[booklog 2005]

[iridium]

i read a whole pile of books before the year ended, so here's the wrap-up.

80. Extreme Exposure -- a collection of monologue texts from a huge range of solo performers. asarwate lent it to me after a conversation in which we finally figured out the piece that the "Art! Soup! Soup! Art! Now which is which?" line came from. dense, but an excellent read, and it makes me want to go find audio/video of many of the performers. might re-read it again, or skim through for the ones i liked best, before i hand it back.

81. Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler. good solid dystopian scifi/fantasy. the preachy bits were a bit too preachy and not actually all that interesting, but it wasn't hard to ignore them. if i can find more of her writing, i'll read it.

82. comics:
Y: The Last Man (#1&2), Brian Vaughan & Pia Guerra. a mysterious, sudden, and gorily fatal illness strikes every male mammal on earth except this one guy and his pet monkey. hilarity ensues. (no, not really. a lot of it is violent and dramatic. some of it's funny, but hilarity does not ensue. i just said that 'cause i wanted to. but, anyhow, it's a well-told story and a well-done comic, and now i have to go out and find the rest of it and read it all.)
Fell, Warren Ellis & Ben Templesmith. a series of one-shot stories, revolving around a police detective (Richard Fell) in a shithole called Snowtown. it's good Ellis work, and Templesmith's art reminds me of Dave McKean's pen-and-ink style...not realistic, kinda jagged and stylized but able to convey the essence of expression or action very well.
The Pro, Garth Ennis. aliens grant superpowers to a prostitute, and she joins the elite ranks of the city's superhero parodies as "The Pro". fucking hilarious, in exactly as painful a way as you'd expect.
(thanks to violin for feeding the addiction...)

83. Trickster's Queen, Tamora Pierce. mmm tasty.

84. The Escapist, Michael Chabon. an odd little book, but entertaining. a rather academic history of one of the characters (the Escapist) created by Kavalier and Clay, with clips of various incarnations though the years.

85. Smoke and Mirrors, Neil Gaiman. a re-read, and still excellent. (violin, the short story i referenced in that conversation about beer and goats was "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar", and it's in this book.)

86. & 87. The Firebird and The Gates of Sleep, Mercedes Lackey. mmm escapist reading. good stuff. both are retellings of old fairy-tales.

...and i think that's all of it, at least all that i remember, for 2005. kinda neat to keep track of it, so i suppose i'll do it again this year.

Comments

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

You're back now, right?

[iridium.livejournal.com]

yeah, i'm back. just got in late last night, went to work today, and somehow thought it was a good idea to devote my entire evening to making huge quanities of turkey stock & soup from scratch. *sigh* i'm planning to go to kimberly's tomorrow for craft-night, at least tentatively...want to come?

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

Ooh. That would be fun! Does writing hack gallery writeups count as crafting? Would it be ok with her if you drag me? I've met her but I don't know her (in fact, I never even manage to talk to her at parties, because I get nervous about talking to people I don't know well.)

[iridium.livejournal.com]

it would most likely be just fine for you to come...i can ask, if you're worried, but i think it's no big deal. i may also end up bringing my laptop and doing some writing instead of actual crafting, and there's usually at least one person working on a laptop, so i think hack gallery writeups are ok. :)

[ubersturm.livejournal.com]

Regarding Octavia Butler - "Parable of the Talents" is the sequel to "Parable of the Sower", and lacks some of the flaws of the earlier book, although [as it is told through Olamina's diary and her daughter's recollections, and I found myself strongly disliking the daughter] it does have new ones. I've also read some of her other stuff - the Xenogenesis trilogy and some of the rest - but I haven't found anything I like quite as much as the two "Parable" books and a collection of short stories whose name I forget which includes the story "Speech Sounds." I think the collection may be called "Bloodchild," or something to that effect.

Also, I've enjoyed "Desolation Jones" more than "Fell," in part I suppose because the artistic style is a little more interesting to me. But Ellis is always a good read, if not always an entirely novel one. Sometimes his stuff does become a caricature of itself, albeit a still-enjoyable one. [Garth Ennis in general is entertaining. I really liked "The Invisibles," if you haven't read that.]

[violin.livejournal.com]

I think I probably enjoy Desolation Jones a bit more, as well. In comics, I prefer serials I think, continuing stories and advancing plots. While I really like what he and Templesmith are doign with Fell in regards to pricing and format, and think it's an excellent comic, overall I prefer serials I think.

And yeah, while the art in Fell is very very good, the art in Desolation Jones has a somewhat mind-blowing character to it. Not necessarily better, but it consistently has pages that elave me in awe.

Of course, the 3x3 grid layout of Fell makes this sort of thing difficult. I think the art in Fell is perfectly suited to those stories-- Jones' orange trench coat would never be seen in SNowtown, for instance-- and what Templesmith and Ellis are able to do in those 3x3 confines is incredible.

I had wanted to give her a chance to read Desolation Jones #1, but I couldn't locate my copy.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

if i ever get around to going back to the Library, i might pick up the Octavia Butler sequel. i've heard good things about her short stories, too, so i'll keep an eye out for those.

*laugh* yeah, Ellis reminds me of HST that way too, in the caricature-of-himself sense. but it's good soul-food, sometimes, even so. i haven't read Desolation Jones yet -- the artwork i've seen from it looks very similar to Transmet, and there seems to be some of the same grumpy-HST-fellow-trailing-hot-women motif. i'll poke at it and The Invisibles next time i'm in a comics store. (Berkeley has a store called Comic Relief which is huge, and dangerous, and they didn't seem to mind me coming in and spending an hour or so pawing through the shelves and sitting on the floor reading things...)

[queersolitude.livejournal.com]

i LOVE Y The Last Man! I was a bit dissapointed with the last trade back issue though. I.e. The ones that precede the recent one were more interesting.

Ever read Fables? You might like it. Or not. Well, I like it at least. :)

[violin.livejournal.com]

I hear good things about Fables, and the little bit I've read I enjoyed. I just haven't really put any energy to it. Someone on my friends list was recently ravign about it, though, and I kinda would've thought it might've been iridium
I can certainly see what you mean about the most recent trade (Girl on Girl). The one before sort of left so much in the air, I think I was expecting more progress in the latest one. Still enjoyed it, though. Part of that, too, might be that I read the first however many (8?) before Girl on Girl back-to-back, and then had to wait a couple of months for Girl to be released.

[iridium.livejournal.com]

yeah, i'm definitely going to have to track down the rest of Y. dunno how much of this particular addiction i can afford to feed right now, sadly -- and i already have incomplete or just-begun collections of Transmet, Preacher, Sandman, and Kabuki.

haven't read Fables. what's it like?

[violin.livejournal.com]

I'll endeavor to remember to track down that gaiman collection

RE The Escapist, I really like Chabon-- he's been my favorite print writer of the moment for quite some time now. But the Escapist didn't do a whole lot for me. They've done I think at least 3 or 4 volumes of it, though. I believe the first 2 were collected in one book at some point, though.

I've also started re-reading Y: The Last Man. THis is in part to slow my consumption of Ex Machina and various other things.

That single issue I'd mentioned that I'd been considering picking up, only to discover I already had? Re-read it, started getting the rest. It's an Alan Moore creation scripted by someone else, and it's jsut 6 issues, so why not. I also started reading Down, another Warren Ellis thing that just started-- it's up to #2. Pretty good so far. Deeply undercover cop type stuff. I've also gotten the first couple of issues of something called Jack Cross, also by warren ellis (it's up to #2 or 3, so also quite new). Dunno how I feel about it yet-- it's basicly a story of intrigue an espionage and such. This, btw, is what I was thinking of when I said I didn't like the art in Ex Machina. The art in Machina is fine, it's Jack Cross's art that leaves me flat.

Ellis is busy lately. Recently started (I think none are past issue #4):
--Fell
--Desolation Jones
--Down
--Jack Cross
Soonish to be starting, iirc:
--Nextwave (the healing america by beating people up thing)
--blackgas (zombie type stuff, iirc?)
I feel like I'm forgetting something else...

[iridium.livejournal.com]

Escapist -- yeah, it was entertaining, but it didn't reach out and grab me. but i was looking for a light read, when i borrowed it from asarwate.

heh. i should re-read Transmet one more time and then return it to you. maybe i'll bring it with me in the car, if i do manage to drive out to MS in a couple of months...would that be ok?

re: Ellis -- damn. i don't think there's any way i can keep up with everything he's working on, not even close. *laugh* i'll wait for the reviews... ;)

[violin.livejournal.com]

That's fine. I just started re-reading Y, so... Also, if you want to borrow the rest of Y at some point, just lemme know. Next time you visit, I'll attempt to have my stuff organized again...

[iridium.livejournal.com]

*grin* sounds good.
i'm hoping to come visit at least once while i'm in the southeast this spring...