22 June 2008

Arboga

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Always bad news from the Ouija board


Wiki

16 June 2008

The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott

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Finally the new Thomas Ott (remember the last). I was going to save it for the perfect reading moment, but literally halfway out of bed this morning I figured I could at least have a little look at the first page - and before I knew it half an hour had past and 100 or so pages had ben scanned. Couldn't help it. I blame the genius. Oh, and it seems like it's his first full-length graphic novel, too.

Over at Fantagraphics there's a downloadable chapter for registered users, they also put up this on their Flickr.

By the way, fans of Ott might want to have a look at the wonderful cover for Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle:

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That whole Penguin series with favourite artists' jackets I would like to have just to hold. Anders Nilsen, Daniel Clowes, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, it's too much!

09 June 2008

Not Finishing #2 - Summer Plans

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I know I've been writing about not finishing before, out of those I've actually only finished number 2 and 3 on the list. This here is more like some projects I'll try to take on this summer:

Diaries:
Lars Norén - En Dramatikers dagbok
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Diary of Virginia Woolf (1915-1919)


Coming of Age:
Angelica Garnett - Deceived with Kindness
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Jenny Erpenbeck - Wörterbuch
Nina Bouraoui - La Vie Heureuse
Mare Kandre - Aliide, Aliide
Maria Gripe - Skuggan över Stenbänken
Katarina Frostenson - Berättelser från Dom


Poetry:
Ted Hughes - Birthday Letters

Short Stories:
Franz Kafka - En Svältkonstnär (the short stories published during K's lifetime)

Non-Fiction:
Susan Sontag - Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
Nancy Huston - Journal de la Création
Katarina Wennstam - En Riktig Våldtäktsman
Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own


Fiction:
Djuna Barnes - Nightwood
Ying Chen - Immobile
Lotta Lotass - Min Röst Skall Nu Komma från En Annan Plats i Rummet
Jeanette Winterson - Gut Symmetries
Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary
(re-read)


Yeah well. Let's see.

07 June 2008

The Horror #1

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My grandmother was persistent when I was a kid:

1. She always did my eggs runny although I hated it (I still shiver at the mere thought)
2. She kept on reading Struwwelpeter (Pelle Snusk) to me although it scared the s**t out of me (and still kind of does)

Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffman (1809-1894) was written as a children's book and I bet the parents of the mid-1840's thought it was really practical and nice to teach their kids some good ol' morals. What good it was to me I'm much less sure of, I was scared to death by Slovenly Peter and even more by the tailor in The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb:

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"The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissorman.
Oh! children, see! the tailor's come
And caught our little Suck-a-Thumb.

Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go;
And Conrad cries out - Oh! Oh! Oh!
Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast;
That both his thumbs are off at last."


It did not make me quit sucking my thumbs, neither to stop biting my nails.

Read it all here.

Read a new take on the stories here.

01 June 2008

No Tears for Queers by Johan Hilton

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Swedish journalist Johan Hilton's report on gay men and hate crimes really got to me. Well-written and on point, oftentimes haunting, quite a page turner.

Read an excerpt (in Swedish).