Archive for the 'Books' Category

“Pride and Prejudice” adapted by Marvel Comics

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Marvel's Pride and Prejudice #1 cover

I wish I could use prose as witty and cutting as Jane Austen’s to describe how unpleasant I found Marvel’s comic-book adaptation of her Pride and Prejudice. If you want sparkling prose, I’ll refer you to the source novel. There is little I can say about the comic to its credit, other than it starts off with Austen’s famous introduction:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

From there the comic departs from Austen’s prose. It is a shame adapter Nancy Butler squandered such strong source material in the service of choices like a clumsy character introduction to the Bennet sisters. The art, though, is really where the offense of this adaptation lies.

The color palette is mostly orange and an ugly yellow. The panels on the pages vary wildly, but not in the service of the story. Tones are either dull or too bright, and the gloss of the paper detracts even further. The illustrations of the characters look more like stills taken from a movie than images that tell a story. And the look of the characters would be laughable if they weren’t so dear to me. They are shown with giant white teeth, exactly the same build, and the glossy glamour look is more B movie/soap opera than appropriate for Austen’s time. Marvel, meanwhile, adds insult to injury with intrusive, garish and inappropriate ads that interrupt the story.

The painted cover art, by Sonny Liew, is the one element I liked. (I also liked his work on Vertigo’s My Faith in Frankie and on Re-Gifters) The art style and colors are softer, and more suited to the story than that of the interior. Unfortunately, Marvel mucked up the cover trying to be clever with girl-magazine type headlines.

My only hope is that girls who buy this might be curious to check out the novel. Had Liew painted the interiors, if it used even more of Austen’s prose, and foregone those silly cover headlines, this could have been quite charming. As it is, even as an entry point, I can’t recommend it at all.

New Covers for Chandler’s Best-Known Books

Friday, March 27th, 2009

At the Penguin blog, “In Search of Chandler,” the fascinating tale behind Penguin’s new set of covers for Raymond Chandler’s most famous novels on the 50th anniversary of his death:

Back in summer 2008, when we came up with the idea of reissuing a selection of four of Chandler’s most well-known books (The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The Little Sister, and The Long Good-bye) we vaguely waved away the issue of getting hold of the actual covers….Easy, I thought. We get in touch with the Bodleian, they dig up copies of all of the books from the stacks, and then they whack the jackets on a scanner and whizz them over to our ftp site for me to send to our art department. And then I go home at 5.30 and run around fields and eat strawberries.

Wrong.

It’s a great story, and took me a little while to track down links to the new covers at Penguin UK, as they’re not yet for sale:

The Little Sister
The Lady in the Lake
The Long Goodbye
Farewell, My Lovely

The Penguin blog link was at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, whose “Ten Things to Read on the 50th Anniversary of Raymond Chandler’s Death” was linked to by The Morning News.

You Just Don’t Understand

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Me, to husband G. Grod, about the Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books:

Three upsets in four days! It’s so exciting!

G: I don’t think you know what that word means.

A Book-Snob Moment

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

I just finished calling around my used bookstores asking if they had copies of 2666 by Roberto Bolano, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri or Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. While on hold with one guy, another picked up the call and said, “You were looking for Stephanie Meyer?” I laughed, said no and told him what I was looking for to explain why I thought it was funny. He didn’t laugh, and put me back on hold. The guy who’d been looking for me picked up again, told me they didn’t have any of the three (natch) and when I told him about the Stephanie Meyer question, he didn’t laugh either.

This is the kind of exchange I would’ve loved when I worked in a bookstore. Am I overly amused at my book geekery, or is it too esoteric?

Posthumously Prolific: Roberto Bolano

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

According to The Guardian, two more novels have been found among the late Roberto Bolano’s effects, as well as what appears to be the sixth and final section of 2666. (Link from Blog of a Bookslut)

I’m going to take this to mean I’m off the hook for having to read 2666 for the Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books, even if it did win its first round.

Who’s Not Watching the “Watchmen”?

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Me, that’s who. I’m a comics geek. I read Watchmen in 1990 and have been an avid comic reader ever since. That’s why I won’t be seeing Watchmen (2009).

Watchmen the book is brilliant. It exploded the boundary, then and perhaps forever, on superhero entertainment and the comics medium. So a faithful adaptation, as director Zack Snyder said he tried to do, misses the point, IMO. It offers superheroes and violence up as entertainment, without the irony.

Instead of investing almost 3 hours and $10 in the movie, read this interview at Salon with creator Alan Moore. (Can’t find the source of the link; sorry. It was probably Morning News or Bookslut) Read the graphic novel. Or go here for a hilarious imagining of what Watchmen might have been like as an 80’s kids cartoon, or to Slate for a parody of what other directors might have done. (Last two links from ALoTT5MA)

My husband G. Grod went to see it last night.

“How was it?” I asked.

“Exactly what I expected,” he replied. “That bad. Now I know.”

Rober Ebert liked it, but it’s clear from his review that he hasn’t read the source material. Part of what worked about recent comic-book movies like Spiderman 2, Iron Man, Hellboy II and The Dark Knight is that they were based on the larger legend, but eschewed existing stories in favor of ones crafted specifically for the movie.

TV critic Alan Sepinwall’s review confirmed my suspicions about the movie. I’ve not yet gone to see any adaptation of an Alan Moore project, though all the graphic novels–League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Swamp Thing, From Hell, V for Vendetta–are among my favorites. Movies and comics are different mediums. Sometimes one can bring something to the other than deepens the story. But with such rich source material as Watchmen, I don’t much see the point.

Comparing Covers

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

At the Millions, a comparison between the American and UK editions of some of the Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books contenders. (Link from Morning News, of course.)

I am actively stifling my urge to go to amazon.co.uk

But I’m going to keep an eye out at Half Price books; often the UK editions will turn up used or as remainders. That’s where I got UK editions of Harry Potter One and Two, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and the lovely HC of Special Topics in Calamity Physics (still unread).

(See how I finagled that? I HAD to go to the UK amazon to get the links for the UK editions. Heh. I did not shop, though. Yet.)

A Few Quick Links

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Because my children are ignoring me and refusing to get dressed, I’m going to ignore them right back. So much for the high road.

The bracket for the Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books is up! Adjust your reading list priorities accordingly. (I’m reading City of Refuge now, which seems bootless, since it’s up against Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.)

At the WSJ, a bunch of financial experts on what to do with your financial stimulus money. Link from Morning News.

At New York Magazine, Nate Silver statistically predicts the Oscar winners.

A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago will be live-blogging the Oscars.

On last night’s Top Chef, Finnish Stefan wore a T-shirt and hat emblazoned with “Suomi”. According to Wikipedia, Suomi means Finnish or Finland. One of the finalists commented that Fabio’s mohawk meant there had been one in every finale. Season four was Richard. Season Three was Dale. I don’t know who it was for the first two seasons.

On Colicchio’s blog at Bravo, he gives more information to the decisions from last night’s New Orleans finale part 1. It’s brief and insightful, plus divulges the technical term pro chefs use for other chefs’ food they admire.

“Perfectly Martha” by Susan Meddaugh

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Susan Meddaugh’s Martha Speaks and its sequels became the basis for the current PBS Kids show–one of the better ones that’s more watchable for parents, in my opinion. Our family discovered the TV show first, then sought out the books from our library. Thus far, 5yo Drake and 3yo Guppy have enjoyed Martha Blah Blah, Martha Calling, though they don’t like Martha Walks the Dog, which has a mean, big dog. But we all enjoy Perfectly Martha, my favorite.

Martha is a dog who learns to speak English after she eats alphabet soup and the letters go to her brain. When a shifty man comes to town and promises dog owners he can train the pets to be perfect pups in a day, Martha is suspicious.

“Hmmmph!” Martha said to Skits. “Dogs are perfect already.”

Clever Martha figures out the scam, and goes about fixing things in her own talkative, assertive manner. She is a charming, capable heroine, and this book seems especially aimed at dog owners who love their pets, quirks and all. My sister Sydney would love it.

“Farfallina and Marcel” by Holly Keller

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

I can’t remember where I first came across a recommendation for Holly Keller’s Farfallina and Marcel, but it’s 3yo Guppy’s current favorite book. A caterpillar named Farfallina and a gosling named Marcel become friends, then are separated one day:

But one day Farfallina was not herself.

I’m not sick,” she told Marcel,

“just a little uncomfortable.

I need to climb up onto a branch and rest for a while.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Marcel called

as Farfallina made her way up the tree.

Marcel does wait, but as most parents know, Farfallina isn’t coming down immediately; there is a note at the beginning about metamorphosis. Marcel eventually gives up and returns to his pond. Farfallina wakes and looks for Marcel, but he is gone. The friends are sad at the loss, and don’t even recognize each other when they do meet again, though they eventually discover the truth.

Keller’s watercolors are simple and lovely, perfectly suited to this sweet, engaging tale of friendship that survives through change.

“One Boy” by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

The New York Times had a recent article in its books section on number books for kids, and they highly recommended One Boy by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. At 5, my number-loving son Drake is perhaps a little old for it, but he and 3yo Guppy both love it.

One Boy is an illustrated counting-to-ten book, with die-cut pages that show words within words, e.g., “ONE Boy. AlONE.” and small pictures within larger ones. It has a clever, surprise ending and is overall quite charming. I will likely be getting this for our library at home, since our local branch doesn’t have its own copy. I’ll be seeking out Seeger’s other books, too.

New Used Books

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Is the title an oxymoron?

New books

From Half-Price Books:

The John McPhee Reader
David Copperfield
Hamlet
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
Nicholas Nickleby

From Big Brain Comics:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Thank goodness I gave up that silly “I need to stop buying more books” vow.

Links are to available copies at amazon, not necessarily the edition pictured.

Favorite Author Shelves

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

A few of our favorite authors have earned their own shelves in our built-in buffet cabinet, based both on number of books and attractiveness. When I love a book, like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, or Hamlet, I buy a lot of copies–for the illustrations, the footnotes, a cool cover, the introduction, portability, durability, whatever.

Jane Austen and Patrick O’Brian
Austen shelf Patrick O'Brian shelf

Anne, Emily and Charlotte Bronte
Bronte shelf, left Bronte shelf, right

Shakespeare
Shakespeare shelf, left Shakespeare shelf, right

A Dog’s Intuition

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Eventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her.

All that winter and all through the spring, Almondine had known something was going to happen, but no matter where she looked she couldn’t find it. Sometimes, when she entered a room, there was the feeling that the thing that was going to happen had just been there, and she would stop and stare and peer around while the feeling seeped away as mysteriously as it had arrived.

I finally started The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and am enjoying it so far, though I’m only about 100 pages in. I like the prose, the dog point of view, the characters, and their relationships to their dogs. I was amused to see Pat Holt’s description of the book in her recent post on publishing:

big-sprawling-summer-novel+Hamlet gimmick+beautiful-writing+struggling author backstory+DOGS DOGS DOGS = Must Read.

(Link from Blog of a Bookslut)

Elizabeth Bennet v. the Undead

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Is it me, or does all the internet hubbub over Pride and prejudice and Zombies (a few of the many links: Galleycat, The Times, and The Guardian, ) reminiscent of Snakes on a Plane–something that people thought was hilarious in theory, but avoided in real life?

“The Scandinavians Are Coming…”

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

The Guardian, on the rise of Scandinavian crime fiction:

Scandinavian crime fiction may still be something of a novelty act in the UK, but it’s a well-established genre in the rest of Europe, particularly Germany and France.

Link from The Morning News.

My book group recently read and thought well of Henning Mankell’s Return of the Dancing Master.

Food that Matters, a la Bittman

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

From Salon’s review of Food Matters by Mark Bittman:

The essence of the Bittman approach is simplicity, ease and quality, but that means he has to walk a fine and constantly shifting line. Americans’ attitudes toward what we eat are laden with class and cultural baggage.

Now Bittman has waded even further into the fray by publishing “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating With More Than 75 Recipes,” an unusual blend of manifesto, self-help manual and cookbook designed to convince people that they can drastically improve their diets with relatively little discomfort. Not only that, but in doing so, Bittman avows, they can also save the planet and relieve some of the pressure on their pocketbooks. As promises go, that’s a whopper, a super-trifecta encompassing the major obsessions of the current moment: weight loss, environmentalism and penny-pinching.

Laura Miller succinctly notes that Bittman’s book is “applied Pollan”, referring to Michael, who wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma (reductive summary: eat more local, sustainably created foods) and In Defense of Food (reductive summary: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”)

I’ve been a fan of Bittman’s since he wrote for Cook’s Illustrated. He’s the creator of the New York Times cooking column “The Minimalist,” advocating real food cooked simply and easily. He has Bitten, a blog at the New York Times, and his How to Cook Everything, which I consult so often pages are falling out, just celebrated its 10th anniversary.

My family and I aren’t ready to try the “vegan till 6pm plan”, but I was game to give the Food Matters approach a try. This was Monday’s meal plan:

Breakfast: yogurt and cereal
Morning snack: tofu and berry smoothie and frozen waffles
Lunch: Spinach and sweet potato salad with warm bacon dressing
Afternoon snack: buttered popcorn made on the stovetop, and hot cocoa
Dinner: Beet soup with Three Legumes (From Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone)
Dessert: B.T. McElrath chocolates

The downside was the time involved in planning and making things, and having a lot of dishes to clean. The upside was that the food tasted great, the kids even tried the beet soup, and I felt good about the quality and variety, and I didn’t feel deprived or resentful. Now I see if I can keep this up, and if practice makes it easier. (Salon link from Arts & Letters Daily)

March Madness Approaches!

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Oh, I am filled with geek joy. Not for the NCAA tournament, but for the Morning News Tournament of Books 2009! They’ve published the contenders (see below), and you can become a fan at Facebook.

Care to join me in nerdishly obsessing over some of the best books of last year? I read along with the tournament last year, and found some of my favorite books of the year. I’ve only read one from this year’s list–My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru–but it was a good one. And several others were already on my TBR radar. I’m off to scan reviews and load up my library request queue.

The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

2666, Roberto Bolano

A Partisan’s Daughter, Louis de Bernieres

The Northern Clemency, Philip Hensher

The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon

My Revolutions, Hari Kunzru

Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
, E. Lockhart

Shadow Country
, Peter Matthiessen

The Dart League King, Keith Morris

A Mercy
, Toni Morrison

Steer Towards Rock, Fae Myenne Ng

Netherland, Joseph O’Neill

City of Refuge, Tom Piazza

Home
, Marilynne Robinson

Harry, Revised, Mark Sarvas

Kids and Comics

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

In his essay, “Kids’ Stuff” from the collection Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon notes that comics as an art form has gained credibility but lost readers:

Days when comics aimed were [sic] at kids: huge sales. Days when comics are aimed at adults: not so huge sales, and declining. (p. 90)

Children did not abandon comics; comics, in their drive to attain respect and artistic accomplishment, abandoned children. (p. 91)

Chabon offers a number of suggestions to rebuild the legacy of comics for kids. While the number of monthly comic books for kids, especially younger ones, is small, there are a few standouts, as well as other comics to be found for kids at the comic store. Until the selection of comics swings back in favor of the kids as Chabon would like, here are a few of our family favorites:

Bone
by Jeff Smith
The Adventures of Polo and Polo: the Runaway book by Regis Faller
Chicken and Cat, and Robot Dreams, by Sarah Varon
Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons by Agnes Rosenthiel
Jack and the Box by Art Spiegelman

Irony

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

I went to the bookstore yesterday for a title my psychologist recommended. I knew the author and the area the book would be in. I checked the shelves, but didn’t find it. I continued checking in related areas, but didn’t find it. Then I asked for help. A kind bookseller led me directly to the book. It was in the area I’d been looking, sitting face out, prominently on the shelf in its own special section.

The book? Driven to Distraction by Hallowell and Ratey. The section? ADD.

*Sigh* I do not think my difficulty finding the book and its topic are unrelated.