Book Club 2025: L’été 80 by Marguerite Duras

I apparently picked this up at a sale in 2021. I quite enjoy Duras’ books, but I’ve only read a handful. I think I’ve seen most of her hit movies, though.

This book is quite short, and you have to admire the lengths they’ve gone to to make this into something that can be sold as “a book” — French flaps, sturdy paper, small pages, large margins.

Anyway, this is a collection of texts that Duras wrote for Libération in the summer of 1980. Her method seems to be to look at what happened the last week, and then write about that en passant, in a way that doesn’t make much sense to somebody that doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And then she mixes it with (I’m guessing) what she’s seeing out the windows, as her house is apparently by the beach, so there’s people running around, and there’s this boy, David, who tells her about a shark and stuff.

It’s nifty! A really enjoyable read.

I particularly liked the bit where she calls, er, directory assistance I guess it’s called? in the middle of the night to talk about Gdansk, because she wanted to talk to somebody about Gdansk. I can just picture it — I’ve listened to a few interviews with her…

Sommeren 80 (1980) by Marguerite Duras (buy used, 3.51 on Goodreads)

Book Club 2025: The Luck of the Bodkins by P. G. Wodehouse

I was feeling both under the weather and down in the dumps, so I reached for a Wodehouse book.

And this one, from 1935, is top notch. This ticks along like extremely complicated clockwork in an almost hypnotic manner. There’s three (3) romances that have to come true, and there’s also a pearl necklace to be smuggled. Naturally Wodehouse goes through all permutations possible for various catastrophes, and it’s all very, very amusing.

It may also be Wodehouse’s longest novel? I’m not sure, but at 360 pages, it’s up there, at least. And I’m not surprised at all that Wodehouse cut it down for US release, because it’s perhaps, er, more than is advised for this kind of thing. It’s not boring for a single moment, but at the same time, you can’t help thinking “well, OK, OK” at the nineteenth plot twist/complication.

But you can’t really blame Wodehouse for not limiting himself when he’s got a good thing going.

The Luck of the Bodkins (1935) by P. G. Wodehouse (buy used, 4.06 on Goodreads)

Book Club 2025: The Bad Samaritan by Robert Barnard

Today was a perfect day for an old mystery novel.

And as usual with Barnard, half of the book is about stuff that happens before The Crime, and then we get half a book of sleuthing. The problem with this kind of structure is that you have to have sufficiently interesting characters to pull it off, but Barnard is pretty good at that.

This is not his best work, though. I mean, it’s fine.

The Bad Samaritan (1995) by Robert Barnard (buy used, 3.61 on Goodreads)

Book Club 2025: Fakkelen er tent! by Tor Eystein Øverås

I frequently read several books in parallel — usually different types of books. Like, a musician autobiography, a short story collection and a novel — or in this case, I’ve been reading a book about the history of the “quality paperback” market in Norway.

And it took me two and a half years to get through this one. Not because it’s boring, but because it’s been strapped into the reading apparatus on the kitchen table, and I’ve been reading it while eating breakfast and the like. So a page or two per day, basically. And this is a brick of a book.

So — this book is mostly about two book series published by one publisher, Gyldendal. These series were launched in the mid 60s and were (to some extent) modelled after Penguin and Pelican books: That is, cheap paperbacks that had serious contents. And this is of special interest to me, because I’ve been kinda obsessed about the fiction series, the Lantern books, that I even did a web site featuring those books. (Best viewed in Chrome with sturdy hardware acceleration.)

Love these designs.

See? Lots of good books.

Anyway, it’s amazing that you can write nigh on five hundred pages on this subject (and not bore the reader), but Øverås is successful: It’s a really interesting history, and he manages to avoid problems books like this sometimes have. It’s basically a celebration of a publishing initiative, and the temptation is to start to exhort the reader to understand how awesome and important these geniuses of authors are, etc etc. Instead he’s very grounded and looks at the interesting stuff, which is: How were these books chosen for publication? How many did they print? Did they sell? Who let the designers run amok in this way and create actually good-looking covers?

And the answers are interesting, but also allows the author to create a kind of tragic story: Because at the start, the “quality pocket book” thing worked extremely well, and basically everybody in Norway in the 60s bought bushels of these books. And then they stopped.

Yes, science fiction was included, too.

And then the 80s arrived, and the new editor in chief (who said endearing things like “I’m in favour of ugly books full of typos”) reined in the less-than-business focused editors, and started publishing horribly, horribly ugly books like those above… and then the editor in charge of fiction killed himself.

Fakkelen er tent! (2021) by Tor Eystein Øverås (4.5 on Goodreads)

Comics Daze

It’s a day for reading comics for sure. And for music today: Albums from 1981 only.

Japan: Tin Drum (1)

12:48: Causeway 25-29 by CF

Oh, man, the white balance is so balanced today. That is, it’s very sunny, and the lamp I’m reading under uses a “warm” bulb, so to get kinda realistic white in the camera, the background looks like everything’s been painted totally blue… Sony should invent “dual white balance” stuff so that the foreground can have a different white balance than the background.

Causeway has been a grab bag of random stuff, but mostly not very narrative.

But in this batch we get a four part story, and it’s pretty cool. Sign up here.

12:57: How To Hold Back Tears by Jooyoung Kim (Kuš)

This is really funny.

And also kinda moving. I like it. Get it from here.

13:08: Ruse by Alex Wedderburn

I like the artwork here.

The story seems like a quite standard TV lawyer drama thing, but there’s a reason those things are popular. The storytelling here is solid, and I can totally see somebody like, say, Image publishing this in full in a couple years.

Yukihiro Takahashi: Neuromantic

13:18: Business Insider by Grayson Bear (Frog Farm)

This book is hilarious.

It’s very on the nose… but then it totally goes where you didn’t expect.

And there’s also a booklet in the book and all sorts of nice things.

13:28: Szarlotka by Jas Hice (Frog Farm)

This book is about a creepy neighbour.

The storytelling is solid, but I found the story frustrating. There’s a limit to how passive you can be.

13:37: Loops

This is a British anthology.

It’s mostly very short pieces. Some funny stuff.

*gasp* Nostalgia! Never heard of it.

The Cure: Faith (1)

13:45: Frontier by Giellaume Singelin (Magnetic Press)

Wow, what a strange hybrid style… It’s like Singelin took some extremely super-cutesy Japanese (or even Korean) comics figures and then smushed them into French comics parameters. So instead of hyperkinetic Japanese comics storytelling we get very staid French old-timey layouts, with no closeups, but populated with these munchkin characters with tiny bodies and bobble heads.

And, of course, mecha-influenced space ships.

Is there a Vaughn Bodé influence, too?

Very odd.

Every time I open a new spread, it all looks so good… until I actually read it. Seen at a distance, this looks like the best sci fi comic ever.

Everybody has exactly identical body and head shapes (men and women), and of course just dots for eyes, so Singelin is diligent in trying to keep all the character (and there’s a lot) separate by giving each one a distinctive hairdo. (And eyebrows.) It doesn’t work — I have no idea who all these people are, or indeed whether I’m supposed to know.

I gave up on this after two fifths.

Simple Minds: Sister Feelings Call

14:17: Jag kommer med stryk by Nanna Johansson (Galago)

This book is a mix of one page gags…

… and longer comics. It’s very funny.

14:53: Summit by Aby Wye

This one is excellent.

It’s a short book, but it packs a lot in — it’s Very Metaphorical Indeed, but works really well. Very sweet.

14:58: Mask 4 Mask by Ollie Kicks

This is the most coherent 24h comic ever.

And it’s very funny. Wonderful punch line.

Simple Minds: Sons and Fascination

15:03: Joe Galaxy Comix by Mattioli (Fantagraphics)

This is a collection of stuff that ran in various anthologies, I guess?

I think they used to call this stuff “anarchic”.

If you happened onto four pages of this in an anthology, you’d go “well, that was fun and pointless” and then move on. Collected like this, it’s mind deadening.

Oh, I guess Mattioli was inspired by Moebius’ Hermetic Garage? But Moebius has, like, a whole thing going on; it’s not just randomness and gross gags. And, of course, the artwork.

I found this book to be tedious — there are some gags that actually work, but they’re few and far between. I ditched it one third through.

15:32: Cold Chips by Chris King

Oh, this is very attractive… it’s got a proper mood going, too.

And it’s a very sweet little book. Class!

Tom Tom Club: Tom Tom Club

15:36: Krut: Seriemagasin

This is a curious artefact — it’s a special comics issue of a Swedish pedagogical periodical from 1989 that I found in a used comic book store the other day.

So you’d expect they’d soft-foot it and run kinda mainstream comics.

But nope, it’s got some pretty wild stuff, like this Max Andersson piece. Most of the pieces are about education and going to school, and most are pretty amusing. It’s an impressive little anthology, really.

16:00: CFBT by Cristiano Cardone and others

So this is one of those gritty Blade Runnerish types of sci fi comics…

… but… like… It’s not good.

I assumed that this was written by a teenager, so I wasn’t going to say anything, but I googled the writer (only his name is on the cover; the three illustrators are mentioned inside) and he’s an actual adult. Shocking.

Yet again, I ditched the book. Man, I’m not having much success with the longer books today…

Tuxedomoon: Desire

16:17: Zoo #3 by Anand

Oh, I’ve read these stories before in the collected edition. Duh!

But I re-read them now, and they’re still amazing — three tight, taut short stories in 44 page. Anand manages to squeeze so much into so few pages. It’s a gripping read.

16:41: Sanctuary by Lev Fielding

This seems to be printed pretty low rez? Was it drawn low rez on a tablet or something?

Anyway, it’s a very metaphorical story about… er… something. Finding your place? It’s nice.

16:55: War on Gaza by Joe Sacco (Fantagraphics)

This was serialised on the Comics Journal web site, so I’ve read these pieces before…

Yeah, it’s as good as I remembered.

And collected like this it’s even stronger.

Kraftwerk: Computer World

17:07: Worn Tuff Elbow #3 by Marc Bell

I love Bell’s line and design sense.

The story is mesmerisingly weird, as usual.

17:27: FK10,000,000 by Nell McKeon (Frog Farm)

This is printed so faintly that I first thought it was some kind of mistake…

… but it goes really well with the story, really. It’s an interestingly vague and somewhat goofy story, and I really enjoyed it.

David Byrne: The Catherine Wheel

17:45: Movie Theatre Stories #1 by Vincent Mollica

This starts off pretty normally, with four panel comics about going to the movies.

But then it turns into something quite else. It’s a fascinating book — so many different approaches; kinda obsessive.

Depeche Mode: Speak & Spell

18:14: The Devil’s Grin #6 by Alex Graham

This is an extra-long issue — 110 pages!

I don’t really remember what the plot was up to this point (even if there’s a recap in this issue), but I think things might be coming to ahead? It’s very entertaining, anyway.

18:53: Trap #2 by Matt Seneca

Hm, have I read this before?

Anyway, it’s pretty wild. Poor Chris Ware!

19:13: The End

Oops, I’ve forgotten to eat anything today, which may help explain why I feel like I’m about to plotz. So I think that’s enough comics.