Graphic Novels of the Dickens, Steampunk and Alpine kind + NY poets (or: what are you reading?)

this blog post is inspired by the blog series "It's Monday! What are you reading?" which is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. more about that, at the bottom of this post

From Noble Literature to ... Comics.
Last week: Noble Literature, induced by the Frankfurt Book Fair - as in: "Words, Wars, Books, Peace Prizes, Time, Beats, etc.
This week: Comics! Induced by the Comic Fair in Essen city. The nice thing is that i received a couple of comics there, and had the chance to thumb into some graphic novels i didn't know yet. Following that theme, my reads this week are comics and graphic novels - and also, NY poets:

Noel, or: Charles Dickens goes Batman
Just in tune with the upcoming Christmas Season, "Noel" was released here in Germany - i read it on Sunday, and was amazed by it. Great graphics, but even more so: great story, which is inspired by Charles Dickens' classic "A Christmas Carol", but with a modern set of characters. The main character is Batman, only that he isn't your helpful superhero in this story but rather the Dark Knight he has turned into in his recent movies and comic stories, scarred by his past and his fight against villains. So: Batman = Scrooge. The equation feels twisted at first, but  works painfully well and leads to uncomfortable reflections: if you deal with villains, how much darkness and cynicism rubs onto your own self in time? The strong contrasts of light and dark in the images, in this case it's a counterpart to the merge of good and bad in the characters. This book  was a #1 New York Times Bestseller. For a peek into it, try this link: Batman Noel

In Search of Peter Pan
I hadn't heard of this book before, and it was both the alpine cover and the title that made me curious. "In Search of Peter Pan" tells a story from the Swiss Alps - the region that is home to the author, Cosey, who favours "realistic comics". Set in the 1930ies, the book weaves together stunning landscapes, the history of the region, and the story of an author looking for inspiration in a narrative that leads from a small mountain village in the Wallis to a glacier that is about to crack to the Aosta valley in Italy. This story was originally serialized in the French magazine "Tintin" in 1983/184. The english edition has the title "Lost in the Alps" and comes in 2 parts. Here's a bit more about the author + artist Cosey and his bio + books (with screenshots) 

Comic artists live
The great thing at the Comic Fair is that there are several artists from different countries, drawing live at the fair. You can stand and watch a white page turn into a comic sketch. It's a kind of magic.

Danach + Steam Noir
The next 2 graphic novels are from German artists, and both also connect to the book fair last week: "Danach" is a non-fictional work, it actually is the thesis of a student, and explores the different ways people take to deal with the end of a relationship. It's not really common to pick the form of a comic for ones thesis, but there have been a couple of comics that developed that way.

And finally: "Steam Noir" - it received the Comic Award for "Best National Comic Book"  It's a steampunk story, here's the definition (which i wanted to look up since ages): "Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that typically features steam-powered machinery, especially in a setting inspired by industrialized Western civilization during the 19th century." (more)

The steampunk approach blended right in with the region there, here's a photo from one of the old mines that the region around Essen is famous for - the nice thing is that i got to see a bit of the region, a photo travelogue is online here: Comic Coal Metropolis, or: short trip photos from the Ruhr Region

A bit more about the Comic nominations and award winners that were announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair, here: Comics Beat / Frankfurt 2012 Awards (i already ordered another of them, Habibi by Craig Thompson, set in Morocco - which i also saw in Essen, yet it was definitely to thick to carry  along with its 672 pages)

...and as non-graphic counterpart: the New York School of Poets 
Despite the fair trips, i still continue the "ModPo" Modern Poetry online class, which is moving to the “New York School Poets” this week. Yesterday i listened to Al Filreis’ audio introduction, and his excitement is contagious. The audio introduction is 30 minutes, and includes 2 poems by John Ashbery already – which is continued in the chapter with Ashbery’s “Instruction Manual” – a mind journey from an office that makes him daydream of Guadalajara, Mexico – and made me think of my own fragmented trip to the Ruhr region, where i tiptoed from the fair to catch some of the tunes of the region, which now seemingly reflects in those lines:

“Let us take this opportunity 
to tiptoe into one of the side streets.
..
How limited, but how complete withal, 
has been our experience of Guadalajara.”

*****

It's Monday! What are you reading? This blog post is inspired by the blog series "It's Monday! What are you reading?" which is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. participating blogs are listed in this Linky Book List

Previous reading blog entries are collected here: bookshelf + monday reads. there also is a visual bookshelf, just click it to get there:



Some lines about me: I'm into roads, stories, places, crossings, and all the things they lead and connect to. I edit BluePrintReview and the blueprint book + lit blog. Apart from being an editor and blogger, I am also an author myself. My new book Worlds Apart launched some weeks ago:

Worlds Apart: the true story of 2 friends, 2 journeys, and 10 life lessons  
In the global world, a traveler from Europe and a teacher from Asia meet in the web, share their journeys, and the joys, longings, and life lessons that wait along the road. Captured in letters and photos that reach from China and India to Germany and Spain, a dialogue across continents and cultures unfolds: Worl(d)s Apart

in Mexico with Rose Hunter (or: reading A Foal Poem)

For the last couple of days, i've been in Mexico every morning for some minutes. It's one of the countries i've never been to myself, but that doesn't feel all foreign - there even is a city i walked through in images and in lines repeatedly: Puerto Vallarta, home of poet + friend Rose Hunter.

Her book A Foal Poem is both a collection of poems, and a poetic travelogue that takes the reader into the inner reality of places, beyond the tourist facades. it starts with a map, and my first touch of it was "Aposematic" - a poem that was first published in BluePrintReview, here's one of its road lines:

me the butterfly and you the relentless road,
with zircon glints
!

Later, another poem become base of a collaboration that moved through several places: Puertos, and on the third page, it's Puerto Vallarta again, with its beach road, the Malecón:

concrete for miles, yet
it's this section
of the Malecón
that has been
chosen for
soapy water
bucket
bleach

Finally, when Foal took shape, i helped with the cover- the image is based on a street scene from Vallarta, and the process of getting the cover together for POD later lead to a (rather unpoetic) how-to-entry in the blueprint book blog: How to create a book cover for print-on-demand services like CreateSpace

but back to Foal:
I first read the book right after it was published, and now am revisiting it, and like with journeys, when visiting a place again, you see more, the details, the patterns forming within, how one place and thought leads to another. maybe that started already during the first read, when at some point, i felt drawn to gather lines for a found poem, which eventually got published in the Found Poetry Review: Or, a Moral Inventory

Someone recently said: "With books like this, I don't need to travel, I get there in words" - and this is how Foal feels to me, this touch of another place, woven into pages that wrap you up while reading - and like with most foreign places, it takes a bit to get into this different world that comes with rebar houses and tejones appearing - until, at some point, those become part of your own  vocabulary, and you find yourself, walking along a relentless road, thinking of a foal. 
--

Book link, About,  & Review Forward

For more about Rose's book Foal, her bio, and her other books, visit her website

Some lines about me: I'm into roads, stories, places, crossings, and all the things they lead and connect to. I edit BluePrintReview and the blueprint book + lit blog. For more of my personal book reviews, click here: "Books", and for a bit more about me and the web projets i'm involved in, visit me at blueprint21. Apart from being an editor and blogger, I am also an author myself. My new book Worlds Apart just launched, and Rose was one of the authors who read an early version of it and accompanied the whole process that leads from draft to final book. Thanks for that!

Worlds Apart - a true story about 2 friends, 2 journeys, and 10 life lessons:  
In the global world, a traveler from Europe and a teacher from Asia meet in the web, share their journeys, and the joys, longings, and life lessons that wait along the road. Captured in letters and photos that reach from China and India to Germany and the Mediterranean Sea, a dialogue across continents and cultures unfolds: Worl(d)s Apart

Review Forward: This book review is inspired by Review Forward, a new online initiative for authors & book bloggers. For more reviews, visit the facebook page or the twitter-stream.

zen and the empty city (global reading challenge)

Zen Mind
there's a book i am reading since last November: "Zen Mind, Beginners Mind". the classic zen book by the Shunryu Suzuki, the founded of the first western zen monastery. with its 147 pages, it's not a thick book by size. but it's like an ocean of thought, with chapters about Practice, Non-Dualism, Attitude, Self-Study, Emptiness, Attachment, Experience and so on. each chapter is but an entry door, and it definitely makes sense to combine the reading with actual zen or yoga practice iself. it's similar to something like swimming: despite all the books about it, you have to get your feet wet at some point to connect to water. and vice verca, while getting your feet wet, a book can be a guide in the big ocean, a pointer between the waves of daily life.

here's a (slightly shortened) quote from the Zen book, a "metazen" reflection on talking about zen:
The purpose of my talking is to give you some idea of the way, but actually, zen is not something to talk about, but something to practice. The best way is to practice without saying anything. If we understand this point, then talking about it will be one of our practices, and listening to the talk will also be practice. And we listen withouth trying to figure out some intellectual understanding, without trying to understand from just a one-sided view.

which leads to the book that sparked this blog entry:

The Empty City by Berit Ellingsen

most of the books about zen are non-fiction: biographies, introductions, collected lectures - but recently i arrived at a zen-novel, writen by Berit Ellingsen. It was an interview in Nonduality Magazine that made me curious for it, in it, Berit explains:

"The Empty City is a short novel about nondual awakening, becoming comfortable with silence and letting go of the past. Connected themes are questioning your own beliefs and what you regard as yourself. .. I wanted to write a novel about nondual awakening, where that was central to the story. There's a lot of nondual nonfiction and poetry, but little fiction. I was curious to see if it was possible to write at all." (interview link)

reading this, of course, made me curious for the narrative of Empty City. i finished it a week ago - it's a thought-provoking, vivid read, with short chapters that move through to different level of consciousness - there are dream sequences, past memories, the present - together, the chapters form a larger mosaic. it was one of the books that i didn't want to end yet, to move on, and on. i looked for a quote to put here, but like with physical mosaics, pulling out a single piece only hints briefly at the larger image.

reading through it also points out how used we are to the established forms of narrative, and it's both refreshing and at the same time perplexing in the best of senses to follow another format - the concept of the Koan comes to mind, the riddle-like stories or notes used in Zen-pracitce to provoke the mind. It also made me think of reading "Open City" by Teju Cole earlier this year, and the line i wrote back then refers to "Empty City," too: "It isn't the typical novel, it's more on the experimental side. While reading it, i looked for interviews with the author.." (here's the Open City blog post)

the book is available both as printed book and as e-book. i picked the e-book version, which makes it my second novel read on the kindle, the first was Wild - and i guess the intro picture shows it: it's too bad that e-books don't come with the cover image - especially that in this case, the cover feels like a physical part of the story mosaic, a part of the narrative almost.

summed up, i would definitely recommend it for readers who are a) into zen / yoga and/or b) into experimental writing. if you want to read an excerpt, the first chapters are online on the book website: Empty City.

----

About me, more books, and Review Forward

For more about Berit Ellingsen and her writing, visit her author website

Some lines about me: I'm into roads, stories, places, crossings, and all the things they lead and connect to. I edit BluePrintReview and the blueprint book + lit blog. For more of my personal book review, click here: "Books", and for a bit more about me and the web projets i'm involved in, visit me at blueprint21. Apart from being an editor and blogger, I am also an author myself. My new book Worlds Apart just launched:

Worlds Apart - a true story about 2 friends, 2 journeys, and 10 life lessons:  
In the global world, a traveler from Europe and a teacher from Asia meet in the web, share their journeys, and the joys, longings, and life lessons that wait along the road. Captured in letters and photos that reach from China and India to Germany and the Mediterranean Sea, a dialogue across continents and cultures unfolds: Worl(d)s Apart

Review Forward: This book review is inspired by Review Forward, a new online initiative for authors & book bloggers. For more reviews, visit the facebook page or the twitter-stream.

"Ledra Street": cities + walls (global reading challenge #5)

a review for ReviewForward

"When you walk the streets of Nicosia, my father used to say, you walk on the wounds of history. The city aches, you can feel it. Walk quietly, walk carfully, walk gently. Can you hear the groans? Can you feel the pulse?"

I've never been to Nicosia. but Nora Nadjarian took me right there, inoto the capital of this island in the East of the Mediterranean Sea, in her book "Ledra Street". And more so: she made me curious for the history of this place. This is what I learned:

Ledra Street is "a major shopping thoroughfare in central Nicosia, Cyprus, which links North and South Nicosia. It is the site of the former Ledra Street barricade where the street ran across the United Nations buffer zone. The barricade symbolised the division of Nicosia between the Greek south and Turkish north."

And Nicosia itself... "is the only divided capital in the world, with the southern and the northern portions divided by a Green Line."

They have a wall, too. I didn't know about that. Such a parallel to Berlin. It was reading about Nicosia that made me go and revisit my own memories of walking through Berlin, here, in: 4 Berlins, or: I am (t)here. Walking on the wounds of history, it's the same there, too.

Of course, Nora's stories don't end at the wall: they move through it, and beyond it. The collection includes 35 stories, and each of the stories sets out to explore the inner and outer shapes and walls of someone's life, there, in Nicosia. Together, the stories form a landscape of emotions, fears, and hopes that reaches far beyond this specific place. Here's another quote:

"I wore white, inside and out. There's a picture of me on the mantelpiece. Smiling; outside, not in. Crying; inside, not out. Confetti and tears. Visible invisible. Hide and Seek."

Borders and Routes
What made this read special: i know Nora from BluePrintReview, she has a story in the Micro Cosmos issue that also is about borders: "Cold / Warm / Lukewarm", and there's an author talk with her in the blueprint blog with Michael K. White.

***

Global Reading Challenge
This is the fifth book for my global reading challenge. the idea: to read books from each continent of the world / several countries of europe. so far, the route lead from Yugoslavia to the Middle East, then to Paris, to Alaska, and now to this island that geographically belongs to Asia, and culturally and politically is seen as part of Europe. (update: and further, the books are online here in an overview: world books)

Review Forward
This book review is inspired by Review Forward, a new online initiative for authors & book bloggers. For more reviews, visit the facebook page or the twitter stream.