Currently I'm reading Alan Moore: Conversations, a book of collected interviews edited by Eric L. Berlatsky. It runs the gamut of his comics career, from the early 1980s to 2009, a few years before this book came out (2012). It's actually a fairly interesting look at a guy I'm not a big fan of. Probably the most interesting interviews for me are the earlier ones, where he talks about his early stories for off-beat British magazines 2000 AD and the like. The other interviews I liked were the one where he digs into his thoughts on Watchmen, and the one where he explains what he was trying to do with Lost Girls. The latter makes me more inclined to check it out, although perhaps not any time soon. Anyway, it's a good book, and there's few of the paranoid rants that put me off of his interviews back when I was still in comics fandom five years ago. Give it a read, you might enjoy it.
Sorry I haven't been here in a while! I was trying to write this big ol' post but the whole thing collapsed on me.
Anyways, since this is about three days late, let's go ahead and review three different books!
Book numero uno: How to Torture Your Brain, by Ralph L. Woods, is a compilation of brainteasers, paradoxes, and other weird brain junk. Some of these are going to be a little familiar to most folks, like the infamous question "What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?" and the infinite hotel problem, but others, like selections from Greek philosophers, or a parody of the twisted logic Anti-Stratfordians work themselves into, are fresh, at least to me. Be warned that it's a pretty old book, so that some of the examples it uses are a little UnP.C. these days. Here's its Amazon pages, or you could check and see if it's at your local library.
Second book, same as last look: Alan Moore, Storyteller by Gary Spencer Millidge, is a coffee table book about perhaps the most famous British comic book writer of all. Frankly I find the aggrandizing tone of it all a bit wearying (did you know that Alan Moore wrote the very first serious superhero story? And also the first feminist comic book heroine, and also the first interracial relationship, and and and), but hey! That's what you get with these types of books. I don't know, I'm more of a Grant Morrison fan, so maybe this book just isn't for me.
Book number three, oh my oh me I've got a big collection of most of Lewis Carroll's major works, so I'm trying to make some headway into Sylvie and Bruno. So far it's slow going; the joke-to-sentiment ratio is nearly inverted from his Alice books. Mostly I've just been skipping around, and reading an article here or a short story there. There's this one really great story about photographic plates that can write a whole short story from your mind that's just amazing, and I may transcribe the whole thing over here so I can show it off.
Next time, hopefully on time: Next time I really want to play a text adventure, because the IF Top 50 is having another round again and I don't want to miss out. We'll see how that goes.
Anyways, since this is about three days late, let's go ahead and review three different books!
Book numero uno: How to Torture Your Brain, by Ralph L. Woods, is a compilation of brainteasers, paradoxes, and other weird brain junk. Some of these are going to be a little familiar to most folks, like the infamous question "What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?" and the infinite hotel problem, but others, like selections from Greek philosophers, or a parody of the twisted logic Anti-Stratfordians work themselves into, are fresh, at least to me. Be warned that it's a pretty old book, so that some of the examples it uses are a little UnP.C. these days. Here's its Amazon pages, or you could check and see if it's at your local library.
Second book, same as last look: Alan Moore, Storyteller by Gary Spencer Millidge, is a coffee table book about perhaps the most famous British comic book writer of all. Frankly I find the aggrandizing tone of it all a bit wearying (did you know that Alan Moore wrote the very first serious superhero story? And also the first feminist comic book heroine, and also the first interracial relationship, and and and), but hey! That's what you get with these types of books. I don't know, I'm more of a Grant Morrison fan, so maybe this book just isn't for me.
Book number three, oh my oh me I've got a big collection of most of Lewis Carroll's major works, so I'm trying to make some headway into Sylvie and Bruno. So far it's slow going; the joke-to-sentiment ratio is nearly inverted from his Alice books. Mostly I've just been skipping around, and reading an article here or a short story there. There's this one really great story about photographic plates that can write a whole short story from your mind that's just amazing, and I may transcribe the whole thing over here so I can show it off.
Next time, hopefully on time: Next time I really want to play a text adventure, because the IF Top 50 is having another round again and I don't want to miss out. We'll see how that goes.
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