Bookmark Six

Having made a sort of peace with the state of the world (or, at the very least, having developed better coping mechanisms for dealing with the Ongoing Shitshow), I was able to read something that approached a decent number of books this year.

Saga, Vol. 1 and 2

Bryan K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples, 2012-13

(March 2015)

Yeah, it is that good.

Fables

Volumes 1-15

Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, et al, 2002-2011

(January 2015)

I recently came into a couple of hundredweight of comics.

Oh Christ. Not like that.

Locke and Key, Vol. 3 and 4

Vol. 3: Crown of Shadows, Vol. 4: Keys to the Kingdom

Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, 2009-2011

(December 2014)

Last time I commented on how the slightly childish exaggeration of the visual style in Locke and Key served to exaggerate the horror through the contrast with the gore and anguish it depicted. Little did I know.

What We See When We Read

Peter Mendelsund, 2014

(August 2014)

A fascinating little book, this. But, perhaps fittingly, one that’s very hard to capture the experience of reading at a remove. Easy to read, hard to say what reading it is like.

Boxers and Saints

Gene Luen Yang, 2013

(March 2014)

This is phenomenal.

A Natural History of Dragons

A Memoir by Lady Trent

Marie Brennan, 2013

(February 2014)

  

Look at that cover. Just look at it. I usually don’t go so much for illustrated covers, being more of a design fan myself. Maybe it’s because illustrated fantasy covers tend towards the ‘swords and capes and chainmail bikinis’ aesthetic that was oh so appealing when I was 14 but just seems embarrassing now that I’ve got a job and a mortgage and, more pertinently, have actually been in the same room at the same time as a real-life naked lady.

The Nao of Brown

Glyn Dillon, 2012

(February 2013)

This is just gorgeous. Here, have a look at some panels other people have uploaded in far better quality than I could hope to reproduce. The actual book has two hundred watercolour pages that work perfectly.

A History of the World in Twelve Maps

Jerry Brotton, 2012

(December 2012)

Maps? History? You’d better believe I’m all up in that shit right here.

(The vernacular’s just so wonderfully expressive, don’t you find?)

Flagrant Copyright Violations

Christmas lessons are, as I’ve previously hinted at, tricky little fuckers. Quite apart from all the cultural baggage which you may or may not bring to the table, the timing is generally a bit awkward as well; sandwiched as they usually are around end-of-year exams and the end of term itself.

Date and Walnut

No punning post title or tenuously connected video below the jump because, well, look at it will you? No point gilding this particular lily. Yum yum yum.

In Defence of the ALT III

Book Three - Larry Cotter and The Exhaustive Catalogue Of Training 
Given To Japanese Teachers On Working With An ALT

Fight! Fight!

Y’see, this is how it happens. You read a blog post the first time and make a good humoured and mildly sarcastic comment. Then you check back a little while later and read a couple of other comments. But, crucially, you than get called away to change a nappy or give the kid a bath or something. And because these aren’t the most intellectually stimulating activities, your mind rehashes and dwells upon whatever it was you were thinking about last.

When your parental duties have been discharged, you return to the post and start to write a reply containing everything you’ve been kicking around for the last half-hour or so. A reply so witty, erudite, and compelling that only the most entrenched ideologue would fail to be convinced by its brilliance. And then you realize that, for all its brilliance, it’s probably going to be close to a thousand words long. There’s a word for people who leave thousand word comments on other people’s blogs. Several words, in fact, none of them good. So then you hit delete.

Past Future Present Tense

In some fields Japan is years ahead of the rest of the world

Gina Calver/Alamy

Another article about Japan in the Guardian (well, Observer). Another opportunity for a collective facepalm by any and all of us who know anything at all about the country.