What are you reading in November 2013?

Believe it or not, November is here already! Time for a new thread then. :) So what is everyone reading?

Haibane Renmei disappointed me today. Back to Complete Rainbow Orchid.

Reading: Saga; The Manhattan Projects; Dark Knights (Green Hornet and The Shadow); and Infinity

I just finished Palestine, but already discussed its merits/demerits in last month's thread. I will add now that I see brianjungwi's points about the final chapter and was glad to see that at least a smidgen of Israeli opinions were included there.

Now I'm on to The Ultimates: Super-human.

Finished The Ultimates: Super-human and found it entertaining enough, but nothing to write home about. I have no interest in going on to Volume 2, so I guess that pretty much sums it all up.

Now I'm on to Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, which looks interesting.

Taking a break from comics at the mo, as I am in one of LT's challenge groups, still have 2 more books to read for it, and none of my remaining choices are comics/GNs. :( Looking ahead a bit, I am almost certainly gonna start off the new year with Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell.

>5 sweetiegherkin:

I loved Jimmy Corrigan. Chris Ware is a genius.

Ack, I'll be curious to hear your thoughts on From Hell.

>7 .Monkey.:

I'll be sure to post them, Mel. :)

Finished reading Kingyo Used Books vol 4 which is a bit of a guilty pleasure. It's a manga where every chapter basically tells how there is a book for every person (or situation). good times.

I'm contemplating starting on Cerebus, I remember friends talking about 15 years ago, but it always seemed a bit much to take on. Has anyone read any of the volumes? suggestions?

> 6 Keep in mind that I did not get very far into it yet, but right now I'm disappointed in Jimmy Corrigan. From the covers and jacket/intro info, I thought it was so clever and funny, but once I got into the story itself I found I'm not that compelled by it (yet). Hoping that will change.

>10 sweetiegherkin:

It gets better. Stick with it.

Thanks, I think I just haven't been in the right mood for it yet.

I finished Jimmy Corrigan and while I got a little more in to it, I still was disappointed by it overall. Now I'm on to Ware's Building Stories.

>13 sweetiegherkin:

That's too bad. Here's a link to my review if you'd like to compare notes:

http://www.amazon.com/review/RW57DC7V142WW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

> 14 Thanks for the link, it's always interesting to hear others' thoughts on books you've read. I agree on the fine print being a bit too much in Jimmy Corrigan at times -- I felt like I needed a magnifying glass to read some of it!

I think you would really enjoy Ware's Building Stories. It's very creative in terms of playing with the comics medium and it has similar art and themes to Jimmy Corrigan but I personally find it much more compelling. I was really disappointed to have it put down last night, but I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer to keep reading it. :)

I thought Building Stories was a remarkable piece of work. Very creative in what it does, as you say. My review is about halfway through on the 17 listed so far on the book page, if you're interested. I liked it better than Jimmy Corrigan, too, although his genius shows in everything he does.

I just started Infinite Horizon, and so far so good.

Just read American Vampire vol 1. Was pretty good, but it seemed to cover a whole lot for a single volume. Kind of wondering just where it's headed when all that was apparently just the backstory? Hopefully my library gets more. They tend to have a habit of not finishing series except the hugely famous ones. :|

>15 sweetiegherkin: & 16

Just added Building Stories to my wishlist. 8)

> 16 Joe, Building Stories has been on my radar as a to-read book after I read your review of it. :) I'm actually afraid to review it when I'm done because I can't think of anything better to say that what you already wrote.

> 17 That's annoying! I can't stand when the library abandons a series ... or decides to get some of the series only in audio format while the rest is only in large print, or what have you.

> 18 Hope you enjoy it then! :)

>19 sweetiegherkin: Oh, they're even worse with the actual books, they don't even bother trying, they just have whatever titles they randomly acquire, no completeness or order about it. Comics they at least get #1, but then half the time either that's it, or they'll have 2 or maaaybe 3, and then nothing. It's infuriating that they have DMZ, and have 1-10. Final 2 vols are all that's left!! HOW DOES IT END?! *FLAILS* ugh. I don't know if they do better with it with the Dutch ones or not, but since everyone here can speak English, the comics get plenty of use from the natives and not just us foreigners! hmph.

>19 sweetiegherkin: Very nice of you to say, sweetiegherkin, but I know your perspective would bring a lot to it.

Just read Tim Pilcher's Comic Book Babylon; a really interesting memoir of life at DC Comics' Vertigo imprint in the 1990s.

> 21 Thanks, appreciate that :)

I just started the fourth Scott Pilgrim in color. I liked the Scott Pilgrim series the first time around - the humor hits me just right - but I'm loving these color ones.

Finished Building Stories last night and while I found its style interesting and complex, I also found it somewhat problematic as a reader.

Then I started in on The Sandman: Endless Nights. I didn't realize when I picked it up at the library that this is actually a follow-up to the original series, so it's possible I may go back at some point go back and try to find the first in the series. But so far my reaction has been my typical reaction on reading a Gaiman book - disappointment.

I'm not a Gaiman fan in general, but the Sandman series was truly phenomenal.

I'm a big fan of the Sandman series, too, so I'm sorry you haven't had a better experience with it, sweetiegherkin. And that Building Stories didn't work better for you.

> 26, 27 Well, I'm not completely writing off Sandman yet. This collection was more like a series of vignettes thrown as a bone to die-hard fans. I think I'll start at the beginning of the series now and give the first two a try before I decide.

Don't know what it is about Gaiman -- I think it might be partially that everything he's written is talked about so much and receives so many awards that by the time I get around it, I'm expecting something mind-blowing and it's usually more like "eh" in reality. There's nothing technically wrong with his works, it's not like I can fault them for being badly written or poorly plotted, they just don't do much of anything for me.

I don't want to give the impression that I thought Building Stories was awful or anything, I was rather riveted by a lot of it. But I did find the format at turns creative, gimmicky, artistic, and plain frustrating. I'm glad I tried it and I definitely give Ware props for embarking on such an ambitious project, but I do think it ended up making for an odd reading experience.

I really hate overhyped stuff, so I agree that that's one of my issues with Gaiman. I don't think anything else he's done than Sandman was that worthy, not at all! Plus the one volume of Sandman that got the best praise and awards and everything, is the one I like least, and the particular little story that earned it I thought was crummy and completely unnecessary. So, yeah. lol. But most of the volumes were amazing, truly.

>25 sweetiegherkin: et al.

Funny - we were having a discussion about Gaiman over at Science Fiction Fans (http://www.librarything.com/groups/sciencefictionfans) and most of the folks over there are pretty meh on him, too. Otoh, in my Alan Moore (aka PolymathicMonkey's nemesis ;) ) group over on Facebook, there are a lot of huge Gaiman fans. As for me, the only thing I ever read of his where I thought he really hit it out of the park was that "24 Hours" story he did early in his Sandman run.

> 29, 30 I'm glad to finally "meet" other people who feel the same way about Gaiman. I was starting to think I was crazy and/or missing something.

Uh oh, PolymathicMonkey, I didn't know you hated Alan Moore. I haven't read that much Moore but I've enjoyed the ones I have.

haha, yeah, as far as I'm concerned he's a misogynistic jerk (he has done not one single thing w/o significant rape, forceful sex, and having at least one woman overall treated like crap (and if there's actually more women in the story it'll certainly be extended to more than one) simply for being female), who clearly has a ton of issues trying to come up with his own characters, and he's writing all these graphic novels yet they're all crammed full of all kinds of text. If you want to write "regular" stories, do it! Don't just go shoving it into a graphic work! ugh. I could go on and on and on but I should stop before I get too worked up. :P

Hmm, well based on my limited exposure to his works, I got a different vibe. Of his three books that I read, only one included other texts and I thought it was rather inventive -- however, I could see how that wouldn't be for everyone. It's kind of like what I was talking about with Building Stories - playing with the form of the comic book is equal parts creative and gimmicky.

As for the treatment of women, that is something I look out for in books and while the three I read did contain some violence toward women (not necessarily rape) but it was important to the plot, not something gratuitous, so I was okay with it. It's also worth noting some of the men also face serious violence as well in the course of the books. Two of the books had strong female leads whose developments were a key point to the story.

Coming up with his own characters - yes, some of his work does seem derivative but then again a lot of comics is about building on/playing with existing characters, universes, etc.

Of course, all this is based on my limited reading of only Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and Batman: The Killing Joke. I can't speak to his other works.

Grimm Fairy Tales Present. Finished up through Volume 7, hoping Santa brings me Volume 8-14 for Christmas. Going to start Robyn Hood and Robyn Hood Wanted shortly!

>33 sweetiegherkin:

Coming up with his own characters - yes, some of his work does seem derivative but then again a lot of comics is about building on/playing with existing characters, universes, etc.

Also, I think this is a paradigm for how art works in general: you take what has come before you, you build upon it/add to it, and you sort of hand it to future artists to build upon it/add to it further. Yes, Moore often uses characters created by others (the Watchmen superheroes being based on the Charlton superheroes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen#Background_and_creation), the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen characters were taken from various Victorian era works of fiction, etc.), but what he does with them is usually about ten times more interesting than what their creators did. Take Mina Murray. In Dracula (which is in many other ways an excellent novel), she's basically a cardboard cutout. In LoEG, on the other hand, she's a believable, three-dimensional person - about as well-written as any female comics character I can think of.

I don't know that I can really speak to the issue of rape in his work, at least not as well. It's an act that obviously disproportionately has females as victims, and, being male, I'm just not gonna be affected the same way that a female is when encoutering it in a work of fiction. All I will say is this: Moore is perhaps the most studious adherent to Harlan Ellison's advice to writers ("You must never be afraid to go there") that I have yet encountered, and certainly its most studious adherent in comics. If Moore feels that an incident of rape is important to the plot, he will not shy away from it, and, because he is, in my view, a writer of great skill, his depiction of this horrifying act will be truly horrifying. This is not something everyone wants to encounter in a work of art; I am sensitive to that. However, in my view, it no way detracts from his merits as an artist nor is an indication of sexism or misogyny; it is, if anything, quite the opposite.

If you've read LoEG, there is nowhere that rape does anything useful to the plot. Yet he had the Invisible Prick rape women multiple times. A rape that is relevant to a story is not misogynistic, no. But when someone finds a way to put it in every. single. work. it's rather telling. All 3 volumes of LoEG that I read had at least one rape/almost-rape (i.e. attempted rape to the point of ripped clothing and bloodied face etc) (v1, v2, Black Dossier). From Hell dealt with prostitutes, yes, but was it actually necessary to go into panels depicting an attempt at keeping a guy between the legs but who realizes and rapes her instead? Afterwards they discuss it in the bar, did we really need to "see" it? His work is full of nude women in forceful sexualized situations. His is the only work I have read where this is such a prominent thing, and in every piece.

I also vehemently disagree that Mina was cardboard in Dracula. Yes, given the attitude towards women at the time the men tended to undervalue her, but she was the brains behind nearly every single thing, and throughout the story they kept commenting on both of those facts. They'd count her out as a fragile woman who couldn't do X but then it turned out she'd off and do Y anyhow and save the moment and earn their praise. Moore's Mina is a hardened bitchy scorned woman, instead, which to my mind speaks clearly about him and is the kind of thing I'm talking about. His women are ...ugh.

I read two of Thomas Ott's wordless graphic novels, 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 and Cinema Panopticum. Very elegant and sinister little reality-twisters.

>37 defaults: I read the former a little while back, definitely enjoyed it!

>36 .Monkey.:

I've read the first two volumes of LoEG and The Black Dossier; haven't got to Volume III or Nemo: Heart of Ice yet. I confess that when I read the ones I've read I wasn't particularly looking at the work through a feminist lens but rather primarily trying to follow the plot and pick out the various literary allusions.

There is a common criticism amongst those who hold right-wing political beliefs that leftists (a group I include myself in) tend to give others who are leftist or left-identified (such as Moore) a pass on statements or work that they would criticize those on the right for. This may indeed be what has been going on in the way I look at Moore and his work, although I would like to think that I am an objective enough reader not to be blinded by my own ideological biases in this fashion (wouldn't we all?). I am planning on rereading those books before I continue on in the series (although I don't know when that will be), and I will certainly keep your thoughtful criticisms in mind when I do so, as I will during my upcoming reading of From Hell.

I think the graphic format makes it easier to pick these things out, because it's literally pictured on the page in front of you just staring you in the face. In text (or other mediums as well, like movies and games), it's a lot easier to just kind of slip quickly by those moments before you've really noticed the problem. It's only more recently that I started paying more attention to this kind of stuff (in more than the cases where it's completely slapping you in the face no choice but to see it, anyway). Because, it does suck when that sort of thing screws up an otherwise pretty good piece of work, something you enjoyed but then you step back and go ...wait, but...! and it gets "ruined." But as the US keeps trying to push women back barefoot into the kitchen with no rights to speak of, and more other things are really spotlighting the massive rape-culture society that we live in, I've started paying it a lot more mind, and have gotten to where I don't really have to try to see it anymore, I just naturally notice now.

I agree though, I think on both sides tend to wear blinders, because one side doesn't see it as an issue, and the other side wants to pretend that the issue isn't there to see. It's natural for people to try and excuse things by those they agree with (those on the right do the same with other righties, they're full of it if they want to try and claim that as a leftist problem!), and I think tons of people just skim over that stuff without realizing it's there. I wouldn't be too hard on yourself about it. It's like those pictures where if you look one way, you see one thing, and if you look a little differently, you see something else. But a lot of the time you only see one of them, until someone points the other one out, and then you can't stop seeing it and can't believe you ever didn't notice it, you know? That's why there's people like FemFreq who are trying really hard to reach a wider audience about these problems in pop culture, to try and make a significant change. :)

>40 .Monkey.:

it does suck when that sort of thing screws up an otherwise pretty good piece of work, something you enjoyed but then you step back and go ...wait, but...! and it gets "ruined."...It's like those pictures where if you look one way, you see one thing, and if you look a little differently, you see something else. But a lot of the time you only see one of them, until someone points the other one out, and then you can't stop seeing it and can't believe you ever didn't notice it, you know?

This sort of thing happens a fair amount in real life also. When I was kid, racial slurs were bandied aboud quite a bit in conversation in my household; I didn't really think about it at the time, 'cause to me at the time it was the norm. Now that I'm older and realize how hurtful that kind of language is, I'll sometimes (not frequently, but certainly frequently enough) be in an otherwise pleasant conversation with a co-worker or an acquaintance and they'll sort of casually drop the n-word, and I'm instantly like, "Aw, maaan..." :(

Oh yeah, definitely. On this social site I use, I always pay attention to how people respond when someone shares a link or just opens a discussion about "controversial," more than once I have either removed a "friend" or changed an opinion about a friend of a friend who I had formerly held in some positive light, when they make comments blowing off (or expressing) some form of bigotry or whatnot. Sucks, but as plenty of us have taken to saying "these kind of posts are always enlightening"! heh.

This discussion about Moore being a misogynist becomes funny when you remember that he accused Frank Miller of being misogynistic and homophobic.

I've finished reading Locke & Key: Guide to the known keys, which has some visual references to Little Nemo, and Locke & Key: Grindhouse, which is a tip on the hat to EC Comics. Both of them, always highly recommendable.

I am reading Essex County and now I think that Jeff Lemire deserves his praise. The art reminds of Ted McKeever mainly due to the inking with strong brushstrokes. Strong reflective stories, but I think they are for "initiateds" exactly because of the art.

>42 .Monkey.:

Whereas I have been stubbornly hanging on to my, er, less progressive friends, because (my thinking goes) if I don't, then who's gonna be there to enlighten them? :D

In all seriousness, I often think about something that the great historian Howard Zinn said: "{History} suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place." I would add to that list of small things that it sometimes behooves us to say to bigoted people, "Hey, it's not cool to talk about women/people of color/homosexuals/whoever like that." It may do no good whatsoever, and it may give them something to think about. We will certainly never know for sure if we do not try.

Oh those people certainly get told in no uncertain terms that their statements leave a lot to be desired, and why that is. But they're not the kind of people most of us want to have anything to do with. When we're talking about personal stuff in our lives, having close-minded jerks around is not something most of us are okay with.

>43 apokoliptian: I'm aware that he said that. I assume he doesn't see it in his own work for the reasons discussed above. He thinks he's one of the "good" ones and therefore that his own treatment of female characters isn't in question, he wouldn't possibly do that with them. I imagine if someone pointed out all the instances to him that he'd attempt to refute it and not see it for what it was.

>44 apokoliptian: I think Essex County is top of the line, apokoliptian. Really well done. I've been somewhat less taken by his other work, although I did like Underwater Welder a lot, but Essex County is a knockout.

Going back to Gaiman, Sandman is terrific, and I do like his non-Sandman books, too. I've re-read Neverwhere several times, and The Graveyard Book and his most recent one, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, among others, are just great storytelling, IMO.

>46 .Monkey.:

When we're talking about personal stuff in our lives, having close-minded jerks around is not something most of us are okay with.

Good point.

heh. It just depends on the environment. In a more open public kind of space, you'll always encounter some of that sort. But something that can be locked down to just "friends" level where people share more intimate stuff, then most don't want those who have beliefs that infuriate them hanging around to see it. ;) Usually there's a thread that drags on for a couple days and has a couple hundred replies in it where the one/couple people are arguing their close-mindedness while a bunch of others try to make them see the light, before it eventually fizzles with all sides a bit on edge. haha

> 47
I agree about Gaiman. Sandman was a watershed. American Gods seems to have influenced works like Fables. Anansi Boys is one of funniest books I've ever read.But I think that he actually suffers with great expectations due to the praise.

> 35 Also, I think this is a paradigm for how art works in general: you take what has come before you, you build upon it/add to it, and you sort of hand it to future artists to build upon it/add to it further.
Yes, a hundred times yes.

> 36 I also vehemently disagree that Mina was cardboard in Dracula. Yes, given the attitude towards women at the time the men tended to undervalue her, but she was the brains behind nearly every single thing, and throughout the story they kept commenting on both of those facts. They'd count her out as a fragile woman who couldn't do X but then it turned out she'd off and do Y anyhow and save the moment and earn their praise.
I don't know, I found Mina to be a fairly dull character, especially as the book progressed. I'm not sure that the praise the men gave was necessarily directed at Mina so much as it was an indirect way for them to praise themselves - i.e., there was a whole lot of 'we have to do the right thing to protect our dear Mina.' (top layer = Mina is wonderful; underlying layer = aren't we wonderful because we recognize/protect her wonderfulness?). The first time I read Dracula I didn't notice it as much (more concerned with basic plot at that point), but the second time around, the lack of in-depth characterization for really every character became too glaring.

> 47, 50 I did read The Graveyard Book back when it was the hot thing to read and was again underwhelmed. Tying in to apokoliptian's point that Gaiman's work does seem to suffer from the high expectations heaped on by his fans -- or at least it does for me. I do have to say that Anansi Boys sounds interesting though. I'm likely not through with Gaiman yet ...

Try Neverwhere some time, sweetiegherkin. It's also done in graphic form by Mike Carey. I just always enjoy the ride with Gaiman, but no author gets universal enthusiasm. I've got a friend who hates Charles Dickens' books, for goodness sakes. I can see not liking them, but hating? You never know.

> 52 So true! We all have our own unique tastes when it comes to reading. :)