Kenny_Shovel
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Posts posted by Kenny_Shovel
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Books Purchased in 2008
January:
01 - Haunts of the Black Masseur:Swimmer as Hero - Charles Sprawson
02 - The State Counsellor - Boris Akunin
03 - The Chain of Chance - Stanislaw Lem
Febuary:
Nothing
March:
04 - Planetary Volume 1 - Warren Ellis
05 - Planetary Volume 2 - Warren Ellis
06 - Planetary Volume 3 - Warren Ellis
07 - Strontium Dog Agency Files Volume 04 - Wagner/Grant
08 - Judge Dredd Volume 9 - Wagner/Grant
Read book
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Only four 5 star books this year, but lots of others that were well worth reading:
Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz
Wonderful Fool by Shusaku Endo
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Just finished: Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The jewish inhabitants of a small Polish town in the 17th century turn to a false prophet and unleash hell on earth. Reminded me of the old Ken Russell film "The Devils".
Next up: One of three. Either The Trial, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova or Fred: Portrait of a Fast Bowler by John Arlott. I'll probably end up reading a fourth option instead...
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Put me in the pro CoD camp.
But meanwhile the Bloomsbury GoodReadingGuide to World Fiction suggests the following for the South of the USA:
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Ballard of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty
Property by Valery Martin
A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Modern Babtists by James Wilcox
A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J Gaines
Tourist Season by Carl Hiaason
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
Regards,
K_S
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But sometimes Murukami feels like he's trying too hard to be Murukami
I know what you mean. I like Murukami, but he does tend to overshadow other writers from post-war Japan, which I'm not sure is all that healthy. I'd personally say that Mishima, Endo, Oe and Kawabata were all at least as good in thier time. I'm sure there are even more that could be added to that list.
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Satan in Goray by Isaac Singer seems to have leapfrogged The Trial somehow. So far, so interesting...
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I think there are at least two film versions, but I've not seen any of them.
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The reason it's taken so long to get round to The Trial is that this will be a re-read, having got through all of Kafka's stuff about ten years ago.
Although this is the first time I've read it since realising how much humour Kafka believed his writing had. Interesting to see if that puts it in a different light.
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Just Finished: Wonderful Fool by Shusaku Endo. Kind-hearted French simpleton travels through the seedy, and morally corrupt, side of 1950's Japan, effecting all those he meets. Similar themes to his later novel Silence, and just as brilliant. Challenges Bleak House for my best book of the year. I'll review it in full on my blog later.
Next Up: The Trial by Franz Fafka. My contribution to the Penguin Classics review blog.
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Just finished: 'Malvinas Requiem' by Rodolfo Fogwill. An interesting, and to Argentinians, important book, as it is set amongst a community of conscript Agentinian deserters during the Falklands War. The back covers comparison to Catch-22 is wide of the mark for my money, as Fogwill simply isn't as good a writer as Heller; but the message of the book is similar.
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Just Finished: 'The Old Capital' by Yasunari Kawabata. Precise, delicate, steeped in meaning, not all of which is apparent to the Western eye. Perhaps to the point were the undercurrent of emotions and restrained reactions of the characters could be misinterpreted as being almost clinical. A kind of literary equivalent of a Japanese Tea ceremony I guess. Impressive stuff.
Next up: Not totally sure yet, but probably 'garden, ashes' by Danilo Kis.
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I have friends in Odessa, so I'll put that on the old Amazon wish list.
*remembers drunkenly falling over on Pontemkin steps*
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...Mickiewicz. He's one of those people usually spoken about in revered tones...
He is? Cooool.
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Under construction (but getting there:
http://feedingthepigeons.wordpress.com/
Just finished Naive. Super by Erlend Loe. Really liked this book, review to follow...
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Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz (translated by Kenneth R. Mackenzie)
So beginsO Lithuania, my country, thou
Art like good health; I never knew till now
How precious, till I lost thee. Now I see
Thy beauty whole, because I yearn for thee.
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I think I'll add this one to my wish list, although it sounds like it mightn't be very easy to track down!
'Solaris' is probably the only one of his books you have a chance of purchasing 'off the shelf'.
Oddly, as you say, Solaris is the exception. I've tried three times to "get it", and yet the book and both films seemed, well, utterly rubbish to me.I'm not sure I'd call 'Solaris' an exception. It doesn't have the same humour running through it, but is covering a similar theme to 'The Futurological Congress', the perversion of reality.
I've not seen the recent film starring George Clooney, so can't really comment. But we'll have to agree to disagree about Andrei Tarkovski - a director in my opinion who couldn't make a rubbish film if he tried. His version of the Strugatsky Brothers wonderful novel 'Roadside Picnic' - filmed as 'Stalker' - is another example of a sci-fi film at the polar opposite to what is produced in L.A.
Regards,
K_S
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Next up is probably Halldor Laxness and Independent People
A word of warning about Laxness, I've read a few of his books and they're hard going at times, with events and characters appearing as if from nowhere out of his prose. A lot of this appears to make more sence if you have a bit of a grounding in Icelandic folklaw, so I decided to wait untill I'd got through a few Norse Legend's before attempting 'Independant People'.
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Stanislaw Lem
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I see you've gone mad on graphic novels all of a sudden!
They're mostly reproductions of favourite strips from my childhood. The late 70's, early 80's was a bit of a golden age for British comics, so they're well worth re-visiting.
I've also had difficulty motivating myself to read this year, so alot of the books I've been going through have been comfort reads (cricket, Graphic Novels, Wodehouse) in an attempt to 'keep me going'.
K_S
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Books Purchased in 2007
Janruary:
01 - Calling the Shots - Micheal Vaughan
02 - Spun Out: The Shane Warne Story - Paul Barry
03 - Zimmer Men - Marcus Berkmann
04 - Beyond a Boundary - C.L.R. James
February:
05 - Third Man to Fatty's Leg - Steve James
March:
Zippo!
April:
06 - Special Assignments - Boris Akunin
07 - Wisden Almanack 2007 - Various
08 - The Cricketer's Who's Who - Various
09 - Fred: Portrait of a Fast Bowler - John Arlott
10 - When Eve Was Naked - Josef Skvorecky
11 - The Big Ship - Gideon Haigh
12 - The Dream Life of Sukhanov - Olga Grushin
May:
13 - Parkinson on Cricket - Micheal Parkinson
14 - Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
15 - Pelagia and the Black Monk - Boris Akunin
16 - Chronicle in Stone - Ismaile Kadare
17 - Five Plays - Anton Chekov
18 - Four Major Plays - Henrik Ibsen
June:
19 - Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
20 - War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
21 - The Complete Works - William Shakesphere
July:
22 - Sketches from a Hunter's Album - Ivan Turgenev
23 - On the Eve - Ivan Turgenev
24 - The Captain's Daughter - Alexsander Puskin
25 - Bleak House - Charles Dickens
August:
26 - Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
27 - Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
28 - Nine Fairy Tales - Karel Capek
29 - Ring For Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
30 - Red Cavalry and Other Stories - Issac Babel
31 - Herman - Lars Saabye Christensen
32 - The Spirt of Prague - Ivan Klima
33 - Wonderful Fool - Shusaku Endo
34 - Novel with Cocaine - M. Ageyev
35 - The Assault - Harry Mulisch
36 - The Silver Dove - Andrey Bely
37 - A Tomb for Boris Davidovich - Danilo Kis
38 - A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
39 - The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe
40 - Songs of Innocence and Experience - William Blake
41 - The Good Woman of Setzuan - Bertholt Brecht
42 - The Discovery of Heaven - Harry Mulisch
43 - Garden, Ashes - Danilo Kis
44 - The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata
45 - Pan Tadeusz - Adam Mickiewicz
46 - The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil
September:
47 - Selected Poems - Osip Mandel'shtam
48 - Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
49 - Satan in Goray - Issac Singer
50 - Much Obliged, Jeeves - P.G.Wodehouse
51 - The President's Last Love - Andrey Kurkov
52 - Agamemnon's Daughter - Ismaile Kadare
53 - The Procedure - Harry Mulisch
54 - Judge Dredd: complete Case Files V1 - John Wagner/Pat Mills
55 - Judge Dredd: complete Case Files V2 - John Wagner/Pat Mills
56 - Judge Dredd: complete Case Files V3 - John Wagner/Pat Mills
57 - Sin City: That Yellow 'person of dubious parentage' - Frank Miller
58 - St Petersburg - Andrey Biely
59 - Headcrusher - Garros/Evdokimov
60 - A Hero of our Time - M Lermontov
61 - The Samurai - Shusaku Endo
62 - Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves - P.G.Wodehouse
63 - Guilty - Anna Kaven
October:
64 - Futurological Congress - Stanislaw Lem
65 - Strontium Dog V1 - John Wagner/Alan Grant
66 - Strontium Dog V2 - John Wagner/Alan Grant
67 - Strontium Dog V3 - John Wagner/Alan Grant
68 - The Inimitable Jeeves - P.G.Wodehouse
69 - The Code of the Woosters - P.G.Wodehouse
70 - Carry On, Jeeves - P.G.Wodehouse
71 - The Mating Season - P.G.Wodehouse
72 - Charley's War V2 - Pat Mills
73 - Judge Dredd: complete Case Files V4 - John Wagner/Alan Grant
74 - Judge Dredd: complete Case Files V5 - John Wagner/Alan Grant
75 - Judge Dredd: complete Case Files V6 - John Wagner/Alan Grant
76 - Quicksand - Junichiro Tanizaki
77 - Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to World Fiction - Nik Kalinowski
78 - Naive. Super - Erlend Loe
79 - The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett
80 - Poem of the End - Marina Tsvetaeva
81 - Joy in the Morning - P.G.Wodehouse
82 - My Man Jeeves - P.G.Wodehouse
83 - The Old Capital - Yasunari Kawabata
84 - Charley's War: Vol 3 - Pat Mills (Signed)
85 - Charley's War: Vol 4 - Pat Mills
86 - To Uranina: Selected Poems 1965-1985 - Joseph Brodsky
November:
87 - The Abyss and Other Stories - Leonid Andreyev
88 - Malvinas Requiem - Rodolfo Fogwill
89 - The Complete Fictions - Bruno Schulz
90 - The Complete Poems - Anna Akhmatova
91 - Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
92 - Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files V7 - John Wagner/Alan Grant
93 - Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files V8 - John Wagner/Alan Grant
94 - Three Comrades - Erich Maria Remarque
95 - Scum of the Earth - Arthur Koestler
96 - Cancer Ward - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
97 - Letters to Olga: June 1979 to September 1982 - Vaclav Havel
December:
98 - The Black Obelisk - Erich Maria Remarque
99 - Imaginary Magnitude - Stanislaw Lem
100 - Journey by Moonlight - Antal Szerb
101 - How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life - John Fahey
102 - Sunflower - Gyula Krudy
103 - Incidences - Daniil Kharms
104 - The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna
105 - In-House Weddings - Bohumil Hrabal
106 - Dawn of the Dumb (Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline) - Charlie Brooker
107 - The Railway - Hamid Ismailov
108 - Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson
109 - The Box Man - Kobo Abe
110 - The Bridge on the River Kwai - Pierre Boulle
111 - The Wine-Dark Sea - Leonardo Sciascia
Read book
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Not a fan of Ben Elton, then, I take it?
I've only ever read Gridlock. Worst. Novel. Ever.
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Reading List 2007
January:
01 - Summer in Baden-Baden - Leonid Tsypkin - *****
02 - Moscow 2042 - Vladimir Voinovich - *****
03 - The Engineer of Human Souls - Josef Skvorecky - *****
04 - Calling the Shots: My time as England Captain - Michael Vaughan - *****
05 - Spun Out: The Shane Warne Story - Paul Barry - *****
06 - Confession of a Murderer - Joseth Roth - *****
07 - Zimmer Men - Marcus Berkmann - *****
08 - Beyond A Boundary - C L R James - *****
February:
09 - Third Man to Fatty's Leg - Steve James - - *****
March:
Zippo!
April:
10 - Parkinson on Cricket - Michael Parkinson - *****
May:
11 - Selected Poems - Marina Tsvetayeva - *****
12 - Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut - *****
13 - County Cricketeers Who's Who 2007 - Various - *****
14 - Chronicle in Stone - Ismail Kadare - *****
15 - About Love and Other Stories - Anton Chekov - *****
16 - Four Major Plays: Henrik Ibsen
A Doll's House -*****Ghosts -*****Hedder Gabler -*****The Master Builder -*****17 - Five Plays: Anton Chekov
Ivanov-*****The Seagull -*****Uncle Vanya -*****Three Sisters -*****The Cherry Orchard -*****18 - Wisden Cricket Almanack 2007 - Various - *****
June:
19 - For the Good of the Cause - Alexsander Solzhenitsyn - *****
July:
20 - Pelagia & The Black Monk - Boris Akunin - *****
21 - Special Assignments: Boris Akunin
____The Jack of Spades - *****
____The Decorator - *****
August:
22 - Bleak House - Charles Dickens - *****
23 - The Absolute at Large - Karel Capek - *****
24 - The Home of the Gentry - Ivan Turgenyev - *****
25 - Trans-Atlantyk - Witold Gombrowicz - *****
26 - Love and Garbage - Ivan Klima - *****
27 - Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - *****
28 - The Assault - Harry Mulisch - *****
29 - Herman - Lars Saabye Christensen - *****
30 - Songs of Innocence and of Experience (illustrated) - William Blake - *****
31 - The Good Woman of Setzuan - Bertolt Brecht - *****
32 - A Tomb for Boris Davidovich - Danilo Kis - *****
September:
33 - Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files V2 - John Wagner/Pat Mills - *****
34 - Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files V3 - John Wagner/Pat Mills - *****
35 - Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files V1 - John Wagner/Pat Mills - *****
36 - Sin City: That Yellow 'person of dubious parentage' - Frank Miller - *****
October:
37 - Selected Poems - Osip Mandel'shtam - *****
38 - Strontium Dog: Agency Files V1 - John Wagner/Alan Grant - *****
39 - Strontium Dog: Agency Files V2 - John Wagner/Alan Grant - *****
40 - Strontium Dog: Agency Files V3 - John Wagner/Alan Grant - *****
41 - Much Obliged, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse - *****
42 - Charley's War V2 - Pat Mills - *****
43 - Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files V4 - John Wagner/Alan Grant - *****
44 - Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse - *****
45 - Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files V5 - John Wagner/Alan Grant - *****
46 - The Futurological Congress - Stanislaw Lem - *****
47 - Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files V6 - John Wagner/Alan Grant - *****
48 - Carry On, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse - *****
49 - Charley's War V3 - Pat Mills - *****
50 - Charley's War V4 - Pat Mills - *****
51 - The Inimitable Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse - *****
52 - My Man Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse - *****
53 - Pan Tadeusz - Adam Mickiewicz - *****
54 - Naive. Super - Erlend Loe - *****
November:
55 - The Old Capital - Yasunari Kawabata - *****
56 - Malvinas Requiem - Rodolfo Fogwill - *****
57 - Wonderful Fool - Shusaku Endo - *****
58 - Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files V7 - John Wagner/Alan Grant - *****
59 - Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files V8 - John Wagner/Alan Grant - *****
60 - Satan in Goray - Isaac Bashevis Singer - *****
December:
61 - Dawn of the Dumb - Charlie Brooker - *****
Ongoing:
?? - The Oxford Shakesphere Complete Works - Edited by Wells & Taylor
The Two Gentlemen of Verona -*****The Taming of the Shrew -*****Henry VI Part 2Henry VI Part 3Titus AndronicusHenry VI Part 1Richard the ThirdVenus and AdonisThe Rape of LucreeThe Comedy of ErrorsLove's Labour's LostA Missummer Night's DreamRomeo and Juliet -*****Richard the SecondKing JohnThe Merchant of VeniceHenry IV Part 1 -*****The Merry Wives of WinsorHenry IV Part 2 -*****Much Ado About NothingHenry V -*****Julius CeasarAs You Like It -*****HamletTwelfth NightTroilus and CressidaSonnets and 'A Lover's Complaint'Various PoemsMeasue for MeasureOthello -*****All's Well That Ends WellTimon of AthensKing Lear -*****MacBethAntony and Cleopatra -*****Pericles, Prince of TyreCoriolanusThe Winter's TaleCymbelineThe TempestHenry VIIIThe Two Noble Kinsmen***** - Excellent
***** - Very Good
***** - Good
***** - Average
***** - Poor
***** - Ben Elton
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Reading List 2006
January:
01 - The Wine of Youth - John Fante - *****
02 - The Master of Go - Yasunari Kawabata - *****
03 - Total Fears - Bohumil Hrabal - *****
04 - A Doll’s House - Henrik Ibsen - ***** (Poor Translation)
05 - Confessions of Dan Yack - Blaise Cendras - *****
06 - Being Freddie - Andrew Flintoff - *****
07 - Under the Glacier - Halldor Laxness - *****
08 - Three by Perec - Georges Perec - *****
February:
09 - The Successor - Ismail Kadare - *****
March:
Zippo!
April:
10 - True Grit - Charles Portis - *****
May:
11 - The Dog of the South - Charles Portis - *****
12 - White & Red - Dorota Maslowska - *****
13 - Dreamers - Knut Hamsun - *****
14 - Ideas That Changed the World - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto - *****
15 - Scenes from the Bathhouse - Mikhail Zoshchenko - *****
16 - Eats Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss - *****
17 - Soul - Andrey Platonov - *****
18 - The Helmet of Horror - Victor Pelevin - *****
19 - A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess - *****
20 - Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe - *****
21 - Pelagia & The White Bulldog - Boris Akunin - *****
22 - Playing for Keeps - Alec Stewart - *****
June:
23 - A Man of the People - Chinua Achebe - *****
24 - Rough Crossing - Simon Schama - *****
25 - No Longer At Ease - Chinua Achebe - *****
26 - South of No North - Charles Bukowski - *****
27 - The File on H - Ismail Kadare - *****
28 - The Sickness unto Death - Soren Kierkegaard - *****
29 - Envy - Yuri Olesha - *****
30 - War with the Newts - Karel Capek - *****
31 - The Hunting Gun - Yasushi Inoue - *****
32 - The Red Laugh - Leonid Andreyev - *****
33 - Toward the Radical Centre - Karel Capek - *****
34 - The Party & other Stories - Aton Chekhov - *****
35 - The Doorman - Reinaldo Arenas - *****
36 - Henry V - William Shakespere - *****
37 - The Compromise - Sergei Dovlatov - *****
July:
38 - The Red Commissar - Jaroslav Hasek - *****
August:
39 - The Soccer War - Ryszard Kapuscinski - *****
September:
Zippo!
October:
40 - One Man's Justice - Akira Yoshimura - *****
41 - Monumental Propaganda - Vladimir Voinovich - *****
42 - Corksucker - Dan Fante - *****
43 - Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata - *****
44 - The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat - Ryszard Kapuscinski - *****
45 -The Night In Lisbon - Erich Maria Remarque - *****
46 - Poems - Anna Akhmatova - *****
47 - Jeeves in the Offing - P.G. Wodehouse - *****
48 - Doruntine - Ismail Kadare - *****
49 - The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett - *****
50 - The Sea and Poison - Shusaku Endo - *****
51 - My First Loves - Ivan Klima - *****
52 - Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit - P.G. Wodehouse - *****
November:
53 - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - *****
54 - Casino Royale - Ian Fleming - *****
55 - Should You Be Laughing At This? - Hugleikur Dagsson - *****
56 - Live and Let Die - Ian Fleming - *****
57 - Selected Stories - Julian Mclaren-Ross - *****
58 - General of the Dead Army - Ismail Kadare - *****
59 - Silence - Shusaku Endo - *****
December:
60 - The ThreePenny Opera - Bertolt Brecht - *****
61 - Collected Plays Vol 7 part 1 - Bertolt Brecht - *****
62 - Scandal - Shusaku Endo - *****
***** - Excellent
***** - Very Good
***** - Good
***** - Average
***** - Poor
***** - Ben Elton
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Personally I'd say Kurkov was closer to someone like Voinovich, Pelevin or even Zoshchenko than Bulgakov, but there you go. It helps to know a little about post communist Russia/Ukraine to really get the flavour of what he's up too. Anyway, he has a new novel out at the moment 'The President's Last Love'.
Kenny Shovel's Book Log
in Past Book Logs
Posted
Reading List 2008
January:
Nothing
February:
Nothing
March:
01 - Planetary Volume 1 - Warren Ellis - *****
02 - Planetary Volume 2 - Warren Ellis - *****
03 - Strontium Dog Agency Files Volume 04 - Wagner/Grant - *****
04 - Planetary Volume 3 - Warren Ellis - *****
05 - Jedge Dredd Volume 09 - Wagner/Grant - *****