Crenshaw's Books & Decks

The present moment is informed by the past, driven by its imperatives, its prescriptions and proscriptions. Either we are repeating it by serving its message, or trying to escape it, or we have evolved our unconscious treatment plan for it. Either way, the past calls the shots, at least until it is flushed out into the full light of consciousness.  (Loc. 148-151). The past is not dead; it is not even past. And what we resist will persist— as haunting.(Loc. 201-202)

This is the first book I read by Hollis, a reputed Jungian psychoanalyst, and I am most impressed with his literary writing, his erudition, his wisdom, his humanity, his compassion a with the way he touches the readers' soul, or at least mine. 

Hauntings is not a book about mediums or ghosts, is a book about those psychological ghosts (by absence and by presence) that make our lives more mechanical and more untrue to who we really are (our soul and inner self). Those ghosts direct our behaviour, our feelings, and our lives in two major ways: by replicating them without being aware we are doing so, or by being aware of them and trying to compensate to avoid them.

THE HAUNTING GHOSTS

> Our genes. Of course, they aren't discussed in this book.

> Our parent's unlived lives and conditioning. Everything we learn about the world is first filtered through them. From them we receive our culture, religion, values and even their neurosis and behaviours. The mother figure is vital until we are 6-7y.o.a, but the father figure becomes increasingly so from then onwards, if any of those fail not to be there or to be too much, or be in the wrong way, those patterns of being, behaving and feeling will be passed on to us.   
> Synchronicity. This the only positive haunting in the book. It is presented as a mysterious non-causal energy of the Universe that follows us to let us know whatever we need to know or notice, and puts us in direct connection with the Universe without the need of any mediator (the state, gurus, evangelists, priests, or whomever else, all of them with their own agenda). 

> Our "complexes" or subconscious patterns of behaviour emotionally triggered. Hollis does a great job at explaining what a complex is, how it works and how it manifest, and the power that they have over us all. We need to bring them into consciousness, but even we do, they are the hardest thing to handle. They are the ghostly aspect most widely discussed in the book:  "We do not rise in the morning, look in the mirror while brushing our teeth, and say to ourselves, “Today I will do the same stupid things, the reflexive things, the regressive things which I have been doing for years!” But more often than not we indeed do the same stupid, reflexive, regressive things, and why? (Loc. 857-860).

> Our shadow, projections and transferences, who present aspects of us as part of somebody else's, an unconscious lens that alters reality and the perception of who the others are, bringing a distorted picture of their self, that we only notice is a lens when the projection crumbles and we tell ourselves s/he wasn't what looked like or the person thought s/he was. 
> Our sense of guilt (personal or social it might be). Guilt is the result of something we have done or failed to do. It shows in our lives in three different ways: patterns of avoidance, patterns of overcompensation, and patterns of self-sabotage. Perhaps the most evident sense of guilt comes from the expectations of society that favours niceness over authenticity and adaptation over assertiveness, so we end giving too much weight to what others expect from us or think of us any failure or lack of fitting is transformed into guilt.  
> Our sense of shame, or the belief that we are wrong or flawed somewhat because we have to meet some criteria, respond to somebody's else expectations, or serve a given agenda, no matter is self-imposed or more commonly imposed by cultural codes, religious institutions, or the internalisation of agendas or assignments (even unspoken) of parents, family or other people who matter to us.
> Psychological social projections, the same as personal projections but at a big scale. They are the base of racism, sexism, xenophobia, prejudice, religious intolerance, dogmatism and the view of anything and anybody who is different as a threat. The more insecure the ego the less it tolerates differences. The reverse side is contagious social ideas, fashions and fears that expand like a plague. Hollis states that no religious, civil, educational or social institution has not, in some degree, constricted us and prevent us from fulfilling  our potential.

> Betrayal from others and from ourselves. Betrayal is a kind of loss that is internalised and leads us to inner conclusions that result in paranoia, obsession, and projective identification. Hollies says that usually transfer to the Universe, the State, the Company, the marriage the role of good parent or caretaker and when they fail to serve us we have a tantrum and disappointment will be seen as betrayal.
> Magical thinking or the failure to differentiate interior reality from external reality.
> Modernism, or the loss of a spiritual core and myths of the 'tribe', which creates an inner void and anxiety. The loss is appeased by compensation: materialism, self-absorption, obsession, compulsion, addiction,  and any sort of "-holism', whatever fills up that void. When reading chapter 9, which deals with this matter, I thought of how the collapse of the Dream Culture among Aboriginal Australians has led the last two generations to being lost, angry, raging, and to consuming much into alcohol and drugs so as to numb their lack of spiritual void and the guidance of the elders.
>  The lost of our connection with our soul.

THE MAJOR TAKINGS FROM THE BOOK TO ME

>> One of the major takings of the book is a clear idea of what complexes are and how they work in our psyche, and how they direct our behaviour. Most importantly, how much power have over us, how much inner energy they summon, and how difficult is to loose them up, because beating them is out of the question. This is a bit terrifying,  especially if you are aware of your own complexes and want to beat them.

.>> The second major taking is how dreams and feelings are relevant for our inner world and psyche. Dreams speak in a symbolic language to tell us what our soul grievances and hopes are. They don't rise from the ego, nor have an ego agenda, so they bring the unconscious to the conscious better than anything else. They are a window to your soul, you have just to poke you nose in to see. In the same way our feelings, the way we feel, are expressions of the psyche and the soul and not of the ego, so we should pay more attention to them.

>>  We need to live more consciously and more thoughtfully. We need to bring the unconscious to our conscious as if our life depended on it because, in a way, it does.

>> We need to be faithful to our core and authentic self.  Betraying our soul is the worst betrayal one will ever suffer. This demands paying less attention to what society and other people expect from us, and doing and being more what our soul is and longs for. This demands learning what you truly want and living according to it. We all fear to change, to grow, to be lonely, to get the disapproval of others, to be weird, not to fit, but that cannot be a deterrent to be who we truly are. Fear is normal, living in fear is not.

>>  There is a need for grace and forgiveness with others and ourselves. Let's accept our humanity and imperfection.  The need to trust even when our trust has been abused. Easier said than done!

>> We need to choose life over victimhood. "It is always easier to blame the other than recognize at how many stages of the process we betrayed ourselves, sustained denial, and perpetuated what was already outlived. Betraying our own souls has been with us so long that we often forget we have a soul and that it is asking to be served even more urgently than our dependencies and our infantilities." Most difficult!


>> Let's individuate! Becoming a person is actually a very difficult project. (Loc. 2598-2599), just worth the effort.

SOME CRITICISM

Hauntings is a wonderful book that has touched me deeply, bit it lacks something very important to me -- practicality. In that regard, I love Robert A. Johnson's books, which aren't as soulful, but more tool-full. Hollis advises us to bring our ghosts to our conscious life, to pay attention to our dreams and feelings, to be faithful and true to ourselves, to face the pain and adversity with some sort of stoicism by going through the pain instead of numbing it or ignoring it. Yet, how we all mortals do that without the assistance of a psychoanalyst?

A WISH

I found a ghost missing from the list. Well, I'm not sure if it is ghost properly speaking but a ghost of mine definitely -- the ghost of poverty. Not being able to have ends meet. I think individuation is just a wonderful thing, and will appeal to some individuals no matter their gender, age and social status, but to individuate we have first to have our belly full and some sort of economical surplus. Or perhaps not. It is definitely always a ghost for me perhaps because I was very poor for a long time and poverty and having nothing is always around the corner, even when I have a bit of money at hand. I would have loved Hollis, who knows what poverty is, to perhaps include it in his list and make some reflections about it. 

ON HOLLIS' WRITING

Hollis is an erudite, well-versed in English and World literature, Philosophy and Theology. He integrates in his books quotes from American and European authors. To me, they are so illustrative and so to the point of what Hollis is writing, that I didn't find them invasive most of the time. On the contrary, I found them illuminating of how artists are so in tune with the human soul and what what life is, and how  they can dig as deep as a psychoanalyst does. 

If you watch some of Hollis's videos online you will see that he is quite a direct speaker, very approachable and easy to understand. However, his writing is quite different, I think simply because he loves writing and does so in a very literary formal way. To me, that is simply wonderful. It is also challenging because he uses a rich English vocabulary that has quite pronounced Latin and German nuances. The way I see it is that his writing allows me to improve my English, not a flaw. I admire when authors do not betray themselves even when pushed by editors to downgrade their writing for the red-necks and bogans of the world, with all my respect. I think those same readers can grab a dictionary and improve their vocabulary. Yet, it sounds at times that those people consider that offensive! This is utterly shocking to me. I also find shocking readers commenting on Hollis' intention of proving how clever he is, which I think it is a clear projection of their inferiority complex because, to be realistic, they don't know this man at all!

Having said that, although I like Holli's style and choice of phrasing and vocabulary, I thought that sometimes he goes a bit too far using words that are archaic, rare or specialised. Not that there are many of those, but I think they aren't needed. E.g. 'anfractuosities.', in medias res' and some others.

Also,  at times there were too many quotes and they aren't always necessary. Here an approximate list of the authors quoted in the book: Robert Frost, Paul Eluard, Rilke, Longfellow, W. H. Auden, Sharon Olds, Delmore Schwartz, James Tate, Josef Breuer, Freud, Jung, Brothers Grimm, Christopher Marlowe, Milton, Nietzsche, Sartre, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Pascal, Emily Dickinson, Kant, Copernicus, Francis Bacon, B, Scott Momaday, St Augustine, Matthew Arnold, Chritopher Fry, Alicia Ostriker, Walt Whitman, Paul Tillich, Kierkegaard, Aldo Carotenuto, Horace Walpole, Thomas Wolfe, Dabuek Wakoski, Adam Zagajewski, Paul Hoover, Homer, Gunnar Ekelof, Joyce, Shakespeare, Yeats, Ibsen, Mann, Hesse, Machado, Wittgenstein, and Dante!

The book is a bit repetitive and loopy at times, and unnecessarily so, and I found the use of rhetorical questions excessive in number, as the same could have been said straight forward in  non-interrogative form without losing any emphasis. In other cases, the rhetoric works great, but not always.

MIND

If you are a reader looking for a simple book to read, this might not be for you. It is written in  a very formal literary way, it is very deep, and it is very Jungian.  So this is not pop-psychology nor a self-help book.

RENDERING FOR KINDLE

The book has no pages, just the usual locations, but there are some cross references (unlinked) in the book that refer to specific page numbers not locations. That shouldn't be so in an e-book. I noticed:
> Location 1037 (p. 49), but the book has no pages on Kindle.
> Location 1851, (p. 000) What What What?!

This is a 28-page e-zine, with a collection of short stories or images that can also be found in Yumi Sakigawa's website on Tumblr. Some of the stories are drawn in colour and others in B&W, and they are mostly motivational and New Age, with some "how-to" regarding anxiety, negative people, consciousness and so on. 

The drawing style is naive and young, intuitive more than artistic, but very charming. There is a mix of text and doodling as well, like the book's cover for example. 

All of the stories have a pearl of wisdom in them, and I think they would make a nice block desk calendar if more were added. 

Perhaps because a person I know has been dumping their negativity on me lately, the advice on how to deal with negative people in the e-zine seemed especially relevant. I also liked the whimsical advice on how to get out of a  dry creative spell.

The Rendering for Kindle is outdated. As this work has just 28 pages, it is not really an issue, but not the latest rendering for graphic books I get from other graphic books.

Miss Don't Touch Me is a four-part   full-colour noire graphic novel first published in France by Hubert and Kerascoet. The novel, is made of four chapters, the first two (The Virgin of the Bordello & Blood in the Hands) narrate a murder story, and the last two (Prince Charming & Until Death Do us Part) are a follow-up and development of the main character.

 Miss Don't Touch Me is set in Paris in the 1930s. The city is in turmoil because the wrongdoings of a serial killer called The Butcher of the Dances, who has a liking for young liberal women. Blanche, a prudish maid, lives with her sister Agatha in an old abandoned penthouse; Blanche witnesses a murder through a peep-hole in the wall and tells her sister that it is  the Butcher's work. Agatha is killed and Blanche tries to convince everybody that The Butcher was the murderer; however, her sister's death is considered a suicide and the investigation closed. Blanche loses her job. With no home to go, she does the unthinkable, she joins The Pompadour, a posh and reputed brothel, where the last victim worked, to try to investigate who the last girl was and to unveil the Butcher's identity. The second part of the story is devoted to Blanche's personal and work life, still working at The Pompadour, and her relationship with the charming, wealthy but elusive  Antoine.
Miss Don't Touch Me is, in a way, a very musical piece but with the music in mute. I see a clear relationship between  the story, settings,  tone and type of story and two theatrical musical genres that were very popular in the 1930s, the vaudeville  and the operetta or comic opera, especially Offenbach's works. Thus, the novel has a mix of burlesque, comic stage piece, social satire with a common link, in this case the character of Blanche. This could have been a terror novel and Blanche a depressed overly dramatic character, but the story is told in a light-hearted way, sprinkled with light humour, grotesque and erotic elements, still keeping a strong social satire.  

One of the downsides might be the different tone, mood and tempo in the two different parts of the novel,  as we go from the mystery and the murder to the exploration of Blanche's character. Personally, I liked both parts and I thought they made sense together and one comes to understand who Blanche really is and what she really wants in life. To be perfectly honest, this second story could have been presented at the beginning of the book with some modifications and the murder story presented afterwards and the story would have still made sense. 

The main downside to me is the ending. Truth be told, it has artistic and narrative integrity. Although I found it a bit vague and abrupt, and totally unfair, it makes sense taking into account the nature of the main characters and the era where they lived.   

Hubert and Kerascoët make a great artistic combo., They understand each other and create amazing colourful elaborated pieces of art that are very thought-provoking, stories pregnant with meaning, but presented in fun light-hearted entertaining way. 

Hubert, is a master at creating characters. They are complex, utterly charming and interesting, but also deceiving and full of flaws;  they  surprise the reader every time. In that regard, all the characters in Miss Don't Touch Me aren't what they seem to be at first sight, not even Blanche. Moreover, there is a clear digging into the individuality of each character, and the secondary characters are not presented as story-fillers or accessories, they are fully-constructed individuals who have a purpose in the narration. 
Hubert is also the colourist of the book. He has a great knowledge of lighting and how colour work and use them with naturalistic but cinematic precision. His trademark is flamboyant intense vibrant colouring and toned up pastels. So the novel doesn't have a specific or overall dominating hue, but the requirements of the narration dictate the colour. He does similarly in his graphic novel Beauty. 

The lettering by Ortho (an American lettering studio that also did the lettering for Beauty) is classic. This is a graphic novel that is as verbal as it is graphic, so there is quite a of text, but it is cosily located in rectangular balloons and economic captions lines. The lettering is appropriate and not invasive, but not specially expressive either, except for some of the balloons turned into spiky ones when the characters are shouting. And there are very few kapows as the drawing is particularly expressive.

Overall, Miss Don't Touch Me is a great entertaining and satiric novel that goes beyond the murder mystery and digs into social conventions and double morals  in  society and shows how the hunger for life plays a role in the survival of people who have had  to endure much in life but never present themselves as victims.

 

WARNING
The novel has explicit sex scenes, nudity and graphic violence. Not for children! Although by looking at the book's cover you might have guessed so :).

NOTES
> First published in French between 2007-2009.

> First published in English in 2008 and all the volumes collected in 2014.

I bought this title recently because I need a definitive guide to style for work. I would have loved this being on Kindle, but it is not, so I made the effort and ordered this manual from the Book Depository.

> Good binding, so the book is flexible and can be fully opened without the binding resenting it. 
> The dictionary is helpful at times and has solved some of my doubts.
> The style manual is helpful at times and has solved some of my doubts.

Huge No-nos

Main No-Nos

The Contents of this Manual

1/ THE NEW HART'S RULES MANUAL (NHR onwards)

2/ NEW OXFORD DICTIONARY FOR WRITERS AND EDITORS

3/ APPENDIXES

> Proofreading marks. Useful.  Not in the COD
> Glossary of printing and publishing terms. Useful. Not in the COD. 
> Primer Ministers of UK and USA. The COD has the same listing bit it also includes the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia!
> Members of the European Union. Not in the COD. Free in the Wikipedia. The UK brexit it!  
> Greek Alphabet. Also in the COD.
> Diacritics, accents, and special sorts. Not in the COD. OK.
> Mathematical symbols. OK. Not in the COD.
> SI Units.  Included in the COD.
> Metric Prefixes. Available in the COD. 
> Chemical elements. Also in the COD.

4/ GENERAL INDEX

In Short

Plot from the Editor
 "When the repulsively ugly Coddie unintentionally saves a fairy from a spell, she does not understand the poisonous nature of the wish granted her by the fairy. The village folk no longer see her as repulsive and stinking of fish—they now perceive her as magnetically beautiful—which does not help her in her village. A young local lord saves her, but it soon becomes apparent that Coddie’s destiny may be far greater than anyone ever imagined."

Recipe for a Hubert Kerascoet graphic casserole for grown-ups

BASIC INGREDIENTS

>>> A piece of new Old-style fable.
>>> A small piece of a modern strong moral lesson.
>>> A children-books graphic style verjus. 
>>> A bunch of spices. Please include the following:
~~ A pinch of strong coloured darkness.
~~ A tablespoon of sex.
~~ A teaspoon of nudity
~~ A handful of war and fights.
~~ Outrageously good but smoky heroes.
~~ Outrageously bad but funny disgusting villains.
~~ A sachet of naivety.
~~ A sachet of human stupidity.
~~ A sachet of wisdom.
 ~~ A pinch of good common sense.
>>> Cooking oils
~~ A tablespoon of love-yourself oil.
~~ A tablespoon of personal-epiphany  oil.
>>> Full-colour colouring.
>>> Seasoning to your liking:
~~ Clear lettering.
~~ Flamboyant vignettes.

MARINADE

Put your fable to marinate in a container, together with the moral lesson and verjus. Stir through. Add now half a litre of adventure, half of litre of children-book graphics and the bunch of spices. Stir the fable trough, and let it stay overnight so the flavours get through.

PREPARATION

Take the marinated fable out of the fridge in the morning, put everything in an earthy casserole, add the two types of oil and the colouring. Now is the time to add, raw, the different sorts of  beautiful stuff. The recipe recommends those from the brand Food for Thought:
}~Mind what you wish for.
}~Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
}~Beauty ideals vary from culture to culture. 
}~Beauty is in the inside.
}~Kingdoms were lost because of a woman's beauty.
}~Unless you don't see yourself beautiful you won't believe you are. 
}~ Beauty is not what you wear is what you are.
}~Beauty halo, also called halo effect.
}~ What you see in the mirror and what other people see are different things.
}~Only brutes put beauty at the top of women's qualities.

Let the whole casserole simmer slowly for a few hours and until Beauty is ready. Before retiring from the stove, increase the heat for five minutes  more.

Season. 

Voilà, the Hubert Kerascoet casserole for grown-ups is ready. What a tasty gorgeously presented plate of food for thought! 

Enjoy!

TYPO IN THE SAUCE!
"Beauty, you will be my Queen, and nothing can SEPERATE us."

THE PLOT
Elijah is a highly-reputed veteran officer of the Philosophical Police in the galactic Union. His job is solving conflicts by focusing on discovering  the core problem to bring conflict to a halt. Life in the Union is egalitarian. People don't have to die unless they want, when and how they want.  Their bodies can be  cloned and merged at will, each clone or echo will share common memories and create new ones. When a merging occurs, only the primary  body survives and all the memories are merged into one, but the oldest ones are destroyed in the process. The Union has appointed Elijah as mediator in the conflict between the Ganedans and the Alephs, two civilisations that are on the brink of war for something that happened centuries ago. At the same time, Elijah's personal life is leading him to question whether he wants to live beyond his current body's life span and what matters to him most in life. 

THE STORY AND MAIN THEMES
I love abstract books, philosophical quests, science fiction and stories that explore new territories in the world of graphic novels. Last Days of an Immortal does so perfectly. The novel really gets under your skin, in a  very subtle but pervasive way, perhaps not the first time you read it, perhaps the second; that was my case. The world depicted and the story are intriguing, thought-provoking and pose readers awesome existential questions. The story, most importantly, has a heart, a gaseous-like sentimentality that is not dramatic or overly out there. I found the concept of echoing really ingenious, like an organic positive split-personality disorder. I loved some of the humour in the novel, like when Elijah sleeps with one of his echoes. He and his self. 

Vehlman's Last Days of an Immortal is an almost-happy Utopia. A world that is multi-racial and multi-ethnic. An egalitarian society where gender differences are non-existent, where men and women pair with people of both sexes, because the body doesn't matter. An age when women are strong, intelligent and feminine in different ways and formats. A time where age and death do not matter per se. A world where the way you look or what you wear is not relevant; you can dress or go naked, as you wish. A space where people from different cultures live together even though they not always understand each other. A society in which conflict is managed in a way that people don't hurt each other on purpose. In short, a society where judgement is minimal and conflict is analysed and tackled through philosophical reasoning. 

To me, the most interesting questions are always those embedded in the story, those never said but whispered, those hidden in the story itself for the reader to discover and reveal. Some of the ones that came to me are the following:

~*~ What does Philosophy serve for in our world? Is Philosophy an empty babble?   Philosophy is presented as something practical, usable, a successful tool to 'get' the world and the other, a door to approaching alterity. Philosophers aren't verbose people, are very sensitive tuned people who solve real problems and conflicts. That is utterly cool to me. I love the way the story shows that Philosophy is not empty rhetoric but a way of approaching reality and other sentient beings.There is an episode in the novel that shows this perfectly. Elijah is confronted by a guy in the spaceport by an annoying guy that tells him what philosophers do this and that, mocks the way they talk, but Elijah replies to him:

"You're confusing rhetoric and philosophy" (pp. 101). 

~*~  What is the key to interpersonal communication? Is it possible to really understand the other, the "alien"?

 To be perfectly frank, humanoid and non-humanoid races are equally hard to understand. -- What do affect us, however, are the expectations we bring to the encounter. -- Part of us imagines contact will go more smoothly with aliens who look like us. In the end, our disappointed expectations are to blame for making it seem more difficult. (p. 6) 

~*~ Can we trust our eyes without questioning ourselves about what we have just seen?

The story stays, be aware that what you see is not a perceptive projection. You cannot fully trust your senses or your reasoning without using meta-consciousness or double questioning yourself. 

 "You just don't ask yourself the same questions when you see things and when you hear about them, is all. You take in things differently." (p. 46) "We think the same things, to varying degrees. We suffer from the same worry -- And this has formed a knot in our minds. It keeps us from making any progress on the case" (p. 130)

~*~ Can we judge other cultures without knowing their basic codes and how they approach reality? 

I thought the way Elija's planet works is just awesome to understand how people should approach refugees and immigrants when they are from other cultures and have  different languages and social and interpersonal codes. Also, which level of understanding we hope from there, and which problems may arise out of just simply cultural misunderstanding. The whole episode with G'Ohi shows just that.

"We knew their way of life was filed by a kind of ritual theatre, but I didn't realise the degree of subtlety available. -- Everything's a game for them. Everything is theatre, down to the last detail. -- At various key moments in their life cycles , Ganedans are randomly issued librettos describing the character they must play: job, social status, sexuality, language, etc. --Upon arriving, I myself received an offworlder's libretto indicating the limits of what I could say or do." (p. 47)

The story is a ode to being understanding, to getting to know the others by getting to understand their cultures, their codes, their feelings and the motives behind their behaviour, and to solve any conflict by getting to understand if there is a conflict at all.

The story is a swan chant to the body as receptacle of the soul not as an empty vessel that can be discarded; in that regard, the sex scenes aren't there for the sake of provoking; there is a direct connection between Elijah's feelings and his lovemaking in his old body instead of using a younger more attractive one.

The story is a love song to the value of close friendship and love itself, which is what matters the most in the end. If we erase those memories we cherish, those that made us better people and gave us inner joy, are we really alive?

"You will only lose a few of your oldest memories. Isn't that the fate of all immortals, in the end-to forget our past?"  (p. 32)

My main criticism to the novel is what I experienced the first time I read it -- it is a bit cold, it feels a bit cerebral and not emotional enough. So it is not everybody's cup of tea. However, there is heart in the novel, is just that Elijah's feelings and sensitivity aren't overly verbalised or dramatic, just hinted and developed throughout the story in a very subtle but distinct way.  

THE ARTWORK

De Bonneval's artwork in the book is very elegant and minimalist, with very open spaces and landscapes, and minimal human figures, and drawn in in a very soft black and white, which becomes even softer when depicting the vanishing of an echo or when narrating episodes of the past. There are some beautifully creative and elaborate countryside landscapes, some of them naturalist and others creative. Some extra fleur is added when depicting the Ganedians and the Alephs, human gatherings and the transportation hub.

The drawing  style and imagery reminded me of some futuristic comics of the 1970s and 1980s mostly because the human figure seems to be surrounded by vast open spaces in which humans look diminute beings.

Regarding the design, some decorative arts and architecture of the 1960s-1970s came to mind: Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture and the glassy interiors of the former, Miró's mobile sculptures, the avant-garde opera costumes designed for The Ballets Russes by several famous artists in the early 20th century, and several interior designs, especially chairs, very typical of the 1960s-1970s interior design.

Overall the drawing has inner coherence and, although it feels familiar, it doesn't remind me of anything that is not this novel. The drawing feels expansive at times, when Nature and the landscape dominates, but it is quite constricted and minimal others, usually in one-to-one conversations, merely because the text is as important as the artwork and there is a space constriction in some vignettes.

I love the lettering used in the book because it is not futuristic, it is a handwritten-alike, personal and human writing that contrasts with the very cold lab-ish interiors and ways of living in Elijah's world. 

RENDERING FOR KINDLE

I was wondering why this ebook was so big  in size, the novel being quite short and in BW. Well, that was until used the ebook and I realised that double tapping allows readers to individuate vertical vignettes to full-screen size, which is awesome. Besides, browsing page by page is great, as the sizing of each page allows readers to pinch in an out as much as you want without losing quality of image. My only complaint is that it is not possible to add a note.

WARNING

There is full explicit sex scenes in the book, so not a book for children.

I have this app installed in all my gadgets. I use it on a daily basis and I have done so for many years. I rarely read on paper nowadays, and part of the reason is because how comfortable and enjoyable the reading experience is in Kindle. The fact that the app is free is nothing I take for granted. The Kindle App is an awesome app, but not perfect.

Here a wrap up of my experience using Kindle.

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THINGS

 <> Kindle allows you to read comfortably by letting you adjust the type of font, size of the font, colour of the background, interlinear space and margin space in your reading area.
<> The side bar is very useful to move throughout the book, between books and to access and manage your notes and highlights. You can even edit those in a batches to create a personalised notebook with them.
<> Variety of background colours: white, sepia, green (this is the last addition and quite enjoyable), and black (my least favourite).

<> Normal books download really fast. Graphic books a bit slower but quite fast as well. Of course the speed of your data connection matters, but it is not just that. 

<> All your books are safely stored in the Amazon's cloud, for which you will never lose them. You can erase them from your device if you wish, something I do so as not to bulk the memory of my tablet and phones, or erase them from a place and not for other.

<> The app is fully synchronisable and you can leave a book in page 10 in a gadget, reopen it in another gadget, and the app will tell the last page in the book you were reading and if you want to go there or not.Synchronisation also affects your highlighted text.

<> Many of the issues in the past affecting  graphic and illustrated books, have been solved, especially since Amazon acquired Comixology, as the reading of comics was and is better in the latter because they focus just on comics. At present, there is little difference regarding the quality of the reading experience in Comixology, and Kindle and you can decide whether reading on one or the other depending the book you have purchased. If the editors bother to prepare them accordingly, you will have a fantastic experience, moving around the pages, moving from vignette to vignette, zooming in and out and feeling that you have the comic book in your hands.
<> If you wish, you can access the Kindle shop from your Kindle app, browse books, add them to your lists and purchase them using your preferred settings. 

SUGGESTIONS TO  IMPROVE THE APP,

+ Launch updates when they are ready and trouble free. If Amazon needs testers, search for them and use them before the general public downloads any update.

+ Add a light green colour highlighter. At the moment most of the highlights are warm colours except for blue. I don't like the orange highlighter as it looks ugly in all backgrounds.

+ Add a few more reading fonts to enhance customisation and allow a more enjoyable reading.
+  Allow the use of fonts that are scalable in size, so you can go from size 1 to 2 in several steps is you want, not in just one jump. 

 + Add a light grey reading background and make the black background perhaps a dark grey. The latter works better than black as it offers high contrast for poor-sighted people but it is much enjoyable for reading.

+ Add a visual effect for page-passing (like Google's reader) as this makes the reading more natural and real. That improvement has been due for years. 

+ Fix a dysfunction, or perhaps a bug, that turns some books that have their text fully justified into non-justified when you increase the font size.
+ When cutting and pasting bits of a given book, allow customers to choose whether pasting them with the bibliographic reference in full, as it happens now, or perhaps a short version of it. I use the cut and paste for personal reasons at times, and others for quoting or keeping some work material together, so I don't always need the bibliographic reference pasted in full every single time I copy a bit of text. 

+ Add the customer's list/s to the recommended readings in the home screen area. At the moment, we get the suggestions made by Amazon on its own accord, i.e. following an algorithm. In my case I have never purchased any of the book suggested, so it is a waste of your time and my space, Mr Algorithm. If the items in my book lists were displayed there, I would buy them more often.
+ The developers keep updating the app all the time, which is intrinsically good. I see major updates in Kindle and how they have improved my reading experience and the use and versatility of the app. However, I don't find acceptable the frequency of the updates and the fact that customers are the lab rats to test them. Most developers do the same, to be fair, but the fact that everybody is doing it, shouldn't be an excuse to keep doing it.
+ I would work on a way to compressing the graphic book files still offering great quality of image and detailed zooming. At present, most comics are between 100-200 MB, some of them reaching the 500. OK if you have unlimited Internet, if you use mobile Internet or data-capped Internet, that is a lot of money you are paying for downloading a graphic book. 
 + The search tool is not the best search too around, let me tell you. I would invest some effort in improving it.

OBVIOUS, BUT IT NEEDS TO BE SAID

This is an app developed by a merchant called Amazon to sell us books in its own format, called Kindle books, which Amazon sells to you.  Therefore, you cannot read, oh surprise! surprise?, Kobo books, Pub books, PDF books, documents and or any other book that is not in Kindle format. Actually, you can read PDF and doc. documents, but Kindle is not designed for that and handles them badly. You can still find online tools to convert any of those books into Kindle and use them in your Kindle. You can also use other apps to turn articles in the Wikipedia and read them in Kindle. Yet, doing the opposite is impossible or almost. It used to be possible in the past, but the results were pathetic.  

COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Some books are not really ready for Kindle; therefore, depending on the case, you cannot use the final index, cannot see some of the images properly, or the notes are a bit messed up. Of course, this is not the developers' fault, but it affects my Kindle experience. Amazon should be working to let editors know that their books won't be accepted into Kindle unless properly prepared. Is that or charging Kindle customers less money for ebooks.

MY ADVICE TO CUSTOMERS

Get the app and try it. However, do not update the app frequently unless it is malfunctioning and you see that the new releases have good reviews in Amazon and Google Play. It will save you time, data, and a headache at times.

"I wanted to write about life, Jorge, and look at me now... All I write about is death.
Ahh, but you know all too welll that death is a part of life my friend.
You're right.. death is a part of life.
Yes
and so is family. " (p. 22-23)

Daytripper offers an harmonious symbiosis of graphic art, an interesting narrative and engaging story with enough surprises and elements of reflection to make it a winner. Two Brazilian artists are the creators of this beauty, twin brothers Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba.

Daytripper is set in Brazil and tells the story of Brás de Oliva Domingos' life. He is a Brazilian journalist, working in the Obituaries section of a newspaper, an aspiring writer, son of the famous writer, and a man who wants to live life to the fullest. The novel presents his life in shuffled chapters that are not always chronological and some of them also have flashbacks to his past.. The chapters and ages are important events and life-changing experiences in Bras' life:

There is a sort of tendency among reviewers to call Magic Realism to anything produced in Latin-America where the narrative is not straightforward, with oneiric and surreal elements are present. I won't lecture anybody on what Magic Realism is. You can easily get that by reading a classic novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude and learn it in the best way possible. However, even the entry in Wikipedia gives a good overview about the genre and summarises the differences between Magic Realism and other genres like surrealism, fantasy and imaginary realism among others I think it is great to keep it in mind to approach and better to understand this novel. I mention all of this because this Magic Realism is used in many reviews to explain why Bras dies in each chapter. In reality, if you re-read the book or just pay attention to the details the first time you read it things are not what they look like.  

1/ Once you finish the book, look at the text boxes' shape and lettering. Which text boxes in the book match those at the very end?
2/ Who do you think wrote the obituaries?
3/ Who is writing the book and seating in front of a typewriter?
4/ After reading the chapter The Dream, and learning what is happening to  Bras, ask yourself what in the book is similar to that chapter?

3/ At the end of each chapter ask yourself, if the death of Bras wasn't real, which events or circumstances  would make Bras, or any other person, "die"?

If you are lazy, my answers are at the bottom of this review.
**** end of spoilers****

***

The short introduction by Craig Thompson, the author of Blankets, is very cute and cool!

Although I enjoyed the novel enormously, I found that the gap between Bras' 40s and 70s is a bit too wide and empty of content that the novel is a bit unbalanced. I would have loved seeing Bras and his family getting progressively older, and reshuffling the chapters a bit more to add a few more layers and produce a rounder  story. Also, we are presented with bourgeois characters, with predictable lives, who might not thrill all readers.

 ***

 ****get spoiled :)****
Here are my answers
Bras says nearly the end of the book: "My name is Bras de Oliva Domingos. This is the story of my life." The typography used and the text boxes used in these pages are the same as those we see at the end of each chapter when Bras dies, so it is not just Brass writing the whole book of his life, he is the one writing the obituaries of those supposed deaths. In the chapter The Dream we are told .that he has been diagnosed with brain tumours, which are affecting the way his awakened and oniric life work, they seem to mix past and present, and overlapping things. If you see the book as a whole this is just the structure of the book, an overlapping of moments in Bras' life in which things that seem magic or fantastic are just a creation of his sick mind but most of them aren't so. I don't think Bras dies in each chapter at all. He dies or is killed inside, or rather, a part of him dies, which part?: