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bookblogging
Aug. 2nd, 2008 12:22 pmNovels/prose books:
Kawana, Sari: Murder Most Modern: Detective Fiction and Japanese Culture
(it's an academic work--according to her bio, Kawana is an assistant prof of Japanese at UMass Boston, and hey, right in my backyard!--but well-written and accessible, especially since I have a background in communications & culture studies, and already grok the basic system she's working with. Kawana looks at the relationship between detective fiction and culture in Taisho and early Showa-era Japan. There's way too much material in here for me to try to summarize it, but I do recommend it if you're at all interested in Japanses detective fiction; even with my scanty historical knowledge of the subject, this was an interesting read. And it has a bibliography, which will come in handy for the mystery manga/Japanese mystery project).
Graphic novels:
Shelley, Mary, author, Gary Reed, adapter, Fraser Irving, illustrator: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: The Graphic Novel
(the art, though whacked, is good, but I'm afraid the book does not stand as an independent work, as Reed says he hopes it will; the adapted script leaves out facts necessary to figure out what the hell is going on. So Justine is blamed for the murder of William. Great. Who's Justine? The adaptation never identifies her or her relationship to Victor. I can guess from context, but it's jarring. I have read the original Frankenstein, but not recently enough to be able to fill in the missing details, and if the work is supposed to stand on its own, I shouldn't need to have read the original to make sense of the adaptation).
Moon, Fabio and Gabriel Ba: De: Tales: Stories from Urban Brazil
(kind of awesome. Is this what's referred to as magical realism? I like it. I could comfortably share head space with these guys).
McCulloch, Derek, writer, Shepherd Hendrix, artist: Stagger Lee
(I gather from McCulloch's notes that this is fictionalized enough from the scanty known historical record that it should not be taken as a textbook history; nevertheless, it is a pretty cool reconstruction of the actual historical murder of Billy Lyons by Stag Lee Sheldon, nicely contextualized in late 19th century St. Louis).
Rabagliati, Michel: Paul Moves Out
(I can never figure out what I like best about Rabagliati--the basic pleasant decency of Paul and the people he knows, the underlying peacefulness and happiness of these slice-of-life style stories, or all of the Quebecois cultural references which are completely new to me).
Manga:
Hidaka Yoshiki, story, Tsugihara Ryuji, art: The First President of Japan, vol. 4
(I would love, love, love to see an analysis of the values of this manga in the larger political and cultural sphere in Japan, as written by someone who knew them well. I have only a vague grasp of the issues myself, so I'm very much at the mercy of the author for context and interpretation. I can testify that it's very entertaining, though).
Kawana, Sari: Murder Most Modern: Detective Fiction and Japanese Culture
(it's an academic work--according to her bio, Kawana is an assistant prof of Japanese at UMass Boston, and hey, right in my backyard!--but well-written and accessible, especially since I have a background in communications & culture studies, and already grok the basic system she's working with. Kawana looks at the relationship between detective fiction and culture in Taisho and early Showa-era Japan. There's way too much material in here for me to try to summarize it, but I do recommend it if you're at all interested in Japanses detective fiction; even with my scanty historical knowledge of the subject, this was an interesting read. And it has a bibliography, which will come in handy for the mystery manga/Japanese mystery project).
Graphic novels:
Shelley, Mary, author, Gary Reed, adapter, Fraser Irving, illustrator: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: The Graphic Novel
(the art, though whacked, is good, but I'm afraid the book does not stand as an independent work, as Reed says he hopes it will; the adapted script leaves out facts necessary to figure out what the hell is going on. So Justine is blamed for the murder of William. Great. Who's Justine? The adaptation never identifies her or her relationship to Victor. I can guess from context, but it's jarring. I have read the original Frankenstein, but not recently enough to be able to fill in the missing details, and if the work is supposed to stand on its own, I shouldn't need to have read the original to make sense of the adaptation).
Moon, Fabio and Gabriel Ba: De: Tales: Stories from Urban Brazil
(kind of awesome. Is this what's referred to as magical realism? I like it. I could comfortably share head space with these guys).
McCulloch, Derek, writer, Shepherd Hendrix, artist: Stagger Lee
(I gather from McCulloch's notes that this is fictionalized enough from the scanty known historical record that it should not be taken as a textbook history; nevertheless, it is a pretty cool reconstruction of the actual historical murder of Billy Lyons by Stag Lee Sheldon, nicely contextualized in late 19th century St. Louis).
Rabagliati, Michel: Paul Moves Out
(I can never figure out what I like best about Rabagliati--the basic pleasant decency of Paul and the people he knows, the underlying peacefulness and happiness of these slice-of-life style stories, or all of the Quebecois cultural references which are completely new to me).
Manga:
Hidaka Yoshiki, story, Tsugihara Ryuji, art: The First President of Japan, vol. 4
(I would love, love, love to see an analysis of the values of this manga in the larger political and cultural sphere in Japan, as written by someone who knew them well. I have only a vague grasp of the issues myself, so I'm very much at the mercy of the author for context and interpretation. I can testify that it's very entertaining, though).
