Hm, why did I buy this one again…? Oh, right, I read Andrew White’s comics piece on O’Keeffe, and I think he recommended this book in the commentary or something?
It’s a very handsome book.
And I didn’t realise she worked in all these different styles…
O’Keeffe’s comments are quite amusing, too.
Some Memories of Drawings (1974) by Georgia O’Keeffe (Buy used, 4.34 on Goodreads)
Am I doing this? Hm… Well, I thought it might be slightly amusing to log books I’m reading… but I don’t want to review books, because if you’re reviewing books, you start reading them in a different way, and I don’t want to do that.
So, like, perhaps just a couple sentences about each book? Or something? Let’s see whether this works out or not. If not, I’ll just ditch the blog series.
I’ve read this before, about two decades ago, but I was totally hung over today, so I wanted something nice and easy to relax with. And I didn’t remember anything at all about the book, so that worked out fine. I mean, it’s a murder mystery, so…
Barnard is pretty misanthropic, and this time around he spends 200 pages making fun of Australians. And as usual, the murder doesn’t happen until one third in, and there’s a shocking twist at the end. Originally enough, the shocking twist doesn’t happen until the very final sentence, which is a nice touch.
The book is just what the doctor ordered.
Death of an Old Goat (1977) by Robert Barnard (Buy used, 3.53 on Goodreads)
Music I’ve bought in December.
I basically didn’t buy much of anything in December, for some reason or another.
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Yet another year where I didn’t read that many books — only about 60. And mostly junk, because I was busy with other stuff.
Do I have anything to say about any of them… er… let’s see…
Hangman (by Mary Binyam) is an interesting novel and I like the way it’s written, but… OK, I read the short story in Paris Review first, and that short story is an edited-down version of the first half (or something?) of the novel. And that short story is excellent, and that’s why I bought a novel by the author — but I didn’t know about that I was about to read an expanded version of the short story. But isn’t more of a good thing even better? Well… the novel leads up to a twist ending, and that twist ending is quite satisfactory — it ties together most of the stories we’ve been told in a “whoa” way. But on the other hand, it’s a twist ending, and that makes the entire novel a kind of Gothic horror novel? Because it leaves us thinking whether the entire novel takes place while he’s dying, or “is he a ghost!!!” or whether “oh, it’s just literature, keep up, daddy-o”…
Also, I was wondering whether the novel was a parody of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy during parts of the book.
But it’s pretty good? The short story was wonderful, but the novel is just pretty good.
I realise that this is a classic — my copy says that it’s the 42nd printing of this edition from 1994, which means that Vintage goes back to press with it more than once per year, still — but I thought it was naff. There. Sorry for using such harsh language, but it’s naff. I can totally see how it was liberating and stuff back in 1969, what with the many scenes of masturbation and constipation, but it’s just not that funny. Perhaps it’s because the schtick presented by this book has been so thoroughly digested by society through Woody Allen movies (I’m guessing he’s a fan) and countless sitcoms? And the delivery is a standup comedy thing, and I hate standup comedy so much. As a wise man once said: “Humour is never funny.”
The first book here set up a really interesting universe (or rather, multiverse), and we kept learning more and more about it in an intriguing and satisfying way. But there were lots of things left unanswered, and I assumed that the second book would answer those questions… and it didn’t at all. Instead it’s just a kinda straight-forward thriller/heist book, so that was disappointing. I mean, these books are fun, exciting reads! I recommend them heartily. But it’s annoying that the multiverse here works in a kinda stupid way, and the only way for the plot to proceed is to have everybody except the protagonists be really stupid.
Like, we’re told again and again that the multiverse contains infinite universes, and it’s not like it’s expensive to find them or explore them. The protagonists set up a rinky dink shop and explore gazillions of universes on basically no budget. The Pandominiom, which has hundreds of thousands of worlds, surely could have explored trillions of universes … per day, so it’s just like “eh? eh?” why their reaction to discovering universes that are inhospitable (due to there being mightier beings there etc) wouldn’t just skip those and go to the next ones. “Infinite” is a big number. There’s no reason to quibble. But everything in this infinite multiverse is so picayune. The Pandominion as a could dozen “bivouac” planets filled with soldiers… but only a couple dozen! That’s nothing! And when the author tries to imagine a wondrous farming planet… he has them using manual labour! to harvest… meter-long corn cobs! CORN COBS!!! What the fuck? The lack of imagination and scale is staggering!
OK, in comparison with the events taken place on this Earth the past couple of years, I can’t really say that people and gummints acting stupid is unrealistic, but it sure is annoying in a novel.
Which brings me to my quibbliest quibble: If the universes are dividing and creating new universes all the time, then why aren’t there a multitude of Pandominions, and why doesn’t it encounter other versions of itself all the time? Sure, you could handwave something — like, “a universe that has invented a stepping machine to go to another universe no longer divides itself”. Sure, fine, but he doesn’t even bother to do that. But that doesn’t help any — if somebody’s just about to invent a stepping machine, then there should be hundreds of thousands of universes being created over the, say, days before that happens, and the vast majority should follow the same trajectory, being almost totally identical, so their steps should be to the same universe, in the same place, and they should all end up saying hello to a quantillion versions of themselves, and and and and
OK, OK, OK, OK… “Sci fi book with mechanics that doesn’t make sense. News at 11.” The reason it’s annoying is that the book tries so hard to be smart (S.M.R.T.) and tell the reader that it’s smart, and it doesn’t cover self evident quibbles like this at all.
IT”S AN OUTRAGE!1!
Speaking of stupid…
This is the first book “James S. A. Corey” has written after the Expanse books, and… it’s OK? But you really have to have a huge tolerance for the Stupidest People Possible trope, because man, nothing in this book would have happened if the people involved didn’t make the stupidest decisions possible. At every point. It also suffers from a lack of imagination (for instance, once species look a bit like monkeys, but they’re materials scientists… but they still fight by biting (like monkeys) and flinging poop (like monkeys) and planting bombs (kinda unlike monkeys) instead of just sharpening a knife and killing all the humans they want at their leisure.
But I mean — it’s a pretty good read? It doesn’t have any of the memorable characters The Expanse had (or any characters with character at all, really), but it’s pretty entertaining.
Each book in this trilogy won the Hugo Awards, so all the other SF authors must have given a sigh of relief when it was over. Time for somebody else to win! And the thing is, I can totally see why they won those awards, because these books a really addictive. The world building is (literally) awesome — she keeps on introducing (or explaining) these really astounding features in this world she made, and it’s riveting.
I didn’t much care for the way it’s written on a sentence by sentence basis. There’s like an unnecessary amount of drama. The characters think sentences like “Oh. Oh!” and so on, and I have emphasis in writing so… much!
The third book suffers a bit in that she has to infodump a bit much, but there’s a lot of interesting bits about the world that has to be explained, and she manages to do so in a fairly interesting way. They’re good sci fi/fa books. *two and a half thumbs up*
Who could have imagined that Stendhal wrote good books? I know! It’s fab.
This, on the other hand, I thought was going to be a lot of fun, but it was kinda dull. I can totally understand that it’s been made into nineteen movies and seventy five TV series, but I have zero interest in watching any of those, because this just isn’t as much fun as it thinks it is.
This is Tepper’s final novel, and it’s a sequel to several of her earlier books. And it’s understandable that she’d want to wrap those up, in a way, but — first of all, those were here weakest books, really, and second of all, they didn’t really need any further wrapping. Up of.
Despite all that, I did enjoy spending some more time with Tepper. Realistically, it’s not a very good book, but I liked it anyway.
I didn’t read all that many Wodehouse books this year. I’m reading them chronologically, sort of, and I’ve reached the early 30s, I think. But I’ve bought all the rest, so I’m set.
Because I thought I should buy them all before they become more expensive — these Everyman editions (from about a decade ago) are really nice. That is, nice size, nice typography, nice everything.
Except the cover illustrations. They suck.
I also somehow found myself re-reading a bunch of Robert Barnard books. (Oh, I see a Brandon Sanderson has snuck in there, too)…
When I have a cold, or if I am under the weather, there’s nothing as relaxing as reading a Barnard mystery. They’re kinda smart, and kinda well written, and doesn’t tax the brain at all.
OK, I did read some non junk this year — look at all these issues of the Paris Review! *counts* 15? Something like that. I usually only read Paris Review when travelling (on planes and stuff), but there’s been a few years with less travelling (*cough* rona *cough*), so I fell behind. But I’ve started going out and eating a leisurely lunch about once a week, and I’ll read half an issue.
Er… don’t have much to say about the rest.
All empty and ready for a new year.
Last opportunity to read comics this year (I think), so here we go. And today’s music is from the halcyon days of 2009 only.
| Circlesquare: Songs About Dancing And Drugs |  |
14:05: Flash Point by Imai Arata (Glacier Bay Books)
This is a pretty original book, really. Or rather, really confusing, because it totally starts off as perhaps an autobio book…
… and then veers into being a satire on influencer culture…
… and then it’s a broad comedy about Shinzo Abe’s assassination and hi-hinx following that.
It’s a funny book, but you get whiplash from the way it meanders towards its conclusion.
| DJ Rupture & Matt Shadetek: Solar Light Raft |  |
14:46: Star Trek Lower Decks #1 by Ryan North/Derek Charm (IDW)
The team from the last half of the Squirrel Girl run united! So I had to get this — I have not seen the cartoon series this is based on.
Oh, I’d forgotten that I’d read the first North/Charm Lower Decks series…
This is very funny. But there’s a lot of Star Trek in jokes that I’m barely getting? I think? But it’s so full of jokes that it’s doesn’t really matter. I’m on board.
15:09: Livet er gas by Annemette Bramsen (Plutoid)
This is set in the early 70s, and is about a guy in a small town who’s really into T. Rex.
The artwork is really enjoyable — it’s got a kind of 70s underground vibe, but updated. The story doesn’t really quite work, though — it’s feels like a sketch towards a larger story?
| Hype Williams: Untitled |  |
15:23: The Return of Captain Nemo by Schuiten & Peeters (Alaxis Press)
It seems like nobody who’s tried to publish the Obscure Cities series has lasted very long… Alaxis is somebody new, I think?
Most of this book is told in this way — we see an old guy recounting the story of Captain Nemo while we get a lot of really nice artwork depicting Nemo’s squid sub in various situations (which seem to have little to do with what the guy is saying most of the time). So I was wondering whether Peeters just wanted to do a lot of these drawings and the text is just an excuse. Because it’s tedious as fuck.
But then we get a clever ending! That’ll probably make everybody groan out loudly, but at least it’s something.
But then the last third of the book is more illustrations of a retro-futuristic city, again with some text accompanying it, but this time around without any narrative.
So I’m back to my original thought: Peeters (or is it Schuiten?) just wanted to draw these things, but they couldn’t come up with a story this time around.
This book was so soporific that I have to take a nap now.
| Laura Jean: Tour EP, 2009 |  |
17:39: Hilda and Twig: Hide from the Rain by Luke Pearson (Flying Eye Books)
I remember really liking the first few Hilda books, but then it was adapted into an animated Netflix series, and that resulted in smoothing out the comics, too, so I lost interest. But I bought this at random to see what it’s like now.
Yeah, the artwork’s more cartoony than it used to be, I think?
But… it’s really good! It’s funny, it’s a bit scary, it’s kinda epic.
| Various: Ze Records Story 1979-2009 |  |
17:52: Erased by Loo Hui Pang & Hugues Micoli (NBM)
So this is about an obviously fictional actor called “Maximus Wyld”, which is a preposterously un-30s movie name. Fake names back then were like “Cary Grant”. I guess it’s better than Fakename McFakeface, but only barely.
I assume! I haven’t googled the name.
The artwork looks pretty good. I mean, rendering wise. It’s pretty inept, though — whenever somebody’s actually doing something, you have to have the text explaining what the artwork supposed to be showing.
And oh, the dialogue… I get that the author’s not going for naturalistic talk, and sometimes he achieves almost Brechtian heights. But it’s mostly just really wooden and awful.
And he has Hattie McDaniel saying stuff like this? That maid quip is famous, of course, but he has her seeming like she’s a slavery apologist and a racist?
This is an awkward and tedious book, so I’m ditching it.
18:36: Fanden til præst by Sylvian Vallée/Jacky Schwartzmann (Shadow Zone)
This is very, very by the numbers — it’s high concept nonsense about a gangster having to disappear, so he takes over the identity of a priest who died.
So you get all the set pieces — him fumbling the mass (and becoming hugely popular), reluctantly taking care of the local urchin, setting up his own little pot distribution thing — all the normal heartwarming things required to make a French comedy drama.
But it’s pretty well done? It’s 100% formulaic, but it’s a formula that works, so…
| Fever Ray: Fever Ray |  |
18:59: Spring Tides by Andrew White (Glacier Bay Books)
Is this the first book by Glacier Bay that isn’t a translation of a Japanese comic book?
Anyway, the first part of this is a kinda slightly abstract post apocalyptic but really more symbolic kind of thing from 2023, and it’s amazing.
The last two thirds are newer and continues the story — but makes it way more concrete. Instead of living in a vaguely non-functioning place, we’re now in a normal city, and there’s doctors and stuff. And it’s good? But I kinda feel that the first part didn’t need to be brought down to Earth like this.
Ah, I see that I’ve forgotten to buy White’s Yearly 2024, so I’m doing that now.
19:24: Fragment (Blokk Forlag)
This is a bunch of small books.
There’s a variety of approaches — we’ve got poetry…
… jokes …
… autobio …
… and illustration. It’s really good.
| Mapstation: The African Chamber |  |
20:01: Pure Pajamas by Marc Bell (Drawn & Quarterly)
Somehow I missed this Marc Bell book from 2011.
This is a collection of stuff done from the mid 90s onwards. It’s interesting to see the older stuff from before Bell got his present style.
And kittens with kittens? Perfect.
It’s brilliant lunacy.
I guess I never made the connection to Robert Crumb, but now that Bell points it out, it’s like duh.
Anyway, it’s so much fun. And somehow for a grab bag of random stuff like this, it works well as a book as well.
| Machinedrum: Want to 1 2? |  |
20:59: Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz by Ari Richter (Fantagraphics)
Sorry, this is just so fugly. Everything about it is wrong. The heavy black border around the pages, and then an extremely white border. The lettering on the narration part IS SO BIG THAT IT”S LIKE HE”S SHOUTING ALL THE TIME. And the artwork itself looks like he’s scribbling on top of images on his Ipad. And there’s like zero colour sense.
This may be the most unpleasant comics spread I’ve opened up in yonks.
And it just goes on like that — page after page that’s just unpleasant to have in your vicinity. The overwhelming computeryness of it all… was this originally done as a web comic?
After about 70 pages of, well, introduction, we get to the main bulk of the book, where Richter retells stories of his relatives in Germany and Poland before and during WWII, and it’s harrowing indeed.
Unfortunately, the things that Richter makes up (dialogues and stuff) never seem that convincing (“You’ll no longer be poisoning these children’s minds” doesn’t really roll off the tongue).
| Peaches: I Feel Cream |  |
But it’s pretty interesting.
And dissing the feverish Polish history rewrites is always fun, of course. (And that’s why he’s not going back — because it’s a horribly run parody of what it should have been, from the looks of it.)
Hey! I’ve been to Dachau.
Anyway… it’s not a successful book, but Richter’s heart seems to be in the right place, so I wish I liked it. But I’m gonna do something I rarely do in a daze: Google what people thought of it.
The book is less compelling when it attempts to unpack how Holocaust remembrance works in Germany and Poland. Even as he foregrounds the importance of this issue, Richter dedicates only a few pages to each, making it impossible to capture the nuances of either. Poland gets particularly short shrift. As it happened, I visited Auschwitz just before writing this review, and Richter’s depiction of his own experience — especially of the pains taken by his guide to stress Polish suffering and downplay Jewish suffering — deeply resonated. However, Richter’s own tour through Polish-Jewish relations and contested memory is rushed. Missing from it is the perspective of Jews in Poland today.
Er… OK, but… that’s not what the book is about. So, yes, he could have written a different book, but you’re reviewing this one. Man.
Hm… there really aren’t that many reviews out there? Well, I found a handful more, but none of them really said anything interesting — and only a couple mentioned the art at all.
| David Bowie: A Reality Tour (1) |  |
22:42: Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki (First Second)
Well, this is very pretty… It’s from the Nausicäa guy, but from 1983.
But! It’s not a comic book! I don’t remember who said it, but there’s a real disappointment when you open a book you think is going to be a comic book, but it’s an illustrated story instead.
It’s not that bad, though? It’s a bit fairytalish (that’s a word), which is always tedious, but it’s OK. Without the excellent artwork it would have been piffle, though.
Oh, those Japanese! They even have a word for what this is — emonogatari. If only English wasn’t such an impoverished language, it’d have a word (or expression) for it, too.
OK, I’m fading, so just one more comic book…
23:15: Havedammen by Marie Sandmand (Forlaget Bogprint)
Wow, love this artwork… it reminds me of late 70s Annie Goetzinger? It’s got that associative flow.
And just original storytelling that’s not confusing despite being this freeflowing.
The only problem is how brief this book is — it’s 30 pages! It’s basically one brief scene, and then it’s over. I mean, it works — it’s a good scene — but more would have been even better.
23:26: The End
OK, but now it’s time to call it a night.
