Thrasher’s Book Club – November 2009 selection

Possibly one of Michael Moorcock’s* best novels, The War Hound and the World’s Pain tells the story of the lone warrior Von Bek forced to make a pact with Satan to save both his own soul and that of his lover’s. All he has to do is find the Cure for the World’s Pain. No pressure at all, right?

Moorcock’s novel contains superb descriptions of both the landscape and the characters, including one of the more unique descriptions of the Prince of Darkness I’ve read. If you can track down this hard-to-find novel, you’ll find it a great read and quite epic in scale for being just over 200 pages.

* Insert Matt doing his best Beavis impression and repetition of “Moorcock.”

Thrasher’s Book Club – October 2009 selection

There’s been a lot of romanticism of the vampire mythos in recent years, but I say, “Screw that!” Instead, turn to this late ’80s/early ’90s trio of novels from Nancy A. Collins. The lead character, Sonja Blue, doesn’t wear crushed velvet dresses and ponder the malaise of living too long, thus being unable to find love. No, Sonja has short-cropped black hair, wears a leather jacket, and listens to Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

That’s right, Sonja is a punked-out vampire who hunts vampires and the other things that go bump in the night. She’s no-nonsense, tough as nails, and doesn’t even consider long-term ramifications to her actions.

Now, you take vampire stories that are actually interesting and combine them with Nancy Collins’s easy to read prose, and you’ve got yourself a winner. If you can’t find Midnight Blue anywhere, check out the individual novels (Sunglasses After Dark, In The Blood, and Paint It Black) instead.

Thrasher’s Book Club – September 2009 selection

The Adventures Of Luther Arkwright by Bryan Talbot is probably one of the most thought-provoking graphic novels you’ll ever read if you’re into hard science fiction. Combining telepathic and psychokinetic powers with time/space continuum-hopping, we follow the… Adventures Of Luther Arkwright as he seeks to prevent the Disruptors from unleashing a doomsday weapon.

While the sequel, Heart Of Empire, is probably a better “story” as a whole (not to mention it’s in color), Luther Arkwright is definitely one you will read many times over just to catch every nuance Talbot has inserted into the page.

Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen, has even acknowledged that Talbot is a big influence of his, and with Michael Moorcock doing the forward, you know it has to be good stuff.

MPM’s book of the random time period

Well here it is:

The DVD that usually comes with it is awesome. It has a sort of junior high filmstrip quality to its production, but, the whole story is just totally awesome. I have spent the better part of 25 years doing real wilderness survival, camping, backpacking, canoeing, etc. and I still learn something every time I pick this up.

I will post some things on Tom Brown’s Field Guides later, but for now, I think this is a salute all to itself.

Thrasher’s Book Club – August 2009 selection

This is where it all began: Don Pendleton’s The Executioner #1: War Against the Mafia is the first in a 600+ novel series providing the archetype for the modern-day action/revenge fantasy.

He was arguably the inspiration for Marvel Comics’s The Punisher and DC’s Vigilante, as well as several feature films.

While the quality of the series as a whole is questionable, the novels penned by Pendleton (1–15, 17–38) are all good reading, if a bit dated forty years later. Still, if you can get your hands on any of these, by all means, do so.

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