GNF 6 – The Secret of the Stone Frog by David Nytra

By Lu Posted in Books, comic Tagged , , 1 Reply

Secret of the Stone Frog coverThe Secret of the Stone Frog by David Nytra (Toon Books/Candlewick Press, 2012)

Toon Books is a new-ish comics/graphic novels imprint that is meant for children ages 4 and up and The Secret of the Stone Frog by David Nytra is their first full-length book meant for children ages 5 and up. Toon Books has some big players in charge, including Art Spiegelman, the artist and author of the classic graphic novel Maus. I didn’t know all of that before I started reading The Secret of the Stone Frog, but it’s easy to see that it’s true now. The art in The Stone Frog is, quite frankly, unlike anything I’ve seen in contemporary comics. Because it’s a complete throwback to older comics and stories. If Nytra does have a contemporary idol, I think it’s Miyazaki, the legendary Japanese animator behind Studio Ghibli and My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away. 

So, it’s pretty obvious that I loved the art right? These images are sumptuous and detailed and just so pretty. I loved the way he drew the children. They almost felt animated, their clothing had such movement. The story itself is, well, meant for a five-year-old. It’s enjoyable for an adult reader, though it is a little simple. The children must find their way home and so must follow the paths behind the stone frogs. Along the way they encounter a woman with human-sized bees as pets, commuting fish, a nasty pick-pocket, a police station that’s alive, and more terrifying, but amazing nightmares.

That’s the thing. This isn’t a storybook that sugarcoats dreamland. It’s a scary place! It’s also a beautiful place. Since we’re grownups reading this story, we are looking for meaning and when we find out that Leah’s parents think she should move into her own room, that she’s too old to share a room with her little brother Alan, we know that this moment is important. It’s an important milestone in her life that is bittersweet. She doesn’t want to leave her brother and be thrown into the world of grownups. Because that’s a terrifying place, not unlike dream world. But as long as you can travel it with your brother, it can also be beautiful and fascinating.

If you are a fan of Miyazaki, Little Nemo, or Alice in Wonderland, I think you’ll find a lot to like in Nytra’s comic. You can read sample pages of this beautiful comic on the Toon Books website. 

GNF 5 – Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary and Bryan Talbot

By Lu Posted in Books, comic, review Tagged , , , , , , 5 Replies

Something that has helped me find new comics to read this month has been really paying attention to the publishers and imprints. After reading and loving Friends With Boys, I immediately requested a bunch of new titles from First Second, the Macmillan imprint that publishes the book. If you’re at a loss for what to read next with comics, look at who published your favorite graphic novel or one you’re particularly interested in and look at their backlist. You’re bound to find books either by the same artists or with similar art and storytelling styles. I think the publishing industry has a long way to go before there’s imprint recognition in the general public. I know that I for one never paid much attention to imprints or publishing houses before I started working in publishing. But I think publisher recognition is more prevalent in comics. Think DC vs. Marvel. Starting with this post, I’m going to start including all the imprints/publishers on here, in case you want to keep track, too.

dotter cover

Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse, 2012)

I had no idea what Dotter of her Father’s Eyes was about before I started reading, but for some reason it definitely wasn’t what I expected. Author Mary Talbot tells the story of her childhood with a distracted, angry father, who also happened to be a Joycean scholar. She parallels the story of her life with the life of Lucia Joyce, James Joyce’s daughter who lived a tragic life.

Mary, within the comic, points out that there aren’t many similarities between her life and Lucia’s. Instead, the parallels are more general. Their stories are about what it is like to grow up as a woman. Lucia fought for independence and freedom as a dancer in 1920s Paris. She suffered a hateful mother who didn’t see the worth in anything she was doing, a father who adored her, but wouldn’t stand up for her and her career, and the lost love of Samuel Beckett. Her parents forced her to leave Paris with them right as her career was beginning to take off and she never regained momentum. Eventually the stress from losing her career and the anger she harbored made her lose control. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed. She lived in a mental institution until she died at age 75.

Mary’s father was distant, distracted, and very short-tempered. Mary seemed to always make him mad, even when she wasn’t exactly sure what she had done to deserve it. When Mary becomes unexpectedly pregnant as a young woman, she marries the child’s father, because she doesn’t see any other way.

Mary and Lucia are both constrained by their societies and their families. Their lives are in deep contrast to the lives of their successful fathers, but also in contrast to each other. Lucia has a life that she wants to lead and she has some success at it, but her family never supports her. Mary never feels like she’s given as much freedom as her brothers and she is always painfully scrutinized by her father.

The difference is the end of their stories: Lucia’s story is tragic. Though I imagine the comic simplifies her downfall somewhat, she never recovers from the few months she was forced to leave Paris. Her dance career is ruined, Beckett calls off their relationship, and Lucia feels like she has nothing left. We know, however, that Mary changes her life. She is no longer married to the man she marries at the end of the comic. She has made a name for herself as a writer. Her father eventually respects her and her decisions, though she never sees him as warm or charming, the way some of his colleagues do.

I liked the art and the simple color distinctions between Mary’s story and Lucia’s story. I also loved the little interjections from Mary about her husband’s art. Whenever he got something wrong, she would point it out, but he didn’t redraw the pictures. It showed their collaboration process, but I thought it was also an interesting commentary on the way we tell stories and how other people perceive them. The inconsistencies are small. Mary really only corrects her husband’s art twice, but I think it was effective to leave them in there with only Mary’s commentary.

I liked this comic a lot. It taught me something about Lucia and I think the parallels between Mary and Lucia’s story are there. It makes sense to tell them together, a fact I think surprised the character-Mary in some ways.

GNF 4 – Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

By Lu Posted in comic, review Tagged , , , , , 6 Replies

saga cover

My love for Brain K. Vaughan and his particular brand of storytelling began with Runaways. I just think the concept behind Runaways is so good and the characters are funny and easy to relate to. I’ve been reading graphic novel-style comics for a while now, but Runaways was my first foray into the more traditional realm of serial comics and it was great.

I’ve been hearing buzz about Saga all year, but Vasilly is really the person that made me want to pick it up and read it as soon as possible. It wasn’t soon enough.

I love Saga. There’s really no ifs ands or buts about it. Fiona Staples’s art is a revelation. It’s detailed, beautiful, and Vaughan and Staples’s imaginations put together is a sight to behold. I went into Saga more or less blind about the story and I think that that’s the way to do it. If you haven’t read Saga yet, just trust me on this one, okay? It’s good and it’s worth your time. Now close out of this blog post and don’t read anymore!

If you have read Saga, then you know there are a lot of things to love. There are dozens of different kinds of creatures and that’s what we’ve seen so far. There are government conspiracies, an all-consuming war, star-crossed lovers, a whole universe to explore, and characters that you grow to love in just a few short panels. My favorite characters ended up being secondary ones in this series. Izabel is instantly lovable and comedic relief, plus I actually cared about her character. I hope she’s not actually gone! I was also always excited when The Will showed up with his truth-telling cat.

That’s not to say that I didn’t like the main characters, because I did. I think they will only get more interesting as we learn more about them, and I was particularly excited to see Marko’s parents show up, but I think the introduction to their story made them a little bit less interesting. Once we find out more about their pasts and how they came to give up fighting in the war, I think they will become slightly more interesting and less one dimensional. They are the heroes, but there’s not a whole lot interesting about them yet. In this part of the comic, it felt like all the action was happening around them and they weren’t doing much of anything.

I suppose that’s a little unfair, because they were fighting for their life. But to me, the more interesting characters are ones we don’t necessarily know what to expect from. Is Izabel really helping them? Or is she only looking out for herself? What about The Will and his ability to compartmentalize right and wrong so it suits his own morals? I think Alana and Marko will become a little bit more interesting and a little bit more unexpected as they learn more about each other.

There’s also the fact that the story is narrated by their daughter. I think this is such a good way to frame the story and I love the way it’s represented in the lettering. It made the final little cliffhanger so good. Those last few panels with the shocked look on Marko’s dad’s face? And the stern look on his mother’s? So realistic. I can’t wait to read more about their dynamic.

I can’t believe I have to wait until this summer to read the next collection. I wish I’d started reading this one when it came out in the issues, though it might have been even more torturous to wait each month for a shorter chapter. I wasn’t surprised that I loved Saga, but I was a little surprised how much. I think, for me, it was really the complement of the art by Fiona Staples and the storytelling from Vaughan. They really are a creative match made in heaven.

GNF 3 – Blue by Pat Grant

By Lu Posted in comic, review Tagged , , , 4 Replies

blue by pat grant

Blue by Pat Grant is a story about us vs them. The story takes place in a seaside Australian town and is narrated by an older man who is recalling the “good old days” when there were no blue people in town. The blue people look different from you and me: they have many legs, their skin is blue, they eat weird food. I think you can see where this is going.

Blue as a metaphor isn’t a very complicated one. Pat Grant set out to tell a fairly common story. It’s so common, it’s the plot of a movie I’m sure you’ve all heard about: Stand By Me, based on the Stephen King story “The Body.” Grant actually had something very similar happen to him as a kid and he decided to include it as an important part of this comic as well. Even as I was reading it, it felt more like an homage than a ripoff, especially since the overarching themes are so different in Stand By Me and Blue.

Something else that makes Blue stand apart for me is the fact that the narrator is not sympathetic at all. When he tells his story about being a kid in this town right around the time it started going bad, you can see that he absolutely didn’t learn anything from what he witnessed on the day Blue takes place. He is completely blind to everything around him. We can forgive him for this when he is a child, but when the art reverts back to the present and we see his adult self, no more mature than he was as a teenager, you know that he hasn’t really grown up at all.

The art in Blue might be off-putting for some people, but I was so reminded of the cartoons I grew up watching as a kid, like Rocco’s Modern Life. The shapes of the characters and the buildings, plus the emphasis on the crude and the gross, reminded was reminiscent that style of 90s cartoons that were at once disgusting and interesting to look at. The crudeness suits the characters and it’s in such contrast to the absolutely stunning, surreal backgrounds that Grant includes. The comic is colored entirely in blue and tan, which is visually interesting and also lovely.

There is an essay at the end of the book that is at once interesting and unnecessary. It didn’t complete this comic for me in any way, but I enjoyed reading it and it did shed some light on why Grant wrote Blue. I didn’t need the why, but I appreciated it. There is a moment towards the end of the comic that felt particularly relevant to Blue, though:

Part of life when you live at the arse end of the world is that your story never seems to intersect with the grand narratives. Bigger histories from more populous places quickly morph into mythologies, but the smaller stories on the fringes are often nudged out of the collective consciousness and lost forever.

Blue feels at once wholly specific to a place and universal. There are bigger histories about outsiders and insiders, about immigration, about new communities versus old, but the fictional town in Blue is simply a microcosm of all of that and it becomes a part of the bigger history and the grand narrative.

I didn’t think I had a lot to say about Blue. It’s an unassuming comic that seems simple on the surface, but it’s rich, layered, and interesting. The story is simple and classic, but the characters, the setting, and the art make it into a much deeper exploration of identity, as a person, a town, and a culture, even at the expense of others.

GNF 2 – Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks

By Lu Posted in Books, comic, review Tagged , , , , 3 Replies

Friends With Boys Cover

I’ve always wanted brothers. Not just brothers, but older brothers, which was, obviously, impossible from the minute I was born. I have this romantic idea of what it would be like to have an older brother: someone who’s protective and loyal and loving and funny and sometimes obnoxious. In that way Friends With Boys was a little bit of wish fulfillment for me. I loved seeing Maggie’s relationship with her brothers, even if it was a little bit more complex than what I imagine.

The title of Friends With Boys is a little bit misleading, because it’s more about Maggie and her first year in high school, trying to understand the relationships between her brothers and the other boys at school. Maggie, like her brothers before her, was homeschooled until it was time for her to start high school. Unlike her brothers, though, Maggie is facing high school on her own, because her mother has left. Maggie’s father, the local police chief, has been trying to keep things normal around the house, but it can’t stay that way for long, especially since Maggie has also been seeing a ghost. When she makes new friends at school, Lucy and Alistair, her brother Daniel is surprisingly upset about it. Maggie is just trying to understand the world she lives in, which feels too overwhelming and confusing at times. Why are her twin brothers Zander and Lloyd fighting? Why doesn’t Daniel like Alistair? Why does the captain of the volleyball team seem to hate Alistair, too? Why did Maggie’s mom leave? And why is there a ghost following her around?

I loved everything about Friends With Boys. I loved the drawing style. Each face is so expressive and each panel meaningful and so nicely drawn. I’m in love with the way Hicks draws faces and I couldn’t get enough of the characters. I felt like they were real people and I loved them. They are all different shapes and sizes and just feel human.

Friends With Boys is funny and sad and heartwarming and heartbreaking all at the same time. Plus there’s a ghost, so, you know. I feel like it is really easy to compare Friends With Boys and Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgot. They have similar plots, though I connected more with Friends With Boys. It’s a little bit more light-hearted, especially when it comes to the ghost, and, as I might have mentioned, I loved the characters.

Friends With Boys is just so charming, I think you’ll find yourself smiling along. There are no neat endings with this comic, though. Many of the questions above are never truly answered, but that was okay for me. I can see some readers being frustrated with it, but I was perfectly okay with a small glimpse of Maggie’s life. And, because the world is an awesome place, you can read the first 20 pages of Friends With Boys online, just to see if you’ll fall in love with the characters and artwork as much as I did. Check it out at the Friends With Boys website.

This week in…

By Lu Posted in Blogging, Books, comic, Life Tagged , , 2 Replies
reading.

You know what I needed after finally finishing Game of Thrones? Graphic Novels/Comics February! There is nothing like reading comics to boost your numbers self-esteem. It’s also just nice to give into the medium. I’ve two very long, involved fantasy novels the last two months and comics are the perfect change of pace. It’s also hard not to devour them. I try to savor each panel and make sure that I’m really paying attention. So far, my favorite comic has been Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks and Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples.

Fair warning: don’t read Saga on a crowded subway train. People always read over your shoulder when you read comics, and occasionally remark on said comics, and that would have been an interesting conversation. I am going to do a full review of Saga, but I really loved it. I can’t wait until July for the next full installment. Anyone know where I can buy the monthly installments?

television. 


Starting sometime in the middle of 2012, I decided to start watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I didn’t really get into it, but would watch an episode here and there. Then something happened about halfway through season one (just like you said it would) and suddenly I was head-over-heels in love. Now I am halfway through season four and still so happy with the show. I just watched one of the best episodes, and possibly one of my favorite hours of television, ”Hush” (S4, E10). The episode is almost completely silent, except for some excellent, atmospheric music, because the monster of the week has taken everyone’s voices. It’s perfect and funny and genuinely creepy. It’s an episode that I can see myself rewatching.

food.

It’s the superbowl! But not I’m not even sure I could tell you who is playing. (The Ravens? Right? But I couldn’t tell you who the other team is. I looked it up on Wikipedia and promptly forgot.) Superbowl Sunday is, for me, an eating holiday. I don’t watch the game and right now don’t host or attend any parties, but Michael and I cook yummy finger foods to snack on all day. On the menu for tomorrow? Homemade chex mix, which made our apartment smell like Christmas all day, How Sweet Eats blue cheese potato skins, and spinach artichoke dip.

family.

My sister is in town for the Fun. concert. I’m pretty jealous! We are getting lunch today before she heads home and I’m pretty excited about that! We’re trying a new restaurant near my office, which will hopefully be a possible new lunch place.

misc.

I feel like this week was really busy, but I can’t remember what I did. I worked for 6 days straight, but other than that, I can’t really remember what I did in the evenings. I guess it wasn’t very memorable! I have had a bad flair up of migraines lately, so I think I did a lot of going to bed early and relaxing, waiting for them to pass. I get aura migraines, which make it hard to see much of anything. They’re very inconvenient.

I’m excited to get home this afternoon and relax with a comic, a beer, and some delicious Superbowl food. It’s going to be a perfect afternoon, I can feel it. Enjoy your Sunday!

GNF 1 – Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

By Lu Posted in Books, comic, review Tagged , , , , 2 Replies

9781770460607I started off Graphic Novels February, also known as Comics February, by reading Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton in January. I had checked out all these great comics in preparation for February and I just couldn’t wait.

I’ve been reading Beaton’s webcomic on and off for a few years now, but not necessarily consistently. It’s always good when I need a laugh combined with a literary or historical reference. I loved that Hark! A Vagrant included explanations for the comics, because they can be a little specific and if you’re not familiar with what the comic is referencing, the joke will be lost on you. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, because that just means that I have new things to explore. I did appreciate it, though, when Beaton gave a little bit of context.

I’ll admit, my favorite comic by Kate Beaton isn’t even one in this book or on her full site. She took a picture of it and uploaded it here, to her Tumblr. It’s one of those things where just thinking about it will send me into a fit of hysterics. I was hoping to find another comic like that in Hark! A Vagrant, and while there were quite a few that made me laugh out loud, there were none that I loved quite as much as Tolstoy’s poop shelf.

Fortunately for me, Beaton’s sense of humor and mine line up pretty well. I find immature and silly jokes to be very funny. I love the low brow combined with the high brow. Beaton delivers in spades and I can’t wait to keep reading her comics.

Comics February is Here!

By Lu Posted in Books, comic Tagged , 4 Replies

So, when Debi posted that she was going to be reading comics and graphic novels all February, I Just thought that that sounded like a fabulous idea. Every year I mean to read more and more comics and I read a few, but I don’t make it a consistent thing. This year, I really want to read more and dedicating an entire month to the medium sounds perfect. It is February 1 (well, I suppose technically 2nd at this point, because it is after midnight) and I have already read three! I’m doing so well!

I’ve also decided to try and post every day again in February. The thing is, I didn’t post every day in January, but I sure did post a lot more last month than I have on this blog in a long time and it felt good. This month I’m definitely going to be focusing on the comics that I’m reading, but there might be a few other posts thrown in, depending on how much I’ve been reading.

My first review, up tomorrow, will be of Hark, A Vagrant! Another goal for February is to keep up my Sunday “This week in…” posts. I like them, they’re chatty, and they’re a good way to bring in a little bit of a personal touch to the blog.

So that’s the plan for February! I think January went really well, though I started to run out of things to do towards the end of the month and, consequently, didn’t post as much. It’s funny because the post I had planned all month, the whole reason I started the project even, never happened. Maybe another day?

January 28 – The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

By Lu Posted in Books, review Leave a reply

The Lats Policeman cover

There’s something about a neo-noir novel (or movie, or tv show, or comic) that I can’t pass up, especially one with a great premise. The Last Policeman is about the end of the world: it’s coming and everyone knows the date. Asteroid 2011GV1, or Maia, is heading straight for earth. No question, it will hit. If you and everyone you knew only had a few months to live, what would you do? Hank Palace decides to keep working as a detective, even though most everyone else has given up. When he’s called into investigate an insurance salesman’s suicide, he’s convinced that it’s a murder. Even though no one quite believes him, he finds himself caught up in a story that’s much bigger than one man’s death.

The Last Policeman is a successful crime story, but that’s not really why I loved it. The crime itself and Palace’s attempt to solve it took a backseat to his observations about a world on the brink of destruction. People are committing suicide regularly, drug use is rampant and heavily controlled by whatever police force is left, and society is barely holding itself together.

While I was reading The Last Policeman, I kept wondering what it is about this gritty genre that I like so much. I’m not a big fan of traditional noir, mostly just unfamiliar with it, but there’s something about a noir story with a contemporary setting that I love. It’s partially growing up on crime shows and airport thrillers, combined with a desire for something a little bit deeper. For me, noir embodies this combination of action, plot, melodrama, and introspection that I just find irresistible. The stories seem so far from reality (at least far from my reality), but they still speak to this universal darkness, but also a kind of hopefulness.

I admit to a certain blind spot when it comes to the neo-noir. The Last Policeman occasionally dragged and I honestly wasn’t invested in the actual crime solving so much as the character study of both Hank Palace and our world right before it ends. There is also a sort of necessary blindness that comes from the first person narration: we only see each character as Detective Palace sees them. Unfortunately, he sees everyone as a little bit one-note, but that was consistent with his character and didn’t bother me, especially since the details about society as a whole were so poignant.

Suicide is a major theme in The Last Policeman. We see a character commit suicide, another one is suspected is suspected of it, and another one is revealed late in the book. Though it’s hard to pin down noir as a genre, the cynicism and hardness of the main character is always one of the first things that makes me think of noir. There are a lot of ways the cynicism can play out throughout the film or show or book, whatever it might be, but I like it best when there’s something to give the main characters a glimpse that their cynicism might not be the only answer to the world.

I started to say that I thought Palace is different from a lot of noir antiheroes because in a lot of ways he is very earnest, and moral almost to a fault. But that seems like a common theme in the noir genre as well, because the detectives are flawed, but also determined to find the truth at the expense of everything else. Maybe because it is the one honest thing they trust.

I won my copy of The Last Policeman from Quirk on Twitter.

January 26 – Oh, my God! It’s January 26!

By Lu Posted in Blogging, Books, Life Tagged , , , 12 Replies

I’m not exactly sure how six days passed between my bookshelf post and this post, but do know that I was working on blog posts, just not ones that I wanted to publish immediately. I wanted them to sit. And that feels in the spirit of this project, so I am moving on. And I promise to never ever promise to write every day, because all I do is apologize a lot.

Until next month when I promise to write a review of a comic a day!

So, I thought I’d catch you up on what I’ve been doing this week.

1) I went to the Macy’s on 34th St. Holy crap that place is big. I asked a friend to go with me and she said, “No, that place is huge and people walk slow.” And I pffed a little bit and said suuuuuure, but yes, it is huge and people walk really slow. It’s bright and overwhelming, but also kind of pretty to look at. I don’t know that I would want to spend more than an hour there, which is what I did, but I looked for some shoes, picked something up for Michael, and went on home. If you’re ever at the Macy’s on 34th St and you need something to eat, Koreatown is literally right around the corner and there are some great, cheap Korean places that you should check out.

2) I want flat black slouchy ankle boots, but they aren’t in style anymore. I have looked everywhere. It used to be that you couldn’t go into a shoe store without seeing a dozen pairs of the same black slouchy flat boot, but apparently they aren’t in style anymore. If I had known this would happen, I would have bought a dozen pair. I had a pair and wore them out, then I bought another, but they are pretty much unwearable at this point too. I found a pair from Target that are somewhat similar, but they have a heel and they are fake leather. So, hopefully they work. I have to walk a mile to work (in the snow! uphill both ways!) and about half the time I have to stand on the subway for 40 minutes. So my shoes have to be comfortable and work appropriate, because I am the laziest and I don’t like walking to work in one pair of shoes and wearing another pair once I get there. This is why I wore my snow boots around the office every day this week. It was cold.

3) I read Game of Thrones. I have been slowly plugging through this. I like reading long books, but I have to take breaks and read other books, which makes it go even slower. I just like to feel accomplished. I really like Game of Thrones and I am excited to start watching the show. I think I’ll be done before January is over at which point I’ll start reading comics!

4) I picked up a lot of comics at the library and I have more coming in on Monday! Ah! I’m so excited about this. I don’t know if I am going to be able to wait until February to start reading. I’ve started picking my way through Hark! A Vagrant, which is much larger than I thought it would be. I’m also ridiculously excited about Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples.

5) I discovered that I’m really interested in neo-noir as a genre. I’ve always known that I enjoyed it, but while I was writing up my review for The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters (coming on Monday!), I realized just how much I want to go deeper into the genre. Anything that even has the tiniest of noir sensibilities is something that I am immediately drawn to. I mean, I grew up watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit – the genre has been part of my cultural landscape since I was a kid. This idea of a hardboiled detective, with his femme fatale, his cynicism and shady city streets has been familiar to me all along. An idea for a project is forming. I want to know more about the genre, I want to know more about the origins of the genre. I have to come up with a more detailed plan, but I want to be a noir expert.

6) I have one audiobook credit before I cancel my Audible membership. Suggestions??? I am horribly indecisive when it comes to this thing.

January 20 – Organize my bookshelves

By Lu Posted in Books, Life Tagged , , , , , 11 Replies

There’s something about a long weekend Sunday that just makes you want to to get things done. You don’t feel like you’re “wasting” a weekend day on cleaning because there are three of them! So, I finally got around to doing a much-needed organization of my bookshelves and general sprucing up of the apartment. I decided to organize the books by category, starting with my unread non-fiction:

20130120_172609

 

Yes, those are two copies of The Wordy Shipmates you see. And, yes, I did buy both of them. Then I added in my poetry:

20130120_173023

 

Obviously I need a little bit more poetry to fill up that empty space.

Then, I got tired of taking pictures of each stage. I’m sorry I don’t have photographs to document it, but I organized the rest into unread BEA/nonrequested galleys, unread requested galleys, and unread fiction. Unread fiction was organized into want to read in the next few months, want to read sometime in the next few years, and unsure if I ever want to read.

20130120_182324

 

Here’s the finished unread shelf. The books I’ve read are stored in the shelves that are underneath the desk. As you can see, I stack my shelves back pretty deep, so if I don’t know where everything is, it’s easy to forget about books. (Hence the double copies of The Wordy Shipmates.) I’d really like to have the review copy quadrant (upper right) cleared out by BEA this year, so I’m going to try and plug away at that slowly but surely. Other than that, though, I’m just going to enjoy a bookshelf that is actually organized in some way and read what I want, when I want.

I’ve been thinking about doing a rotating library book, review copy, purchased copy, ebook, just to get through everything I have. It won’t be firm or anything, and pretty lenient since I read multiple books at once, but I tend to ignore certain parts of my shelves in favor of others. So, that’s something to think about. Maybe I’ll give it a try and see how it goes!

How did you spend your Sunday?

January 19 – Review some non-fiction books!

By Lu Posted in Books Tagged , , 4 Replies

I haven’t posted in 3 days. Let me hang my head in shame! It is mostly because I had nothing to post about, which is a poor excuse for not posting in this month of posting every day. But the past few days have been a lot of doing the same things I have been doing all month, which is good, and the point of this month, but which don’t make for good blogging. (I’m pretty sure I’ve already said this sentence this month, for example.) Anyway, it’s time to review some books!

It’s midnight on a Saturday! I apologize for any typos or opinions that change tomorrow. There will also be no book images, because I feel lazy. I’m sorry.

Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti

So I forgot that GoodReads is synced up to my Facebook (because otherwise there’s nothing on my timeline, womp womp) and when this book popped up, one of my friends left a single comment: “?”. It’s a provocative title, that’s meant to elicit reactions like my friend’s, but which has little to no bearing on the actual content of the book. As interesting as the book was, I didn’t find it to be very revolutionary. I also didn’t like Valenti’s idea at the beginning of the book that it was meant to make the reader mad. Maybe because I agreed with most of what Valenti said, but I didn’t think anything she said was particularly anger-inducing. It has a very simple thesis: we put too much pressure on ourselves and other mothers as a society, so we should probably cool it. There was some other stuff in there, but two weeks later that’s the gist I remember.

I wish there had been more to this book. I wanted more serious solutions to these very serious problems, but I realize that each chapter could have probably been a whole book in itself. So if you approach this book as a basic overview of the issues that affect middle class mothers and feminism, then you won’t be disappointed. If you go in expecting a more in depth and thoughtful discussion of the topic (that has a wider scope that just US-upper-middle-class motherhood), then I would suggest looking elsewhere.

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Gail Steketee and Randy Frost

Where Why Have Kids? suffered from not having enough content, Stuff suffered from having too much. This was case study, academic study, and self-help book all in one and it felt a little repetitive and overwhelming. That being said, I really learned a lot about hoarding that was absolutely fascinating and eye opening. I love that the title of this book is the “meaning of things” because that was really the focus of the book: how do people with hoarding problems assign meaning to objects and how is it different from people without hoarding problems? One of the main points of the book is that people who hoard are often more perceptive and make more unique connections between objects and people and events than the average person. So, the reason a person who hoards can’t throw a piece of trash away is because the assign it some meaning that the average person never would.

After reading this book, I read a few online reviews and it’s amazing to see how many people have been helped by this book. The book is completely eye opening: I have to admit that I think of hoarding in a completely different way now. I read this book a few chapters at a time, often putting it down for a week or so and going back to it. It’s a good book for that and overall is very interesting and informative, but I do wish it had been a little bit less repetitive and a little bit more clearly structured. It was never clear to me why the authors chose some case studies over others or what they hoped we would learn from each one.