Recently read

With the imminent arrival of house guests, I haven't been getting all that much reading done - too much house-cleaning to catch up on.  I have, however, managed to squeeze in a couple of things:

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill - After reading the short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and his second novel, Horns, I became a Joe Hill fan.  It's not surprising, I suppose, because I am a huge fan of his father's work and Hill writes a bit like him, same super-natural/horrific subject matter, same engaging accessibility, same gift with characters, but without the tendency to run long.  Hill's first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, is a solid, exciting, ghost story thriller with an unusual protagonist - you don't often see aging shock rockers as main characters in novels.  HSB moves along quickly - perhaps a little too quickly as I would have like it to stretch out a little longer.  It has plenty of scares and a good lesson to be learned: whatever you do, don't buy a ghost off eBay.

Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. - I had a bemused reaction to the movie version of Kick-Ass but was interested enough to want to read the comics the movie was taken from, which was the first eight books of the series.  The comics are much darker (the guy doesn't get the girl and Big Daddy is a seriously twisted dude) and incredibly gory and violent.  I can see why they would have lightened things up for the movie a bit although in doing so, the humor just doesn't quite click; there is not much humor in the comics.  I don't see continuing to read more issues but I feel like I understand the movie a little better now having read the source material.

PS - I'll update this with links shortly.