This is not your practice blog

Buying books and reading them

A long time ago, decades ago, I had this notion that I couldn't buy a new book until I had read all the books I already owned. How quaint. Eventually, I decided that rule was off. Now, our house is filled with books, including many hundreds I hope to read some day. When I get a new book, I typically keep it close for a day or two, leaf through it, admire it, then put it away somewhere to await its turn. I love to read, but unfortunately, I'm not a fast reader (a side effect of reading lots of technical things, I think -- I wish there was a way I could learn to read faster [but not speed reading]), and I don't have a lot of time for pleasure reading.

MAD in Wikipedia

The quality of Wikipedia articles is, er, highly variable. I'm a huge fan of MAD magazine, and the Wikipedia article about MAD is one of the best articles I've read in that famous online encyclopedia. It seems clear that somebody close to the magazine put a lot of work into it. My only quibble is the discussion about MAD's decision to accept advertising in 2001, which broke a fundamental agreement between the magazine and readers, but is glossed over in the wiki article. Of course, I know how to fix that: it's Wikipedia, so I should make the change myself by quoting some of the criticism that appeared at the time.

But that's a minor objection. Overall, it's a really great article, and you can learn plenty about MAD by reading it.

Book review: Wally's World

Wally Wood is one of my all-time favorite comic book artists, so when Barbara got me a recently published
Wood biography, Wally's World: The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Wally Wood, the World's 2nd Best Comic Book Artist, as a Father's Day present, I was eager to dig into it. Wood was not part of the first wave of comic books, but got rolling in the 1940s and hit his stride in the 1950s, primarily drawing science fiction for EC Comics. I knew him best for his work on MAD, which continued through the 1960s and into my childhood. Wood was the master of all genres. Science fiction, horror, drama, humor, superhero, advertising: Wood was wonderful at all of them.

Wally's World begins at the end of the story: Wood's tragic death by his own hand. Then, then story starts with Wood's parents -- actually it starts with the Vikings coming to the New World, and then describes Wood's immediate predecessors. The book describes how Wood showed artistic talent as a farm kid, and was kept from the hard labors so he could pursue his drawing. It details his closeness with his mother and brother, his strained relationship with his father, and his adventures in the armed forces near the end of World War II, which toughened him up.

Unfortunately, part of that toughness included alcoholism and various attendant health problems, accompanied by a lifelong series of battles with editors and publishers over fair treatment. The book does a wonderful job of painstakingly describing each phase of Wood's career. You get a true feel for life in various Wood home studios, as artist friends would gather daily for marathon sessions of drawing, talking, drinking tea, and collegial hanging out. Much of this information is provided in first-person quotes from Wood's first wife and lifelong friend Tatjana (Weintraub) Wood, an artist and great character in her own right. The story ends in tragedy as Wood's declining health, skills, and fortunes lead him to suicide in 1981.

Wally's World provides unprecedented detail about the life and work of this great artist. If you're a fan of Wally Wood, EC Comics, or classic comic book artists, you're bound to enjoy reading it, and you'll overlook the unfortunate typos and quirks that afflict the prose, especially in the later chapters. The book contains a generous sample of Wood's fantastic art, so you can just look at the pictures if you like. Recommended!

Tolkein rides (writes) again

SantAmazon Claus has brought me the new J. R. R. Tolkein book, The Children of Húrin. This novel was put together from manuscripts and notes by Christopher Tolkein (son of J. R. R.), who has been doing this sort of thing for decades now. The story takes place during the First Age, thousands of years before the time of Lord of the Rings, where the bad guy is Morgoth, who taught ol' Sauron everything he knew about being evil.

Watchmen

This weekend I re-read one of my all-time favorite comic books, the classic Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen, which takes place in the mid-1980s, was the first and probably still the best attempt at showing what a real Earth would be like if it were inhabited by super-heroes. The story examines how the world is changed politically, technologically, and socially when a few super-folks appear on the scene, especially one incredibly powerful man who happens to be American. The characters are developed in great depth, and all this plays out as the world careens toward a disastrous U.S. - Soviet war while great mysteries and plots are revealed.

The list of praise for Watchmen is practically endless. It's the only comic book/graphic novel on Time Magazine's list of 100 greatest novels, and the only one to win a Hugo award. Joss Whedon and Damon Lindelof are among its fans. New articles are still being written about it. Blah blah blah. Just read Watchmen. And re-read it: every time you do, you'll find new bits of story, new meaning, and new visuals that you didn't notice before. Watchmen is still great, even though I was surprised to find that the pages of the book, now 20 years old, are starting to smell like old comic books.

Robin Williams in Iraq

The San Francisco Chronicle has a remarkable two-part interview with Robin Williams (part 1 and part 2) about his many visits to U.S. military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries. Williams talks about the warmth of the people he meets, the feeling of danger, and the reason why he does it, despite his anti-war politics:

In a war, that even though I go: I don't know why we're there, but I know they're there, so that's why you still go for them.

It's a challenge to translate Williams' frenetic rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness, multi-voiced delivery to the printed/rendered page, but the Chronicle does a good job. It's another challenge to follow along as you read it, and the interview is long, but I highly recommend you stick with it. Williams riffs on uniforms, Bob Hope, George Bush, memorable military characters, helicopters, and many other subjects. It's funny, enlightening, and human.

SpiderWorks e-books

Adam and Tonya Engst and the gang at TidBITS have been doing a great job publishing Take Control electronic books for more than a year. Now another legendary Macintosh name, Dave Mark, is taking the e-book plunge. SpiderWorks is a new e-book imprint that's focused on Mac programming topics, at least initially. The first e-books from SpiderWorks include brand new updates of two classics, Danny Goodman's AppleScript Handbook and Dave Mark's Learn C on the Macintosh. That's a very impressive start.

Although the first SpiderWorks books are developer-focused, the site says that non-developer books are on the way. SpiderWorks books are presented in a horizontal "landscape" format, created by Mac author Robin Williams, that's designed to take advantage of today's wide screens.

SpiderWorks books arrive as PDF files that are not copy protected, although they employ a gentle form of "social copy protection". When you buy a SpiderWorks e-book, your name is encrypted and placed in the PDF as a digital watermark. You can't see the watermark, and you can copy the document freely, but if a copy gets loose in the wild, SpiderWorks says they can use the watermark to find out where the copy came from.

You can download free preview chapters to get a taste for the books. Good luck to Dave Mark and the gang at SpiderWorks in their new venture!

(Disclaimer: everybody mentioned in this post is a friend. But please check out the great stuff at SpiderWorks and Take Control anyway -- both provide free samples.)

The Filth

I just finished reading (and re-reading) a rather incredible comic book series (for adults) called The Filth, written by Grant Morrison. It's pretty hard to describe briefly, but here goes: an ordinary guy's life is shattered when he's told he's really a member of a secret agency called The Hand that goes around cleaning up any weird stuff that deviates from the standard way things are or "doesn't belong". Along the way, Morrison fills the comic with one incredible concept after another, including a superintelligent Soviet chimp assassin, a ship the size of a city, a drug-addicted president who meets a horrifyingly bizarre fate, nanotech robots who talk to cancer cells, giant killer sperm, a comic book universe that's used to develop technology for harvesting into the real world, and some of the evilest evil villains you've ever met. Also many other things. Amazing art by Chris Weston. New concepts are thrown out at a dizzying pace that reminded me of a modern, adult version of what Jack Kirby did when he returned to DC in the early 1970s. You have to read it slowly and pay attention.





If you're weird, check it out. Let me know if you want to borrow mine. Reminder: this is for big-minded grown ups. Sex and violence.

Complete Peanuts

If you're a fan of Charles Schulz's classic Peanuts, you'll be ecstatic to know that Fantagraphics Books is about to start an ambitious project to reprint every Peanuts strip ever. The publisher projects that this project will take more than 12 years and 25 volumes to complete. The first volume covers 1950 to 1952 and costs $29. It's scheduled to ship next week.

The Silmarillion

I finished reading The Silmarillion yesterday, completing my Return of the King-induced book binge. It's fun but very different from The Lord of the Rings, as everybody who has read it knows. It lacks a central narrative focus or main character, like Hobbits or Aragorn. It feels a lot like the Bible -- very stately and "begat-y". The number of characters, mostly Elves, is overwhelming, and family members often have similar names: see if you can distinguish Fingolfin, Fingon, Finarfin, Finrod, and Finduilas.

Still, there are moments of wonder and beautiful writing. The book starts with a cool creation myth: the world is made out of music. There's the origin of the sun and the moon. You find out why there's all that fuss about the White Tree in Gondor. The story of Beren and Luthien is neat and foreshadows Aragorn and Arwen (who are also their descendants). You hear a lot about Morgoth, who taught Sauron everything he knows. You get the origin of Aragorn's race and find out why the world is round (it wasn't always). If you get totally lost, there's a wonderful index of names so you can refresh your memory.

Eventually the story catches up to the end of The Lord of the Rings. I really love the very end of the book, which is also one of the last scenes in LOTR:

And latest of all the Keepers of the Three Rings rode to the Sea, and Master Elrond took there the ship that Cirdan had made ready. In the twilight of autumn it sailed out of Mithlond, until the seas of the Bent World fell away beneath it, and the winds of the round sky troubled it no more, and borne upon the high airs above the mists of the world it passed into the Ancient West, and an end was come for the Eldar of story and of song.

Beautiful. So am I a full-on Tolkie now?