Weekly Reading Wrap Up | dark nights and the Dark Knight

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Hi, Roy here. Welcome, welcome back to my channel where I talk about books, comics, magazines, and other bits of pop culture and connections between them.

[00:00:16]And this sort of video is an informal loosey goosey wrap-up of the week. Stuff I've read. I haven't scripted it or written even any prompts down. So, let's get into it. Um, guess you could say the week started on Sunday when I read this Lucy and the Mad Cap mystery book, which is a Whitman authorized edition type of book where they'd take sort of realworld stars and put them into fictional situations for juvenile books. Um, I did make a video just about this and as it happens, I'd looked at one of those videos. You see quite a lot of sort of um how to make your YouTube videos better, the four mistakes that small channels make, all all that sort of stuff. And I thought I'll just watch one just out of curiosity.

[00:01:14]And while I was watching, I thought, well, you know, this sounds quite sensible really and kind of lots of things here won't cost me anything. If I do them, if they work, that's good. If they don't work, it's just like, you know, I haven't exactly put a lot of time into making these changes. So, I did all the things with this video, and I'm sure you know what I'm going to say.

[00:01:38]It got fewer views than than I generally get. not absolutely terrible. And it might be just no one no one cares about Lucille Ball in a kids's mystery book. Or maybe the maybe the the famous algorithm thinks, "Ah, you're trying those tricks, are you?" Right? It will slam you down into the basement where you belong. Um, I don't know. Anyway, not bothering with any of that anymore. Um, but it was really good and there's a video about it if you want to join the select few who looked at it.

[00:02:13]Right. But what I also did, this being horror mayhem, finished a book of not a book of short stories, finished a novela called Graveyard Shift by ML Rio.

[00:02:28]And because I don't read much modern fiction, certainly not none, but it's probably about 5 or 10% of what I read, I suppose, maybe more, but um there are some well-known authors who have completely passed me by and I think ML Rio is one of them. I watched a review afterwards, a review video of this book by Charlotte Coiny Reads, which I recommend, and um unlike me, Charlotte was able to sort of put it in context of why ML Rio was already known and the sort of stuff she writes and that kind of thing. So, I just came at it as like, here's a book, I've bought it, I'm going to read it, which is cool.

[00:03:17]Um anyway, yes. So, there's a danger.

[00:03:20]I'll come on here and I'll be like, I've just found this amazing book, Demon Copperhead. You won't believe it. It's like an update of David Copperfield, the author's uh Barbara King Solver. Anyway, that hasn't happened yet.

[00:03:38]Graveyard Shift, right? As much as anything, it's a book about smoking.

[00:03:43]So much so that I ended up with sort of ghosts of decades of gone by marba lights coming back to me. Um so one thing probably smokers and ex-smokers will say that they liked was the way smokers bond with random people just about the fact that they're the one smoking that's now like a minority.

[00:04:09]Guess it would have been very different when it was the the majority that smoked. Um, so here you have one of those groups. They're also for various different reasons all around late at night. So they've got into the habit of gathering for a smoke break um in a graveyard that happens to be on a university campus. So um you know it sort of is near where they all work or apply their various trades. One of them's a ride share driver. So, they're kind of anywhere and they get together for a smoke and they're, you know, they're very different. I'd say it's hard to find likable characters in this really. And then a thing happens where they gather there's like somebody's dug a brand new grave, which is mad cuz it's like an ancient graveyard that's been shut down for ages with a deconsecrated church um called I think the some it's got the word anchorite in the title. So the smoking group call themselves the anchorites. That's kind of cool. And so there's a mystery about that and it turns into a sort of a um a bit of a science horror mystery really cuz another thing that's been happening offstage you just told about is wild attacks. People going suddenly going crazy and making terrible attacks on people other people. Um and it's the kind of book that keeps on subverting your expectations. So just when you think ah so it's going to be about this. It's going to be about figuring out why this is happening. Um yes that does get resolved but sort of in a low-key offstage kind of way and it's on to something else. You get backstories for all these characters and you get interactions between them and it's, you know, but I enjoyed it. I rather felt this was a bit of a sort of a, you know, people who love this author. Here's an extra thing as a treat with uh because there's other stuff in the back as well, an essay and a playlist and things like that, you know.

[00:06:18]So, it felt like a little bit kind of fanerviceing kind of thing. Um, but it's fine. kept me kept me reading. Kept me reading. Yes. Good. So, Graveyard Shift and then still with the horror mayhem. Still with the green covers. Been United JB Priestly Penguin Horror. So, it must be a horror book. And in fact, they say it's a celebration of the best literary horror. There's an interesting idea.

[00:06:53]a series of terrifying novels and tales that for generations are thrilled, captivated and kept readers wide awake at night. Uh so JB Priestley was 20th century really really well known as an author, playwright, non-fiction writer as well. Um and in fact I was going to do a bit of a JB Priestly read with Jean D. Stanfast at some point which never got beyond buying some of the books. But this one I came across in the horror section of our local water bones and um you know looked short enough to fit the bill. Realized it was made into the 1932 movie The Old Dark House. Well, I didn't I vaguely remembered that and then commenters on a earlier video pointed out that's what it was. And yes, I had remembered it right. Uh nothing to do with the 1960s movie called The Old Dark House, which is a kind of a comedy horror. Um good in its own way, but the 1932 one that I remember a lot more of now having read the story is is great.

[00:08:07]Directed by James Whale of Frankenstein fame. So, the story is starts off with a a married couple in a car driving through a terrible, terrible rainstorm and they've got a passenger who they've taken away from. I think they've all been at the same sort of party or gathering and they're giving this young other guy a lift who's a a friend of the husband, but the wife isn't keen on him. Um, and they're going along and it's really there's like floods and landslides and it's getting terrible and they see lights and think, you know, we're not going to get on. In fact, the the road's gone in front of us and behind us, so we've got to ask for shelter in this house, which is populated by people who are in various ways mad, right? But they do give them shelter and it's obviously, you know, very weird.

[00:09:11]The characters are so eccentric. There's obviously going to be like secrets and stuff. Um, and another two people arrive as well. Same reason. They're beited.

[00:09:23]And uh, this is an industrialist. Oh, I should say this was written in 1927 or published in 1927.

[00:09:31]So, it's got a very sort of post first world war vibe. There's this rich guy and he's taken away a showgirl for the weekend. So, that's um a bit like icky.

[00:09:45]Um and there's obviously sort of class things going on as well um in amongst this group. And it's really good. I mean, I really, apart from the fact it's a little bit talky and a little bit like a play, I would give it five stars. I'd say it's probably four and a half stars, but it really is great. Um, he sort of jokes about it being like a play by saying the layout of the house, it's like one of those plays sets where all the doors open out onto the same space.

[00:10:21]Um although bizarrely even though Priestley was a playwright, um I think an Inspector Calls is one of his, it wasn't adapted for the stage until really recently, like 10 years ago. Um yeah, so there's these travelers, there's the weirdos, lots of Jeopardy.

[00:10:40]It's not supernatural, but it's so gothic and strange and uncanny that it it might as well be really. Um, but you also get the backstories of the travelers and of to some extent the people in the house.

[00:10:59]um who include a hulking servant played by Boris Caroff in the movie, a religious maniac, and while I think of it, the description or the evocation of a kind of stoaltifying religiosity in the character of this woman and her her room um is is just amazing. Um, and I think it's a sense of, you know, got past the first world war, people are like damaged by it in various ways. Um, one guy in particular is kind of, you know, he's like given up on life because of his experiences.

[00:11:42]Um, but also like there were the old ways that are that are going and you know here here's someone who's holding on to this very judgmental type of um type of religious idea and uh yes anyway that's really good. Lots of stuff like that and um good. I found it moving. I found it thrilling and creepy and all the things you'd want. So, uh, big recommendation for Beited and for the old Dark House movie. Probably watch that afterwards, unless you know it super well. Um, then thirdly, on the old Kindle, I've been reading now and again a collection of Batman comics that I bought. So, it's um, let's see, I've got a picture somewhere. um is Legends of the Dark Knight. And these are comics united by the fact that they were drawn by Jim Aero, one of the great comics artists, I think, one of the great Batman artists. Um I remember these with a great deal of fondness. And they're from the Brave and the Bold, which is a teamup book, right? So every issue Batman is with another superhero.

[00:13:03]Um, so these are from the 70s. So it's before, despite the Dark Knight, um, title, it's before Frank Miller, it's before Batman turned all kind of super grim and creature of the nightish. And it's so strange because in this, he might as well be a policeman. You know, he he can walk down the street in daylight. Nobody turns a hair, do things like go to a race course with Commissioner Gordon watching the race cuz they're waiting for a crime to happen. And it's like no, no one's like cares, you know? It's just like here here's this guy in a in a bat suit. Um he has friends like regular folks are his friends as Batman. So what he sit around like having dinner with them in the cowl. It's it's great. And um yeah, there's that aspect of it. It's also still a bit sort of hip and groovy. You know, uh Batman occasionally says he digs things as in not digging holes, but as in digs as in I understand that. Yes, I dig that uh the shipment's coming in tomorrow. Um, and a lot of the crimes are quite sort of realistic and gritty, uh, and kind of police procedural really with added athleticism from Batman, but with these weird teamups with all sorts of characters. And that's the bit that I used to really love was this like how is Batman's like this and how's he going to get on with this character? Um, so there's loads of those. It's one of those sort of if it was a book it'd be like the the sort of 500page chunker. Um it includes one of my favorite stories of all time really from comics that I remember well which is where Batman is a team up with the atom. Right. So the atom he can shrink down to you know really really tiny like molecule size and do all sorts of clever science things. So in this story Batman is electrocuted and dies. He's literally dead lying in a hospital dead. The atom thinks if I can just reactivate his brain on some basic level, maybe some sort of ingrained like final memories will reveal, you know, help solve the crime, find out who it was that um that did this to him. So, he shrinks down to really small, goes inside Batman, and he's in Batman's brain jumping around and like reactivating things. And as a result, Batman does kind of lurch back into semiife and you know has a fight and stuff like that and it's all brilliant. So yeah, really like that.

[00:16:08]It's crazily inconsistent. So you might get him saying things like there's no such thing as ghosts. Previous issue he was teamed up with the spectre, a ghost.

[00:16:21]He's also teamed up with Dead Man in another one, also pretty much a ghost.

[00:16:26]So, how he figures that out, um, who knows? So, they've been a lot of fun as well. Um, I usually, as in I've done it once and hope to do it again, would have a mail call of the week. Nothing really spectacular's arrived. Um, the postman might be bringing me something, but if that doesn't happen in the next 30 seconds or so, then it won't be in this video. Um, I think all I've got to show you is the puffin picture book version of Jack Kerax on the road. Yeah. So, that's that's been me with Jenny. Got some good audio books to talk about one day. Um, watching some Denzian telly as well. We um we actually gave up on the TV adaptation of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett. Went back to the box set of Dickens and it's Martin Chuzzlewit now and I knew nothing of Martin Chuzzle Wit. I think in my mind it's always been just stop with the stupid names Dickens.

[00:17:31]I can't I can't deal with that right now. So I've never even thought about it and it's a really good story. So enjoying that. Um yeah, that's it. I think. Okay. So, back soon with something else. Bye.