Jim Ottaviani's Blog, page 9

Jim Ottaviani at Heroes Convention, June 7-9 in Charlotte, NC

Hey, wow. Good to see you! It's been what, four years, hasn't it? Yes, yes it has. And you haven't changed a bit, Heroes Convention. No, really, I mean it. Your guest list is still fantastic, your organizers still friendly and professional, and you're still in Charlotte, which is a pretty nifty town.
So yeah, I'll be there. You can find me at table AA-907, right next to Maris Wicks (@mariswicks) as we reprise our historic meet-up just before she started drawing Primates . (We ate lots of brunch, and talked a lot about gorillas and chimps and orangutans.) And now...well, now that book is not only drawn and colored and edited, but it's printed as well. How about we debut it at the show? 
Yes, let's!
I hope you'll come by and pick up a copy. We'll both have other books too, just in case you want a little more science and fun in your life.

Weekend article reading

Here's a list of magazines and journals I read articles from recently, in rough chronological order. The first one to guess what the current project is from this list gets a free copy of Feynman ...recently seen back on the NYT bestseller list. (!)

Am. J. Sci., Ann. Phys., Am. Sci, Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. A. (x2), Phys. Rev. Lett. (x2), New Sci., Commun. math. Phys., NYT Mag., Playboy, Nature (x3), Phys. Rev. D. (x7)

Send me a private tweet, Facebook message, or email if you think you've figured it out. I'd love to send someone a book, but I made this cryptic* on purpose. We're not quite ready to announce, but I hope to be able to reveal all -- or at least more -- soon.

* Turing pun intended...I'm not talking about "The Imitation Game", which is so close to complete I can taste it. Leland Purvis is doing terrific work!

Feynman, now in paperback

Question: What has the same great cover and interior art, but lots more blurbs and doesn't cost as much as its first incarnation and has five fewer typos and weighs 1.2 ounces less and now has no run-on sentences?

Answer: Feynman , in paperback. It's out tomorrow, April 30, and it's also more bendy than the hardcover, which makes it perfect for those times when...heck, I don't know, when need a shin pad. You know, in an emergency?

Nobody said this was a good riddle, but all those blurbs on the back and "The #1 NYT Bestseller" bit that's now on the front indicate it's not just Leland and me who are happy with how the book turned out.

(p.s. I didn't really weigh it, and I don't think the hardcover had any run-on sentences.)

Primates Events: We're Having Some!

Primates . It's a book, it's coming out soon, and we're excited about it.



We = Maris and me, and we're two people who can't wait to talk about this thing we made together. And we may even do some of that talking together, at least once.



So...see below for dates and places so you can plan your social calendar accordingly. (All dates are 2013, in case you wondered.) Event times to be determined, so check back here or at the various locations where we're scheduled to appear for updates. We hope to see you soon!




Charlotte, NC

June 7-9

Heroes Con

The book's official release date is June 11, but this is the launch event and debutante ball for the book, all rolled into one. Maris will be in chiffon, I'll be sporting a powder blue tux. Or maybe she'll be wearing a t-shirt and jeans and I will too. (Different shirts, different jeans, I promise.) You'll have to come to the show and find out.

Brookline, MA

June 13

Brookline Booksmith

Maris, being awesome at a local bookstore.

Ann Arbor, MI

June 15

Vault of Midnight

Jim, trying to be as awesome as Maris. Maybe we'll play Bananagrams too. The Vault is cool that way.

Somerville, MA

June 15

Hub Comics

Maris, still awesome, still local.

Lansing, MI

June 18

Schuler's Books and Music

Jim, and maybe a guest primatologist (probably not Dr. Goodall or Dr. Galdikas, though).

Ann Arbor, MI

June 25

Nicola's Books

Jim again, talking more about Primates. I'll make sure it's different from what we'll do (have done!) at the Vault, so you can attend both without fear of being bored. Unless people really liked playing Bananagrams, in which case maybe we can do that again...

Maris Wicks on "In the beginning..."

You probably didn't know that you need to go to Maris' blog right now and see some great sketches (am I wearing argyle socks there?!) and read her story about signing on to do Primates .

Like I said, you probably didn't know. But now you do. So, all set? Great. Thanks. That's it for today.

Primates, for reals!

The book really, really exists, and you can verify it via show and tell at the First Second blog, thanks to Gina G! My favorite quote:

Can you believe that one of the people at our parent company had never
heard of the Barrel of Monkeys toys that our designer, Colleen AF
Venable, was modeling these on? We had to explain.

She's referring to the back cover, which is So Very Fine. Click that link and you'll agree!

Blogging at/for/with 826michigan

Go here, where here = The Staple, to read what I wrote about writing. And yeah, I meant that self-referential and redundant phrase "wrote about writing"...this is a blog post about a blog post, after all.

Now you can build Google's book scanner!

We've had a bunch of these near U-M's campus, for years. I never saw them, or even knew where the undisclosed location was, exactly. (My wife did, and knew. She's good about honoring NDAs, though!)

But now, if you have out of copyright works that deserve to be seen more widely? Well, get crackin'! Start here to learn more.

Publishing numbers

As I write this, an interesting (if you're interested in book publishing) discussion of BookScan is going on over at The Beat under the heading "Just how accurate is BookScan anyway?".

A couple folks with numbers and industry experience to share -- including me, complete with some embarrassing typos -- have chimed in!

Something(s) to read, 2012

Up here above the 42nd parallel the weather is such that I'm staying inside and reading more, and you might also plan to spend extra time indoors in the next few weeks. Or months. So in case you wondered, here are the best books I read in 2012, complete with my brief notes to myself about them. They're in no particular order; they're all good and some are even better than that. I hope you find something new here to enjoy!


Fiction

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
More poetic than I remembered, and great all the way through. What a surprise, right? Chapter 19 is some of the best writing I can remember reading, but the whole thing shines. (Too bad about the n-word, though.)

A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan
Startling and well done and fun.

Lemons Never Lie
Richard Stark
Excellent crime fiction ride via Donald Westlake's Grofield. It's not Parker, but that means you get to like the main character all the way through.

Science Fiction/Fantasy

Stories of Your Life and Others
Ted Chiang
Excellent short story collection; consistently thoughtful and imaginative and well-written.

Doomsday Book
Connie Willis
Science fiction set in centuries past. It's sad and beautiful. There are repetitious passages, but you can make an argument that they're thematically important and true to the period.

Ready Player One
Ernest Cline
Fun! A good summer page-turner.

American Gods
Neil Gaiman
Enjoyable and meandering in a good way; well-plotted and in very well written. I'm glad I waited to read the author's preferred text.

The Speed of Dark
Elizabeth Moon
Very good book on autism and what it means; I suspect it's written as aspirational (in terms of the ending) by someone who knows autism personally. It carried me along effortlessly.

Prepare to Die!
Paul Tobin
Fun superhero story, proving you can do something new with the tropes. If you're as good as Paul, that is.

Young Adult

The Waiting Sky
Lara Zielin
Her best so far. Pulls you right through. I'm tempted to say it spins you around and sucks you in, but that would just be cheesy.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay
Suzanne Collins
Great premise and plotting, and exciting to read. In the end, I think of this as The Road for young adults. Not plausible through-and-through, but still a page-turner.

Fire and Hemlock
Diana Wynne Jones
Horrible cover on a pretty fine book. As Sara Ryan pointed out, it creates an absorbing world that held me off balance for most of the story.

Non-Fiction

A More Perfect Heaven
Dava Sobel
Another remarkable book by Sobel, in the tradition of Longitude (at least in length) and Galileo's Daughter in terms of building a resonance with the character of Copernicus.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
Amazing story, well written and structured, and a page-turner throughout. Read this.

Distrust That Particular Flavor
William Gibson
Some great stuff in here, esp. "Disneyland with the Death Penalty", "My Private Tokyo", "Johnny: Notes on a Process"

Rin Tin Tin
Susan Orlean
Great writing, great story.

Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
Excellent book on how and why we act, react, and think. I think it's particularly insightful about bias and choice, and along with Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein should be required reading for the whole world.

Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens
Andrea Wulf
Interesting story, and a great origin of big science/international cooperation. Makes current travel difficulties pale by comparison.

Lincoln at Gettysburg
Garry Wills
Terrific close reading of Lincoln's address; the context and the structure are both fascinating and illuminating. Terrific book, and a guide to powerful speechmaking as well.

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story
Sean Howe
Fascinating, but I don't know what lessons to learn except that you shouldn't expect job security or creative license unless you're at the very top of the executive heap. And it is a heap. Made me want to read, or re-read, some of the more interesting-sounding (in a train-wreck sort of way, on occasion) series.

The Signal and the Noise
Nate Silver
Silver takes a victory lap even before his amazing calls of the 2012 election. A great book, full of important ideas.

Where Did Our Love Go?
Nelson George
History of Motown, focusing on business dealings but with plenty of interesting analysis of how/why Motown worked, and then didn't. Quintessential Detroit, both good and bad.

Graphic Novel

The Cardboard Valise
Ben Katchor
Elliptical and occasionally beautiful. A pleasure to read and see, and a wonderful physical package.

Walt & Skeezix: 1929-1930
Frank O. King
The extended sequence about Skeezix's inheritance is too long by a lot of weeks, but overall the book is still a treat and a ticket back to a wonderful, imagined world.

One Soul
Ray Fawkes
Technically and formally brilliant, but emotional and attractive as well.

Harvey Pekar's Cleveland
Harvey Pekar and Joseph Remnant
Not his best writing, but still good, and Remnant's art is terrific all the way through. Meet the new Crumb, and the new standard for drawing Pekar.

Drama
Raina Telgemeier
Another note-perfect story about being someone just discovering yourself, and learning to like what you find.

The Mighty Alice
Richard Thompson
Mighty, as always.

The Score
Darwyn Cooke
Another good entry in the Parker series of adaptations by Cooke. What else to say; hard-boiled just the way real lugs and dames like it.

Big Questions
Anders Nilsen
Remarkable. Not sure what to think, or how to analyze this, but it's up there with the great graphic novels I've read.

Sailor Twain
Mark Siegel
Much, much better in one chunk than serialized. And it was great fun serialized. A lovely book, worth revisiting.