Fifty Shades of Black and White

Never being one to miss a chance to jump on a bandwagon, I was inspired by Joe Hill's top fifty favorite books to do the same here. Like Joe's, these are in no order of preference, but unlike his, I couldn't be bothered to list the authors alphabetically- I pretty much put them down as they came to me.

I'm sure more will come to me as I think of them

1. Foucault's Pendulum • Umberto Eco
2. The Name of the Rose • Umberto Eco
3. Fragile Things • Neil Gaiman
4. The Lord of the Rings • J.R.R. Tolkien
5. The Silmarillion • J.R.R. Tolkien
6. The Sword of Rhiannon • Leigh Brackett
7. Irish Folk and Fairy Tales • Michael Scott
8. Duma Key • Stephen King
9. IT • Stephen King
10. The Lankhmar Stories • Fritz Lieber
11. Something Wicked this way comes • Ray Bradbury
12. Caves of Steel • Issac Azimov
13. I, Robot • Issac Azimov
14. Chronicles of Amber • Roger Zelazny
15. The Tain • Thomas Kinsella (trans.)
16. The Complete Fiction • H.P. Lovecraft
17. American Gods • Neil Gaiman
18. The Chronicles of Conan • Robert E. Howard
19. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen • Alan Garner
20. Elric of Melnibone • Michael Moorcock
21. Le Morte d'Arthur • Thomas Malory
22. The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas
23. The White Goddess • Robert Graves
24. New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos • Ramsey Campbell (ed.)
25. Day of the Triffids • John Wyndham
26. Earth Abides • George R. Stewart
27. A Game of Thrones • George R. R. Martin
28. The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith • Clark Ashton Smith
29. Small Gods • Terry Pratchett
30. Mort • Terry Pratchett
31. Dracula • Bram Stoker
32. The Best of Myles • Flann O'Brien
33. Sophie's World • Jostein Gaarder
34. The Illuminatus! Trilogy • Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson
35. Everyday life of the Pagan Celts • Anne Ross
36. The Complete Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
37. Perdido Street Station • China Mieville
38. The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
39. Viriconium • M. John Harrison
40. Stainless Steel Rat • Harry Harrison
41. The Earthsea Series • Ursula Le Guin
42. Complete Works • W.B. Yeats
43. Death of a Naturalist • Seamus Heaney
44. 20,000 Leagues under the sea • Jules Verne
45. The War of the Worlds • H.G. Welles
46. The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
47. Time and The Gods • Lord Dunsany
48. 1984 • George Orwell
49. Johnathan Strange and Mister Norrell • Susanna Clarke
50. Gods and Fighting Men • Lady Gregory

Dem bones, dem bones...

Reaper miniatures released a range of unpainted plastic minis a few months back, substantially cheaper then their white metal equivalents. Off the back of the success of this line, they've launched a Kickstarter to accelerate their release schedule, and as of this post, have almost doubled their initial funding goal. Check it out, it's pretty neat.

I listen at the door...

The original articles, still available for the price of
several organs on eBay.

Thanks to being distracted by my friend Dave's site, I stumbled into these very nice printable dungeon floor tiles. Slightly bigger at 30mm square, but still most excellent and a perfect complement to my Games Workshop Dungeon Floor Plans from 1989. Uncut and intact, I have plans for those beauties that I'll be sharing in due time...

BeDerken also do an excellent line of miniatures, very reminiscent of GW's early John Blanche days. Highly recommended.

Wyrd Sisters

Original cover to Wyrd Sisters, by the late Josh Kirby

Terry Pratchett is probably one of the finest writers of fantasy out there. Yes, he's funny as hell, but it's his slightly absurd view of our own world that infuses his Discworld with it's life.

BBC Four Xtra has been running a few dramatizations of his best known books. Wyrd Sisters, the first one to deal with Granny Weatherwax and her coven properly, is a great riff on Shakespeare- check it out. It's a great place to jump into the Discworld for the first time, and the link is good for about a week, so hop to it.

Going Underground

Places like Quinta da Regaleira, Portugal are like crack for the mind's eye. 

Here's the Wikipedia Entry and a mess of shots of the estate from Tumblr.

The whole place feels like Mike Mignola designed The Village for Number Six.

Say hello to Elik Tôk Klanbrazzil, Dwarf Ranger/Ithilid Slayer from around 2002. Threw himself off a tower, breaking his fall onto a Mindflayer's skull. Good times.

It seemed as easy to do two blogs as one, so heres my personal space to rant into the ether about what interests me: games (both console and boardgames) movies, comics and anything else that grabs my fancy.