Member: georgematt

CollectionsYour library (687), Currently reading (4), To read (6), Read in 2007 (13), Read in 2008 (15), Read in 2009 (18), Read in 2010 (21), Read in 2011 (17), Read in 2012 (27), Read in 2013 (6), Favorites (90), Non-Fiction Favourites (54), My Adolescent Favourites (50), Read but unowned (39), Not Read (18), All collections (687)

Reviews56 reviews

TagsFantasy (129), Science Fiction (76), Horror (67), Modern Novels (65), Fabulation (58), Anarchism (51), Dark Fantasy (49), London (48), Philosophy (45), Short Stories (41) — see all tags

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About meI love reading (and do a bit of writing too)and is the quickest and safest route to other worlds and psychologies. You can travel to strange lands, experience weird mental states, feel terror and fear from the safety of your armchair or just enjoy a great story. To add to the pleasures of reading you can gain knowledge and understanding of the world and the cosmos around you. What other media or artform compares to that?
I am an average inhabitant of Britain, living in a London suburb with a dull, low paid office job (working only four days a week) but a denizen of an imaginative inner world.
To quote the great J.G. Ballard: 'I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us,to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.'

About my libraryMy library contains books I have bought since my early teens and the content, style and subject matter of the novels and short stories tend to be highly imaginative and fantastical or science fiction. The non-fiction are mostly books on left libertarian politics and history, general philosophy, popular science and cosmology, and the arts (literature, cinema and music.)
I have rid myself of many books over the years due to lack of space or I have borrowed from libraries. Likewise many books important to me in childhood and adolescence I have lost or again borrowed from public or school libraries and so I have decided to include those I enjoyed reading, although not in my collection.

GroupsCheating The Ferryman, Cinebooks, Happy Heathens, New Wave Science Fiction and Fantasy, Radical History, Revolutionary left, The Horror Film: History, Reference, and Beyond, The Weird Tradition, Weird Fiction

Favorite authorsPeter Ackroyd, J. G. Ballard, William Blake, Jorge Luis Borges, Ramsey Campbell, Angela Carter, John Crowley, Charles Dickens, Philip K. Dick, Fyodor Dostoevsky, M. John Harrison, Michel Houellebecq, M. R. James, Franz Kafka, H. P. Lovecraft, China Miéville, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, George Orwell, Mervyn Peake, Edgar Allan Poe, Iain Sinclair, Clark Ashton Smith, Gene Wolfe (Shared favorites)

Homepagehttp://undergroundmangeomatt.blogspot.com/

Real nameGeorge Matthews

LocationWalton-On-Thames, Surrey, England

Account typepublic, lifetime

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/georgematt (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/georgematt (library)

Member sinceSep 5, 2006

Currently readingThe Stories: v. 2 by Ray Bradbury
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard by J. G. Ballard
Alan Moore: Storyteller by Gary Spencer Millidge
Replay (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) by Ken Grimwood