Book Review: Alan Moore - 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom

(Harry N. Abrams)

With each new technological advance, pornography has proliferated and degraded in quality. Today, porn is everywhere, but where is it art? 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom surveys the history of pornography and argues that the success and vibrancy of a society relates to its permissiveness in sexual matters.
This history of erotic art brings together some of the most provocative illustrations ever published, showcasing the evolution of pornography over diverse cultures from prehistoric to modern times. Beginning with the Venus of Willendorf, created between 24,000-22,000 bce, and book-ended by contemporary photography, it also contains a timeline covering major erotic works in several cultures. 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom ably captures the ancient and insuppressible creative drive of the sexual spirit, making this book a treatise on erotic art.

This is a reproduced essay written by Moore on one of his non Lovecraftian obsessions - pornography.

It's an interesting little read that is entirely and obviously Moore and feels like it fell straight out of the pages of Dodgem Logic. The really odd thing about it are the remarkably prudish illustrations. For an article that is championing the decline in quality of pornography it's remarkably coy about showing almost anything that could be considered actually pornographic.

A light but enjoyable article that is more polemic than argument but was possible better suited to be a magazine article rather than a book in its own right.

............................................................................................................
For the last 11 years Wonderful Wooden Reasons has championed experimental and non-commercial music of all forms. Please visit to access our extensive archives of music, book and movie reviews.
It is the in-house magazine for the Quiet World label which has released music from artists such as Ian Holloway, Darren Tate, Banks Bailey, Philip Corner, Colin Andrew Sheffield and many more.  

Book Review: Alan Moore & Facundo Percio - Fashion Beast

(Avatar)

Alan Moore's lost masterpiece comes to life as an incredible comic book series almost three decades later! The mid-80's were a stunning period of brilliance for Alan Moore, seeing him create true masterpieces including Miracleman, Watchmen--and Fashion Beast! Working with Malcom McLaren (Sex Pistols), Moore turned his attention to a classic re-telling of a Beauty and the Beast through his unyielding and imaginative vision.
At long last, Fashion Beast is presented in deluxe trade paperback and hardcover collections of the complete ten issue Fashion Beast series. Doll was unfulfilled in her life as a coat checker of a trendy club. But when she is fired from the job and auditions to become a "mannequin" for a reclusive designer, the life of glamour she always imagined is opened before her. She soon discovers that the house of Celestine is as dysfunctional as the clothing that define the classes of this dystopian world.

This is an old Alan Moore based on an idea he'd worked on with Malcolm McLaren way back when. It tells of a self obsessed cloakroom attendant named Doll who finds herself hired as the feature model at the world most prestigious fashion house. As the world falls apart outside she discovers that life inside the fashion house to be wholly dysfunctional.

It's an entirely of sort of thing that didn't really grab me to the point most of Moore's things do but it's lack of anything to grab onto may be a fairly good reason as to why it never saw the light of day until now. It seemed empty, almost vacuous even. The ending is heavy handed and the pacing was uneven but an intriguing read nonetheless.

............................................................................................................
For the last 11 years Wonderful Wooden Reasons has championed experimental and non-commercial music of all forms. Please visit to access our extensive archives of music, book and movie reviews.
It is the in-house magazine for the Quiet World label which has released music from artists such as Ian Holloway, Darren Tate, Banks Bailey, Philip Corner, Colin Andrew Sheffield and many more. 

Book Review: Barry Gifford - The Stars Above Veracruz

(Thunder's Mouth Press)

A high-wire artist named Ropedancer is our guide to Gifford's world in The Stars Above Veracruz. His tale opens and closes this book of linked short fictions that take place in Honduras, France, Cuba, Paris, New York, New Zealand, Mexico, and other locales. Gifford's lyrical stories are often confessional, involving crimes large and small and narrators who, win or lose in their battles, never emerge unscathed. There is little triumphing here; victory lies in the completion of the journey, the survival of the high-wire artist who, step by step, follows his lifeline with utter concentration. At once tragic and humorous, full of pathos, and reminiscent of Thornton Wilder's humanist classic The Bridge of San Luis Rey, The Stars Above Veracruz is Gifford's most significant work since Wild at Heart.

This set of shorts from the author of the Sailor and Lula novels (the first being Wild at Heart made into a movie by David Lynch) had some gems mixed amongst them and there were some moments of pure Gifford but it wasn't all gold. Some parts dragged which is really saying something with stories that often only lasted a couple of pages.

I'm a huge Gifford fan. I've read everything I can get my hands on and he very rarely disappoints.  This is also the case here and on the whole though it was still a typically fun piece of Gifford-ana.

............................................................................................................
For the last 11 years Wonderful Wooden Reasons has championed experimental and non-commercial music of all forms. Please visit to access our extensive archives of music, book and movie reviews.
It is the in-house magazine for the Quiet World label which has released music from artists such as Ian Holloway, Darren Tate, Banks Bailey, Philip Corner, Colin Andrew Sheffield and many more.  

Book Review: Charles Stross - The Apocalypse Codex

(Orbit)

Bob Howard used to fix computers for the Laundry, the branch of the British Secret Service that deals with otherworldly threats, but those days are over. He's not only been promoted to active service but actually survived missions against cultists, enemy spies and tentacled horrors from other dimensions.

I really like these very British Lovecraftian books about the UK's magical secret service The Laundry that Stross has done but I'm not sure I could actually read one. All the one I've come across (and I'm fairly certain that it's all of them) have been audiobooks and now all the characters are so entirely tied up with the voices that reader Gideon Emery has given them that this is the only way for me now.

This latest one pits our promotion bound hero, computational demonologist Bob Howard, against an American evangelist with a hard on for waking the Sleeper which would be bad news for all involved and everyone not involved. Helping him along the way are two external operatives - Persephone Hazard and Johnny McTavish, a witch and an ex-squaddie respectively - who slowly reveal to him the the true hidden history and nature of The Laundry.

This time out it's less obsessed with the bureaucracy of the agency and what we get is more of a straight adventure story but as Stross has been writing each as a pastiche of different authors such as Len Deighton, Ian Fleming and Anthony Price and here inserting Bob into Peter O'Donnell (Modesty Blaise) novel that's understandable. These have fast become amongst my most anticipated releases and are an absolute joy to find out where Stross is going to take Bob next which is a particularly apt way to end this review as it mirrors the tantalising end of the book

............................................................................................................
For the last 11 years Wonderful Wooden Reasons has championed experimental and non-commercial music of all forms. Please visit to access our extensive archives of music, book and movie reviews.
It is the in-house magazine for the Quiet World label which has released music from artists such as Ian Holloway, Darren Tate, Banks Bailey, Philip Corner, Colin Andrew Sheffield and many more. 

Book Review: Mitch Cullin - A Slight Trick of the Mind

(Canongate)

Behind my head as I write this is a shelf with about 20 Sherlock Holmes books plus various DVD adaptations / versions. It would be pretty safe to say I'm a fan. I am not however even remotely precious about it. Amongst those 20 odd books and sat alongside the canon are a number of pastiches, some are downright silly - the 'War of the World' one springs immediately to mind (written by the magnificently named Manly Wellman). Another features him teaming up with a young Teddy Roosevelt, whilst a third pits him against the gentleman burglar Arsene Lupin although he is called Herlock Sholmes in that one. There's even a first edition of Michael Chabon's masterclass of a novel featuring an elderly Holmes, The Final Solution.So basically, do what you want with him. The character is malleable and durable enough and I'm enough of a fan to go along on the journey and see if it's going somewhere interesting.

In 'A Slight Trick of the Mind' Mitch Cullin takes Holmes somewhere very interesting indeed, to the end. Cullin places the nonagenarian Holmes in two very different settings and the younger version into what at first seems like a rather nondescript case that eventually takes on much deeper meanings.

Switching effortlessly between his life amongst his beloved bees in the company of the housekeeper's son, his beekeeping protégé, and a trip to postwar Japan ostensibly to search for prickly ash but also to satisfy a young man's curiosity regarding his estranged father whilst also being drip fed the resolution of the earlier case; Cullin's book is that rarity, a literary pageturner. It's beautifully written and reveals it's heartbreaking secrets both far too soon and frustratingly slowly. The carefully crafted links between the various stories are given the time and space to allow their tales to tell and to allow us to more fully understand what it means to be both Holmes at the height of his powers and Holmes at their decline.

For many people this will no doubt be an ill fit alongside the canon but those people will be missing the point. This isn't a book about Sherlock Holmes the great detective; he is simply the principal in a book about loss both great and small. Loss of friends, loss of family, loss of a child, loss of love, of memory, of things, of direction and ultimately loss of self. Holmes is ourselves wit large and as such any loss is born magnified and intensified. Through him we are shown what it means to be ultimately, inevitably, inescapably fallible.

I found this to be a beautiful and poignant read that took me to a place I've not visited in a while and brought me back filled with questions for which the answers can only be experienced when the time comes for them to be asked.

Heartily and resoundingly recommended.

............................................................................................................
For the last 11 years Wonderful Wooden Reasons has championed experimental and non-commercial music of all forms. Please visit to access our extensive archives of music, book and movie reviews.
It is the in-house magazine for the Quiet World label which has released music from artists such as Ian Holloway, Darren Tate, Banks Bailey, Philip Corner, Colin Andrew Sheffield and many more.

Book Review: Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - Nemo: The Roses of Berlin

(Top Shelf)

This is the second League of Extraordinary Gentleman spinoff books to feature the exploits of everyone's favourite sub aquatic pirate goes off to Germany to rescue her daughter and her son in law, the air pirate Robur.

The book mixes in The Great Dictator, Metropolis, Cabinet of Doctor Cagliari, She and more to great effect. I've got to say though that if it wasn't for the majesty of Jess Nevins and his explanatory website - http://jessnevins.com/annotations/rosesofberlin.html - much of it would have been incomprehensible to me as it was written in German and I don't currently have a friendly German to hand..

It's a quest book (of sorts) and as such is a little thin on plot but what there is is typical Moore and there is plenty of distraction in the always beautiful art from O'Neill who as ever brings the most absurd worlds to life in stunning, awe inspiring and eye popping glory.

Not the best of them but still wonderful.

............................................................................................................
For the last 11 years Wonderful Wooden Reasons has championed experimental and non-commercial music of all forms. Please visit to access our extensive archives of music, book and movie reviews.
It is the in-house magazine for the Quiet World label which has released music from artists such as Ian Holloway, Darren Tate, Banks Bailey, Philip Corner, Colin Andrew Sheffield and many more.

Book Review: Ray Bradbury -Fahrenheit 451

(HarperCollins UK)

Time, I think, for a classic. I do this every now and again. I'm a fairly freeform sort of reader normally and just go with what catches my eye but now and again I like to dig into the classics for a while. They rarely disappoint. I did A Canticle for Liebowitz recently which turned out to be a corking experience so, as I said, time for another. This is one of those books that regularly sits near the top of 'Greatest ever...' lists so I had high expectations for it and disappoint it did not.

The story, as I'm sure you all know, tells of the awakening of fireman Guy Montag from a world of blinkered, sanitised corporate delusion where he burns books for a living to one where he becomes one of the saviours of the very things he's meant to hate.

It's a poignant, sad and exhilarating and is as tightly wound as Montag's nerves. Most of all the novel seems utterly and depressingly real. Magnificent.

.............................................................................................................
For the last 11 years Wonderful Wooden Reasons has championed experimental and non-commercial music of all forms. Please visit to access our extensive archives of music, book and movie reviews.
It is the in-house magazine for the Quiet World label which has released music from artists such as Ian Holloway, Darren Tate, Banks Bailey, Philip Corner, Colin Andrew Sheffield and many more.

Book Review: Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane

(Headline)
(HarperAudio)

Every now and again it's fun to do into Gaiman's worlds again and see what he's been up to. This one is fairly safe ground for him telling - in flashback - the story of the time when he and the family of 3 ladies who lived down the end of the lane accidentally brought a grey thing into the world and then sent it away again.

In a lot of ways it felt like a kids book but with some decidedly adult scenes dotted throughout. The version I got was the audiobook as read by the author and it was, as you'd expect, nicely done and it very much lent an extra autobiographical feel to the proceedings in support of the first person narrative.

It was an enjoyable trip, not for me on a par with his best but still bags of fun.

.............................................................................................................
For the last 11 years Wonderful Wooden Reasons has championed experimental and non-commercial music of all forms. Please visit to access our extensive archives of music, book and movie reviews.
It is the in-house magazine for the Quiet World label which has released music from artists such as Ian Holloway, Darren Tate, Banks Bailey, Philip Corner, Colin Andrew Sheffield and many more.

Book Review: Robert Chambers - The King in Yellow

(Wordsworth Edition)
This has been sat on my bookshelf for at least two years waiting for me to get the urge to read it.  I finally have and just in time for all the references in True Detective to start appearing.

The book is a strange sort of thing with the first 4 stories concerning the effects of reading the titular play on different people.  These tales are odd and sometimes very dark - 'The Repairer of Reputations' and 'The Yellow Sign' - sometime M.R. James type ghostly - 'In the Court of the Dragon' - and the fourth (or second in chapter order) is kind of lovely.  The rest of the book is entirely unrelated to either kings or the colour yellow and are largely forgetable.

Later in his career Chambers made a very good living out of writing romance stories and the seeds are already here whether they are hidden amongst ghost or war stories there is often love in amongst the narrative.

Truly this entire book threw me for a loop.  Absolutely not at all what I was expecting but fun nonetheless.

.............................................................................................................
For the last 11 years Wonderful Wooden Reasons has championed experimental and non-commercial music of all forms. Please visit to access our extensive archives of music, book and movie reviews.
It is the in-house magazine for the Quiet World label which has released music from artists such as Ian Holloway, Darren Tate, Banks Bailey, Philip Corner, Colin Andrew Sheffield and many more.