Crossing Over (Into Comics)
Last week I did a couple of reviews of verse novels that worked pretty well as crossover (from YA to “adult”) fiction. This week I want to introduce two comics that suit the crossover theme, except this time when I say “crossover” I mean that I’m pretty sure these were marketed for older audiences but could have appreciative teen readers as well.
The first book, just like one of the books last week, was a gift from the lovely Megan Harrison. Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá was published in a serialized issues in 2010, and since then has won an Eisner award, a Harvey, and an Eagle award. The story is about Brás de Oliva Domingos …
The miracle child of a world-famous Brazilian writer, Brás spends his days penning other people’s obituaries and his nights dreaming of becoming a successful author himself—writing the end of other people’s stories, while his own…
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The Circle by Dave Eggers
After battling my way through ‘The Luminaries‘ by Eleanor Catton recently, I wanted to read something which was the absolute polar opposite of historical fiction and settled on ‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers. It tells the story of Mae Holland, a twenty-something graduate who starts a new job at The Circle – a social media conglomerate the size and power of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and every other major tech company combined. Although Mae is impressed by what she finds there, the wider implications of how the company is developing soon become apparent.
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Oscar Wilde in Prison
On the 19th of May 1897, Irish writer Oscar Wilde was released from prison after serving a two year sentence for criminal sodomy and “gross indecency”. He had to go through hard labor and major deprivation, a very problematic situation for a hedonist accustomed to his creature comforts. His experiences in prison were the basis for his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol(1898).
In a bid to understand the reasoning behind Wilde’s imprisonment, Neil McKenna’sThe Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (2003) systematically investigated all available evidence about Wilde’s amorous liaisons, his lifelong erotic attraction to men and his subsequent support of Uranianism. The latter was a 19th-century term which referred to the actions of a person of a third sex, neither entirely male, nor female, someone with “a female psyche in a male body” who is sexually attracted to men, later extended as a definition…
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On Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway was published on this day, 14 May, in 1925. In honour of this, we thought we’d offer a few little facts about this novel, and about Woolf herself.
The action of the book takes place over just one day – a ‘moment of June’ in 1923 – although there are flashbacks to events that occurred in the characters’ lives over the previous five years, in the immediate wake of WWI. The original title of the book was ‘The Hours’, a title that Michael Cunningham would go on to use for the title of his novel about Woolf, which weaves together events from Woolf’s own life and events from Mrs Dalloway. The book was filmed, in 2002, starring Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman (the latter of whom famously wore a prosthetic nose to portray Woolf).
Mrs Dalloway wasn’t the only novel Woolf wrote the action of…
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Neil Gaiman: “Crossover Artist” or simply a good “Storyteller”?
Neil Gaiman – made popular by the macabre comics The Sandman but who has said that he really began writing with picturebooks that never got published – is a self-professed “crossover artist”. With textual works that vary from adult fiction/fantasy like American Gods to the Carnegie and Newbery Award winning The Graveyard Book. Pushing even farther into crossover Gaiman wrote Coraline the text that inspired a stop-motion animation film, he has written episodes of Dr. Who and, he co-wrote the script for that oddity of a film Beowulf and, yes, ALSO Batman comics!
Whew. Need a breathe. I’m sure I’m missing things…
Gaiman, as evidenced by the above paragraph, has inspired many a post here on The Bookwars and all four of us are fans of his works and, though this impressive resume could inspire a many more a post (“many a more post” ?), I think that…
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Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole
Title: Every Day is for the Thief
Author: Teju Cole
Publisher: Faber and Faber, Penguin UK
ISBN: 978-0571307920
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 176
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5
Teju Cole burst on the scene with “Open City” a couple of years ago. A unique voice is needed all the time, to wake the literary circle, so to say. “Open City” had a deep impact on the sensibilities and emotions as well. There was something unique about it and at the same time, it was quite ordinary. That is the charm of Teju Cole’s writing. He makes the mundane come alive.
“Every Day for the Thief” is a sort of a literary memoir. It is not a memoir and yet sometimes feels like one. A young Nigerian goes home to Lagos, after living away from it, in New York for close to fifteen years. The unnamed narrator moves from the places in…
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AFTERPARTY: Truly Mind-Bending Science Fiction
Afterparty by Daryl Gregory
Reviewed by Raul
Gregory’s exhilarating new book, Afterparty, draws you into an engaging story that plays on some powerful themes. The underlying idea of what people seek in religion is exactly what makes this story so powerful. Is God real or just a thought in our heads? Parables highlight the background of the characters and enhance the religiosity. That the Godhead is perceived by them with the use of a drug named Numinous suggests the best of Aldous Huxley and Philip K. Dick.
Lyda Rose is not your typical religious zealot. Having been there at the creation of Numinous, and also one of its first overdoses, she is an addict in recovery. Other members of Little Sprout, the company that manufactured Numinous, have pledged never to make it again. So after seeing a fellow patient kill herself when weened off the drug, Rose’s only concern is to stop whoever is…
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Amber Nicole Brooks 