Most of you still haven't answered my question of a while back (and some of you, oh so charmingly, are STILL answering me privately instead of on this blog): what are you reading at the moment? What have read recently? Granted, it won't be as exhaustive (or sexy) as mine, but even so - spill!
7 comments:
3 slim volumes! This morning I tore through the first half of the graphic novel, "Different Ugliness, Different Madness." Its drawn with achingly good style and confidence (thanks, Kevin!). Over the weekend I read new books of poetry by Laura Sims and Frank Bidart. The Sims is flakey in patches but it can make your mind click in fun ways. The Bidart is often strong, emotional, & smart. Steve, I think you, in particular, would like his 40 page poem about the life of Benvenuto Cellini: lots of blood and bluster. But I won't quote from that; I'll quote from this:
HAMMER (by Frank Bidart)
The stone arm raising a stone hammer
dreams it can descend upon itself.
When the quest is indecipherable, --
... what is left is a career.
What once was apprehended in passion
survives as opinion.
To be both author of
this statue, and the statue itself.
Okay, okay, I'll talk!
I'm currently reading "Foundation and Empire", "The Brothers Karamazov", and "The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction". I've also been reading the 'novel' "Happyland", serialized in Harper's (mostly on lunch breaks and in the john - does that count?).
Then there's the comics - here's a sampling:
Rocketo, Astonishing X-men, NextWave (Agents of H.A.T.E.), Loveless, The Uncanny Bosnian Lesbian Cancer Patients, Annihilation, Age of Bronze, and Eternals.
you're aware that in Astonishing X-Men (and even sometimes in Eternals) the characters where .... COSTUMES? Have SUPER-POWERS (other than byronic navel-gazing, that is)?
What would cause you to look at such trash? Pity? Slumming?
God bless you, Steve - you're the only person I know who would argue that I don't read enough Superhero comics. Everybody else just snickers about the 15 Legion action figures sitting on the shelf by my drawing table...
Nextwave is superheroes too, duh.
no, Nextwave is superhero SATIRE, the whole FOUNDATION of which is that superhero comics aren't ever - CAN'T ever be - seriously good. Mother's milk to comic book snobs!
But it's a superhero satire made with love! We kid because we love! Doesn't it get geek points for the delightful B-list cast that it's assembled?
Plus, the idea that creating a superhero satire's "whole FOUNDATION... is that superhero comics aren't ever - CAN'T ever be - seriously good" is a bit paranoid - I mean, Warren Ellis & Stu Immomen's last project before this was a terrific little run on Ultimate Fantastic Four - a plain old straight stuperhero story, done lovingly and well. See, and I read that, too.
I'm also reading Justice (Alex Ross). Tights and more tights.
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