Reading List: June 2009

I feel as though I have wasted the past month. I have written little, whether here or for school, and much of my reading has been confined to comic books. While I do have a paper in mind analyzing the layouts of Brian Michael Bendis, I am not sure that I can really call much of what I did read 'research.' As much as it pains me to admit, I am not sure that I work all that well alone. Rather, I tend to be much more productive with tight deadlines and when I am attending class where I can bounce ideas off and gain new insights by listening to my colleagues. Last summer was quite unproductive as well, but since I am done with classes forever, or at least until I pursue another degree, I need to learn how to get some real work done.

Anyway, the library turns out to be a great source of comics. Since I started using it as my main source for obtaining books, I've read at a much quicker pace than I usually do. Of course, it helps that I can just sample things without shelling out a penny. Minus the large amount of taxes I now pay, of course.

Continuing my quest to actually recommend something for you, I would have to say that Bill Bishop's The Big Sort was by far the best book I read this past month. I intended to write up some thoughts on it, but it all just seemed to be summarizing Bishop's arguments. Along with the work of Ken Robinson and a timely trip home to see my family, this book made me not only better understand the environment I was raised in, but has caused me to question in what sort of environment I want to raise my own children. Bishop argues that our immediate culture (neighborhood, peer group, church, etc.) have become homogenized over the past thirty years as people purposefully though often unconsciously move to be with people that think the same way they do. Check out the review on the New York Times website.

In the month of June, I completed 26 books and/or graphic novels:

• The Push Man and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• Ultimate Spiderman: Public Scrutiny by Bendis & Mark Bagley
• Sleepwalk and Other Stories by Adrian Tomine
• Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff
• Ultimate Spiderman: Venom by Bendis & Bagley
• The Chris Farley Show by Tom Farley, Jr. & Tanner Colby
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Decimation: X-Men: The Day After by Peter Milligan, et al.
• Civil War by Mark Millar & Steve McNiven
• Shards and Shadows edited by Margaret Clark & Marco Palmieri
• The Big Sort by Bishop
• Batman R.I.P. by Grant Morrison & Tony S. Daniel
• Sin City: Hell and Back by Frank Miller
• Ultimate X-Men: New Mutants by Bendis & David Finch
• Ultimate Spiderman: Irresponsible by Bendis & Bagley
• Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Tatsumi
• Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson
• Ultimate Spiderman: Cats and Kings by Bendis & Bagley
• Ultimate X-Men: The Tempest by Brian K. Vaughan & Brandon Peterson
• Ultimate X-Men: Cry Wolf by Vaughan & Andy Kubert
• X-Men: Deadly Genesis by Ed Brubaker & Trevor Hairsine
• Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
• Remix by Lawrence Lessig
• 52, Volume One by Geoff Johns, et al.
• Ultimate Spiderman: Ultimate Six by Bendis & Hairsine
  

Seeing as I am still not using this blog in the way I had intended originally nor the way I had thought of going a few months ago, I have no idea whether or how often I will post here again. I wait until something strikes me, but you see how productive that has been. Questions, comments, etc.