For Jeane’s Dog Ear Challenge: West with the Night was the nonfiction book on an obscure topic/on a topic you don’t often read about. I had a broad selection of Jeane recommendations for this one, since she is always reading books that sound interesting but that I would never pick up on my own. West with the Night is Beryl Markham’s memoir of growing up on her father’s farm in Africa, and becoming a horse trainer, and eventually learning to fly a plane. Beryl Markham sounds like a pretty cool person, though from reading her Wikipedia article it sounds like…
14 CommentsCategory: 2 Stars
A.D. is a graphic novel about seven people from New Orleans. The author interviewed these people extensively, visited New Orleans, took pictures, and then created this book. It tells the stories of people who left and people who stayed, wealthyish people and poorish people, black people and white people. I liked reading this book, because it aligns very nicely with my memories of the hurricane. The high school kids talked about how they were going to miss a couple of days of school, and everyone expected it to turn east the way they always do, and the doctor has a…
6 CommentsDo you ever read a book where you finish it and you’re like, Hm, I think I may be deeply stupid? I sort of felt that way when I finished reading A Pale View of Hills, but with that one, at least, I thought about it for a while and came to a conclusion. I have been thinking furiously about The Girl in a Swing, ever since I finished it yesterday morning, and I am still trying to figure out what the hell happened. I was excited to read this book. I love Watership Down like crazy, and The Girl…
43 CommentsIn Chicken with Plums, Marjane Satrapi writes about tar musician Nasser Ali, a great-uncle of hers who decides to die after his wife destroys his tar in a heated argument. He tries and tries to find another tar that will be the equal of the one that was destroyed, but even the best of tars will not make the music he imagines. He lies down on his bed and stays there for eight days, upon which he dies. Chicken with Plums follows him through those eight days, through visits and memories and dreams and hallucinations. The good: Marjane Satrapi charms…
4 CommentsMm, I hated the troll sidekick. I hated him. The evil sorceress lady Lamorna (only she’s not that evil – good for her to get the robe at the end despite her wicked ways!) is totally justified in smacking his head off. I would smack his stupid head off too. He spoiled every scene he was in. The Robe of Skulls is all about Lady Lamorna trying to raise enough money to make a robe all out of skulls. With spiders. She’s thrilled about the whole idea, but she doesn’t have enough money, and so concocts a scheme to raise…
Leave a CommentMy graphic novel experiments continue! I checked this out because I opened it up and I liked some of the things the artist did with panels. I still do actually – there’s a page I remember, where the whole page is the character’s face, and it’s broken up into panels with dialogue across it. It’s a good effect, how the dialogue washes across the character as he’s deep in thought. Maybe it’s because I read Scott McCloud’s books, or maybe it’s because there were some rather flashy art choices (not flashy in a bad way!), but I noticed panel divisions…
2 CommentsDesultory. I was going to make that my whole review. Get it? Get it? Cause that the book was desultory and so was my review, see? See what I would have done there? But then I wanted to gripe about some stuff, so I decided to expand upon the ways in which it was desultory and have a moan about them. I can do that if I want. The Rules of the Internet say so. I was anticipating enjoying Forbidden Fruit. Sex and religion in the lives of American teenagers? That is very interesting! Plus, I flipped through it and…
2 CommentsSome smart kids take a test to see how they smart they are, and it turns out they’re smart enough and nice enough to win the prize of infiltrating an Ominous Institute and finding out what the super evil scary man is plotting! That’ll teach you to be smart and nice, kids! Anyway, they meet a nice, nice man with narcolepsy, and he tells them how there is an evil, evil man (who also has narcolepsy, as it turns out) trying to control everyone’s minds, and they have to go infiltrate his school and foil his plans. They all agree…
6 Comments