It’s the height of the Vietnam war and Nick Fury has gotten himself captured by the Vietcong. Fury being Fury, he knows all about the CIA’s massive drug-smuggling operation and they can’t afford for that knowledge to potentially leak. The CIA needs a mindless, efficient killing machine to take him out, just in case - who else but Frank Castle? Time for him to… Get Fury!
With Germany’s surrender in May 1945, the war was over for some of the Allied soldiers in Europe who returned home. Like Ralph’s dad, who was physically maimed in a flamethrower attack, but also mentally broken - what we call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder today and was called shell shock at the time. And though the family unit is restored, the experiences of war have changed Ralph’s dad - forever.
Jacob Finch Bonner, a once promising novelist whose career has now flatlined, is resigned to being a humble writing teacher. Then he meets a cocky student convinced that he has a can’t-fail novelistic plot that’ll make him rich and famous. Jake reads a fragment of the novel but hears the plot in full during their only one-to-one. Years pass, and Jake learns that his student never did write his incredible novel - because he died mere months after telling Jake the full story. Jake decides to realise his student’s plot but without crediting him - which does in fact finally make Jake a bestselling author. Except now he’s getting messages from a mysterious person online threatening to expose Jake’s theft to the world. Who is this person and how do they know his secret? The plot unfolds…
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book and been at a total loss as to describe what the story was or who any of the characters were, but that’s entirely the case with Cain’s Jawbone!
Old age, eh? That’s kinda the theme for this collection of short stories by Sarth Ifrikan writer JM Coetzee.The Pole is the longest story here, taking up nearly two-thirds of the book. An elderly Polish pianist falls for a slightly younger Spanish woman and woos her, old folks-style. It’s a realistic romance story where Coetzee doesn’t go for overblown melodrama, but the story is still quite predictable. And boring.
Cartoonist Alec Robbins is married to classic cartoon pinup Betty Boop and they’re madly in love with one another. They also can’t stop having orgies with the likes of Bugs Bunny and Peter Griffin. Then Sonic the Hedgehog gets jealous and tries to assassinate Alec. You know - that hoary old canard!
In his 2010 book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is changing the way we think and act - for the worse. Shocker! I don’t think anyone would argue differently, given the prevalence these days of garbage timesink sites like TikTok and news stories about how literature students these days can’t read books, let alone the average person!
Lorelei Lee is 18 years old, hot, blonde and dumb. So of course men are falling over themselves to marry her. So LL stumbles from one wealthy guy throwing money at her to another, all while traipsing around Europe, with her faithful sarcastic buddy Dorothy along for the ride. Then the book ends.
This Penguin Little Black Classics edition collects two stories: the novella-length White Nights and the short story Bobek, both by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a writer whose name I’ve seen spelt differently depending on who’s publishing him, and many publishers publish him. Why is that?! It’s his name! The vagaries of the Russian language eh?
Quin is a hotshot New York editor working at a major publishing house - who is then accused of inappropriate behaviour by a growing number of women. An older, wealthy man in a position of power preying on young women? Surely not! How far did Quin go and what will be his fate? He and his friend Margot look back on his past dalliances and wonder as they head towards the answer…
Joe Sacco published between a page and four pages at intervals from January to July 2024 on The Comics Journal website about his thoughts on the current Israel-Palestine conflict that kicked off on 7 October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel. The pages amount to roughly the length of a single issue comic which is published by Fantagraphics this week (or you can read the instalments for free on the TCJ website).
The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios is a collection of four stories by Yann Martel. I loved the title story, thought another one was ok, and the other two were quite weak.
