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I bought this while on a recent uneventful trip to California when I wanted something to read in my hotel. I don't have any great knowledge of the graphic novel genre, and the only comic I read as a child was 'Transformers', but at least this prevents me having any snobby pretentions about the...

The Dark is Rising is my favorite book of the sequence. The scene at the beginning with the land frozen by carpeting snow, and the various transformed mythic figures trudging through it to meet the child protagonist, is beautifully unsettling. It's the evocation of the pre-Christian heritage of...

For me, these are still the best works of Children's fiction I've ever read, and am totally shameless in going back to them time and time again even now, a decade or two after I read them for the first time. I can't really understand the esteem Philip Pullman's books are held in, especially when...

I'm gonna try and keep up a daily blog It's all in your World Cup. You can't write off the Ger...

I have a Panasonic Lumix FX9 which is about the same size and price as the Canon. I bought it mainly because it as an optical image stabiliser which is pretty useful when taking photos with a tiny camera, and in my experience of using it, really does make quite a big difference. You can see it here

For me, there wasn't much to choose between the Zidane of '98 and the Rivaldo of '98. Until the final, it would have been difficult to suggest that ZZ was having a great tournament. Likewise, I'm not really feeling the hatred of Brazil '94, this was a team led by Romario after all, and if...

I agree, WoW wasn't great, but in terms of unnecessary remakes, it's first hour basically justified the effort. With Kong, I found absolutely nothing to enjoy in it at all.

The whole film was visually bland, the characters hugely unappealing, and the CGI tedious (seeing a human perform outrageous stunts has some defamiliarising impact, watching a monkey jump around it's just, well, a monkey). The biggest turd jostling in the bowl though had to be that repeated...

Lowering the tone momentarily, was anyone else shocked at quite how awful Kong was?

Mark, surely you accept that the idea of Brazilians passing the ball uselessly among themselves is as invalid as the idea of England as a bunch of Dave Basset inspired hoof machined. Ronaldinho is arguably one of the most direct and relentless attackers the game has ever seen, and pace and...

I think people rightly fancy Brazil because they have the two best attacking midfielders in the world both playing in something approaching the form of their lives (Kaka and Ronaldinho) in addition to a wealth of reliable strikers (Ronaldo may not be the player he once was, but I hope that...

The Erdos number project might interest you http://www.oakland.edu/enp/ It's an attempt to plot the relationships between mathematicians who worked with the prolific collaborator Paul Erdos.

I read Battlefield Earth when I was about 9 years old, and even then I couldn't figure out why he'd picked such a ridiculous name for the lead character. Has anyone else ever taken one of the tours at the Scientology Centre on Hollywood Blvd? I passed it a couple of years ago when I was staying...

Oops sorry all, looks like I did manage to fix it without realising the fix had worked (damn browser cache) problem was an open <a href> tag... Thanks for looking, really appreciate it.

If any html genius would like to take a look at the formatting of my blog and tell me why individual permalink pages are coming up with the entire contents as a huge hyperlink, that would be really appreciated. eg http://verlaine79.blogspot.com/2005/11/what-kind-of-language-is-this-its.html

Ronaldinho is a special case for me; in contrast to a large number of 'tricky' players (Okocha, various false Maradonas, Joe Cole) Ronaldinho's tricks are always in the service of hurting the opposition. His flicks and backheels aren't done in midfield no-man's land, they are done in attacking...

I wrote this little piece at the weekend about George Best which ended up in the Guardian's blog round up today. I think I got into trouble once in the past for saying that Best might not have measured up in the end to the likes of Maradona, but really, the far more pressing issue is the fact...

"Rock is dead", and "rock is dead to me" obviously mean very different things. For six months until we moved recently our office overlooked the Astoria, and a couple of times a week you could guarantee a very young, very committed rock crowd would start gathering about mid-day for the gig in the...

I wouldn't necessarily say throbbing

www.abebooks.co.uk definitely gets my vote. It was where I finally located a copy of the Funk and Wagnalls dictionary of folklore