I’ve been reading comic books pretty much my whole life (with a break in my 20s and 30s that lasted about twenty years). I got my first bunch of books at about age five from my grandparents, a random assortment of comics including Archie, Richie Rich, and Scoobie-doo. I read those books over and over… Continue reading Make mine Image
At this point I’ve read roughly 220 pages of the massive 1020 page tome that is David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Every time I get to the point of wanting to dismiss it as stream of consciousness disconnected random thoughts strung together with no apparent concern for plot or characterization, I stumble into passages of… Continue reading Not quite knee-deep in Infinite Jest
I find our current culture’s fascination with spirituality interesting given that it is paired with a growing percentage of the population that affiliates with no specific faith tradition. I’m not sure how much this milieu contributes to the broad appeal of the comic book The Wicked + The Divine (my seventh book read so far… Continue reading The Wicked + The Divine – Vol 1
One review calls it “a comic book love letter to non-compliant women.” I’d call this sixth book I’ve read in 2016 a great story from Image comics and Kelly Sue Deconnick. Volume 1 of this book introduces some strong characters and also contains some funny and poignant back matter further fleshing out the world of… Continue reading Bitch Planet
Today I finished reading my fifth book this year, a delightfully twisted graphic novel from the folks at Comixtribe. Here’s a sample panel from early in the first issue: Oxymoron is a villain on the order of The Joker who spends this arc tormenting Officer Mary Clark and exposing the hypocrisies he sees in… Continue reading Oxymoron: The Lovliest Nightmare
I recently finished reading my third ‘book’ this year: Spiral is a 5-issue arc in Amazing Spider-Man 16.1 – 20.1 written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Carlo Barberi with inks by Juan Vlasco and colors by Israel Silva (plus letters by Joe Caramagna). I could also talk about ‘reading’ a fourth book since I… Continue reading Spiral
I recently read an essay entitled Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership from the Harvard Business Review. The author encouraged all leaders to ask themselves four questions about areas of their leadership – key projects or groups they are leading – that I found particularly compelling. Since reading the article I’ve spent… Continue reading Four key questions leaders ask themselves
The second book I finished in 2016 is the first novel by Argentine author Edgardo Holzman entitled Malena. Malena is the name of a central character as well as the name of a well-known Tango. This was a haunting book examining the repressive regime in Argentina in the late 1970s and early 1980s through its… Continue reading Malena by Edgardo David Holzman
In an effort to keep better track of the many things I read I’m going to post brief notes anyway about each book I finish this year. And that includes the graphic novels and comic trades I read (though I won’t write about individual issues unless they are too incredible to skip). To that end,… Continue reading First book I’ve finished this year
I do a lot of reading – so much in fact that by the end of the year I have trouble remembering everything I read the previous year. So I’m going to start recording what I read here and add (in general) some brief notes about the book. Here are a few of the things… Continue reading Books I read in 2015 (a partial list)
InTruthItsNotThatSimple 