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February 05, 2008

NBCC GOOD READS: LOCAL VOICES WEIGH IN

The NBCC has announced its Winter GoodReads list.  To see who's been chosen, you'll need to stop over at Critical Mass.

In anticipation of this evening's NBCC festivities at Skylight, we have a few bonus goodies for you today.  First, as last time, L.A.'s resident animation expert Charles Solomon continues to fill us in with his choices, until such time as the NBCC creates a manga category:

Haruna Aizawa, the heroine of Shouko Akira's Monkey High Vol. 1 (Viz: $8.99), compares high school to life in a troop of squabbling monkeys. Haruna had been a leader at her posh school until a scandal forced her father to resign from the Diet. At her new school, she's drawn not to tall handsome Atsuyuki Kito, but to Maseru "Macharu" Yamashita, who looks like "a baby monkey." During her first semester, Haruna learns that Macharu's kind heart more than makes up for his small stature. Monkey High offers considerably more depth than the average shojo (girl's) manga.

In contrast to the gentle affection in Monkey High, skewed romantic triangles form the core of Jin Kobayashi's uproarious School Rumble Vol. 8 (Del Rey: $10.95). Perky Tenma Tsukamoto adores her vacant classmate Oji Karasuma, while Johnny Depp-esque bad boy Kenji Harima dreams of Tenma. Their maladroit efforts at romance produce endless and very funny complications. In this volume, Tenma and her friends are convinced Harima is dating her younger sister Yakumo--and no one listens when he tries to set things straight. Amid these contretemps, a debate over what the class should do for annual cultural fair turns into an after-hours guerilla war.

.hack//G.U.T. Vol. 1, story by Tatsuya Hamazaki, art by Yuzuka Morita (TokyoPop: $9.99) continues the adventures set in The World, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Three years after the events in .hack//Legend of the Twilight, Haseo is seeking revenge against Tri-Edge, the mysterious character who destroyed his friend Shino. Events in the on-line realm are tied to the real world, and the player who was Shino has been in a coma since Tri-Edge attacked her. The interesting plotlines and imaginative designs of the .hack books offer a model for manga adapted from games.

The first volume new larger format edition of the samurai classic Rurouni Kenshin ("Kenshin the Wanderer") (Viz: $17.99) allows to reader's to appreciate the details in Nobuhiro Watsuki's dramatic artwork. During the civil wars surrounding the Meiji Restoration, Kenshin Himura was a deadly Imperialist assassin. Having sworn never to kill again, Kenshin now fights with a reverse-blade sword: the inner edge is sharpened, rather than the outer one, so he can't inflict fatal wounds. Kenshin's efforts to remain true to his oath in violent times have made Rurouni Kenshin enormously popular on both sides of the Pacific.

The oddest offering this month is The Manga Bible by Siku (Galilee/Doubleday: $12.95). Siku goes "From Genesis to Revelation" in only 218 pages, suggesting what God might have accomplished had He worked with an editor. The elongated figures in the illustrations suggest Peter Chung's Aeon Flux, and include such curious touches as God dropping a bomb labeled "Fat Man on Job and Satan tempting Christ in contemporary New York.

Next up, Amy Gerstler, who will appear with us on our panel tonight at Skylight, talks about the three titles she recommended, and why:

Poetry: 30 years worth of Elaine Equi's poems are collected in Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems.  Her work is consistently witty, surprising, graceful, and fluid. This is an indispensable and long awaited volume for those who have been juggling her pile of smaller books, as well as for readers who have not yet had the delight of encountering her inventive, magical voice.

Non-fiction: Lucia Perillo is one of America's finest living poets. The writing in her dark memoir I Have Heard the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness and Nature combines, as her poetry does, brilliant intellect, bravery, ferocity of spirit, great precision and admirable command of language.

Fiction: Robert Walser was a world class literary oddball, a Swiss contemporary of Kafka's, with whom his work shares some characteristics. His novel Jakob von Guten and the various collections of his short prose are wonders. The Assistant, a novella translated by Susan Bernofsky, appeared this year for the first time in English. Walser is by turns comic and heartbreaking, modest and grand, fresh and cheeky. He seems to inhabit this world and several others simultaneously. The voice of his mind is wildly unique, very pure, and strange in the most inspiring ways.

And finally, another co-panelist, Veronique de Turenne, shares her non-fiction choice with us:

It kills me to recommend a coffee table book but California Romantica, about the preservation of Spanish Colonial architecture in Southern California, just won't let go. It's as unlikely a collaboration as you can imagine - wacky actress Diane Keaton and essayist DJ Waldie. She's famous (some would say infamous) for her obsession with Spanish-style homes and furnishings. Don Waldie made his name with "Holy Land", a memoir about growing up in the tract homes of the planned community of Lakewood. In "California Romantica", Keaton and Waldie each play to their strengths. She shows us the lines and curves and mystery of the grand houses of California's recent past. He studies their form and function, materials and craftsmanship and transmutes their myth into history.

Seriously, folks, do join us tonight for a lively panel, and find out more about where recommendations like these come from.  A splendid time is guaranteed for all ...

-

Posted by TEV at 09:33 AM in Worthy Titles |

Comments

wish i could join...but living miles away i just have to taste the richness of your thoughts and recommendations only via your blog, whose reading has become addictive. though i still struggle with the language of anglophone literature your blog has been tremendously valuable. Keep on the good job.

vasilis, athens, greece

Posted by:blue cave | February 05, 2008 at 01:21 PM

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Reviews & Criticism

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