bookblogging

[cerusee]

Novels/prose books:

Kipling, Rudyard: The Jungle Book II.

Christie, Agatha: Murder is Easy
(totally called it. This post should be titled: Christie, Agatha: Calling The Murderer is Easy).

Sayers, Dorothy: Lord Peter Views the Body
(Sayers short stories do not afford quite the same satisfaction as Sayers novels, but I find them fun AWESOME. Sayers was a copywriter before she was a novelist, and she knows how to work brevity to the end of wit. Some of these stories truly take advantage of being short to do things that do not work in a novel.

Side note: I stopped by to ask my lovely manager, who likes vampire romance porn and very good mystery writing, if she'd read Sayers, and she replied, glowing, that she had, that she loved them, and owned all the DVDs of the BBC adaptations to boot, even the ones with Ian Carmichael. She offered to lend them to me! I've already seen them, so I didn't need to take her up on that, but my god, I adore this woman).


Graphic novels:

Slade, Christian: Korgi
(If you happened to know me personally, you would know that corgi-themed material is a gimme. This textless, corgi-themed graphic novel happens to be adorable, well-drawn, and a sweet bit of story, too!

And. Magic corgi. MAGIC CORGI. You heard me, MAGIC CORGI. If this was, like, Renaissance Italy and I was a wealthy widow? I would be personally funding Mr. Slade's work. I think I might commission a painting of me and Sprout against a library backdrop while I was at it. And I'd like a pony. But I would settle for a corgi the size of a pony; Korgi has those, too.

Also, the corgi would need to breathe fire).

Corgis are pure love and joy and they have happy smiling dolphin teddy-bear faces! It's true. Ask anyone. They are the happiest-looking dogs in the dog family. And they can do backflips. They are PURE MAGIC.


Various: The Big Book of Grimm
(I wish they'd copyedit these things a bit better; I know Grimm well enough to spot a few textual errors. I imagine they exist in the other Big Books of, too, I just don't know the material well enough to catch those).

Eldred, Tim: Grease Monkey
(Eldred's love of classic sci-fi is stronger than his ability to draft sci-fi--nobody in two-thousand freakin' one AD can reasonably claim that a preference for sending paper memos over digital files is reasonable for an ENGINEER working on a SPACE STATION, and all in all I think this is really dated beyond the actual excuse of its date of origin--but it's a good comic, and it's fun to watch the art evolve.

I just wish there was, you know, better science in the science fiction).


Van den Bogaert, Harmen Meyndertsz, author, and George O'Conner, artist and adapter: Journey into Mohawk Country
(this is so nifty! O'Conner adapted Van den Bogaert's 17th century journal of the historical title journey into a graphic novel, and it's a textbook example of what an artist can do to interpret, enliven, and flesh out a piece of writing. I would love to read more work from O'Conner, and would love to read more works like this).

Eisner, Will: Invisible People.


Manga:

Takada Rie: Punch! vol. 1
(hee. I'll read whatever the library has. It's kind of cute and funny, although he nicknamed his girlfriend after his dog? What? I love my dog too, but what?).

Kanari Yozaburo, author, and Sato Fumiya: Kindaichi Case Files: The Gentleman Thief
(called it! Kinda).

Comments

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

I adore the Korgi book--that artist *knows* corgis. I met him at Comic Con last year and he did a small commission for me in my autograph book. :D

I liked the art and the characters in Grease Monkey, but the narrative didn't really go anywhere and the science (as you rightly point out) never stacked up. Still, fun read. (I do like the "episode" where he lets you decide the music that sets the scene. That's pretty great.)

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Re: Grease Monkey: Yeah, I was disappointed that in the great hulking heavy thing that is the book, there was very little actual story. There's something about the format weighing in at a couple of pounds that makes you expect some direction. Fun, but ultimately, no more than nostalgia-referencing fun.

You got art from Christian Slade? I'm so jealous! Was it corgi-themed?

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

I paid him $20 and he did a full-page sketch of his corgi in a forest. I was so excited! I think he was a little bemused at my joy. Him, and Gary Amaro, I felt very, very good commissioning things from.

[the-z.livejournal.com]

Korgi is a delight for all corgi lovers! I "read" it to my daughter. She adores it. Corgis are her first exposure to dogs. She is forever tainted XD

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

My parents dog--my first dog at age 22--is a corgi, and therefore I am also forever tainted. I would like to have many dogs, at some point in the future when I have the resources to care for them, and I would like to have some big dogs, because...big dogs are cool...but corgis will always be the coolest dogs to me.

I like the way Slade thinks. What could improve a corgi? Being pony-sized and breathing fire, obviously!