Books, Design and Culture
Based on Roald Dahl’s Matilda and Quentin Blake’s illustrations, cartoonist Aaron Renier has created a wonderful comic about the joy of books and libraries. Read the whole strip at Unshelved.
(via Drawn | The Ephemerist)
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Risky Business — Cartoonist Adrian Tomine talks about his new book Scenes From An Impending Marriage, which originally started life as a mini-comic for his wedding guests, with More Intelligent Life:
I probably first started thinking about publishing it when a copy appeared on eBay. I assumed that since it was only given to close friends and family, that would never happen, but I was wrong. And like I said, since I was slowly adding pages to the book, I eventually found myself with 50 or 60 pages worth of material, and I just proposed the idea to my publisher. If he had declined, I would’ve happily filed it away…
AND Adrian and his wife Sarah Brennan talk about the new book with NPR’s All Things Considered.
(For the record, Scenes From An Impending Marriage is distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books).
Sunny-Side — Jonathan Lethem talks to Carolyn Kellogg at The LA Times about decamping from Brooklyn to Southern California. There is more of their conversation at Times’ Jacket Copy blog:
I’ve only probably reviewed seven or eight novels. It’s really problematic. I’m gregarious with writers; I like novelists. I don’t want my sympathies to cause me to write a review that’s in any kind of bad faith, nor do I want to destroy some pleasant, even if it’s slight, collegial feeling. I try to review the dead guy — Bolaño — or the biography of the dead guy, because I like being in the conversation. Sometimes I look at what Updike did at the New Yorker. I don’t know if many people have the temperament, let alone the incredible set of skills he brought to that, the versatility, the endless curiosity, to identify with so many different kinds of novelists who were not doing what he does.
The Price of Zero — David Carr on media companies and unpaid contributors for The New York Times:
For those of us who make a living typing, it’s all very scary, of course. It’s less about the diminution of authority and expertise, although there is that, and more about the growing perception that content is a commodity, and one that can be had for the price of zero… For the media, this is a Tom Sawyer moment. “Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” he says to his friends, and sure enough, they are soon lined up for the privilege of doing his chores. That’s a bit like how social networks get built. (Just imagine if Tom had also schooled them in the networking opportunities of the user-generated endeavor: “You’re not just painting a fence. You’re building an audience around your personal brand.”)
And finally…
In the Age of Screens — A serialized essay about contemporary book discovery and reading by Chad W. Post, publisher of Open Letter Books, editor of the Three Percent blog:
[W]e’ve stripped away all the institutions that supported the ways in which most outsiders found their literature, leaving texts to float untethered in the ether, there to be found… There is no serendipity… And yet, for the long-term benefit of society, we need people to have—and be exposed to— ideas from the out-of-nowhere.
The complete essay is available as a PDF.
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, Edmund de Waal’s memoir about his extraordinary Jewish family and an inherited collection of ornamental Japanese carvings called netsuke, was on many of last year’s “best-of” lists and is high on my current ‘to-read’ list. The author talks about the book with Eleanor Wachtel on CBC Radio’s Writers & Company:
CBC Radio Writer’s & Co: Edmund de Waal Mp3
Edmund de Waal, who is also a successful ceramicist, is also profiled in The Guardian:
Comments closedDe Waal and his netsuke have been much discussed over the past seven or eight months, but even now he is “completely taken aback” by the success of a book which is an “odd matrix of personal obsessions”. (We talk in the upstairs room of his south London studio – downstairs are three kilns, his wheel and a bag of clay, ready for him to get to work in the afternoon.) Yet that it is so personal and springs from these obsessions (Japan, objects, memory), drawing on his expertise as a potter, is surely a clue to its enormous appeal. How things are made and handled, he writes, and what happens to them “has been central to my life for more than 30 years”.
Ben Fullerton, Director of User Experience at Method Design in San Francisco, talks to Nora Young about design that supports solitude and mindfulness for CBC Radio’s Spark:
CBC Spark: Ben Fullerton Designing for Solitude Mp3
(I love this idea).
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An interesting interview with John B. Thompson, author of Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century, at Beyond the Book:
[R]eaders are going to be faced with a growing proliferation of possibilities in terms of the ways that they read and consume the written word, and people will make different choices about that. I think what we will see is some readers will migrate effortlessly into an electronic environment and will welcome the emergence of a variety of different ways to read texts online or in dedicated e-book readers or on iPads or other forms of device that will enable them to read in different ways and different contexts… Others will find it less attractive and will continue to value some aspects of the printed book that are important to them, because for many readers, books are not just reading devices. Books are cultural artifacts. They are social objects. They are indeed forms of art, which they like to own and possess and to put on a shelf and display and to share with others and to return to time and again and read on various occasions in the future. And they will continue to cherish that physical objective character of the printed book. And so, some will not choose to read in an online or an electronic form, because for them, the book matters as an object.
Beyond the Book John B. Thompson Mp3
(via MobyLives)
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I feel a special admiration for The Second Pass. Launched almost two years ago — shortly after first tentative posts at The Casual Optimist — and with a list of whip-smart contributors, it seemed to signify a second wave online literary journals that built on the success of groundbreaking sites like Bookslut and ReadySteadyBlog. Well-designed and appropriately eclectic, it had wider horizons than ailing newspaper review pages, and yet Brooklyn-based founder John Williams — who previously worked in publishing — seemed less prone to the snark so commonplace among some of the more established online literary set.
I was, needless to say, surprised when I first received an email from John. The idea that he had even heard of the less-than whip-smart The Casual Optimist seemed so… unlikely. And yet, John and I have remained in touch on and off for the past year and half, and I have even contributed to The Second Pass, so I thought it was high time I talked to him about the site and its recent book party in Brooklyn.
We corresponded by email…
For those people unfamiliar with the site, could you describe The Second Pass?
The site is an online magazine devoted to books new and old. It features reviews of new books, essays about older and more obscure books, and a blog about books of all stripes. That’s the basics. It’s a place where serious readers of all kinds can enjoy themselves and, from time to time, maybe learn about a book or author they might not otherwise learn about.
What makes The Second Pass unique?
Unique is a strong word. There are other sites and publications that pay attention to obscure books, but I think the site’s regular devotion to it — including out-of-print books — is rare, if not entirely unique. I also like to think the writing is generally at a level that separates it from many other online-only enterprises.
What lessons have you learned in the first 20 months of editing the site?
Plan ahead. And have contingency plans. I’ve learned those lessons, though I’m still learning to act on them.
Appearance and readability often seem to be an afterthought for websites about books, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with The Second Pass. Did a lot of planning go into the design of the site?
Yes, my friend Strath Shepard spent time coming up with several visual ideas for the site, and I chose from among them — any one of which I would have been thrilled with. I wanted to make sure the site looked good, because I think design is as important online as anywhere else. It should be strong and inviting without being an obstruction or a distraction, in my opinion.
Is it easier or more difficult for independent online literary journals to find an audience today?
Easier than it was in the past online? I’m not sure about that. My unscientific sense is that many more people are spending time online, but that the idea of a big audience for niche blogs or journals is more or less a dead dream. Reaching a certain core number of readers is easy enough online, if you’re patient and steady in your production, but I think the audience for serious books coverage is inherently limited in a way that can be hard to admit. I would rather try to reach the maximum of that particular audience (and I have no idea what that number would be; my site’s traffic is surely a tiny sliver of it) than start throwing too many things at the wall to try to reach a more general audience. I think the pressing need for lots of traffic is reflected at a place like The Huffington Post, where the books coverage is a hodgepodge of too-frequently-published pieces that don’t feel unified in any satisfying way. But those people who work for places where increasing traffic is paramount — to paraphrase David Letterman, I wouldn’t give their troubles to a monkey on a rock. I’m happy there’s no one above me worrying about traffic.
What other book sites do you read regularly?
Maud Newton, The Book Bench, Paris Review Daily, Bookslut, The Millions, John Self, Levi Stahl’s I’ve Been Reading Lately, the Barnes & Noble Review, Mark Athitakis, Novel Readings, and yours. Those might be the ones I check most regularly, off the top of my head, but I drop in on many more, most or all of them on the links page at The Second Pass.
Where does the name of your blog, A Special Way of Being Afraid, come from?
It comes from a Philip Larkin poem called “Aubade,” which is a terrifying and beautiful confrontation of the fear of death. It begins: “I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. / Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.” And a bit later: “This is a special way of being afraid / No trick dispels. Religion used to try…” It’s always been one of my favorite poems, and I thought that phrase would make a good blog name, back in 2005, when I started it. I still like the name.
How has the experience as founder and editor of The Second Pass been different from blogging?
I started the older blog while working for a big publishing house, partly as a way to maintain the habit of writing and to develop my own voice while in a job that made it difficult to find time for those things. Especially in the beginning, I felt it was important to keep the blog regularly updated, for the exercise of it and for building readership, however modest. I feel that pressure more keenly with The Second Pass, since I have more ambitions for it. Ideally, I would update it far more often than I do. I also work with other people on The Second Pass. I wear all the hats, but I rely on reviews and essays from other writers, a social part of the experience that I really enjoy but that makes it different from the more dictatorial nature of the blog.
The blog is also more wide-ranging. I’m probably a reader first and foremost, but I’m also a longtime fan of music, movies, and sports, among other things. Not to mention the more personal things I might ruminate about over there. I still consider the blog a useful outlet for those things, though I’ve been terribly neglecting it for the past several months, if not longer.
The Second Pass held its first event in November. What made you decide to throw a party?
I had been meaning to have a party ever since last March, when the site celebrated its one-year anniversary, but was stymied by various obstacles that wouldn’t have stymied someone with more resolve. I thought it would be fun to have a party, and figured it couldn’t hurt the site’s visibility. Plus, I wanted to showcase some of the fantastic people who have written for the site.
Who read at the event?
Carlene Bauer, Will Blythe, and Maud Newton read from works of fiction in progress. Jason Zinoman read from his book about horror movies in the 1960s and ’70s, which is being published here next summer. And Lauren Kaminsky read an excerpt from a terrifically weird book called Listen, Little Man by Wilhelm Reich, a screed written by an Austrian psychoanalyst who worked with Freud and later seemed to have cracked up pretty good. I’m hoping Lauren will write about the book (and him) for the site at some point.
Do you think the evening was a success? And will you be organizing more events in future?
I thought it was a big success. I’m biased, of course, but the readers couldn’t have done a better job, there was plenty of wine and food, and everyone seemed to have a good time. Melville House, an independent publisher and bookstore in Brooklyn, was a gracious host. And yes, I’m certainly hoping to do it again, perhaps in Manhattan next time, when the site turns two (which happens March 10) or soon after.
Do you think interest in live book events will see the same kind of revival that live music events have in recent years?
I think live book events, at least in New York, have been thriving in recent years. My dirty little secret is that I find many traditional readings dull. Not all, but many. Lots of good writers just aren’t good readers, which is no knock on them. It’s not their job, and they’re very different skills. Only a few lucky people have both. I think it’s also asking a lot of a text to keep people interested for a long stretch of time while it’s read aloud. (I’m not a big fan of audio books for that reason, though this is probably saying much more about my aural attention span than about the worth of audio books.)
Who are some of your other favourite authors?
William Trevor, Richard Russo (especially pre-Pulitzer), Marilynne Robinson, David James Duncan, Dostoevsky, Lorrie Moore, Wilfrid Sheed, Nabokov, William James, Martin Amis (back when), Iris Murdoch, Richard Ford (the Bascombe books, particularly), to name a few.
What were your favourite books of 2010?
I recently finished The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr, a nonfiction story set in late-19th-century France, which tells the parallel stories of a serial killer on the loose and a criminologist who was doing a lot to introduce the set of forensic techniques that we now, thanks to TV, simply refer to as “CSI.” It’s a gripping story, smartly told. I also enjoyed Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist. He’s an old-fashioned storyteller, sweeping and just the right amount of sentimental, and this novel is about a Mormon with four wives and 28 children.
What books are you looking forward to reading in 2011?
I’m glad you asked this, because it reminded me that I’m behind in figuring out what the site will cover this year. I’m a fan of Jonathan Coe’s work, and his new novel, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, is coming in March. Just today, I received a galley of House of Exile by Evelyn Juers, a biography of Heinrich Mann, his wife Nelly, and their circle of famous friends. I’ve been looking forward to its U.S. publication since I read a terrific review in the TLS. And of course, there’s David Foster Wallace’s novel in April. Though I’m skeptical of posthumous releases, including this one, I’m as curious as every other fan of his.
Thanks John!
Photo credit: Justin Lane
Ducking in just under the wire, here is my list of favourite of new books of the year. It’s not meant to represent the “best” of 2010. Rather, it’s a completely unscientific, very subjective list of books (arranged in alphabetical order) that I enjoyed. As I mentioned in my previous post, I found compiling the list a bit of a challenge and yet, for all that, there’s an air of withering predictability about the selections. There are no surprises. But even if this wasn’t a particular stellar year for reading, there were still lots of books I was excited about and that can only be a good thing.
I should also mention, for the sake of disclosure and all that, the top 10 includes one book distributed by Raincoast Books in Canada, and the list of honourable mentions refers to a couple of other titles I have helped promote in some minor capacity. They’re included here because I actually like them, not for any nefarious marketing reasons, but I guess you’ll just have to take my word for that. In any case, all these titles are identified with an asterisk…
And with that out of the way, on to the list!
Born Modern: The Life and Work of Alvin Lustig*
Elaine Cohen Lustig & Steven Heller
Chronicle Books
ISBN 9780811861274
I am a little embarrassed to start this list with a title distributed by Raincoast, but it comes first alphabetically and, I can honestly say tat Born Modern was the book I was most looking forward to this year. And I was not the only person excited about the book. When I tweeted about it from the Raincoast sales conference, the response was immediate. Almost every North American book designer I’ve ever spoken to cites Lustig — who designed covers for New Directions Press in the 1950’s — as an influence. The book designer’s book designer, then… A must-have.
C
Tom McCarthy
Knopf
ISBN 9780307593337
Tom McCarthy’s C was, as mentioned previously, one of the defining books of the year for me, standing — perhaps unfairly — opposite the ubiquitous Freedom. If I am honest though, I liked it less than McCarthy’s previous novel, the starkly compact Remainder (one of my favourite books of the last 10 years). At times, the sprawling, crawling C felt like it was held together with the sticky-tape of McCarthy’s singular intellect (a thought reaffirmed by seeing him in conversation with Douglas Coupland in Toronto). But somehow, in the end, it still works in some sort of baffling, gorgeous way.
The book was also perfect excuse to finally talk to Knopf cover designer Peter Mendelsund for the blog. The Q & A with Peter and Tom about C is here.
The City and the City
China Miéville
Del Rey
ISBN 9780345497529
I am cheating a little by including The City and the City because it was first published in 2009. It was, however, published in paperback in 2010, and as that’s how a lot of us still buy our fiction, I’m bending the rules to include it.
The novel itself is essentially a detective story, but what lifts out of the ordinary is the imaginary space in which it takes place. Architecture, geography and maps are clearly important to Miéville, but where, for example, Perdido Street Station creates a fantastically baroque city of ghettos and towering alien architecture, The City and the City is only slightly off-kilter — familiar but unsettling — and the book is even better for it.
Joy Division
Kevin Cummins
Rizzoli
ISBN 9780847834815
This was my Christmas present (thank you Mrs C.O.!) and it is — pretty obviously I would think — for fans only. Still, I’m guessing there’s quite a few out there. In any case, the book is a collection of beautiful black and white photographs of Joy Division and the late Ian Curtis by Manchester-born photographer Kevin Cummins. It includes Cummins’ iconic pictures for the NME of the band standing on a snowy bridge in Hulme, Manchester, as well as photographs of live performances and the band back stage. The book was stylishly designed — with more than a whiff of Peter Saville — by London design agency Farrow.
Just Kids
Patti Smith
Ecco
ISBN 9780060936228
Other than owing a copy of Horses, I can’t say that I’m particularly familiar with the work of Patti Smith, or Robert Mapplethorpe for that matter (other than the sort of stuff must people know about his art, and that he was connected to Sam Wagstaff, no relation). But, it doesn’t really matter. Smith’s memoir about her relationship with Mapplethorpe is a touching and self-deprecating look at their early years together in New York and their adventures in the art/music scene of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Memories of the Future
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull
NYRB
ISBN 9781590173190
I am definitely cheating by including this in the list as it was published in 2009. That said, it was published late in 2009, I missed it, and it’s too good not to be in this year’s top 10.
The book itself is a collection of seven short stories written between 1922 and Krzhizhanovsky’s death in 1950, all of which were suppressed by Soviet censors. The stories are reminiscent of Gogol’s short fiction and Bulgakov’s novellas, and suffice to say, they’re all bonkers. But in a good way. I loved the story Quadraturin about the man who gets lost in his black, ever-expanding apartment, and the strange time travel title story which concludes the book.
Penguin 75: Designers, Authors, Commentary (the Good, the Bad…)
Paul Buckley
Penguin
ISBN 9780143117629
Seeing as I spend so much time talking about cover design, I would be remiss if I didn’t include Penguin 75 in my top 10. Released to celebrate Penguin’s 75th anniversary, it’s a surprisingly diverse and candid look at the recent cover designs from Penguin’s US outpost in New York. I talked about Penguin 75 with art director Paul Buckley and book designer Christopher Brand here.
Parker: The Outfit
Darwyn Cooke
IDW
ISBN 9781600107627
The previous book in Darwyn Cooke’s Richard Stark adaptations, The Hunter, was on last year’s list, so perhaps it is hardly surprising that the sequel, which I think is better, is in this year’s top 10 as well. In new book, the formidable Parker — now with a new face — turns the tables on ‘the Outfit’, who quickly wish that they’d let sleeping dogs lie. Cooke seems in more confident form with this adaptation and the result is a stylish and fast-paced noir that looks incredibly cool. My pithier Advent Book Blog pitch for The Outfit is here.
The Shallows
Nicholas Carr
W.W. Norton & Co.
ISBN 9780393072228
I had a frisson of recognition reading Carr’s description of internet affected attention spans and I doubt I was the only one who thought “oh god, that’s happening to me” while reading The Shallows. The book is too long — a shorter book would’ve been even more effective — but it is still compelling. Carr doesn’t say technology is wrong, but reminds us that for all its benefits, we should be mindful of the consequences and what we might be losing.
Werewolves of Montpelier
Jason
Fantagraphics
ISBN 9781606993590
I wrote about my love for Jason’s comics when Werewolves of Montpellier was about to be released earlier this year, and the book itself didn’t disappoint. Ostensibly the book is about a thief called Sven who disguises himself as werewolf to rob people’s apartments and incurs the wrath of the town’s actual werewolves. It is, however, as much about friendship, identity, loneliness, and, ultimately, Sven’s unrequited love for his neighbour Audrey. In a lovely one-page scene, Audrey stands behind Sven, hugging his shoulders. “Do women come from another planet?” she asks. “Yes, women come from another planet,” Sven replies. The whole book is achingly brief, but Werewolves of Montpellier is possibly my favourite Jason book to date.
Honourable Mentions
American Trademarks edited by Eric Baker and Tyler Blick*
Footnotes In Gaza by Joe Sacco (December 2009)
I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester (published in the UK as Whoops!)
KENK by Richard Poplak and Nick Marinkovich*
Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960’s and 1970’s by Jonathan Lippincott*
The Lost Rolling Stones Photographs: The Bob Bonis Archive, 1964-1966 by Larry Marrion
The Rocketeer: The Complete Collection by Dave Stevens (December 2009)
Shirley Craven and Hull Traders: Revolutionary Fabrics and Furniture 1957-1980 by Lesley Jackson (October 2009)
So there you go. If this hasn’t met your requirements, Largehearted Boy is aggregating every online “best of 2010” book list he can find, and Fimoculous is aggregating all of the lists related to 2010 in categories ranging from ‘Advertising’ through to ‘Words’. That should keep you busy…
Happy New Year!
2010 was a year of losing battles and one of the first casualties was time for personal reading. The moments I did have were snatched on the subway and, if I could keep my eyes open, last thing at night. I often found myself unwittingly rereading chapters I had read the previous day, or worse, that very morning. The difficulty this week of compiling a list of my favourite books of the year — and the predictability of that list (to be posted soon) — made it very clear that not only did I read less than previous years, I rarely strayed off the beaten path.
The year was thus defined, for better or worse, by two big novels that were in some senses polar opposites: C by Tom McCarthy and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. If C was modern experimental novel masquerading as an early 20th century bildungsroman, Freedom was a Victorian drama in modern dress. It felt like “Two Paths for the Novel” all over again.
Someone cleverer than me observed C “was surrounded by the sort of buzz and static which it contained and described.” But while the buzz amplified C to the Booker shortlist, the hype around Freedom and Franzen seemed to diminish the book. It was so ludicrously overpraised, and subsequently criticized and shunned, that it was almost impossible to evaluate fairly.
OTHER FICTION
Like just about everyone else, I started 2010 reading Stieg Larsson, but now, with 2011 just around the corner, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest remains unfinished, my bookmark at Chapter 6.
I loved the architecture and weird psycho-geography at the heart of the mysterious The City and the City (published in paperback this year) and went on to read China Miéville’s earlier, equally architectural, novel Perdido Street Station.
I was also happy to belatedly discover that Phillip Kerr had resurrected his Bernie Gunther Berlin Noir detective series. Better late than never…
Sadly neither The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman nor Zero History by William Gibson really added up to more than the sum of their (occasionally really quite good) parts.
I simply abandoned Justin Cronin’s clunker The Passage.
Better was Canal, Lee Rourke’s L’Étranger in London. I wasn’t entirely convinced by it, but an off-beat novel about urban ennui and existential violence was a welcome change of pace. Rourke is no doubt an author to watch.
Canal had the added virtue of being short, something of a rare and undervalued quality these days. In fact almost all of the fiction I enjoyed the most this year — the icily beautiful The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, the bonkers Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, and the lyrical The Blue Fox by Sjon — were short. And not actually published in 2010.
Colony by Hugo Wilcken, also short and published in 2007, was unquestionably my favourite novel of the year. Drawing its title from Kafka’s The Penal Colony (and, in turn, Joy Division’s song Colony), the book seemed to me more like a post-modern Conrad, or perhaps Camus trying his hand at a Boy’s Own Adventure. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to Wilcken’s next novel…
NONFICTION
I waited too long to read Patti Smith’s wistful and self-depreciating memoir Just Kids, but I was charmed by it nonetheless. I was less enthralled with Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz. I was not, I suspect, the target audience however…
Jared Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto and Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows both raised intelligent concerns about development of the internet. I was less convinced by Lanier’s polemic than Carr’s tweedier defense of long-form reading, but neither were as reactionary as they were sometimes characterized, and both offered interesting insights whether one agreed with them or not.
The subjective magazine-style reportage of War by Sebastian Junger and the gossipy Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin were both signals of what we can expect from nonfiction in future. But both were troubling, especially War, which felt both narcissistic and yet, at the same time, voyeuristic and exploitative. Neither book properly addressed the complications of embedded insider journalism.
Both War and Game Change were, at least, entertaining. That cannot be said of Bob Woodward’s less than electrifying Obama’s Wars. There is something to be said for detailing events in chronological order, but that doesn’t make it any more readable. Worse, perhaps, I didn’t gain any greater insight into what had happened.
COMICS
Even though Dan Clowes is the godfather of the miserable asshole, it is now such a common trope in indie comics that despite his undeniable virtuosity I was somewhat disappointed by the uncompromising Wilson. It was, however, unfair of me to expect Clowes to be anyone other than Clowes, and just about everyone whose opinion I respect tells me I am wrong about this book, so don’t take my word for it.
KENK took up a lot of my professional time this year so I was glad to see it get such a positive critical response and I’m hopeful that it will finally see a US release in 2011.
Having a short attention span, I enjoyed the latest installment of Hellboy, and its gothic spin off Sir Edward Grey Witchfinder, but continued to be underwhelmed by Mignola’s plodding BPRD series.
Like just about every other nerd in Toronto I read the 6th and final installment of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series (now handily available as a box set). I also finally read Jeff Smith’s epic Bone from cover to cover and revisited The Rocketeer stories by the late Dave Stevens, which were collected, at long last, in a slim hardcover edition at the end of last year.
I loved The Outfit, the latest installment of Darwyn Cooke’s adaptations of Richard Stark’s Parker stories (my Advent Book Blog recommendation this year), and Jason’s strange and delightful Werewolves of Montpelier.
Footnotes In Gaza (published late in 2009) left me depressed, but thoroughly in awe of Joe Sacco.
THE ONES I DIDN’T GET TO (BUT MEANT TO)
The list of new books that I had every intention of reading this year but didn’t is far, far, too long. Here, however, are a few of the books (in no particular order) that I intend to get to sooner rather than later: Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas, Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Sheyngart, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman, Kraken by China Miéville, What Ever Happened to Modernism? by Gabriel Josipovici, The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund Dewaal, A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor, Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield, Set to Sea by Drew Weing and H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness adapted by Ian Culbard. There are no doubt many, many more… I would love to hear what you read and enjoyed this year and what I should add to the list of books for 2011…
2 CommentsPast and Present — An excerpt from Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig by Steve Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen at Design Observer*:
Lustig’s designs fluidly shift from past to present. For his early “experimental” work he built upon an armature of old technologies… and techniques…, which evolved through new technologies… into unprecedented styles… Toward the end of his life, his typography turned into a playful amalgam of vintage letters composed in contemporary layouts with vibrant colors. In “Personal Notes,” he wrote, “As we become more mature we will learn to master the interplay between past and present and not be so self-conscious of our rejection or acceptance of tradition. We will not make the mistake that both rigid modernists and conservatives make, of confusing the quality of form with the specific forms themselves.”
The Authentic — Chuck Klosterman, author most recently of Eating the Dinosaur, profiles Jonathan F., author of Freedom, for GQ Magazine:
It’s a present-day problem: There’s just no escaping the larger, omnipresent puzzle of “reality.” Even when people read fiction, they want to know what’s real. But this, it seems, is not Franzen’s concern. He disintegrates the issue with one sentence.
“Here’s the thing about inauthentic people,” he says on the train, speaking in the abstract. “Inauthentic people are obsessed with authenticity.”
Telling Stories — Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, on interactive storytelling:
The ability to write communally and interactively with computers is nothing new… Digital tools for collaborative writing date back twenty or thirty years. And yet interactive storytelling has never taken off. The hypertext novel in particular turned out to be a total flop. When we read stories, we still read ones written by authors. The reason for the failure of interactive storytelling has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with stories.
Footnotes — Part one of a long interview with journalist and cartoonist Joe Sacco, author most recently of the remarkable Footnotes in Gaza, at Art Threat (via Drawn):
[T]he biggest influence on me journalistically speaking has been George Orwell. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the book Road to Wigan Pier, but Orwell spent time in the industrial areas of Britain during the depression and took a room with a miner, lived with miners. He went down into the mine shaft with the miners. His ability to go to these places and really look at things from a ground level, that was impressive to me. And for other reasons too: because he was so dedicated to his work, and he felt that his work was sort of bigger than himself as a human being. I appreciated that dedication.
Part two will run on Monday apparently…
And finally… Superhero WikiLeaks:
(Thanks Shawn)
*Born Modern is published by Chronicle Books and is distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books.
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