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Dec 17, 2009

Rory rated it:

SHUT UP, Adrian Tomine. I get that your characters are all you, and that they're all your girlfriends, and that they're all lonely and disconnected and pathetic. I get it, now SHUT UP. And endings? I know they're not hip, but you could humour us with some, couldn't you?

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 30, 2008

Eli rated it:

The last story gets three stars. In general I had issues with this book though. It seems as if the medium with which Tomine tells his stories really stifles any progression the stories might make. Everyone comes across as really two-dimensional and, I promise I'm not trying to be cute here, everything is so black and white. The guys are either pathetic, awkward losers/chauvinistic jocks and the girls are all masochistic sluts with low self esteem. There is also a lot of blankness to the way Tomi More...

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Dec 16, 2009

Michael rated it:

Such a right-on look at urban/suburban loneliness. We all may not have felt this way in our high school and college and 20-something years, but I sure have at times. Sure, the characters are whiny and self-pitying, but so are people who actually go through those situations. This is not as Raymond Carver-redux as everybody is claiming--for one thing, the situations are a little more unusual, where Carver really gets great mileage out of the banal and the utterly ordinary. No, this feels like clas More...

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Jul 22, 2010

Benjamin rated it:

Much like Short Comings in style and general story arc but split up into four vignettes. The flap on the jacket is accurate. Mr. Tomine does have a knack for drawing all sorts of facial expressions, but particularly annoyed ones. These stories did remind me of certian people I have known in my life. People that I haven't thought about in a long time. Very subtle characterizations that I have never been able to put my finger on came to life again in some of these stories. [return][return]I enjoye More...

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Feb 09, 2009

Yofish rated it:

Written by the Wall Street Journal Education writer. Had maybe enough for a newspaper article. It is his position that US colleges are not meritocracies because of legacy admission, sports (especially rich, white sports) scholarships, and going after children of wealth in order to increase endowments. But he doesn't really make the case--he mostly states it and assumes that you must agree. Nor does he make a good case about why I should care, either as a Yale alum or as a US citizen. Some o More...

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Dec 20, 2008

Sharm rated it:

Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine was my most recent comic book recommendation. The four stories contained within each encapsulate a little slice of California Gen X life in all its urban loneliness. In fact, what I liked most about them was that there weren't tidy endings to any of the stories. Additionally, anyone who is at all Chinese or knows anything about (migrant) Chinese culture may identify very much with Hillary in 'Hawaiian Getaway'.

I found a surprisingly good review of the boo More...

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Nov 21, 2011

Veroni rated it:

Tomine is a master at distilling human situations into an image. Every expression on a person's face, every background is thoughtfully constructed. If you took all that's sloppy and arbitrary in this world and created its exact opposite, you would get Tomine's illustrations. As for the writing, it's an equally precise record of modern despair. The dialogue aches with realness.

So why the missing star? Honestly, in terms of craft (of both writing and illustration) this book deservers 5/5 More...

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Nov 10, 2011

Vivid Scribe rated it:

The title is worth commenting on. Blondes are usually thought of as fun and attractive, more attractive than brunettes. By another author, the title Summer Blonde would indicate something like a fun holiday romance. But in the world inhabited by Adrian’s characters, and people who love his works, blondes are wicked. They are phantoms, style over substance, all matter and no essence. They’ve grown up not knowing rejection, only being praised for how they look. They will bewitch you. They will rej More...

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Jun 25, 2011

Franklin rated it:

It's kind of pathetic that I feel more motivated to bitch about a book I didn't like than to convince y'all to read an amazing one, but let's get bitching!
The back cover has a bunch of positive reviews, but I really just didn't like this book.
The art was fine, although when he didn't color people's irises in, they looked like soulless monsters who were never really looking at anything.
Almost every character was a creepy asshat, and there weren't any endings, either. If he did tha More...

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May 06, 2011

Jess rated it:

Oh. Despite really not liking Shortcomings, Summer Blonde has redeemed Adrian Tomine in my eyes. I think his characters, who may strike unaccustomed readers as obnoxious or intentionally abrasive, are more tolerable in these brief glimpses. Again, the artwork is clean, detailed and subtly expressive, with that rare quality in graphic fiction of looking like actual people you may pass in the street.

These are not definitive moments in these peoples lives, they're not transformative mom More...

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Feb 05, 2011

Géraldine rated it:

Lu en français
___

Quatre nouvelles en image

*Alter Ego*
Un écrivain en mal d'inspiration retourne sur les traces de son adolescence suite à la réception d'un mot d'une fan qui est peut-être son ancien amour d'adolescence.
*Blonde platine*
Un jeune homme en difficultés relationnelles observe et jalouse son voisin serial seducteur
*Escapade hawaïenne*
Une jeune femme dite "bizarre" tente vaille que vaille de trouver sa place dans la société et, More...

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Nov 07, 2010

Artur rated it:

Blonde Platine, Summer Blonde no original, é um livro que reune quatro histórias publicadas originalmente no comic Optic Nerve, um comic influente e inovador que Tomine publica desde os seus dezasseis anos (nada como génios precoces).

Blonde Platine é composto por quatro contos em BD. No primeiro, Alter Ego, somos introduzidos ao mundo de um escritor que luta débilmente para escrever o seu segundo livro. Enquanto busca inspiração, envolve-se com a irmã mais nova de uma antiga paixão pla More...

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Aug 05, 2009

Nazary rated it:

This book is the reason I am happy that the graphic novel genre exists. It's good to see people breaking away from superheroes and into actualy storytelling with real people. The people in the book may be flat, but they're not boring. They're the typical freaks and geeks we meet in high school and adulthood, they all have their issues and they try to deal with them as best they can. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. What's important is that we can relate to these characters. They're not More...

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Jun 30, 2009

Jimmy rated it:

Summer blonde, some are not blonde, and some just fantasize about blondes. There's too much teen angst and white-boy self pity in these pages for me to really be very enthusiastic about it. All four protagonists are losers who are just creepy or bitter enough for you to not feel sorry for him/her. The first two stories suffered from this the most, I felt like the artist was writing about himself. The last two stories are an improvement. I liked the 3rd story the most, because it was about a More...

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Jul 05, 2011

jess rated it:

I enjoyed reading this book well enough, in that it was an adequately pleasurable reading experience. I didn't love it. I haven't thought about it since I finished it. It is not the sort of book that got its details stuck in the crevices of my brain. It's a portrait of a sort of urban/suburban middle-class existence in a specific place (Bay Area) at a specific time (now-ish) for a specific generation (Tomine-ish). The major themes come back to loneliness, isolation, pathetic desperation, etc. Th More...

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Jun 02, 2009

Emily rated it:

I read this book late one night on vacation. It was depressing but also really made me realize how honest Tomine is with his comics. "Hawaiian Getaway" was a lot like Dan Clowes "Ghost World" in that the character was increasingly bitter. Which makes me think that most graphic novelists have some edge of bitterness sloshing around in their brains.

Tomine captures the pre hipster era well in these stories, almost as if he can see it coming. I didn't see it coming. More...

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Jul 23, 2011

Todd rated it:

A little procrastination at the Mountain View library.

I was disappointed in Shortcomings, but I still admire Adrian Tomine's drawings and technique so much that I'm happy just to leaf through a book of his drawings for an hour or so. I was happy that the four short stories in the book were excellent as well. The overarching theme is loneliness, especially that particular subclass of loneliness people experience when they are trying to figure out their place in life when it seems eve More...

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Jul 16, 2010

Christina rated it:

struggling with how many stars. prob between 2 and 3. tomine has struck a chord with his writing/drawing style: these are well-crafted short stories with literary merit that could only be told the way he tells them. and he's really good at creating characters that feel true and alive and very sad...don't read it if you're in a bad mood or are feeling mildly depressed. because these characters are sad and they make me sad. and sometimes they're hard to like...much like some people in real life. i More...

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Jul 02, 2009

Janice rated it:

It's not a surprise that Adrian Tomine has been involved in introducing Tatsumi to a North American audience. Tomine's characters are young people in the 1990s and 2000s (not the '50s and '60s), and they live in San Francisco or Sacramento (not Japan), but like Tatsumi's characters they're terribly lonely and even desperate. They have very contemporary problems (boring dead-end jobs, the homophobia of classmates, crummy boyfriends/girlfriends), but like Tatsumi's characters they are sometimes More...

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Jul 21, 2007

Tao rated it:

i cried on the last page not because it was sad but because it was so good.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 19, 2010

Heidi rated it:

Adrian Tomine's Summer Blonde is a collection of four stories all delving (sometimes uncomfortably yet truthfully) into the loneliness that comes with love. On the front jacket flap of the book, Dan Raeburn says, "Tomine not only makes these people real, he makes them sympathetic, and that is what makes a true artist. That, and his ability to draw just about any facial expression in human experience." And that is exactly true. The expressions push the conversation past the point of awk More...

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Apr 04, 2010

Jeff rated it:

Soon as i picked this book up i couldn't put it down until i finished reading it. Adrian tomine serves up another bunch of emotionally raw characters who feel original yet familiar at the same time.

The stories are short though you wish they were longer because you enjoy being with these characters and hope something positive for them, Bt tomine's talent is shown by saying so much. in such a short time and space.

The Endings are never quite satisfying and at times leave y More...

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Jan 28, 2012

Joe rated it:

My favorite author, John D MacDonald, once summed up the point of writing or storytelling in general like this: At some point, the reader ought to be eagerly picking up and resuming the book thinking, "Dammit, I want to see what happens to the guy!"
As a mystery/thriller writer, MacDonald was probably thinking of stories with a highly dramatic scope entailing death and danger.
Summer Blonde is NOT that book.
The shorts in Summer Blonde deal with the ordinary and mundane. More...

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Dec 07, 2010

Maggie rated it:

I'm not totally sure this is a youth appropriate text, but wanna get the hang of this, and I read it last night.

Adrian Tomine's graphic novel, a collection of four short stories, is for a high school reader, if not a late high school reader. Tomine explores the isolation and loneliness of four modern young characters. "Alter Ego" tells the story of a young author floundering to try and find his next project, checking out of his own life and only being able to connect with t More...

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Jul 07, 2008

Jen rated it:

Wow. I had been enjoying the Optic Nerve single issues I was reading, but this book totally blew me away. I read Tomine's 32 Stories not too long ago (his collection of really early, self-published Optic Nerve issues), and the distance he traveled between that book and this one is remarkable to me. Summer Blonde is four different stories - each one of which was published in an issue of Optic Nerve, I believe, before they were collected - and the title of one of the stories is Summer Blonde. More...

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Apr 11, 2008

David rated it:

These stories of young men and women seeking meaning (and seldom finding it) in a world that is as aimless and sometimes as cruel as they themselves are, may at first seem somewhat drifty and static, but they have a way of creeping in under the skin and setting up residence in the heart. A maladjusted former telephone girl – fired for acknowledging that it was William Shatner ordering those crewnecks – strikes up a relationship with a victim of a crank call. A socially inept author parlays his More...

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Apr 19, 2008

Mike rated it:

I decided to include Summer Blonde in the "catching-up" dimension of my 52 books in 52 weeks challenge after going to my favourite comic book shop and being stared at incredulously at the shrugging motion I made when the clerk asked me if I had ever read some Adrian Tomine. He immediately pulled out Summer Blonde from the stack and emphasised on how important it was for me to acquaint myself with the book.

It was incredibly easy to get into these four stories of social and More...

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Aug 26, 2007

Dan rated it:

This book is a compilation of 4 shorter comics from Adrian Tomine's comicbook Optic Nerve. The common theme to all the stories are sad lonely people trying to make a connection with others. Whether it is a high school loser grown up to be a successful writer flirting with a high school girl; a suicidal man over come with jealousy for his smooth neighbor; an over-weight second generation immigrant who can't talk to people in person; a drunk high school girl who poops her pants at a party and a More...

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Feb 04, 2009

Wes rated it:

A collection of early stories from 'Optic Nerve'. Typical Tomine characterizations. I don't know why I am so attracted to Tomine's work. His is more interesting situations than interesting characters. I only say that because his characters, at least in 'Summer Blonde' are especially self-loathing, uncertain, ocassionally soiciopathic assholes or worse. Don't look for any happy endings in this collection. The artwork is pretty good though, and, like I said, the stories are fascinating!

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May 02, 2009

Beth rated it:

This is the most depressing graphic novel (or short story collection rather) of all time, which shouldn't have any bearing on its rating, but it does. That said, the characters are extremely realistic and well-formed, especially considering Tomine crams four stories into a fairly slim volume. With the exception of the fourth story, however, I found the characters unsympathetic and unlikable, though I felt like that had more to do with me than with Tomine's creation.

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