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Yours Truly, Pierre Stone - Sam Bain

For the Jed Maxwell in your life.

Written by one of the creators of Peep Show, and endorsed by Ricky Gervais, you know that this is going to be filled with biting observation and dark humour.  In this quick read the titular Pierre Stone writes letters to his favourite television presenter, offering her compliments, commenting on her attire, and generally telling her about his life.  He assumes that she will take as much interest in him as he does in her.  However, he comes to realise that she never once writes back.  At first he thinks that the machinations of the TV company are working to prevent her ever seeing his letters, but soon becomes convinced that she is reading and wilfully ignoring his communication.  How is that any way to treat your most ardent and loyal fan? Part cutting satire, part warning on the dangers of obsession, part reminder that the folks we see on screen are human afterall, flawed individuals with an audience.

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Call of the Wild - Guy Grieve

As Grieve explains the intricacies of proper Arctic latrine maintenance (because the horrors of dealing with “poo stalagmites” are only truly revealed once the thaw begins), you may lose the romanticism of adventure and wanderlust.  However, at the current time, maybe not having to constantly worry about every surface you touch and every person you come into contact with, living in fear of an unseen threat (and instead worrying about the more primal risk of your food attracting bears) may still hold some attraction. Grieve, worn down by the hum-drum, embarks to spend a year nearly completely alone in the Alaskan wilderness, learning skills from the indigenous people before building his own cabin away from civilisation and going solo.  What his wife and two young children think about this is not really explored in depth, but what is is his newfound admiration for the people to whom this is the everyday, and a reassessment of, and appreciation for, the things that truly matter to him (the wife and kids do get a look-in here!).  He doesn’t shy away from when times are tough, nor his joy when his persistence in the face of multiple failures finally pays off, and there is much to enjoy in this tribute to the hard work needed for the simple life.

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Daredevil - Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev

Mainstream superhero comics are a transient artform.  Writers and artists come and go, and the quality and direction ebb and flow with these changes.  When Bendis and Maleev came to Daredevil he was a fringe character who hadn’t really been given a fair shake since Frank Miller.  As such they were pretty much left to their own devices to explore the character in his own bubble.  Bendis is a tremendous plotter, putting things in place that won’t pay off for months, or even years to come.  This consistency in narrative and creators led to one of, if not the greatest story arcs in all of Marvel.  Passing the baton to Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark, who were worthy successors (and in any other situation would be the dream team for a character like this) they elevated The Man Without Fear to a major player and a must-read, and paved the way for the Netflix series’.

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Morbid Curiosities - Paul Gambino

One of the best ways to discover the true human condition is through our fringe interests.  How better to understand the leaps and bounds we’ve made in medicine than by looking through a collection of quack devices from the past?  We can shine a light into the darkest parts of our person by perusing the ephemera of human freakshows.  Every oddity here has a reason and a purpose, be they educational, documenting personal history, or celebrating life and death.  Gorgeous photos and great biographies and interviews with the curators of these curious collections.

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Science Tales: Lies, Hoaxes and Scams - Darryl Cunningham

Misinformation and anti-science are rife these days, be it the perennial denial of global warming, or the stubbornly persistent hogwash of the supposed link between vaccinations and autism.  But these topics can be quite tricky to get your head around (although the two I mention can be distilled down to “it definitely is a thing” and “it definitely isn’t a thing” respectively!), so here are some entertaining, informative and most of all thoroughly clear and digestible short comics that get across their points in a way that everyone should understand.  Love this, and always turn to it to convey things in a more measured and methodical manner than I could.

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Nietzsche and the Burbs - Lars Iyer

Drawn in by both cover and title, I’ve loved what I’ve read of this.  The dialogue is sharp and characters well realised.  The titular Burbs, disaffected sixth formers who think themselves unremarkable compared to their peers (who have some identifier that grants them an advantage in teenage society, be that through looks, or fiscal security, or sexuality), but also somehow better than them.  They latch onto the new kid in class, who seems the epitome of their nihilistic and intellectual ideal, dubbing him Nietzsche, and propelling him to the forefront of their metal band in the hope that he will drag them to a level of higher understanding, or at least help them from their malaise.  A satire of the highest order.

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Transfer of Power - Vince Flynn

I always describe this as “Die Hard in the White House”, an action thriller that will keep you turning pages and reading chapters long after you planned to put it down.  The Mitch Rapp novels are great what I like to call “train books”, fast-paced enough for the time to fly, but not so lowbrow that literary snobs will look down on you.  With this and “The Third Option”, Flynn staked his claim to being a worthy successor to Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy.

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Nomad - Alan Partridge

If you can, don’t read this book.  Listen to it.  Coogan’s delivery adds so much to the experience.  Admittedly, the book is pretty good regardless (as is the preceding book, “I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan), so I still recommend it.  Face it, if you know Alan Partridge you’re doing the voice (badly) in your head anyway.  Part travelogue, part memoir, part putting the world to rights, and  always guaranteed to raise a wry smile.  Jacka-nacka-nory.

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Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town - Cory Doctorow

Alan discovers that his neighbour has a secret - She sprouts wings from her back, and every few months her abusive boyfriend hacks them off.  She only stays with him because she believes nobody else will understand her predicament.  But Alan understands more than she’d know.  His father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine, and among his brothers are a set of nesting dolls (some of whom are starving to death, because the littlest brother is missing).  Oh, and the main plot of the book is Alan’s quest to blanket Toronto with free Wi-Fi. Surreal, but thoroughly enjoyable.  If the premise above intrigues you then you’ll be rewarded.  If it turns you off, at least now you know.  That’s the beauty of an extremely left-field synopsis.

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Transmetropolitan - Warren Ellis & Darick Robertson

Spider Jerusalem, a cyber-punk Hunter S. Thompson, left The City and retreated to a hermetic existence in a mountain hideaway.  Dragged back into the madness by an incomplete publishing contract, he dedicates himself to fighting the corruption and abuse through his articles in The Word, the largest newspaper. Originally published in the late 90s, this comic shows tremendous prescience, with trans rights (in this case transhuman - individuals wanting to splice their DNA with alien genetics), police brutality, political corruption and warmongering, the cult of personality over sound policy (erstwhile Bush and Blair, now Trump and Johnson), all predicted in this “alternative” future.  At times sleazy, at others scary, but mostly darkly hilarious and well told. Some of the subject matter, imagery and language skews towards the more adult, so 15+ 

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All My Friends Are Superheroes - Andrew Kaufman

A novella that is definitely a one sitting experience.  Tom, a normal man, loves The Perfectionist, a superheroine.  At their wedding her jealous (and evil) ex hypnotizes her to believe that Tom is invisible.  Some time later she is sure that she has been left in the lurch, and sets off to start a new life.  Sat beside her on the plane, Tom has until they land to prove to her that he is still with her.  A sweetly humorous take on the common romance story that is easy to fall in love with.

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Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

One of several volumes of at times hilarious memoirs of Sedaris’ varied life, from having a speech therapist forced upon him during his youth in North Carolina, to coming face to face with the twin daemons of recreational drugs and conceptual performance art in a less than stellar college experience, to his father’s proclivity for hiding food in his pockets.  Every story is told with an acerbic wit, and a level of sarcasm more associated with writers from this side of the Atlantic.  My favourite though is “Remembering My Childhood on the Continent of Africa”, which I won’t spoil here, but contains the blackest of humour.  Another dip in when you can, or devour in one sitting book.

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Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne

An adventure classic that I was first introduced to at a young age, by an anthropomorphic lion, in the “Around the World, with Willy Fog” cartoon.  This took several liberties with the plot and characters, but intrigued me enough to take out a children’s edition from the local library, and finally read the original novel some years later.  If you want something to get you into reading pre-20th century literature this is a great place to start.  Short enough to not be intimidating, with a clear premise, and a plot that propels you through the book.  This isn’t quite as fantastical as some of Verne’s other voyages, so is a good gateway to the 19th century novel. 

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Killing Floor - Lee Child

Introducing Jack Reacher, drifter, former military cop, and righter of various wrongs.  This is the first of 20+ novels featuring the thinking woman’s brute, as he applies his brains and his fists to a menagerie of mysteries. Getting off a bus a small American town on a whim, to see the last resting place of a blues musician, Reacher finds that things aren’t as they seem, and that this place he has never visited before may hit pretty close to home. A very easy read, these are the books that I revisit when I’ve not found the time to sit down with a book for a while.  Fast-paced, hard-hitting, action-packed, but with some smarts underneath, Child has many imitators (there’s a hilarious in-book spat with one of the most blatant derivatives), but few if any betters.

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Local - Brian Wood & Ryan Kelly

Written as a series of vignettes, each of the twelve chapters can be read as a standalone short story, or as part of a greater narrative charting the life of a girl called Megan.  She travels from town to town across North America, trying to find her place, geographically, socially and emotionally.  Sometimes she’s the “lead” in the story, sometimes she’s just a “player” in someone else’s drama, but such is life.  I love the art style too.  There’s a cluttered detail to it that makes the world seem all the more real, something it would’ve been very easy to skip over to the book’s detriment.  Not all comics need superheroes and explosions, and this is a perfect example of an intimate story told brilliantly.

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Severed - Frances Larson

I love a quirky history books, and if there’s a touch of the macabre then all the better!  This is certainly a book that will raise eyebrows if you’re seen reading it on the bus, but you should at least keep a seat to yourself!  This could also definitely be a book you can dip into on a whim, to learn about US troops adorning their tanks with their defeated enemies, or why Oliver Cromwell’s head was not buried until the 1960s, via medical specimens and the French Revolution.  For kooks and academics alike.

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All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy

A novel far more rugged than the title suggests.  The bucolic life of 16 year old John Grady Cole is uprooted when his grandfather passes away, and the family farm put up for sale.  He sets off towards Mexico, with his friend in tow, preferring the life of a cowboy to the gentrification of town.  What follows is a brutal dissection of the immature romantic view of the Wild West, of the swashbuckling gunslinger and the girl that will give up all she knows for the love of a humble and noble man.  By no means the most bloody or bleak of McCarthy’s work, and all the better for it, if you can get on board with his writing style this is a great little book.