Guts - Chuck Palahniuk

Awful. Just really awful.

Seconds - Bryan Lee O'Malley

Seconds is a delicious treat that left me wanting seconds. If Bryan Lee O'Malley continues in this direction, he has a dedicated fan in me. The book's vivid depictions of food left me ravenous, and what's more, the restaurants were a perfect metaphor for the unrest in Katie's life.

Discworld & Narrative Causality

In Discworld, "stories are important" (Witches Abroad). They wrap themselves around people, play riddles with them, and shape their lives. A witch in a gingerbread house always has an unfortunate ending, a girl skipping through a forest in a red coat always meets. Nowhere is this more evident than in Witches Abroad, a tale of two powerful women fighting each other through stories. An evil queen forces people to obey the narrative, on threat of death.

The Importance of Weird in Discworld

Let's get this straight: to me, weird is a genre that encompasses anything that could not happen in our world (it's straight-up weird that mixes genres). Terry Pratchett used weird in one of the best ways I've seen.

Comic Book Superheroines

What comic book superheroes do you think are overly-sexualised? The one that's thrown out a lot is Dick Grayson-discounting his costume, which shows less skin than pretty much every female superhero ever, the first covers of latest efforts (by creative team) for Grayson and Wonder Woman are so different.

Source 1: Wonder Woman #36

Source 2: Grayson #1

Some TV Show Recommendations

Though The Last Man On Earth only aired last night, it was a revelation. It came bursting through the television screen full of promise. Kristen Schaal has always been one of my favourite comic actors (her stand-up is grotesquely sweet), and it's great to see her in a regular live-action role again. More than this, Last Man came with its own sense of humour unlike anything else on right now. Here are some other shows with their own humour:

Pop Culture & Class

James McAvoy's anxiety "about a society that doesn't give opportunities to everybody from every walk of life" reminded me of a few other recent comments about art and class: Julie Walter's and Judi Dench's in particular. This was only further compounded by a thinktank's analysis of Grammy wins over the last few decades: the study concluded that music was the whitest it had been in over thirty years (while not all white people are privileged, they are more likely to be a higher class than minorities).