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The graphic canon
Volume 1 takes us on a visual tour from the earliest literature through the end of the 1700s. Along the way, we're treated to eye-popping renditions of the human race's greatest epics: Gilgamesh, The Iliad, The Odyssey (in watercolors by Gareth Hinds), The Aeneid, Beowulf, and The Arabian Nights, plus later epics The Divine Comedy and The Canterbury Tales (both by legendary illustrator and graphic designer Seymour Chwast), Paradise Lost, and Le Morte D'Arthur. Two of ancient Greece's greatest plays are adapted—the tragedy Medea by Euripides and Tania Schrag’s uninhibited rendering of the very bawdy comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes (the text of which is still censored in many textbooks). Also included is Robert Crumb’s rarely-seen adaptation of James Boswell’s London Journal, filled with philosophical debate and lowbrow debauchery. Volume 2 gives us a visual cornucopia based on the wealth of literature from the 1800s. Several artists—including Maxon Crumb and Gris Grimly—present their versions of Edgar Allan Poe’s visions. The great American novel Huckleberry Finn is adapted uncensored for the first time, as Twain wrote it. The bad boys of Romanticism—Shelley, Keats, and Byron—are visualized here, and so are the Brontë sisters. We see both of Coleridge’s most famous poems: “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (the latter by British comics legend Hunt Emerson). Philosophy and science are ably represented by ink versions of Nietzsche’sThus Spake Zarathustra and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Volume 3 available in October, 2013
Suggested by Anne |
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Midwinterblood
Seven stories of passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined--this is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice. An archaeologist who unearths a mysterious artifact, an airman who finds himself far from home, a painter, a ghost, a vampire, and a Viking: the seven stories in this compelling novel all take place on the remote Scandinavian island of Blessed where a curiously powerful plant that resembles a dragon grows. What binds these stories together? What secrets lurk beneath the surface of this idyllic countryside? And what might be powerful enough to break the cycle of midwinterblood? From award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick comes a book about passion and preservation and ultimately an exploration of the bounds of love.
Suggested by Anne |
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Storms of my grandchildren : the truth about the coming climate catastrophe and our last chance to save humanity
An urgent and provocative call to action from the world's leading climate scientist--speaking out here for the first time with the full story of what we need to know about humanity's last chance to get off the path to a catastrophic global meltdown, and why we don't know the half of it. In Storms of My Grandchildren , Dr. James Hansen--the nation's leading scientist on climate issues--speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: The planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return. Although the threat of human-caused climate change is now widely recognized, politicians have failed to connect policy with the science, responding instead with ineffectual remedies dictated by special interests...This urgent manifesto bucks conventional wisdom (including the Kyoto Protocol) and is sure to stir controversy, but Hansen--whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned Congress about global warming--is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide.
Suggested by Anne |
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A red sun also rises
Reclusive Anglican priest Aiden Fleisher and brilliant hunchback Clarissa Stark travel as missionaries to the distant South Pacific island of Koluwai, where they encounter hostile natives--and a gateway to another world lit by two suns. Fleisher and Stark meet the native Yatsill, consummate mimics who construct an elaborate society based on Victorian London, using details mined from the thoughts of their new visitors. As Aiden and Clarissa strive to make sense of this strange new world, they become aware of an approaching menace: the arrival of a third sun that will bring the Blood Gods to ravage the world.
Suggested by Anne |
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Marbles : mania, depression, Michelangelo, & me : a graphic memoir
Cartoonist Ellen Forney explores the relationship between "crazy" and "creative" in this graphic memoir of her bipolar disorder, woven with stories of famous bipolar artists and writers. Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability while retaining her passions and creativity. Searching to make sense of the popular concept of the crazy artist, she finds inspiration from the lives and work of other artists and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, William Styron, and Sylvia Plath. She also researches the clinical aspects of bipolar disorder, including the strengths and limitations of various treatments and medications, and what studies tell us about the conundrum of attempting to "cure" an otherwise brilliant mind. Darkly funny and intensely personal, Forney's memoir provides a visceral glimpse into the effects of a mood disorder on an artist's work, as she shares her own story through bold black-and-white images and evocative prose.
Suggested by Anne |
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Click
A video message from the dead. A thieving teen. An epileptic seeking answers in a fairy tale. A man who can stick his toe behind his head and in his ear. And a family with a secret that changes everything. Ten of the world's best-selling authors tell the startling tale of George Keane, photographer, adventurer, and enigma. Under different pens, a portrait emerges of a man, his family, and the glorious tangle that is his life.
Suggested by Angelique |
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Buried in a book
First in a new series. After losing her job as a journalist at the age of 45, Lila Wilkins accepts an internship at A Novel Idea, a thriving literary agency in North Carolina. When a penniless aspiring author drops dead in the agency's waiting room--and Lila discovers a series of threatening letters--she's determined to find out who wrote him off.
Suggested by Angelique (and Tamara) |
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I judge you when you use poor grammar : a collection of egregious errors, disconcerting bloopers, and other linguistic slip-ups
Correct grammar and proper spelling can be a challenge, and their absence can be a source of gleeful humor to everyone but the victim of a bad grammar attack. How do you react to sandwich boards, road signs, laminated instructions, and other written missives that are just not exactly what their creator meant? If you've ever (gently) judged anyone else for their linguistic failures, if you find yourself guffawing about the frequent confusion between "incontinence" and "inconvenience," if you've ever been tempted to whip out your marker to add in or cross out apostrophes, and if you've refused to answer e-mails in which "your" and "you're" are used interchangeably, this book is for you.
Suggested by Angelique (and Tamara) |
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Sea travels : memoirs of a 20th century master mariner
J. Holger Christensen loved the sea, plain and simple. He learned about life at sea at an early age from the best of teachers-his father, Neils Julius Christensen, who was himself the son of a seafaring man. Neils had sailed from Denmark at the age of thirteen, rising from cook to sailor. His journeys aboard the last of the world's full-rigged sailing ships took him all over the world. In 1893 at the age of nineteen, Neils knew he had "come home" when he arrived at Bainbridge Island, Washington. His next years were devoted to sailing in the Pacific coast lumber trade and gold mining in Alaska, earning enough money to buy land and build a home on the island, start a family, and build a workboat to sail Puget Sound.
Suggested by Angelique |
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There but for the
At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and Miles' story is told from the points of view of four of them: Anna, a woman in her forties; Mark, a man in his sixties; May, a woman in her eighties; and a ten-year-old named Brooke. The thing is, none of these people knows Miles more than slightly. How much is it possible for us to know about a stranger? And what are the consequences of even the most casual, fleeting moments we share every day with one another?
Suggested by Angelique |
that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better.