Remember the post I wrote a couple of months back about the poll that awesome independent booksellers The Big Green Bookshop have been running to determine people’s Top Fifty Favourite Books Of All Time?

Well, the results are in.

All this week on their blog the Big Green Booksellers will be counting down the chart from 50 before revealing the winner. There are already some surprising titles that didn’t make the list!

Whether you agree with the selection or not, there are bound to be some top notch book recommendations in there. Take a look, and happy reading.

-Sam

Eeee(book) by gum!  It’s grand news…

The first four Scream Street titles – Fang of the Vampire, Blood of the Witch, Heart of the Mummy and Flesh of the Zombie – are now available to buy as iPhone apps from the iTunes App Store.  Each book costs just £3.99, and is instantly available to read as soon as it has downloaded.

Simply click here to launch the App Store on your computer: http://ax.search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?media=software&term=scream+street

And, as if that wasn’t enough – ALL SEVEN Scream Street novels are now available to buy from the Waterstones website as ebooks by clicking here: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/advancedSearch.do?buttonClicked=1&title=scream+street&author=&bookkeywords=&format=3757&ctx=&price=&age=&isbn=

What a scream!

Tommy

To be filed firmly in the ‘so utterly, horribly wrong it’s right’ category, allow me to introduce you (via Boing Boing) to The Adventures of Lil’ Cthulhu — a bloodcurdlingly chirpy animated short film that narrates H P Lovecraft‘s classic and terrifying Cthulhu Mythos in a way that now – at last! – the whole family can enjoy.

I particularly like the bit where Lil’ Cthulhu gets hungry. -Aw! [shudders]

According to this article at my favourite film website, Twitch, yesterday was the fifty-fifth birthday of one of the most famous and greatest (not to say biggest and angriest) monsters of them all…. GODZILLA!

…AND WE FORGOT! No presents, no cake, not even a card for him – nothing.

Run away! Run away very fast! AAIIIEEEE!

Here’s a short, instructional video explaining how to enter this month’s Quest, and win the chance to become a character in a future Scream Street book:

Find out more at: http://www.watchthemgrow.co.uk/quest.html

Tommy

That was the sound of my jaw hitting the cave floor, when I read the first line of Furnace: Death Sentence by Alexander Gordon Smith. By the time I was at the bottom of page one I’d forgotten that my mouth was still open, and it was only when I finished the book that I remembered. My tongue has dried to the exact consistency and stickiness of a rubber-faced ping pong paddle. But enough about my hobbies.

Here’s a link to a review I wrote back in April of the first book in this series, Furnace: Lockdown. I won’t tell you anything about what happens in the follow-up, Furnace: Solitary, or the third book, Furnace: Death Sentence, as I don’t want to risk ruining the story for you. I’m just going to say that these books have more that lived up to the promise of the first: in my opinion, this is the best and most thrilling YA series being published right now. If you’re a fan of fast and ferocious storytelling, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

PS: Have you ever wondered how the books that you see in bookshops are chosen? Out of all the thousands of books published each year, who chooses which of them are going to be there on the shelves of bricks-and-mortar shops for you to pick up at look at? For an insight into this utterly crucial aspect of the book trade — and for a rare opportunity to review books yourself, before they’re even published! — check this blog post by samurai bookseller Simon Key, of The Big Green Bookshop.

I just read this terrific interview with Maurice Sendak, talking about the upcoming live-action interpretation of his all-time monster classic Where the Wild Things Are with the film’s director Spike Jonze and its screenwriter Dave Eggers.

Watch out for what Sendak says his answer would be to parents who think it ‘may be too scary.’ HEE HEE HEE HEE!

This story appeared this morning on the BBC website: just over one hundred and sixty years after his death, a second funeral has been enacted to commemorate one of the fathers of modern horror storytelling, Edgar Allen Poe.

Follow this link to read my favourite story of his, The Tell Tale Heart. And here’s another link to an absolutely stunning animated adaptation of the story, voiced by James Mason.

Poe died in Baltimore, in the USA: that’s where his rather touching-looking second funeral took place. But it’s a lesser known fact that he went to school in Stoke Newington. That’s near [sniff] where I used to live before being condemned to a lightless eternity in these caves.

Poe’s work lives on as an inspiration to us all.

A while back, Mark posted this review of the utterly brilliant young adult novel, GONE.  I agreed with every word – in fact, I’d go so far as to say that GONE is one of the best books I’ve ever read.

When the book was released, the publisher, Egmont, made it available to read online for a few weeks – something that was considered to be a very bold move indeed.  Well, the good news for those who haven’t yet read the book is that Egmont has decided to be bold again, and you can read GONE online again up until 31st October this year.

The presentation of the story online is utterly brilliant.  When you first visit the site you’ll see a short video trailer, which seamlessly leads into a close up of the book’s cover.  The cover opens, revealing the first page of the book, and from there the whole thing becomes interactive and you can start flipping through pages and reading the story.  Even if you’ve already read the book, it’s worth taking a look at the site if only to see how impressively the whole thing has been put together.

Go visit www.gonebook.co.uk and check it out for yourself.

A flurry of concern in the caves today, at the news (via Boing Boing) that Bernard managed to blunder out of the wrong lake at the wrong time and got himself caught on camera.

Honestly. With buffoons like Bernard about, it’s amazing that sightings of monsters by humans occur as infrequently as they do.