Crenshaw's Books & Decks

I travelled to Bhutan just after the release of this guide. Lucky me! This being so, all the practical information and advice was fresh and reliable, up to date, which is what any person purchasing a travel guide wants.

I found this travel guide very useful and practical, clearly written, well researched, well structured and nicely illustrated. Although most people travel to Bhutan in small-group locally-organised tours, it is possible to visit the country independently -a legal permit is necessary and a previous lengthy detailed application is needed- or semi-dependently by telling the local travel agent the places you want to go and visit and stay to make your own trip. This being the case, I consider the guide a good tool for all sort of travellers, not just the majority using guided tours.

Bhutan History is complex, and historical facts, myth and religion mix in ways that are difficult to separate at times. The authors make a terrific job at condensing and distilling it for the foreign reader in ways that are understandable and entertaining, and surprisingly unbiased at times (read for example the pages devoted to English interventionism).

I also loved the approach to Buthanese Buddhist customs and ways of living, and all the info about Buddhism in Bhutan (Mahayana Buddhism is so complicated!) which are very important to put into practice to show respect and get respect back from the locals, and to understand what is going on in a country that breathes Buddhism. I also found the book very good to find out on matters that some of the guides found embarrassing or inappropriate to comment upon or reply to because they relate to "odd" practices or monks' behaviour, etc., so the guide will tell you what some local guides won't.

The Kindle edition is truly useful, easy to carry around, with linked cross-references that make the book easy to move back and forth, clearly indexed, survivor-kit links, and everything so well structured that using the book is very easy. My only complain is about the formatting of the book using left justification instead of full justification of the text (very early 20th century!), which makes the book look amateurish and unpolished.

The selection of photographs and illustrations is very good, as you can expect from any Lonely Planet guide.

I had many expectations about this book after learning that the movie based on it had won the Palm D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. As  usually happens, high expectations aren't always matched.

"Le bleu est une couleur chaude" (Blue is a Warm Colour, funnily translated as Blue is the Warmest Colour) is the first major work by French graphic artist Julie Maroh. The book narrates the sexual awakening of Clementine, her coming to terms with being a lesbian, and her relationship with Emma. This is a posthumus story, as the book starts from the ending with a flashback narration of the love story as told by Clementine herself in her blue diary.

The artwork is wonderful. The use of colour is just another character in the story, if that can be said, because it gives the book its melancholic mood. Sepia tones are used in the flashback, only highlighted by Clementine's blue diary and Emma's haircut.  The story told in the present is painted in a mix of pastel blues, greens and ochres. Maroh has a great eye for detail and her depiction of the city's streets, parks and skyline, as well as the beach scenes, are truly beautiful.  She uses a mix of watercolour, pencil and mixed media to create precious images. 

I found the narrative simple, realistic and believable, but also a bit over-melodramatic at times. I think the story reflects well the hurdles that gay people find when they discover they are gay, first, and when they come out of the closet, then, having to deal with their not-always-accepting friends and families. I think the book also succeeds at depicting gay people as individuals, not as bunch of people who act or think the same, or who reacts to their own sexuality in the same way. As the character says:

 "For Emma, her sexuality is something that draws her to others, a social end political thing. For me, it's the most intimate thing there is". p. 131.

I have gay friends, and all of them fall on Clem's side. On the other hand, the book is unbalanced, because most of the story focuses in Cleme's teens years, while her adult life with Emma is barely sketched. This being the case, the ending feels hurried as we don't know why Clementine is feeling alienated from Emma, what is going on in her head for her to be deluded and act the way she acts.  

The book has explicit sex scenes.

Queen's Day was released in 1999, published after being listed in the September selection of the Xeric Foundation's comic awards. I have read it in Kindle format, as it has been released in electronic format this year by Alternative Comics.

This is more a booklet than a book, with just 69 pages. It contains three separate unconnected stories, some of Corman's early works, and as such they have to be appreciated. 

The stories are  drawn in a glorious black and white, with a predominance of a bright black and greys over white. The style is very expressionist (the cover really doesn't reflect the style of the comic), with angular characters. The texts are reduced to a minimum.

In "The Baba Yaga". An old Russian "witch" rescues a little girl that has fallen asleep in a freezing cold river. In "The Myth of Never Being Sick a Day in Your Life", a young lady visits her grandma and the mountain area where her brother lost her life. In  "Koninginnendag", a girl living in Holland is cheered up by a friend.
Despite the sobriety and brevity of the whole, the stories are engaging. There is something non-explicit that gives them a melancholic mysterious tone and blends them together, especially the first two. The elements that I personally see commonly reflected in all them are:
> gloominess.
> The forest, the mountain, and the power of Nature.
>  Ascension.
>  Support and care.

If you love rare non-mainstream comics, this is one of those. 

I have to say that this book has brought more laugh to my life that anything or anybody else this year. Laughing out loud continuously while reading anything is a gift that one has to appreciate for its rarity.

God is not Disappointed in You summarises and condensates all the texts amd books contained in the Bible in 220 pages, writing the story in a contemporary "dude-whats-up?" sort of language.

Russell has an amazing wit, a a daring sense of irreverence, a profane humour, and a great insight into the incongruence of the historical figures and events the Bible presents us with. It reminds me, in a way, of the way Monty Python approached Biblical facts in their unforgettable film "The Life of Brian". However, Russell does not deform or twists the stories and behaviours or laws contained in the Bible no matter how nonsensical or farcical they might appear. We have to remind ourselves that these stories were written and compiled thousands of years ago. In the introduction, Russell says:

"It is not my intention to mock the Bible with this book, nor to endorse it, but merely to present it on its own terms in a way that is accessible and which relays the same sense of fascination I had when I truly discovered the Bible for the first time. If you want to reject the Bible as ancient superstition or digest it as the holy word of God, that’s up to you. I just thought you might like to know what’s actually in the hot dog."

Russell's approach to the Bible is not historical or contextual, but I would have been bored to death if he had tried to do that. That is not his job or intention. "God is Disappointed..." is not an exegesis of the Bible, just a funny book on the Bible's texts.

You might think that reading anything Biblical is too serious, uninteresting, or religious. You might adduce that you aren't a believer, or a Christian. It doesn't matter. Russell's book is almost better than the original, forgive my enthusiasm. The  book will especially appeal to agnostics, atheists and lax Christians and Jews with a sense of humour. I guarantee, that you will still find yourself laughing out loud. To those who are practising believers, you might be irritated by the tone of some of the language used, but you won't find anything you haven't heard before in more dramatic formal terms if you go to Mass every Sunday and listen (i.e. with full attention) to the readings.


This not a book for everybody, though, because it touches on divine matters, and that is always a sensitive pruritus to scratch. Zealots, bigots, fundamentalists and any other -ish people who take religion to the letter might be angry, upset and even deprecatory. Knowing that, please dear bigot don't make a ziggurat of an issue about the authors' enterprise if you decide to go ahead and read it. You've been warned. You are very welcome.   

The books that I found funnier and more enjoyable were, in the Old Testament, the Books of Nehemiah and Esther and the Songs of Songs; I also loved the Book of Ecclesiastes because Russell really likes it (how not to?) and condensates it quite well and with less mock than the rest. In the New Testament, I thought all the Gospels were lovely, but the wittiest to me was the Gospel of Luke.
Just three samples for your to taste, they will give you an indication if you can stomach the book or not:

 <Deuteronomy> If you’re a soldier and you have a wet dream, you’ve got to leave camp for one whole day before you come back. Also, when you’re in camp, be sure to shit discreetly in a hole. Remember, God walks among you, and the last thing you want is for him to be stepping in your shit.

 <The 1st Book of Samuel > The whole ancient world was a bag of dicks. Even God was a bit of a dick.

<The Gospel of Mark>  Jesus rolled his eyes, and said, “People aren’t defiled half as much by what goes in their mouths as by the shit which comes out.” Then he went back to eating his sandwich. The Pharisees decided they’d had just about enough of this smartass.

I was a bit disappointed with Wheeler's illustrations. I like his drawing technique and character creation, and his illustrations are funny, some of them matching Russell's inspiration perfectly. However, many of the illustrations are just OK, and are overshadowed by Russell's tsunami-like wit. The cover of the book is fantastic, very simple, stylish and expressive.

The book is for adults as it contains swearing words, obscenity, profanity, sex references and other godly but sinful events happened thousands of years ago. Blame it on History; Russell is just making you laugh.

The adjective that most describe the book is hilarious. It made it to my top five of the year, and the happy-o-meter marked very high in the Treschaud's Scale of hilariousness.

 

This is the first book by Brown I read, and the first book in the "Girlfriends Trilogy". 

Clumsy is a glimpsed window to Brown's personal love life and her long-distance relationship with Theresa.  A memoir structured in short episodes of his daily life that tell us about meeting, dating and falling in love with Theresa, but also the day to day elements that make a relationship grow despite how mundane: from hugging, to farting, sex tons of sex, condoms, insecurities, discussions, moments of indescribable happiness and others of tension. Life as you live it when you relate to somebody. A depiction of intimacy in its beauty and rawness.

Brown is good at telling a story with honesty and in a way that appeals to the reader disregarding the gender. Being a woman, I especially appreciate how Brown tells his love story, so very different from any woman's way of telling it and living it. I am sure that if Theresa had written or drawn her version, the tone of the story, the elements and moments selected would have been very different. The book, for obvious reasons, is appealing to men, especially those who, like Brown, are a bit clumsy, weird, sensitive and a bit needy, the post-modern male if you want.

However, what makes the book appealing is not only the approach to the memoir genre, and the way the story is built by decomposing it in micro-pieces, but also the fact that Brown puts his heart in there.  The result is a very charming naughty and tender love story.

Visually speaking, the book is drawn in a "rudimentary" sort of style. Like a comic strip in a newspaper. The pages are filled with six vignettes, drawn in a clear black and white, with lots of white space, very clean and clear, with little elements of distraction. Despite the simplicity and the lack of shadow work, the images are very well composed and framed, and Brown does a terrific job at creating complex expressive intimate images with very few strokes. I especially love his use of horizontal and vertical lines to create perspective and depth in images that, otherwise, would be flat. I love the way he draws nudity, the way he depicts body hair, and the facial expression of the characters.  All very cute.

The book is for adults, adult themes, sex, nudity and all the goodies that we want to find in comic and graphic goods. If you don't, well, back off.

I have to confess, that this book's cover is one of the most boring ugliest cover I have ever seen on any book. A major sin and put down, taking into account that the author is a graphic artist! Hellooooo. 

Tales from Outer Suburbia is perhaps the most Australian of Tan's books, and definitely very Western Australian. Tan is native from the northern suburbs of Perth WA, and the landscapes, urban furniture and fauna he depicts are just part of Perth's visual idiosyncrasy.

This book is atypical, in two ways. Firstly, Tan, usually very concise in the wording of his books and in the use of words in them, writes a lot in here, and the text is as important as the images. This is so, because this is a semi-memoir of Tan's childhood, and the stories part of his emotional memory growing up in Perth. Secondly, visually speaking, this book is eclectic in styles, because he he uses very different illustration and painting techniques and styles to accompany the different stories, which remind the reader of the ones used in his previous books. In that regard, the book is less congruent visually than his previous ones.

What is still typical of Tan is his mastery at drawing, its ability to create magic realism from the quotidian, to create visually appealing almost-touchable images, absurd meaningful scenes, and quirky funny adorable characters. I love the way he uses his images to create mock newspapers news, mock Post envelopes, mock wall-collages, how he incorporate the credits and acknowledgements in a borrowing slip library card or an envelop, his mock postage stamps, the quirky funny magical sketches that cover the inner front and back covers of the book.  

Some of his usual themes are also here, especially the concepts of foreign (how foreigners see us, how we see foreigners, what  foreign is) and of how our childhood memories never fade out in our hearts, no matter how mundane they were, because the way we lived and perceived them. 

 

The stories or chapters in the book are:
>> The Water Buffalo.
>> Eric (this is one of my favourite in drawing style and message -very similar to the Arrival- and because Eric is just the bomb!)
>> Broken Toys.
>> Undertow.
>> Grandpa's Story (Another favourite because of the narrative, and how Tan turns a real story into something really magical).
>> The other country (Because it depicts his contact with the Mediterranean culture and the magic in it. The painting is also very Mediterranean!)
>> Stick Figures (I love the visuals of this one because it depicts Perth summer landscape very well).
>> The Nameless Holiday.
>> Alert but not alarmed
>> Wake.
>> Make your Own Pet.
>> Our Expedition.
>> Night of the Turtle Rescue

To be honest, every story is wonderful.

This is a melancholic book about Tan's emotional landscapes, so it has to be read as such.

The Cat in the Hat is one of those books that little children and adults enjoy reading because it is fun, it is naughty, it is educative, and the cat in the hat is just a quirky cat! Adults can see the value of the embedded message, and kids learn that behaving and being orderly will benefit them, not just their mothers. This is a classic of world children literature, and so enjoyable that you want to buy for yourself, to remember your childhood, or to make it part of your children's childhood. Like all Dr Seuss' book, this book is shrinkingly simple in its imagery, with a very 60s pop-culture sort of colouring and style, which gives the book a sense of surrealism that makes the whole acceptable for children. 

The application format works well with Dr Seuss' books and with this one, turn it in a sort of semi-animated mini-movie. You select the way you want to read the book, by yourself, by the narrator, or you just to leave it on auto-play and the pages and voice will move at their own pace. The app automatically rotates your screen, and uses the original illustrations of the book, closing up and down on them to match the action and speeches of the characters. Background noises have been added, but they are very cute and not invasive at all; still, you can mutate them if you want. You can browse the pages on your own by using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were those of a real book.

The narrator's interpretation and reading is great. The reading comes handy if you have children and want them to read and not to watch TV, but do not have the time to seat and read to them. Genius!

A few things that I would have liked to have available in this app are: 1/ Option of female and male voice. 2/ All the objects in the screen being interactive. Some of the main elements in each image show the name when you click on them, but some of them not, like the curtains or doors or walls, or the floor, or many of the secondary elements in the image. It would have costed nothing adding those extra words!

This is a perfect app not only for English speakers, but also for for foreign children learning English, as the interactivity of the app make learning new words fun and easy.

Dr Seuss are not just fun, are strikingly pop in their imagery, they are very educative and ridiculously funny. This is the case of Mr Brown Can Moo, which is addressed to very small children, those who are learning the name and sound of different things, that is onomatopoeia formation, This is is one of my least favourite stories by Dr Seuss, because there is no story. Although I recognise its pedagogic value.

The application is fantastic, as all of the Seuss stories that Oceanhouse has turned into electronic interactive format. The app is interactive if you choose the read yourself option; you can click on any image on the page and the word will pop up on your screen and will be pronounced. From the main menu, you select the way you want to read the book, on your own, using the narrator's voice, or auto-play. The app automatically uses the landscape setting and rotates your screen, and uses the original illustrations of the book, closing up and down to focus on the action and speeches of the characters. Background noises and musical notes have been added to enhance the experience, but it can be mutated if you want. You can browse the pages on your own using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were the ones in a real book.

Pride of Baghdad is a beautiful allegory of the events happened in Iraq after the fall of the Hassam Hussein's Regime. It is based on a true event occurred in April 2003: the accidental release of a big group of wild animals from the Baghdad Zoo after a bomb destroyed part of the premises. The book focuses on the wanderings of a group of four lions, two female (Safa and Noor), a male (Zill) and a cub (Ali) throughout the city after their escape.

The story exemplifies the questions that the world was making after the international intervention and occupation of Iraq, and the problems that the liberation and freeing of the Iraqies meant, de facto, for the Iraqies. The book uses the characters and the script to question the real meaning of freedom and living in peace. The book succeeds at presenting, in very simple but very effective terms, dual concepts for further thinking: civilised vs uncivilised, freedom vs oppression, instinct vs reason, wild vs tamed nature.

I would have liked Vaughan giving a step forward and creating something more profound and universal, which is impossible because the story is set in Iraq. For an allegory to be successful, the less time-place references, the better. That is why "Animal Farm" by Orwell is still a classic, understood and meaningful to people all over the world, decades after it was written. While Reading Pride of Baghdad, I thought that the book was very good, but it could have been brilliant, but it never got there because the dialogues and part of the story needed of further developing.

"There were other casualties as well". I loved that!

I absolutely love the artwork. Without Niko Henrichon's vision the book would had been way less effective and enjoyable. Henrichon's drawing technique, composition, colouring and use of lights and shadows are masterful; he is able to create stunning crispy-clear expressive images without crowding the page with too many vignettes, just the right amount. The book has an overall warm golden-orange tone that I absolutely love, with the sporadic presence of luscious bright green natural elements and dark-blue/green interiors and night scenes. One of the things I love more about Henrichon's drawing in this book is the use of sun shadows, I mean light shadows that are not dark, something he does with a wow easiness. The book is visually impacting because of the darkness of the story is rendered in bright yummy colours and aesthetically pleasing images. I always love that.

I thought the rendition for Kindle was pretty good!

A must have for lovers of graphic books lovers. Not for small kids. I think it is great for mid teenagers under supervision.

In a world in which children are over-indulged, over-protected and driven like cattle anywhere, Meg McKinley's wonderful story comes to teach children that walking is wonderful, that life is full of magnificent small things that brighten up our days, and that discovering them is not only part of life, it is life itself. The book is also perfect for adults who need to be reminded that mediocrity and boredom are things that you build everyday when you detach yourself from the gazillion beautiful things that life has to offer, and that opening your eyes and moving your derrière are basic for brightening your time.

The text and the illustrations are like an odd happy marriage. This is not the typical book for children with colourful illustrations and childish cute characters. Hughes-Odgers' images and characters convey well the lack of brightness of the life of a group of apathetic-looking children, who could be early teens. By using a mix of matt subdued greens, ochres, beige, blues and blacks, he creates a world that is earthy and mysterious, a sort of urban forest that is scary but exciting to walk through. I always love his characters and magic world, so I was delighted at finding him as the illustrator. His illustrations were first painted on wood panels and will be exhibited at The Place (mezzanine floor in the State Library of Western Australia) for about two months.

If you have kids or nephews, go and grab it. If you like illustration, go and grab it. If you want to feed you inner child, well, go and grab it - no money? Libraries are full of free books ;O.

A beautiful tiny book that brightened up my evening.