Comic-A-Week March 20-26 – Mercury by Hope Larson

I picked this one up on a whim from my library and I’m glad I did. Mercury is a charming story, filled with the real sadness, embarrassments and joys of adolescence, but with tragic undertones that hint at the “real world” that is right around the corner for most teens. It has a strong sense of place, specifically Nova Scotia, with common slang and locations explained, which honestly made the experience of reading Mercury that much more enjoyable.

While comics have been around for a long time, this is still a medium that is young. I love to see comics artists make innovative and interesting decisions. For example, this comic follows two storylines, Tara in current time and Josey in 1859; Tara’s storyline is on a white background while Josey’s is on black. In a comic meant for younger readers, this is a perfect way to mark the change. It’s simple and subtle, but one that most readers will pick up on.

Not only does Larson carefully combine the present and the past, but she also combines fantasy and reality. This was not quite as seamless as the the changing timeline. I could definitely get behind some of the more “traditional” magic, such as premonitions, but there was one part at the end that seemed particularly far-fetched. It’s not even necessarily that the fantasy itself was far-fetched (it’s a comic after all – anything can happen!), but that we were supposedly dealing with normal high school students. What happened did not freak them out and, unfortunately, that seemed odd and out-of-character to me.

Overall though, Mercury is a successful mix of humor, tragedy and everything in between. My problems with it are minimal and wouldn’t deter me from recommending it to a comic-lover of any age.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve read everything else

Reading Rants!, Mama Librarian, The Boston Bibliophile, Stuff As Dreams Are Made On, Buried in Print, Sophisticated Dorkiness and The Zen Leaf all have posts about Mercury by Hope Larson. Do you? Link to your post in the comments and I’ll add it here.

Poetry Wednesday – Rhina P. Espaillat (2)

I know I just posted another poem by Rhina P. Espaillat last Wednesday, but when I read this one, I couldn’t help but feature another one. You’re going to see immediately why I like it, I guarantee it. Rhina P. Espaillat was born in the Dominican Republic under the Trujillo regime. Her and her family moved to New York when she was a young woman and she began writing poetry, in Spanish and then in English. I love the way she treats bilingualism as the blessing it really is here. Absolutely beautiful.

________________________________________________________

Bilingual/Bilingüe by Rhina P. Espaillat

My father liked them separate, on there,
one here (allá y aquí), as if aware

that words might cut in two his daughter’s heart
(el corazón) and lock the alien part

to what he was – his memory, his name
(su nombre) – with a key he could not claim.

“English outside this door, Spanish inside,”
he said, “y basata.” But who can divide

the world, the word (mundo y palabra) from
any child? I knew how to be dumb

and stubborn (testaruda);  late, in bed,
I hoarded secret syllables I read

until my tongue (mi lengua) learned to run
where his stumbled. And still the heart was one.

I like to think he knew that, even when,
proud (orgulloso) of his daughter’s pen,

he stood outside mis versos, half in fear
of words he loved but wanted not to hear.

Indie Lit Awards – Poetry (Plus a handy tutorial!)

I have some exciting news for Poetry Wednesday lovers everywhere! In 2011 I will be bringing you even more amazing poetry, thanks to the Indie Lit Awards! The Indie Lit Awards were started last year by Wallace at Unputdownables and features books in several different categories that are nominated by and voted on by bloggers. The categories for 2011 are Biography/Memoir, GLBTQ, Literary Fiction, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and Speculative Fiction. I’d love to be on every single one of those committees, but I’m really excited to be on the poetry committee. Anything to get more poems out there!

So what can you do to get involved with the Indie Lit Awards?

• Read poetry published in 2011! You can’t start nominating books until September, because we want to make sure you’ve had a chance to read all the great books that are being published between now and then. But in order to nominate, you have to be reading.
• Learn about new poetry releases! One of the easiest ways to do this is through an Amazon advanced search. This one I have for you is all poetry published after December 2010. Obviously that list is on the long side at almost 5,000 releases. In order to change the search parameters to see what’s being published in March, for example, go to the Amazon Advanced Search.

 

Then set your parameters as follows:

Obviously you can choose the publication date to suite your needs. Looking for books published during March? Amazon can do that. Books published before December 2011? Under control. But in order to get to the poetry, there’s one more step:

Under the department heading, you must click poetry! As you can see there are plenty of titles for you to look at, but I promise that once you play around with this feature a little bit it will be a lot easier. Sorry if some of this information seems a little simple or obvious, but I just found out how to do this the other day and wanted to share it with everyone! (I apologize for any negative affects this might have on your wallet.)

I hope you’ll check out the Indie Lit Awards website for more information! A lot of really great bloggers are involved and I’m honored to be a part of this award.

Poetry Wednesday – Rhina P. Espaillat

This poem sold me with its opening conceit, but won me over with its language. I’ve never read a poem by Rhina P. Espaillat before this one, but it seems like I am truly missing out.

_______________________________________________________________

Weighing In by Rhina P. Espaillat

What the scale tells you is how much the earth
has missed you, body, how it wants you back
again after you leave it to go forth

into the light. Do you remember how
earth hardly noticed you then? Others would rock
you in their arms, warm in the flow

that fed you, coaxed you upright. Then earth began
to claim you with spots and fevers, began to lick
at you with a bruised knee, a bloody shin,

and finally to stoke you, body, drumming
intimate coded messages through music
you danced to unawares, there in your dreaming

and your poems and your obedient blood.
Body, how useful you became, how lucky,
heavy with news and breakage, rich, and sad,

sometimes, imagining that greedy zero
you must have been, that promising empty sack
of possibilities, never-to-come tomorrow.

But look at you now, body, soft old shoe
that love wears when it’s stirring, look down, look
how earth wants what you weigh, needs what you know.

Comic-A-Week March 13-19: Essex County by Jeff Lemire

I’ve been hearing good things about Essex County for a long time, so finally reading it almost felt like coming home to something I’d been missing. I can think of so many adjectives to describe Essex County: haunting, epic, real, beautiful, authentic. There are so many, and all of them good. It’s a sweeping family drama that starts at the end and slowly winds itself to the beginning and back again.

I don’t know that I really want to go into the specifics of this comic, because watching the history of this family unfold is what is so beautiful about it. You don’t really know how things are connected until the very end and I loved that about it. You can guess, but all of the intricacies and twists of the family trees play out slowly throughout the course of the stories. This is a collection of shorter comics and each one focuses on a different person in Essex County. Geography initially seems to be the only thing connecting them, but it is much more.

I was recently listening to the Bookrageous podcast about taboo topics in literature and the topic of comics was brought up. Bookrageous contributor Josh was talking about graphic novels and comics when he said something that really expressed how I feel about the medium: the ability to express emptiness. He goes on to say that a blank page can be extremely powerful in a graphic novel and I couldn’t agree more. Essex County is filled with moments like this, of not necessarily blank pages, but nearly blank pages. The beginning chapter takes place on a farm, and every scene involving the corn and its progression were perfect in expressing a character’s loneliness, along with the passage of time. Or when another character returns to the farm, all lines denoting where the image ends and begins are abandoned and the landscape of the farm takes over completely, accompanied by a long, lonely shadow. Or more still, when the pane focuses solely on the ice. How do you draw ice in black and white? Lemire does it.

Another favorite part of Essex County? When one young character loves drawing comics and we get to see the comics he draws. They are amazing. As someone who has zero talent for drawing, I wonder what it was like to go back and draw in the style of a child. I love it when a comic pushes the boundaries of what it means to be a comic. It is such an open medium – why not include photographs? Why not include multiple styles?  Why not draw part of the comic as if you were 12? I also love a comic that has such a strong sense of place. See my review of Local. Essex County is so completely relates what it is like to live in rural Canada that I feel as though I have been there. Even though I have never stepped foot in a place more north than Rhode Island, I can feel the cold, I can feel the vast, openness of it.

I always find these comics after they have been collected into an omnibus. Where are the comics now that will be collected together in a few years? Can anyone point me in that direction? I want to be on top of this. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. In the mean time, get out there and read Essex County. You won’t be disappointed.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve read everything else

An Adventure in Reading (Vol 1 & 2), So Many Books, So Little Time (Vol 1, 2 & 3), Monniblog, Buried in Print, all have posts about Essex County. Do you? Link to it in the comments and I’ll add it here.

A View from the Back Pew: God, Religion & Our Personal Quest for Truth by Tim O’Donnell

I feel like you come to Regular Rumination expecting nothing less than honesty, am I right? So let’s get some things out of the way: I am not feeling well and I’m grumpy. BUT while that may in fact affect my delivery of this review, I don’t think it is affecting my opinion of the book A View from the Back Pew by Tim O’Donnell. I began reading this book weeks ago and I promise you I wasn’t quite as cranky then.

A View from the Back Pew and I immediately got off to a rough start. In his introduction, O’Donnell makes a remark I have heard before that infuriates me: “I’m troubled by reports of people declaring themselves agnostic and leaving their churches in droves. To me it’s a kind of cop-out. I may not agree with  the conclusion an atheist draws about God, but at least he has asked enough questions to draw a conclusion. It’s all too common today for people who become disillusioned with their religion, frustrated with dogma and ritual, to stop asking questions altogether. They just walk away – inadvertently turn their backs on God as well.” (xiv) Unfortunately, O’Donnell is making a lot of assumptions here. He assumes that all people who classify themselves as agnostic have simply stopped asking questions. For me, it is being in a state of constantly questioning, which is ultimately not so different than the path that O’Donnell finds himself on. In his mind, he is superior because has reached a covenant with God, which he blatantly calls a “Deal”, and thus can know God. I don’t presume  to have the answers to the questions that O’Donnell asks, and answers himself, but I do ask them.

If I didn’t ask them, I would still be Catholic or Methodist, the two religions I was raised in. Perhaps it was this dual upbringing that originally led me to question belief for the sake of belief. I asked questions that my Sunday School teacher wasn’t pleased with. I questioned too much. I could relate to O’Donnell in that sense, but when his questioning suddenly went from wondering to knowing, I questioned that transition as well. What if “God” had not kept up his “deal” with O’Donnell? Would he still feel the same way about God?

I think I need to take a break from the religious non-fiction. I’m sure a lot of you wonder why I even bother, when I’ve so clearly laid out my beliefs here as non-religious, non-Christian, and constantly questioning. I don’t know. I guess I’m interested in faith as a journey, in the Bible as literature, in the scripture as history. Unfortunately, I haven’t run across the books that agree with me yet. I’m just being honest – grumpiness makes me honest to a fault. It’s not necessarily that I want every book to agree with me, because that would be presumptuous and ignorant, but I just want to read about that journey a little bit, somewhere. I think that’s why I loved Blankets by Craig Thompson so much. That journey was so much like my own. But that also doesn’t mean I’m not willing to read books that differ in opinion, I love to! I love the discussion that comes out of it, but where my problem begins is when an author asks me to accept something as fact that is not a fact, but it is a belief. I suppose to the truly spiritual, there is no difference.

Unfortunately, I’m just not capable of making that leap. And that is why I’m a heathen. (A joke! Sort of.)

I think there is certainly a reader out there for O’Donnell’s book and there are probably far better people than I who can separate their own beliefs from what they are reading and can admire this as a personal journey of faith. But to me it reads as a “how-to” guide in a way and one that is much too impractical for most to follow. So I could tentatively recommend this book to a certain reader, but overall? I’m just not convinced.

Special thanks to TLC Book Tours for sending me this book to review. In the interest of getting this review up on time, I’m currently posting it without a cover image or links because my connection is slow. I will come back later and add in links and images when I can!

Tomcat in Love by Tim O’Brien

A couple of weeks ago, there was a conversation going on about favorite authors and whether you can call an author your favorite if you’ve only read one of their books. While I’m still not really sure about the answer to that question, it did lead me to finally get around to reading another book by Tim O’Brien. I’ve long called him one of my favorite authors, but I’ve only read The Things They Carried, which is one of my favorite books. I’ve also seen Tim O’Brien speak and he was amazing, which adds to the fact that he’s one of my favorite authors, not just the author of one of my favorite books.

So what happens when you read a book by your favorite author and you hate it? I knew going into Tomcat in Love that we were going to have issues. I tend to dislike books about older academic men who prey on young women. I slogged through Tomcat in Love, but at the same time, I found myself understanding what O’Brien was doing. I’ve long prescribed to the idea that you can hate a character, but not the book. I also believe in abandoning a book when you are not enjoying it. Those two beliefs were at odds here. I really did not enjoy Tomcat in Love for the majority of the time I was reading it, but it is also one of those rare books where the ending made the slog worth it.

Thomas Chippering, a linguistics professor, is left by his wife for a small lie, at least according to Chippering. And that is the key line in this review – Tomcat in Love is all according to Chippering and where O’Brien’s brilliance comes in is the way his story slowly unravels. He masterfully shows the reader glimpses of how Chippering’s story is a fabrication, picking and choosing how he shows us these women. That’s really what Chippering’s story is: a history of this time in his life, as told through the women he encounters. But it goes further than that: all the women are caricatures, he sometimes can’t even call them by their first name. He writes down their information in a ledger of sorts, but nothing about who they actually are, just the details that make them up.

The more you read, the more Chippering’s story unravels. Like The Things They Carried, Tomcat in Love brings together the possible layers of storytelling. I love it when an unreliable narrator exposes us to the process of telling a story and how much we really rely on the person telling it to do a good job. So when that confidence is shattered, it’s kind of refreshing.

I think that Tomcat in Love is a book that a lot of people will find repellent. There are times when Chippering reminded me of a Humbert Humbert kind of character; there were certainly echoes of Lolita here. Chippering is similarly disgraceful and disgusting, placing a similar blame on all the women in his life. His own transgressions are minimal compared to the way women are constantly trying to destroy him. I don’t think that Tomcat in Love is perfect in the way The Things They Carried is. There are parts of this novel that seemed superfluous and perhaps it could have been 100 pages shorter, but I do think it successfully creates this strange world that, horrifically, echoes our own.

So go read this: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve read everything else

Do you have a post on Tomcat in Love? Leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

Comic-A-Week March 6-12 – Owly: The Way Home and The Bittersweet Summer

Listen, there is a time and place for me to be concerned with the state of comics and what makes a great one, a good one and an okay one. There is a time when I can hem and haw about how I felt about something, writing post after post about how my expectations just weren’t met, or about how my expectations were met and, possibly, exceeded. There are times when I can be as objective as possible and leave my emotions at the door.

This, my friends, is not one of them. Seriously, Owly is the kind of book you read when you are having a bad day and you need remember just how cute life can be. Look, I’m biased. I have a very fashionable affinity for owls. Even these creepy ones. Call it a throwback to Harry Potter. Blame it on this video. Blame it on this blog. Whatever the reason, Owly was probably written for me.

It’s about an owl. Who rescues a worm. Then they go on adventures together. If there ever was a definition squee, this would probably be it.

Andy Runton probably draws the cutest comics I could imagine. He doesn’t use many words, instead relies on his images and onomatopoeic words to tell Owly’s story. Some comics would suffer from this, but not Owly. Because you know what a lack of words does for this comic? Angry eyes! The cutest angry eyes I have ever seen. That’s the whole reason I chose the picture on the right. This isn’t even from The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer, but it was the best illustration of angry eyes I could find.

I will be reading this entire series, saving them for when life gets me down and I need a happy reminder that there are things in this world that are so adorable you audibly squeal with glee. (Wait, is that what squee is actually defined as? Because I just figured that out. Whoa! I just thought it was that sound everyone made when things were cute.)

In an interview with Connect Savannah (quoted at Largehearted Boy, the original article seems to be gone), Andy Runton said this:

Connect Savannah: Why do you think people relate to Owly?

Andy Runton: People relate to Owly because he’s this predator by nature, but he chooses to be kind and nice and make the world a better place. That’s rare these days. For me he’s sort of based on all the stuff I loved as a kid, wrapped it up into this little owl.

Another reason people like it is they can sense I enjoy it. There’s a certain amount of purity that comes with that. Other than that I really have no idea. He’s just a little owl and it’s just me.

Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve read everything else

Book Dads and The Book Vault have posts about Owly. Do you? Link to it in the comments and I’ll add your post here.

Poetry Wednesday – Audre Lorde

Look I made a shiny new Poetry Wednesday button! Anyway, today I’d like to feature a poem by Audre Lorde. Lorde is, for me, one of the most expressive poets I have read. When you read her words, you just want to say them out loud. They have such a natural fluidity and rhythm. This poem in particular was an early favorite of mine. I considered posting another one today, just so I could have something new to read, but nothing else seemed to embody the way I feel about Audre Lorde like this poem does.

Hanging Fire by Audre Lorde

I am fourteen

and my skin has betrayed me

the boy I cannot live without

still sucks his thumb

in secret

how come my knees are

always so ashy

what if I die

before morning

and momma’s in the bedroom

with the door closed.

I have to learn how to dance

in time for the next party

my room is too small for me

suppose I die before graduation

they will sing sad melodies

but finally

tell the truth about me

There is nothing I want to do

and too much

that has to be done

and momma’s in the bedroom

with the door closed.

Nobody even stops to think

about my side of it

I should have been on Math Team

my marks were better than his

why do I have to be

the one

wearing braces

I have nothing to wear tomorrow

will I live long enough

to grow up

and momma’s in the bedroom

with the door closed.

Comic-A-Week: Feb 6-12 Moving Pictures by Kathryn and Stuart Immonen

For the first time during this project, I have come across a comic that confuses me – I do not understand why the authors chose to tell this story with this medium. The story itself is interesting enough – Ila, a foreign curator at a French museum who decides to stay after German occupation begins, has a complex and tense relationship with the German officer who has been ordered to inventory the collection. While the story is unique, a feat for a market inundated with WWII fiction, the art does not add much to the story and misses out on an opportunity to incorporate more of the art in the museum.

I did not respond well to the minimalist style of this comic. The story is complex and rich, but the art does not reflect that. While the art in a comic does not always have to perfectly match the tone of the story, it should do the best job possible to tell the story.  I’m not convinced that minimalist, negative-space reliant art truly tells this story well. There was a lot that was skipped over and too much was left to the imagination. A little ambiguity is good, but honestly it just frustrated me here. There was, however,  a lot of good tension in this story, that unfortunately didn’t play out “on screen”, for lack of a better term. There were times when the art style benefited the story. It set the mood and the use of shadowing was brilliant. One of my favorite panels is when we finally see Rolf’s face. Before that he had been almost entirely in shadow. The opening sequence, without any words, was beautiful and used the simple style of the art in a way that benefited the story.

The more comics I read, the more I realize what makes a good one. Though there are wordless comics, for me what defines a comic is neither the art nor the words, but how they work together. For me, that means that the art and the words  have to add something different and complimentary. If they aren’t holding their own, it’s not worth it to me. The Immonen’s had an opportunity here to do a lot with the artwork in the museum and using that to illustrate their story, but aside from a few panels, they didn’t take advantage of that. Maybe I wanted too much out of this little comic. When I found out it started as a serialized comic, the structure made a little bit more sense. There were gaps in the story, which might have been less jarring if I was waiting a few weeks or months to read each strip.

Here’s something interested – while I was doing my research for I saw some of the illustrations on screen and I was much more impressed by them. This is a comic that was meant to be seen one panel or strip at a time on the internet – it makes more sense for the story, it makes more sense for the art and I think I would have appreciated this a lot more if I had read it as was originally intended.

Am I in a bad mood, or what? Everything I have disliked lately has been something almost universally loved. But I have been reading things that are just amazing, so when something doesn’t live up to that, I’m more critical. If I had read this graphic novel after reading, say, Mother, Come Home, I probably would have liked it more. Maybe I will revisit this one in a few months and see how I feel about it.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile

Olduvai Reads also has a post about Moving Pictures. Do you? Leave a link in the comments and I’ll include your post here.