Habibi

An artistic and epic story that is a feat of drawing and literature.  Thompson (native of my hometown Portland) places his story of loss & love in an unidentifiable time period and a corrupted eden.  One understands why it took seven years for his sophomore release when viewing the intricately detailed pages of his book - they are at turns beautiful and grotesque.  I cannot recommend this to everyone - so much horror happens to the central children and it never truly attains a 'happily ever after.'  The artistry in Habibi surpasses his previous, award winning book Blankets, but Blankets realized its message and felt agonizingly truthful, while Habibi leaves one wondering what to make of it.  I still loved reading the story, seeing the depths of admiration Thompson expresses here for the beauty and familiarity of the Islamic culture, and enjoying the interweaving of stories throughout in an Arabian Nights style.  The power of a story is perhaps the main message the artist/author succeeds in revealing, and in this, I can be satisfied.  But I suspect there were a great many more messages trying to be heard.   I've never seen someone manage both words and drawings so beautifully as Mr. Thompson - he's really accomplishing something unique here.  But Blankets let me know that his writing can compete with any others (at least when it is his own tale) and so ultimately, he set the bar fairly high himself.  I'm hoping that his storymaking continues and improves to the point that his invented stories achieve the poignancy of his personal history.

October Reads Borrows and Bought

October Reads
The Male Brain - by Louanne Brizendine
Please Look After Mom - by Kyung-Soon Shin
Graphic Design For Non-Designers - Tony Seddon
Habibi - Craig Thompson
The Walking Dead Vol2 - Robert Kirkman (graphic novel)

October Bought & Borrowed
(Borrowed from the library)
Wild at Heart - by Barry Gifford
The Walking Dead Vol2 - by Robert Kirkman
(Purchased from Amazon and Powells)
The Male Brain (3 copies!) - by Louanne Brizendine
Habibi - by Craig Thompson
(Purchased from Friends of the Library sale - I'm an addict!)
Running with Scissors:A Memoir - by Augusten Burrows
Lies My Teacher Told Me - by James Loewen
Peony in Love and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - by Lisa See
Outlander - by Diana Gabaldon
Foucault's Pendulum - by Umberto Eco
How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents - by Julia Alvarez
Into Thin Air - by John Krakauer
The Witches of Eastwick - by John Updike
Reading Lolita in Tehran - by Azar Nafisi
Loving Frank - by Nancy Horan

Warning to Readers

My Latest Evangelism-Worthy Books

 

Louanne Brizendine blew me away and made me an annoyingly pest of my friends after reading The Female Brain in April.  I recommended it to all my (many) male colleagues with tween and teen daughters as well as anyone going through or supporting a spouse through menopause.  In addition I used many of the astonishing lab result finds to start (or stop) many a dinner conversation [e.g. did you know a mothering rat will choose the button that releases a suckling baby rat 100% of the time over the button that releases CRACK!?  the feel-good hormones released when nursing are a better high for the human-brain-hormone similar rats!].  Well, I figured The Male Brain would be similar but now-familiar fare since she often highlit the differences in males and females throughout Female.  Yet, once again, I was blown away by Brizendine's voice and data.  I planned to buy a copy for my sister who has a baby boy when I was in the first chapter.  Then I read the Teen chapter, followed by Mating, Parenting and Retirement chapters and the epiphanies kept rolling in.  So in the end I purchased one for myself and both my siblings and have started a new evangelization compaign for this captivating book.  It's non-fiction which I rarely deign to read, but it reads like a narrative, is short (1/2 of the book is just reference material) and divides topics easily into 5 life-stage chapters.  It is emminently readable, and hopefully for others - awesome.  Super-highly-hyperbolically recommended!  These two were probably my favorite books of the year so far (and I've read some great ones this year!) 

September Dregs

okay, catching up on the last of my September reads... two graphic novels and a book of poetry.
The two graphic novels this month were Anya's Ghost and Y: The Last Man Vol3. 

Anya's Ghost starts light hearted enough, and then slowly adds on the creepy.   Without really trying to, the narrator addresses bullying, 1st generation immigrants trying to fit in with the pressure to honor the past, infatuation, teenage moral codes (or lack thereof), self acceptance and others.  At the same time, we have ourselves a ghost story with a 93-year old ghost 'girl' and the girl who befriends her.  The ghost really is a vehicle to offer some 'what would you do if...?' scenarios and it works well in this medium.   It's not world changing underground 'comix' but it's a fun and layered read.  I wish the author delved a titch more into the complex emotions that surround the betrayal of treating another the way you were once treated (and hated) out of fear of the past.  There is a lot of current (great) literature or movies out about this phenomenon of pursuing the frenemies in one's life rather than befriending those who need friends as much as oneself and who would prove far more loyal.  Anya's story had an opportunity to add more on the subject but really just touched it and moved on.  I'd still recommend this quick read.

As for Y:The Last Man, I'm on the third (of 5) compilations in these serial graphic novels but haven't yet discussed it much with the exception of my graphic novel rating entry.  This series keeps getting better as women decide if they want to recreate the conflicts that occured in a world with both sexes.  The majority of politicians, soldiers, pilots, violent criminals, and Fortune 500 CEO's have disappeared.  Where do we go from here?  And what do we believe about fate and faith now in the midst of the greatest apocalypse in earth's history?  And for Yorrick (yes, Yorrick - his dad was a big Shakespeare fan), the sole surviving male on earth - what is his responsibility to womankind... was he supposed to die as well or is he supposed to be the hope for a new mankind?  The trek across land and sea paces quickly while staying true to a time-scale of several years.  I can anticipate numerous take-offs of 'inspired-by' stories that follow or prequel other characters in this world instead of following the last man... because while his story is interesting, this is still at heart the story of a world of women reeling and coping with the remnants of human(and animal kingdom as well)-kind and a ticking clock for the expiration of life on earth.  Highly, highly recommended!

Finally, as a result of reading the slogged-through-it-and-can't-decide-if-I-liked-it-or-hated-it Hollywood by Charles Bukowski, I decided to check out one of his books of poetry to see what all the fuss was about.  In my mind, Bukowski seemed like a wanna-be Hemingway in the manner of self-destructive, womanizing, cerebral but soul-less jerk. 
I picked up Bukowski's post-humous book Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way…  (even his title irks me!) which was one of the few books available at the library and it didn't really help because it was written around the time that Hollywood was finished so any insights just compounded my I'd-rather-be-reading-Billy-Collins-than-this-asshole opinion.  I've spoken to a few women who obsessed over his earlier poetry in their adolescence so perhaps I should give him another shot... but then again, I'm in my 30's and will likely finding it just as tiresome since I know I would find myself as an adolescent quite annoying.

Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale

I am happy that someone has returned to this tale so Disney doesn’t have the last word.  I remember attending the movie as a child fully expecting Ariel to die in the end (I did not yet understand that Disney has their own agenda when storytelling) so the "happily-ever-after" came as a shock.  (though "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" was probably a worse perversion!).  This story takes licenses of its own but with a sexy, foreboding, "life-isn't-fair" feel that remains truer to the original... and a fairly faithful plot as well. 
Told through two female characters: the mermaid who longs for a human soul (and human man) and the human princess who values the magic revealed by the mermaid even more than love, family or her own life, the book rings with remnants of a storyteller's voice around a fire or over coffee in a bazaar or by candlelight in Shahrazad's chamber.  I thought it lovely and recommend it for any fairy tale lover!

The Man from Beijing and I Capture the Castle

This month my lady's bookclub chose two excellent books to read - The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell, and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.  Vastly different, they both satisfied.

The Man from Beijing is my second Mankell read so far, the first being Faceless Killers (the first book of the Kurt Wallander mysteries).  Beijing is a stand-alone story with characters unfamiliar from Mankell's other books with the exception of the cold weather and countryside.  I appreciated the Kurt Wallander book as a true depiction of mystery solving via methodical (and often slow) police procedure.  This book contains minimal procedure and requires suspension of disbelief to follow the tale.  It is widesweeping (in geography and motivations) as the reader is taken from Denmark to London, Beijing and 1800's United States.  It is a far-fetched story of revenge, clashes of culture and tough decisions regarding whom to trust.  I appreciated the central character's authenticity but was disappointed by the number of coincidences that led to solving the case.  Ultimately, I found this a better story for learning something about early America and modern-day China than a mystery.  Mankell has his own impressive style and research behind the book again which is why I plan to return to his tales and I would still recommend the story for fiction readers, but I think die-hard mystery fans would find it troublesome. 

I Capture the Castle has gained many fans as a result of its recent re-printing.  The book was out-of-print for decades after its introduction to the world after WWII.  Thank goodness - It is a delight! 

I've read numerous books in the past year taking place in England so the eccentricities of the characters are nothing new.   Aside from the characteristic scenery, mouldering architecture and quirky characters though, this book could be a wonderful coming-of-age story for any land.  The narrator Cassandra voices the tale through her diary which is a difficult task for an author to pull off effectively.  She succeeds in injecting the exuberance, ecstasy and agony of teenagedom throughout Cassandra's tale and the ending was satisfyingly real (which means unsatisfying unlike most rom-coms today).  I highly recommend reading this book - especially for the literature lovers out there as she loves alluding to Jane Austen, quoting poetry (did everyone memorize poetry in the first half of the century!?) or starting interesting debates such as "Would you rather have a little Jane in your Catherine or a little Catherine in your Jane?" - now really, don't we all want to have that discussion?!