Sunday, April 20th, 2008

Time	Event
6:25p	Nexus Archives Volume 6, by Mike Baron & Steve Rude Another in the series of lovingly produced collections of this fantastic comic. $50 each, but with the exchange rate at the moment and my staff discount, I'm paying about £17, which softens the blow a bit... I'd pay more, though, to be honest - I just enjoy them so much, and they look gorgeous on the shelf. Also, as with the Absolute Editions that come from DC, I just think it's a good thing that (some) comics are getting the chance to be re-produced properly, in a format and with a quality that puts most book publishers to shame. Anyway, this is one of the better volumes so far, I think - there's a sense that the basics of the series have all been set up, and some bits of the plot can just roll along in the background. We know who most of the main characters are now, and I quite enjoy seeing little incidents that are obviously going to build up into bigger developments at some point. This volume also includes my favourite single issue so far, which looks at Nexus and his home from another point of view, and finds it significantly more scary than previously thought. Really really well done. A very well produced Hardback, with equally good contents, ISBN: 1593077912. I read this at home on a day off a couple of weeks ago, and finished it today. (Comment on this)
6:34p	The Absolute Sandman Volume 2, by Neil Gaiman et al. Do you know, I read this when it came out, back in November last year. I can't work out why I never wrote about it - it isn't the kind of book that hides away, seeing as it is, in fact, too big to fit on any of my shelves. So it sits on my desk, and I see it every morning, and at no point did I go 'ooh, I haven't written about that'. So far, as far as I'm aware, I've only forgotten to do one book that I had actually read (The Last Days of Newgate, by Andrew Pepper). I hope there aren't any others. Probably just a sign that I'm getting old... Still, bearing in mind that things are a bit fuzzy, six months later, my overall feeling is that I loved it. Well, of course I dd. It's Sandman, reproduced in an absolutely fantastic format (even better than the Nexus Archive below), and we're still in the area of 'some issues Marcus has never actually read before, despite calling himself a fan'. Hey, I was only ten when the comic started. This volume contains issues 21 to 40, and a bunch of bonus material - rare short stories, scripts, introductions, sketches, covers, a gallery. Oh, you know, all the normal stuff. Brilliant if you're a minutiae geek like me. There are a few one-off stories in here, which I have read before. I know a lot of people enjoy the longer-form bits of Sandman, but I have a real soft spot for Gaiman's shorter stuff - he can often get more information and character into 28-or-whatever pages than I can believe. There are also two longer tales - Season of Mists, which I once had as a trade paperback and is actually one of my favourite bits of the series, and A Game of You, which I know is meant to be one of the best things in here, but which was new to me and didn't have the impact that, I suspect, it would have done if I hadn't heard so much about it (both in terms of content and quality). I must have read this back in December at some point. Quite the most beautiful comic I own - very well (leather)bound, in a fantastic Dave McKean slipcase, printed on high-quality paper with lovingly restored artwork. ISBN: 1845765621. (Comment on this)
6:55p	Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman This was what reminded me that I had never written about Absolute Sandman (the review below). It is Gaiman's contribution to World Book Day 2008, which is the scheme in which authors write a (usually very small) book for free, publishers print it for free, booksellers buy it for 10p and children buy it for a pound. Which sounds a bit like a bookseller-evil-scheme, apart from the fact that every kid in the UK should get a £1 voucher from their school, which they can use on anything, and us booksellers swallow the cost of that. If they buy a World Book Day book, we lose 10p. If they use it towards another book, it costs us 50-60p. But if someone pays actual money for a WBD book, we make 90p, and pretty much everything balances out nicely. And the vouchers are printed and distributed by the Bookseller's Association, who are partly funded by booksellers. See, we're not so bad. Kids get to read a cool little book, which they might not have picked up otherwise (the point, of course, being to get the ones who would never pick up any book to do so), and discover the Joys of Reading (tm). It's a really good scheme. Anyway, lesson over. We're here to talk about the book. Gaiman has produced an all-new 100-ish page novella (novelette?), introducing new characters and telling a complete story, with illustrations by Mark Buckingham. Makes Dav Pilkey's reprint of the first book in his Captain Underpants series look a little unimpressive, really. Guess which one we've sold more of? Ah well, such is life. If I really understood bookselling I wouldn't be working in it. And Pilkey didn't have to donate anything at all, so I'll stop being mean and cynical now. Digressing again. Odd (the book) is a fun little thing, but Odd (the Character) is an unhappy little thing. Crippled, orphaned, with an overbearing stepfather - no wonder he runs away into the snow of Norway, hiding in the abandoned shed of his wood-carving father, killed whilst on a Viking raid (but not killed in a glamorous obvious Viking way, oh no). He does OK for himself, for a while, but then he meets a rather odd (ha!) trio of animals - a bear, a fox, an eagle - who help him, move in with him, talk to (or rather, around) him. Not normal behaviour, really. Turns out they're Gods (of course they're Gods, this is a Neil Gaiman book). Thrown out of Asgard by the Frost Giants (well, a Frost Giant, anyway), weakened and feeling rather irritable and foolish, but completely unaware of the tropes of myth and Young Adult fiction. Do we think Odd (the boy) can possibly solve their problems, get rid of the Frost Giant(s) and return home? I bet he can... ...but the point, of course, is not that this is a retelling/revisioning of innumerable myths and legends and stories. The point is that Gaiman does it his way. No great battle, no plucky sidekicks, no cliched motives. The way in which Odd (the boy) solves the problems facing him and his new friends - which I won't spoil - is wise, gentle and brilliant. And all of his problems aren't instantly solved by the end - he isn't healed, his father doesn't return, he may well still not fit in back at the village. But at least now he knows himself (although, to be fair, he was really quite self-confident already), and what he can do (likewise, he starts off with a greater opinion of his ability to solve problems and survive than anyone around him), and a bit more about the world (still, probably not most of the really important stuff, like girls). In other words, it may be a fairly straight-forward little story, but, being a Gaiman book, is much more interesting than that. That sounds a little obsequious, reading it back, but I stand by it. So, in summary: Odd (the book) is very good. And it only costs a pound. And it's for Charity. Go on, what are you waiting for? I read this a day or two after it came out in early March (on World Book Day, obviously). There are probably still some copies knocking about around the UK (we've got lots! Ready for the next signing...), but it may be a bit harder to find internationally. ISBN: 0747595380. (1 Comment | Comment on this)
7:36p	The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie I enjoyed this book. There, I said it. What I can't understand is why it took me almost six weeks to finish it. SIX WEEKS. I haven't read a single full-length novel in six weeks, apart from this one, which I finished today. Oh, I've read the paper every day, and I've read some comics, and I've read a novella (review below), but no 'real' books. And yes, I've been busy at work and so on, but still. SIX WEEKS in which I finished one book. I don't think there's been a point since I started reading that has been so barren. It got to the point where I was refusing to start another book, because I HAD to finish this one, because if I didn't I never would, if you know what I mean. And I wouldn't even mind that much - we all need a break, sometimes, and I've read an awful lot of books in my life - if it was because I wasn't enjoying it. I mean, if I'd hated it, I would have just thought to myself 'ah well, give up, start something else'. Or, at a pinch, 'ah well, in a week or so you can just sit down on your day off and finish the damn'd thing and then move on'. Nope, both of those solutions would have been fine, except I was enjoying the blasted book. I just didn't want to read for a while, I guess. Anyway, pointless explanation of why I haven't read a book in ages (or updated this blog, which of course follows on from the first point...) aside, just to reiterate, I enjoyed it. Having not read any Rushdie in an age, I wasn't quite sure why I decided to pick this one up - perhaps I just felt it was time for me to try something new that wasn't a new author, but rather someone I'd too often let slip from my to-read pile. The blurb on the back of the proof didn't convince me one way or the other, either, because there wasn't one - the publishers obviously believe that Rushdie is now beyond the point at which people in the book trade need to know what a book is about before deciding to read it. Which is fair enough but, still, left me unsure as to whether I was reading the book because I felt I ought to, or because I actually thought I would enjoy it. The book tells the story of a charismatic stranger who comes to the capital city of the 16th-century Mughal Empire with a fantastic and disturbing story. Fairly quickly, after tricking his way into an audience with the emperor, he starts to tell his tale, and the novel splinters into a carefully structured set of flash-backs, flash-forwards and stories-within-stories. The reader is never given a trustworthy sense of what is true and what is a lie, and the fact that we are given no insight into the wanderer's real thoughts means that we, like the emperor, can never know if we are hearing the truth, part of the truth, or an utter deception. The stories we are told - of Machiavelli, Amerigo, the Medici's, the Mughal court, Genghis Khan and dozens of others - are utterly fantastical, often fascinating and frequently touching. Yes, we're into the realms of magical realism. Rushdie is retelling the history of the emperor Akbar, and provides various explanations for some of his acts, such as the abandonment of the great city Fatehpur Sikri (thank you wiki). At the same time, the title is not a trick - there really is an 'Enchantress of Florence', and much of the book is set in a world which is infused with magic, spells and witchcraft. The fact that the emperor, according to this book, has not one but two imaginary wives during the course of the plot is almost the least jarring intrusion of fantasy into reality. In fact Rushdie manages to make these two women, both created (under different circumstances) by thought, surprisingly believable. To me, that example sums up my feelings as to why I feel so positive about the book. I mean, apart from his skill as a writer of beautiful sentences and distinct (and distinctive) characters, it is entirely clear that Rushdie knows exactly what he is doing. This novel has been planned down to the finest detail, not to mention heavily researched (the five page bibliography at the back is proof of that, although my knowledge of the era and area isn't anything like strong enough to know how actually accurate he has been, of course...). The structure is sometimes difficult but obviously well-balanced, and the prose - this shouldn't really be a surprise - is occasionally florid, but always well done. I do have some slight reservations about the point of the book - there are some occasionally clunky discussions about the need for/belief in a god which maybe hint at a theme - but, in the end, I don't think the book had an obvious central premise. That isn't the end of the world, by any means, because the book is often a joy to read, and many of the small character pieces were masterclasses in how to tell a short story. I just begin to wonder if the explanation for why I stalled for so long was that I had no real reason to keep reading - I enjoyed the journey, but wasn't sure that the destination deserved it. I read a proof, which I started on the flight back from my holiday in early February, and finished today, the twentieth of April, at home. The book is out now, ISBN: 0224061631. (Comment on this)

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