2014 Q2

Thought I already posted this...

Sf&f: The City and the City, Neverwhere, Neptune’s Brood

Comics: Fatale, George Perez’s Avengers Visionaries, Great Darkness Saga, 303, Lazarus, Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, Little Hits (Fraction's Hawkeye), Batman: Illustrated by Neal Adams, Defenders: "Tournament of Heroes"

other: Oregon Hill, The Tipping Point, Veronica Mars, Brothers K, Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus, I Know What You Did Last Summer

Romantic Poetry: Scott, Coleridge, Southey, Landor, Lamb, Campbell, Hazlitt, Moore, Hunt, DeQuincey, Peacock, Haydon, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Beddoes (i.e., finished the anthology I was reading)

Notes on reading--of the novels, probably most admired The City and the City which read like a chapter of Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveller that just kept going. A few of this I took in by audiobook: Neverwhere and The Tipping Point read by the author, which is always my preference. I heard that the Veronica Mars audiobook is narrated by Kristen Bell, which sounds appealing, but the third person viewpoint would be weird. Of the comics, I was pleasantly surprised by Brubaker and Phillips's Cthulu-noir take on crime fiction. I was not surprised by the Hawkeye (the second volume even better than the first), the Legion of Super Heroes Great Darkness (I had 3 of the 5 issues when a kid, so the nostalgia carried me through), or Defenders (for some reason, I have loved every issue of that series I've ever come across). It's work noting that Lois Duncan "updated" I Know What You Did by throwing in words like "texting" and "webcast." The updates were merely annoying, but I would seek out originals in the future.

I finished my major reading project in the Romantics anthology-- I should jot down some notes before too long. I also plan on glancing at some more current anthologies to see how the landscape has changed.  Expect to see some posts in next few weeks--thinking about a piece comparing the Reagan-era dystopias of Frank Miller and Margaret Atwood.

2014 Q1

What I read from Jan 1- Mar 31, 2014

Sf&f: The Lathe of Heaven; Lies of Locke Lamorra; Red Seas Under Red Skies; Almuric; Miss Peregrine; Thief Eyes; The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

Comics: The Incal 1-6; Blueberry 2; Batman, Death by Design; Noel;The Black Mirror; Dark Knight Strikes Back (horrible); Chew 1-3; Chaykin’s Blackhawk; Mignola’s Corum; Miller’s Daredevil; Alias and the Pulse; Demo; The Essential Huntress

other:Super Graphic by Tim Leong; Call of the Wild;  Bold Stroke for a Wife; Beautiful and Damned; Dunciad; Moonwalking w Einstein

Romantic Poetry: George Crabbe; William Blake (Songs of Innocence/Exp; Marriage of H&H; Milton); Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude)

STL #115: The Year Reading, 2013

It's taken me a while to get back to this. So as I learned last time, I read a whole heck of a lot of books last year. Here is a an attempt at a list of the ten best. I made it by jotting down all possibilities and then starring all that jumped out as being a cut above the rest. That wound up being 10, so here you go.

1. We Have Always Lived At the Castle by Shirley Jackson. There's no doubt in my mind that this was the best book I read this year. Merricat is an unforgettable narrative voice and the scenes depicting mob mentality are chilling and unsurpassed. It lead me directly to Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, which is just a bit off this mark but also an astonishingly insightful narrative in (more pronounced) genre trappings.
3. Desperate Characters by Paula Fox. The second great discovery of the year. I read it in a single sitting one rainy Saturday morning. Though I wasn't there, it seems a cuttingly accurate portrayal of New York in the 70s. It's a story of breakdown on many levels--physical vandalism to social entropy to marital indifference.
4. The Counterfeiters by Hugh Kenner. From two compelling new voices (to me) to an old favorite. Kenner writes with a world-embracing confidence. The perspective of this study of Swift, Buster Keaton, and sundry others is remarkably contemporary.

5. Building Stories by Chris Ware.  The flaws of Ware are, as ever, equally his virtues. His style is cold and at times precious, but that's an unavoidable function of his aesthetic. While the appearance and perspective is classic Ware, the innovative packaging of the 14 separate components of the box labeled "Building Stories" represents something new--relinquishing something of his past demand for control to the participation of the readers.
6.  Borges Collected Fictions. It's odd to put the work of one of my favorite writers in this second rank. I might have made that statement about Ware as well--but perhaps it is the familiarity with both that led me too it. Or maybe, for Borges, it is the sheer whelm of reading so many of these short pieces (concurrently with the nonfiction). The best of the stories should be read in isolation, to allow them to resonate.
7. Little, Big by John Berger. To be honest, I don't think I was an adequate reader for this book. The prose is lovely and dense, and the plot intricate. I think it deserves more careful attention, than I gave it--it is a long journey in short steps that took me quite a while to finish. I hope to read this again sometime, though. 
8. The Score by Richard Stark. This is a proxy for the first six books of the Parker series that I read in succession. While I've adored the Parker novels I had been able to find, this sequence finally became available via ebook from my local library. I'm on The Seventh (the title), which I keep checking for, through The Sour Lemon Score and then I'll pick it up again with Deadly Edge. 

9. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammet. Great book. What else is there to say? Let the Op speak: “I haven't laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.”  Or, more descriptive of the book: "This damned burg's getting me. If I don't get away soon I'll be going blood-simple like the natives.” 
10.  Dune by Frank Herbert. I reread this after many years. I had a vivid memory of the ecological specifics of the desert people and not much else. You see this cited again and again as a prime exemplar of world-building, which is certainly justified. The least talented stylist on this list by a country mile, which makes me wonder--what science fiction or fantasy writer has the best quotient of world-building facility and stylistic acumen? Is the apparent disparity real? If not, what is the reason for it?

2013 Q4 (belated) and 2013 stats

Horror: We Have Always Lived in the Castle; The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All; Haunting of Hill House; October Country; Twentieth Century Ghost ; NOS4A2

Crime:Red Harvest; Baltimore Blues

Non-fiction: Cognitive Surplus; One Summer

Sf&F: Dying Inside; Among Others; Anathema

comics: finished Astro City; Morrison's Batman, Batman Inc, and Batman and Robin; Morrison's Flash; Seven Soldiers of Victory; Seaguy 1 and 2; Steed and Mrs. Peel;  Blueberry 1

~25 books

Totals (shocking even to me): 65 prose books (counted Borges Collected Fictions and Non-Fictions as only two books), 105 total books based on rough estimates of long runs of comics (i.e., determining equivalencies between the runs and  "books" (TPBs)) (in other words, about 40 TPBs). Surprisingly, Crime had the biggest slice of the pie (18), followed by sf (13), fantasy (10), horror (7), nonfiction (6), and poetry (3). There were 10 books that I did not classify, mostly classics and more recent "literary fiction." I kept comics separate (i.e., didn't count sf comics as sf). 

Quarterly Report (Q3)

Including summer months and renewed usage of audio books.

sf&f:  Dune (finished); Tehanu; Old Man's War (abandoned); Player of Games; Curse of Chalion; Fahreinheidt 451; The Ocean at the End of the Lane; Neuromancer; Hitchhicker's Guide

comics: Doom Patrol (finished); Astro City (in progress); Moore LXG 2009

other/list: 

other: The Four Hour Body; The Comedy is Finished (Westlake), the first six Stark books (The Jugger, The Score, The Man With the Getaway Face, The Outfit, The Hunter, The Mourner),  Maigret Afraid; The Story Structure Architect; White Fang; Out Stealing Horses; ; Ruby in the Smoke; Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter; Cause of Death (Cornwall--horrible) My Man Jeeves; The Innocence of Father Brown; Classic Crime Short Stories; Classic Detective Short Stories; Salt Sugar Fat 

(27 books, ~33 with comics TPBs)

Quarterly Report (Q2)

For two of the these three months I've been off, more-or-less. I've felt that I'm not reading enough, but a glance suggests that's crazy. I continue on my diligent work on my pre-established lists of science fiction and fantasy "gaps"; prose books I own but hadn't gotten around to reading; comics I etc. Mixed in are some poetry I read for April and a handful of other books I checked out from the library. And so...

sf&f: Foundation (my feelings exactly); Little, Big (wonderful); Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion (I prefer the sequel); Valis (reread for the first time since I loved it as a teen); Perdido Street Station (a bit longer than necessary, but I will read more Mieville) ; The Stars My Destination (I see why it's influential, but not that impressed); Dune (in progress)
comics: Building Stories (amazing); Rabbi's Cat (great); The Lovely Horrible Stuff (not the Eddie Campbell I love) and Mssr Leotard (not it either, but closer); Morrison's New X-Men, JLA, and Doom Patrol (the last in progress); New Moon (Jason, who I like ok); Carnet de Voyage (reread)
other/list: The 20 Year Death (interesting experiment, but the sources (Simenon, Chandler, and Thompson) are all better; Novels in Three Lines (an odd book); The Counterfeiters (Hugh Kenner--terrific. Must finally read Gulliver's Travels);  Splendide Hotel (Sorrentino-- wonderful); The Widow (Simenon dure. Ariel Winter was closer than I thought at first).
other: The Gift of Tongues and In the American Tree (two very different poetry anthologies); Gustaf Sobin's Earth as Air (collection of lyrics for National Poetry Month; Sharpe's Escape (meh); Madame Maigret's Own Case (not exactly as billed) Desparate Characters.

If you count TBP collections for the Morrison, that is 35 books in three months.

STL #113: The Boys

And with this I end what has become a half-year-long accounting of the reading of the previous year. At this point, I don't care that much about The Boys. There was a spiritedness I felt (or imagined) when I first discovered it last year, but as it has sunk in, I recognize the series clearly is lesser than and derivative of other earlier critiques of the superhero genre. There's a whole tradition of super-hero critique starting in the mid-80s with Watchmen and Dark Knight (maybe). It's well-known that Alan Moore intended Watchmen as a final nail in the coffin, the ultimate critique of the genre's fascist tendencies. What happened was that subsequent work embrace the darkness of the critique--that's probably what's happening in Frank Miller's work since that time, it pretty much explains the flood of "grim and gritty" comics of the 90s. Around the new millennium, the critique returned with Warren Ellis's work on Stormwatch and The Authority and has been a part of the landscape ever since. There are essentially two ways of looking at this movement, both of which involve the having and eating of cake. One one hand, the fans can feel all sophisticated being hep to the critique while indulging in the most gratuitous tropes. On the other hand, this formula allows the writers to get paid best they can while making fun of a genre and fanbase they disdain. I'm pretty sure both things are going on with Garth Ennis's first extended creator-owned series since Preacher. It's about a covert org bent on policing the abuses of superheroes, who run amok with violence and sexual debauchery. The series then gets to portray orgies and decapitations, all in the name of critique of the fascist love of power inherent, they say, in superhero comics.

So maybe for a short time I played the mark, the drooling idiot who thought he was in the know. But in any case, The Boys may remain important in the history my reading practices (a topic I understand is of interest to no one but myself). My first contact with The Boys came through a stack of single issues, the "floppies" that for so long remained the cornerstone of the comic book industry. I got these at a library discard sale, along with the TPB (trade paperback collection of previously published issues) of a mini-series featuring all the same characters in the most "shocking" excess. The mini-series was called "Herogasm" which says everything I need to say about it. The first phase of my reading was therefore disjointed--I had the first four issues, a gap of about 30 issues followed about 20 of the next 30 issues. I also had partial mini-series spotlighting main characters and the aforementioned 'gasm. The result of this kind of reading, an artifact of the publication culture based on serial publication and a collector's mentality, is a sense of the "world." You know the types of things that happen in the world, but not all the details of what "really" did happen. A friend then loaned me a digital archive included all the issues published at the time, which was all but the last. I read these on a cbr reader on my iPad. That final issue I purchased and read on Comixology, a store with its own reader. So it might be that The Boys will the the first of a chain of hybrid reading experience that I experience in a range of media. This hybrid species probably won't last that long; floppies at least are sure to disappear in the near future. The question I wonder about, then, is how does the material condition of reading an incomplete stack of issues differ from the continuous reading of a digitally archived body of work? It certainly does, and it seems clear the previous is soon to disappear from our world.