I was nominated by my editor Jessica Shen to share the books that stayed with me through the years. No surprises here - some of them are comics---ahem---I mean graphic novels :o) 1. ANY OF THE FIRST VOLUMES OF HELLBOY DRAWN/WRITTEN by Mike Mignola I confess I actually came to Hellboy late, and through the movies. But when I saw how this brilliant dude absorbed Poe, Lovecraft, H.G. Wells and then brought that assimilated fervor forward with his woodblock/print style I was in heaven. All Ive ever wanted to do was draw monsters, - Mike Mignola. 2. THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS by Frank Miller. A lot of people criticize Millers drawing style. But really he took the semi-golden rule dont busy up the page with too many panels and turned it on his head. THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS reads like the most frightening and exhilarating tour-de-force through a Gotham turned on its head and through the eyes of an aging Batman. This last part is crucial. Oh yeah, and Superman is sent to bring down the Caped Crusader! 3. THE JOHNNY DIXON MYSTERIES by John Bellairs, or basically ANYTHING WRITTEN by John Bellairs. Im pretty sure today John Bellairs couldnt get a book past the agent query stage. I may be wrong. His style is really simple - and it works. He follows the Victorian school of M.R. James who once reluctantly wrote an introduction on writing ghost stories - reluctantly, because he found it so forced and trite, and basically the will of his publishers. M.R. Jamess horror treatise is thus: introduce the characters in their most comfortable setting; give them a beer, put their feet up; and then slowly, little by little, reveal the terrifying monster until he/she/it is so larger than life that they hold the scene for the rest of the book. Bellairs followed this beautifully and with great heart and pluck; throw in the drawings of Edward Gorey and this fanboy needs a bathroom break. 4. DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman. Its just awesome world-building. And I love every single character. Disciples of Tolkien, they created a race of beings called Kender - who steal everything from people but dont think they are stealing just keeping track of something for them. Kender also have a wild curiosity and wanderlust; they also have ZERO fear. That is a wonderful combination. 5. A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS by Robert Bolt. Perhaps the greatest play about a crisis of conscience. Nuff said. 6. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce. I became a James Joyce fanatic in high school because I was a pretentious/precocious writer/artist and identified with the Stephen Daedalus who must fly by so many nets. Since reading ULYSSES and understanding 30% of it, Ive come to see Daedalus as so cold and refined out of existence to quote his own words, that I cant identify with him anymore. Yet, A PORTRAIT is really the touchstone of a young poet/artists experience in so many ways. And the scene where he throws away the cassock of faith in favor of the pure hedonism of life and language and art...well its just magic. 7. ITS HALLOWEEN by Jack Prelutsky. Okay, okay. You thought because I threw in some respected works of fiction I was done with childrens books and comics. WRONG! This childrens picture book came with a record - a record! ahhhh! - and I wore both out. It really began my love/hate relationship with being terrified. Theres a section about ghosts sitting in a house where the speaker just says and theres two on the stairwell, and of course in the picture book theres just an empty stairwell. It just is so fabulous. You put the terror together in a very, safe childish way, but it works. And then theres one about a goblin sitting in a tree...and the artwork is just so rad. 8. WALDEN POND by Henry Thoreau. Okay, back to serious. Heres another thorny character you wouldnt really want to have a beer with...because you might get an ecological-political sermon about why that beer is over-taxed and blah blah blah come have some of my beans, wont ya. But this book was magic because it is such a work of the 19th century mind that really thought by putting things down on paper in a serious way you might actually change the world. I dont necessarily think this has changed, but maybe the legitimacy of artist-thinker-visionaries has been relegated to a less dignified sphere in the working world. All the same, lines like people suffer to cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh, and the worse thing is to become the slave driver of yourself, well those Thoreau-isms have certainly stayed in my blood. 9. THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST by Rick Yancey. All books but particularly the second book CURSE OF THE WENDIGO. Yancey also lives in the 19th century, but his body is here in the present. He actually worked for the IRS most his life, and wrote a NY Times best-selling book Confessions of A Tax Collector. Yet he always nurtured his love of writing for young people. THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST is a love poem to early horror, Victorian science, and maybe Shakespeare. It is so rich both in language and the complexity of its master-apprentice relationship between the monster hunter and his adopted charge, that just thinking about it gives me joy...and then goosebumps. 10. ATHENAZE an Introduction to Ancient Greek Language. I know this probably doesnt count because its not fiction, but I cant think of another book Ive spent more time with. Learning a foreign language, and particularly an ancient one, where the scanning of a line is completely different from how we place our parts of speech is like rewiring your brain. It rules. And then theres the visual look of the language itself - its really beautiful. I think Arabic and Farsi are probably more visually stimulating, but Ancient Greek is up there.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:45:48 +0000
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