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The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a magnificently poignant book that once again show's Neil Gaiman's brilliance at not merely putting words onto paper but rather using them to paint wonderful colorful and evocative words of art in our imaginations.

The mark of a good book for me has always been in its ability to capture your heart and imagination and draw you deep into its world so that you lose all track of your surroundings and the passing of time. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is just such a book and from beginning to end you'll find yourself laughing, crying and just enjoying every word and sentence and paragraph before coming to the end and wishing for more.

A phenomenal work and one that I could hardly do justice to with a review. Lord of the Rings is the sort of book that will last for ages to come and it's characters and stories should be passed on from generation to generation.

A pretty good and interesting read. Wheaton has always been a great writer in the time I've been following him and this book just further cements his reputation in my mind. Riveting from start to finish I enjoyed every word. It provides a good look at the life of an actor from a cultural phenomenon such as Star Trek and how he comes to terms with that in his life, both personally and professionally.

Reading The Road is certainly one of my literary highlights in all my years as a bibliophile. The sparsity of its world is mirrored in the prose and pulls you in deeper the further you read. The dialog between the two main characters is phenomenally strong and manages to convey how 'the man' or father is struggling to look after and protect his son in the remains of a world we once all knew and how his son is trying to find something to hold onto his innocence when everyone around him seems to be 'the bad people'.

It manages to hit all the emotional points and leaves you with an immense sense of hope. The ending is probably one of the best I've read in a long time and even though part of you knows what will eventually happen at the end of the story you still are emotionally drained after reading it.

I can't think of a better book to recommend to friends and fmaily and anyone who wants to lose themselves in a wonderful world and story.

As a gaming aficionado myself this is a book that I read through from cover to cover with very few pauses in-between. Gaming as a hobby / interest is still something that many people don't necessarily approve of as a good use of time and anyone who loves games even more than a little bit must by necessity be a bit strange. In some cases they are right as not every game out there deserves anything more than a second of your precious time but the same can be said for movies or books or music.

What makes gaming unique when compared to a lot of other industries out there is the amount of control we as consumers of that medium are able to exert. Of course most games are strictly plot driven games that don't allow you to dictate the plot to any large degree other than choosing to be 'good' or 'evil' and selecting between two or three separate branches that might be offered to you. Nonetheless what they do allow you to do is take an active part in the telling of that story by creating your own stories within their worlds. Most of my fondest gaming memories are tied to open game worlds such as SimCity, Far Cry 2 and numerous others that let you go from point A to point B by way of point Z with little to no restrictions on how to go about it.

And the best thing about the gaming industry having been around for as many years as it has is that the older it gets the more maturity there is to find in it's offerings. For every game that has no semblance of plot other than shoving a gun in your hands and asking you to mow down hundreds upon hundreds of identical looking bad guys there are two or three sublimely crafted 'experiences' that see you trying to save your son from drowning be trying to survive a serial killer's tests of your parenting (Heavy Rain), dealing with the atrocities of violence and it's justification (Spec Ops: The Line) and contemplating your death and what you've done with your life (Dear Esther).

After blathering on so much how does this have anything to do with Extra Lives? Well these are the sorts of things Tom Bissell seeks to answer. These are the questions he works through in the book and using his own life and experiences with gaming he tries to tell us whether gaming really matters. Of course it's not a simple black or white answer. For every person out there there will be a gray answer that determines whether gaming has had any affect on their lives. What this book can definitely say is that no matter how we might want to believer otherwise, gaming is here to stay and can provide us with some great moments that can be shared between gamers and non-gamers alike. If you've ever played a game of Pong or Dragon's Lair and lost yourself in a world of the game developers creating then pick this up and rediscover some of the wonders that gaming can bring to young and old alike.

World War Z is a phenomenal piece of writing. More so because it deals with zombies, which are so widespread in modern day media that they have almost become passé. Where The Walking Dead tries to use the lure of dealing with how the human mind deals with zombies and slowly becomes corrupted itself, Brooks rather deals with how our human world and infrastructure is overthrown and copes with a zombie war. That's not to say that he ignores humans, far from it. He takes every opportunity to explore the despair, hope, sadness and happiness that springs from our dealings with zombies.

Probably his masterstroke is in dealing with the world rather than focussing on just one country or area. It really brings home the scope and devastation of the war and makes the eventual recovery after the war even more impactful. Hearing from so many different people and cultures gives us a wonderful cross section of opinions both god, bad and strange) as well as allowing us as readers to know that for all he bad the war did, it also helped humanity to grow closer together and appreciate each other more.

However good or bad the movie is, it will not change the fact that World War Z is one of the most amazing books I've read. Even if the mere mention of the word zombie makes you sigh with reluctance I'd enthusiastically advise you to read this or to at least get hold of the excellently crafted audiobook.