I’m reading a brilliant book at the moment; if I thought it would do any good I’d suggest that a copy be handed out in every A&E department to all the scroats who shamelessly waste NHS time and money. Especially the little wanksta I spoke to at the weekend who repeatedly called me a c*** and threatened to rape and beat me. Charming young man, his parents must be so very proud.
book review: wiffle lever to full!* by Bob Fischer
April 21, 2009 By
Up until about 3 years ago when I finally got a proper job and had to start acting like a grown-up, I used to attend co
nventions on a regular basis; they’ve taken me everywhere from Glasgow to Los Angeles to Milton Keynes and I met a lot of nice people in the process (hey, Marina!). I actually bought this book for D for Christmas because, geek though he is, he’s yet to brave the convention circuit even for a day but loves hearing my stories about various weekends with time travellers and vampires. For me it was interesting to read Fischer’s accounts of the conventions he attended during one hectic summer (some of which I’d never even heard of) and the people he meets (think I recognised at least one of them) and also the stories from his childhood, which brought back a lot of shamefully geeky memories from my own mis-spent youth.
This is a fun book, written in a friendly and engaging style, and is well worth a look if you’ve ever felt partial to dressing up as a Time Lord and spending a weekend in an alcoholic haze. Although I’d advise skipping the extracts from his sci-fi “novel” at the start of each chapter; that’s just silly.
*Or, to give the book its full title; Wiffle lever to full! Daleks, Death Stars and Dreamy-eyed Nostalgia at the Strangest Sci-fi Conventions
book review: the da da de da da code
October 24, 2008 By
The story centres around Jonny Hooker
, a young man living in North London who has an imaginary friend and plays in a band. One day he gets a letter telling him he’s won a competition, but investigating the source of this mysterious letter leads him to uncover conspiracies, musical trivia, secret societies, groupies and grisly murders.
I’d been quite disappointed with the last couple of Rankin books (couldn’t even finish Brightonomicon) so was hoping this would be a return to the page-turning form of earlier work such as the Brentford Trilogy. Unfortunately, it was not to be.The plot – such as it is – is nothing I haven’t read before and it all felt a bit tired and plodding.The jokes about story continuity were funny at first but then began to seem like an excuse for lazy writing because they were used far too often. All in all, it was an effort to finish this one.
