I like to browse charity shops in search of amazing books. As I’m a bookseller if not by trade anymore then by something possibly stronger than genetics or space-time, this is not necessarily just a case of being pleased to find an unproofed review copy of the new China Mieville six weeks before it’s meant to come out, since the YMCA clearly don’t check that sort of thing. No, it is not just good books that I am interested in. In fact, I think I’ve possibly passed some sort of event horizon where I no longer care about “good” books because all books are part of the whole sort of general bookish thing and so it’s beyond an investment in my own literary pleasure into an investment in this whole sort of general bookish thing. All books, especially the waifs and strays, are relevant to my interests. Especially, sometimes, the really, really bad ones.*
Which is how I found myself in the aforementioned YMCA shop, West Ealing, idly browsing the racks and happened across a spine that immediately set my ‘this is unlikely to have been nominated for the Booker prize’ senses tingling. ‘TYRANNOSAUR CANYON,’ t’was. I know, with the ambiguous quote at the top of this entry, you’re probably thinking that this book doesn’t sound very amazing at all. After all, if John Grisham wrote Jurassic Park there’d probably be a lot of courtroom drama regarding the massive number of personal injury claims possible if you’ve had your legs ripped off by a velociraptor and it wasn’t your fault and then some coffee-drinking. That, though, is because I’ve deprived you of the rest of the blurb, as in actual fact the book contains- more »
Most of you will remember Mormon boyband Hanson: long hair, big in the 90s, one of them looked like a girl. But can any of you remember any more than that? Indeed, would you be prepared to test your knowledge of the teenage trio from Tulsa by buying and reading Hanson: The Ultimate Trivia Quiz Book? Well someone must have as it was in the remainder sale at my local library. Dear reader, I thought it was well worth 25p to investigate what made Zac, Taylor and Isaac tick in 1998. more »
It took me a while to get the hang of my first kabuki show. A lot of it is very alien. The music is drums, very loud clappers and samisen, which sounds like an out-of-tune banjo, which is clearly my problem with their very different scales rather than suggesting anything wrong about it. The singing is very strange – sometimes high and wailing, sometimes guttural and forceful, never remotely familiar in style or tone. It also took a while to get used to the simultaneous translation over a headset, essential as that was for me.
The opening storyline was ludicrous, too. It starts with Yoshitsune telling his famous girlfriend that it is too dangerous for her to accompany him, as at this point he and his small band are on the run from a pursuing army. She refuses to leave him, so he ties her to a tree at the edge of the road down which the pursuing army are chasing him. Yes, that is how best to ensure her safety… The last sentence of the synopsis offered online proves this isn’t just an opening aberration: “A group of comical priests enter with the intention of capturing Yoshitsune, but the fox defeats them with his supernatural powers and joyfully flies off with the drum.” more »
Ronald Searle turned 90 earlier this month, and to celebrate that, the Cartoon Museum here in London has an exhibition of his work.
He joined the army in 1939 and his first St Trinian’s cartoon was published in 1941. The following year he was taken prisoner by the Japanese, and remained in their hands for the next three and a half years, much of it working on the so-called Death Railway in Burma. His great period was the 1950s, when the bulk of his St Trinian’s and Molesworth (this with Geoffrey Willans) material was published.
It’s easy to forget that most of his work has not been cartoon school humour: as well as countless other cartoons, he published his war drawings, and did a lot of other reportage and general illustration for Punch, Life, the New Yorker, plus some work in animation, sculpting commemorative coins, film design and credits, and many other areas. more »
Firstly, mostly to get them out of the way, two boring anecdotes.
Semi-irrelevant anecdote #1:
Once when I was working in Waterstones in Oxford, I sold lovely David Mitchell a book of M R James’ ghost stories. The end.
Semi-irrelevant anecdote #2:
I went to a supposedly haunted school. more »
I neglected comics aimed at girls when I wrote the first 25 parts of this series. I’m male, and I read few comics for girls when I was young. I have had some entertainment looking back later, from the extraordinary extremes they went to to torture their heroines, and the ludicrous contrivances. That’s not to say it’s all silly and unpleasant, but the good stuff is not easily found, and I can’t be of much help. The American market has been traditionally hopeless for girls, though in recent years it has improved.
But the Japanese comic market is completely different, and there I have found a few good comics aimed squarely at girls – and one masterpiece, actually aimed at young women rather than girls, which is what has prompted me to add to my series a year and a half later.
Ai Yazawa’s Nana is perhaps my favourite comic ever now, and I thank my friend Cis for pointing me at it. It’s about two young women who move to Tokyo for a new life, both called Nana. Nana K is sweet and rather naive – the punky Nana O calls her, in an exasperated temper, “puppy-dog-like”, and Nana K gets the happiest expression ever. Nana O is a singer, and it’s her band and that of her ex that provide most of the other characters, and the two bands are central to the developing story, which so far runs to 19 translated volumes of around 200 pages each. more »
In M R James’s universe everyone who matters is fluent in Latin. It’s not so for the modern reader – or at least this modern reader – and there’s an interesting gap left between the Latin that he so liberally scatters throughout his stories, and the translations we read.
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas begins with some big chunks of Latin, which our antiquarian protagonist – Mr Somerton – gets straight down to translating. What he ends up with isn’t immediately clear to him, either, but he follows up the clues within and is lured into a hunt for buried treasure, departing to parts foreign, and for now out of our sight. more »
Well I must have been onto something in my last audition roundup because Roland Muldoon has echoed my observation that today’s young comedians eschew, by and large, political or social commentary. Muldoon – the guy who ran the Empire for 20 years and who still does the New Act of the Year competition there – went off on one at the School of Comedy’s Funny Festival, as reported here in Chortle.
His rant can’t have done any favours for the nerves of last night’s auditionees. (Yes, they all read Chortle.) (It is a weird business.) Yet it was the strongest group we’d seen yet. more »
For any fans of old horror monsters and/or the stylings of Roy Thomas, here’s a three pager I originally wrote for the horror issue of Solar Wind, that finally found a home in Duke Etrange’s World Of Weird. Art by Brian Coyle.
Most of you will remember Mormon boyband Hanson: long hair, big in the 90s, one of them looked like a girl. But can any of you remember any more than that? Indeed, would you be prepared to test your knowledge of the teenage trio from Tulsa by buying and reading Hanson: The Ultimate Trivia Quiz Book? Well someone must have as it was in the remainder sale at my local library. Dear reader, I thought it was well worth 25p to investigate what made Zac, Taylor and Isaac tick in 1998. 
In M R James’s universe everyone who matters is fluent in Latin. It’s not so for the modern reader – or at least this modern reader – and there’s an interesting gap left between the Latin that he so liberally scatters throughout his stories, and the translations we read.
Well I must have been onto something in 
For any fans of old horror monsters and/or the stylings of Roy Thomas, here’s a three pager I originally wrote for the horror issue of Solar Wind, that finally found a home in Duke Etrange’s World Of Weird. Art by Brian Coyle.