What I did last weekend, and what I read.
Feb. 27th, 2009 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cdave*)The DFC.
Spectrum Black looks like it will be an interesting space opera.
I've not enjoyed this run of John Blake as much as the first. I'm not sure why though. I think the first few were very exposition heavy, and the last few were really action heavy. I seem to recall the first run being more balanced.
8) Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland
The cover looks like a romance nove. I wouldn't have picked it up, if I hadn't just finished JPod. One of the pull quotes described it as so good you forget it's a satire. I'd have said the opposite. It's such a compelling satire, you forget it had it's origins in any genre.
It opens as two of those fabulous LA people meet across a restaurant, and go for a walk (Note to non-Americans walking for the hell of it, is just not done).
A series of non-sequential flashbacks, slowly reveal exactly how messed up these two people are. In fact pretty much everyone this novel is messed up, misanthropic, or otherwise socially mal-adjusted in one way or another.
Their pasts are compelling enough in their own right, but using the placing of them to provide illumination, and almost drive the plot in the present was beautiful.
I don't know why, but I feel compelled to write up a fairly typically un-typical weekend. Probably as for once, most of the major players in it have a blog I can link to. Since this seems to have taken me most of a week I doubt I'll do it very often.
At the start of the week, I was planning to (but didn't) spend Saturday round Steeeeve's to play party console games (Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, Beat 'em ups using the dance mat and guitar as controllers, etc.). This is a not entirely uncommon event in the lives of the north London people I know, but isn't something I see talked about my flist? This deserves a poll, but I probably won't get round to doing one.
Sunday was planned to be spent up at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hawkida's doing Eastercon stuff. And was. See attached:
Since I already had to be north of London on Sunday, when I heard fromadelheid that she had a rare Saturday off work, I took the opportunity to head up and visit her. The fact that she lives 10 minutes walk away from what Scott McCloud described as the "U.K.'s best comics shop" had nothing to do it.
9) Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi.
Bought at the "U.K.'s best comics shop", Page 45.
I absolutly adore Copper. Large whimsical gorgeous standalone comics, with unusual panel layout* and brilliant quality brushwork and colouring.
This went on hiatus for more than a year while he, and a small team, worked on this 200 comic (cut down from 300 pages, redrawing up 65% of pages between drafts). I've been meaning to seek this out for a while.
Despite it's length, I finished it in about an hour I think. Only afterwards did I realise that there's very few words in it, and all quite short. Scholastic publish it, so I guess it's aimed at quite young kids.
However it has a very dark tone in places, so not for letting them read alone.
It's a fantasy quest, where a young girl and her younger brother are in a strange world with a robotic rabbit to guide them. Not my usual fare, but interesting enough. I'll keep my eye out for the next in the series.
* I absolutely love it when a comic is not just in a series of identical boxes.
Spectrum Black looks like it will be an interesting space opera.
I've not enjoyed this run of John Blake as much as the first. I'm not sure why though. I think the first few were very exposition heavy, and the last few were really action heavy. I seem to recall the first run being more balanced.
8) Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland
The cover looks like a romance nove. I wouldn't have picked it up, if I hadn't just finished JPod. One of the pull quotes described it as so good you forget it's a satire. I'd have said the opposite. It's such a compelling satire, you forget it had it's origins in any genre.
It opens as two of those fabulous LA people meet across a restaurant, and go for a walk (Note to non-Americans walking for the hell of it, is just not done).
A series of non-sequential flashbacks, slowly reveal exactly how messed up these two people are. In fact pretty much everyone this novel is messed up, misanthropic, or otherwise socially mal-adjusted in one way or another.
Their pasts are compelling enough in their own right, but using the placing of them to provide illumination, and almost drive the plot in the present was beautiful.
I don't know why, but I feel compelled to write up a fairly typically un-typical weekend. Probably as for once, most of the major players in it have a blog I can link to. Since this seems to have taken me most of a week I doubt I'll do it very often.
At the start of the week, I was planning to (but didn't) spend Saturday round Steeeeve's to play party console games (Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, Beat 'em ups using the dance mat and guitar as controllers, etc.). This is a not entirely uncommon event in the lives of the north London people I know, but isn't something I see talked about my flist? This deserves a poll, but I probably won't get round to doing one.
Sunday was planned to be spent up at
hawkida's doing Eastercon stuff. And was. See attached:
Since I already had to be north of London on Sunday, when I heard from
adelheid that she had a rare Saturday off work, I took the opportunity to head up and visit her. The fact that she lives 10 minutes walk away from what Scott McCloud described as the "U.K.'s best comics shop" had nothing to do it.9) Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi.
Bought at the "U.K.'s best comics shop", Page 45.
I absolutly adore Copper. Large whimsical gorgeous standalone comics, with unusual panel layout* and brilliant quality brushwork and colouring.
This went on hiatus for more than a year while he, and a small team, worked on this 200 comic (cut down from 300 pages, redrawing up 65% of pages between drafts). I've been meaning to seek this out for a while.
Despite it's length, I finished it in about an hour I think. Only afterwards did I realise that there's very few words in it, and all quite short. Scholastic publish it, so I guess it's aimed at quite young kids.
However it has a very dark tone in places, so not for letting them read alone.
It's a fantasy quest, where a young girl and her younger brother are in a strange world with a robotic rabbit to guide them. Not my usual fare, but interesting enough. I'll keep my eye out for the next in the series.
* I absolutely love it when a comic is not just in a series of identical boxes.
