poprock wrote:

I know what you mean. I let it slide thinking that maybe the procedural side of things was reflective of the early ’80s.

I mean they all went to school right?

Facewon wrote:

Trying out at fat duck with heston today, in fact.

He must be a serious baker. Best of luck in his direction, that’s one hell of a gig.

He got it! Head baker. Get in.

Yay, well done him, that's gonna be a brilliant experience. Though I couldn't help but initially read it as 'one who bakes heads' and humming headshrinker by oasis

tigerswiftly wrote:

Just started on The Hod King. Bancroft is an absolute treat.

Another cracker. I think I preferred Arm of the Sphinx but the arc over the 3 books so far has been superb. Very much looking forward to seeing how Senlin and the Tower are left at the end of book 4.

Finished King’s Wizard and Glass yesterday. Also still working on Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams, which feels like the literary equivalent of wading through treacle. I will finish it, but I’ll be glad to move on to another author once I have.

Wizard and Glass isn’t bad. It’s overlong and has a silly ending, but it benefits from not having a great deal of Eddie and Susannah in it, whom I’ve decided I’m really not very keen on.

Anyway, I’ve finished The Hill of Dreams. Phew! That was heavy going. It’s about a young lad who’s a bit different from all the other kids. He takes himself off into the Welsh countryside and imagines he sees fairy banquets and fauns and such, much of it focused around an old Roman fort. He decides early in life that he wants to become a writer, and will settle for nothing less than writing the most beautiful prose, inspired almost entirely by the hallucinogenic visions he experiences in the Welsh wilds. What follows is a dense, baroque journey into adulthood, trapped inside the characters’ head as he battles with his craft. Light reading it most certainly was not.

Also just finished up The Ragthorn by Robert Holdstock and Garry Kilworth. It’s a short novella presented in the form of diary entries by a character who’s on the trail of the mythical Tree of Life. It wasn’t bad. I want to read a lot more of Holdstock’s work this year. I got into his Mythago Wood series of books over twenty years ago and they got under my skin and never quite got out again. He has a unique take on fantasy; it’s a primal, piss-soaked, mud-slicked world where fantastical archetypes such as Robin Hood and King Arthur are conjured from the minds of the protagonists as dangerous, elemental beings. It’s a provocative, unforgettable world, and if there’s one author I could recommend to you all if you’re looking for a very different take on fantasy, it’s Robert Holdstock. Mythago Wood (which won the World Fantasy Award for best novel) is very good. It’s sequel, Lavondyss (winner of the BSFA award), is simply phenomenal. I was pretty devastated to discover recently that he had passed away a few years ago, way before his time, which has prompted the desire to reread some of his greats and catch up on some I missed.

So...also included with The Ragthorn were two short stories, one by Garry Kilworth (The Fabulous Beast, I think it’s called) and The Charisma Trees by Holdstock. I’ve never read anything by Garry Kilworth before and...my goodness...I never will again. I felt like I was reading something written by a fourteen year old. I don’t think I’ve ever read something so amateurish in my entire life. How the man has managed to get himself into print is beyond me. Fortunately Holdstock’s short was great.

Will be starting a horror anthology called Gutted next.

Wizard and glass was the top of the dark tower.


Read This is going to hurt. Humorous diary of a house doctor. Equally funny, sad and rather worrying. Very easy read.

Also read Stephen Fry's Heroes this week. Excellent read....Has me wanting to read the 1st volume Mythos. I suspect there will be a follow-up about Troy which I'll get too. Again..easy to read. Interesting insights into modern day culture and its origins. Also shows how the tales are butchered for film.

Does Fry read the audio versions? I think id like that.

I've tried audiobooks a few times - I find I either lose focus or fall asleep.

I'd be prepared to give this a try though.

I walked out mid way through his one man wankathon at the theatre a few years back.

All is right with the world.

I've successfully listened to all of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - but then that was the original radio show and so designed as such.

I've tried the Hobbit , read by a guy called Rob Inglis, who is superb, but I kept dosing off. Probably the quality of a voice which is best suited to this sort of thing.

Also tried Reappraisals by Tony Judt - a rather elephantine modern history of Europe  centred around WW2 - I found it hard to stay focussed as it requires concentrated listening.

I haven't given up on the format - I'd need to try earlier in the day - trying it in the evening really doesn't work for me.

davyK wrote:

I've successfully listened to all of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - but then that was the original radio show and so designed as such.

I loved that as a kid. Listened to it over and over.

So that’s The Grey Bastards finished. It has a very m, very shaky start and I was rather close to giving up on it. I am, however, glad I stuck with it as it improved massively as it went on. The setting is nicely done and the world building gradually becomes one of the best parts of the book. It has all the traditional high-fantasy stuff but each species has a nice little twist (especially the centaurs) and it is all nicely grimdark!

It was the characters though that really sold it. The book is heavily influenced by Sons of Anarchy and you can see it in the relationships between characters and their code they follow. They were all great and even lesser characters were given details and nuances throughout.

Overall it was just good fun. Dodgy start but everything came together and launched into a blockbuster series of set pieces, high drama and great moments.

Lol sorry ;p

Someone else might have read it before me tho. So let's both blame them.

And yeah good luck.