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Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions
Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions by Alberto Manguel Published: 2018 Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart Length: 03:54 (160 pages) I love books on books. I’m always looking for more to read, and I really enjoyed this one. It’s less about specific titles as it is about a life surrounded by books. Alberto Manguel moved from a large home in France to a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment and had to deal with his home library of 35,000 books – deciding which to bring, which to store, and which to discard. The title is a play on Walter Benjamin’s Unpacking My Library (which I have yet to read) and the…
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October in Review
Books Acquired: N/A Books Read: Akira, Vol. 3 by Katsuhiro Otomo Jupiter’s Travels by Ted Simon Normal by Warren Ellis We began the month with a trip to Disneyland. We had some friends taking their children there for a week and decided to tag along, which we also did a few years ago. The beginning of October is a great time to go, actually, as they have the Halloween decorations and events out already but the Halloween crowds haven’t really arrived yet. We also used the Disneyland app this time, which is a complete game-changer. It felt like we barely spent any time in lines, at least relative to how…
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Akira, Vol. 3
Akira, Vol. 3 by Katsuhiro Otomo Translated by: Yoko Umezawa Series: Akira #3 Publisher: Kodansha Comics Published: 1986 Length: 282 pages I found the first half of this one to be a bit tedious. It’s a cat and mouse chase between multiple groups that just felt bogged down to me. It was full of action and intrigue, but just in a very repetitive and dull way. I wanted to get on with it and was a bit worried for the series. What I’ve liked, up to now, was that Katsuhiro Otomo never seemed to get too hung up on a particular plot point. I think when a story has a…
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If We All Spat at Once They’d Drown
If We All Spat at Once They’d Drown: Drawings About Class by Sam Wallman (editor) Published: 2016 Publisher: Pen Erases Paper Length: 200 pages This is a collection of comics and drawings from various illustrators and writers around the world, over sixty in total, that I picked up last year while in Melbourne. It was crowdfunded by Melbourne cartoonist Sam Wallman and focuses on issues of social class, general issues as well as some specific to Australia. Class isn’t something that’s discussed very often in Canada, from what I’ve seen, at least not in the way it seems to be elsewhere. I’m not sure where Australia lands on this, but…
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Paper Girls, Vol. 2
Paper Girls, Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan Illustrated by: Cliff Chiang, Matthew Wilson Publisher: Image Comics Collects: issues #6–10 Published: 2016 Length: 128 pages This series didn’t take long to go in a completely different direction than I was expecting. What I thought was going to be an 80’s adventure throwback has turned into an outlandish time-travel story. The girls have found themselves in the future, our present day, and are trying to escape their pursuers from the even-more-distant future. I’m still not really sure where this is going, but I’m having a blast following along. There are some interesting themes to explore in this series. Meeting your future…
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Himself
Himself by Jess Kidd Published: 2017 Narrated by: Aiden Kelly Length: 09:47 (384 pages) This is a 1970s small-town murder mystery with a touch of the supernatural. A man named Mahony is travelling back to his hometown, the small (fictional?) Irish village of Mulderrig, to discover why he was left in an orphanage as an infant. When he arrives, he quickly discovers from a letter that he was taken from his mother under seemingly nefarious circumstances and is warned not to trust anyone in town. It’s a book that pulls from a lot of genres. There’s the main detective plotline, a comedic small-town slice of life aspect, an underlying supernatural…
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September in Review
Books Acquired: N/A Books Read: Property Values by Charles Demers I’m a one-book-a-month man now, apparently. Savouring a few pages each night while you gluttons fly through hundreds a day. Just disgraceful, if you ask me. I’m hoping to get back into reading and writing a bit more now that the rainy season has hit. My head’s been all over the place the last couple of months, so it’s probably time to consciously relax a little. During September I was really focused on learning to ride motorcycles. I took a week-long course (partially taught by Lee-Ann, actually), and basically spent every bit of daylight either at work or on a…
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Fifteen Dogs
Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis Published: 2015 Series: Quincunx #2 Length: 171 pages This is the first book I read for this year’s CanBook Challenge. I finished it at the end of July, which shows just how behind I am on this whole blogging thing. My interest in this was piqued when I heard of it won the 2017 Canada Reads competition, but I’ve never been a huge fan of anthropomorphic animals as a literary device. Maybe I’m still reeling from the trauma of watching Homeward Bound as a kid, but animals as main characters is not something that makes me want to pick up a book. Lee-Ann bought this…
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August in Review
Books Acquired: Property Values by Charles Demers Books Read: Sailing Alone around the World by Joshua Slocum If We All Spat at Once They’d Drown by Sam Wallman (Editor) This was a bit of a weird month for me. I read a single comic/art book, listened to one audiobook, and played almost no games. I just couldn’t focus on anything this month. I did turn 36, so maybe my mind is starting to go. To celebrate my deteriorating mental faculties, we decided to spend a week in Oahu. On the flight over, I was unfortunately packed in with a crowd of screaming children. I was fine for the first half…
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Sunshine Blogger Award – Part II
Okay, so when I said tomorrow in the last post, I obviously meant in one week. Easy mistake, but here we are. I was nominated by Red Metal at Extra Life. Thanks for the mention! 1. Have you ever watched a critically acclaimed show only to feel it didn’t live up to the hype? I may get banned from the Internet for admitting this, but I’ve watched a few episodes of Rick and Morty and just wasn’t into it. I love pretty much everything I’ve seen from Dan Harmon – Community, HarmonQuest, Great Minds with Dan Harmon – but this one just didn’t hook me, despite the plots being fun…
