Lord Napsack

You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night) - Meat Loaf

Got to dig this up because I've read through the first two books again in preparation for the last two which I've just received. Birth of a Killer was pretty damn good. Not sure how it would fare for an outsider to read it, as I feel some things were left unexplained as they were explained in The Saga of Darren Shan, which may do one of two things: alienate or intrigue. But, for someone who loves the original Saga to bits I have to say that this book pleased me greatly. To some it could be viewed that the story is a little bit rushed, as it deals with a lot of Larten's early life within around 250 pages, but this is okay. The book is plit into 4 different sections, each focussing on key points of Larten's life, with brief mentions of events that happened between these sections that are not important enough. This actually helps with the pace of the plot and allows the reader to understand the development of the young Mr. Crepsley. But yeah, the plot is great and it is well written, as per usual. Defnitely pick it up if you're a fan of Darren Shan's writing. If you are a newcomer, pick up the original Saga first. (Sorry this couldn't be longer and more in depth. I'm very very tired, but wanted to get some opinion out there somewhere. Will probably do a full review at some point.)

Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast - Pink Floyd

See America Right - The Mountain Goats

Letter from America - The Proclaimers

Letter From God To Man - dan le sac vs. Scroobius Pip

End Love - OK Go

I'm Happy Just To Dance With You - The Beatles (Not during the night at the moment, it would seem. I work night shifts and I'm on my days off)

What Did I Ever Give You? - Kaiser Chiefs

The Way You Move - Outkast

I'm Going Home - Frank (Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture Show)

What You Gonna Do - Plan B

Everything Will Be Alright - The Killers

Jesus He Knows Me - Genesis

http://youtu.be/thEQlaqhHeY It just won't leave my head! Not that this is a bad thing, I love the song, it's just a shame I only get to listen to it about 6 times within an hour

The second trilogy is definitely one I think a lot of people might not like for the reasons you state, especially Trials of Death. I feel people may find it a pointless book overall, but it serves well to advance plot and to give us more understanding of the characters' limits and personalities, especially as there were many only recently introduced. Also, it's just generally fun. Also, have to say I totally agree about the Goblet of Fire stuff. I mean, Harry could just not have done it. In fact, surely he shouldn't have been allowed to. It was pretty obviously rigged, especially after all the stuff that had happened the previous 3 years. The trials in Trials of Death have a lot more weight to them, doubly so with what happens at the end of The Vampire Prince.

My second favourite song from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles, beaten only by Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite! Also, this album is probably tied as my favourite album alongside Animals by Pink Floyd. Just can't choose between the two!

I've seen the 1980s version of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Was pretty good from what I remember, but it was quite a few years ago. Battle Royale I enjoyed. I love the book to bits and so was a bit wary about going into the film. But it was surprisingly faithful to the book, whilst also doing its own thing. Was good to see it was trying to do different things with the story. Still got nothing on the book, but it was an enjoyable film. Now the manga... yeah, stay away from that! One director I absolutely adore is Terry Gilliam. I love Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I can expect many people have seen, but there's a lot you may not have seen. Of these we have The Adventures of Baron Muchausen, a film I'm beginning to suspect I've only seen because I've not met anyone who has seen it, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I must admit many have seen but still seems to be in a grey area of obscurity amongst my friends, and Tideland, which I really enjoyed, though it was a tad too artsy at times and I can defnitely see a lot of people not liking. I'm also quite a fan of Video Nasties. Though I might not like some of them, I still enjoy them as a piece of British cinema history. Not that many, if any, of these were made in Britain. No, it's that they were banned in the UK. I am attempting to own them all, but a lot are very hard to come by, and some are still banned over here. Just wondering if anyone's seen these ones: Axe! (Awful) Don't Look in the Basement (Not as awful) The Driller Killer (Mostly bad due to annoying punks. Could otherwise be good) The Evil Dead (Love it) Also own I Spit On Your Grave and A Bay of Blood, but haven't got round to watching them yet. Some kind of obscure stuff, but I'd love to hear if people have seen any of those.

It has been quite a long time since I read this. I originally read it because I was interested in an adventure game on the PC of the same name based upon the short story, which I believe Harlan also wrote content for. It tells the tale of five survivors of a genocide enacted by a super computer, AM. AM keeps them alive simply to torture them, seemingly giving them immortality just to enact his hatred of humans. This torture is psychological, physical, sexual, and and other kind of -al that you might torture someone with. There's not much I want to say about this as too much information may give away this amazing story, which was written in a night and mostly unchanged from the first draft. The story is gripping, well told and haunting, especially the ending which gives me chills every time I read it. All I can say is read it if you can. It won't take long and it's entirely worth it. To give you an idea of the tone of the story I think AM's opening monologue serves well. It's just... chilling. So, any of you read it? Anyone feel like reading it? I'm not into a lot of Science Fiction, but this is approachable to anyone.

For young adult stuff (at least, I think it's in the young adult section) I can't help but recommend anything by Darren Shan. The Saga of Darren Shan is probably one of my favourite series of books and its very dear to me. The spin off Saga of Larten Crepsley has recently finished and I'm making my way through those and they seem good. Also, whilst the ending was a tad disappointing, the Demonata books are great, with Bec being one of my favourite books by Darren Shan. The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver I have yet to finish, but the first 4 or so books I read of it were great. A really good setting with some really cool characters. The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan was also really good, if I remember. Recently found out there is a sequel trilogy and a prequel. Will need to pick those up at some point. All of these essentially fit into the fantasy genre, though the Darren Shan books are mostly horror based.

The Song of Achilles was a book I was wary to even touch. I did Classical Civilisations at A Level and because of this I like anything referring to classical literature to be somewhat accurate. I can’t watch Disney’s Hercules thanks to this and whilst O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a great film but I couldn’t shake off the fact that it was too loosely based on the Odyssey. So when I saw that Madeline Miller BA and MA in Latin and Ancient Greek I thought I should give it a go. To my pleasant surprise I found that the novel is actually fairly accurate to the original Homeric epics. Events, for the most part, take place how and when they should. Some liberties are taken with the story, such as Patroclus’ back story being tweaked, but this is artistic license that I can completely understand. You see, Patroclus doesn’t really have much written about him. He’s mostly known just because of Achilles and that is all, whilst Achilles has more tales about him prior to Troy. Miller uses this well and uses his story to generate sympathy for the character, who has had a difficult childhood in the book – and it works! The character of Patroclus is very sympathetic at first, being unloved by his father, then accidently killing some kid, leading him to be exiled. This is all pretty damn tragic, so when he starts getting on with Achilles you feel happy for him. I mean, he deserves some happiness. But then we get a massive issue with this book: the characters. See, it’s all well and good having the characters be sympathetic at the beginning but not have too much character. They are just kids; they should grow and develop throughout the story. But they don’t. Both Patroclus and Achilles are so bland that they could give Aeneas a run for his money in the “Blandest Classical Character” competition (I jest! I love you, Aeneas!). This utter blandness stretches further than the main two characters, though. Most characters are bland and dull. The ones who aren’t are usually made up of single emotions, such as Agamemnon, who is just rage, or Pyrrhus, who reminds me a lot of Joffrey from Game of Thrones. The only characters I could say I liked were Odysseus, possibly due to my love of him from the Odyssey, and Briseis, who actually had emotions. Characters are obviously not Miller’s strong point, and this carries over in the dialogue. Conversations can be hard to follow if speech has no name beside it as no character has personality to distinguish themselves, aside from Odysseus. On top of this, it seems Miller at times actively attempts to avoid dialogue, which becomes quite evident later on. However, Miller does have a strong point in her description. At times she can beautifully describe certain areas or people. The book is narrated by Patroclus, so the world is described from his point of view. Because of this, however, it seems that some description can be lacking. She can brilliantly tell you about Achilles’ naked body over and over, but when it gets to battle she seems to have no way of making the fighting flow. I had other issues with the narrative. On many occasions the structure of “If he was (insert emotion) then he did not show it.” I believe that formula may have been used at least ten times throughout the novel, maybe even more. This just felt clunky later on when it happened in quick succession. Furthermore, Miller would spend a long time describing a few days, then suddenly skip through 5 years for no apparent reason, which happened to be quite jarring. Nonetheless, for the most part the description is fairly strong and is important for carrying the plot forwards. But then we have another issue: the plot. The start of the novel eases you in to understanding Patroclus, the situation he’s in, et cetera. He befriends Achilles, falls in love with him, and then they head off to get trained by a centaur for a bit. Then the book kind of stalls for a while, with nothing in particular happening. Without the in depth and interesting characters we don’t have anything to really help us through this period. I nearly completely abandoned the book, but I was waiting for Troy to start. When I thought Troy was on the horizon the book stalled a bit more, had a few interesting parts at Troy and then ended with what seemed like an incredibly rushed ending. My biggest issue with the plot had to be that the homosexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus seemed incredibly forced. There seemed to be no romance, no real love. Just lust. Patroclus constantly comments on how Achilles looks, not his personality. But when hits at heterosexuality come along at times there is focus upon personality, which confused me. Did Miller have a kind of agenda, or am I looking into things a bit too much? Probably the latter... definitely the latter, but it still concerned me. Despite all of this, though, I have to say I did enjoy the book. Well, to an extent. It is definitely an easy to read book and does have a lot to offer people who don’t know the origins of the tale. The writing is somewhat simplistic and not necessarily deep, so is hard to put down. But, as I’ve said before, there are many issues I found with the plot and narrative structure. The Song of Achilles won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012. I don’t mean to be too harsh on the book because it wasn’t bad, but I think the other books in the running for the prize money must have been kind of bad, otherwise I don’t see how this won. Maybe it’s because it has its roots in the Iliad, the influence of the Homeric epic pushing it through to win. For me the book was pretty average. Readable, but nothing to get excited about.

Oh, of course. I loved the books. Read them in Year 7 or 8 when I went to this reading group thing for a day just to discuss the first book and ended up going through all three. I was glad the romance was not intrusive, but it was a nice touch to put in there. I really felt for Will and Lyra at the end. It was both depressing and beautiful.

This: Steam Powered Giraffe are slowly growing in popularity and they deserve it. This song isn't like a lot of their other stuff, but it's just so beautiful and probably my favourite one.

Bad fan fictions. Oh boy, fan fictions. So badly written, but so funny to read with friends. Sadly, because of all the grammar and spelling errors you start questioning the legitimacy of the words and sentences that are correct. I think these things make you actively dumber (I'm looking at you Half Life: Full Life Consequences!)

The His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. The romance only really came in near the end of the trilogy, but it was mostly well handled, though a bit weird at one point. Very touching at the end.