Apparently, this series, of which I own volumes 1 and 2, was spawned from another graphic by Neil Gaiman. Apparently, I read that in 2007. Apparently, I remember nothing about it at all. I still have it, though, so perhaps I will re-read it.
I was not overly impressed by this volume. The world was interesting, involving faerie, and including the Manticore, but the story, itself, didn’t grab me. The artwork was good, and I especially enjoyed the introduction by Jane Yolen, which spoke highly of the value of story. I’m a big believer in “story,” and think that it is highly underrated in our society.
In this volume, we follow a young man named Timothy, who discovers that, perhaps, the person he lives with may not be his actual father. Instead, his father appears to be someone from the fae community, who goes by the name of Tamlin and is also known as Falconer.
Tim sets out to find out the truth, but, in doing so gets trapped in the realm of the manticore, a deadly monster who has Faerie under his spell.
The interactions between characters, in my opinion, seemed to lack depth. Even Death, when introduced later in the book, didn’t have the kind of depth that Gaiman’s Death had.
It’s been a while since I updated things, here. Done a book review or two, I think, but not much else. It’s been a busy couple of weeks.
This is my “slow” week at the library, but I have an appointment every day that I’m not working, and had one this morning, as well.
I’m getting vein treatments on my legs, for my varicose veins. They started this morning, and I’ll be going to work at my usual time, at 4:15 this afternoon. So far, there is no pain, but it’s possible the numbing agent hasn’t worn off, yet. I watched the doctor do the treatment, but couldn’t tell much about what was going on. The whole thing was done with ultrasound going at the same time.
I have three broken veins in my right leg and one in my left. So there are four treatments. I’ll go back tomorrow morning for another on the right leg (we started there, today), and then Thursday, we will switch to the left leg. Next Monday, I will return for the last right leg treatment. Then there will a follow-up on the Monday after that.
I see that the last non-book post I made was the night of Game Six of the World Series. Not much has been happening since then. My wife had a birthday (always known as “C” in my blogs), this past Saturday, one of the big ones. We started celebrating last Friday evening, after I got off work, and continued until yesterday afternoon, when she and I had a couples massage at our favorite spa location. It was quite wonderful. At one point, I asked my massage therapist if she was sure she only had two hands.
We had a few good meals, during the weekend. We had Braum’s for dinner Friday, including ice cream Sundaes (even though it was in the forties outside). We wound up calling out for Italian food on Saturday evening, and then, for Sunday lunch, C and I stopped by Freebird’s in Grapevine, on the way home from church. Yesterday, we went to a cafe for “brunch” on the way to our massage appointment. Then we stopped at Chef Point Cafe on the way home and had some of their famous bread pudding.
It was a fun weekend. I forgot to add that C got energetic and put up all of our Christmas decorations, as well. This is the first time we have done that before Thanksgiving! She and I put the lights up around the outside of the house, Sunday. Looks like this:
We have continued to visit Living Word Lutheran Church on Sunday mornings. I finally met the music director, this past Sunday. She is the wife of the lead pastor, and plays a mean pipe organ. They do some wonderful music there, and I am considering getting involved in some of that, as well. I need to brush up on my trombone chops, though, if I plan to play in their little orchestra.
I guess that’s about it for today. I need to get ready to head to work, soon.
I just posted my review of V for Vendetta, which you can see either by clicking that link or clicking back to the previous entry of this blog. Now, I’m reading Darker than You Think, by Jack Williamson, which is a delightful horror story from one of the early Grand Masters of Science Fiction. It is weirdly wonderful that this master of science fiction could also write a fantastic horror story. I’m close to finishing it, so it will get reviewed soon, I’m sure.
To a large degree, I found myself in this book. Except, of course, that I’m not a woman.
But I am very much “in touch with my feminine side,” and might actually be a “feminist.”
In Murder Book, Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell chronicles the history of her obsession with true crime, and pretty much blames it all on her mother.
I have developed a similar obsession, but can’t blame my mother at all. I actually blame our oldest daughter, because she’s the one who introduced us to My Favorite Murder, a few years ago.
Hilary, in delightful graphic novel form, takes us from the beginning of her true crime obsession, all the way back to her days of watching Law and Order with her mom. I understand that Law and Order, and shows like it, such as CSI, NCIS, and Criminal Minds, are not “true crime.” However, they frequently use true crimes as bases for their episodes.
Hilary evolved from Law and Order to shows like Forensic Files, which, she claims, is always on somewhere. The craze, itself, has blossomed into a veritable plethora of media, though, from those TV shows to Netflix original movies and miniseries, to the inevitable Podcast, which is where Karen and Georgia come in, with My Favorite Murder. My wife and I (and that aforementioned oldest daughter) have seen Karen and Georgia live, by the way, in Dallas. It was quite a show.
Hilary’s obsession actually began with the Zodiac. Her mother lived through that era, along with all the other serial killers in the late sixties and early seventies. I, myself, do not remember the Zodiac murders, but I do remember being terrified of Charles Manson and his “family.” Anyway, she got obsessed with Zodiac, and it simply grew from there.
So the book pretty much starts out with Zodiac, then goes into movies and TV shows that were based on true crime cases. After that, she discusses Ted Bundy and, of course, many peoples’ true crime hero, Ann Rule, who wrote The Stranger Beside Me, because she actually worked right next to Ted Bundy and thought that he was a really nice guy and that they must have been mistaken when all the evidence pointed to him.
Then there is a section about Anne Marie Fahey, about whom I had never heard before reading this book. She was another victim who disappeared in the late nineties. Actually, that section began by discussing podcasts, of which Serial seems to be the groundbreaker in the true crime arena. Karen and Georgia came along and pretty much normalized the true crime podcast with My Favorite Murder.
I thoroughly enjoyed this graphic novel memoir and would recommend it to anyone who has found themselves mesmerized by this craze of true crime that has struck us in the past decade or so.
I decided to combine these two into one blog entry, as the reviews of them would have been pretty much identical. I have been reading Nathan Pyle’s comics on Facebook for a while, now, and was delighted to discover that the Hurst Public Library has two graphic novel collections of his work. There might be more, but I discovered these during my shelving adventures last Tuesday night.
They were not, of course, disappointing. I remember seeing a lot of the represented comics before, but some were new to me. In these comics, Mr. Pyle finds a way to re-phrase some of our most common human experiences, as though aliens were experiencing them. Examples: Refrigerator is called “sustenance preserver;” eating vegetables is referred to as “ingesting leaves;” cats are called “vibrating creatures;” and kissing is referred to as “mouthpushing.”
Various traditions are tackled, such as a wedding (called “cohesion”) in the second volume, and Halloween, in which the phrase “trick or treat” is rendered, “Provide a sweet or face mild harassment.” A penalty is called in a sports event, for “shoving after shove time was over.” Another sporting event is referred to as “recreational face-striking, and then there is a celebration of “collective survival” on “New Revolution’s day.”
Side note: While perusing Nathan’s Facebook page, I noticed a simple phrase in his info. “I follow Jesus.” That makes me very happy.
I’ll share two of my favorites here. The first one involves the vibrating creature and its love for little boxes. However, as the scene pans out, it seems that we are not so different from our vibrating creatures.
And how could I not love this one about libraries, structures filled with texts, free for us to simply take?
The Constant Reader 