You asked for it so here’s my recommendations for rainy Sunday’s or nice beaches or just cos reading is nice…in no particular order:

1. Christine – Stephen King

Synopsis

Arnie Cunningham is a teenager in 70′s America, nerdy, hampered by terrible acne & a social misfit. His best friend is Dennis, popular, football playing Jock who spends his time at school looking out for Arnie. Until Arnie finds Christine…a 1958 Plymouth Fury, a rusty old car as unloved & ugly as Arnie himself feels. Gradually Arnie begins to change, his obsession with Christine turning into something more…

Review

Christine was the first Stephen King book I ever read, at the age of 13 on an awful holiday in Wales. Being stuck in a grey, unfriendly place & being an awkward teenager probably helped me relate far more to Arnie & his desire to stop being the outsider, his desire just to fit in, than I would’ve had reading it by a pool in Spain. Stephen King recently said that his aim with his books wasn’t to scare you but to grab you emotionally & the fear comes from your love of these characters & not wanting terrible things to happen to them. For me, Christine is an emotional rollercoaster & perfectly sums up the feeling of being a teenager & the huge changes you go through while growing up, the mistakes you make along the way & how everything seems monumentally important when you’re 16.

2. Anno Dracula – Kim Newman

Synopsis

Victorian London in the 1890′s, the Queen is in mourning for the loss of her beloved Albert however she has a new man in her life, a Carpathian Prince recently arrived from Transylvania & is now the ruler of England & the Empire. Meanwhile in the East End of London, women are being murdered by a vicious killer the press have dubbed Jack The Ripper…

Review

From a premise that sounds so cheesy it has mice running from Australia to get at it, this What If? sequel to Dracula is an amazing piece of work! Fun, interesting, slightly mad but all put together so well you have to be impressed by Kim Newman’s nerve in writing such a bold, ballsy novel. Taking in every Victorian cliche you can think of, throwing in every Victorian literary character from Sherlock Holmes to Dracula himself but still retaining a nice tongue in cheek touch, the book zooms along at an incredible pace. There were 2 sequels but sadly they don’t have the sheer drive & imagination of Anno Dracula so if you do enjoy it, approach the others with caution.

3. Watchmen – Alan Moore

Synopsis

Who killed The Comedian? A right wing, American sponsored meta-human dies but who has the strength & power to kill a superhero? Following the investigations of Rorsach, the members of The Watchmen are gradually pulled out of their tired, middle aged lives to re-examine what it really means to be a superhero & face what they did in the past for their country & also what they may have to do in the future.

Review

Before Heroes came along there was Watchmen. The biggest inspiration on Hiro, Peter Petrelli et al is this study of the nature of superheros, the mentality required to put on a silly outfit & fight crime while examining the psycology of the individuals involved. Along with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen was the biggest influence on the superhero genre which we see today in movies & now on TV. It is a graphic novel in the truest sense, it’s a novel that just happens to be told with pictures along with words but don’t mistake it for a fluffy comic book, this is serious writing with a huge dilemma behind it which is relevent now more than when it was written in the 1980′s. Strong, solid characters & an unlikable central character pull you in to the mystery while dropping clues that you will miss until you read it a second time. Don’t be scared that it’s a graphic novel, if only there were other writers who could carry a story like Alan Moore!

4. Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman

Synopsis

Richard Mayhew is an ordinary guy, Scottish by birth but living in London with a dull 9-5 job & a fiancee he’s having serious doubts over. His view of life is changed forever when a mysterious girl named Door begs him for help & things take a turn for the very weird as he is pulled into Neverwhere, a parallel London filled with Angels, demons & some very unsavoury characters.

Review

You’ll never look at London again in the same way. A brilliant concept of an underground city, the true meaning of strange place names that seem to litter the Capital & which reads almost like the Brothers Grimm on acid. Although not a traditional fantasy novel, Neverwhere is full of archetypes of the genre all set against a modern, recognisable London. You can imagine Neil Gaiman riding around on the tube & seeing these places which kicks off something in his vivid imagination, a simple idea but handled expertly.

5. Strangers – Dean Koontz

Synopsis

All strangers, all having visions of the Moon, all dealing with their sanity slipping away from them but seemingly all have something in common, a mystery which brings them together from across America to a small Diner in the Arizona desert.

Review

A genuine mystery novel which keeps you turning the pages as you get to know the characters & how they are dealing with the strange visions of the Moon. Slightly creepy in places but as with most of Dean Koontz’s books, very readable despite being quite huge. The eventual revelation of what happened to these people is not disappointing. Hard to review without giving too much away!

6. Rainbow Six – Tom Clancy

Synopsis

An elite team of Special Forces soldiers from across the World are brought together as a counter terrorism unit, to undertake the Black Ops work that no one country could possibily undertake on their own.

Review

The kind of book your Dad would read on holiday when you were a kid but as we’re all around that age now anyway perfect for us. I’d never read a Tom Clancy novel until I read this so wasn’t quite sure what to expect. If you’ve never read one of his books either, just imagine a more right wing version of 24 but where violence is always the answer & you should strike hard & first in any given situation. Full of almost pornographic descriptions of military hardware & big, macho soldiers it still maintains a solid, often complex story as they train & then begin to go on missions. A different read for me but i really enjoyed it, was torn between recommending this or Executive Decision, only plumping for this one as it’s a one-off novel while Executive Decision is another in the line of Jack Ryan novels & you’d probably have to read the previous books to get the most out of it. It is very good though.

7. Domain – James Herbert

Synopsis

A perfect Summers day in London is shattered as a nuclear bomb explodes in the sky above Hyde Park, destroying most of the city in an instant but leaving a few shocked, battered survivors fighting to stay alive in the ruins. Then come the rats…

Review

The first few chapters describing the explosion & the effects it has on various characters is a great piece of writing, probably the best James Herbert has ever done. The aftermath with the survivors pulling together & facing the dangers that the end of Cilivilisation would undoubtadly bring about is really the meat of the story however the introduction of the rats ramps everything up a notch. Quite gory in places but never scary, it is a strong, interesting story although has a bit of a cop out ending.

8. The Great & Secret Show – Clive Barker

Synopsis

Magic is power & reality is mallable, with the right knowledge it can be twisted & torn apart. With vast, ancient demons trapped just beyond reality one man decides he wants to bring them back.

Review

This is the book where Clive Barker stopped being a horror author & threw himself into Fantasy, although a dark, gritty fantasy featuring demons made of shit & semen for a start…nice. Grounded in the “real” world but with an underbelly of strange, powerful characters, the book builds into a classic fight between two mages in the heart of modern America but with the entire World at stake. Clive Barker has a great trick of making up words that seem so natural that you’re sure you’ve read them somewhere before & this really helps with the magical elements of the story, magic for women coming from the Menstruum for example. There was a sequel but it was rubbish.

9. The Talisman – Stephen King & Peter Straub

Synopsis

Jack Sawyers Mother is dying of Cancer in a lonely, grubby Hotel on the East Coast of America. His Father died years before & his creepy Uncle is pursuing Jack’s Mother for his own reasons. A meeting with a mysterious man opens Jack’s eyes up to his Destiny & the unique ability he has to flip between America & a parallel America called The Territories, filled with faces & people he knows but who have a different, yet parallel, life.

Review

A joint novel by two authors but it’s hard to work out who wrote what so gels together nicely. Jack’s confusion when he begins flipping, as it’s called in the book, between Worlds is nicely believable & the quest he undertakes to save his Mother who is also the dying Queen of the Territories has an emotional impact. The boy who began his journey certainly isn’t the same boy who finishes it & the character of Wolf, his companion on the trip, is just brilliant. Quite a dark fantasy novel overall but it’s very different from either of the writers previous work.

10. 1984 – George Orwell

Synopsis

A story about Government & the State, the control of it’s people & the effect on one man.

Review

Universally known but probably not as widely read, this is the definitive take on a dystopian future with a facist, all controlling Government. Maybe you were made to read it at school but it’s worth re-visiting & scarily predictive, the background of the ongoing war against an unseen enemy & the control it gives to the Government is extremly relevent. However, where I personnally differ from most takes on this book is that I find it quite funny. I think it’s been woefully misrepresented from how George Orwell meant it to be taken, it’s a satire, with one disaster after another affecting John Smith until it builds to his encounters in Room 101. Keep this in mind if you do read it.

Ok, that’s me, obviously have all of these books if you fancy a read so just let me know.