Slam

Slam

review coming soon

Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet

Anthem of a reluctant prophet

It has been a week since finishing this book. so forgive me if I struggle to give a direct punchy review, as its effect has worn off of me a little – in future I shall endevour to review titles I read as soon as I have read them.

Luke Hunter, the first person lead character of this title, can see how people are going to die. He’s young, he’s struggling to find his way in the world, yet this gift is a curse and he wishes to be no media whore to the baying masses that want association with his ‘God-like’ ability.

This book, carries along well to begin with, however by the middle of the book, I did start to lose faith in the power of the plot. I hoped it would include more and more visions of death and how Luke faces up to his gift, perhaps include more and more characters that try to take advantage of him etc. However, no. The book falls into line to deal with the young life and concerns that wouldn’t be out of place in any teen(ish) novel, dipping occasionally back to the ‘prophet of doom’ hook that made me pick up, buy and read in the first place.

Was this a good book? yes. Was it what I expected? not really. I’m happy to have read it – and will recommend it to friends, but warn them not to take the back cover too literally. I feel the marketing hype selected the punchiest aspects only to hook us into purchasing – the tale is more a young life with a twist than anything else.

I most state though, that this is a rich story. I could visualise it well and really would love it to be made into a film. Kind of ‘Dogma’ meets ‘The Wonder Years’ in a contemporary ‘emo’ 2008 lifestyle.

over 300 pages of reasonable font, average page, nothing special margins and quite normal kerning and lineheight. Great, great cover art and choice of font though – I was sold on it alone. 

Stuart, A Life Backwards

Stuart, A Life Backwards (amazon link)
Just like the book before this (Boy A) its also been subject to a TV programme and it also has to doom ridden small font. The saving grace tho, is the layout. Its rich with paragraphs, good margins, varying font sizes for featured sections and even the odd drawing thrown in to break things up. With a decent font size this could have been waaaay up in the 4 or even 5 stars, but as it stands its only getting a 3 from me. Stuart is a pretty unique book, covering a life in reverse from nutter to lovable child. Hope plenty of people check this one out. I’ve not read it yet, and I’ve only half seen the TV programme, but I’m looking forward to settling down to it.

Review:
I am reading ‘Stuart: a life backwards’. Its about a documented life of a homeless person told in reverse to the point whereby he went from a innocent lad to a twisted psycho, nick named ‘Knife man Dan’. Recommended reading if you care about people caught up in a world and fighting for a way out. This is a funny, yet informative read, which forces you to care about someone you would normally keep well away from.

The Long Dry

The Long Dry
119 pages, big margins & paragraphs. Good linespacing, font and the paper was reasonable. Odd story, but a quick read. I’m not sure what caught my eye about this read, there was possibly a bunch of them together on the shelf which did it. Anyways… i sat and scanned the pages whilst making notes in my phone. It looked like it was all descriptive, but hidden within the blocks of paragraphs, there is dialogue, which is nice. Tho I’d rather it be sectioned off personally. This is a quick book, the story didn’t grab me at all, but it could be one of those life changing reads… if only we give it a chance. Seek it out, and give it a thumb.

Last Light

words don’t sell books, pictures do!
(guns don’t kill people, rappers do!)

Last Light
The way to promote mountains of text is through mountains of pictures. Here’s a book that might attract a few visionaries, who happen to ‘gleee’ at the thought of being scared to death about what happens to humanity when the worlds oil runs out.

http://www.scarrow.co.uk

Wrong About Japan

Wrong About Japan
short book, 150 odd pages, plus a few full page pictures thrown in. Decent sized font, with good kerning and line spacing, very easy on the eyes. The margins are big to, so the line length is pretty short. A real non-readers book this, tho rubbish smelly paper. I knocked out a chapter in Waterstones, bought it, and read another chapter in Starbucks… and I’m now about quarter of the way through the book. The story is a journal type thing about a dad discovering the hidden messages within Manga and anime history with his obsessed son Charley. Its an alright read, nothing stunning, you may learn something about japanese history, Godzilla being an animated response to the A-Bomb for an example, however Manga fan will probably enjoy this book the most. I felt a bit embarrassed carrying a pink Anime covered book about, luckily it fitted in my pocket tho.

Snow

Snow
A dinky book, easily readable at 90 pages (ish). I bit like a little hard back with a cover and all that. A nice story too, its about a coming of age story whereby this dude is supposed to become a monk or a warrior, instead he decides to become a poet. I like little books, but I probably won’t buy this. Its a bit lovey for me. Paper was ok, nothing stunning, cheap book, and I don’t recall many paragraphs tho, so a bit fiddly on the formating for my eyes.

Jpod

Jpod
I didn’t realise I like Douglas Coupland until I picked up this book, when I then realised that he’d written Generation X … so it appears I am a fan. However I haven’t read any of his books, which is unsurprising.

Jpod didn’t initially appeal because its a thick book, beyond my default ‘under 300 pages’ limit (550 odd eeek!)… however it had pretty pictures of lego-ish men on the cover so that grabbed my attention. As did the book title of ‘jpod’ too. Good title that. I can see why they used it. I flicked through the pages of jpod without reading anything…. just to smell the pages and check out the font, kerning, paragraphs, whitespace and pictures as usual…. immediately I was hit by the layout… very appealing, if like me, you don’t read much, and are turned off by pages and pages of text. This was full of various font sizes and weights and looked just gorgeous. The subject matter was great too, as its about office life, shit marketing departments with daft ideas and a splattering of web related stuff thrown in for good measure. This book could be my life tbh. Bought it, as yet unread. Might read it if I’m bored on holiday.

Train Man

Train Man
Another daft book. But I’m liking these irregular format things, makes browsing more interesting. This is laid out in messageboard format based on conversations from one of Japans busiest forums. I can’t exactly recall if its all fiction or faction, but its different that’s for sure. Check it out. (if you hate reading)

Written in Chinese with english subtitles

The 3.5 lives of Captain Bluebear

The 3.5 lives of Captain Bluebear
This book is as mad as a box of matches! If Eddie Izzard was a book, it would be this one. There’s a lot of pages, which I didn’t like too much, but the formating (layout and whitespace) was good… pictures too! which I was stoked to see. I won’t buy this, but it was such a good find that I had to mention it. Buy if you’re bonkers and have a childs brain (harry potter fans) … its big, yellow and soft backed, which means it’ll crumple at the corners in my bag when I’m travelling. Not good. Still fun tho.