Blankets

Blankets

by Craig Thompson

Top Shelf Productions
2003

ISBN:1-891830-43-0

I haven't finished this book yet, but I am so in love with it. Craig Thompson's graphic novel depicts his own coming-of-age story, complete with uncomfortable childhood, zealous teenage Christianity, and the awkward guilt of his sexual awakening. I've come to appreciate graphic novels as an art form in the last year or so, and this book is definitely beautiful, but what really grabs me is the brutal, graceful honesty with which it depicts the turbid emotions of Christian teenagers. Takes me right back to high school.

Quotage:









Would I read it again? As long as the ending is good.

Standard Hero Behavior

Standard Hero Behavior

by John David Anderson

Clarion Press
2007

ISBN:0-618-75920-4

Mason Quayle lives in a town stuck somewhere between the High Middle Ages and the Bush Administration. He's a bard, but not a very good one, and he spends most of his time making mundane activities sound heroic, like the time Mr. Frinkmeyer faced a giant chipmunk in his backyard. It's just that nobody does anything heroic anymore. Ten years ago, the town was full of heroes. In fact, Highsmith was to heroes what Hollywood is to actors. But then they all mysteriously left town, even Mason's father, and were replaced by one rich hero, Duke Darlinger.

Now Hero's Alley is dilapidated, the townspeople pay a protection tax to the duke, and a sign in the town square informs them of the current monster attack threat level (Goblins are orange. Or is it red?).

But when Mason discovers that not only is the duke is a fraud, but his town is about to be attacked by a menagerie of evil creatures under the control of Bennie the Orc, he sets off on a quest to bring heroes back to Highsmith (now called Darlington).

This is a great book, full of orange-haired witches, cross-dressing giants, narcoleptic swordsman, and all sorts of quirky magical creatures. The beginning is a little slow, but once Mason gets out of town, the book is funny, exciting, honest, and heartfelt, all without being too cheesy.

Quotage:

Mason looked around him. Looked back in the direction of Darlington. Looked at the sword that was still hanging from his belt, at the horse he was riding, at his new boots and his old pants and the way his hands already felt rougher from holding on to the reins. He looked at how far away he was from anything he knew.

"This," he said with a sigh. "This is it. You're looking at it. This is the single greatest accomplishment of my life."

"We haven't done much," Cowel said. "Rode into one town, had a conversation, and pitied someone into giving us free shoes. We're basically beggars on a borrowed horse."

"I know it's not much." Mason thought about it and tried to figure out what was so remarkable about what they were doing. "But we didn't say no," he said. "That's the thing. We could have run from it. I don't know. It's the potential of it that makes it so great. I'm starting to understand why my father left now. Kind of...Do you get what I'm saying?" Mason turned around and looked at Cowel, whose head was bowed. "Cowel?"

Cowel looked up. "Yeah. Sorry, Mason, mashing lips with Gwyndolyn Broadmore was way better than this."

Would I read it again? Yes. Out loud.

Time Magazine

Time Magazine

I love Time. I used to read Newsweek in high school, but now I've converted to Time because we get it at work and I don't have to pay for it. I try to read it cover-to-cover as often as possible. They've got interesting articles on the Presidential campaigns, stuff you don't find on CNN or the BBC, and I always want to read the little one-page pieces at the beginning and end of the magazine. Keeps me sharp enough to get all those Gilmore Girls references.

The Principles of Uncertainty

The Principles of Uncertainty

by Maira Kalman

The Penguin Press
2007

ISBN: 978-1-59420-134-9

I love this book. I discovered it on the sale table at Barnes and Noble over Christmas break and immediately wanted to buy a copy for everyone I know (I settled on buying just one, for my sister's birthday). Unfortunately, I didn't even know Maira Kalman existed until I found this book, but she's incredible. She publishes books for kids and adults, her paintings are frequently on the cover of the New Yorker, and The Principles of Uncertainty was originally a blog for the NY Times. Plus, she did an illustrated edition of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, which is only the best writing and grammar guide in the universe. And she loves hats. (I love hats!) I want her life.

Anyway, the book is organized like a journal, and each date has a theme or story that's hand-written with full-page illustrations. It's gorgeous. At least, I think so. You can pretty much read the entire book on the NY Times blog.

Would I read it again? Absolutely. I would bathe in it, if I could.

Then Some Other Stuff Happened

Then Some Other Stuff Happened: A New History of America (sort of)

by Bill Lawrence

Pegasus
1969

LCCN: 69-15697

Eight-grade American History teacher Bill Lawrence combines the best phrases, sentences, and paragraphs from his students’ papers and tests to create the ultimate (if not completely accurate) American History textbook. With chapters like “Pilgrams And Other Drunkards,” “The Star Spankle Banner,” and “Der Big Furor,” the book warns, “Any similarity between the characters in this book and real historical figures is purely accidental. […] The views expressed by the students are their own and do not represent those of the author, the school, the publisher, or the world at large.” This book is probably funniest for those who both work with kids and really know their history. It’s not long; I read it in a couple of hours.

Luke and I particularly enjoyed this bit:

On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat. The believed assinator was John Wilkins Booth. […]

The assination all started off when Booth bored a peep hole (for peeping through) in the door of the Ford Theater. He told the policeman that was suppose to guard Lincoln’s body that he was wanted on the telephone. The guard was a pretty dumb fuzz and didn’t know that the telephone had not been invented yet.

Assinator. Oh, it’s too much.

Would I read it again? Yes.

American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese

by Gene Luen Yang

First Second

2006

ISBN: 1596431520

This graphic novel alternates between three stories: a Chinese legend about the deity Monkey King, the first-person account of an adolescent Asian boy trying to survive public school, and a TV show with a stereotypical Chinaman. Each chapter brings the stories closer together (like the picture book Black and White) until they collide in a surprising conclusion. The art is great, the characters are funny, and, overall, the book is charming if a little pedantic.

Would I read it again? Yes.

The Lady and Her Tiger

The Lady and Her Tiger
and the other famous animals she trained with love and struggled to save
by Pat Derby with Peter S. Beagle

Thomas Congdon Books
E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
1976

ISBN: 0-525-14275-4

I found this book at work while catloguing the 700s. For those of you who lead normal lives and don't know the ins and outs of the Dewey Decimal System, the 700s contain books on art and, for some reason, football and NASCAR. Wedged in there between Broadway and Indoor Games of Skill is a tiny little section devoted to Animals who Perform Publicly (791.3 or 791.8, if you're interested). Most of the books feature giant pictures of grinning chimpanzees which are not the least bit tempting to me. However, when I flipped this one over to look for the ISBN, I saw this picture of the tiny little author kissing a gizzly bear. I started flipping through just to look at the pictures and captions, but I got so involved in the stories that I finally had to set the book aside to check out for myself.

Despite its designation in the ol' DDS, The Lady and Her Tiger is really an autobiography of Pat Derby's interesting life. She grows up in England, where her dad teaches Shakespeare at Cambridge, finishes university at 15, moves to New York on her own, and begins performing in night clubs. Eventually, she hooks up with this animal trainer and the two of them start to develop weirdo ideas about training, things that involve actually feeding your animals and cleaning out their cages. Needless to say, their methods don't sit well with their boss, so they create their own training company, but can't resist adopting every mistreated or malformed wild animal they come across in Southern California. Most of the book centers around their relationships with different animals, their wacked-out ideas of love and friendship, and their absolute poverty (because, let's be honest here, love and financial success do not go hand in hand).

It sounds kind of fluffy, but it's really very depressing, with lots of animals dying because of human idiocy or poverty, relationships falling apart, health problems...it's a great read. And she's a wonderful writer.

The following excerpt is near the beginning of the book, when Pat is working as a nurse at a large ranch. They've had two gorillas delivered to her in crates, but the animals' cages aren't ready, so they live in her tiny trailer for two weeks:

They smelled wonderful. Nothing smells as sweet as a gorilla, though bears smell as good in their own harsher way. It's a slightly musty kind of sweetness, a little like the smell of grapes in the sun. I would know it anywhere. If innocence had a smell, it would smell like a gorilla. [...]

They never stopped smelling like gorillas. Forceing a man to live in his own excrement until his mind and all his senses are drowned in fowlness--and the average gorilla is considerably cleaner about his person than the average human being--is an approved traditional method of breaking him, of reducing him to an animal, as we say. The two great animals shut up in boxes in my trailer, crouching alone in darkness and filth, never gave in, never went mad, never diminished for an instant from what they were. Edging around the crates a hundred times a day, lugging my eternal buckets and bottles of baby-animal formula, or pressed close against them crooning pitiful, hopeless lies into the reek, I could still smell their old sweetness of dark grapes and attic sachets.

Would I read it again? Not anytime soon.