Black Hole...an acrostic follwed by rambling

Things one will find in Black Hole by Charles Burns:

B - Bizarre mutations
L - Loneliness
A - Alienation
C - Creepy, yet somehow beautiful, art
K- Kainotophobia

H - Hope and hopelessness
O - Originality
L - Lots of Love--young love, obsessive love, unrequited love, sweet love
E - Epidemic

Yeah, sorry about that "k" one...I was having trouble there. Oh okay, I apologize for all of it. But good heavens...have you read this?!! It is so not an easy thing to describe...

It's a graphic novel. As in the medium of storytelling. It is also slightly graphic, as in there are naked people, sometimes having sex. It is also graphic, as in the artwork is very bold and vivid.

It's a story about growing up...you know, those teen years. It's a story about change. It's a story about figuring out who you are and where you belong.

To be perfectly honest, through about the first third of this book, I couldn't quite figure out whether or not I even liked it. For some reason, it just took a while to click with me. But once it did, I could hardly make myself put it down. And yes, I ended up liking it very much.

It felt so real, so authentic. It was set during the 70s, during those years when I too had entered my teens. Perhaps sadly :P, I related to their clothes and their hairstyles. But far more, I related to their lifestyles...hanging with friends, getting high, intense feelings of new love. Luckily, there was no sexually-transmitted virus out there causing bizarre mutations, like tails and second mouths, as there was in the book. But there was a sexually-transmitted virus out there beginning to take lives...for my high-school/college days were the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

But I hope I haven't made this sound immature and shallow. This book is not "about" teens partying. It's about navigating new territory. That new territory we all encounter as we leave childhood behind.

I found this book at turns frightening and tender and repulsive and heartbreaking. And truly, truly different from anything else I've ever read.

Unwind...random thoughts

I finished up Unwind a few weeks back, but I never really added my final thoughts here. Though I wonder if I even need to...I suspect this one is going to stick with me.

I love this book. Is it perfect? No. But it had so much to offer...

My favorite--questions. It asked so many questions. Not flat-out asked them, of course. But it made me ask them to myself. Even better--it didn't try to tell me the answers.

Of course, there's the whole issue that sets up the book, abortion. But even here, it doesn't so much focus on the idea that abortion is "right" or "wrong"...instead it explores a number of possible scenarios that could arise if abortion was made illegal. Actually, I'm not wording that correctly, but I can't quite figure out how to say what I mean without giving things away.

But that's only one of the intriguing roads this book takes. There are also questions like, "what does it mean to be alive?" and "when does one label an act of violence as terrorism?" and...honestly, I could go on an on. Really, there's just so much to this book. But I swear, it's not overdone. And all these multitude of issues meld together remarkably well.

Control of one's own body...war...religion...terrorism...parental rights and responsibilities...

And you know what--it's just a damn compelling story, too! My heart pounded in fear for characters I loved, and I cried big fat tears for a character I hated.

Oh, and one more thing...I mentioned in an earlier post that I wasn't sure I bought into the brief explanation that sort of sets up the whole book, but that I could set that aside. Well, Chris told me that things were eventually explained a bit more. They were, and yes, I'm going to have to agree with him that even this explanation is questionable. But it really did add a bit more credibility to the story overall. And actually, it provided one of the many passages in this book that just made my heart ache:

"...You see, a conflict always begins with an issue--a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn't matter anymore, because now it's about one thing and one thing oly: how much each side hates the other..."

Anyway, many thanks to Annie and to Chris for making this book sound so intriguing. I owe you.

I can't believe how little I got read...

...though not because I usually read more than this or anything. In fact, many days I read a lot less. No, the thing is that I'm totally sucked into Unwind...it's so distracting, because I find myself thinking about it and wanting to pick it up all the time. But thus far, I've been good and stuck with getting my work done instead of ditching it all and just curling up with this book until I finish it. Anyway, yesterday I managed another 45 pages in it. For me, it's one of those books that isn't perfect, there are some definite flaws in my mind, and yet I'm thoroughly enjoying it anyway. :)

*****
And in the dangerous world of blog-reading, these books have been added to my wish list:

*Love's Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom (thanks to Chris' heartfelt review...dang, I meant to look to see if the library had this when I was there this morning)
*No Place Left to Bury the Dead by Nicole Itano (thanks to Eva's glowing review of what sounds like an incredible book)

*****
And what I'm dying to read from our own shelves (shelf #2):

*Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
*The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury
*The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
*The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
*The Sisters Grimm: The Usual Suspects by Michael Buckley
*Northlander: Tales of the Borderlands by Meg Burden
*Black Hole by Charles Burns
*Fledgling by Octavia Butler
*Mijeong by Byun Byung-Jun
*The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Like last time, if you could please help me maybe weed this list down a bit, I would greatly appreciate it. Tell me which ones you think I should leave on, and I will strike the rest off (with the exception of one I get to pick myself). 

perhaps I should change the name

Of this blog, that is. Because I'm doing a lousy job of keeping up here on a "day-to-day" basis. Of course, I won't really--it's still fulfilling its purpose of giving me a place to record my personal reading journeys.

So, in the past two days...I read another 56 pages in Scrapbook Page Maps (and am still unsure as to whether this will make the "keeper" pile), only another 9 pages in Last Chance to See, and a mere 6 pages in Shadow Man.

But I did start a new book. Bad, bad, bad me!!! My pathetic story: Rich and I went out to buy new towels last night (our old ones are literally falling apart--not surprising seeing how they are over ten years old). Anyway, being so close to Borders, we decided to pop in, grab a coffee, and relax a bit. But I was just in one of those finicky moods where I couldn't find anything I wanted to look at while we sat in the cafe. Well, with Chris' review fresh in my mind, I decided to go grab Unwind and just read the first few pages. I'd already decided it was going to be my next read after finishing Shadow Man anyway. And I promised myself that when we went home, it was right back to Shadow Man, and Unwind would have to wait. Yeah, easy to see where this is going, huh? Yep, I'm a big fat liar...we weren't home for five minutes before I was down grabbing Unwind off Annie's shelf. I apparently just can't be trusted.

But at 54 pages in, I am absolutely loving this book! The whole concept (abortion being made illegal, with the caveat that teens from the ages of 13 to 17 can be "unwound"--that is, they are taken apart and all their body parts go on "living" as organ transplants--if their parents so choose for any reason) is just so thoroughly disturbing, but thus far, the book is not graphic in any way. I do somewhat question the point where it all began--years ago with the Second Civil War (fought solely over reproductive rights) and the constitutional amendments that were passed to end the war to the satisfaction of both sides. See, what I question is why the pro-choice side would agree to the terms...as they really do nothing to protect a woman's rights over her body and yet all responsibility is still laid fully on women. I'm just having a hard time seeing what was gained for the pro-choice side. It just doesn't sound plausible to me. I have a feeling, though I could obviously be wrong, that this isn't even going to be talked about in the book...that the Second Civil War and the resulting constitutional amendments are just the set-up for the story. And I guess I can live with that...the story is so incredibly intriguing! It may just be one of those incongruous things that I have to set aside to enjoy the book. (And then again, maybe I'm wrong and this will be discussed later in the book, bringing up points I haven't considered.) Anyway, I fear there's no stopping me now--I will be reading this book right alongside my other reads, instead of waiting like I'd promised myself I'd do. Oh well. :P

 But on a "I'm proud of myself" note--neither Rich nor I has bought a book for ourselves the last three times we've been in a bookstore!

*****
And in the dangerous world of blog-reading, these have been added to my wish list:

*Love by Toni Morrison (thanks to Ana's amazing review, which literally left me in tears)
*The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander (thanks to Eva's fun "cold reading" post)
*Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler (as above)