Booking through Thursday

It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S., so let’s keep today’s question simple–What are you reading? Anything special? Any particularly juicy summer reading?

Today I finished Scott McCloud's informative, funny, and spell-binding Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. I had so much fun reading this book. I just started reading graphic novels last year and have been slowly but surely trying to read every one that I can get my hands on. Though only 213 pages, it took me three days to read it. There was so much information to absorb. After reading Understanding Comics, I want to re-read every graphic novel I've read over again.

Dinner With Friends

Dinner with Friends (2000)
Donald Margulies
76 pages
2000 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama

Powerful play about two married couples who are best friends. Karen and Gabe are trying to help their friends Beth and Tom through their divorce. The thoughts of what went wrong pour out from both sides along with the effects of the divorce. It was also made into a movie several years ago that's just as good as the book.

Fables: Legends in Exile

Fables: Legends in Exile (2002)
Bill Willingham
128 pages
Winner of the 2003 Eisner Award for Best New Series

I am becoming the newest biggest fan of graphic novels. This was a genre, that until recently, I didn't pay any attention to. I'm glad things have changed so much.

Fables: Legends in Exile is the first book in a series created by Bill Willingham. The characters from various fairy tales have been exiled from their homelands by an enemy called The Adversary and now have to live among humans in America. The characters that can pass for humans live in New York City while those that can't live upstate at a place called "The Farm." All the characters hope to one day defeat The Adversary and go back home.

Book 1 features Bigby Wolf a.k.a. The Big Bad Wolf trying to solve the murder of Rose Red. Also feature is Snow White, her ex-husband Prince Charming, Cinderella, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, The Frog Prince, Bluebeard, Beauty and her husband, the Beast and many more. The story is so funny and realistic. I started reading the novel and didn't put it down until I was finished. It deserves my 5 out of 5 rating.

With that said, I just realized this was my last book for the Once Upon a Time 2 Challenge. I have to thank Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings for hosting this great challenge. I had so much fun reading books I usually don't read. So it's official: I'm hooked on the strange and the unusual.

I read:

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1 - Alan Moore

The Stolen Child - Keith Donahue

Fables

The Sandman Vol. 1 - Neil Gaiman

The Resurrectionist - Jack O'Connell

My favorite reads for this challenge: Fables and The Stolen Child.

My least favorite: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1. Maybe it's the feminist in me, but I couldn't understand why Mina Murray couldn't kick ass herself.

The end of my weekend of books

The Resurrectionist (2008)

Jack O'Connell

304 pages

4 out of 5

Last Thursday was the last day of spring semester and I was determined to squeeze in as many books as possible. But as we all know, life happens and I only squeezed in a few books. I enjoyed myself though.

The Resurrectionist is about Sweeney, a widower and pharmacist, and his comatose son, Danny. Sweeney blames himself for the accident that caused Danny's coma and hopes that the Peck Clinic can give Sweeney the miracle he thinks he need. Sweeney and Danny's story crosses with the freaks of Limbo, a comic book Danny loved. As Sweeney digs deeper into the story of Limbo and its inhabitants, he also finds out he should look beyond the surface of things and family is more than just the blood of your own.

The Book of Other People

Edited by Zadie Smith (2008)

304 pages

5 out of 5

The Book of Other People is a collection of short story edited by the talented Zadie Smith. It contains stories by Chris Ware, Miranda July, ZZ Packer, Jonathon Safran Foer, and many others. Years ago Zadie Smith asked the writers to make up a story about character, a character and name that story about he/she or it. The result is now my favorite short story collection.

Some of my favorites are:

Jonathon Safran Foer's Rhoda about his grandmother

David Mitchell's Judith Castle

Chris Ware's Jordan Wellington Lint - tragic and yet funny

J. Johnson by Nick Horny

I started this book months ago and picked it up this morning only to read the whole book in a matter of two hours. Though I usually give away books after I read them, I know this is one I will be rereading many times.

You Set It Paperback Challenge

One more challenge. Now I'm up about 16 challenges! So I just signed up for the You Set It Paperback Challenge. The rules are you pick how many books to read, you set the time limit but it has to be at least one month, and you only read paperbacks. I think I will read six books in next six months, starting today. Here's my list.

1. The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion

2. The Penderwicks - Jeanne Birdsall

3. The Scent of God - Beryl Singelton Bissell

4. Her last death - Susanna Sonnenberg

5. I am no one you know - Joyce Carol Oates

6. A good man is hard to find - Flannery O'Connor