Sunday 03 January 2010 at 9:16 pm
UPDATED: For Ceilingninja and the English Language.
It's hard not to be aware that Scott Westerfeld is awesome. He wrote the
Uglies trilogy (or is it called the
Pretties trilogy?), which is made of WIN! And he wrote
Succession (an adult space opera), which is pretty flippin' cool.
Midnighters?
Peeps? Ok, I haven't read those last two, but it's more about not getting around to it, yet. He's just an awesome YA guy and and awesome SF guy (remember, SF is hipster for sci-fi (not to be mistaken with SyFy (which is icky-sauce.)))
With
Leviathan, Westerfeld, has done it again, seemingly upping the awesome. Like some sort of crazy mad scientist (I'm giving him a lot of credit, since he's technically not the first to do any of these things (but I digress)), he brings his skills with strong teen characters and adds a heaping helping of steam-punk and alternate history into another action-packed saga.
The story begins at the beginning of World War I, with the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (that's how WWI started), but from there Westerfeld's tale has some rollicking fun with history. He's replaced all the boring versions of countries that can be found in any ol' history book with Darwinists and Clankers. Clankers fight with huge armored machinery (think tanks that are more robot than tank). And the Darwinists have used the ideas and theories of Darwin to create some amazing animal mutations (talking lizards and the flying whale airship of the title).
From there it's a little bit country (diplomacy and world politics) and a little bit rock 'n roll (elaborate air and land battles between Clankers and Darwinists.) It even comes with exquisite drawings from Keith Thompson that add to the richness of
Leviathan's alternate world. Glad I started my year with it!
Friday 01 January 2010 at 11:40 pm
My parents used to have this beautiful set of Time Life books about the Wild West. They were wonderful, I would stare at them for ours, flipping through the pages, examining the pictures.
But I never actually read them.
Now that has changed. Sort of. Well, alright, not really. Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett certainly created a fine facsimile of one of those Time Life books though, and about a robot to boot.
The books fills in a missing part of history about an inventor named Archibald Campion and his automaton nicknamed "Boilerplate." The robot, invented to stop the human death toll in the line of battle, ends up gallivanting across the globe with people like Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla, Lawrence of Arabia, and more.
Artist/writer Guinan and writer/editor Bennett weave the robot so seamlessly into history, it's hard to believe that he wasn't there. He wasn't right? By the end, they'd done such a fine job collecting, compiling, and creating the artwork, photographs, and history of Boilerplate that I started to believe he was just a forgotten part of history. When I started I was certain this was just an alternate history book about a robot masquerading as a legitimate nonfiction book about a robot. Now, I'm not so sure. I could research it, but I was so immersed in the world of Boilerplate it might be a letdown to find out he didn't actually exist.
Friday 01 January 2010 at 1:41 pm
Sometimes how we come upon books or others we like can be an interesting story. Or, I think it can be. Well, I am going to pretend that you may feel the same, and share how I came upon Yoshihiro Tatsumi.
I decided late this year, sometime around mid-November, that I would try to stop hating on manga. At least, I told myself, I would try to understand it. I just felt I needed to try more manga, especially shonen, before I could write it off. I asked some patrons for some recommendations and discovered
Death Note and
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, two series I've fallen in love with. But I was also looking for different styles of manga, besides shonen and shojo (I don't know if I've really read a ton of shojo (any suggestions?)). My favorite manga, even above the two series I mentioned above is still by Osamu Tezuka, who seems to transcend the genre. I found manwha, Korean manga. Then one day, a patron returned
The Push Man and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. I asked them how it was, to which they replied, "It was ok." Well, I decided if a manga fan didn't like it, well, I, a manga cynic, certainly wouldn't like it. But as I was returning it to the adult desk for the patron, I read the back. It was edited by Adrian Tomine, and I liked
Shortcomings. It also had refrences to Tezuka and Haruki Murakami. Well, I decided to go against the patron and check it out. Once I picked it up I was hooked. I read the collection in about an hour. And I was exposed to a new style called gekiga. Basically, gekiga is to manga what graphic novels are to comics, it's a way to differentiate and add a more mature, literary connotation. It's also a more experimental and cinematic style.
So I requested the head of the adult department pick up the rest of Tatsumi's canon, those available in the US anyway. And among those was the 2009 memoir,
A Drifting Life.
I know it's cliche to refer to graphic novels as beautiful, but this one is. It delicately tells the story of Tatsumi growing up in post-war Japan, and reminded me of the films of Yasujiro Ozu.
This is also a great read for manga fans, of the older variety as there is some mature content here. Tatsumi is not only a manga artist, he is also a fan of manga. A Drifting Life is both a thorough history of modern manga and a love letter to it. Tatsumi, through his own evolving work, also questions what comics, and literature, can and should be able to do. It's fascinating watching him try to make art better.
It's an engrossing read, a must for manga fans, especially those looking for something more.
Thursday 31 December 2009 at 10:25 pm
Alright, let me level with ya, I haven't read a lot of 2009 books, so I felt like maybe this list was a bit of a lie. But when I started to look over books I've read this year, a few from 2009 really stood out to me. So this isn't a "best of" list, it's a "favorite of" stuff I've read in 2009, that's from 2009. Because it's 2009 and as a part of the Holiday Break Reading Challenge, I have chosen my Top 9.
I did have to make some tough choices, even though I've only read 15-20 books published in 2009, there were about 14 that could have made this list. Also, I read a few of my favorite books of all time this year, a couple of which I read earlier this year and thought I'd plug.
City of Thieves by David Benioff and
Kendra by Coe Booth. Both are highly literary and underrated, and worth your time.
Ok--So on to my Top 9 of 2009:
9. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (published September 1, 2009):
The much-hyped and much-anticipated follow-up to
The Hunger Games was, for the most part, worth the wait. The beginning, which some found boring, was a reality television fans delight, giving an insightful look into what players might be like outside of the game. And the action of the second half was more thrilling and inventive than that of the first book. The ending, however, felt rushed and left me unsatisfied. Good thing a 3rd is coming out in 8 months.
8. Going Bovine by Libba Bray (published September 22, 2009):
It feels almost irreverent to call this the funniest book about a dying sixteen-year-old ever written. But it is. Hilarious and imaginative. Bray is clever and imaginative, but manages to ground a totally-bonkers-no-holds-barred-anything-goes-fun-house road trip, making it both believable and poignant. It would be higher on the list, but sometimes Bray pushes her hyper-reality
Juno-ishness over its tipping point, taking me out of the story completely.
7. The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan (published September 8, 2009):
This is the point where things got tricky. I really liked 8 & 9, but felt they were flawed. I didn't really feel the same about the next 7. Starting with Matt Phelan's magical
The Storm in the Barn. Using beautiful watercolors Phelan tells a dust bowl story that is heartbreaking (the protagonists younger sister has never seen rain) and mixes in folklore to bring the story to an amazingly awe-inducing conclusion.
6. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (published September 29, 2009):
You know how sometimes when you are working on vocabulary and your teacher asks you to use a word in a sentence. Well, this book was like your teacher asking you to use the word "awesome" in a sentence. Zombies and Airships and Steampunk, Oh My!
5. A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi (published April 14, 2009):
I just finished this one, I will have my review up tomorrow (it's done, but I don't quite have an ending.) Anyway, this epic cinematic manga-memoir is about post-WWII Japan, a history of modern manga, and the story of one of my favorite artists, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, growing up and pushing himself, and manga, to become better.
4. Amulet 2: The Stonekeeper's Curse by Kazu Kibuishi (published September 1, 2009):
It was a good year for sequels.
Amulet 2: The Stonekeeper's Curse was also one of my biggest suprises. I love Kibuishi, his artwork and stories are whimsical, fantastic journeys, but the first
Amulet was disappointing. So I didn't expect too much from the second volume. However, Kibuishi surprises with a more epic, more visionary, and more, well, more betterer. It floored me. It's impressing, Kibuishi turned a series I probably would have finished, because I like him, into a series I can't wait to finish.
3. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (published July 14, 2009):
Another big surprise. Stead earned a lot of praise for this book, so I figured I may like it, but I didn't think I'd love it. If anything, I felt it was underhyped (of course, people disagree with me). It's one of those books that will have its proponents and opponents. It's a delicate tale of childhood friendship, but the real kicker is mind-frying ending. It's mostly telegraphed, but it still hits all the right emotional notes, leaving me breathless.
2. The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness (published September 8, 2009):
I loved, loved, loved
The Knife of Never Letting Go. Loved! But after reading
The Ask and The Answer I can't tell you why I loved the first book in the
Chaos Walking series so much. It pales in comparison to the second installment.
The Ask and the Answer uses a dual narrative to look into the psyche of both Todd and Viola to tell an explosive and thought-provoking story of the divisiveness of war. It is the best, most honest, and truthful look at those involved in war of our time. And that from a book for teenagers. This is the kind of book that proves YA deserves to be held as highly as any adult lit.
1. The Photographer: Into Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert (published May 12, 2009):
This book left me speechless. A mixture of real photographs and great drawing from Guibert, this book follows photographer Didier Lefevre as he documents a Doctors Without Borders mission into Afghanistan. It's fairly unpolitical, and gives a fascinating look inside a country that we only generally see one-side of.
Oh->Post Script: I am currently reading two amazing 2009 books right now,
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld and
Boilerplate: History's Mechinical Marvel by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, but I probably won't finish either of those until this weekend. So they couldn't make the list, at least that made making the list easier though.
