November 2nd, 2011
Ten books read this month, but almost all finished in the first two weeks. Because of everything that happened this month I didn’t seem to have enough energy to read much. Hence also the five undemanding mysteries…
Carthage Must Be Destroyed — Richard Miles
A history of Carthage that attempts to escape the biased view of it we have gotten from the Romans and their later admirers. Sadly Richard Miles does not escape having to put Carthage’s later history in Roman context, simply because that history was dominated by wars with the Roman Empire, which ultimately of course destroyed it. Because I knew this outcome, it was difficult to keep on reading…
Omnitopia Dawn — Diane Duane
This is the science fiction equivalent of an Arthur Hailey business novel, but since this is the twentyfirst century, this is set in and around a MMORPG rather than a hotel or car plant…
A Wreath for Rivera — Ngaoi Marsh
Also known as Swing Buddy Swing, the better title in my opinion, this is another competent mystery revolving around the murder of a jazz musician.
The Mysterious Affair of Styles — Agatha Christie
The first Hercule Poirot story. It has been literally decades since I last read any Agatha Christie murder mystery, but what with everything that happened this month and me cataloguing Sandra’s books, I thought I’d give them a try again.
Mrs McGinty’s Dead — Agatha Christie
A 1950ties Poirot story, which starts with him depressed about “modern times” but revitalised when an old acquaintance asks him to investigate the murder of an old woman. even though her lodger has already been condemned for it.
Snuff — Terry Pratchett
His latest Discworld novel, starring Sam Vines out of his element and depth, as he’s out of Ankh-Morpork and has to play the laird on his wife’s estate somewhere in the country. Quality as always, but not the best novel he has ever written.
Troy and Homer — Joachim Latacz
An attempt at determining how much of The Illiad is based in fact, whether Homer’s Troy was real and the city Schliemann found was indeed the same city.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd — Agatha Christie
Another early Poirot, the first of many in which Poirot has gone into retirement and not liked it. Best remembered for a twist ending, somewhat cheating.
Hickory Dickory Dock — Agatha Christie
Poirot is asked to investigate an outbreak of petty thefts in the lodging house of his secretary’s sister, but this of course soon turns into a murder investigation…
Trouble and her Friends — Melissa Scott
It took me ages to read this book, which had more to do with me than the book. As a second generation cyberpunk novel (published in 1994) this is quite dated in its ideas about what cyberspace would look like, but is saved by its politics. It’s the only cyberpunk novel I’ve read so far that comes close to imagining the attractions and dangers cyberspace and hacker culture can have for women and LGBT people.
Categories: books and books review, posts interesting only to me
November 1st, 2011
Tom Spurgeon wonders:
Martin Wisse writes about a reader’s suggestion that Love & Rockets is the kind of book you hand people to get them to read comics, which soon moves into that thing I never understand about how the series lacks a natural jumping-on point. I’m beginning to wonder if the old way of encountering TV shows and comics right in the middle of their narratives and then working one’s way backward or not depending if it’s interesting or not has all but gone away. It could be the stumble-upon approach was simply the default method of those that grew up without access to DVD series season collections and comics trades.
It wasn’t so much the lack of a clear jumping on point that stopped me getting into Love & Rockets as just not seeing the original comics anywhere and the collected editions only rarely. And usually when I already had my eye on other comics. Besides which, I am anal enough not to want to read books out of sequence if I can’t help it.
When I were a lad I did get into superhero comics just diving into the deep end. The first American comics I can remember reading were Dutch reprints my uncle had lying around in his small collection. One was a reprint of the start of the Korvac saga in Avengers, which in half an issue introduced some dozen heroes or so, then puts them into space to meet yet another half dozen heroes, with copious allusion to earlier stories. The other one I remember is a Lee-Buscema Fantastic Four story, the Coming of the Over-Mind, again with a lot of characters you’re supposed to know and references to stories you’re supposed to have read. That was enough to intrigue me and once I started buying my own comics, it was yet another guest star filled Avengers spectacular, that crossover with Thor when Surtur’s demons threaten New York.
But all of that was at a time when I could buy one or two comics each week even on the meagre pocket money I got. That’s a bit more difficult if you’re buying comics at three-four dollars a pop, let alone want to buy trade paperback collections or gods forbid, hardcover reprints. Then it is a bit more risky to take a chance at a new title and you do want to get something you are already pretty sure of you’ll enjoy and understand. The more expensive comics become, the less easy it is to stumble over new stuff.
Categories: Comix
October 30th, 2011
From the heart of the first Great Depression comes this cartoon from A. Redfield’s The Ruling Clawss, a collection of cartoons he did for the communist newspaper The Daily Worker. Excerpts from this book have been uploaded to Flickr by Michael Kupperman. Redfield was a pseudonym for Syd Hoff, a New Yorker cartoonist. Philip Nel has a short profile of Hoff and his work as Redfield up on his blog.
All found via Metafilter.
It neatly shows how little has changed in the past seventyfive years, doesn’t it? You can find the same attitudes Redfield documents only thinly disguised in government policy and “market” attitudes all over.
Categories: Comix, class war
October 29th, 2011
A reader writes:
The best ‘entry drug’ for civilians is Love & Rockets – very hip in the 80s, but still as brilliant as ever (best comic of past 30 years IMO).
Confession time: I’ve never really gotten into Love & Rockets. At first I was too engrossed with superheroes, then when I did start looking into other sort of comics, I could never find anything in the local comics shops, unlike with e.g. Cerebus, which I discovered through flipping through the High Society phonebook in my then local. I was aware of it of course, because it was, as Kasper says a serious candidate for being one of the best comics of the past three decades, but I never found a good jumping on point.
To be honest, there didn’t seem to be any. These days, Fantagraphics a nice line of L&R collections, but back in the nineties, when I was a serious comics collector, Love & Rockets was one of those series that it seemed you’ve had to have read from issue one to be able to understand it. Which sort of reinforces my point from two days ago, that continued availability is key for any comic to become part of the canon.
Categories: Comix
October 28th, 2011
Below is the list of the twentyfive books chosen for World Book Night 2012. According to the site, these books “were selected partly by a public vote for the World Book Night top 100, with an editorial committee whittling down the list”, which may explain some of the odd nature of the list. I thought I’ll keep it simple for this meme: everything I’ve read is in italics, everything I’m not planning to ever read is struck out.
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Player of Games by Iain M Banks
- Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham
- Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- The Take by Martina Cole
- Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell
- Someone Like You by Roald Dahl
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Room by Emma Donoghue
- Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Misery by Stephen King
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella- Small Island by Andrea Levy
- Let the Right One In by John Ajvde Lindqvist
The Road by Cormac McCarthyThe Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger- The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
- The Damned Utd by David Peace
- Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
- How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
- Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
- The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak
Only four out of twentyfive read means this is not the list for me. A weird mixture of genres, established classics and recent blockbusters, yet not very diverse considering this is supposed to be for World Book Night. It’s certainly not all Dead White Males, but as far as I can tell these are all authors writing for/firmly established in the UK/US book markets.
To be honest, I never like this sort of list and if anything makes me less inclined to read a book, it’s when it’s being promoted as part of something like this.
(Meme found via Nicholas Whyte, originated by Ian Sales.)
Categories: "Literature", books and books review, posts interesting only to me
