I’d like to provided you with a little context, which hopefully will provide insight into the reviews. The following is an attempt at providing you some idea of the books that have formed me as a reader (and therefore, probably, have an effect on my reviewing as well). My apologies if they aren’t well known enough to actually help you figure out what sort of reader I am and how much you should invest in my opinions about books that, clearly, I didn’t invest too much money into.

My favorite epic poem is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Even though we are missing much (or nearly all) of it. There was a quote from Gilgamesh on the bookmarks that were part of our party favors at my wedding. It says something that my wedding favors were bookmarks.

My favorite books that relies heavily on Sumerian mythology as part of the narrative is Neal Stephenson’s cyber punk classic Snow Crash. I think I’ve own three or four copies of it as I found myself giving it away to friends a lot and then I’d decide I wanted to read it again.

My favorite writer named Neil, however, is Neil Gaiman. I read most of Sandman in under a week to impress a girl I crushed on in college. Reading it that quickly isn’t a good idea, and I never had the nerve to tell the girl how I felt. Still Gaiman’s novels are great: Forunately the Milk was for a long time our go to just under and hour family road trip audio book. I am not going to sing the praises of American Gods and Good Omens because there are choirs of folks doing that.

As long as we’re in Britain, I’d like to mention how compelling and well put together Bellman & Black and The Thirteenth Tale were. Diane Setterfield knows how to write the sort of books that will keep you up until two in the morning gobbling up their secrets and then, the next day, with tired eyes, you’ll start rereading only to be impressed by how smartly the clues were sprinkled through the narratives.

In terms of rereading books, I’m a rereader. I’ve reread the Fletch Series a few times through, mostly for the pleasure of individual sections of dialogue. And there was a time in my life when I was almost always rereading something from Steven Brust’s Taltos series. I’m terribly biased because I started reading those books early as a teen and they imprinted on me that the way a mother duck (or nearby human) can imprint on a baby duck. (Yes, I’m the baby duck in that situation.)

When it comes to British illustrators, you can’t go wrong with Andi Watson. The first place I saw Andi Watson’s work was in the Hopeless Savages comic which was written by Jen Van Meter and whose second volume was drawn by Bryan Lee O’Malley who wrote the Scott Pilgrim series. And if you mention graphic novels and the name Scott, I can’t help but point to you towards Scott Morse who churns out interesting and varied comics. Of course, that doesn’t cover folks like Bill Watterson and Berkeley Breathed.

Those fellows did funny daily newspaper strips, back before comics moved to the internet. I could give you a list of comics on the internet, but let’s just go with http://www.threepanelsoul.com and http://www.lackadaisey.com

I think that might be enough context for the moment. If you have specific questions about stuff I like, drop me a line at dollarstorebookreviews@gmail.com.