#OcTBRChallenge 2024: a fourth and final A to Z of books and audiobooks

I took part in OcTBRChallenge again this month, and this time I tried to finish off as many of my short books and audiobooks as I could, in A to Z order. It's been highly enjoyable. My first A to Z of the month is here, the second is here, and the third is here. I didn't think I was going to manage a fourth A to Z by the end of the month, but I threw out the ballast, trimmed my sails, swapped some short books out for even shorter books, and got there with a day to spare!

The fourth A of the month is for Am I Actually the Strongest, Vol. 1, by Sai Sumimori and Ai Takahashi, about a layabout reborn as a baby in a fantasy world with what is assumed to be a rubbish power. But he finds imaginative ways to use it and his mana is exceptionally high.

B is for The Black Moon Chronicles, Vol. 5: The Scarlet Dance, written by François Froideval, with poster-style art by Olivier Ledroit that's more illustrative than sequential. I haven't got into this series yet. It's like someone's shouting the story at you while they run past.

C is for Cosmoknights by Hannah Templer, a future sports comic about a girl who runs away from home, after previously helping a princess run away too. She teams up with a pair of lesbian princess rescuers, but there's a male on their trail, trying to coerce a way into their gang.

D is for Dark Spaces: Wildfire by Scott Snyder and Hayden Sherman, about a group of female prisoners on day release to fight forest fires. Told that a house in the fire's path contains a fortune in cryptocurrency, they risk everything to sneak in there and get it before it burns.

E is for The Egyptian Princesses, Part I, a black-and-white graphic novel by a Ukrainian writer and artist, Igor Baranko. Circa 1150 BC, two young daughters of the pharaoh Ramesses III are led into a deadly trap, but survive it to discover magic, mysteries and weird old men in the desert.

F is for Flywires, Vol. 3: Organic Transfer, by Chuck Austen and Matt Cossin. Illegal reproduction has run rife on a generation ship and drastic measures are now required to keep life support running. Feels like the creators were told to quickly wrap it up, but at least it got an ending.

G is for Gleipnir, Vol. 1, by Sun Takeda, about a sad boy, Shuichi Kagaya, who turns into a sports mascot costume when agitated, and the weird girl who realises she can unzip the costume, climb inside it, and use its strength to kill people. It's all very saucy and symbolic.

H is for The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, the brilliant fourth Maigret novel by Georges Simenon, translated by Linda Coverdale and read by Gareth Armstrong. The maudlin Maigret follows a shady character all the way to the German border, only to provoke his suicide at the train station. It leaves the great detective decidedly out of sorts.

I is for It Waits in the Woods by Josh Malerman, another short ebook that's free to read in Prime Reading. A scary movie just dying to be made, it's about an 18-year-old film-maker who goes into Central Michigan's National Forest with a camera to find her sister, who went missing three years ago.

I'd been picking at Les Justes by Albert Camus all month but time was running out so J was instead for Jack Wolfgang, Vol. 1: Enter the Wolf, by Stephen Desberg and Henri Reculé. It's a fun James Bond adventure in a world where animals have learnt to walk, talk and come up with megalomaniacal schemes.

K is for Kaya, Vol. 1: Kaya and the Lizard-Riders, by writer and artist Wes Craig. A tough girl tries to get her princeling half-brother to safety among her crush's lizard-people, after robot invaders torch their home. Lovely artwork in nice, rectangular, digital-friendly panels.

L is for Legend of the Scarlet Blades, Vol. 4: The Abomination's Hidden Flower, by Saverio Tenuta, translated by Samantha Demers. Glorious artwork and an epic story. For the full effect I think it would be better to read all four books at once rather than over the course of three years.

M is for Miao Dao, a horror story by Joyce Carol Oates about Mia, a 13-year-old girl being sexually harassed at school by older boys, and at home by a stepdad. She befriends some feral cats, and one becomes her protector. Read by Amy Landon, who does a great "creepy man" voice!

N is for November, Vol. 2: The Gun in the Puddle, by Matt Fraction and Elsa Charretier. I didn't feel that this moved the story forward a great deal from volume one, but maybe the problem is that I whizzed through it too quickly rather than soaking up the mood and the artwork.

O is for The Owl, by J.T. Krul, art by Heubert Khan Michael, a spin-off from Project Super-Powers, where Alex Ross and his team gave public domain characters the care and attention usually reserved for Marvel and DC heroes. I read this out of order (a late substitution for an audiobook I wasn't close to finishing) so it was my 100th book of the month!

P is for Public Domain, Vol. 1: Past Mistakes by Chip Zdarsky. I adored this. A Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko/Bill Finger realises he owns a major superhero, not the writer and his company. What really made it for me was the big left-turn it takes after the lawyers talk.

Q is for The Queen in Hell Close by Sue Townsend, a comic Penguin 70 about a new government kicking the royal family out, and making them sign on. A brilliant portrayal of what it's like to live without money, but also rather a nice tribute to the Queen. I read it on the bus, and it was the first book I ever read with my reading glasses on. It does have very small print, to be fair!

R is for Rage, written by Jimmy Palmiotti, with art by Scott Hampton and Jennifer Lange. A chap gets thrown in prison after his ex pretends he kidnapped their daughter. Knocked out by another prisoner, he wakes up to see that everyone else in the cell has been beaten to death…

S is for Second Best Thing: Marilyn, JFK, and a Night to Remember, by James Swanson, a short ebook about the one and only photograph of Marilyn Monroe and JKF together, on the night of his birthday fundraising event, and the private party (or two?) that followed. The kind of thing I would never normally have read, but reading challenges can sometimes prod you in odd directions.

T is for Throne of Ice, Vol. 1: Orphan of Antarcia, by Alain Paris with art by Val, translated by Lindsay Marie King. A fantasy story set circa 8000 BC on Antarctica, when humans supposedly still lived there, before it froze, and a vicious queen wanted her king's illegitimate son dead, while one wiley retainer stops at nothing to keep him alive.

U is for The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Tom is famous for the Harry Potter-ish novels his long-lost dad wrote him into, but then a journalist reveals he may not be his dad's actual son, setting some wild events in motion. Pretty cool.

I'd hoped that The Veiled Woman, a Penguin mini by Anais Nin,would be the V this time around, because I'd already read quite a bit of it this month, but sadly the light in the pub in which I was waiting for my daughter was too dim for a print book with a tiny font. Never mind, maybe next year! So V was instead for Void by Veronica Roth. While Ace works as a janitor on a interstellar cruise ship, time passes quickly (or normally) elsewhere, so today's baby could be next year's elderly man – it's The Forever War as service industry. When a favourite passenger is murdered, Ace can't help investigating.

Similarly, I'd hoped that Witching Hour Theatre by Jonathan Janz would be the W, but I wouldn't have finished it in time. It's very good so far, though. It's about a lonely chap who spends every Friday at an all-night horror movie triple bill with other aficionados. Instead, W is for Wings of Light, Vol. 1, by Harry Bozino, with art by Carlos Magno, based on an original story by Julia Verlanger. A former Retroworld slave becomes a cadet in the Brotherhood of the Stars, and on his first assignment rescues a pregnant woman from the axe, causing a diplomatic incident.

X is for XO Manowar, Vol. 1: Soldier by Matt Kindt, with fabulous art by Tomas Giorello. I picked this out because my other remaining X books were lengthy omnibuses of X-Men comics and the Xeelee Sequence (estimated reading time: 45 hours!), but it was an unexpected treat. A roman soldier, who got some space armour and then retired to an alien planet after his adventures on present-day Earth, gets dragged off to war again.

Y is for Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land, written by Mike Mignola and Thomas Sniegoski, with art by Craig Rousseau. Little red and Professor Bruttenholm are stranded on a lost island, where they meet another of Hellboy's idols. Aimed at kids, I think, but it was good fun.

And last but not least, my final Z is for Zenith: Phase Four, by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell, another mind-boggling attempt to reprogram your consciousness via superheroes and pop stars. I've got 78 other 2000 AD books I haven't read yet – I should do something about that. Together with Zenith: Phase Four and Nameless, that takes Morrison to the top of my leaderboard for I think the first time ever, at 67 books read, ahead now of Garth Ennis (66), Moorcock (62), who I think lost the lead in 2022 or so, and Terrance Dicks (59), who probably knocked Enid Blyton off the top in 1983.

These are my reading stats for the month. 61 graphic novels, 22 audios, 20 prose, and 1 book of poetry. Fantasy and sf shared honours as top genre, 23 each. Male writers predominate, but a bit less than usual thanks to manga. 50 of the books and audiobooks were written by Americans, 54 were by writers from 13 other countries.

As usual, I'll take a month off reading now to write a novel of my own (and to finish off the next issue or three of TQF!), but I've already been thinking about how to attack my TBR list again next October. It needs to again be something that lets me switch between audio, digital, print, etc depending on where I am, what I'm doing, whether there's good lighting!

I thought about maybe reading only books with an average rating over 4 on Goodreads, so that I'd only be reading the best of the best. But filtering my Goodreads list like that produced mainly very fannish stuff, like manga and Transformers. Great works of literature are often rated lower, because of all the people obliged to read them who don't like them! For example, The Old Man and the Sea's average Goodreads rating is currently 3.8 out of 5.

A challenge of challenges could be fun, collecting together all the various reading challenges people set, like the OcTBRChallenge badges, or the Reading Glasses challenge, mush them all together, and try to complete as many as possible.

One writer friend lets a random number generator pick which books he reads, which could also be fun. I could narrow it down to only unread books up to 150pp, of which I have 1549. Maybe have a separate random generator for audiobooks. But I could easily get stuck with something short but boring.

I think my favourite idea at the moment is to start with literally my shortest book, then read a book one page longer. So say a 48pp book, then 49pp, 50pp, and see how high I can get. In parallel I could do the same with audiobooks, start with a 1hr book, then a 1hr15, etc. We'll see.

My main goal next time may seem odd, given that I've just finished 104 books and audiobooks in a month: to spend more time actually reading each day. 

That's a lot of books! But it was often just a half hour for a graphic novel at lunch, an audiobook while working, a short ebook at bedtime, and so on. The only time I really got properly stuck into a book was when I was out and about, waiting for the kids at the coach station, or reading in a nearby pub while one of them was at a birthday party. I've got a lot of work on at the moment, and I do love working late after Mrs Theaker goes to bed, but I know it's not a healthy habit…

#OcTBRChallenge 2024: a third A to Z of books and audiobooks

I'm taking part in OcTBRChallenge again this month, and this time I'm trying to finish off as many of my short books and audiobooks as I can, in A to Z order. It's been highly enjoyable. My first A to Z of the month is here, and the second is here.

This time A is for Aesthetics, a Very Short Introduction, by Bence Nanay, engagingly read by Alex Wyndham. The discussion of what it's like being on a film award jury was interesting, having just been an award juror myself. I liked the wry humour: "Being a film critic also has a pretty depressing side. You have to spend a lot of time with other film critics…" Not sure I agree with the notion that a critic isn't doing their job unless they teach you how to love a work of art. I was also interested in what the book had to say about the dangers of becoming jaded as a reviewer, if you have decided "the space of possibilities" that a film can explore before it even begins, and how it warns against making a review into nothing but a task of classification. It was interesting to learn about the "mere exposure effect", which'll make perfect sense to anyone who has gradually come to enjoy their kids' awful music, or who suddenly started to love a band they'd always hated – the Smashing Pumpkins are a good example of the latter for me.

B is for Bouncer, Vol. 5: The She-Wolfs' Prey, a violent western written by Alejandro Jodorowsky with marvellous art by François Boucq. The Bouncer helps a female hangman with a rowdy crowd but she wants to kill his dad. This left me very keen to play Red Dead Redemption 2 again!

C is for Chi's Sweet Home, Vol. 7, by Konami Kanata. She's a bit lost! I don't know how I've ended up seven volumes into a manga series about a kitten, but I guess it's a combination of (a) learning about my cat, (b) getting them all cheap, and okay (c) it being totally adorable.

D is for Dead Eyes, Vol. 1, written by Gerry Duggan. John McCrea's art is less cartoonish than usual, more dramatic, still fantastic. Dead Eyes is an infamous crook who comes out of retirement to fund his wife's healthcare. I knew within a couple of pages that I'd love this book.

E is for The End of the Fxxxing World. An American psychopath and his girlfriend go on the run after stealing his dad's car. I liked the tv show (set instead in England), but this didn't do much for me. Not much story, very few panels, lots of padding. Some decent twists, though.

F is for The Fable, Vol. 1, by Katsuhisa Minami. Things get a bit too hot for a legendary hitman and his beautiful assistant, so they are sent to live in Osaka as regular folks for a year, but violence has a way of finding them regardless. I quite enjoyed this, would read more.

G is for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, written by Ana Lily Amirpour, with art by Michael DeWeese. Not as I assumed the inspiration for the film, but rather two issues from an unfinished adaptation of it. What there is of it is good, but an absolute cheek to sell it as a book.

H is for Honeybones, a rather brilliant novella by Georgina Bruce about the power of saying no. A teenage girl has to deal with supernatural and sexual threats, and a mum who won't talk to her any more. My first print book of the month, finished off at the Library of Birmingham.

I is for Intruders by Adrian Tomine, from the excellent Faber Stories range. It's the creepy, sad tale of a soldier between tours who accidentally acquires the keys to a house he used to rent, and starts spending the day there. Finished this outside a wedding

J is for John Carter: The End, a Dark Knight Returns for the Edgar Rice Burroughs hero of Mars, written here by Brian Wood and Alex Cox, with stylish art by Hayden Sherman. He let Dejah Thoris think their great-great-etc-grandson was dead, but the boy's grown up to be a dictator.

K is for Killing Time in America, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Craig Weeden, with art by Justin Norman. Another unpredictable, entertaining Euro-trashy graphic novel from the Paperfilms Humble Bundle. A pseudofamily of four are sent to exact revenge upon American holidaymakers.

L is for Legend of the Scarlet Blades, Vol. 3: The Perfect Stroke, by Severio Tenuta, my first book this month by an Italian writer. In a fantastical, brutal, gorgeously-painted version of medieval Japan, a soldier visits the ruins of his home village, to recover lost memories.

M is for The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science, by Kate McKinnon, hilariously read by the author and her sister, Emily Lynne. As much fun as their Audible sitcom, Heads Will Roll (see our review). A Lemony Snicketish tale of a mad scientist who takes three girls under her wing. According to an SNL castmate Kate McKinnon previously wrote fantasy novels under a pseudonym, but no one knows what they were – this is her official debut. It's aimed at kids but go on, no one will judge you for listening to it.

N is for Normandy Gold, by Megan Abbott and Alison Gaylin, art by Steve Scott. The Normandy Gold of the title is a sheriff (her dad died near D-Day) who goes undercover as a high-class prostitute when her sister is killed by a john. It's grotty, exploitative and implausible, but the mystery is pretty good.

O is for Otaku Blue, Vol. 1: Tokyo Underground, written by Richard Marazon with art by Malo Kerfriden. While two unhappy cops investigate a serial killer, a post-grad student researching otaku culture makes fashion-first friends who wangle her an introduction to the ultimate legendary fanboy.

P is for The Pram by Joe Hill, a super story about a couple who move to the country after a tragedy, with horrid consequences. It's great on the stresses of having to hold it together when your partner needs you to be strong for them. And the pram is very creepy!

Q is for Quarry's Climax by Max Allan Collins, read by Stefan Rudnicki. Quarry and partner Boyd are hired to prevent the assassination of a Larry Flynt type. A later novel set back when they still worked for the Broker. Pretty good but felt quite similar to Quarry in the Middle.

R is for Requiem: Vampire Knight, Vol. 1: Resurrection by Pat Mills and Olivier Ledroit. A glitch with the Kindle version (the cover is taller than the rest of the book, so the rest of the book is unnecessarily small) doesn't spoil a crazy saga of a Nazi soldier reborn as a vampire lord in hell. Each panel could be a heavy metal album cover.

S is for Stumptown, Vol. 3: The Case of the King of Clubs, by Greg Rucka and Justin Greenwood. Portland PI Dex Parios tries to figure out why her football chum got badly beaten up after a match. Odd to read a story about football and hooliganism set in the US.

T is for The Time Invariance of Snow, by E. Lily Yu, a short, glittering ebook about the quest undertaken by G, a woman in a world where the devil's magic mirror was shattered, and the pieces fell into our eyes, distorting our perceptions of ourselves and others.

U is for Usagi Yojimbo, Vol. 34: Bunraku and Other Stories, by Stan Sakai. The ronin rabbit watches a spooky puppet show, among other short adventures. The first full volume in colour and it feels a bit odd. Is the art slightly less detailed to leave room for the colour? But the stories are as good as ever.

V is for The View from Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins. A Penguin 70 which explains how eyes evolved, not once but many times, independently. Nice to read this after seeing him on stage in conversation this week. President of Gallifrey Lalla Ward provides the illustrations!

W is for Wunderwaffen, tome 1: Le pilote du Diable, by Richard D. Nolane and Milorad Vicanovic, set in a world where the D-Day landings failed, Hitler was badly injured by another assassination attempt, and the war went on with new armaments. Great illustrations of the planes.

X is for X, Vol. 1: Big Bad, written by Duane Swierczynski, with art by Eric Nguyen. X is Dark Horse's unpleasant, ultraviolent mix of Batman and the Punisher, and in this he kills a bunch of corrupt people as vigorously as possible. But a trap awaits and he might need a friend.

Y is for Ya Boy Kongming, Vol. 1, by Yuto Yotsuba and Ryo Ogawa. A freebie from March 2023, but if I'd realised it was about master tactician Zhuge Liang from Dynasty Warriors being reborn now and becoming the manager of a wannabe pop star I'd have read it immediately. Hilarious.

Z is for Zenith: Phase Three, by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell. Apparently 2000 AD became a colour comic three weeks after this story ended – even without knowing that I'd wondered if it was drawn to be printed in colour, because it was so hard to follow at times. But still an epic story!

So that's my third A to Z of this year's #OcTBRChallenge complete, as well as all the challenge badges! Not sure if there's time to finish a fourth run through the alphabet before the month ends but we'll see.

#OcTBRChallenge 2024: a second A to Z of books and audiobooks

I'm taking part in OcTBRChallenge again this month, and this time I'm trying to finish off as many of my short books and audiobooks as I can, in A to Z order. It's been very good fun. My first A to Z of the month is here.

A is for Abominable, a novella by William Meikle. A lost journal of George Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine from 1924 is offered for sale. It records their final, fatal ascent of Mount Everest, when they encountered something abominable! With a mouth full of long yellow teeth!

B is for Broken Glass, an audiobook of Arthur Miller's play about a Brooklyn woman in 1938 who, terrified by news of Jewish businesses being smashed up in Berlin, loses the ability to walk. Wonder what she'd make of the same thing happening now in New York. Stars JoBeth Williams. It was staged by LA Theatre Works in 1996. Included in Audible Plus for free.

C is for Creepy Comics, Vol. 1, by various writers and artists, Dark Horse's resurrection of the old horror anthology comic. Found this a trudge, to be honest, with inconsequential, simplistic stories and muddy artwork that was often hard to parse.

D is for The Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child, by Frank Miller and Rafael Grampa. Bit weird this, originally published as issue 1, but no other issues materialised so now it's published as a book in itself. Batman Cassie Kelly and Superman's kids get into a fight with Darkseid.

E is for Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin, the first thing I've read by her, and a Hugo winner, apparently. An agent sent from a colony expects to find Earth in ruins, but in fact it became a utopia after the nasty capitalists fled. A bit cringey, but how they treat him is sweet.

F is Fabius Bile: Repairer of Ruin by Josh Reynolds. I know I'm trying to finish my shortest books and audiobooks, but at only twenty minutes this audiobook is an extreme example! It recounts a skirmish on a demon world in the Warhammer 40K universe. Great sound effects and performances!

G is for Gallifrey 1.2: Square One, by Stephen Cole, starring Lalla Ward, Louise Jameson and John Leesons. I'd forgotten that I bought over a dozen of these audios a couple of years ago and they are quite a treat. This one concerns time trickery at a temporal summit, at which Leela goes undercover as an exotic dancer.

H is for Hellblazer: Rise and Fall, written by Tom Taylor with art by Darick Robertson. Ouch, painful. Makes the New 52 issues look good. I suppose English police officers might carry guns in the DC universe, but I think Hellblazer writers from outside the British Isles do best when setting their stories in their own countries.

I is for Is Kichijoji the Only Place to Live? by Makihirochi, a gentle manga about twins who took over their parents' estate agency, and run it in an unconventional manner, which always seems to involve persuading their clients not to live in Kichijoji, but elsewhere in Tokyo.

J is for The Judge's House by Georges Simenon. Maigret is present during a judge's attempt to dispose of a body. Typical Maigret tale full of grub and grubbiness. Modern-day readers may be surprised at how one chap gets away with what would now be considered a serious crime. We're supposed to feel sorry for him, if anything!

K is for Ka-Zar, Vol. 1, a Tarzan in Marvel's version of New York story by Mark Waid, with art by Andy Kubert and others. I remember this being well-regarded at the time, but it's not easy to see why now. The art is wildly dynamic, but not always to the storytelling's benefit.

L is for The Lover by Silvia Morena-Garcia, a short ebook/audiobook about Judith, a young woman treated as a servant by her more beautiful sister. She dallies with a pair of men, one who gives her books in return for sexual favours, the other her sister's husband.

M is for Melody James by Stephen Gallagher, an intriguing novella about a clever, resourceful fortune-teller recruited in 1919 to vet a journalist, a potential spy for the British secret service in Soviet Russia. Spin-off from a novel, The Authentic William James.

N is for November, Vol. 1: The Girl on the Roof, by Matt Fraction and Elsa Charretier. A stylish and mysterious graphic novel about a dissolute young puzzle fanatic who is paid $500 a day to solve a puzzle in the paper and broadcast the solution from a radio set on her roof.

O is for O Maidens in Your Savage Season, Vol. 1, written by Mari Okada, trans. Sawa Savage, with art by Nao Emoto, a manga book about romantic tension and teenage hormones boiling over in the school book club. It's funny and sweet but gets a bit ruder than expected in places.

P is for Put to Silence by Rose Biggin, a short, tart ebook published by Jurassic London in 2014 about a murder attempt during a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The target's Brutus, the client's playing Julius Caesar, the killer's in the chorus.

(I decided not to count it for my A to Z in the end, but for P I also read an excellent novella that will hopefully appear in our twentieth anniversary issue of our magazine. It's the latest story in a long-running series. My favourite thing I've read this month, honest!)

Q is for Queen Crab, a short graphic novel by Jimmy Palmiotti and Artiz Eiguren. On my TBR list since January, when I got it in a Humble Bundle. The tale of a woman betrayed – after a scoundrel tries to drown her on a cruise, she mysteriously gains a pair of powerful crab claws!

R is for The Roman Empire, a Very Short Introduction, by Christopher Kelly, read by Richard Davidson. Explains how the Roman Empire was built, and banishes many illusions about it. Weird to learn that present-day Britain has a higher population than the entire Roman Empire. It looks like these are all leaving Audible Plus this month so I want to listen to a few of them for free while I still can.

S is for Stag by Karen Russell, read by Adam Berger. A lone wolf type of guy attends a divorce party with a one-night stand, and as things take a more serious turn at the previously silly party, he becomes rather obsessed with the divorcing couple's pet tortoise.

T is for Trigger Girl 6, thus named because she's the sixth mysterious super-powered assassin sent to kill the President of the USA. Written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, with very nice art by Phil Noto. Feels more like a French BD album than a traditional American comic.

U is for Ushers by Joe Hill, one of my Amazon First Reads picks this month. Two police officers chat with a young man in a bookshop (where he buys 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman) because he went home before a school shooting happened and got off a train that subsequently crashed.

V is for Venom by Donny Cates, Vol. 1: Rex, with pencils by Ryan Stegman. Eddie Brock learns about the symbiote's cosmic origins. The reason given for Venom's vulnerability to sound and fire was very silly, but there was some cool stuff too; overall the best Venom book I've read.

W is for Wild With Happy, the audiobook of a superb play from writer, director and star Colman Domingo, who plays Gil Hawkins, dealing (or not) with his mother's death by getting off with the funeral director and foregoing any ritual, much to the dismay of his hilarious aunt.

X is for X-Men Grand Design: Second Genesis by Ed Piskor, which pulls together a decade's worth of X-Men issues into one indie-style graphic novel. My 50th book or audiobook of the month! Jamming all these stories – not to mention all the fantastic TQF submissions I've been reading! – into my head at once is making me a little dizzy.

Y is for Yee-Haw: Weirdly Western Poems by Rhys Hughes. Of poetry I know not much, but what my mother said / "Books by that wacky Welshman, must not be left unread!" My favourite bit was a short Samuel Beckett-ish play, "Uneasy Rider", featuring author Max Brand.

Z is for Zero Gravity by Woody Allen, his fifth book of comedic essays and stories. The ideas, writing and jokes are as strong as ever, but the audiobook sounds like it was recorded at the kitchen table! It's almost unlistenable at first, but gets better later on.

Second A to Z complete!

#OcTBRChallenge 2024: an A to Z of books and audiobooks

I always look forward to #OcTBRChallenge, where the idea is to clear as many books from your TBR list as possible in a month. I like to slice my collection a different way each year, and this time I'm reading as many of my short books as I can in A to Z order. The first one I finished was Ankle Snatcher by Grady Hendrix, about a family plagued by an actual monster under the bed.

B is for Bad Machinery, Vol. 10: The Case of the Severed Alliance, by John Allison. Her friendship with Shauna on the rocks, Lottie volunteers to work at a local newspaper. She discovers that the Chamber of Commerce is making blood sacrifices! Smashing, but sadly the last volume.

C is for Claudine à Paris by Colette, beautifully read by Isabelle Carré. Finished this, but have to admit I didn't follow it. I've been trying to improve my ear for French, and listening to this definitely helped, but I'm still picking out words and phrases rather than following the story. I listened to some of it with Android captions on, but it defeated the point since I just started reading instead of listening. If I listen to another French audiobook, I'll read a plot summary beforehand, so that I have some kind of framework to drop the bits I understand into, or maybe listen to a book I already know well.

D is for Doctor Who: UNIT Dominion by Nicholas Briggs and Jason Arnopp. As UNIT fends off more interdimensional incursions than the Evangelions, two Doctors turn up to help. One is a Scottish chap with an umbrella, the other is a haughty future Doctor, played by Alex McQueen…

E is for Earthdivers: Kill Columbus, volume 1 in a series written by horror author Stephen Graham Jones, art by Davide Gianfelice. In 2112, the native American survivors of an apocalypse try to fix things with time travel, by murdering Columbus before he reached their continent.

F is for Forager, a short graphic novel by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Steven Cummings. A couple on the rocks take their daughter on a spaceship to Mars, where she makes contact with something alien! Feels like a slightly more rushed version of ace Leo books like Betelgeuse or Aldebaran.

G is for Gallifrey: Weapon of Choice, an entertaining Big Finish Doctor Who spin-off by Alan Barnes, starring four of Tom Baker's companions: the second Romana, the first and second K9s, and the one and only Leela. In this story Romana, now President of Gallifrey, gives Leela a mission.

H is for How It Unfolds by James S.A. Corey, both of him: a short ebook with more ideas than most books ten times the size. It's about Roy, who takes part in an audacious colonisation project. Given how much I loved this, I should probably read the Expanse books.

I is for I'm Standing on a Million Lives, Vol. 1, a manga book by Naoki Yamakawa, with art by Akinari Nao, translated by Christine Dashiell. Stories of Japanese teenagers transported to an RPG game world are ten a penny, but its exploration of the game's mechanics is quite fun.

J is for Jeremiah Bourne in Time, a fun four-part Big Finish audio drama written by Nigel Planer. Jerry time-travels like Christopher Reeve in Somewhere in Time, by focusing on the details. His first accidental trip is to 1910, where he encounters various oddballs played by a splendid cast.

K is for Kounodori: Dr Stork, Vol. 1, by You Suzunoki, a genuinely moving manga book about a doctor who moonlights as an acclaimed and mysterious concert pianist. He cuts performances short when his patients go into labour. I got about 200 of these Kodansha books in a free giveaway.

L is for Lovers at the Museum by Isabel Allende, about a young couple found curled up asleep on the floor of a supposedly secure museum, first thing in the morning. I like how Amazon First Reads now includes some shorter ebooks – this fab fantasy story was a March 2024 selection.

M is for The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, by Christopher Hitchens, where he puts the reputation of this holiest of scammers under the microscope and takes a scalpel to it. Really is shocking to read of her heartless treatment of the sick and dying.

N is for Nameless by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham, in which a psychic fights god, who turns out to be an otherdimensional alien imprisoned in an asteroid that's hurtling our way. The art is fantastic throughout, but it felt like the writer's magical beliefs rather swamped the story.

O is for One, Vol. 1: Just One Breath, by Sylvain Cordurie and Zivorad Radivojevic, also about a psychic, this time a "bloodcog" called on to investigate why the world is suddenly at peace. I read a lot of this book while the adverts were on during Rings of Power!

P is for Pay the Ghost by Tim Lebbon. A little girl goes missing and a year later her mum returns, sick and wasted away to nothing, ruined by a year of searching in supernatural territory, needing dad's help. I haven't seen the film, but it sounds like it left out some of the best stuff from the book.

Q is for Quarry's Cut by Max Allan Collins. When a former colleague kills a friend, the erstwhile hitman hunts him to an adult film shoot at a ski lodge. I adored Stefan Rudnicki's readings of other Quarry books, but Christopher Kipiniak's grimmer version here is great too.

R is for The River and the World Remade by E. Lily Yu. In a world of permanent flooding, some moved inland, others have floating homes woven from plastic bags and styrofoam; in this ace story a house-weaver battles a storm to save a young rascal from his own folly.

S is for Stone Ovaries and Bowling Balls Trapped in Beautiful Prodigy World, a title that left little room for much else in my tweet about it! An outrageous, hilarious unsplatterpunk tale by Douglas J. Ogurek, full of unhinged, profane wordplay, like Oscar Wilde writing for Rik Mayall. And it's hilariously read by J James – a handful of glitches can be forgiven on what must have been a very challenging production. I'm biased, obviously – Douglas has probably contributed to more TQF issues than me at this point! – but I was laughing out loud throughout.

T is for Taproot, collecting and expanding a webcomic by Keezy Young. A gay ghost has a crush on a bisexual gardener, whose efforts to keep his plants alive unwittingly cross the line into necromancy! The odd pacing reflects its webcomic origins, but it's sweet and the art is lovely.

U is for Undercover by Tamsyn Muir, a twisty-turny urban fantasy story about a tough woman hired to bodyguard a gangster's ghoul, read by Susan Dalian. One of those nice books where if you borrow the ebook in Prime Reading, you can claim the audiobook to keep for good in Audible.

V is for Vampire Dormitory, Vol. 1, by Ema Tōyama, a gay vampire romance manga book very much aimed at female readers, to the point that one of the boys is secretly female and binding her breasts. Has the cute idea that vampires seduce humans because love makes our blood sweeter.

W is for Walking to Aldebaran, the audiobook jauntily read by the author, Adrian Tchaikovsky. British astronaut Gary Rendell is lost in the Crypts, a mysterious interplanetary nexus where various aliens try to survive among the detritus of each other's failed expeditions, and time gets weird.

X is for XIII Mystery, Vol. 6: Billy Stockton, by S. Cuzor and L.F. Bollee, the life story of a supporting character from volume 3 of the main XIII series. It's misery on top of misery as a child who loses his parents in a plane crash grows up to inflict misery on others in turn.

Y is for The Year of Magical Thinking, the audiobook version of a one-woman play by Joan Didion, based on her memoir of the year that followed her husband's death, and led up to her daughter's death, performed by Vanessa Redgrave. I gave the littler Theakers a big hug after this.

Z is for Zodiac Starforce, Vol. 2: Cries of the Fire Prince, written by Kevin Panetta, art by Paulina Ganucheau. A defeated enemy is so desperate for revenge on Zodiac Starforce that she tries to summon a demon goddess, but gets instead the goddess's pet dancer.

A to Z complete!

#OcTBRChallenge: books 67 to 100 reviewed

Just finished my hundredth book of the month! It was a bit less of a challenge than expected – I have a lot of very short books! – and of course in the grand scheme of things reading a hundred books in a month is an entirely meaningless achievement, but it was still a good deal of fun. Here are my reviews of books 66 to 100.

Doctor Who: Short Trips – Volume 3, Xanna Eve Chown (ed.) (Big Finish Productions): A slightly different format for this anthology: one story, read with aplomb and astonishing range by Nicholas Briggs, acts as as a frame for the other stories. David Troughton narrates a story of Zoe stuck in the wrong time zone while the Doctor fights a millipede man. Jo and the third Doctor encounter an advertising robot, which leads them to shut down the Tardis – this story has an interesting explanation for why the Tardis's computer technology sometimes seems familiar to us. The fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane visit Barnum's circus, where I learned that we get the word jumbo from an elephant's name. Doctor Who, educational as ever! The fifth Doctor and Peri take refuge from the rain in an house that is being put to an unusual use. Peri and the sixth Doctor visit the Oort Cloud and seem to discover a bunch of naked humans living there. Sophie Aldred reads a story in the first person as Ace, where she and the seventh Doctor investigate a series of violent attacks near a river. India Fisher reads a story about a scoundrel using the eighth Doctor's Tardis as a fairground attraction. Enjoyable, and read very well throughout. ***

Lucky Luke: Le Fil Qui Chante, Morris and Rene Goscinny (Dargaud): In a book by the classic Morris/Goscinny team, Lucky Luke joins an effort to extend the telegraph wires from west and east until they meet at Salt Lake City. Whichever team arrives there first will win a prize. Unfortunately, there's a saboteur on Lucky Luke's team, and the terrain is difficult. Typically enjoyable, typically dated in places, the square and rectangular panels look absolutely splendid on an iPad. ****

Olympus Mons, tome 1: Anomalie un, Christophe Bec, Stefano Raffaele, Digicore Studio and Pierre Loyvet (Soleil): A book that carefully cultivates a sense of awe around a series of mysterious vessels, on a mountain, in the depths of the ocean, and on Mars. A police psychic warns of doom if the vessel in the ocean is interfered with. It ends on a cliffhanger, but I didn't feel at all short-changed. The art is very good. I'll keep my eye out for future volumes. ***

Doctor Who: Short Trips, Volume 4, Xanna Eve Chown (ed.) (Big Finish Productions): A fourth audio anthology. The first Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara try to help the cloned survivors of a sea-lion species. The second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe investigate a big hole in the ground. The third Doctor and Jo deal with giant rhubarb in a Wakefield shed. A cafe owner with an alien secret dreads the sound of the Tardis arriving; this time it brings the fourth Doctor, Romana and K-9 to make the decennial check on him. The fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan investigate an anomaly at a dinner to celebrate the completion of Nelson's column. Colin Baker reads a story about the sixth Doctor visiting a cornish pasty maker in hospital – it was funny to hear the scorn with which he read a reference to I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, a year before he appeared on it. Ace gets a sore throat from some bad food and encounters a shadow thief while the seventh Doctor plans to watch a spaceship launch. India Fisher reads a story about the eighth Doctor helping an archivist stuck in a time loop. Not as good as previous volumes, but I was amused by the idea in a couple of the stories that if aliens come to destroy the Earth it might well be as part of a prank or a hobby. ***

Masquerade, Vol. 1, Phil Hester, Carlos Paul and Alex Ross (Dynamite Entertainment): A spin-off from Project Superpowers, which placed lots of out-of-copyright heroes in a shared universe, this tells the story of Masquerade, via crucial episodes on her adventuring, and flashing back from each of those to her childhood. The plot makes it more of a side-story to the original Project Superpowers series than a fully-fledged story in its own right, but it was still a good read. I was a bit frustrated by how the book didn't care to tell us what happened to an important character after she was kidnapped, casually revealing that she survived at the end but never telling us how. ***

Goldie Vance, Vol. 2, Hope Larson and Brittney Williams (BOOM! Box): Tintinesque but with a livelier hero, this book sees 1960s teenage detective Goldie Vance investigate the case of a girl who washes up on the beach in an astronaut suit. Goldie is a charming character, and, perhaps unusually for a children's book, all the adults in her life are very likeable too. ***

Mrs Fox, Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber): A man's wife seems to turn into a fox, not temporarily, like a were-fox would, but permanently, and he doesn't take it well. Feels like a metaphor for men who persuade or coerce unhappy partners into staying. ***

Dreams of a Dead Country, Douglas Thompson (Salo Press): A man dreams of a long-lost love, since that's the only way they can be together again. His dreams are "jumbled up fragments" of things that happened, things that might have happened, things that could only have happened in a different reality. As usual, Douglas Thompson offers ideas every few pages that other writers would mine for entire novels. ****

Fairy Tales, Marianne Moore (Faber & Faber): These seem from the preface to be translations of Charles Perrault's stories rather than entirely new tellings. Puss in Boots and Cinderella held few surprises, but the second half of Sleeping Beauty was all new to me. ***

Orion's Outcasts, Vol. 1, Eric Corbeyran and Jorge Miguel (Humanoids): Based on the work of Julia Verlanger, this is old-fashioned adventure sf set on the world designated Orion-XB12557, where the descendants of colonists from Earth live iron age lives, the ruins of the colonists' spaceships a backdrop to their settlements. A pair of outcasts – Kohlen, a warrior tricked into a liaison with a priestess and Tryana, who saw an offworlder trading weapons – team up in an attempt to escape their fate. While this is often a bit corny, not least in the way that in a fight Kohlen kills without hesitation but the people he's fighting show restraint in return, I did enjoy it. The art was very much to my taste. ***

Miss: Better Living Through Crime, Vol. 1: Bloody Manhattan, Philippe Thirault, Marc Riou and Mark Vigouroux (Humanoids): A flint-hard woman takes her first steps – or long strides – into criminality, quickly acquiring a sidekick and a reputation for making people disappear. Terrific art and a story that pulls no punches. ****

Shutter, Vol. 1: Wanderlost, Joe Keatinge, Leila del Duca and Owen Gieni (Image Comics): Kate Kristopher used to have science fictional and fantastical adventures with her dad, like Tom and Tesla Strong, but he died ten years ago and now she's working as a photographer, living with her old schoolfriend Alain and a talking, cat-shaped alarm clock. On a visit to his grave, she is attacked by a trio of purple ghost ninjas and from that point things just get weirder and weirder. It's a very lively book, with a vibrant colour palette and a ton of things happening, all with Kate at the centre. I didn't fall in love with it, but I'd be interested to see what happens next. ***

Unnatural, Vol. 1: Awakening, Mirka Andolfo (Image Comics): A buxom, blue-haired pig lives in a world where anthropomorphic animal species can cross-breed, but are forbidden from doing so. It's rather hard to imagine how these species evolved, but I suppose I don't complain about that with Usagi Yojimbo, so it would be unfair to complain about it too much here just because I didn't like the book as much. The protagonist has reached the age where the government steps in to find a same-species mate for anyone who hasn't found someone for themselves, but she is distracted by sexy dreams about a big white wolf. I didn't enjoy this very much. The casual violence was frequently at odds with the cutesy art, and all the naked pig-woman scenes were a bit weird. One for the furries. **

Postal, Vol. 1, Bryan Edward Hill, Matt Hawkins, Isaac Goodheart, Betsy Gonia, Isaac Goodhart and Troy Peteri (Image Comics): A book with an interesting idea: a town that seems to be very happy has a habit of taking criminals to the church and shooting them dead. The protagonist is the town's postman, who is very good at noticing things, and noticing things in this town leads to all the secrets everyone is trying to keep. I wasn't blown away, but it's a promising start. ***

Mars Attacks Judge Dredd, Al Ewing and John McCrea (IDW Publishing): I didn't have any great expectations for this, so to see it had such a renowned pair of creators involved when I opened the book was a surprise, and it turned out to be very good fun. It felt like a genuine Judge Dredd story, albeit in the IDW continuity, and I especially enjoyed John McCrea's "Gaze into the fist of Dredd" moment. There's not a lot to it, so if I had paid full price I might have been disappointed, but I got it in a Humble Bundle. ***

Oblivion Song, Vol. 1, Robert Kirkman, Lorenzo De Felici and Annalisa Leoni (Image Comics): Ten years after a disastrous land swap between our world and a more demonic dimension, one man keeps travelling there to find survivors and bring them home. But because he doesn't do the obvious thing – i.e. put up a sign saying that he wants to take people home, telling them when and where to meet him – and instead hunts and shoots them like animals, the people stuck there think he is an enemy. The basic idea is one seen before in books like Hellboy and Savage Dragon, but as usual with Robert Kirkman's books what makes it compelling is how it shows the effect of these events on the people living through them. The absence of chapter breaks makes the reader hurtle through the book, and he really knows how to end a book on a thrilling note. Smashing art too. ****

James Bond: Kill Chain, Andy Diggle and Luca Casalanguida (Dynamite Entertainment): Bond gets on the trail of of a SMERSH plot to divide the NATO allies, and does his best to foil it via the judicious application of violence. Stylish and restrained. ****

Starving Anonymous Vol. 1, Yuu Kuraishi, Kengo Mizutani and Kazu Inabe (Kodansha Comics): Teenager I'e is sensibly wearing his mask on a bus when everyone else passes out. The gas still gets him eventually but a lighter dose means he wakes up before the others, to find himself in a ghastly facility, where fat people are sliced up for meat and skinny people are fattened up for later consumption. He teams up with a violent weirdo and a rapist in an attempt to escape, only to discover horrors even worse. A very discomfiting book. ***

Robert Silverberg's Colonies: Return to Belzagor, Part 1, Philippe Thirault and Laura Zuccheri (Humanoids): I've read the novel Downward to the Earth a couple of times, but have only hazy memories of it, so I can't judge whether this is a faithful adaptation or not. But taken on its own terms it's a very good graphic novel, portraying a racist imperialist administrator returning, as a tour guide, to the world from which he was ejected, and perhaps learning to relate to that world and its peoples in a new way. Laura Zuccheri's alien flora and fauna really make it feel like we're not on Earth. ****

Miss: Better Living Through Crime Vol. 2: Sweet Lullaby, Philippe Thirault, Marc Riou and Mark Vigouroux (Humanoids): Miss and Slim take a job to kill a rich guy on a boat, but as usual kill anyone else who irritates them too. A certain amount of affection introductes itelf into their relationship. Like the first book, it looks amazing, the art and colours utter perfection. ****

Bramble, Vol. 1: Electric Roots, Jean-David Morvan and Nesmo (Humanoids): A big strange chap (a bit like Archer's Goon) leaves his idyllic village in the countryside and comes to the city, building a pile of dead bodies wherever he goes. This attracts the attention of the police, as embodied by Captain Edward Mornieres. The art shows us everything from peculiar angles to create a certain mood, and it's usually pretty clear what is going on, but there were a few sequences I had to re-read. ***

Carthago, Vol. 1: The Fortuna Island Lagoon, Christophe Bec, Eric Henninot and Milan Jovanovic (Humanoids): A company drilling for oil discovers an immense underwater cave, which turns out to connect to other immense caves around the world. It is home to a variety of prehistoric creatures, but the one that really captures everyone's attention is a megalodon. Quite a fun comic with very nice artwork -- the animals look terrific. ***

The Manhattan Projects, Vol. 1: Science. Bad., Jonathan Hickman, Nick Pitarra, Jordie Bellaire and Rus Wooton (Image Comics): The extra s in the title is significant: this is about a world where the atom bomb was only one of the Manhattan Projects. Strange versions of Feynman, Fermi, Einstein and Oppenheimer work to expand the boundaries of reality, with frequently unfortunate consequences. I wish I'd read this sooner: I found The Nightly News hard going and thought Hickman's other Image stuff was in a similar style, but this is the kind of wildly imaginative type of story that makes me love reading comics so much. ****

Revival, Vol. 1: You're Among Friends, Tim Seeley, Mike Norton and Mark Englert (Image Comics): Like Les Revenants and the various television shows it inspired, this is the story of a town where people have come back from the dead, for no apparent reason, and not as mindless zombies, but as, it seems at first, the people they used to be. But even if the idea is not new, the execution of it is very good, with lots of mysteries and interesting characters. In art and style it feels like the kind of classic Vertigo comic that got me back into reading comics again in the first place. ****

Miss: Better Living Through Crime, Vol. 3: White as a Lily, Philippe Thirault, Marc Riou and Mark Vigouroux (Humanoids): After some business that I didn't really understand by the river, a racist hires Miss and Slim to perform a hit on a man on a golf course. Then the KKK show up and Miss chooses that moment to show her affection for Slim. Like many stories with evil people as their protagonists, this book comes into its own when the people Miss and Slim tangle with are even worse than they are. You can never root for them, but you can appreciate the way they deal with dangerous situations and terrible people. ****

Miss: Better Living Through Crime, Vol. 4: Bad Luck, My Love, Philippe Thirault, Marc Riou and Mark Vigouroux (Humanoids): A final volume for the pair of criminals, who never quite seem to achieve the Better Living Through Crime that the subtitle promises. This one's not so much about the crimes, though as usual they commit plenty, with double-crosses and bonus crimes for people they don't like, and more about Slim getting sick with tubercolosis. Miss needs a big score to pay for the treatments. It looks as good as the three previous books, and even if they are a pair of irredeemable villains it's nice to see how their relationship develops. ****

Savage Highway, Book 1: Hit the Road, Mathieu Masmondet and Zhang Xiaoyu (Humanoids): Based on a novel by Julia Verlanger, this tells the story of a severely traumatised woman and a man who might well turn out to be equally traumatised if he ever spoke more than a word or two. After he kills her from brutal captors, they develop a relationship and he joins her on a quest to find her abducted little sister. It's standard post-apocalyptic stuff (the moon has broken into pieces), but the action is portrayed very well, and they are a fairly likeable pair of protagonists. It's satisfying to watch them take down a bunch of the bad guys. ***

A Rare Book of Cunning Device, Ben Aaronovitch, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Audible Studios): An investigator of the supernatural and the superscientific looks into what is thought to be a poltergeist at the British Library, in a low-key adventure that feels like a less flashy British version of the Dresden Files. The story came and went without leaving much of a trace, but I enjoyed Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's weary narration. ***

Usagi Yojimbo/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Complete Collection, Stan Sakai (Dark Horse Books): Collects five stories where Miyamoto Usagi meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, four by Stan Sakai, and one by Peter Laird, creator of the Turtles. Its only real flaw is that the turtles in the fifth story seem to come from a reboot continuity, so that the pleasant fellowship built up over the other stories is lost. Other than that, this is as much of a treat as any Usagi Yojimbo book, the art flawless, and looking so good in the colour section that when I finish reading Usagi Yojimbo I'll be tempted to go back to the beginning and read the new colour editions. ****

My Son the Fanatic, Hanif Kureishi (Faber & Faber): A taxi driver notices that his son is behaving oddly, discarding his possessions and becoming silently judgmental. At first he thinks the problem is drugs, but the truth is that the young man is becoming a religious fanatic, and the father's own moral failings complicate his attempts to challenge this unwelcome development. From 1996 but still feels topical. ****

Le Lama Blanc, tome 1: Le Premier pas, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Georges Bess (Humanoids): A powerful Tibetan monk, prophesying dark times ahead for his community, says that he will be reborn as a baby in a particular house after his death. Not everyone is keen on this plan, and assassin gods are sent to kill the baby. But there is another child born in the same house, the child of English parents… It's a decent start, and not as offensive as I expected, but very talky. ***

Mallam Cross, T.M. Wright and Steven Savile (PS Publishing): The people of a town called Mallam Cross are concerned to hear that a ghost-hunting television show is on its way to visit, and with good reason: pretty much everyone in the town is a ghost. (Bill and Deirdre, who run the grocery store, used to be the dwarven royalty of the Antipodes, but I wasn't sure if they had died before coming to Mallam Cross, or just retired.) Unfortunately, the ghost hunters aren't even the worst problem the town faces: a pair of naked ancient Welsh magicians are running around the place torturing and devouring other ghosts. The book begins by introducing a slightly overwhelming array of characters, most of whom won't play a major role in the narrative, but an afterword explains why. In his later years T.M. Wright struggled to write, but came up with the idea of a city where everyone was a ghost, and produced a series of fragments describing its inhabitants. After his death, his friend Steven Savile was asked to prepare them for publication. This is why the book's description doesn't match the book, and why Savile was originally credited as the book's editor rather than a co-author. This proving impractical, he instead built a new story around those fragments, also incorporating emails and other writing by Wright, making the book itself a tribute to him and his work. For an author, this book is the equivalent of being sent out on a burning Viking longboat. I'd never read a word of T.M. Wright's work before buying this book, but that didn't affect my appreciation of it. I especially enjoyed the lightbulb moment at about the three-quarter mark, though it may come sooner for readers sharper than I am. ****

The Finishing School, Muriel Spark (Polygon): A portrait of Rowland Mahler, a teacher and struggling novelist who burns with envy of Chris, the young writer for whom it all seems to come so easily. I've known a Rowland or two, and I'm sure that Muriel Spark knew more, and it is utterly hilarious to watch his descent into teeth-grinding mania, complemented as it is by his wife Nina's increasing insouciance towards him. The book is also very good on the creative benefits of a good old-fashioned literary enemy. I read a hundred books this month, and this was my favourite of them. *****

The Book of Dreams, Jack Vance (Coronet Books): When Matthew Hughes talked about writing an authorised sequel to the Demon Princes series, I realised that I had never read this one. I thought I had, perhaps because I'd read the other books twice. I can't be mad at myself, though, because that mistake meant I had a new novel by Jack Vance in his prime to enjoy today. In this novel, Kirth Gersen, the interplanetary Count of Monte Cristo, goes after the fifth and last of the super-criminals who attacked his home and killed his parents. Howard Alan Treesong is a rapist, a paedophile and a child murderer who was on the verge of ruling this part of the galaxy under three different hats until Gersen steps in. I loved it, and I loved how it ended. ****

Already looking forward to next year. I don't know if I will aim to read a hundred books again, or if I'll do a different project, like reading all my remaining Dumarest novels, or as many Penguin 70s as I can, or a manga serial from start to finish. Something to think about! Anyway, now to finish off TQF68 and get on with some novel-writing!

#OcTBRChallenge: books 34 to 66

Pretty much on target to finish reading a hundred of my short books and quick reads this month as part of #OcTBRChallenge. Some of these books were very quick reads, so reading 66 of them hasn't really been a challenge, but it's still been fun.

New Atlantis, Lavie Tidhar (JABberwocky Literary Agency): Hundreds of years after our time, in a world still trying to recover from the damage we've been doing to it, a relatively small number of humans survive in isolated communities. Mai gets a message from an old flame who lives far away, asking for her help. The tone of this seemed much more sincere than the other Lavie Tidhar books I've read, with none of the usual ironic detachment, but I found it all very interesting. It left me with two questions: which of his other books take place in decaying time vaults (it would explain a lot!), and why do ants let us live? ****

The Alliance of the Curious, Vol. 1: Sapiens, Philippe Riche (Humanoids): An ancient relic gets everyone running around in a tizzy while the son of its erstwhile owner wanders the city, dazed and confused. This took a little while to get going, but I was getting quite interested by the end, when the Alliance of the Curious was officially formed. ***

Spider-Gwen, Vol. 4: Predators, Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez and Hannah Blumenreich (Marvel Comics): A dimension where Gwen Stacey was bitten by the radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker. In this book she's trying to get her powers back by working for an apparently evil Matt Murdoch and chasing the Lizard to Madripoor. I didn't really enioy any of this, except for when Mary-Jane beat up a creep. **

Getting Even, Woody Allen (Audible): Not quite as funny as Without Feathers, which I listened to recently. It's humorous rather than hilarious. But the epistolary chess game was superb, anticipating online life better than any science fiction novel I've read. ***

Flywires, Book 1, Chuck Austen (Humanoids): An ex-cop, called a frywire because his link to his Dyson sphere's neural net is permanently busted, gets drawn back into the action when hoodlums blow a hole in his apartment's wall, a kidnapped little kid in their hands. Nothing massively original, but there are worse ways to spend half an hour. ***

Nevertheless, She Persisted, Diana M. Pho (ed.) (Tor Books): A mostly female group of writers respond to Mitch McConnell's infamous words about Elizabeth Warren during the Jeff Sessions confirmation hearings, with very short stories that take his words as their launchpad. I didn't think they were very good, on the whole, but Catherynne Valente's story pulled it up from a two-star rating and I liked the bit in the Charlie Jane Anders story where a man made of ice climbed out of the freezer. One or two of the stories seemed to advise against persisting, if anything. ***

Conscientious Inconsistencies, Nancy Jane Moore (PS Publishing): A short collection of five stories in an expensive format, which made some careless errors stand out: people paying £25 for a 66pp book would expect a bit better. I quite enjoyed "A Mere Escutcheon", a Three Musketeers pastiche. The hero of "Homesteading" was admirable, and "Three O'Clock in the Morning" was interestingly nightmarish. ***

The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood, read by Laural Merlington (Canongate Books): A pointed interrogation of the Odyssey, from the point of view of Penelope, married to Odysseus at fifteen and left behind during his adventures, as well as that of her maids, murdered upon his return. Penelope's rivalry with Helen of Troy, which continues beyond the grave, was amusing, and the book does a good job of persuading us to read between the lines of The Odyssey. Well read by Laural Merlington, but the recording is from 2005 and the sound effect used for the chanting maids sounds very odd, as if they were aliens in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. ****

Daughters of Passion, Julia O'Faolain (Faber & Faber): A terrorist on hunger strike thinks back to her childhood, the friends she had then, and how reconnecting with them as an adult led her to this situation. ***

Solid State Tank Girl, Alan C. Martin (Titan Comics): Her kangaroo boyfriend gets sick so Tank Girl and friends go on a fantastic voyage to his gentlemanly area. Extracting the source of the illness just leads to even more trouble. The story was okay, but I haven't found any of the Tank Girl books very funny, so I think I'm missing out on one of the main things people seem to like about them. My first reaction to the art was not particularly positive, but it grew on me a lot: it's highly expressive and full of character. ***

Side Effects, Woody Allen (Audible): Another very enjoyable book of short stories and humour pieces, with the usual literary, philosophical, romantic and criminal themes. I especially enjoyed his take on UFOs, the death of Socrates, and falling in love with his partner's mother. I'm surprised the latter did not become a film. ****

A River in Egypt, David Means (Faber & Faber): An assistant art director, recently fired from what sounds like a terrible science fiction film, tries to keep his son from crying during a test for cystic fibrosis, and a nurse enters the room at a point where the father seems to have lost control. I liked this a lot. I liked the way he read acres of thought into each expression on the nurse's face, it being part of his job to encourage film viewers to read actors' faces in the same way. I also liked the title: it's not about a river in Egypt, but it is about denial. ****

By The Numbers, Book 1: Traffic in Indochina, Laurent Rullier and Stanislas (Humanoids): An accountant gets dragged into a shady deal and, what's worse, the money he was meant to hand over gets stolen. Rather than doing the sensible thing, he follows the money to French-occupied Vietnam and tries to get it back. A good story with excellent art. ****

Vardoger, Stephen Volk (Gray Friar Press): Sean and Ali check into a luxury hotel but everyone seems to think Sean was there already on his own the previous week, and he didn't behave well at all. He soon becomes convinced that he has an evil twin, one who wears a smart suit and mistreats women, and frustration turns to horror when he sees his wife leaving the hotel on that double's arm. As with the same author's The Little Gift, I'm baffled that this was nominated for a British Fantasy Award; neither feature any fantastical elements. I found the plot fairly interesting – it would have made a good episode of Inside No. 9 – and could share Sean's anguish, but he is an unpleasant character from the off, grabbing female staff by the arm and such, and it's narrated in an artless, blunt style that may reflect the way Sean sees the world but didn't make it enjoyable to read. One mystery remains at the end: what was the Frankie Goes to Hollywood song playing at the wedding party? ***

So Long, Lollipops, Sarah Lyons Fleming, read by Julia Whelan (Podium Publishing): Having, he thinks, sacrificed himself to let the rest of his group escape a zombie attack, Peter is pleasantly surprised to be rescued by a young girl. After spending some time with her group, he sets off to find his own people. It's a fairly bog-standard zombie story, and an awful lot of it is spent telling us how Peter feels about people who aren't in it. He's very sentimental about children. The reading is fairly good. ***

Stumptown, Vol. 1: The Case of the Girl Who Took Her Shampoo (But Left her Mini), Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth (Oni Press): A private eye in Portland gets herself shot, beaten up, cold-cocked and generally mistreated in the course of trying to find and protect a casino owner's missing granddaughter. Pretty good. ***

Fantastic Four by Dan Slott, Vol. 1: Fourever, Dan Slott, Sara Pichelli, Stefano Caselli, Nico Leon and Simone Bianchi (Marvel): Reed Richards and Sue Storm and a bunch of brainy kids are travelling through the dimensions created by their son, while The Thing and the Human Torch are noodling around on Earth and missing them. Felt like a contrived way of ageing up the children without breaking Marvel time, as much as anything. The eventual reunion is nicely done, though. ***

Muse, Vol. 1: Celia, Denis-Pierre Filippi and Terry Dodson (Humanoids): Coraline, a highly attractive woman with a tendency to clotheslessness, takes a job as a governess to a young boy. He turns out to be a steampunk inventor, who (although this is not confirmed by the end of the book) appears to be creating various fantasy scenarios at night in an attempt to seduce her. Overall it's rather like Beauty and the Beast if the Beast were a child. Very weird and deeply iffy. No idea why the book is called Celia. ***

Doctor Who: Short Trips, Volume I, Xanna Eve Chown (ed.) (Big Finish): Not, I think, an audio adaptation of the old BBC print anthology, but a set of new stories, one for each of the first eight Doctors. One about the Doctor and his friends encountering a civilisation for whom time passes more quickly was well done, though very similar to the Star Trek: Voyager episode with the same plot. In the second story a sculptor makes a version of Zoe out of memory meat to help the Doctor. The third Doctor repairs a bicycle. Leela gets herself killed. The story about the fifth Doctor, where Nyssa tries to fix the chameleon circuit and inadvertently creates a new species of giant whale, has a nice Hitch-Hiker's reference and was my favourite in the collection. Colin Baker writes his own story, which involves the Doctor making even more of a muddle of time than usual. Sophie Aldred narrates a story featuring Ace, and India Fisher reads one about a disastrous adventure for the eighth Doctor. I enjoyed this audiobook a lot. It had the exuberance of the old annuals. ***

The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, Zen Cho (self-published): A young female writer of Chinese descent, originally from British Malaya, is now living in 1920s London. She writes a scathing review that leads her into a relationship with the book's irritatingly handsome author, but is that what she really wants? This novella was self-published, which may explain a slight inelegance in the ebook (a line of space between each paragraph, and two unspaced hyphens instead of dashes throughout), but that's the only way in which it is below par. Geok Huay (or Jade Yeo as she is known to the English) is a highly amusing protagonist, especially in her frustration with her own feelings: she's a wind-up merchant who has wound herself up. The dialogue is funny, the romance romantic. It's a film waiting to be made. ****

Sole Survivor, Vol. 1: Atlanta–Miami, Stephane Louis, Thomas Martinetti, Christophe Martinolli and Jorge Miguel (Humanoids): Max, the only survivor of a coach crash in which his girlfriend died, has been persuaded to board an aeroplane. He recognises the pilot as the drunk driver who caused the coach to crash, and believes it is his mission to deliver justice, regardless of the consequences for anyone else. It's a fairly bog-standard madman on an aeroplane story. We never really understand why Max acts in such a demented way, and the ending seems to be predestined so it's hard to invest in what's happening. ***

Sole Survivor, Vol. 2: Bossa Nova Club, Stephane Louis, Thomas Martinetti, Christophe Martinolli and Jose Malaga (Humanoids): The sole survivor of the disaster that capped the first volume is even more demented than Max. Convinced that she has been saved for a purpose, she latches onto a pregnant girl and makes it her mission to stop the girl getting an abortion at all costs – with disastrous consequences, this time reaching their crescendo in a night club. It's rather like Final Destination, except that it's the survivor who causes all the additional deaths, rather than death's pursuit of them. ***

Sole Survivor, Vol. 3: Rex Antarctica, Stephane Louis, Thomas Martinetti, Christophe Martinolli and Jose Malaga (Humanoids): The third volume is a bit different to the first two, in that here the sole survivor of the last book's climactic disaster is deliberately trying to avoid the curse (as he sees it), rather than leaning into it. Calculating that the curse will only strike when it can kill more people than died in previous events, he only agrees to go on a boat trip since there will only be a handful of people on board. But before too much time has gone, they run into difficulties and are rescued by a cruise ship. And so the curse perks up its ears… This was probably the best of the three books. ***

Aftermath, Vol. 1: Ares, James D. Hudnall and Mark Vigouroux (Humanoids): A group of artifically-enhanced teenagers fought a successful war against alien invaders. Years later, one of them, known as Ares, is trying to write a book about it all. When a former comrade he meets is then murdered, Ares is accused of the crime. This only deepens his determination to bring the truth to light. This book wasn't helped by the kind of computer-effects colouring that made 2000 AD look so plastic a decade or two ago, and the plot feels very similar, so far, to Watchmen. None of the characters really jumped off the page. But it was an okay read. Can't really complain for 79p. ***

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Penguin Classics): It took me three and a half years to finish this 64pp book, so it won't be a surprise to say I didn't enjoy it much. My only way into it was to pretend that it was the work of a pretentious poet character in a Jack Vance book. I did like this line, though, which gets to the root of why we like social media so much: "What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own." ***

Doctor Who: Short Trips, Volume II, Xanna Eve Chown (ed.) (Big Finish Productions): Another set of stories for the first eight Doctors. Barbara and her Tardis crew get stuck in a bubble of frozen 1963, and we learn that Barbara had a lesbian aunt. The second Doctor and Victoria investigate a boy who has reinvented time travel for a science fair. The Brigadier forces the third Doctor to take a break from work, and a visit to the zoo gives Liz Shaw an insight into the Doctor's feelings about being trapped on Earth. Louise Jameson reads a fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith story, where he watches a pound coin roll around on its way to destiny. Peter Davison reads a story about a depressed widow who finds a dancing horse in her home; she quite likes it but it's a sign of a serious problem. A post-Peri sixth Doctor loses his coat, but, unfortunately, finds it again. Sophie Aldred reads a seventh Doctor and Ace adventure, where they try to stop a deadly weapon from being unleashed; she often sounds like Susan Calman when she does the Doctor's voice. Charley and the eighth Doctor visit the family left behind by someone who died during an adventure. This is a more downbeat collection than the first volume, but still enjoyable, and well-read throughout, with era-appropriate incidental music. ***

They Are Really Molluscs, Anna Cathenka (Salo Press): A chapbook of clever, amusing poetry drawing inspiration and sometimes the actual words from The Observer's Book of Sea and Seashore and its brethren. ****

The Girl With The Horizontal Walk, Andrew Hook (Salo Press): A nice little chapbook. Not sure what the title means (is it her hips swaying? or is it that Marilyn Monroe is laid out for her autopsy?), but this was an interesting story that seemed to be about an actor losing her identity through playing the role of a character who lost her identity. ***

The Book of Chaos, Vol. 1: Ante Genesem, Xavier Dorison and Mathieu Lauffray (Humanoids): After losing a colleague in the midst of making a remarkable archaeological discovery, an adventurer writes a book about his experiences. Warned to keep everything secret, he ignores the advice and New York is plunged into a nightmare. It is all very Lovecraftian, like Hellboy without the heft. ***

Warlord Of Io and Other Stories, James Turner (Slave Labor Graphics): A book reviewer asked on Twitter recently if it was a good idea to include the publisher's synopsis in their review. I said no, it's lazy and they aren't always accurate. This is a good example of that. The book's description claims that it's "the story of Jon Jett, a hero in the mold of Flash Gordon who is unstoppable and unopposable", but he doesn't appear in the book at all, except when the lead character of the main story plays a video game he stars in. It's actually the story (or the beginning of the story, since it doesn't get very far) of a young prince who gets the job of emperor when his dad retires to a brothel, told with black and white computer-generated artwork. A second story is about grumbling demons in hell, a third is about a guy who tells the truth at a job interview, and the last is about a chair complaining about the weight of its users and then getting depressed when no one else wants to sit on them. Has the feel of a book that's been scraped together from unfinished projects. **

Retina Vol. 1: Just Another Day, Benoit Riviere and Philippe Scoffoni (Humanoids): A woman is killed on the street; retina scans bring up two matches. Two sets of crooks were planning to kill her. A criminagent sees the shooting and takes the case. ***

Open Earth, Sarah Mirk, Eva Cabrera and Claudia Aguirre (Limerence Press): Scientists sent up into space twenty years ago decided to stay there, because things were getting so bad on Earth. A young woman from the first space-born generation wants to move in with a boyfriend, but is at pains to reassure everyone else that she will remain sexually available to them afterwards. That's basically it. It's really quite appalling how some of the young men respond to her. They treat her as public property, and sound like cult members, but the book seems to regard this behaviour as normal. Sexually explicit. Creepy. Not very good. **

Black Science, Vol. 2: Welcome, Nowhere, Rick Remender, Matteo Scalera and Dean White (Image Comics): A bunch of dimension-hoppers are in a world ruled by giant bugs, and trying to stay alive until the pillar that brought them there is ready to go again. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who hasn't read the previous volume – I had, and I was still quite lost as to who was who for most of it. The art was beautiful, striking and dynamic, but often quite hard to parse. ***

#OcTBRChallenge: the first 33 books

I've been trying this month to read a hundred books as part of the #OcTBRChallenge, which is where people try to reduce the size of their TBR (to-be-read) lists, or get stuck into the books they've been putting off too long. Obviously there's nothing special about reading a hundred books – almost anyone could do it in a single day if the books chosen were short enough! – but it has been good fun to really burrow through my collection. Plus, knowing that I was going to go all out with the short books in October encouraged me to be a bit more patient with longer books the rest of the year. Anyway, here are my short reviews of the first 33 books of the month.

Exo, Vol. 1, Jerry Frissen and Philippe Scoffoni (Humanoids): Aliens come to Earth and the Moon to proactively prevent the colonisation of their own planet. Decent enough, but unremarkable, and it's very much one chapter rather than a story in itself. ***

Giant Days, Vol. 13, John Allison (BOOM! Box): Good fun. Some real wisdom. I'll be sad to read the last volume but it feels like it's coming to a natural end. ****

The Lydia Steptoe Stories, Djuna Barnes (Faber & Faber): Three short stories in diary form about sexual stereotypes and the people they suffocate. I loved this book. I would get the end of a sentence, realise it hadn't said what I was expecting it to say from its shape, then double back and realise how funny it was. *****

My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism, Titania McGrath (Hachette Audio): Hilarious. I nearly fell off my chair during some chapters. You can tell how carefully the (left-wing) writer has been paying attention to the wilder reaches of Twitter, where racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying and authoritarianism thrive in what are supposed to be progressive communities. Many of Titania's most outlandishly offensive statements are things I've seen people say for real, and receive thousands of likes for doing so. Satire often involves exaggeration; here it's more a concatenation. Alice Marshall's reading is perfect. I'd love a sitcom about the character. She's like a modern-day version of Nathan Barley or Rik from The Young Ones. ****

Shaky Kane: Elephantmen and Monsters, Richard Starkings and Shaky Kane (Image): Three short stories about traumatized ex-soldiers investigating crime and horror in the big city, all drawn with verve by Shaky Kane. ***

Robert Sax Tome 01 : Nucleon 58, Rodolphe and Louis Alloing (Delcourt): A dapper Belgian garage owner finds himself drawn into international espionage. It's 1957 and Eastern bloc operatives are after the plans for a nuclear-powered car. I adored the art – it's a bit like Paul Grist drawing Tintin, if that makes sense? – and how tall panels were used throughout to showcase the architecture of Brussels. ****

The Four Horsemen: The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel C. Dennett, foreword by Stephen Fry (Transworld Digital): Fascinating discussion between four prominent atheist thinkers. It's not as if I needed to be persuaded to their point of view – I don't remember ever believing in any of the gods, except Santa Claus – but I was constantly impressed by how well they put things. I suppose that by the time of this discussion they had had a lot of practice. I thought it was interesting how often they interrupted each other, and how often they disagreed, and agreed to disagree without flying off the handle. I also liked Richard Dawkins' shout-out to The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle – I loved that novel too. If I'd read this a few years ago, I'd have been glad that in the UK religious thinking had been in retreat since their discussion took place, on the whole. Reading it now, long stretches of it could have been, with barely a word changed, a discussion between feminists on how to deal with extremists pushing the idea that the female sex doesn't exist and thus requires no protection in law from the male sex. It feels like that kind of thinking never really goes away, especially when it gives men an excuse to control women. Sam Harris makes an interesting point towards the end, that it's easier to find shared ground when focusing on specific problems rather than the broad strokes. ****

Cosmopolitan, Akhil Sharma (Faber & Faber): The attractive neighbour of a lonely retiree asks to borrow his lawnmower. He makes a grab for her in the garage but is fortunate in that she is receptive rather than outraged. A relationship develops between them, and the question is whether it's the kind of relationship he thinks he wants. He is not the most sympathetic of protagonists, but it's a well-written story that reveals his character, and develops it, in a variety of subtle ways. ****

Terres Lointaines, episode 1, Leo and Icar (Dargaud): A young man searching for his father is taken under the claw of an intelligent crustacean, Stepanerk (the chap on the cover). To reach the right continent, they join an archaeological expedition, the goal of which is to discover what happened to the previous inhabitants of this planet. Stepanerk was the character who made this book for me: he considers everything in terms of whether it is interesting or annoying, which was often amusing, and his spidey-sense was a fine way of creating tension, by letting the reader know something bad was about to happen without telling us what it was. ***

Dalek Attack: Blockade and Other Stories, Terry Nation et al. (BBC Audio): Five stories about people who get into trouble with the Daleks, on Earth and elsewhere, plus some other bits and bobs about the trundling terrors. The stories aren't terribly good, but the readings are, and I enjoyed listening to it. Matthew Waterhouse sounds uncannily like Colin Baker, and it was a surprise to learn that Davros can read minds! ***

John Wick, Vol. 1, Greg Pak and Giovanni Valletta (Dynamite Comics): Decent prequel to the films, showing John Wick's introduction to the world of the Continental. ***

Monsieur Jean, Part 1: The Singles Theory, Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian (Humanoids): Imagine Friends, set in Paris, and drawn in the style of H.A. Rey. I thought it was charming. ****

An Elegy for Easterly, Petina Gappah (Faber & Faber): A sad story about the last days of a Zimbabwean shanty town, very well told. ****

Child of the Storm, Vol. 1: Blood Stones, Manuel Bichebois and Didier Poli (Humanoids Inc): A newborn child is found in the forest, still attached by the umbilical cord to his dead mother, who had apparently been struck by lightning. Raised by the hunter who found him, Laith's peculiar reaction to storms draws attention, and once his abilities reveal themselves powerful people beyond the village begin to pay attention. A decent enough book, without being at all remarkable. ***

The Art of the Boys, Darick Robertson (Dynamite Entertainment): The covers for all the issues of The Boys, plus those of the mini-series that came out during the original run, with preliminary sketches for each cover and brief plot synopses. Probably makes more sense as a physical object; with a digital copy you might as well be browsing the covers on Comixology. Interesting to read that Adam McKay was trying to make it into a film but all the studios turned him down. Wonder if they regret that now it's the biggest thing on television? ***

Do Not Pass Go, Joel Lane (Nine Arches Press): Five short stories, all featuring a crime or two, and set in and around Birmingham. They're all pretty short, so there isn't much mystery, it's more about mood, and overall it makes a pretty good argument for staying at home after bedtime. ***

James Bond: Hammerhead, Andy Diggle and Luca Casalanguida (Dynamite Entertainment): A straightforward but reasonably entertaining adventure for a ruthlessly violent Bond, with him getting into bother at an arms fair. ***

The Dynamite Art of Alex Ross, Alex Ross (Dynamite Entertainment): Lots of amazing artwork, some from comics I've read and loved, like Kirby Genesis, others from comics I didn't even know existed. His style is as stunning as ever, and his talent for revitalising old characters is as remarkable as Alan Moore's, but by the end you do wish he would do fewer covers and more interiors. It's as if the world's greatest actor just appeared on film posters rather than appearing in the films. ****

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television, Koren Shadmi (Life Drawn): An excellent biography of the man who created... The Twilight Zone. Shows us his experiences in World War II, his battles with the network censors, and how unfaithful he was to his wife. Brilliantly drawn. ****

The Fantastic Voyage of Lady Rozenbilt, Vol. 1: The Baxendale Cruise, Pierre Gabus and Romuald Reutimann (Humanoids): A book about the people on an airship, some very rich, others very poor, some human, others not. It's weirdly short, apparently due to it being from a French album that has been sliced in two, and entirely unsatisfying to read on its own. ***

Drifting Dragons, Vol. 1, Taku Kuwabara (Kodansha Comics Digital-First!): A crew hunts dragons in their airship; the similarities to whaling make it a rather uncomfortable read. Some of the characters are quite engaging and the art offers some impressive views of the sky and the dragons that live there – at least until our heroes slaughter them without mercy, even the babies. ***

Black Widow, Volume 1: S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Most Wanted, Mark Waid and Chris Samnee (Marvel): Someone knows Black Widow's secrets and blackmails her into stealing intelligence from SHIELD. A pretty good action adventure that seems (from the trailer) to be the inspiration for Black Widow's first solo film. ***

Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery, Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece (Dark Horse Books): A light-skinned black journalist goes undercover in the American South to gather evidence of lynchings. It's getting too dangerous now people know he's out there, but just as he's getting ready to take a desk job his own brother is thrown in jail for a crime he didn't commit, and a mob is gathering outside. It's a very good book, surprisingly funny in places, that burns with its purpose: making sure those crimes against humanity are never forgotten. ****

Without Feathers, Woody Allen (Audible): A very funny audiobook collecting various humorous pieces by Woody Allen, which begins by announcing that it was to "be published posthumously or after his death, whichever comes first", and continues in a similar vein. A striking feature was how often I would be in the middle of a sentence laughing at one thing, and then a twist at the end of the sentence would send me laughing in a different direction. Terrific. I'm so glad Audible got him to record these audiobooks. ****

Moon Face, Vol. 1: The Wave Tamer, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Francois Boucq (Humanoids): Gigantic waves hit the coastline regularly and various groups of lunatics handle it in different ways. Into this situation comes a young man with a flat face and the ability to heal from bullet wounds. It's okay, but I do get tired of how pretty much every Jodorowsky book features sexual violence against women. ***

Living with the Dead: A Zombie Bromance, Mike Richardson and Ben Stenbeck (Dark Horse Books): Two blokey blokes who survived the zombie apocalypse find their friendship tested when they encounter an attractive and boisterous woman. Quite entertaining but I wasn't sure what to make of the ending. ***

What Is Existentialism? Simone de Beauvoir (Penguin Classics): Felt like a bait and switch given that "What Is Existentialism?" was only six pages long and basically said it's too hard to explain in so little space. The rest of it was interesting but reminded me of reading a Camille Paglia book a while back – the snappy individual sentences tended towards the aphoristic, but I couldn't tell what they were supposed to add up to. In several places it asserted things that were blatantly untrue in the course of a making an argument. ***

The Arrest, Jonathan Lethem (Ecco): A pleasant post-apocalyptic enclave is disturbed by the arrival of a blowhard in his supercar. Full review to follow. ****

Ms Ice Sandwich, Mieko Kawakami (Pushkin Press): A Japanese boy is fascinated by the ice-cool woman who sells sandwiches in a supermarket. When he becomes friendly with a girl in his class (one so cool she can act out the entire gunfight from Heat) his fascination with Ms Ice Sandwich becomes at first a roadblock and then a joint endeavour. A very sweet and tender portrait of a child who feels adrift. ****

The Originals, Dave Gibbons (Dark Horse): I can't see the art of Dave Gibbons without being six years old again and wowed by his work in Doctor Who Weekly. This story of sci-fi mods and rockers looks as good as his work always does, and if it isn't one of his all-time classic works it's still well worth reading. ***

Brussli: Way of the Dragon Boy, Vol. 1: The Conqueror, Jean-Louis Fonteneau and J. Etienne (Humanoids): A little boy found in an egg is raised by a kindly couple as if he were their own. He's a bit funny-looking and gets teased a lot, but when the village faces danger he will show his bravery. The art is gorgeous, like cells from a hand-drawn animated film, and Brussli and the friends he makes are very charming to read about. ***

The Last Ones, Vol. 1: Exodus, David Munoz and Manuel Garcia (Humanoids): A children's book illustrator found herself in charge of a bunch of children when the apocalypse and then the vampires struck. As they try to reach safety a new ally offers his help, but he's a bit long in the tooth, if you get my meaning. Kind of like The Walking Dead but with vampires, this didn't blow me away but it was a decent start. ***

The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark (Canongate Books): A wonderful book, full of humour and character, about the women living together in a London hostel in the period after World War II. I did not expect such a nerve-wracking ending! It is read to perfection by Juliet Stevenson, who even sings at one point, something I always love in audiobooks. *****