Author Archives: electricrocket

Book Log – Songbook

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Songbook by Nick Hornby

With this work, I have completed my reading of the Non-Fiction and Fiction oeuvre of available Nick Hornby… or have I?

According to Wikipedia, there’s something called Contemporary American Fiction he wrote in 1992.  No real info about what it is.  Hmm.  And there’s some short stories and edited anthologies I haven’t bothered with.  And I gave up on Fever Pitch… I’m not going back, because I simply don’t care about football/soccer that much.

And actually, that’s why I haven’t read Songbook until now.  I was afraid of another Fever Pitch, except about music.  And I don’t care about music either, to own the truth.

Which is not to say I don’t enjoy watching and playing soccer, or listening to music.   I just don’t burn a lot of energy thinking about it.

But it is Nick Hornby, and the passion and wit he brings to talking about books in his Believer column is present here, to the extent that I almost, for a moment or two, was interested in checking out some of the music he’s talking about.  The feeling still comes and goes a bit.  Hopefully, it will pass, because I don’t need to see funds desperately needed to buy books get funneled into mp3s.

 

 

Book Log – Letters from the Age of Reason

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Letters from the Age of Reason by Nora Hague

I’m not sure how this book ended up in our house.  I think Stacey got it as a gift several years ago.  It’s been sitting on the To Be Read shelf for longer than I can remember (though, since it was written in 2002, that’s our earlier limit).

I picked it up a year or two ago, I think for lack of anything better to read on hand.  I’ve been picking it up on and off since then.

This is another historical fiction from the era of slavery (set just before and during the Civil War), and like The Unknown World, it’s not my typical fare.  But it’s a well written first novel, and like Jane Austen’s first novel, it is composed entirely of letters.  The book tackles the oddity of relationships between slaves, owners, and those with uncomfortably mixed ancestry.

I like to look up authors I’m unfamiliar with, but Nora Hague hasn’t got much info out there.  A few reviews of this book, no wikipedia page, and a Facebook page with the french edition of this book as the profile picture.  Her author note at the back of the book says she’s working on her second novel… it must be a long one.

Book Log – Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy & Expressive Anatomy

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Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy by Christopher Hart
Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist (Will Eisner Instructional Books) by Will Eisner

So here we have two books on drawing… one by a relatively young guy, and another by a giant in the field, published posthumously from his notes.

It surprises even me that, while I liked both books, I found the young guy’s more educational.

It’s obvious that Will Eisner is the better artist.  There are many drawings from Christopher Hart’s book that I find… less than publishable-quality.  But Christopher Hart is the first person to really make me pay attention to skeletal and muscular structure.  I don’t know why; Almost all the figure drawing books I have go over this.  But there’s something in the way Hart breaks it down that made it easy for me to digest.  Amazingly Easy, I guess.

Granted, the books don’t have the same aim.  Eisner is addressing expressiveness and storytelling.  Hart is trying to communicate the basics.  It’s entirely possible I’m just not ready for the Eisner.

I can accept that.  I’ve got it in my library for later.

Book Log – Un Lun Dun

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Un Lun Dun by China Mieville

Curt Holman loaned me this book, a favorite of his daughter’s.

My only experience with China Mieville thus far has been Perdido Street Station, which is a quirky but engrossing book. Mieville seems like the writer that the term “speculative fiction” was coined for, as one hesitates to call it fantasy or science fiction.

Un Lun Dun is a surprising and creative book intended for kids, but entertaining for adults.

Jumping between what I’ll call an Un-World and this world, it has a down the rabbit hole feel, but more grounded than the Alice surrealism. The world of unLondon thrives on the cast-offs of the real London, where animated garbage and eccentric creatures abound. A crisis that threatens unLondon and London alike can seemingly only be thwarted by a prophesied young girl, but Mieville is not so pedestrian to allow that to play out as you would expect.

The vivid description of the action and oddball characters is crying out for a movie adaptation.

Dreams of My President

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I dreamed last night that I participated in two unrelated press conferences with President Obama.

The majority of the dream was me trying to figure out how to compress the description of the experience into 140 characters.

This is my brain trying to tell me something.