Recommended Reading List

As it says in the title... this is just a bunch of stuff I've read and would happily recommend to anyone with similar interests etc...

THIS EDIT: FEBRUARY 2011

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BOOKS:

Fifth Business - Robertson Davies - authors site [link]
The Rebel Angels - Robertson Davies
Outside the Dog Museum - Jonathan Carroll - authors site [link]
American Gods - Neil Gaiman - authors site [link]
Knowledge Of Angels - Jill Paton Walsh - [link]
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - authors site [link]
The Forgetting Room - Nick Bantock - authors site [link]

...and,

The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes - Stephen Marlowe
The Good Fairies of New York - Martin Millar (though I would recommend anything by Martin Millar really)
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
Baltazar and Blimunda - Jose Saramago
Grendel - John Gardener
the "Bob Howard/Laundry" series - Charles Stross (and his excellent Halted State for you techies) - a great blogger too [link]
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut
Long John Silver - Bjorn Larsson
The Wandering Jew - Stephan Heym
Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Three Musketeers/Ten Years After - Alexander Dumas
Iron Council - China Meiville (any of his books also)
Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges
Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd
The Alienist - Caleb Carr
The Falls - Ian Rankin
The three-volume historical epic "The Baroque Cycle" (the individual novels being; Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) - Neal Stephenson
The Last Kingdom & The Pale Horseman - Bernard Cornwell

… all the Felix Castor novels by Mike Carey
… any of the “Rebus” novels by Ian Rankin
... any of the Henry Gresham stories by Martin Stephen
... any of the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard
... any of the "Sharpe", "Grail Quest" and "Warlord" novels - Bernard Cornwell
...anything from the Burke series of novels by Andrew Vachss [link]
...anything by Joe R. Lansdale, in particular the "Hap and Leonard" novels (this is the guy that wrote Bubba Ho Tep, the novella not the movie).

... and pretty much anything and everything by Jonathan Carroll and Robertson Davies & the great H.P Lovecraft...


(If you don't know Cornwell's work you can check out his site here [link] )

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COMICS:

Heartbreak Soup - Gilbert Hernandez' beautiful piece of magic-realist fiction, heartbreaking and life affirming... I must read this once a year... [link] (Hey, let's face it, pretty much anything from the "Love & Rockets" stable by the Hernandez Bros. is worth checking out).

Hellboy - Mike Mignola (colours by the amazing Dave Stewart) the most beautifully designed set of books on my shelves - Aw hell, just read anything, seriously anything to do with Mignola... treat yourself.

Logicomix - Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna - "Covering a span of sixty years, Logicomix was inspired by the epic quest for the Foundations of Mathematics. This was a heroic intellectual adventure most of whose protagonists paid the price of knowledge with extreme personal suffering and even insanity. The role of narrator is given to philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell. It is through his eyes that the plights of such great thinkers as Frege, Hilbert, Poincaré, Wittgenstein and Gödel come to life" - [link] - An amazing book, really worth your attention, read it alongside Neal Stephenson's "The System of the World" if you want to bend your head right out of shape...

All Over Coffee - Paul Madonna

Feynman - written by Jim Ottaviani and so simply (and brilliantly) illustrated by Leland Myrick

Journalism - Joe Sacco

Finder - Carla Speed McNeil [link]

Goliath - Tom Gauld

Wet Moon 1, 2 & 3 (series of graphic novels) - Ross Campbell

Maus – Art Spiegelman [link]

A Contract with God - Will Eisner

Dork - Evan Dorkin (Big laughs and yucks from the House of Fun) [link]

Cages - Dave McKean [link]

Why I Hate Saturn - Kyle Baker

Maakies - Tony Millionaire [link] Ahh, Drinky Crow! Thou art my role model...

Powers – Bendis/Avon Oeming [link] (also check out Oeming's work on "Hammer of the Gods" if you like your Norse/Viking stuff).

Saga - written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Fiona Staples.

Desolation Jones, Made in England - Warren Ellis, why no more of this Marlow-esque hard-boiled genius happened I have no idea...

Blacksad - created by Spanish authors Juan Díaz Canales (writer) and Juanjo Guarnido (artist).

BPRD and Associated "Hellboy" universe titles - Various

Hawkeye - Matt Fraction & David Aja

Age of Bronze - Eric Shanower [link]

Cerebus - Dave Sim (I am Cerebus - at least I can empathise with, and see parallels, with him until the end of "Form and Void" ... sad but true) [link] [link]

…and pretty much anything written by Mark Carey [link] particularly his "Lucifer" and "Hellblazer" for DC (the best guy in the field right now for fantasy based gritty comics, they're also re-releasing his "Inferno" work for Calibre I believe).

I'm going to add the link to Suture's Essential Graphic Novel list here too (I believe they are going to update it or add a "part 2" at some point) - [link]

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You can find my movie recommendations elsewhere in my galleries on DA.

h.