Mid-February Book Report

One of my Christmas gifts from James was Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree. I really enjoyed it, and thus I'm going to rip off its format for all of my book reports.

Books Acquired (all checked out from the New York Public Library. Guess who just paid the late fees on his card and is back in full check-out swing?)
Heft On Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180 by Mike Magnuson
There And Back Again by Sean Astin
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Wilco: Learning How To Die by Greg Kot
Kyle's Bed and Breakfast by Greg Fox
The Mindful Cook by Isaac Cronin
Top 10: Book Two by Alan Moore
Across the Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore by Alan Moore

Books Read
Heft On Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180 by Mike Magnuson
There And Back Again by Sean Astin
Kyle's Bed and Breakfast by Greg Fox
Top 10: Book Two by Alan Moore
Across the Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore by Alan Moore

The two Moore books were stunning. Top 10 is new to me, I haven't regularly read comic books in a while. But I've enjoyed stories from virtually every part of Moore's career, and this was no exception. I have no idea if this series is still going but I'd love to read more. The DC stories are also wonderful; the Green Lantern mythology seems to particularly lend itself to creative perspectives (and I don't think it was Moore, perhaps it was Rick Veitch, that intersected Swamp Thing with the Green Lantern that was a plant?).

I read with interest and appreciated the other three books. A person might like them if they are already interested in the general ballparks that each book is in: Magnuson --- bicycling/recovery, Astin --- Tolkien/the movie business, and Fox --- gay men/comic books. They all could be sharper. I felt a little lost in both of the memoirs; they were almost too casual in their conversational tone. I realized that David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs make the form look easy but it isn't. Fox's comic book is tough to recommend to people not naturally interested in gay bed and breakfasts (and the telenovela-style drama that generally ensues). I liked it, but a generic comic book reader would probably not be impressed. The art tends to be a little stiff (haw haw).

Posted by chris at February 15, 2005 12:13 AM