Thursday, January 01, 2009

Read in December

Another month is done and with it 2008. It looks like I read a lot of books this year, but, as always, I'm focused on the ones I didn't read, and the teetering piles of books I still haven't gotten to. But here's what I did read recently, mostly (as usual) for my own reference.
Julian L'Estrange, editor, The Big Book of Sex "Quotes" (12/14)
This sat on my nightstand for a few months, and was entertaining enough while it lasted. I've pulled some of my favorite bits from it for future "Quote of the Week" usage; look for them the last Friday of each month through most of 2009. But I'm not going to bother to "review" this book; it's just not worth it.
The Will Eisner Reader (12/18)
Seven semi-random Eisner stories plucked from his work to make one slim introductory book. I may write more about it later -- here or at ComicMix -- but, then again, I may not.
Robert Mankoff, The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker (12/22)
The last time I was in the library, I happened to be poking through the oversized books, where I don't think I'd ever browsed before. And, lo and behold, I found this behemoth. And then, after I'd lugged it home and read more than half of it -- not a difficult thing; it may be huge, but it's nearly all cartoons and those are pretty good -- I wandered over to my own shelves on a hunch and discovered that I'd bought this myself a few years back and read it once already. If you like New Yorker-style cartoons, this is the book to get -- but it came out in 2004, so you likely don't need me to tell you that. If you want a book that could kill a small dog if thrown (or launched -- it's big enough that you need serious upper-body strength just to hold it), this is also the book to get.
Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Brett Helquist, The Lump of Coal (12/31)
I'm not going to bother breaking this one out into its own entry -- as I did last year with The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming, Snicket's first holiday-themed picture book. This one is the fabulist tale of a talking lump of coal, who wants to be an artist, or perhaps part of a barbecue. Snicket must be mellowing, because Lump of Coal has what approximates a happy ending...

And that was 2008. I expect I'll read more books in 2009, and I'll keep writing about them here. More than that, I won't promise.

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