As 2008’s sultry midpoint has come and gone, the looming tower of incoming books and comics often begins to attain critical mass. Perhaps it’s the approach of the holiday season that spurs the increase, or maybe it’s nothing more than the recalcitrant procrastination of the receiving writer. Unfortunately, these books aren’t going to review themselves, though hopefully such plans are in the works at Amazon’s R&D department. One can dream…

Whatever the truth may be, the year has so far been an impressive one for graphic novels, whether they’re of the brooding caped superhero type or your standard-issue shoe-gazer indie introspective. The sheer number seems to grow from year to year, but so too does the quality increase, with a respectable stream of praiseworthy work coming out of a number of the smaller houses, who haven’t let the major publishers’ forays into the field crimp their style. And so, on to looking at what’s worth reading, graphic novel-speaking, before fall comes calling.

Good-Bye by Yoshohiro Tatsumi (Drawn & Quarterly)

Though the two artists would seem to share precious little in artistic style or worldview, if there were a Will Eisner for Japan, Yoshohiro Tatsumi would probably be it. Little known these days in Japan, and even less so here, Tatsumi’s work has nevertheless been slowly eking its way back into view, due to Drawn & Quarterly’s worthy effort to republish his shorter pieces in a series edited by Adrian Tomine. An implacably dark collection of short stories originally published in 1971 and 1972, Good-Bye has more in common with disaffected American urban novelists from the period like Bernard Malamud and John Cheever than the hyped-up sugar candy manga Japan is better known for these days. Each revolving around a different breed of lonely man (one unhealthily obsessed with the Hiroshima bombing, another anxious to enact revenge on a wife he hates), the stories are suffused with anxious, desperate sex and the dehumanizing greyness of the era’s overcrowded and ramshackle cities. While little turns out well for the men and women depicted here, there’s an appreciative humanity to Tatsumi’s work that begs attention. You can see a .pdf preview of the book here.

The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard by Eddie Campbell and Dan Best (First Second)

One has to throw at least a squib of appreciation towards a book whose first frame reads, “The amazing, remarkable LEOTARD empties his fortitudinous bowels. He combs his imposing, resplendent mustachios. And only then does he make his death-defying LEAP…” Eddie Campbell proved his mettle for dense historical graphic fiction with Alan Moore back when they were creating the masterpiece From Hell, but his sense of humor has rarely been so well displayed as in this hilarious adventure. Theoretically based on the famous acrobat who popularized the leotard, the book is really more an excuse for Campbell, and co-author Dan Best, to goof around with the increasingly outrageous and unbelievable antics that befall a fractious circus troupe trying to make its way at the end of the Victorian era. Campbell and Best rope in everything from the Titanic to Jack the Ripper, talking bears, battling dwarfs, and a giant lion-tiger hybrid called the “Ti-Lion,” blasting open the fourth wall whenever they feel like it, and generally having a blast.

Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell (Top Shelf)

Somewhere there’s a filmmaker who could make a minor masterpiece out of Nate Powell’s suburban nightmare of a book. Equally as informed by David Lynch and Donnie Darko as it is by the darker fringes of indie graphic fiction, Swallow Me Whole initially reads as just another closely-observed mumblecore take on adolescent ennui, with its repressed family and teenage girl protagonist who can’t quite connect with anything that’s going on around her. But then she starts seeing the hordes of bugs that nobody else notices, and there’s the divine messages she starts receiving. It isn’t long before the book flies right through the looking glass into a world of drowning black terror that’s all the more frightening for how quietly and precisely Powell’s pen delivers it.

Tōnoharu: Part One by Lars Martinson (Pliant)

Everybody’s heard about those great teaching jobs one can get in Japan where local language skills are barely necessary, just the ability to stand in front of a classroom and pronounce English. Easy money, in other words. Lars Martinson’s autobiographical graphic novel shows just how wrong such assumptions can be, particularly when the protagonist is a dull-faced twenty-something slacker who doesn’t seem to have any hobbies besides sleeping, watching TV, and not learning Japanese. Martinson’s art has an exquisitely etched, woodcarved look to it that’s just a hair shy of being fussy (not surprisingly, Martinson gives thanks to Chris Ware in the acknowledgements). While the book’s style can lead to some sameness in facial expression, Martinson’s depth of perception renders the aching social awkwardness being portrayed all the more potently. And this is only part one…

—Chris Barsanti

One of the most heartbreaking moments of my life in the last few years was the day that I discovered I was no longer in love with Angelina Jolie. This may not seem like much to most people, but I was a full-on altar boy in the Church of Angie, back when she was disastrously married to Billy Bob Thornton, carrying his blood around with her and sharing her love of knife-play and backseat coitus with a tongue-clucking world, the very soul of dangerously hot. Then she had to go and trade up, and her tabloid life became all about baby bumps and real estate and imaginary feuds with Jennifer Aniston while making three lousy movies for every one good one. The dangerously hot Angie is now guarded and conservative and, well, ordinary. She’s become Julia Roberts with better lips and the occasional ability to act.

The point is that while we may crave security, home and hearth, such things carry with them a life sentence in Dullsville. Some of us are fine with that tradeoff, some of us chafe at it, and some of us reject it altogether. The last group are the ones we want to read about: the people who wade into the situations the rest of us only wish we had the balls to face, and then come back with the scars and prizes that make us green with envy. Because of this, Mike Edison is my new hero. Punk drummer, amateur wrestler, pothead and smut peddler, Edison is a wiseassed and wickedly funny road warrior whose memoir I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World (Faber & Faber, 2008) is some of the most fun reading I’ve had since Hunter Thompson capped himself.

Beginning with the moment in his dysfunctional teens when he scored his first joint and never looked back, Edison drags us along on the demented hayride of his life. While dropping out of NYU film school because they looked askance at his proposed zombie epic, Edison began to make his bones as a writer for third-tier pro wrestling magazines and hardcore porn publishers, learning his craft (and yes, good porn takes craft) and eking out a living while pursuing his other passion, very loud drumming. Over the years Edison pounded cans for his band Sharky’s Machine, the Lunachicks, the semi-legendary Raunch Hands, and the hardest-working punk band in Spain, the Pleasure Fuckers, all the while getting into all the alcohol- and drug-fueled hijinks a single boy with a screw-you attitude and a high tolerance for pain can encounter. Edison describes going on a Vegas drunk with Evel Knievel, opening for the Ramones, and barbecuing (!) with the late great GG Allin.

Upon his return to America, burnt out and without a future, Edison discovered that he had somehow become an in-demand journalist on the below-the-radar magazine circuit, and after learning the business side of the publishing industry and renewing his ties with old connections, was hired as the publisher of High Times. Long a bastion of the ’60s counterculture and staffed by inveterate hippie holdovers, the place saw Edison bring a unique combination of business savvy and punk recalcitrance to the job, turning a perpetual punchline of a publication into a real magazine with edge and funk (and profit) by doing daily pitched battle with his employees. As Edison describes the Sisyphean task of trying to motivate a motley crew of pot casualties into doing their damn jobs, even Deadheads will feel the urge to kick the patchouli out of some of these people.

Edison’s book is brash, irreverent, funny as hell and beautifully written, proof positive that one can be both edgy and erudite, lowbrow and literate, and take joy in the unbridled pleasures of the id without sacrificing the higher mind. Mike Edison is my hero, and I’d love to send his book to Angelina. Maybe it’ll inspire her to scrub off the Brad Pitt stink and go back to being dangerously hot. She’s so much more interesting that way.

This article was originally published at Flagpole.

—John G. Nettles

Despite being restricted to members of the British Commonwealth, the Man Booker Prize is a hell of a lot more prestigious than the Commonwealth Games is for sport.  There are those who accuse it of being a B-league by omitting the United States and any number of non-Anglosphere countries, but it carries a remarkable amount of prestige, mainly because of the continued dominance of the United Kingdom in the literary world.

The other major difference with the Commonwealth Games is that in sport Australia runs rings around the competition but in books it’s not nearly as influential.  Nevertheless, Australia has won the second most Bookers out of any country—with either four or six prizes, depending on whether you count J.M. Coetzee’s two.  I don’t, because he moved here subsequent to his prizes, whereas Peter Carey, Tom Keneally and D.B.C. Pierre are Australian-born.  Pierre is another strange case, having been raised in Mexico and the USA with only a short stint as an adult in Australia.  I guess that’s what comes from being a nation of immigrants.

This year is a good one for Aussies, with locals Michelle de Kretser (for The Lost Dog) and Steve Toltz (for A Fraction of the Whole) both on the long list of 13.  The odds aren’t good, however, with the bookies favouring Salman Rushdie, whose Midnight’s Children was recently acclaimed the best Booker winner ever.

Of course, the long-odds books do occasionally win over the judges and the big names can be overlooked.  There were not a few critics that saw Midnight’s Children as a very safe choice for the Best of the Booker and the panel could be conscious of the need to give attention to some lesser-known writers.

The big surprise for the Australian industry is the omission of Helen Garner’s astonishing return to novel-writing, The Spare Room.  Garner is one of the few “big name” Australian writers still residing here rather than in the UK or USA.  In that sense, she’s clearly “one of ours” in a way that Carey or Pierre or Coetzee aren’t.

Of course, the Booker judges aren’t so interested in national pride and literature is (fortunately) less jingoistic than sport.  I still can’t help cheering on one of my own.

—David Pullar

A few (million) of you have been holding your breath, waiting for the midnight release last Friday of Stephenie Meyer’s last installment of the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn. Will Bella end up with Edward or Jacob? And what’s this about a wedding scene? (Don’t draw any conclusions!)

Yesterday, Meyer’s publisher released sales figures for the first day of Breaking Dawn‘s release, and the numbers are big. Really big. MTV.com reports:

Hachette Book Group announced today that the fourth and final novel in Stephenie Meyer’s #1 internationally bestselling Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn, shattered first day sales records for the company. HBG estimates that sales on the August 2 on-sale date were over 1.3 million copies.

Julie Bosman of the New York Times writes:

Barnes & Noble planned to hold vampire-theme parties in more than 600 of its stores on Friday night, and invited readers to arrive in costume, socialize and play Twilight trivia. Borders Group was expecting more than 100,000 fans at 900 Twilight-theme parties at its Waldenbooks and Borders stores.

Carol Memmott at USA Today counters: “Still, nothing competes with Harry Potter. Last July, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 8.3 million books in its first 24 hours on sale.”

Fans who needs more Twilight in their lives can recreate the author’s personal soundtrack, created while penning the final volume on her website. Crafty souls out there might be tempted by a free knitting pattern for Eclipse socks, embellished with the ribbon motif from the cover of the third book in the series.

I’d love to say I managed to attend a midnight party last weekend, but I have to admit, I’m waiting for a four volume Twilight set to be released – perhaps in time for the holidays? 

—Lara Killian

NPR has a short interview with Loriene Roy, who has recently completed her term as president of the American Library Association. Roy discusses her position as the ALA’s first Native American president and how her heritage has impacted her position. She discusses issues involving young readers in contemporary America, with a more positive outlook that we normally hear on that subject. Roy reminds us that books have survived the evolutions of television, film, and radio, and states that gaming and the Internet simply provide greater options for young readers.

Roy’s thoughts on books and reading can be found all over the NPR site, and I recommend checking back through her past documents. I don’t know if there’s ever been an ALA president so passionate and informed about such a large range of authors, genres, and issues.

Roy signs off, too, with a final reading list that includes the books she is in the middle of finishing, including Louise Erdrich’s Plague of Doves, Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, and Paula Poundstone’s There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant To Say.

—Nikki Tranter

Though it’s all over the news media today, I’m recommending checking out The Australian‘s piece on the passing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alongside a straightforward obituary is a 16-page photo album featuring images of the reclusive author thoughout his long life, from his days in the Soviet Army to his exile in Vermont up until his 80th birthday celebrations at Moscow’s Theatre Na Taganke. It provides a full picture of an artist and his time.

For a comprehensive investigation into the author’s life and work, visit today’s Guardian:

His wife, Natalya, told Interfax that her husband, who suffered along with millions of Russians in the prison camp system, died as he had hoped to die. “He wanted to die in the summer - and he died in the summer,” she said. “He wanted to die at home - and he died at home. In general I should say that Alexander Isaevich lived a difficult but happy life.”

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—Nikki Tranter