My favorite story in this collection is easily “The Narcomancer” but there’s plenty of other good ones as well. There are 22 stories here, and I thought all but one or two were very well done. (And I won’t say which since I’m sure many people will have different opinions on which one or two.) Won’t take you long to work through this collection and it’s well worth the time.
This is pretty easy - I happened to go through a number of these in the past week or three.
Miracleman, by Alan Moore. This is one of Moore’s “deconstruction” books. The background on the series is kind of interesting in and of itself: Back in the 1950s, the Captain Marvel (“Shazam”) license was kind of laying fallow in the US as a result of a lawsuit filed by DC comics against the Captain Marvel book (claiming it was a ripoff of Superman) and the other publisher basically going under. A British publisher basically decided that they could get away from ripping off Captain Marvel in the UK, so they created “Marvelman”. Moore resurrected the idea and essentially says, “Hey, how could we make the incredibly cheesy Captain Marvel-style origins and adventures work in an ‘adult’ and hyper-gritty way?”
The series was published in the UK as “Marvelman” but changed to “Miracleman” in the US to avoid the obvious lawsuits from Marvel. It’s not Moore’s best work, but it’s pretty good.
Baltimore, by Mike Mignola. I’ve always enjoyed Mignola’s Hellboy and BPRD stories, and I love his art-style (recreated here by Ben Stenbeck).
This story isn’t as good as his Hellboy stuff, but the setting is pretty awesome and would make a great role-playing setting.
The Immortal Hulk, by Al Ewing. A YouTuber that I follow recommended this, and I’m glad I listened to him and picked it up.
Essentially, they take the well-worn Hulk character and go in some interesting and fairly dark places with it. The series is pretty much the Incredible Hulk re-imagined as a horror comic, and it works quite well, at least for the first dozen or so issues (collected into the first two “volumes”). After that it starts to stray a bit, but is still consistently good. Be warned though that this is not a complete story.
Al Ewing was also behind Planet Hulk, which was pretty much the best Conan the Barbarian book ever written… if you don’t mind that Conan is green, is named “Hulk”, and isn’t actually a barbarian.
I mean, the Hulk is basically a reskin of Jekyll and Hyde, so I would say it’s fundamentally a horror story to begin with.
Progress: 24/52
This anthology has a little something for most everyone, as long as you like it set in space and/or alien planets. Action, horror, fear, military, old folks, young folks, humor, etc, etc - at least one of the stories here has it. They’re all fine stories, and I’m happy to have spent a couple hours reading through them. None stood out as amazing, though.
Progress: 25/52
https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Omnibus-Vol-TPB/dp/1524108596
The Boys has a cool premise: superpowers exist, people are basically assholes, superpowers make super assholes, and someone has to keep them in check. But then the authors decided to cram in every kind of crude language and deviant sex act possible. Some of that’s going to be necessary to the world and story, but this goes way beyond that. Can’t recommend this. Even if you’re not easily offended…and I consider myself in that category…there’s just too much unnecessary filth to wade through here. (Slightly longer-form thoughts here.)
That’s Garth Ennis for you.
Unlike you, I think it’s well outshone by the quality of the story itself, both here and with Preacher, and would heartily recommend both with the caveat of that content being pretty in your face.
He also has runs on Hellblazer and The Punisher where he’s toned that kind of thing down quite a bit that are excellent… and then a bunch of other stuff that seems to be all that stuff and nothing worthwhile, like Crossed.
Progress: 22/52
Completely lives up to my high expectations from the first book and from the praise and awards it has received. Great world, characters, and prose. 5/5
Progress: 23-27/52
Figured this prompt and a long vacation made a good excuse to sign up for a month of Comixology Unlimited and see what was there. These are the best of what I’ve read so far, with Saga being the biggest highlight.
Progress: 26/52
Poetry has never been my thing, but given the right subject matter I can find some pieces I enjoy. This collection about flight has a few that I enjoyed (details in the blog link above, if you’re interested). Still plenty I didn’t like as well, but that’s normal for me with poetry.
July plans!
Loved the Imperial Radch trilogy by Leckie. This is a stand-alone set in the same universe.
Near-future cyberpunk thriller dealing with a coup in Columbia driven by soulless corporate machinations.
This is one of those globe-trotting thriller type books. Could fit into any of the Earth categories. There’s some of it in Africa so it’ll work here.
“In a tour de force tapestry of science fiction and historical fiction, Andromeda Romano-Lax presents a story set in Japan and Taiwan that spans a century of empire, conquest, progress, and destruction. Plum Rains elegantly broaches such important contemporary conversations as immigration, the intersection of labor and technology, the ecological fate of our planet and the future of its children.” Sold.
Pulitzer-winning novel about a midlife crisis played out on a trip around the world. One of the settings is a desert island in the Arabian Sea, seems fitting for the “other places on Earth” category.
Progress: 28/52
Poetry hasn’t really been my thing either, but it seemed like a good chance to check off a piece of the canon. The results were about what I was expecting, with some striking imagery and ideas that will stick with me, intermingled with bits that went right over my head.
Progress: 29/52
Figured I may as well get some more value out of my month of comixology. This is also hard to evaluate – it’s made up of so many micro-stories on similar themes that it’s inevitably a bit repetitive and mixed-quality, but there were some really powerful and well-done ones in there too. And the message is certainly worth reiterating as often as it takes.
July Plans
Loved this series so far, and am looking forward to finishing it up.
I guess this is technically Central America, but close enough.
@Dave_Perkins recommended this one, and he hasn’t steered me wrong yet!
I’ll join @ineffablebob on this one, also on the recommendation of @Dave_Perkins
A classic that I never got around to – might as well rectify that.
That’s one of my all-time favorite books. I started reading it with my son but he’s just a bit young for it, couldn’t hang.
I’ve been reading How Long Until Black Future Month? by N K Jemisin. She’s the author of the “Broken Earth” trilogy, which I really enjoyed.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Long-Black-Future-Month/dp/0316491349/
As with any short story collection, it’s a little hit or miss, but I think more the former than the latter.
So I managed to read two books last week, since I flew out to the east coast and back, so these are my June books! Yay, I’m ahead of schedule!
Anyway, having read Starfish a month or so back, I decided to move on to the other books in the Rifters trilogy, Maelstrom and Behemoth. And they’re good, solid SF - though to be honest, good and solid are a step down in my estimation for Peter Watts. Still, I did enjoy reading them, no regrets.
The series is definitely in keeping with his other fairly bleak near(ish) future dystopias. The characters, who I mentioned were interesting in the first book, are fleshed out more in the latter two books though not always is the most palatable ways. There are no heroes here - all of them are damaged and lash out in fairly brutal ways. I won’t talk much about details because I found the various twists and turns entertaining and unpredictable, probably best if you do too if you plan to read these. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else liked these books.
Progress: 30/52
My impressions on this are fairly congruent with @ineffablebob and @Tin_Wisdom on this – lots of enjoyable stories in this one. Only being familiar with Jemisin from novels in original worlds, it was interesting to see such a high proportion of real-world settings. My favorites were Red Dirt Witch and Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints in the City Beneath the Still Waters, but I enjoyed all of them to some degree.
With June over, we’ve reached the halfway point of the year. Hope you’ve all been enjoying the challenge and the books you’ve been reading. For August, the prompts are a title-based scavenger hunt.
August 2019 Prompts
8A (Main): Alliterative title
8B (Bonus): Title forms a grammatically complete sentence
8C (Bonus): Title (as shown on the cover) contains a non-alphanumeric character
8D (Bonus): Single-word title (you can ignore subtitles)
I’m glad that Less is a short novel, because I was mostly bored by it. There’s no real plot, the main character Arthur is terribly dull, the writing style felt like I was reading some “classic” from high school English that everyone else gushed over but I thought was just overdone. The globe-spanning travel that I picked it for does happen, but is largely just background that doesn’t really impact what happens to Arthur. Definitely a book that is Not For Me.
I’m committed to reading more in 2019. I’m “sacrificing” movie and videogame time for it, but finding it a wonderful trade-off.
Progress: 3/20
Past 4 weeks:
Read “Lord Of Light” by Roger Zelazny. Good story, interesting premise. He’s a fun writer but not a master. Made me Google Fu a lot of Hindu pantheon.
Re-read “A Connecticut Yankee In King Authur’s Court” by Twain. I loved it, almost everything about it. He is so clever with words, so imaginative, so uproariously critical. No wonder he was so popular in his time.
Just finished “Sirens Of Titan” by Kurt Vonnegut. I’ve read almost everything by him, he almost never misses. I consider this one of his top 5. Well told, cool to see his take on sci-fi.
Any other recommendations? Just got my library card and I’m ready to dig in.
I haven’t read much Hemingway. Is “For Whom The Bell Tolls” considered his seminal work?
Been reading through this thread to pick up some suggestions for my upcoming holiday reading. This caught my eye: I do not doubt that I will enjoy it, but is it possible to read this on an e-reader? Or is it illustration/map heavy?
There are 20-odd maps. Not sure how an ereader would handle them. I was on my phone so it was easy enough to bookmark them and zoom as needed. If you’re concerned, maybe download them to a phone ahead of time to refer to.