Did anyone else who uses Blogger experience a flurry of comment spam over the weekend? I wonder if it has anything to do with the new blog search functions. Hopefully, the word recognition feature will clear away some of the junk. It’s more a nuisance than anything, as most of them appear on entries from as long as a year ago.
I’m convinced this bug is never going to go away, but it did let me plow through a lot of the reading stack, both SPX stuff and the week’s ridiculously large manga haul.
The highlight of the SPX reading was the rest of Jessica Abel’s La Perdida (Fantagraphics). I’m glad I didn’t wait for the Pantheon collection. I also really enjoyed Josh Neufeld’s A Few Perfect Hours (and Other Stories from Southeast Asia and Central Europe) (Alternative). While La Perdida isn’t a travel comic, it relies so strongly on sense of place that it filled that function for me. Beyond their armchair traveler value, both focused on a kind of immersive, seat-of-your-pants brand of travel that I never practice, so there was an extra level of escapism. (I’m very big on set itineraries, confirmation numbers, and guaranteed comfort and safety when I hit the road.)
It seems like I’ve been waiting forever for another book by John Berendt, whose Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story is one of my favorites. (It spent forever on the best-seller list, and it was made into a truly appalling movie by Clint Eastwood.) His follow-up is finally out, The City of Falling Angels. This time, Berendt looks at culture, class, and crime in Venice. I’d forgotten that I’d pre-ordered it, so its arrival was a pleasant surprise.
I read a lot of the same manga volumes as Johanna Draper Carlson (what a surprise!). She updates several entries at Comics Worth Reading. But, here are some of my quick reactions:
- Othello Vol. 5: It’s nice to see Yaya starting to question the lapses in her memory, even as she seems to gain some confidence. The story is moving along nicely.
- Hikaru No Go Vol. 5: It surprised me to notice how much Hikaru has grown as a character over the course of this series. I can’t imagine the Hikaru from the first volume having the kind of emotional conflict he faces here (having to choose between ambition and loyalty).
- Yotsuba&! Vol. 3: Still delightful, and excellent bathtub reading, just in case anyone out there partakes of that particular pleasure. And plenty of Jumbo!
A new Flipped is up today, where I yammer about novels, graphic and otherwise, and the increasing intersection between the two. As case studies go, I probably could have done better than Socrates in Love.