping tradesmen and card sharps who see him coming. Things are turning so badly that even his loving wife, Sophie, is starting to wish he was at sea again. Meanwhile, my beloved Stephen isn't faring so well either. That bloody Villiers woman is back in town and tormenting him once more, the laudanum monkey that's on his back has got bigger and meaner, he's lost a bunch of intelligence papers in the back of a cab and a patient on the operating table and, to top it all off, has even had a pop at an Admiral. Thankfully, Jack soon accepts a new command - the Leopard, a huge ship with a bad reputation - and a new mission: to rescue Captain Bligh (yes, that Captain Bligh) who's on the other side of the world with another possible mutiny on his hands. Before you get too excited though, remember that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry and before we can meet any infamous historical persons we've got a whole heap of ocean to get through, on a boat transporting convicts (including women, Heavens above! One of whom, Mrs Wogan, is a suspected spy) and stuffed with indifferent officers who think nothing of trying to undermine Jack's authority at every turn.

Before long the convicts' appalling conditions mean gaol-fever is sweeping the ship and corpses shrouded in sails are soon slipping over the side. And that's even before 'Firebox' Peggy Barnes, one of the infernal women on board, has opened her legs and given most of the sailors a venereal disease. A brilliantly tense and thrilling sea chase over the course of a number of stormy days, in which the undermanned Leopard is pursued by the much bigger and better manned Dutch warship Warkhaamzeid, sees several large holes punched in the ship before an iceberg finishes the job, ripping a hole in the hull and snatching away the rudder, leaving the few left aboard after abandonment by the many who'd rather take their chances in a dinghy to bail like hell and hope for land. And through it all, the delightfully sneaky Stephen is quietly intercepting Mrs Wogan's letters and filling them with falsehoods before sending them on their merry way.

Every second of these books is a delight to me - whether it's learning about the many harsh realities of life in the Age of the Sail, Stephen's passion for the creatures they come across, or the snarky asides at boozy dinners - I could even roll around in giddy ecstacy at the sentences that make my eyes cross ('A burton-tackle to the chess-tree,' he called, loud and clear. 'Lead aft to a snatch-block fast to the aftermost ring-bolts and forward free.')

I could easily read nothing but these books for the rest of my life and die satisfied, but at the age of 35 I've only got fifteen left to go (sniff!) and so I'm probably best off eking them out a little.

Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt, by John Cooper Clarke

4 stars

When I was 15, I was pretty certain that poetry just wasn't for me. I could see why others liked it, but nothing I'd read so far really seemed to be speaking to me. And then, hidden away on a punk mix-tape (I was at least 15 years out to have actually been there), I stumbled across Kung Fu International: 

For iPhone/iPad click here.

Poetry was no longer just the province of long-dead men in cravats contemplating the nature of love, but of men in drain-pipes, contemplating the nature of getting your head kicked in in a phone box. Something told me that this dude was more punk than anyone else snarling away on my tape, but little did I know then that Kung Fu International wasn't even his best.

Ten Years In an Open Necked Shirt is a brilliant collection of John Cooper Clarke, which includes my favourite:

For iPhone/iPad click here.

...as well as more of his other best and most-known works, plus a few others.

Full of acerbic wit, this is full of lines I'd like to memorise so that I can pull them out the next time I'm called upon for a witty comeback (or so I can spew A Love Story In Reverse at them, if they've really annoyed me. Oh, you haven't heard that one? Here, let me oblige) 

For iPhone/iPad click here.

The only reason this is getting a 4 rather than a 5 is solely down to not hearing them spoken in Clarke's nasal, Salford twang (although my imagination did its best to supply it).

The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O'Brian

5 stars

Running off to sea again with Lucky Jack Aubrey and his BFFF (and my imaginary boyfriend) Dr Stephen Maturin has been long overdue, and so it was with an eager hand that I opened The Mauritius Command. I wasn't disappointed as it turned out to be as rollicking good fun as its predecessors, even if I still don't know my mizen from my masthead.

Having married his sweetheart, Sophie, and settled in a long-dreamed for cottage, The Mauritius Command finds Jack Aubrey on land and on half pay. His dreams didn't quite match reality, however, and the cottage is not only pokey but also contains his domineering mother-in-law and two hairless twins who, to make matters worse, aren't even boys. His cabbages are being munched by caterpillars, and even the bees that were Dr Maturin's gift have died (not the bees!). Thank heavens then, for the timely reappearance of Stephen and a set of secret orders to sail the frigate Boadicea to the Cape and onto Mauritius, where Jack is to harry the French while flying a Commodore's pendant.

A step-up in command brings its own problems, however, and Jack is soon striving for success while managing the difficult personalities of the Captains under him - the showy and insecure Clonfert, the capable but cruel Corbett who takes better care of his brass than his men, and Pym, the numpty whose incompetence nearly spells disaster - while Stephen spreads subversive literature and schools the crews in an early bit of Hearts and Minds - no thieving and raping, please, gentlemen! 

Everything that I've come to love about this series is still present and correct - the fantastic characterisation, the astounding amounts of food that Jack puts away, the wonderful insights into life at sea and the throwaway asides that make me snort ("...the surviving swine struck down into the hold together with the goat, which, in the general silence, could be heard bleating angrily for its long overdue tobacco") and most of all, the relationship between Jack and Stephen ("Jack loved him, and had not the least objection to granting him all the erudition in the world, while remaining inwardly convinced that in all practical matters other than physic and surgery Stephen should never be allowed out alone.")

Ahhhh, Stephen. Skilled surgeon, dedicated naturalist, super-spy, the man I'd most want on my side in an argument and an all round colossus of a character, Stephen has wormed his way into being my favourite character of all time, and made it look as easy as kiss my hand. Wibble.

I was going to give this a four as its not even the best that I've read in this series so far, but sod it. I loved every minute of it so much, it's getting a five.

Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell

All the stars

This probably isn't going to be a proper review.

In my head, I'm still busy making it mix-tapes full of Smiths songs and doodling its name on all of my books, in between wondering what happened to both Eleanor and Park after the book and how life is treating them (I hope it's being kind). If I could think about them during English, I would (it'll have to be during a team meeting instead).

The story of Eleanor (picked on and defensive), and Park (quiet comic-book fan) finding and falling for one another, simply and beautifully written (to the point I wanted to underline everything), this is a wonderful little slice of perfection that nearly had me inhaling it all in one sitting - I made myself save some for the following morning knowing I'd be bereft on finishing (and I was).

The sort of book that had me wanting to shove it at random strangers in the street, yelling 'THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!' in between crying at its loveliness, it's also the sort of book that will make me hold a grudge against any others I read for a while for not being This Book, which will now be bought for the birthdays of absolutely everybody I know.

I love you, Eleanor and Park.

Say hello to my leetle friends

Everybody, meet Creedence...

...and Crosby...

Creedence and Crosby are 8 week old brothers who came to live with us on Saturday. So far they're settling in brilliantly, spending most of their time either asleep, eating, or running around like mini-maniacs and trying to wrestle one another into submission.

Crosby so far seems to be the daring one, trying new jumps and climbs wherever he can find them while Creedence follows behind, trying to bite his tail.

Then it's time for yet another nap, while I try not to squeal at their cuteness: 

Especially when they fall asleep mid-fight.

I've no idea how I'm going to drag myself away from them in order to go to work!

Fables, Vol 1: Legends in Exile, by Bill Willingham

4 stars

A graphic novel in which fairytale beings live in New York? And the Big Bad Wolf is a private dick? It's like someone wrote this excellent introduction to the Fable World (in which the aforementioned Bigby Wolf investigates who killed Rose Red, the sister of Fabletown's deputy Mayor, Snow White) just for me...

It was fun to see new takes on familiar characters - apart from the Big Bad Wolf and Snow White we also meet Old King Cole, Bluebeard, Jack (of the Beanstalk fame, now a grifter) and Beauty and the Beast (whose marriage troubles made me snigger).

The plot itself was straightforward and enjoyable, if not mind-blowing, but I love the world that's been set up and I can't wait to read more.