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September 10
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Lindsay
added:
Therefore, Repent! (Paperback)
by Jim Munroe, Salgood Sam
bookshelves:
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my rating:
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Lindsay
added:
Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (Paperback)
by John Lydon
bookshelves:
want-to-read
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my rating:
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August 19
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Lindsay
gave
to:
Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel (Paperback)
by Kathy Acker
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in August, 2008
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August 12
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New comment on Lindsay's review of
Going to the Movies: A Personal Journey Through Four Decades of Modern Film
(see all 2 comments)
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August 11
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Lindsay
is currently reading:
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (Penguin Classics)
by Benvenuto Cellini
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Lindsay
gave
to:
The De-moralization Of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (Paperback)
by Gertrude Himmelfarb
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in July, 2008
Lindsay said:
"I have no idea if her history is accurate or if this woman is a total fruitcake, but I do know that I really enjoyed reading this book. Himmelfarb writes very well, and her unconventional approach to the Victorian era gave me another viewpoint to add...more
I have no idea if her history is accurate or if this woman is a total fruitcake, but I do know that I really enjoyed reading this book. Himmelfarb writes very well, and her unconventional approach to the Victorian era gave me another viewpoint to add to my existing ideas about that time....less
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New comment on Trane's review of
Sexy Voice and Robo (Sexy Voice and Robo)
reply to this comment
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Lindsay
read and liked
Trane's
review of Sexy Voice and Robo (Sexy Voice and Robo):
"In truth, I expected a bit more from Iou Kuroda's Sexy Voice and Robo, though I couldn't really tell you what. The basic story involves a 14-year-old "telephone dating operator" who can figure things out about people by listening to...more
In truth, I expected a bit more from Iou Kuroda's Sexy Voice and Robo, though I couldn't really tell you what. The basic story involves a 14-year-old "telephone dating operator" who can figure things out about people by listening to their voices. She can also manipulate people like hell by altering her voice and/or telling people what they want to hear. Nico Hayashi, a.k.a. 'Sexy Voice,' actually wants to be either a "spy or a fortuneteller" when she grows up. Her sidekick Robo is an out-of-work collector of toy robots (I don't know anyone like that, do you?) who tries to assuage his loneliness by meeting women through the teleclub. He's a bit slow on the uptake, but an otherwise sympathetic character, and he's constantly being manipulated by Nico into being her partner in pseudo-spying. The third main character in this book is a mysterious old man who becomes Nico's boss. He clearly has a checkered past and lots of ties to the underworld, and yet (of course) he's basically a good guy at heart.
This book falls down in a couple of ways. First of all, there's not really a coherent narrative that underlies the various vignettes. This would be fine in an autobiographical comic, or a comic that was just trying to introduce a few characters in order to give us a slice of alternate-world living, but in Sexy Voice and Robo Kuroda throws us suddenly in wildly dramatic story arcs that only last a few pages, and then rips us out of them just as suddenly. This leaves the stories feeling as if they are either incomplete, or as if they've been artificially cut short. This ties into a second major failing of this book, which is the realization of secondary characters. Secondary characters play a major role in this book (often as villains) but they never seem to have realistic, or at times even fathomable, motivations for what they're doing. There's the mobile phone systems programmer who develops an unstable system and simply needs an "element of chance" to make the decision to destroy the system from the ground up. Why this is the right choice, the comic never really reveals. Why Sexy Voice is the element of chance isn't really revealed either. But you do get this fantastic bit of dialogue: "You've been sent here to do this. It's your destiny." Uh-huh. This gets us to the third problem with the book, which is that the dialogue is often either badly written, totally unrealistic, or at times even confusing. I'm not sure if this problem is ultimately the author's fault, or the translator's fault, but it definitely kept me from ever completely buying what the comic was trying to sell me (and trust me, I wanted to buy!).
That much said, there is a lot of enjoyment to be had from this book, and I certainly don't regret having read it. There's a hit man who can only remember as far back as three days ago. There's the woman who leaves notes in love hotels as a series of clues that ultimately lead to the phone of a particular room — the only phone that can make a call to her mobile phone without getting an operator's voice. There's the crazy otaku who wants to turn off all the Christmas lights on Omote-sando. And etc. And all of this done in a nice brush-style that kind of reminds me of a combination of Paul Pope and Ben Katchor, which is a strange combination, but I'm going to stick to that claim.
And finally, there's a lovely 'dated moment' in this comic. This comes when Nico/Sexy Voice calls her parents from a landline because she doesn't want anyone to see that a 14-year-old is using a mobile phone. I mean, how on earth could a 14-year-old ever get ahold of one of those super-expensive things, and why would she need one anyhow? The original book was published back in 2002 and I guess this just goes to show how quickly 2002 can become dated when it comes to stuff like the culture of personal technology....less
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August 06
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Lindsay
added:
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Paperback)
by Patrick Süskind
bookshelves:
want-to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Victorians!
— 70 members
— last activity 17 days ago, 05:34PM
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
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