.

75 Books You Must Read Before You Die

 

 

 

 

by Joe Rose

 

 

© 2021 Joe Rose

 

 

 

Contents

 

Author's Note

 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Asterix and Cleopatra

At the Mountains of Madness

The Ballad of Halo Jones

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Batman - The Long Halloween

Batman: Year One

The Beautiful and Damned

Berlin: The Downfall 1945

The Big Sleep

Birthday Letters

The Blue Lotus

The Catcher in the Rye

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Crime and Punishment

The Dark Knight Returns

The Dark Phoenix Saga

David Copperfield

De Profundis

Emma

Ethel and Ernest

Explorers on the Moon

Far From the Madding Crowd

Farewell, My Lovely

Frankenstein

Franny and Zooey

From Hell

From Russia With Love

Fungus the Bogeyman

Girl, Interrupted

The Great Gatsby

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole

The Happy Prince and Other Tales

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

The Hobbit

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hunger Games

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Invisible Man

The Iron Man: A Children's Story in Five Nights

The Island of Doctor Moreau

Jane Eyre

King of the World

Lolita

Lord of the Flies

Madame Bovary

The Moonstone

The Naked Civil Servant

The 900 Days

Nine Stories

Nineteen Eighty-Four

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Peanuts Treasury

Prisoners of the Sun

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾

Slaughterhouse-Five

Skeleton Crew

The Snowman

Superman - Red Son

Talking Heads

Tender is the Night

This Side of Paradise

The Time Machine

Tintin in Tibet

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Unforgivable Blackness

V for Vendetta

The Walking Dead Volume One

The War of the Worlds

Watchmen

Watership Down

When the Wind Blows

Woody Allen - The Complete Prose

World War Z

 

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

 

Stuck for something to read next? 75 Books You Must Read Before You Die might be able to help and includes reviews and thoughts on an eclectic range of suggested books to read by a diverse range of of authors. Everything from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Alan Moore's Watchmen. This is not intended to be a list of the 75 greatest books ever written but more of a personal and subjective list of books that I enjoyed and found interesting. I have tried not to make the list too obvious and included some eclectic selections from a few different genres (fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, autobiographies etc). At the very least, I hope this book will give readers a few ideas for something to read next and might introduce them to a book or two that they might enjoy but have never got around to reading.

 

 

ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll

"Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865 and written by Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Charles Dodgson. Dodgson was also a scholar, poet, and mathematician. He conjured up the adventures of Alice as a means to entertain the children of some friends during lazy summer days by the river. Once his fantastical tales were put into book form, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland eventually became of the most famous and enduring works of fiction ever published.

The book concerns a young girl named Alice who is dreamily sitting by a riverbank when she notices a white rabbit race past. Nothing strange about that you might think. However, this rabbit is wearing clothes and seems to keep checking a stopwatch as if time is of exceptional importance at this precise moment. Alice, naturally curious about this remarkable sight, explores but falls a down a rabbit hole into a strange world full of remarkable creatures who seem somewhat like the animals and insects of our world - only they can talk. It quickly transpires that logic plays little part in this topsy turvy and endlessly eccentric and strange world. But is it all a dream or is Alice really here?

Curiously, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was not very well received when it first appeared and it was only after the publication of the sequel (Through the Looking Glass) that it got some traction and become much more loved and widely read. It's hard really to think of many more influential books than Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It has inspired dozens of film and television adaptations and the image of little Alice in her blue dress is as identifiable as any character in fiction. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a delight on every page and fantastically weird and offbeat. The book is a wonderful celebration of nonsense and whimsy and full of preposterous conversations, memorable characters, puzzles, poems, and enjoyable absurdity.

One can more or less include the sequel Through the Looking Glass in any discussion of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as these two books are equally strong and equally delightful. Through the Looking Glass has a similar sort of premise (in the sequel Alice explores the world that exists on the other side of a mirror) and is more of the same really with classic characters, puzzles, absurdist humour, and an enjoyable disdain for convention or reality. These two books remain great fun for children but are also recommended to any adults who (for whatever reason) simply never got around to reading them.

ASTERIX AND CLEOPATRA by Goscinny and Uderzo

Asterix and Cleopatra is the sixth book in the classic Asterix series by Goscinny and Uderzo and was first published in Pilote magazine in 1963. The book, which gently spoofs the 1963 Elizabeth Taylor film Cleopatra, is one of the most popular and famous in the series and begins in Cleopatra's lavish palace at Alexandria. Julius Caesar is present and irritates Cleopatra when he declares that Egypt is a decadent nation only fit to serve under the Romans. When Cleopatra reminds him that Egyptians built the pyramids and great temples, Caesar is unimpressed and jokes that all they do now is wait for the annual flooding of the Nile. This is the last straw for a furious Cleopatra who announces that in order to prove that the Egyptians are still a great people they will build a magnificent palace for Caesar in Alexandria in just three months. An amused Caesar replies that if this unlikely feat is accomplished he will indeed admit that Egypt is still a great nation.

Cleopatra immediately summons Edifis, the best architect in Alexandria ('Which isn't saying much,' admits Cleopatra!), and informs him that he has only three months to build a great palace for Caesar. If he succeeds he will be covered in gold and if he fails he will be thrown to the crocodiles. Edifis is unsurprisingly rather unhappy at this new assignment as it appears to be an impossible task requiring almost supernatural powers. But then he remembers somebody who might be able to help. None other than his old friend Getafix, the wise druid who lives in the Gaulish village that continues to defy Roman rule. When Edifis travels to the village he receives a warm welcome and Getafix tells him he would be delighted to help as he'd wanted to visit Alexandria again anyway to look up something in the library. Asterix and Obelix (of course) will go too as they all seek to help Cleopatra put one over on Caesar and stop Edifis from being thrown to the crocodiles.

Asterix in Cleopatra has just about everything you could ask from an Asterix book. The story is fun and clever, the art is superb, some great characters are introduced, and the book is consistently amusing and entertaining. The opening pages immediately set up the task that our heroes will be charged with and I love the way we move from Cleopatra's magnificent palace to the Gaulish village where it's snowing and Asterix and Getafix are playing a game of dice in a cosy hut with a log fire roaring away in the background. The speech by Chief Vitalstatistix as the party prepares to leave is great too. 'You, my friends, are to represent the spirit of Gaul on the banks of the Nile! Show yourselves true-born Gauls, by Toutatis, and may the sky never fall on your heads!' Some lovely art here of ships at sea and a classic encounter with the incompetent Barbe Rouge inspired pirates who always seem to end up scuttling their ship. 'One more classical remark from you and I'll make you eat your wooden leg!'

There are many memorable moments in the book with all the jokes and some wonderful panels that catch the eye. A lovely lighthouse at night panel ('A tower to guide ships?' ponders Obelix. 'These Egyptians are crazy!') and a great illustration when they approach Alexandria in their sailing ship. Some good visual jokes too when Getafix, Asterix and Obelix visit Edifis at his own (very shoddy and wonky) house and realise he really is a terrible architect. Uderzo's art is a delight in Asterix and Cleopatra and he really makes the most of the location with wonderful interiors and great landscape panels. I really love the panels here when Getafix, Obelix and Asterix are locked inside a pyramid by forces working for Edifis's arch rival Artifis, becoming trapped in the maze like corridors. 'I am very much afraid this might be the end our adventures, by Belenos!' admits Getafix. This section includes something very rare indeed when Getafix, for once, allows Obelix (who fell in the magic potion as a baby) to drink some magic potion in order to break down a heavy door deep within the pyramid.

We learn here how the Sphinx lost its nose (in typical Asterix style) and there are some nice twists and turns in the story when Caesar tries to interfere in the process. I liked Cleopatra's food taster too, this character providing some good panels, and there is a clever bit when our heroes are framed by a poison laced cake being sent to Cleopatra in their name and Getafix must act quickly with one of his potions. It's great fun to see Getafix have a larger than usual role in the story and he has some good moments here. 'These pyramids built by the Egyptians as tombs constitute one of the wonders of the world!' Getafix tells Obelix as they gaze out at them. 'Magnificent! From the summit of these pyramids twenty centuries look down upon us!"

Cleopatra is a lot of fun in the book too and - with her famous nose and range of elaborate costumes - is given a lot of personality and some nice lines. I loved Cleopatra's visit to the building site, on a giant throne like a gold Sphinx being pulled by dozens of slaves. 'Oh, don't stop! I'm just paying a quiet visit. Incognito. Do go on!' It's a slight shame the old cover (with the legend 'THE GREATEST STORY EVER DRAWN - 14 litres of Indian Ink, 30 brushes, 62 pencils, 1 hard pencil. 27 erasers, 1984 sheets of paper, 16 typewriter ribbons, 2 typewriters, 366 pints of beer went into this creation!') seems to have been phased out but, overall, Asterix and Cleopatra is an excellent entry deserving of its fame and reputation and sits proudly at the Asterix top table with the very best entries in the series. The story is good, the jokes are funny and the art is superb. Definitely one of the best books in the Asterix series and highly recommended for readers of all ages.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by HP Lovecraft

At the Mountains of Madness, first published in 1936, is one of Lovecraft's most famous and enduring horror stories and remains hugely influential. The story is set in the lonely windswept interior of the Antarctic plateau and told by Professor William Dyer - a geologist from Miskatonic University. Dyer's terrible tale is a warning to a planned scientific expedition of Antarctica not to travel to this frozen outpost and follow in his footsteps. He led a team of scholars from Miskatonic University there to extract geological and biological specimens but what they found was so horrifying that his official report had to be censored. Ancient pre-human alien life forms, a lost city, biological engineers who dissect humans for experimentation, creatures so indescribably hideous that one look at them would lead to insanity. As if this all wasn't bad enough, there were also (gulp) giant penguins.

Generally, Lovecraft's pantheon of Elder Things and his rather bleak take on the universe. A vast random indifferent place without any spiritual meaning where man is inconsequential. Dyer and his team have barely hit the ice when their dogs start to act strangely and bark all the time. Strange blob creatures millions of years old are found in a cave and this will merely be the tip of the (ahem) iceberg. "I could not help feeling that they were evil things - mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss..." Some knowledge of Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos might be an advantage going into this book but I don't think it's by any means essential. It doesn't matter if you don't know a shoggoth from Adam. Think of this as an old fashioned horror yarn along the lines of The Thing From Another World - although Lovecraft will not give you quite what you expect when it comes to the conventions of these types of stories.

This novella takes its time to build suspense and curiosity and is amazingly atmospheric and descriptive. Old sea planes across a yellow sky, the lights from a torch spearing the gloom of old caves, the vast expanse of white nothingness that surrounds the barren location. At the Mountains of Madness takes us back to a time when polar science was much more of an unknown quantity and there was much that had never been explored. This would be a difficult book to adapt into a film as Lovecraft's work is best imagined rather than depicted. Indeed, a theme of Lovecraft's work is there lurk horrors which would lead to madness if we ever clapped on eyes on them. It's naturally almost impossible to fufil that promise with special effects but the imagination is much more powerful.

At the Mountains of Madness is regarded by many to be the greatest story that Lovecraft wrote and it's hard to disagree. The foreboding aura of doom and danger that laces the text right from the start is very compelling and the tale that unfolds builds to an enjoyably dark and outlandish series of discoveries. At the Mountains of Madness is mind-twisting terror and cosmic horror at its very finest.

THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES by Alan Moore

The Ballad of Halo Jones was a science fiction comic strip that first appeared in the weekly British publication 2000 AD in 1984. It was written by Alan Moore and drawn by Ian Gibson. The strip - which revolves around an ordinary 50th-century woman named Halo Jones (who frequently seems to end up in extraordinary situations) became much loved for its mixture of sadness and humour, social commentary, imagination and, of course, everywoman central character Halo, who constantly dreams of a better life. T

The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones collects together all of Halo's adventures, which are spilt into three books. Although there were supposed to be nine Halo Jones books and only three were ever finished, this still feels like a complete story with a beginning, a middle and an end. The story spans ten years in the life of Halo and begins with her as a teenager living in 'The Hoop' - a hi-tech slum floating near Manhattan in the Atlantic Ocean. The Hoop is a place used to dump the unemployed so they can't annoy rich people, the inhabitants of The Hoop living on a state provided credit card system in this overcrowded, jobless, and often dangerous place. Halo lives with her friends Rodice, Ludy and Brinna and yearns to leave one day.

The first book drops you straight into this futuristic world without much explanation but you soon get into the story and start to pick up the slang, rules and technology that drives The Hoop. Book One largely revolves around Halo and Rodice having to venture out into the walkways and public areas of The Hoop to do some shopping. Going out to shop in The Hoop is a rather stressful and sometimes dangerous experience for Halo and her friends ('I can't take a shopping expedition! I just can't! Please, let an algae satellite crash on my head right now...') and this first book has some wonderful comic elements as we follow their trip. I loved some of the weapons Moore invents for the inhabitants of The Hoop. Rodice has a 'Zenade' - which is essentially a hand grenade that makes people incapable of anything but meditation, intuition and complete non-aggression! There is a fantastic series of panels here where she accidentally drops one and comes over all 'zen' herself when it explodes.

Rodice also has a 'Sputstick' - which makes people violently vomit when activated but once again it backfires on her in comic fashion. This first book is full of imagination and quickly becomes great fun (later chapters take a darker tone). In The Hoop there are strange teenage cult groups, a zombie police force and Halo has a robot dog called Toby. Book One is funny with very likeable characters and some excellent visual jokes. There is a wonderful prologue to Book Two over several pages. In the far distant future, a teacher is telling his students (all in little futuristic pods!) all about a legendary character from a long time ago named Halo Jones and trying to sift fact from fiction.

Book Two is equally as good as Book One and finds Halo now working as a hostess serving rich people on the Clara Pandy, a luxury space liner. A major twist occurs in the story here and extraordinary events happen to Halo - although she only realises years later. There are some great new characters in this section, the most memorable of which is Glyph, an androgynous stowaway on the ship who people never notice is around. 'Everybody forgot about me. I was just a cypher, a sort of glyph. It was as if I'd slipped beneath the threshold of human awareness.' Glyph tells her/his story (although no one is listening!) and this particular chapter (I'll Never Forget Whatsizname) is both sad and funny. This character is a fantastic invention by Moore.

There seem to be a few nods to The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy in Book Two with dolphins and rats playing an important part in the story. Dolphins here are navigators for ships and therefore wield great power on Earth as ships can't fly in space without them. Halo can speak dolphin (or 'Cetacean') and becomes friends with the Clara Pandy's aquatic navigator as a result. There is some great stuff in this second book. Book Three is the darkest segment of The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones and begins with a drunken Halo trapped on a desolate planet called Pwuc. The jobless and aimless Halo is having nightmares about being a trapped in a giant spider's web but a chance meeting with her old friend Toy Molto from the Clara Pandy leads to her joining the army.

Halo is dragged into a nightmarish Starship Troopers type campaign on distant worlds where the laws of time are skewed and gravity can kill you as easily as the enemy. Earth is fighting a bitter war against its distant colonies in the Tarantula Nebula, the colonies mounting a guerilla resistance on these increasingly ruined planets. Book Three is the most epic of the three sections in Halo's life but does feel a little more derivative than the other two books at times. It's wonderfully imaginative and full of great panels and flourishes by Moore but is essentially an anti-war story and therefore reminds you of Vietnam films and other sci-fi bits and pieces about interstellar conflict. The themes in Book Three remain as relevant as ever though.

The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones is an inventive and very likeable graphic novel with great characters and an epic story arc. There are many great touches by Moore (characters are addicted to soap operas despite the huge events happening around them) and some good jokes and lines. It's also very poignant and sad in places. The b&w art is enjoyable too with good detail and the characters given some real personality. The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones fully deserves its reputation as a cult classic.

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL by Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a famous poem by Oscar Wilde that runs to about forty pages and was first published in 1898. The poem was written by Wilde when he was in lonely exile on the Continent after being released from jail for 'homosexual offences' and is dedicated to 'C.T.W, sometime trooper of the Royal Horse Guards, obiit HM Prison, Reading, Berkshire, 7 July 1896'. Charles Thomas Wooldridge, the soldier in question, had been hanged at Reading for the crime of murdering his wife while Wilde was serving time there. It inspired one of Wilde's most famous ever lines for The Ballad of Reading Gaol - 'Yet each man kills the thing he loves'. The poem is very haunting about prison life in this era and contains some of Wilde's most memorable and poignant flourishes. Although not terribly long, The Ballad of Reading Gaol tells a story and also gives you an idea of how awful it must have been for Oscar Wilde to be incarcerated.

Because Wilde was disgraced at the time, The Ballad of Reading Gaol could not be published under his name and went by the author name of 'C.3.3' (cell block C, landing 3, cell 3) instead. The poem received an excellent critical reception and although it was only revealed a few years later that Wilde had written it, from what I can gather in Wilde biographies those in literary circles knew all along who the real author was. It must have been fairly obvious I would imagine to work it out! Wilde's name was mud at the time and he was desperate for money so getting The Ballad of Reading Gaol published under any name was absolutely vital to him. Few copies were published at first but it became quite popular when it received some very good notices from critics. Wilde himself was apparently never quite convinced by The Ballad of Reading Gaol though, feeling some of the verses were wonderful but that his personal problems and experiences had brought an emotional reality into the poem which he was slightly dubious about.

Wilde also felt the poem went against his theories about art and was generally great in places but perhaps a trifle uneven. Essentially, the poem is Wilde's reaction to the suffering of others and his shock and pity at the terrible things he had seen in prison. His sympathy gives the poem a very poignant and haunting quality, especially the death of the soldier in question. 'They hanged him as a beast is hanged,' says Wilde in the poem. 'They did not even toll, A requiem that might have brought, Rest to his startled soul, But hurriedly they took him out, And hid him in a hole'. The poem conjures up vivid images of a Victorian prison, with lines about warders with jangling keys, inmates shuffling around the yard, squalid conditions and catching fleeting and wistful glimpses of a blue sky. 'In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard, and the dripping wall is high... '

One of the things I find most interesting about The Ballad of Reading Gaol is definitely the way it gives you an insight into what life must have been like for Wilde in prison. He paints a picture of a fairly grim and somewhat disturbing place where he must have found life incredibly difficult given who he was and how he had previously lived. As you read the poem you imagine a bedraggled Wilde in prison garb as an onlooker to the troubling new world around him and trying to survive and get through each day as best he can. The poem is full of powerful imagery about iron bars like 'lattice' works, wheels slowly turning and the time ebbing away for the prisoner who provided the main inspiration for Wilde to write this. Wilde writes about sewing sacks, breaking stones and turning the 'dusty' drill.

Apart from the line about each man killing the thing he loves the most famous thing about The Ballad of Reading Gaol is that a memorable verse from it was used as the epitaph on Wilde's own grave in Paris. 'And alien tears will fill for him, Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.' I suppose the only possible drawback to this is that it is rather bleak and contains not a trace of Wilde's trademark wit and fun. Hardly surprising considering the circumstances in which it was written and what had happened to him in the previous couple of years and this is one piece where Wilde is not attempting to make the reader laugh. The fact that Wilde is writing about the all too real harshness and squalor of a Victorian prison of the era makes the poem more powerful. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is an atmospheric and interesting poem with some legendary verses and is certainly worth reading.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is especially interesting because Wilde is writing about his own experiences and life and giving you an account of something that actually happened and that he was close to. It's almost like a short story told in verse and quite moving at times with many lines that we still remember today. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is certainly an essential read for anyone interested in Oscar Wilde and remains a haunting and poignant piece of writing with some great verses and lines.

BATMAN - THE LONG HALLOWEEN by Jeph Loeb

Batman: Long Halloween is a graphic novel by Jeph Loeb with art by Tim Sale and was originally published in as a 13-issue comic book series in 1996/97. The story picks up soon after the events of Batman: Year One (Frank Miller's classic account of the origin of Batman and his early days fighting crime). As ever, Gotham City is a dangerous and complicated place for our brooding hero. Corruption is rife and it seems that only Gotham DA Harvey Dent, police Captain Jim Gordon, and the billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne are immune to the bribes and threats of Gotham City mob boss Carmine "The Roman" Falcone. Falcone puts the squeeze on Bruce Wayne (he is unaware of course that Wayne is secretly Batman) at the beginning of the story to launder money for him but the billionaire refuses.

When Bruce Wayne urges Gotham City Bank board members to rebuff Falcone too, he seems to be successful but the bank president he replaces is gunned down by Falcone's nephew Vito. Harvey Dent has also had his share of run ins with the Falcone mob and has recently been the victim of a beating. After an investigation of Falcone's penthouse, Batman is alerted by the Bat-Signal and finds Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent waiting on a rooftop for him. The three men make a pact to end the grip Falcone has on Gotham city - even if it means bending the rules. Meanwhile, a mysterious serial killer named Holiday (because he only strikes during famous national holidays) is going about his grisly business and picking off members of Falcone's crime syndicate. Batman must put his famed detective skills to the test to solve the mystery and - as if all of this wasn't enough - his future rogues gallery of supervillains is starting to fall into place and make themselves heard.

Loeb and artist Tim sale had produced some Batman Halloween tales previously and were asked by DC to work together on a story that would follow on from Year One and focus on the gangster elements of the city and the murky politics and corruption that plagues the town. Long Halloween is most famous though for exploring the descent and transformation of Harvey Dent from District Attorney and friend to Batman and Jim Gordon to the insane Two-Face, a hideously scarred villain who is left with a split personality after an acid attack. The arc for Dent is nicely done here and I like the way he is portrayed in shades of grey even before his transition to bonkers villain.

This is an important part of the character and see how much Dent has to endure on his path to villainy. This graphic novel and the depiction of Two-Face in particular was a huge influence on Christopher's Nolan's The Dark Knight and there are one or two scenes that seem to have been lifted from that film. He's drawn superbly too and looks very horror film. Frank Miller was of course a huge influence on Long Halloween not only because he encouraged them to elaborate on the universe he had created with Year One but also because of his Sin City series of comics. Like Sin City, Long Halloween has a real film noir atmosphere (murder scenes fade to black and white) with a highly stylised retro thirties atmosphere. Batman himself is drawn as a mythic almost supernatural hero enveloped in a huge billowing cape. Panels where he casts a shadow or waits in profile are superb.

The start of the book actually feels like a homage to The Godfather with anachronistic gangsters holding court at a swanky event that Bruce Wayne attends. It's wonderfully illustrated and I love the use of shadows on walls through the book too. There is a very Nosferatu panel and also some fantastic silhouettes of Batman. The look inside the crime family is very well written and even seems to anticipate things like The Sopranos. There are a slew of famous guest stars here too although they are never allowed to take over the comic or divert us from the core of the story too much. Selina Kyle aka Catwoman pops up more than once. In the classic tradition, we are never quite sure if Catwoman is a goodie or a baddie. Maybe she's a bit of both.

The Joker is here and rather piqued that the Holiday killer is stealing the limelight (he plans to kill the residents of Gotham with his laughing gas in his usual inimitable fashion) and The Scarecrow makes an appearance too leading to a frightful encounter for Batman when the Scarecrow's deadly nerve toxins force him to relive the murder of his parents, the very event that made him become Batman in the first place. Poison Ivy also features in the book and attempts to use her own brand of persuasive potions on our hero. This is a rare case of the story and the art meshing and both serving as strengths rather than one letting down the other. Look by the way for zombie supervillain Solomon Grundy in some sewer panels. It was a nice touch to include this character.

I liked too the inclusion of The Calendar Man, a most puzzling villain who Batman comes to believe knows a lot more than he is letting on. The noir approach works well here the and the book constantly drops clues our way as we become drawn into the hunt for the Holiday killer. The colours are muted to create a rich sense of atmosphere and dread and you feel like the artist really captures the spirit of Gotham City. A foreboding place that is both beautiful and ugly. I think the key to the story is the brotherhood between Batman, Gordon and Dent at the start. They have to become monsters to combat monsters and in the end it consumes one of them too much so he can't cope anymore. Gordon and Batman know how to bend rules without breaking them and stick to a code but Dent is pushed to breaking point. Long Halloween is a superior Batman story and a great read if you are a fan. It's a long graphic novel too so you don't feel as if you've been short changed when it comes to the length and number of pages.

BATMAN - YEAR ONE by Frank Miller

Batman: Year One is a classic Batman story written by Frank Miller and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli that first appeared in DC comics in 1987. The collected story in book form was chosen as the greatest Batman graphic novel ever by IGN Comics, who commented; 'No other book before or since has quite captured the realism, the grit and the humanity of Gordon and Batman so perfectly.' The story arc is, as the title suggests, an origin tale detailing the beginning of Batman's career as a costumed crimefighter and subsequently proved to be a very big inspiration to Christopher Nolan - who liberally pilfered ideas from it when he was asked to reboot the Batman film franchise with 2005's Batman Begins. Even actor Christian Bale commented in an interview once that reading Batman: Year One made him take the world of comics more seriously and feel more comfortable about taking on the role of Batman.

Batman: Year One begins with a young Bruce Wayne returning to Gotham city after many years away, mostly spent studying martial arts fighting systems and forensic and criminal sciences. Still haunted by the murder of his parents in front of him in Crime Alley when he was a child ("All sense left my life..."), Wayne has an obsessive determination to revenge his parents and do something about the crime, moral decay and corruption of Gotham but he isn't quite sure how he will go about this. Also arriving in Gotham is a young detective called Jim Gordon. The idealistic Gordon is soon deep up to his neck in trouble and appalled by the widespread corruption he encounters working in his new city.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne ventures out on a surveillance mission and investigates the Red Light District of Gotham in disguise. He inadvertently gets into a fight with a pimp and a certain Selina Kyle before being shot at and arrested by the police. The bloody Wayne eventually escapes and broods alone in the darkness of his isolated country Manor. "What do I use to make them afraid?" he asks his dead father. As he contemplates, a bat smashes through a window and lands on a sculpture of his late father. Taking this as a sign, Bruce resolves to use the image of the bat, an image which he recalls frightened him in a half-remembered childhood incident, to intimidate the dark criminal forces of Gotham...

An enjoyable tinkering with the history and origin of Batman, Batman: Year One is a clever and absorbing graphic novel that also fleshes out the backgrounds and beginnings of Jim Gordon, Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent and Catwoman and introduces crime boss Carmine Falcone. The comic won a lot of praise for its more down to earth, less camp and colourful, and more grainy 'real world' treatment of the character, an approach that Christopher Nolan duly adopted when he took over the film series. There is quite a nice symmetry to this book too in that Miller is also well known for the classic The Dark Knight Returns, a story which featured an aging Bruce Wayne coming out of retirement to don the cape again, and here rebooted the character for DC, presenting us with a 25-year-old Bruce Wayne at the start of his crime fighting career.

The core of Batman: Year One is the developing relationship between Gordon and Batman which is very nicely handled and portrayed here. We see Gordon begin the story as a high-flying young detective and become embroiled in the murky politics and tentacles of the criminal underworld. The story shows us how someone like Gordon will come to trust an eccentric and mysterious vigilante like Batman more than anyone in the world. Batman: Year One benefits from not having outrageous villains with super weapons and daft colourful costumes. The baddies here are gangsters and policemen who have abused their positions of authority, lending a nice layer of realism and texture to the story. The lengths to which Gordon, an honest policeman in a city where even the Commissioner is on the take, has to go to fight corruption are quite hard-hitting at times and we can see how the experiences of Gordon and Batman will establish a close bond and eventually bring the two men together in a single cause.

Although the book is quite talky, Miller always keeps you absorbed with an absorbing narrative, interesting characters and some witty lines. He's also good at creating tense action set-pieces, especially when Batman is trapped in a bombed out building with a rogue SWAT team after his blood, a scene that must have partly inspired the climax to Nolan's The Dark Knight Returns. Nolan's use of a 'sonic' bat device in Batman Begins is also a doff of the cap to Batman: Year One. Bruce Wayne/Batman refreshingly comes across as a relatively human comic book hero here who is somewhat tormented and capable of making mistakes and being beaten up if he gets things wrong. I liked the little moment at the start of the book where Wayne is returning to Gotham on a plane after many years away and ruminates; "I should have taken the train, I should be closer. I should see the enemy." I liked too the way that the story dealt with the murder of Wayne's parents relatively quickly in a flashback and then concentrated on the early months of Batman himself.

This isn't the longest graphic novel ever printed by any means but the book still feels like an epic story. Although not as dark or subversive as Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One does throw in a few adult moments and story strands, most saliently in an extra-marital affair involving one of the characters and making Selina Kyle a prostitute prior to becoming Catwoman, inspired by Batman's nocturnal antics to pull on a costume and roam around at night herself. The depiction of Catwoman in Batman: Year One is quite interesting and she plays an important part in the story at key times but this is essentially the story of Gordon and Batman and how they came to trust each other in a city where you can't trust anyone. Gordon is almost like a co-lead with Batman in this book. Another plus for the book is David Mazzucchelli's impressionistic minimalist art which has a certain noir quality and works very well with what is a grainy and sometimes dark story. Gotham is (naturally) depicted as a slightly nightmarish city of graffiti and dark corners. Overall, Batman: Year One is a compelling and enjoyable twist on the legend of Batman and sets a very high standard that only the top tier of graphic novels can attain. This is a nuanced and interesting story that keeps the reader absorbed and throws in plenty of incident and danger for our respective heroes.

THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughters hoarse as a crow’s, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath—and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light—light dividing like pearls—forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky." The Beautiful and Damned was published in 1922 and further established F. Scott Fitzgerald as a shooting star in the world of fiction. The story concerns a socialite named Anthony Patch who is waiting for his grandfather to die so that he can claim his inheritance. The book chronicles his relationship with his wife Gloria (regarded to be a thinly veiled Zelda Fitzgerald by many readers) and his battle with drink. One can see why the book is felt to be autobiographical. Fitzgerald was apt to ransacking his own life for material and even used (his wife) Zelda's diaries sometimes to convey the stormy and complicated nature of maintaining a marriage in fiction.

The Beautiful and Damned is also rife with the author's deep seated fears and anxieties about money and being able to live the sort of life he felt he needed to in order to keep hold of his wife, his friends, and his general reputation as the sophisticated man about town, social gadly and continent hopper. He liked to travel and hobnob with the wealthy and famous and these penchants required a certain level of income. In the story Patch is waiting for his grandfather to die so he can come into a large amount of money but the author shows how this obsession with inheritance and money can be corroding and dangerous. The danger is that in the end all you do is end up anticipating the arrival of money and not take the time to appreciate the things that are already around you. The Beautiful and the Damned is full of reflective prose about the desire for wealth and attention and passing of time.

A sense of lethargy and not having a goal in life is a principle theme of the story and perhaps something that the author ruminated on himself as he whirled through what seemed to be on the face of it an enviable life of parties and excess in the "roaring" twenties. Fitzgerald would later be thought of as a lost soul of a lost generation in what seemed like no time at all so The Beautiful and Damned gathered extra resonance as it began to establish some distance from its publication. Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter. This ode is a familiar refrain in the work of Fitzgerald - a sense of trying to recapture something that has been lost or romanticising it out of all proportion. "Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know—because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand."

The author is obsessed with the intricacies of the mind and how we perceive things in a different way with the passage of time - even if that is not how they actually occurred in the moment. The Beautiful and Damned has a strong undercurrent about the nature of time. How we remember things and allow the future to stagnate the present. It is also of course though a beautifully written book with some of Fitzgerald's most memorable flourishes. The Beautiful and Damned captures a strata of society at a point in time and makes them vivid and alive. The author has a great instinct for dialogue and also an easygoing manner in satire and gentle humour. In many ways Fitzgerald anticipates JD Salinger with his sense of humour and darkly comic set-pieces. Once again, Fitzgerald proves to be adept at donning some different clothes even within the framework of a single piece of work. The results are often striking and always interesting. The Beautiful and Damned is a stylish snapshot of the mind of Fitzgerald and another great document of time and place.

BERLIN - THE DOWNFALL 1945 by Antony Beevor

Berlin: The Downfall 1945 was first published in 2002 and written by the historian Antony Beevor. It tells the grim story of the last months of World War 2 in Europe and the bloody battle for Berlin. It begins at Christmas 1944. Berlin is being bombed by the Americans during the day and by the British during the night. The city is being reduced to rubble as the 3 million inhabitants struggle to find enough air raid shelters and realise that Hitler has led the country to ruin. But the thing that scares people most of all is the Red Army.

The Soviet Union has 6.7 million soldiers on a front from the Baltic to the Adriatic and thousands of tanks, planes, heavy guns and the terrifying 'katyusha' rockets. They are just 40 miles from Berlin and the only thing that stands between them and the capital are the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel; foreign SS, Hitler Youth, Luftwaffe pilots organised into army divisions because there are few planes left to fly, what is left of the Wehrmacht and the Volkssturm (Germany's version of the Home Guard). The surreal and ruthless nature of Germany's pointless resistance - orchestrated by an increasingly isolated and mad Hitler in a damp bunker - is shatteringly conveyed by Beevor (who never forgets the human element to battles and carnage).

The war is nearly over but SS squads still manically roam around the crumbling fronts hanging what they consider to be traitors and retreating soldiers from trees to harden resistance. The brutality of the SS is matched by the bestial behaviour of the Red Army who loot, rape and pillage on an unprecedented scale - 'Domination and humiliation permeated most

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 27.01.2021
ISBN: 978-3-7487-7302-3

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