American Vampire Vol. 1 by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Stephen King
Posted: July 2, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic, Fiction | Tags: Books, English, Scott Snyder, Stephen King, Vampire Leave a comment
What pushed Stephen King to co-script a comic book, I don't know. This ain't the Shining, if you ask me.
For my taste, the book is mediocre – not because of art, but due to clumsy text and action. Winner of the Eisner award? Hm. Eisner wouldn't have liked it if he were still alive.
Too little to write home about, really. Roger out.
Posted with BlogsyAre You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel
Posted: June 25, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic, Documentary | Tags: Alison Bechdel, Books, Donald Winnicott, English, Virginia Woolf 1 Comment
Alison Bechdel just had a new autobio comic book out, a follow up to her immensely successful Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic masterpiece, probably one of a dozen most critically acclaimed comic books of all time.
Fun Home, which I read around 3 or 4 years ago (and loved it!), revolves above Bechdel’s realization that she is a lesbian, her subsequent and dificult coming out, especially to her family, her slow understanding that her father is also gay – and different events in her life leading to her father’s suicide – all seen through the prism of a number of major literary works. At least, that’s the way I remember it – and I tend to forget things easily.
In Are You My Mother?, the style is heavily repeated – not an easy book to flip through, it is a non-linear maze of sorts – but here the key theme is psychoanalysis. It is structured as deconstruction of seven Alison’s dreams, the discussion of these with a number of analysts/shrinks she goes to, her relations with her mother in light of Fun Home publication – all seen thorough her reading of Freud, Jung and, most importantly, Donald Winnicott, a paediatrician and psychoanalyst she seem to hold in most esteem. Plus, not unexpectedly, Mrs. Virginia Woolf – to my shame, haven’t read a single book of hers – after this one, I know where to start at least. To the Lighthouse.
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale by Jenna Jameson and Neil Strauss
Posted: June 22, 2012 Filed under: Books, Documentary, Non-fiction | Tags: Books, English, Jenna Jameson, Neil Strauss 1 Comment
Kindle sometimes pushes you (well, me) to read some, ehem, funny stuff, not usually found on my home shelf – like bad girl Jenna’s 2004 autobiography in whopping (as I realized far too late) 600 pages – ghost-written by Neil Strauss, whose book with Marilyn Manson has been on my shelves for years (unread to this date – mommy, promise, I will read it someday).
This book, in spite of a suggesting and rather provocative title, is in fact a Cinderella story in the adult world – well, adult in you-know-what-I-mean sense ;-)) Far too many bad things happened to poor Mrs. JJ – or so she claims – but you need at least a few big bad wolves for the Red Riding Hood to pass through the woods and find her way home, to her darling porn-director-turned-second-husband prince. Well, after one porn-director-failed-first-husband folly and quite a few non-husband ones.
And in the end, “rags to riches” is spun as porn starlet to “porn CEO”, as she proudly calls herself. Oh well.
I’ve never told anyone about either the Montana experience or the one with the Preacher [no mires’ note: rapes in her teens] because I don’t want to be thought of as a victim. I want to be judged by who I am as a person, not by what happened to me. In fact, all the bad things only contributed to my confidence and sense of self, because I survived them and became a better and stronger person for it.
The Accidental Investment Banker by Jonathan A. Knee
Posted: June 13, 2012 Filed under: Books, Documentary, Non-fiction | Tags: Books, English, Investment Banking, Jonathan A. Knee, Michael Lewis 1 Comment
The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade that Transformed Wall Street turned out to be a book I would strongly recommend all junior bankers to read. And senior bankers. And clients – umm, maybe.
A dear old friend and revered former boss ZS suggested it to me back in November 2007 in London, during a roadshow, at the height of the IPO craze – back in the good old times, as now they are called in bankers lingo.
Not as sensational as House of Lies – an image-shattering tv show about consulting powerhouses, especially in the eyes of less sophisticated Russian clients – but quite educational indeed for those not too familiar with the i-banking industry.
The fact that it is not as funny and as politically incorrect as Liar’s Poker or Monkey Business, both of which tended to hyperbolize trading floor and i-banking paranoias respectively, is a strong plus. This book, written a couple of years ahead of the Too Big To Fail drama, gives a much more balanced and candid view of what banking was and what it evolved into. All the conflicts of interest, hidden agenda, internal politics, tricks and treats of the trade, sugar and spice and all things nice, you name it.
In total, it has been one of the most gripping reads recently. Get a copy indeed.
Some bankers were famous for getting revenue credit for a wide range of transactions to which their connection was obscure at best. Referred to internally as “velcro bankers,” because they would stick their name on any deal in the general vicinity, it was said that they engaged in “hoverage” rather than “coverage” of accounts. These bankers consistently managed to get revenue credit on deals even where there they would fail my own “police- lineup” test for awarding secondary revenues: if the client could pick the banker out of a police lineup, he gets secondary credit.
My Life as a Russian Novel by Emmanuel Carrère
Posted: June 3, 2012 Filed under: Books, Documentary, Non-fiction | Tags: Books, Emmanuel Carrère, English, Limonov 1 Comment
In anticipation of the upcoming translation (I hope) of Carrère's recently published and acclaimed Limonov book, I have picked up his Un Roman Russe to try. Unexpectedly, it was a real page turner, a memoir (unless he lies) depicting a few years of his life – last page finished near 2:30am in the morning, my poor kindle afraid of the bubbling bathtub.
Covers three subjects, predominantly.
Firstly, his vertiginous relationship with his partner Sophie, a true Santa Barbara styled saga of sorts with such unexpected twists and ambushes that one can't but suspects a pinch of fiction spicing up real events. I googled Le Monde story – you would too. Also, the beginning of the book especially, I couldn't but compare it to Limonov's Taming the Tiger in Paris, the book I adore. That Sophie theme, I felt, as key to the book.
Reheated Cabbage by Irvine Welsh
Posted: May 30, 2012 Filed under: Books, Fiction | Tags: Books, English, Irvine Welsh Leave a comment
No buts – Welsh is my fave pulp fiction writer for the past I dunno how many years – guess from late high school or so. This may not be his best book – after all, this reheated cabbage is nothing but a recollection of old and not so old stories published in various mags and multiple author volumes – but still quite nice music to my ears.
Starts off with A Fault on the Line, one of his most cruel short pieces, which I found online ages ago with some help from my friend Mac – a must read in our sick world – published ages ago in Barcelona Review – if you haven’t read it, you just try. Mere 3 or 4 pages long, it’s the jist of cynicism.
Other than that, some stories hit the button more than others. Typical Welsh as I love him – crude, brutal, disgusting at times, a spit in yer face. Plus I definitely loved I Am Miami, a short follow up to 2001 Glue novel, which is the only new story here.
This burd kin fairly gab n it’s aw borin shite aboot crappy modellin jobs, promoting aw sorts ay pony perfumes in malls n the like, but life’s taught ays thit ye huv tae gie fanny a bit ay air time n pretend tae be interested in thair obsessions (them) if yir gaunny be drawin open they beef curtains later oan.
A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld
Posted: March 11, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic | Tags: Books, English, Josh Neufeld Leave a comment
A short non-fiction graphic novel on the US Katrina disaster, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is a one hour long read, tops. Nice work, but has its deficiencies – while brilliantly drawn, it lacks the unique tension of a kind that makes your jaws clutch, like, say, Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde does.
From pure documentary standpoint, it definitely loses out to Spike Lee’s deeply moving TV classic When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, a meticulous look into Katrina disaster and its aftermath.
Here, the Katrina events are more circumstantial as they relate to the five families Josh picked as his subjects. Some of them are actual Katrina survivors – some are its refugees, evacuated before the wind and the subsequent floods – and the story follows them in a patchy manner, starting from the week preceding the storm and later in the week that followed – plus a glance at how they are coping a couple of years down the road.
The only moving moment in the book, imho, is the depiction of armed looters and thugs by one of the survivors, Denise, taking refuge in the Convention Center. As opposed to the mainstream image, where non-Caucasian thugs looted and raped the weak and the meek, here they are presented as a people’s militia of sorts, restoring order in the abandoned center and administering food and water rations. Well, each coin has two sides, I guess.
Swallowing the Earth by Osamu Tezuka
Posted: March 10, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic | Tags: Books, English, Osamu Tezuka Leave a comment
Swallowing the Earth turned out to be the most difficult Tezuka book to lay my hands upon. First, I was waiting for it in Amazon, not falling for pre-order option. Then the book, produced not by Vertical, the usual Tezuka publisher in the US, but rather by DMP, a comic book company I never heard about, went out of stock in a matter of a few days, as quite few copies were published. All you could buy was a lousy used copy at least 5x the cover price. Hm, not for me.
A couple of years later Amazon advertised a kickstarter project by DMP, who were raising money to put out a new edition out – and, not unexpectedly, I subscribed to this funding initiative to get my new copy. Never tried kickstarter before – and, frankly, the idea is nice but I am sure at least half the projects are dead in water after funding. Oddly enough, the guys didn’t lie, and in half a year or so, the book finally came, along with half a dozen of lower quality manga I got hold of as well thanks to my (was it?) $60 funding.
Now, the book is Tezuka’s first serialized graphic novel, written and drawn in 1968, before Ode to Kirihito, MW, Adolf and the rest of his perennial classics. A strange story of women’s revenge against civilization – focused on destruction of money, law and love – and not too much of a happy ending. To my mind, the book lacks clear storyline – it goes away from the main character and back far too easy. Lotsa dead bodies, as usual – sex and violence reign. All in all, too bold and not too well baked for my taste – you can see the master’s touch, but it ain’t a mona-friggin-lisa story-wise. Oh well.
P.S. I realized I missed DMP’s second project for Tezuka’s Barbara. Dang.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
Posted: February 13, 2012 Filed under: Books, Documentary, Non-fiction | Tags: Books, English, Michael Lewis 4 Comments
The Big Short turned out to be quite a wholesome book – it seems, the more I read Lewis, the more I like him – so I guess I have to read more.
To tell you frankly, for a person not too involved with and not too interested in FI markets, I never really took time to analyze what hit the big WS firms back in 2008 – I guess I am still a bit puzzled how the smart guys outsmarted themselves and kept this rotten pile of crap on their balance sheets – I don’t buy into this loan warehousing idea – and blunt bets for the trading units would be, umm, stupid – I know, boys will be boys etc, but still, why not push the crap away to, as Lewis calls him, the sucker, a mystery to me. S&P, AIG and the rest – easy to understand – but MS, ML and the rest of the folks – uh, why?
As in his golden 80s when Lewis spat venom about Salomon Bros, his recent stuff is all about “ibankers, the wrongdoers of the world” – oh, well. #occupymyasshuh
* * *
When a Wall Street firm helped him to get into a trade that seemed perfect in every way, he asked the salesman, “I appreciate this, but I just want to know one thing: How are you going to fuck me?”
* * *
Senior management’s job is to pay people,” he’d say. “If they fuck a hundred guys out of a hundred grand each, that’s ten million more for them. They have four categories: happy, satisfied, dissatisfied, disgusted. If they hit happy, they’ve screwed up: They never want you happy. On the other hand, they don’t want you so disgusted you quit. The sweet spot is somewhere between dissatisfied and disgusted.”
Boomerang: Travels in the new third world by Michael Lewis
Posted: January 29, 2012 Filed under: Books, Documentary, Non-fiction | Tags: Books, English, Michael Lewis 1 Comment
Mike Lewis’s last book isn’t one at all. In fact, it is a collection of five standalone articles published between 2009 and 2011 in the Vanity Fair magazine, disguised as a book and given a new introductory chapter.
Five stories of people that Lewis wants to show as stupid and/or crooked – Icelandic fisherman i-bankers, corrupt Greek public servicemen, Irish real estate developers and politicians who got far too excited to think clearly, anal rule-abiding German-based bond investors, and greedy Californian firefighters – all in one bowl.
A funny read at times – though I guess I should know better than take all Lewis claims for granted – fact of life, the guy loves to exaggerate. The best bits are Iceland and the Greeks, but I will probably steal today’s quote from the German section, huh.
“The Hamburg red-light district had caught Dundes’s eye because the locals made such a big deal of mud wrestling. Naked women fought in a ring of filth while the spectators wore plastic caps, a sort of head condom, to avoid being splattered. “Thus,” wrote Dundes, “the audience can remain clean while enjoying dirt!” Germans longed to be near the shit, but not in it. This, as it turns out, is an excellent description of their role in the current financial crisis.”
PS: BTW that thing, that particular Frankfurt WC, has already been mentioned to me more than once in one quite interesting Russian corporate banking urban legend – did you guess which one? 😉
“The interesting thing, said the German financier, who visited often, is the glass room at the top, from which one looks down over Frankfurt. It is a men’s toilet. Commerzbank executives had taken him there to show him how, in full view of the world below, he could shit on Deutsche Bank.”
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