No, it wasn’t good, it was bloody terrible, but I watched it when I barely knew what anime was and it got me into watching decent stuff, so if it can do that for someone else then it’s fine by me.

No, it wasn’t good, it was bloody terrible, but I watched it when I barely knew what anime was and it got me into watching decent stuff, so if it can do that for someone else then it’s fine by me.

The best anime I’ve watched to date. Visually beautiful and with a particularly interesting plot. Strong characterisation and character design makes for an anime which was a total joy to watch.

The last arc had obvious…aspects(I’m sure you can guess what (who?) I mean) missing which made me like it a little less, but the last episode more than made up for this- it’s not a real gripe, more a fangirlish whine.

I loved this anime, there need to be more like it.

Seriously my favourite anime ever. (well… this and Death Note. Eclectic, ney?)

I loved Hot Fuss with a passion (I bought it when they were new and unknown on a whim, so very glad I did, and fell in love) so when I heard Sam’s Town was coming, I bought it pretty much immediately.

On first listening I was incredibly disappointed, as it seemed like everything I’d liked from Hot Fuss was gone, the sharpness, the edgness was missing. It took me several months before I found myself wanting to listen to one of the songs. I ended up letting it play in the background while I was painting one day and listened to the whole album through 2 or 3 times. From there I suddenly started hearing it differently and it’s really developed into a favourite. It’s a very different sound to Hot Fuss, there are still some things which don’t quite work- it seems to me that they’re trying to sound kind of… emo in some of the tracks (think Bright Eyes or Dashboard Confessional) but on the whole it’s a more mature album, with a lot more of a studio feel, which is both good and bad.

Personal favourite tracks are probably the title track- “Sam’s Town”, the Interlude and “This river is wild” Some twiddly little lyrical moves coupled with awesome guitar (as ever) makes for some pretty sweet songs. (that whole “I still remember Grandma Dixie’s wake, I’d never really known anybody that died before/ Red White and Blue upon a birthday cake, my brother he was born on the fourth of July” line really sings out to me as pure awesome for some reason- something in Brandon’s voice is just perfect here.)

It’s a grower, but definitely work taking the effort over in my opinion.

It’s been so long since I read this and I really want to again. This was my first taste of Gaiman, who served as the perfect foil to Pratchett who at the time I was entirely too enamoured with. I can’t believe it took me almost 2 years to read more Gaiman and almost as long to get a little bored of Pratchett (After 2869 books he’s beginning to wear me down, I haven’t read his last like…5 novels, because to be honest they just appeared out of nowhere; I thought I’d leave one for a month or so, maybe wait till it was in paperback or something, and the next thing I knew he’d written 90876 more.)

Anyway, wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, funny and just…intriguing. Good stuff, I thought- my first foray into anything quite like this (and led me onto Robert Rankin and all the strange quirks that lie therein. Dance of the Voodoo handbag indeed.)

Anyway, give it a go- if you don’t like it you can always put it down :P

My favourite Gaiman so far!

True enough, very very similar to Anansi boys, but about 1000 times better. I preferred Neverwhere, but I still loved this book. Shadow and Wednesday are the perfect anti-heroes, you can’t help but love them through all of their varied and multiduninous flaws.

Oh, I loved this book, really I did. Probably the first piece of Steam-Punk fiction I’ve ever read. It was a total wildcard when I bought it, I just saw it on a table in the bookshop and thought it looked interesting so I bought it. I’m so glad I did- definitely, definitely worth reading.

I bought this book last year at the Cheltenham Literature festival after hearing Will give a lecture/reading- he was an absolutely amazing speaker, and I think pretty much everyone in the audience felt a desperate need to buy his book afterwards (he was actually one of the speakers I had no particular opinion on and ended up being the best of the weekend, sadly the person I most looked forward to (Vic Reeves) was incredibly dry and very, very dull- shows that we should always try new things, even if we’re not sure we’ll like them, eh?)

Afterwards I went up to get my book signed and had a gloriously long chat with Will and he signed my book with this great big long personal epithet, an entire paragraph which still makes me feel all swimmy when I read it.

Unfortunately, almost exactly a year later I’ve still only read the first 50/100 pages. Sad, really- I can still hear the voices he used for all the characters when he was reading (honestly, it was awesome, his voice for Runty at the beginning- pure gold.), but I just never got into it. I still intend to read it, and I will, someday, there’s been many a day when, gazing over my bookshelf for something I HAVEN’T read a thousand times, my eyes graze the cover of this book, but I think it’s something I’m just going to need to feel a stab of inspiration to read.

I’ll probably end up packing it in a suitcase one day when I know I’m going on a particularly lazy holiday, which is shockingly bad behaviour towards any book, but perhaps the only way I will be able to get into it. (and I do want to.)