Booknotes: June 2024
In which I briefly comment on the books I read each month, so a few years from now when I’m trying to remember one I think I read, I’ll be able to find it here. I’m also not going to limit this just to books because I’m a media omnivore. Maybe you’ll find something interesting, too?
Let’s find out!
Book Notes
Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti
- (3.5; print) An entertaining and thought-provoking romp with a bittersweet ending. I can’t remember how this ended up on my TBR a few years ago, but I’m glad I finally read it.
{STAR} Becoming Who We Are: Real Stories about Growing Up Trans edited by Sammy Lisel and Hazel Newlevant
- (4.0; ebook) A diverse range of stories about childhood experiences growing up trans, written for kids but just as important for adults.
{STAR} Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
- (5.0; print) I first read this back in ’03 when I got back into comics as an adult, and it still holds up as an invaluable must-read for anyone who wants to, well, UNDERSTAND the art (and history) of the comics medium. This time around, I appreciated the comparative references to manga a lot more than 20 years ago, when I barely knew it existed.
Astro Boy Omnibus, Volume 1 by Osamu Tezuka
- (3.5; print) I mainly decided to read this because the excellent Mangasplaining podcast put Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka on my radar and I wanted to read its inspiration first. Most of the stories hold up surprisingly well (except for “White Planet”), and it was interesting to see how Shonen has evolved since then (mostly into a style that rarely appeals to me.) Tezuka’s intros are a nice contextual addition, too.
{STAR} Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 by Naoki Urasawa, Osamu Tezuka, Takashi Nagasaki
- (5.0; print) Tezuka’s “The Greatest Robot on Earth” story was particularly enjoyable for making the bad guy a surprisingly interesting character, so I was intrigued by how Urasawa’s acclaimed mature adaptation would read. The first volume is a fascinating take on the original Astro Boy story — shifting perspective and fleshing out the side characters to give the underlying plot a lot more emotional weight. Volume 1 was so good that, for the first time with manga, I immediately bought the rest of the series at once!
Witch Hat Atelier Volume 8 by Kamome Shirahama
- (4.0; print) A delightful interlude that centers two side characters while also moving the larger plot forward. This continues to be my favorite ongoing manga series, although unlike Pluto, I’ve been picking it up one volume at a time. Might be time to change that.
Media Notes
- I’ve always loved a good card game as a palette cleanser and Poker is one of my favorites. I also like a good Roguelike/lite — Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, West of Dead — but was very skeptical of the Balatro hype until I finally played it. And played it. And played it. It’s currently replaced Diablo IV‘s current season as my “relaxing” game and will definitely stay in occasional rotation alongside Slay the Spire long after this initial addiction wears off.
- I’ve always understood Godzilla was a metaphor for the Japanese rather than just the goofy monster movies American studios have churned out, and I was prepared for it to look as impressive as it did despite a ridiculously small budget, but I wasn’t expecting it to be such an emotionally powerful take on wartime PTSD. So! Damn! Good!
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Theatrical)
- Prior to Fury Road, I thought Mad Max was a decent but extremely overrated trilogy, and my favorite George Miller film was Babe: Pig in the City. (That’s not snark; the Babe sequel is an underrated classic!) Furiosa was infinitely better than the first three, and with Fury Road, not only makes the Wasteland a lot more interesting as a franchise, but it also helps separate it even further from Mel Gibson’s taint.
- I needed the hype to die down a bit on this one before giving it a chance and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t just the scripted version of Hell’s Kitchen I was expecting. The unexpected Punisher reunion was nice little bonus, too!
- This is inexplicably one of my film nerd son’s favorite shows, by one of his favorite directors, but I resisted his requests for me to watch it for several years because I remembered having ZERO interest in it when it first came out, and the couple of Lynch movies I’ve seen did very little for me. After enjoying Better Call Saul, another strong recommendation I initially resisted, I finally gave in and was surprised that it wasn’t what I thought it was at all. It’s way campier and randomly darker than I expected, and while I don’t exactly LOVE it, it has an earnest charm that I’ve found entertaining enough to give Season 2 a shot.
Your Notes?
If you’ve read (watched or played) any of these, let me know what you thought. And if you have any related recommendations, drop ’em in the comments like we used to do in the good old days! Some of you prefer email, which is cool, too. You do you!
PS: Notes on Notes
Where possible, I’m linking to Bookshop.org as the least offensive online shopping option for books, although I’ve been disappointed to find some books I’ve read don’t have a listing there, as if the book I held in my hand didn’t exist. They’re affiliate links, but feel free to switch to your preferred local bookshop if you have one and decide to buy anything. Where Bookshop doesn’t have a listing, I’ll link to the publisher’s page, which is often the best place to purchase your books anyway, although it may be a little more expensive and less convenient. If you’re lucky, some of them may also be available at your local library, in print or digital format!
Despite my day job, I still mostly read in print, but I’m noting the format along with my rating for context. If the format has any impact on my rating, I’ll mention that, but it rarely will since I try to avoid reading ebooks of anything that has a visual element.
Discover more from As in guillotine...
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
That’s a damn good selection of comics there. 🙂
At least the ones I’ve read are good. I haven’t read Witch Hat Atelier, but it looks interesting. I keep meaning to watch Bear, but haven’t found the time to yet. (Easier to slot a movie into your watching schedule than a series.)
Like everybody else, I really liked Minus One. I followed it by re-watching the original 1954 movie in Japanese and I’d forgotten that it too leans very hard into the nuke metaphor. It literally has a scene where a doctor holds a Geiger counter up to a child and shakes his head. The shots are directly based on aftermath footage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s honestly a bit brutal. So, Minus One is very much going back to the roots of the franchise and then managed to outdo the original on multiple fronts. Honestly quite amazing.
On Twin Peaks and David Lynch: I have a love-hate thing going with Twin Peaks and David Lynch. Campiness with occasional dark moments is my favourite vibe and I have a strong tendency to overthink things, so you’d think that his work would be right up my alley. I enjoyed Mulholland Drive a lot, but I think that movie works in spite of Lynch’s sensibilities, not because of them. Dune too. Not a good movie, but fun to watch. However most Lynch movies just plain aren’t fun to watch, despite being well-made. They also tend to centre sexual violence way too much for me to be able to comfortably watch them.
I like Twin Peaks itself. The original network TV series, I mean. Season two itself is a weird beast (and season one, TBH). The episodes where they wrap up the Laura Palmer murder are well made but a bit brutal, right on the edge of what you’d get away with on network TV, and at least one scene there is quite hard to watch, but overall it works. The series ending is an open-ended one and IMO honestly worked really well as the final say in the story, so of course he had to go on and ruin it. Twice. We needed neither a prequel nor a follow-up. My recommendation would be to watch season two, but ignore what came after.
I definitely want to (re?)watch the original Godzilla now, and Shin Godzilla, too.
The Bear’s episodes were shorter than I expected, but the intensity of a few of them makes them feel longer. We never watched more than two at a time.
No serious comics fan should go without reading Understanding Comics!
I’m looking forward to rereading Making Comics now, and I bought Reinventing Comics, which I haven’t read before.