Reading List: April 2010

After returning from the PCA/ACA National Conference last month, I was contacted by a couple of professors from SUNY Potsdam who are editing a book on digital rhetoric inviting me to submit my presentation as a chapter, assuming I could get it done in under two weeks. Knowing a good thing when it falls in my lap, I jumped at the opportunity, integrating a portion of my thesis with my conference paper in order to make a broader, and more lengthy, argument. So that's how I spent the last half of April and a major reason why nothing got posted here.

Now I have joined a group of colleagues in preparing an article on Facebook & Pedagogy, which will almost certainly be published. Not exactly in my area of research, but a peer-reviewed publication will be very advantageous at this stage in the career. And after receiving a call for papers from Modern Fiction Studies, I am beginning a look at the way the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise dealt with the cultural climate in the US after 9/11. I'm sure I'll find an angle somewhere, and even though I am unlikely to be published in such a prestigious journal at this stage, it's a win/win scenario because I can always send it elsewhere if it doesn't pass muster. It's also nice to sit around and watch hours of Star Trek guilt free.

I also found out this afternoon that I was placed on the wait list for Florida's program, so I am hoping that with the book chapter, the co-authored paper, my analysis of Enterprise and 9/11, and a revised paper I did for a Writing Center Theory & Practice course, I'll be a sure thing come next year.

Anyway, last month I completed 7 books and 4 graphic novels, which were:

• The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
• Queen & Country: Operation: Morningstar by Greg Rucka & Brian Hurtt
• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
• The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons
• Fables: The Great Fables Crossover by Bill Willingham, et al.
• The Needs of the Many by Michael A. Martin
• Queen & Country: Operation: Crystal Ball by Rucka & Leandro Fernandez
• Reality Hunger by David Shields
• Queen & Country: Operation: Black Wall by Rucka & J. Alexander
• Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith
• Synthesis by James Swallow

Wish I would have had a little time to give these works a proper review, but here's a quick shorthand.

The Good: Wallace, Shields, Simmons, Rucka, Smith, Swallow
The Bad: Willingham, Gawande
The Ugly: Martin

Thoughts and comments are encouraged and appreciated.

Reading List: March 2010

Right now I am in St. Louis at the PCA/ACA National Conference where I am presenting my paper on hyperlink cinema tomorrow afternoon. I've attended a few panels over the past two days, including a great one comparing changes in baseball as being reflective to changes in the nation (and the reverse). I also have been immersed within the world of adaptation studies, trying to decide if that is a possible home for at least some of my interests. I'll likely be writing about some of what I've heard in future entries here.

Only seven posts of substance last month, but I am proud of them. I thought I'd blow through Kieslowski's Decalogue, but spacing them out has made for a more relaxed and reasoned response. That said, I hope to be done before April is over.

On the academic career front, I have some acceptances but as of now no funding, meaning I'll likely be taking a year off. In many ways this is a good thing: it gives my wife more time to finish her degree; more time for my house to accrue some value before I have to put it on the market; another year of banking real money before taking the huge cut to teach. Yet I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed, that it didn't feel like a step backwards. I have some ideas on how to make myself a better candidate to programs that will probably suit me better next year, so I am confident that I'll land in a better spot eventually, though on a day to day basis this is occasionally hard to remember.

March saw me avoid reading a novel for the first month since, well, before I started keeping a list. I'm still unengaged by literary fiction, though I may take a look at an occasional story or novel w/r/t adaptation studies in the near future. The best book I read was Nonzero by Robert Wright, an application of game theory to cultural and biological evolution. Since I finished this the night before leaving for St. Louis, I haven't written thoughts on it yet, but look for those in the future. Anyway, I read 4 books and 4 graphic novels last month:

• Bomb Power by Garry Wills
• Reading Judas by Elaine Pagels & Karen L. King
• The Return of Depression Economics by Paul Krugman
• Astro City: The Dark Age: Brothers & Other Strangers by Kurt Busiek & Brent Eric Anderson
• Queen & Country: Operation: Broken Ground by Greg Rucka & Steve Rolston
• Rasl: The Drift by Jeff Smith
• Batman: Cacophony by Kevin Smith & Walt Flanagan
• Nonzero by Robert Wright

Thoughts or questions about anything, whether related or not, are welcome as always.

Reading List: February 2010

For some reason these monthly recaps of my reading have also become a place for me to keep those who read this space updated on my scholarship and academic life, and though I am not all that traditional, I do not like change all that much either. As such, I haven't spent as much time as I would have liked working on my conference paper on hyperlink cinema, but I do have a decent outline. Currently, I am working on the tone, wanting to move away from the style of reading a paper to tailoring a presentation for an audience, a skill in which I possess some talent that I would like to further cultivate. I've spent a lot of time the past week or so watching the presentations given at the various TED conferences, and I'm planning something along these lines. If this approach is successful, I think it will go a long way in helping me make a name for myself in the field, for hopefully at future conferences I will start to generate preliminary buzz. That said, I worry that such an approach may not be met with respect due to being outside the norm. However, I have got to be me.

March 1st was the date by which graduate programs were to let me know their decisions on admission to a doctoral program, yet that day ended without a letter, email, or phone call. Perhaps that's holding them too strictly to a standard, but somehow I feel like if my application would have come a day (or more?) late then it wouldn't have been accepted. The stress over the uncertainty is palpable, for so many decisions that affect not only my life but also the lives of my wife and others wait in the interim. And while a friend of mine received an acceptance email last week, I am unsure whether or not to wait on a letter like I did for college thirteen years ago.

To the point of this post, a list of the books I read in February, there were 4 books and 7 graphic novels. Here is what they were:

• Ex Machina: Dirty Tricks by Brian K. Vaughan & Tony Harris
• Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
• Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns by Geoff Johns, et al.
• You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier
• Green Lantern: Agent Orange by Johns & Philip Tan
• DMZ: War Powers by Brian Wood & Riccardo Burchielli
• Precipice by David Mack
• Green Lantern Corps: Emerald Eclipse by Peter J. Tomasi & Patrick Gleason
• Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
• Flight, Volume 4 edited by Kazu Kizbuishi
• Strangers in Paradise: Pocket Book 1 by Terry Moore

Anyone interested in technology or Web 2.0 needs to read Lanier's book, something I should have written about while I still had a copy. I was a bit underwhelmed by the Green Lantern stories, making me a bit skeptical concerning Blackest Night, though I'll almost certainly read it. And I think Chuck Klosterman is doing the sort of thing with journalism that I'd like to do in academia: writing seriously, if humorously, about semi-serious things.

Give me some feedback, ask me some questions, tell me about your most recent dream, etc.

Reading List: January 2010

Though the past couple of months have seen posts of substance, said posts have been infrequent at best. I hope they have been entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking, and while I hope to post more often, I wonder if I have the discipline to actually knock out thoughtful posts on a more frequent basis. Nevertheless, discipline is something I sorely need to improve upon in several walks of life, so I shall try. Progress on my conference paper has been proceeding fairly well, though I need to organize my thoughts again and define the parameters of my question in order to adequately yet concisely address the emerging film genre of hyperlink cinema.

Over the past month I only managed to complete six books and two graphic novels, which is due to a changing emphasis on my reading. Joining Twitter has provided me with a near constant stream of links to new stories and essays on film, and I started to watch Lost online, which I have generally enjoyed. Anyway, I've decided to return to the old format of capsule reviews instead of a dry list, so here it goes:

1. The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe: Obama for America campaign director Plouffe recaps how the current administration navigated the tumultuous primaries and slaughtered John McCain in the general election. A fascinating behind the scenes account, the author too often shoulders the responsibility for anything that went wrong and rarely characterizes any candidate missteps as mistakes, proving his loyalty but making one wonder how accurate such an account is. It would be interesting to read the Obama sections in Game Change, to compare and contrast.

2. Green Lantern Corps: Sins of the Star Sapphire by Peter J. Tomasi, et al.: After the Sinestro Corps War, new lanterns across the color spectrum were created and have led up to the current Blackest Night storyline. The Star Sapphire Corps represent love, and as the Guardians order that relationships and love by Green Lanterns are forbidden, a hole in the feeling spectrum is filled. Overall, I found the story to be mediocre, seeming only to be putting pieces into place for later storylines. In addition, I've never really liked Guy Gardener, so Tomasi's work here doesn't resonate with me on two levels. I'm taking steps to get the collections on the Red and Orange Lanterns, so expect updates to follow.

3. Flight, Volume 3 edited by Kazu Kibuishi: The third excellent collection in this series. Overall quite entertaining, though I was a bit disappointed that certain storylines that continued from the first volume to the second weren't followed through here. That aside, such collections collect and display emerging talent, and I look forward to reading more by several of these creators in the future.

4. Mendoza in Hollywood by Kage Baker: I am interested in the mythology surrounding Baker's Company, but it only serves as a background to a mediocre story about a British plot to steal California during the Civil War. The narrative is bogged down with a twenty page recount of a D.W. Griffith film, and I struggled to make it through the whole thing. I understand that there is more of a focus on the Company in future novels, but I honestly don't know that I'll be going back.

5. The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott: Heaps of praise made me want to read this new 'crime memoir' by an author whose work I have previously enjoyed, and while this was a decent book, it falls short of the expectations I had for it. While covering a murder trial, Elliott simultaneously investigates his relationship with his father, who abandoned him into foster care as a teenager, as well as his penchant for masochistic relationship. Good, entertaining, just not great.

6. Let's Talk About Love by Carl Wilson: Highly recommended. Read my thoughts on this book here.

7. Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman: Klosterman writes intelligently about pop culture; in this book he has new essays on topics like the liberalism of the NFL, time travel, and the parallels between David Koresh and Kurt Cobain. Such essays are fantastically entertaining, but even at their most insightful, they seem to lack resonance. Perhaps this is one of the hazards of writing about pop culture, a lesson that perhaps I should learn in a hurry.

8. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde: Fforde's new universe imagines a future in which social castes and protocols are regulated by one's individual color perception. Protagonist Eddie Russet is looking to marry up when he and his father are shipped to one of the outer territories, where he learns that the rigid rules of society have a dark side as he begins to question the status quo with the help of Jane, a Grey who exists as a menial servant due to her apparent lack of color perception. While the story moves along quickly enough, the creation of this world seemed to take precedence over telling an entertaining yarn, setting up for future stories at the expense of this one. However, a new work by Fforde is always welcome, and I am excited to read future stories set within this universe.

There it is. As always, I welcome comments, questions, corrections, unrelated hilarity, and other notes of substance. I'll endeavor to post more often over the coming month, but of course, I've said that before.

2009 Reading Statistics

I wasn't going to post this until tomorrow or the next day, but since I can't sleep due to anxiety over graduate school applications, I compiled all the data as the sun came up. Each month I post a list of the books I completed over the previous one, so there is no need to recap that here. Yet this does give me the opportunity to reflect upon how I spent my reading time, and perhaps how I could better spend it in the future.

This year I completed 240 books, plays, and graphic novels, surpassing my previous high last year of 230. Since statistics are fun for everyone, or at least me, here is how it all breaks down:

• 35 novels (14.6%)
• 17 short story collections (7.1%)
• 42 works of nonfiction (17.5%)
• 144 graphic novels (60%)
• 2 plays (0.8%)

With an overwhelming majority of my reading coming from graphic novels, the overall total here appears greatly inflated. And while I enjoyed making my way through series like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming's Powers series, I wasted a lot of time reading things like Ultimate X-Men & Spiderman. I doubt that will be happening again in 2010.

The biggest reason for the shift in these demographics is due to the economy, at least indirectly. I was out of work for a period at the end of 2008, and as a result things got a bit tight. In order to save money, I switched from buying books frequently to utilizing my public library on a weekly basis, if not more. Fortunately, I live in a large enough town to have a better than average library system. The huge numbers of graphic novels are directly due to my ability not only to easily read pretty much any comic I wanted on a whim, it also took what would have cost maybe $1000, even at a used book store, and made it free.

I'm also very surprised that the number of novels I read fell by almost 50% from last year, something I am at a loss to explain. Both nonfiction and short story collections remained relatively even, but I suppose the ebb in my interest in fiction, which I touched on early this evening, has been more protracted than I had originally believed.

For 2010, I predict that these numbers will go down for a number of reasons. The first, I have exhausted much of the library's supply of graphic novels, at least ones that I am interested in, and there isn't much on the horizon that I really want to read. But more importantly, as I apply to another graduate program, I plan on being incredibly busy (and happy) come the fall semester, assuming someone lets me in and greases the financial wheels. As a result, I'll have less time to read, at least casually, but I think I am finding real satisfaction with my academic work, so it is a trade I will happily make.

I used to come up with a list of my top five books of the year, but this year I think I'll pass. However, here are some authors I read this year that I hope you will check out: Dan Chaon, Aleksandar Hemon, Joshua Cooper Ramo, Stieg Larsson, Tom Bissell, & Maile Meloy.

Reading List: December 2009

I've lost pretty much all interest in reading fiction. No, scratch that, I am still interested in a few things, but in practice I seem to be bored and unable to read more than a dozen pages at a stretch. This is quite uncommon for me, but I suppose its cyclical and eventually I'll get bored with foreign policy and economics and go back to it. Likely, the lack of interest is due to being out of school, with its constant grind of academic reading, and being used to internalizing information like that as opposed to casual fun reading. The habit is hard to break.

This month's pick is The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo, which highlights the flaws in modern thinking about politics and the economy, trying to shift the paradigm of actors from believing they can act as architects in a system they can control (which doesn't work, obviously) to understanding that such things are more of an ecosystem, with all sorts of actors responding differently to events and to each other, creating an environment that can at best be managed. It's not so much that Ramo offers up any solutions, but rather this change in thinking will allow us to succeed where we are failing horribly now.

SuperFreakonomics was good, though lacked the cohesion of the first book. And the main criticism, that the chapter on the environment, should be faulted more for straying from interesting microeconomics than for lax science. The new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book was pretty bad as well. But Kazu Kibuishi's Flight anthologies were entertaining and demonstrate what some of the best new comic artists can produce, though the stories were a bit light on the unorthodox construction that I enjoy so much.

Anyway, last month I finished eight books and four graphic novels, and this is what they were:

• And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer
• The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved
• Three Nights in August by Buzz Bissinger
• The Great Movies II by Roger Ebert
• The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman
• What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo
• Green Lantern Corps: Ring Quest by Peter J. Tomasi & Patrick Gleason
• SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
• Flight, Volumes 1 & 2 edited by Kazu Kibuishi
• Let it Be by Steve Matteo

Right now I am reading David Plouffe's account of the Obama presidential campaign and Vali Nasr's book on the rising Islamic middle class. Maybe I'll squeeze a novel in before too long.

Questions, comments, random unrelated notes that entertain, etc.

Reading List: November 2009

Despite a decision over two weeks ago to shift the focus of this space, noting has yet happened because (1)I have been busy and stressed, and because (2)I just haven't felt as though I have had anything worth saying. Yet my commitment to the change remains theoretically strong, so hopefully I will spend some time this month writing about interests of mine.

There are several films that fall into the hyperlink cinema genre that I have yet to watch though they sit in my living room, and I have also been pondering the seeming cultural superiority that Star Trek's Federation inhabits yet simultaneously denies, especially as this pertains to the Ferengi and Deep Space Nine. Thoughts on such topics shall, hopefully, be forthcoming.

In November, I completed 5 books and 5 graphic novels:

• The Never-Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Are the Humanities Inconsequent? by Jerome McGann
• The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way & Gabriel Ba
• Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
• Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America by Jeph Loeb, et al.
• Green Lantern: Secret Origin by Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis
• Invisible by Paul Auster
• Assignment: Earth by John Byrne
• The Umbrella Academy: Dallas by Way & Ba

Unreserved recommendations for The Umbrella Academy, which is a cross between a typical superhero family and a Wes Anderson movie. Auster's new novel was also decent and a departure from his last few works. However, I was quite disappointed in Chronic City, not because it was bad but because it was just mediocre and I expect better from Lethem. And while Loeb's Captain America story wasn't very good, he did do some interesting things with the layout and using 70s era artwork, with the reduced color scheme, to contrast modern sensibilities in flashback portions of the narrative.

Questions, comments, et cetera, ad nauseum.

Reading List: October 2009

Almost no new content here over the past month, though there are two ways to look at that. The first is that no content means no readers, which does not bode well for a blog that I am struggling to figure out what to do with anyway. However, I did write about 20,000 words this month as I finished my Master's thesis and successfully defended it, so it is not as if I did nothing.

Yet the former is what I have been mulling the past few days. A big problem I have with this space is that I don't really know what it is here for. I occasionally post reviews of books I read or films I see, but those reviews vary not only in quality but in substance as well. There seems to be no unifying theme, save me, and while the readers here are all people I know from elsewhere so no problem is immediately apparent, no one drops in here via Google and sticks around because they have no relationship with me and no attachment therefore to the content.

So my goal in the next month is twofold: one, revise and submit my thesis to the graduate college; and two, decide what, if anything, I want to continue to do with this space. It needs to be about something, or what's the point?

Last month I finished only 12 books/graphic novels/plays:

• Swamp Thing: Reunion by Alan Moore, et al.
• The Walking Dead: Safety Behind Bars by Robert Kirkland & Charlie Adlard
• The Great Movies by Roger Ebert
• The Last Generation by Andrew Steven Harris & Gordon Purcell
• Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Troublesome Minds by Dave Galanter
• Omega the Unknown by Jonathan Lethem & Farel Dalrymple
• Final Crisis by Grant Morrison & J.G. Jones
• Fables: The Dark Ages by Bill Willingham, et al.
• God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza
• Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman & Andy Kubert
• Reasons to be Pretty by Neil LaBute

Further updates as events warrant.

Reading List: September 2009

Severe lack of updates this past month for a lot of reasons, but for the most part due to a focus elsewhere. My thesis shall be finished on time, though I foresee a frantic weekend of rewriting after I get notes from my advisor and before I submit it to my committee. All said, it is actually going pretty well and I just might be able to massage the content into a journal submission or two.

I have no idea how much content I will have time or desire to post this month, but I am sure I will think of something. I may even take bits of my thesis and alter them into blog posts. Anything to procrastinate. Anyway, in the month of September I read 9 books and 8 graphic novels, and this is what they were:

• Open Secrets by Dayton Ward
• Rose by Jeff Smith & Charles Vess
• Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tails by Smith, et al.
• Enough About Me by David Shields
• Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
• Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar, et al.
• Nobility of Spirit by Rob Riemen
• Half in Love by Maile Meloy
• The Soul Key by Olivia Woods
• Powers: The 25 Coolest Dead Superheroes of All Time by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming
• Swamp Thing: Earth to Earth by Alan Moore, et al.
• The Nobody by Jeff Lemire
• The Walking Dead: Miles Behind Us by Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard
• The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
• Ron Carlson Writes a Story by Ron Carlson
• The Dead Fish Museum by Charles D'Ambrosio
• The Impostor's Daughter by Laurie Sandell

Dan Chaon is the best writer that nobody reads, and Await Your Reply was a damn good book. The short story collection by D'Ambrosio is also worth your time, but you should avoid Lemire's The Nobody and Temple's boring mystery novel.

Please ask questions and/or offer opinions about anything here.

Reading List: August 2009

Rather than use this monthly post as a place to worry in writing about the lack of progress I am having with my thesis, I'll just say that things are getting written and even if I end up writing 20,000 words over a long weekend I will have this finished and defended by Thanksgiving so I can apply to PhD programs and do this all over again in a few years. My motto: Live and Don't Learn.

Not much content this month, especially with at least three reviews being scrapped when I found they had nothing original or (potentially) enlightening to say. I worked for a while on something about Disney's acquisition of Marvel this afternoon, so maybe that will see the light of day before long. Jenny Davidson did an interesting meme tonight, so maybe I will break a self-imposed rule and do it here tomorrow.

Last month I finished 9 books and 9 graphic novels. Here is what they are:

• Bob Schieffer's America by Bob Schieffer
• Uncanny X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire by Ed Brubaker, et al.
• Outside the Dog Museum by Jonathan Carroll
• Star Trek: Countdown by Mike Johnson, et al.
• Cooperstown Confidential by Zev Chafets
• Swamp Thing: A Murder of Crows by Alan Moore, et al.
• X-Men: Emperor Vulcan by Christopher Yost & Paco Diaz Luque
• Love and Obstacles by Aleksandar Hemon
• The Father of All Things by Tom Bissell
• 100 Bullets: Wilt by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso
• Uncanny X-Men: Divided We Stand by Brubaker & Michael Choi
• Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
• The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
• The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye by Robert Kirkman & Tony Moore
• Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon
• Castle by J. Robert Lennon
• Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke
• Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

Read Lennon, Meloy, and Hemon, a favorite of mine. And don't read any more X-Men comics; I'm done with them after these pitiful volumes. Comments, questions, some small sign that people actually read this?

Reading List: July 2009

I've spent this month doing only two things: worrying about finances and hating myself for being so unproductive. In this time of economic strife at home and abroad, the former seems justified, yet since I can do little to change my situation at the moment, I should probably just let it go. Yet the latter is so awful, so eroding of the edifice of my soul, that I have no (good) excuse for not making a major change.

Despite the fact that another month has passed, I still have accomplished very little on my thesis. Now I have a delineated outline and a scope of what exactly I am hoping to accomplish, most of that was done over three weeks ago with the help of my adviser. Words are on the page, but I cant seem to get any real work done in one session, and my sessions tend to occur a week or so apart. This month necessitates a reversal, so I am going to try and hit 1000 words five times a week. This seems reasonable.

Dedicated readers will have noticed that I only posted three times of any consequence in the past month, the lowest total since I started to actually maintain a blog last winter. Again, I hope to change this, but I must say that finishing my degree (for which I have spent enough to buy a decent luxury sedan) must take precedence over a format in which I have yet to earn a dime.

Rather than just making a list this month, I am going to return to an old tradition that I stole from Steve Mollmann. In the month of July, I read 18 books and/or graphic novels:

1. Ultimate Spiderman: Hollywood by Brian Michael Bendis & Mark Bagley: The webslinger gets all meta when Sam Raimi begins to film a movie based on news reports of Spiderman's exploits. Sort of fun, but without anything really meaningful to say.

2. Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander: The title made me pick up this book. That said, this memoir is about so much more than growing up in a dysfunctional Jewish Orthodox family; the idea that God is all knowing and all powerful, if used to scare children, can ravage their lives as adults. For example, saying that if you masturbate you will forever burn in hell, submerged in a vat of all the semen you ever ejaculated manually. So it's funny, but there is something not at all humorous about the way such teachings, which one believes as gospel when there is no other influence, can cause so much angst and literal trauma. I really wish I would have written more extensively about this book.

3. Ultimate X-Men: The Most Dangerous Game by Brian K. Vaughan & Stuart Immomen: Mutants accused of capital crimes are sent to an island where they are hunted as a form of execution. But the twist? It's all filmed for the worst reality television ever. Craptacular.

4. Ultimate X-Men: Hard Lessons by Vaughan, et al.: All over the place and not too interesting to boot, this collection suffers from being comprised of storylines that have virtually nothing to do with one another. Also, they kill Gambit and give his powers to Rogue, who now can touch people. She's the most interesting one solely b/c she can never touch anyone! Yawn.

5. Ultimate X-Men: Magnetic North by Vaghan & Immomen: Better, but only relatively. Lorna Dane accidentally commits a terrible crime and the mutants under Emma Frost team up with the X-Men in order to protect her from being sent to superhero-Guantanamo.

6. Losing the Peace by William Leisner: Overall, a book I thought was okay. Read my thoughts here.

7. Ultimate X-Men: Phoenix? by Robert Kirkman, et al.: To be honest, I don't remember much from this, aside from a 'date night gone awry' story.

8. Better by Atul Gawande: Read about my thoughts on this collection of essays by the New Yorker writer here.

9. 52, Volume 2
10. 52, Volume 3
11. 52, Volume 4 by Geoff Johns, et al.: Probably better as an exercise than it was w/r/t story points, I still enjoyed this collection. However, it reminded me how far out of the loop I am in the DC Universe (Barry Allen is alive?!?!?), so I may have to pick up a bunch of collections in the near future.

12. Ultimate Spiderman: Carnage by Bendis & Bagley: One of the most iconic deaths in comics history is interpreted here as a random killing by a bad guy. Bendis should be fucking ashamed of himself. Maybe I'll write more about this, but it's probably already been done.

13. The Echo Maker by Richard Powers: One of the best books I have read this year. I wanted to write about it, but I just couldn't find the words to do it justice. I'm looking forward to making it through the rest of Powers's work in the coming year.

14. Treason by Peter David: Why did I read this book? For what one should expect from a recent New Frontier book, this is as good as any. But it just didn't work for me.

15. Beware of God by Auslander: This collection of short stories is thematically quite similar to the memoir (written afterwards). While the stories were pretty good, I felt I had already read the 'real' account and their effect was subdued.

16. Ultimate Spiderman: Superstars by Bendis & Bagley: Wolverine and Spiderman switch bodies in one of the stupidest stories ever told.

17. IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman: Entertaining collection of Klosterman's journalism over the past decade. He's funny and occasionally says something insightful. I wish I could write like this.

18. Full Circle by Kirsten Beyer: For what this set out to do, tie up Christie Golden's story threads and get Voyager back to the Delta Quadrant, it did well enough I suppose, though the prose is uninspired. And I'm not sure where Chakotay was in this book. Sure, there was a guy named Chakotay, but he was a whiny douchebag who isn't even presented consistently. From now on, Brendan Moody will be responsible for keeping me up to date with Beyer's work so I don't have to read it; he likely will be unable to resist her next novel this fall.

That's it. Perhaps all the time I spend reading might be better served writing. Actually, I'm pretty sure that 'perhaps' should read 'certainly.' Questions, comments, et cetera, ad nauseum.

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.

Reading List: May 2009

Last month I decided that rather than merely list all the books I had read, I would also make a strong recommendation that readers of this blog go out and pick up a copy of what I considered the best of the lot. Fortunately, the book I picked last month I had previously reviewed. However, I didn't have a chance to review Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because I finished it right before I had two big projects due in school.

The book succeeds due to Larsson’s two protagonists -- Carl Mikael Blomkvist, a reporter filling the role of detective, and his sidekick, Lisbeth Salander, aka the girl with the dragon tattoo -- who make this novel more than a run-of-the-mill mystery: they’re both compelling, conflicted, complicated people, idiosyncratic in the extreme, and interesting enough to compensate for the plot mechanics, which seize up a bit as the novel begins to resolve itself. Knowing that Larsson was able to complete two sequels before his death in 2004 is exciting, for I am not ready to let these characters go.

On the school front, I shall spend the next few days revising a document for my thesis that I should have finished months ago. Then I'll start planning the actual outline and hopefully will be able to get started writing sometime towards the end of the month. This said, never underestimate my laziness nor my ability to get distracted by just about anything.

The month of May saw me finish 34 books and/or graphic novels, and this is what they were:

• 100 Bullets: Dirty by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso
• Replay by Ken Grimwood
• What the Gospels Meant by Gary Wills
• Superman: For Tomorrow by Azzarello & Jim Lee
• All Star Superman, Volume II by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely
• Sin City: That Yellow Bastard by Frank Miller
• X-Men: Endangered Species by Mike Carey, et al.
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
• X-Men: Messiah Complex by Ed Brubaker, et al.
• Ultimate X-Men, Volume II by Mark Millar, et al.
• Sin City: Family Values by Miller
• House of M by Brian Michael Bendis & Olivier Copiel
• Over a Torrent Sea by Christopher L. Bennett
• Green Lantern Corps: Recharge by Geoff Johns, et al.
• Ultimate Spider-Man: Double Trouble by Bendis & Mark Bagley
• Genesis by Bernard Beckett
• True Enough by Farhad Manjoo
• Ultimate X-Men: Ultimate War by Millar & Chris Bachalo
• Green Lantern Corps: To Be a Lantern by Dave Gibbons & Patrick Gleason
• Sin City: Booze, Broads, and Bullets by Miller
• Decimation: X-Men: The 198 by David Hine & Jim Muniz
• Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine
• Superman: Last Son by Johns, et al.
• Swamp Thing: The Curse by Alan Moore, et al.
• Ultimate X-Men: Return of the King by Millar, et al.
• The Element by Ken Robinson
• Ultimate Spider-Man: Legacy by Bendis & Bagley
• Shortcomings by Tomine
• Green Lantern: Tales of the Sinestro Corps by Johns, et al.
• Ultimate X-Men: Blockbuster by Bendis & David Finch
• The Best American Mystery Stories 2005 edited by Joyce Carol Oates
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 10 edited by Dean Wesley Smith

Not hard to see that the bulk of the readings for the month, and the year to date for that matter, are graphic novels or collections of individual issues. I am still slightly interested in Marvel's Ultimate line, but the interest is waning. To be honest, I don't think I was more than moderately satisfied with any of the collections I read this month from either DC or Marvel, except maybe House of M. I'm also hoping to read some long form fiction, read 500+ page novels, this summer since I am finished with my coursework.

As always comments and queries are strongly encouraged. I hope to post here much more often over the coming month, yet we know how such vows have gone in the past.

Reading List: April 2009

I will be done with graduate school classes in twelve days, allowing me to use the summer to work on my thesis and complete it at the start of the fall. Words cannot describe what a joy this will be, though I suppose I should keep in mind the two seminar papers I must write between now and the 12th. Anyway, this will hopefully free my schedule enough that I can focus on some short pieces for this space, perhaps even some multipart posts concerning specific issues.

This month was a bit of a mixed bag so far as posting goes. I did increase content over March, but it was sporadic and I let more than a few ideas die a quick and unceremonious death. I also am realizing that while I am completing a lot of books, the majority are graphic novels, usually quick reads, and thus my numbers are a bit inflated. I'm hoping to get back to reading more long fiction this summer.

In the month of April I read 19 books and graphic novels, and this is what they were:

• Breakdowns by Art Spiegelman
• Sin City: A Dame to Kill For & The Big Fat Kill by Frank Miller
• Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
• DMZ: The Hidden War & Blood in the Game by Brian Wood & Riccardo Burchielli
• Preacher: Alamo by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon
• Fables: War and Pieces by Bill Willingham, et al.
• Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
• Planetary: Leaving the 20th Century by Warren Ellis & John Cassasday
• Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War, Volume I & Volume II by Geoff Johns, et al.
• The Boat by Nam Le
• Ex Machina: Ex Cathedra by Brian K. Vaughan & Tony Harris
• Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins
• The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham
  
• Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore & Brian Bolland
• JLA: Earth 2 by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely
• Joker by Brian Azzarello & Lee Bermejo

This month is going to start a new tradition where I make a pick of the month and encourage everyone to read it. Ideally, this will be a book I have already reviewed so one can further investigate my opinions and decide if they want to give the book a shot, yet I make no promises. This month, however, I did indeed write a review of Joan Wickersham's The Suicide Index, in which the author attempts to put into order the details surrounding her father's suicide sixteen years ago. An excellent rumination not only on suicide, but also on the nature of turning life into stories.

As always, I welcome questions or comments about the books listed or about anything under the sun.

Reading List: March 2009

I must apologize for the lack of content here over the past few weeks. This point in the semester is always busy, and when you add stress from the rest of your life in there seems to be none left over for side pursuits such as this. It's not that I haven't read good books or seen some good movies, it's just that I am too tired to really formulate any sustained opinions to post here.

Completed a big presentation this evening on Joseph Mankiewicz's All about Eve for my class on Film and Feminism which went reasonably well. Despite my reservations about the subject, I am finding that film criticism may be an outlet for scholarly work for me in the future. Still have no idea what my seminar paper will concern, but I am thinking of comparing Frank Miller's Sin City comics with film noir movies, then analyze the Sin City movie with these observations. However, that may be more research than I would care to do.

Anyway, I read 25 books and/or graphic novels last month, the best of which was likely Mark Harris's Pictures at a Revolution, something anyone interested in the film business should probably take a look at. I also finished up the released books in Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming's Powers comic series, which is fantastic, a must read for even so-so superhero fans. Here's what they were:

• The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
• Astro City: Local Heroes by Kurt Busiek & Eric Anderson
• God Save the Fan by Will Leitch
• Powers: Forever; Legends; Psychotic; Cosmic; Secret Identity by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming
• Rickles' Book by Don Rickles with David Ritz
• Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger
• Preacher: Dixie Fried; War in the Sun; Salvation; All Hell's A-Coming by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon
• Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris
• Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham, et al.
• Box Office Poison; BOP! [More Box Office Poison] by Alex Robinson
• Time and Human Language Now by Jonathan Boyarin & Martin Land
• Sin City: The Big Goodbye by Frank Miller
• The Lemur by Benjamin Black
• Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street by Warren Ellis & Darick Robertson
• The History of Sexuality: An Introduction by Michel Foucault
• DMZ: Friendly Fire by Brian Wood & Riccardo Burchielli
• The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball

Now that I am caught up with Powers and almost done with Preacher, who knows what I will end up reading. Of course, I promised to finish The Satanic Verses by now and I'm not even close, which I hopefully will get back to after I finish Thomas Geoghegan's latest. And I hope that this forum will see a bit more activity this month as well.

2008 Reading Statistics

I’ve been keeping a list of each book, play, or graphic novel that I read since the start of 2006. My friend Bill Leisner introduced me to the process, and I found that it allowed me to realize when I had been watching too much television. But more importantly, I have been able to retain a lot more of what I read, for when I just glance at a list I usually am able to recall the situation in which I read it and access those memories. I’m not sure if that makes sense to anyone, but it works for me.

Since I post a list at the end of each month detailing the books I finished, I decided not to post a year end wrap up a couple of weeks ago. But as I am seemingly writing more and more about graphic novels because the library has an abundant supply, I decided I would run some statistics for last year so at the end of this year I could make a comparison.

This year I completed 230 books, plays, and graphic novels, blowing away my 2006 total of 178, my previous high. However, Sarah Weinman read 462 books last year, so I am sufficiently humbled. It breaks down like this:

• 67 novels (29.1%)
• 21 short story collections (9.1%)
• 45 works of nonfiction (19.6%)
• 29 plays (12.6%)
• 68 graphic novels or nonfiction comic works (29.6%)

Of those 67 novels, 15 were set in the Star Trek universe, including the six novels in the Myriad Universes collections. I was surprised that I read so many graphic novels, but I did read ten collections of Bill Willingham’s Fables as well as the entire run of Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: the Last Man.

My predictions for this year are that I will likely read less that 200 books, though without school to distract me during the late summer and fall I might make it up there. I would also suspect that I will read more graphic novels this year, and that they will make up a greater percentage of the total. Less plays as well since I am not studying drama this semester.

And if you were to only read one book that I did this past year, I think I would have to recommend Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland a shade above Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.