Neonomicon by Alan Moore, Jacen Burrows etc

I've written a lengthy review of this for The Zone, and it's up now. It took me ages, because I've been very busy and it's very long.

Before writing about Alan Moore’s ‘Neonomicon’ I wanted to “finish off” my thoughts on HPL after reading the essay ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’. I wanted to get the hang of what Lovecraft though Lovecraftian horror is, and I thought that would be the place to look.

After a while, though, I realised I was never going to get around to writing about 'Supernatural Horror in Literature'. It is, unfortunately a very boring essay.

Panoptica feels like a warped dream or a British Thomas Pynchon novel

Four star review of Panoptica on goodreads and Sift Reviews.

The review's not entirely enthusiastic, and another thumbs down for Gary and Pete - what's the matter with you people!

But still - four stars! Come on stray browsers seeking pictures of Priapus - buy my novel!

Reading log - Q1 2012!

So, rather than writing about everything I read this year I'm taking a step back from blogging to concentrate on my fiction and also reviews. That's working OK, I guess. I've only written one review so far this year and haven't really made startling progress with my novel (some, but not much) but on the other hand I have been posting on the book pages of the Guardian.

I've also joined Goodreads, and have been noting my reading there (don't forget to nip in and give Panoptica a good rating if you're a Goodreads reader!) so if you're a Goodreads member  with an interest in keeping up with my tedious malarky then drop by and friend me up.

In order to satisfy my fans, though, I'm going to do quarterly reading updates here, and this is the first!

After a jump, I'm going to discuss the books I've read so far this year:

A Dreamquest for Unknown Kadath and Supernatural Horror in Literature by H P Lovecraft
A Reflection in Glass by Jeffrey Hewitt
A Short History of Western Thought by Stephen Trombley
Redlaw by James Lovegrove
Osama by Lavie Tidhar
WildC.A.T.S by Alan Moore et al
Ex Machina by Brian K Vaughn et al
Thor - The Black Galaxy Saga byTom De Falco and Ron Frenz

... and a cavalcade of contemporary comics.

Fame at last!

A pretty cool review by Will Self, by the way.

Redlaw by James Lovegrove

My review of Redlaw by James Lovegrove is up at the Zone.

This is another bad book, and another bad review. As I’ve noted before, I hate reading bad books and writing bad reviews in about equal measure. I’m inclined to write positive reviews, I think, and seek out books I think I’ll enjoy as any normal human would.

I chose to read this book as I had previously read Lovegrove’s Provender Gleed, on the recommendation of Francis Spufford. Francis spotted some common ground between it and what I was attempting in Panoptica and thought it might be useful to take a look at other approaches. I think he was right that there is common ground, and it was a useful reference point, but actually it showed me where I didn't want to go rather than where I did.

Provender Gleed is an interesting book in many ways, but it didn’t quite work, either in reference to what I was attempting or – in my opinion – in achieving it’s own goals (as I understood them). I did like the idea of the society put forward in Provender Gleed, and in the first third of the book it was well-articulated and relevant. But as the story went on, Lovegrove seemed at a loss as to where to take the satirical elements, and the story fell back on a rather dull Stockholm-syndrome thriller plot that didn’t do much for me.

While it didn't entirely sell me on Lovegrove, I thought he would at least be worth keeping an eye on, but alas Redlaw suffers from the same sort of problem, only more so.

Panoptica free download on 29 February 2012!

Do you love me? Well consider this my womanly proposal!

Panoptica will be free to download on 29 February for one day only. After this, the price is going up to £1.99 UK and $3.99 US (to level the playing field a little for the eye-wateringly expensive print version).

So hurry, hurry hurry! It'll never be free again. And if you do down load, don't forget to leave a review on amazon and goodreads.

Download it NOW (or rather soon) from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

Or pay a fucking fortune for the hard copy on Lulu! Why not?

(I promise this'll be my last post about Panoptica for a while! Real content coming soon!)

You can now find me on Goodreads

If you're a Goodreads user, well, here I am. Why not drop by and add a rating to Panoptica, you bastards.

In case you're worried that this blog is becoming too commercial, I have posts coming up about HPL's supernatural horror in literature and a review of James Lovegrove's Redlaw. So, I'm still dealing in the tangential, inconsequential and pointless gang!