Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (Fanfare/Ponent Mon) is really amazing, but I have to know… Is any of Fabrice Neaud’s other work available in English? Because his piece for the anthology is spectacular, and I think I’m in love. I’m going to have to suck it up and re-learn French, aren’t I?
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Are you a librarian who deals with holdings for young adults? Would you like to answer my dumb questions about the process your library uses to select graphic novels and offer me anecdotes about your experience with user responses for use in a future Flipped column? E-mail me at DavidPWelsh at yahoo dot com, and I’ll be very, very grateful.
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How weird is Yun Kouga’s Loveless (Tokyopop)? I mean that in a good way, I think. I know Earthian is probably considered Kouga’s classic work, but Loveless seems a lot more immediate and moving to me. There’s also something strangely… wrong about it, but the wrongness seems to contribute to why it works so well. I’ll have to ponder this and consider just how such a strange little piece of shônen-ai has managed to move so well in bookstores.
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What exactly are all those people competing for on Top Chef? It doesn’t seem like the prize is as impressive as Project Runway’s, though I guess it’s harder to pinpoint a consistently desirable outcome for people with so many different professional backgrounds and ambitions. (I can’t see all of them wanting, say, a restaurant start-up, a cookbook deal, or a television show, so cash was probably the way to go.) It’s a lot of fun, though, and it’s certainly better than The Next Food Network Star.
(I’m kind of dying for Food Network to do a Chefography on Sandra Lee, because I think it would be hilarious and tragic. “And then, young Sandra saw her first electric can-opener, and her life changed forever.”)