The Book Pirate

From Weird Al’s 1989 cult film UHF.

Blurb for the back cover:
“Feels as if Maupin was just trying to make things as crazy as possible”

More Tales of the City picks up shortly after Tales of the City. Everybody is still going about their daily routine. Mouse and Mary Ann go on a cruise and meet a mysterious stranger while Mona impulsively travels to a brothel in Nevada and discovers her past and one of Mrs. Madrigal’s secrets.

The format of this book is still the same with each chapter only taking up roughly three pages. This again makes this book very easy to pick up and read only for a few minutes before putting it back down. This could also lead to the classic “just one more chapter…” problem and several chapters later you find yourself still reading the book.

Sadly, there were a few occasions where the book got just so ridiculous that I had to put it down and walk away from it for a few days. The major difference between the first book and this one is that More Tales of the City takes more of a soap opera approach. There is amnesia, sex changes, characters that you thought were gone reappearing, and the revelation of who is Mona’s father. With the first book I thought it took just showed the lives of people living in San Fransisco. But this book feels as if Maupin was just trying to make things as crazy as possible.

I didn’t really like More Tales of the City because I had just come off reading Tales of the City and had such high expectations. After thinking about it some more post-reading, I’m pretty indifferent towards this one. As of writing this I have finished the third book in the series (Further Tales of the City) and I am glad to say that Further was much better but more on that later.

I just finished watching the British adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic. The film is based off of the first two books of the Discworld series which I have not read. One of the reason I have not touched the series is because it is currently 36 novels long. I DON’T HAVE THAT MUCH TIME! Geez. A 36 book series. I have also read Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman) but didn’t really care much for the book. Maybe I need to re-read it. Anyway, getting off topic here. I liked The Color of Magic and Tim Curry plays the bad guy which is awesome. I am now tempted to pick up the first book in the Discworld series.

Any fans of the Discworld books seen The Color of Magic and read the book? Did you like it?

I mentioned previously that I saw Steve Almond (author of Candyfreak and Not That You Asked) at Tin House’s 10th Anniversary celebration right? He’s a hoot and a half and now I have proof. Firstly,

Now you can also listen to Steve Almond’s analyze Toto’s Africa.

Steve Almond Analyzes Toto’s Africa

Audio was provided by Tin House and their new blog.

Going to Reno today for an extended weekend. After much deliberation I decided to take Armistead Maupin’s Babycakes as well as Tin House’s The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House.

Speaking of Tin House, I attended their 10th anniversary shindig and was treated to some quite awesome readings from Tin House Magazine contributes. My personal favorite reader was Steve Almond and his essay on Toto’s song Africa. Anyway, I need a nap before the flight.

A retraction from yesterday’s post.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is written by Seth Grahame-Smith (and Jane Austen).
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is written by Ben H. Winters (and Jane Austen).

I mistakenly credited Seth for being the one to bring sea monsters to Jane Austen’s classic novel of life and love.

My bad.

This is was the first thing I read about when I woke up today. Seth Grahame-Smith is at it again. Depending on how you feel about Jane Austen, he is either improve her works or destroy classic literature. His new book, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, will feature 40% of Seth’s work and 60% of Jane’s which is more than he contributed to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

While I am still not a fan of this genre, this follow book trailer does make me want to read the book.

What are your thoughts?

There is this Japanese game show where a group of six contestants walk in to a library and must perform these random tasks that normally involve pain. The catch is that, like most libraries, they can not make a sound.

Blurb for the back cover:
“Superheroes? Check.
Orphans? Check.
Girl that looks like a violin? Er, check.”

So The Umbrella Academy appears to be your typical superhero comic on the outside. A group of seven kids are adopted by some rich guy in order to “save the world”. Naturally, these kids were born in mysterious circumstances and have super human powers. The book opens with a prologue with six of the kids saving the Eiffel Tower and the seventh watching as she seemingly has no super power. The story jumps forward twenty years and we discover that the group has broken up and gone their separate ways only to be reunited at the funeral of their adoptive father. Yanya, the seemingly unspecial seventh child, gets pulled in to a diabolical scheme that just might prove how special she really is, but at the same time, destroy the world in the process.

I haven’t read many superhero related comics but what drew me to this one was the fantastic art style (drawn by Gabriel Ba) used in the book. It’s colorful and morbid with a nice attention to detail in the bigger panels. Plus, the girl on the cover looks like a violin.

Story wise I didn’t find it to be anything that special. There is a bad guy and there are superheroes. The superheroes stop the bad guy and the heroes stand around and are like “It’s a good thing our adoptive father’s death conveniently brought us all together again so that we could overcome our differences and team up to stop the apocalypse. Also I could really use a sandwich right about now!”. There is a very dry humor that is used to tell the story. It wont make you laugh out loud (or LOL, as kids nowadays are calling it) but it will make you grin.

I would recommend this graphic novel. The story may not be special, but the artwork and humor make it stand out compared to all the other graphic novels I have read (which is only a few, so really who knows what I am say…)

Other blog reviews:
read/RANT!
Bao’s Blog

Blurb for the back cover:
“A fantastically enjoyable book”

Tales of the City, the first book in a current seven book series, centers around the inhabitants of 28 Barbary Lane in San Fransisco in the 1970’s. We enter the drama already in progress as we follow Mary Ann Singleton as she bids farewell to Ohio and extends her vacation permanently. Anna Madrigal is the landlady of 28 Barbary Land and acts as mother figure to the tenants often offering them advice and comfort in the form of marijuana. The other tenants include: Michael, the novel’s token gay man; Mona, Michael’s roommate and sorta-lesbian; Brian, former lawyer, current womanizer; and Norman, the mysterious stranger who lives on the roof and starts a relationship with Mary Ann. There are so many more characters in this book but to try and list them all here would be ridiculous.

Speaking of the characters, I would like to address one of the problems I had with this book. It seemed to me that all the characters knew everyone else and never ventured out of their social circle. If one character knew Jon, then so did everyone else and at least two people were sleeping with him. In the city of San Fransisco I would imagine that people knew other people that their friends did not know. That is not the case here. However, to try and include even more people in this novel would just make it harder to keep up with what everyone was doing. Instead I grew to view the characters not as people but as archetypes (the gay man, the cheating husband, girl who moves from small town to big city). Maybe this isn’t exactly what Joseph Campbell had in mind back in the day, but it works.

The way Tales of the City is written may at first seem a little odd. Each chapter is only three pages long and tend to focus only on one or two characters. This probably goes back to the fact that originally the text was originally serialized in the San Fransisco Chronicle. Maybe each chapter was published once a day. I don’t see the short chapters as a bad thing. This made it incredible easy to pick up and put back down if I needed.

Tales of the City is a fantastically enjoyable book that I quickly read and just as quickly purchased the second book in the series, More Tales of the City. My goal this summer is to read all seven books.