bookblogging

Graphic novels:

Avi, author, Brian Floca, artist: City of Light, City of Dark
(so very, very excellent. I amused myself by trying to translate the bits of Spanish dialogue without looking at the English captions for them. I didn't do very well, but I appear to have remembered more of my high school Spanish than I realized.

YA plot structure is so recognizable! I think I would have identified it as being a YA book even if I hadn't seen Avi's name on the cover).


Sabatini, Rafael, author, Various: Graphic Classis: Rafael Sabatini
(I haven't read any Sabatini before--don't look at me like that; I wasn't an English major--and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked his style. Very fun stuff).


Bell, Gabrielle: Lucky
(or, when slice-of-life gets whiney.

Sorry, that's not fair. I did really like it, but I constantly wanted to shout at the boyfriend, "Just pick an apartment and stay in it! I'm tired of reading about the author helping you move and you deciding to stop checks you wrote to innocent tenants who thought they'd found a roommate, you jerk." Maybe it's a New York real estate thing, where you have to move fast and put down a deposit on an apartment you want to rent ASAP lest you lose it, but I really disapprove of writing checks in bad faith, particularly when it's done habitually).


Manga:

Hirano Kohta: Hellsing vol. 3
(Doing wonders for the image of the Catholic church, those side stories are).

Watase Yuu: Absolute Boyfriend vol. 4
(I can no longer remember whether I read volume 3. I might have. I dunno.

This is not gonna go down in history as my favorite Watase manga, but man, I always dig her style. I'd rather be reading Ceres, it's just never at the library when I'm there).

bookblogging

Graphic novels:

Stassen, Jean-Philippe: Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda
(this is the most depressing thing I have read this week).

Various: Graphic Classics: Gothic Classics
(I've already read Northanger Abbey, and was familiar with "Carmilla" from having heard a version of the radio play based on the story--it follows it very closely, except for having a little looser of an ending, I think--so the highlight of this for me was The Mysteries of Udolpho. It's a ridiculously overblown story, but knowing the highlights adds a bit to the experience of Northanger Abbey, which references Ann Radcliffe's work and makes a little bit of fun of it.

I don't really know how "At the Gate" fits into the Gothic tradition--maybe my sense of the term is too narrow?--but I liked it. Doggie souls camped out at the gates of heaven waiting for the souls of their masters and mistresses in life, so they can go in together--not because they aren't allowed in alone, but because heaven isn't heaven to a dog without the beloved human companion? Yes, I teared up).


Manga:

Oda Eiichiro: One Piece vols. 3-4
(the awesome thing about manga like this is that it takes me about ten minutes to read a volume. And when I say, "read," I mean, "flip rapidly through the pages and read any words that are bolded and enlarged, which is the only part of the dialogue necessary to follow the action.").

bookblogging

Graphic novels:

Tommaso, Rich: Let's Hit the Road
(I should have been warned off by the foreword, in which Tommaso mused how overdone the autobiographical comic was, and how silly it was that he was doing his when they were out of vogue, but I guess everyone does them for the same reason, etc etc. He's right! They're overdone! But that's not why I gave up two chapters in; I gave up because they've overdone enough that I can opt not to read autobiographical indy black and white comics that are misogynistic, profanity-laced slacker wastelands like this, and still be able to pick from a full shelf. Yeah, life is good).

Ottaviani, Jim, and Janine Johnson: Levitation: Physics and Psychology in the Service of Deception
(such a grandiose title for such a slim volume! Worth the fifteen minutes it took to read it, though).


Campbell, Ross: Wet Moon vol. 1
(I read this directly after giving up on the Tommaso, and almost tossed it aside unfinished, too.

The art is striking and skillful, but it's also got a seriously uncomfortable aesthetic--let me just put out there that I am not in the crowd that finds extensive facial and body piercing even remotely sexy or beautiful, and I gag reflexively on the leather-and-plastic side of Goth fashion, which translates to, "The aesthetic of this art is something that I find unattractive to the point of ugliness."

The writing is moody and spare, and there's the kind of emphasis on the seedy and scatological, with a dose of wasted youth. It's the kind of thing that can go wrong for me very fast. I pushed on, though, and by the end of the book, I was pretty hooked. Campbell knows what he's doing).


Manga:

Toyada Minoru: Love Roma vol. 1
(dang, those kids are adorable. I really love the ever-growing peanut gallery of friends and classmates, especially the laconic female best friend).


Usui Yoshito: Crayon Shinchan vol. 1
(reread. Indeed, it's me that's grown more tolerant, since the last time I tried reading this a year or two ago, I hated it and didn't finish the book.

Shin-chan is like Dennis the Menace or Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, if the American comics page had an exponentially higher tolerance for scatological and sexual humor).