Some books of january

[oneiriad]

Lord Dunsany
The Complete Pegana
There's some very lovely and occasionally creepy tales in this. Very entertaining, and it's easy to see why it's published by Chaosium, as there's some parts that must have been part of Lovecraft's inspiration for his Dream Cycle.

John Kenn Mortensen
Post-it monstre
Okay, so I probably didn't strictly speaking read this, as the whole thing is just pictures. Lovely, creepy monster pictures. Which can also be seen on the artist's blog. Nice and creepy.

Kim Newman
Anno Dracula
This is an awesome book. Imagine a world where Dracula kicked Van Helsing and co.'s collective arses and went on to marry Queen Victoria. That's the world this novel's set in, as we follow an agent of the Diogenes Club and a young vampire lady as they hunt Jack the Ripper. It's brimming with intertextuality and it's fun and dammit, now I want fanfic about this world's Sherlock Holmes returning to London post-book (maybe got my first yuletide request idea for the year, y/n?) and honestly, I probably should read the rest of the series first, shouldn't I?

Steampunk II - Steampunk Reloaded
An anthology of very varied quality - it was lovely to see the old Danish story about the flying fish Prometheus in English, and in general, there were several nice stories and some gorgeous illustrations. The whole Mecha-Ostrich thing though, that was just weird...

Total number of books and comics read this month: 29 (mostly comics, really)
Currently reading: just about to start Tamora Pierce's Tortall and other lands

Comments

[kabal42]

People's reading blogs always gives me an inferiority complex. I'm a BAD GEEK for not reading enough! However, the Anno Dracula one sounds MADE OF WIN!

[calvinahobbes]

Those monsters are pretty. Kind of creepy-cute?

Hah, I was just thinking that Anno Dracula sounded a lot like A Study in Emerald and whataya kno, apparently there's a reason for that! How's the writing, is it good?

[calvinahobbes]

Urgh, I ALWAYS feel like this! I want it noted that reading books is a total fluke for me, I never usually do it!

[kabal42]

Gosh, I'm so glad I'm not the only one!

[neotoma]

I read ANNO DRACULA several years ago, and found it pretty enjoyable, but never did bother to track down the sequels. It read a lot like a crossover fanfiction, if I'm remembering right, which was more or less what it was...

[oneiriad]

The writing's okay - very evocative, very good at showing the Victorian London with added vampires and the consequences of that, and if you have even an average grasp of the literature of the period (or vampire stories in general) there's a lot of spot-the-references. And yeah, it does remind me of A Study in Emerald - sadly, there's no Sherlock in Anno Dracula. There's Lestrade grumbling about how the great detective would have caught Jack the Ripper a long time ago, and Mycroft being scheeming and even Moriarty and Moran being criminal, but no Sherlock. Which is half the reason for why I'd love to read that fanfic if anybody ever writes it.

[oneiriad]

Yeah, a bit like crossover fanfic, but perfectly well-written crossover fanfic with lots and lots of interesting characters and some very nice worldbuilding. Also, the vampire Geneviéve has been used by the author before, in some novels he wrote set in the Warhammer universe, so it was fun seeing her Anno Dracula version. So it was fun and I really do need to read the sequels. Sooner or later...

[oneiriad]

And I'm a bad geek for not writing enough fic or playing video games or... We're all bad geeks, really. I suspect it has something to do with this annoying thing called having a life and the peculiar fact that there is only 24 hours in a single day - it would be much more convenient if there was, say, 48, wouldn't it? 8 hours to work, 8 hours to sleep, 32 to hours to do stuff. :-)

[kabal42]

Yeah, you have a good point there :-)
I think my guilt is linked to being a big reader all my life - until I started Uni (erm, and became obsessed with online life as well). It's all a matter of not enough time, though.

*trying to make up a bit by reading Batman*