Tag: books

Nemu-Nemu

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhtnpEuRqEg]   Here is my third video interview from San Diego Comic-Con 2010 (but fourth recorded). I’ll finish editing and posting the other videos by end of week. Here, I speak with “Nemu Nemu” […]

Fat Rabbit Farm

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY8wD0H3VZI]   During San Diego Comic-Con 2010 Day 2, I interviewed Fat Rabbit Farm creators Patty Variboa and Jason Ponggasam and writer of the first book Nicholas Doan. Cramped space in the booth made for tough […]

Mollycules

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnqMEn7qaIw]   In my first San Diego Comic-Con 2010 interview, artist and illustrator Molly Hahn shows off some delightful monsters and offers tips for aspiring storytellers. She’s bright and articulate, Mollycules is superb branding […]

Read More

Stoning ‘Philosopher’s Stone’

While traveling this month, I started reading J.K. Rowlings’ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, with the shameful, Americanized title. The book is properly known in the UK as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Given the Potter series’ popularity (six books and four movies), I had high expectations of the bestseller, but lowered them upon reading.

Coming from Northern Maine, where remain cultural ties to Canada and Britain, I quickly picked up on the mishmash of very British references. I’d say that Rowlings includes just about every magical or ghoulish creature known on the British Isles. The book borrows heavily from literary consciousness. The lacking originality, of plopping together concepts and creatures familiar to many generations of Britons, is astounding—unless her originality is humor. I take the book to be farcical, humorous in its plopping together so many creatures steeped in British cultural heritage. 

Read More

Twisted Tales for Girls

In today’s New York Times, author Naomi Wolf looks at “cute” books for teenage girls that are anything but sweet.

Teenage girl series, such as “Clique” or “Gossip Girls”, are fitting to the adage, “You can’t judge a book from the cover”. Beneath the banal paperback covers are pages rife with status, shopping, and sex. Excerpted from one of the “A-List” series novels, one teen describes sex with her boyfriend: “We used to jump each other, like, three times a night. When we went out to the movies, we’d sit by a wall and do it during the boring parts”. 

Read More

Da Vinci Deserves Better Than This

I finished reading book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown over the weekend. Someone lent us the book a year before I started reading, which seemed to labor for a year. I just don’t get all the hubbub over the book.

To be clear, I had no trouble with the book’s core concepts about Christ or with the weaving historical interpretation. Of course, Jesus Christ was supposed to marry. I don’t believe that he did, contrary to the book’s fictional assertion. But there is no question that he was supposed to. The Jewish and Christian concepts of the Fall involved two male and one female being (Muslims believe the same, yes?). The Messiah, King of Kings—whatever you want to call him—should marry and resolve the problem, man and woman, reversal of man and woman falling. 

Read More

Icon: Biography or Fiction?

I just finished reading book iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, which I bought at my local Borders Book store. I just about never buy hardcover books, but this one piqued my interest. After all, Steve Jobs banned all the publisher’s books from Apple retail stores.

I understand why the strong reaction from Apple’s founder. One undercurrent focuses on Steve Jobs’ charisma and claims of his taking claim for others’ work. The theme adds second meaning to the title, as in “I con”.