Further Books Reviews: 2010 Backdated Edition

I want to post some thoughts on the books I read last year, before I forget about them completely. Goodness, I swear my memory gets worse and worse. Must be the drinking.

I read some pretty great stuff last year, spanning a wide range of the human experience - love, death, struggles, intrigue, 18th century French meat products, sexy vampires. Without further ado, etc., etc.

Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian

This is the first in that series about sailing around in your fancy ship boarding other fancy ships. It was pretty great, but I am not sure I'm ready to commit to reading the entire long series, like my parents or my friend Natalie have. This was pretty good about getting into the nitty gritty practicalities of life at sea without getting you confused by the seafaring jargon. There was also a handy diagram in the front of the ol' boat if you wanted to check up on your rigging. I was hoping that there might be more homoerotic subtext between Captain Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, but I assume that appears more in later books - it's maturin' throughout the series. (Pun!) Then you can 'ship them as a couple. (Double pun!!)

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

This was pretty great, I remember really liking the b & w art, especially all the little girls at school in their headscarves. I wonder if the animated movie version was any good?

Club Dead - Charlaine Harris

I haven't a clue what happened in this book, I don't remember which of the Sookie Stackhouse novels is which. I expect there was some vampire shagging, and too much stuff about were-panthers. (Were-panthers, were-tigers, were-foxes etc: RIDICULOUS. I hope that sort of thing hasn't infested the True Blood tv show too much yet.)

The Truth - Terry Pratchett

Ok, I see what must have happened here. If I was reading both Charlaine Harris and Terry Pratchett, I must have been on a plane. This was a solid Pratchett, it was about the development of the printing press and newspapers. Some interesting stuff about the magical properties of movable type, and the outrageous truth-telling potential of the media. The only thing is that the protagonist was obviously gay, but ends up with a tacked-on female love interest. (I know, I just want extra gay in all my reading, but still.)

The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola

This Zola is about the Les Halles food market in Paris. It is glorious, full of lush descriptions of all the foodstuffs in the thriving and vast markets. Even the vegetables sound exciting, but Zola really goes all out when describing what goes on in the central setting of the book, which is a market -adjacent charcuterie. (A business where they prepare meat products, like pates, sausages, bacons, confits, etc.) The French really can make an extraordinary array of delicious foods out of pork fat. This book is not for vegetarians.

I think Zola's point is that all this food makes you decadent, resistant to change and greedy. Still makes it sound bloody delicious, though. The human angle in this book is about the gossipy relationships between market vendors and how everyone conspires to condemn an innocent man.

Interestingly, the translator of my edition claims he doesn't even like Zola's writing very much. He is a food writer, he's just in it for the pork products, too. Most of the footnotes are bacon-specific.

Carry On, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse

Jeeves and Bertie! Excellent stuff. This story collection begins with the arrival of Jeeves in Bertie's life - Jeeves Takes Charge. Yes he does.

Cider With Rosie - Laurie Lee

I can't remember a single thing about this novel was like, except that it had a nostalgic kind of mood. I also have vague personal feeling of guilt, because I bought Cider With Rosie from a bookshop, read it on the commute to my crappy summer job, and returned it two days later, pretending that I thought it was rubbish.

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

What a corker! Seriously, I think everyone must love this book. I couldn't stop reading it. I was really annoying for about a week because I was supposed to be having a good time on vacation but I was either reading this book or moping around wishing I was reading this book. Note to self: read less absorbing books when on holiday. In case you don't know what Middlesex is about: it follows three generations of a family who migrate to America (that plot is total Pulitzer-bait, amirite?) beginning in Greece, and the protagonist Callie/Cal and his struggles with gender identity, his family's past, and the American Dream!

Commencement - J. Courtney Sullivan

I borrowed this from Jen and Lucy when I stayed with them - thanks for everything, Jen and Lucy! It's about four best friends who graduate from Smith together, and their divergent paths. There's a good lesbian plotline, obviously, because they start out at Smith.

Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith

This is a re-read, I still love it. It's about sisters, one sister is madly enthusiastic about life and falls in love with a Geurilla Girls-style eco warrior, and the other sister starts out very anxious and conventional but loosens up. There's some cool stuff where the first sister and her lover go around Inverness graffiti-ing mystifying yet profound slogans on everything. The real strength of this novel, I think, is how Smith totally nails the voices of each sister. Innovative yet totally convincing. Plus who doesn't love a genderqueer love story in their novel.

(Unfortunately this novel was a nominee for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Smith does get a bit carried away sometimes, but I didn't mind it at all. I would rather read a passage about sex making you feel like a magical leaping fox than some sort of uncomfortable Philip Roth-style thing in this year's Important Novel.)

Trumpet - Jackie Kay

This is a novel about a jazz trumpeter guy who hides his biological sex, but then when he dies there's a big media reveal that he was born female. It's about his wife and adopted son in the aftermath; I liked the bits with the wife but the novel spends too much time in the voice of the angry and embarrassed son, and the journalist who wants to write a tell-all scandalous book. Left kind of a bad taste, for me. I guess I just wanted everything to work out, and for no one to be mean to the poor trumpet player.

The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

Some good ghostie bits, but mostly disappointing. My least favourite Waters book so far (except perhaps for the depressing Affinity). Make me want to go back and re-read The Night Watch. Shame, because I was really excited about this one. I still think the cover is fabulous, though.

An Anthropologist on Mars - Oliver Sacks

Having heard Oliver Sacks on the radio, I could tell he was fantastically intelligent and a total sweetheart. These are fascinating vignettes of unusual neurological conditions, and how they affect the lives of people who are affected by them. They include an artist who suddenly becomes colourblind, a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, and a bit about Temple Grandin. Definitely recommended, and I am about to go read more Oliver Sacks.

More to Follow...

Two Notebooks

I recently made these two notebooks. Both are constructed in the same kind of way. The guts of the book are chainstitched, and then I added a home-made bookcloth spine over the top, and the front covers are card sandwiched over the cloth spine and the end page. It's surprisingly sturdy, and since I like using chainstitch this is a good way to add a proper-looking spine.

The one with a red cover was a birthday present for Caity, but the other one I haven't found anything to do with yet. (Maybe if I ever have a table at a street fair again I could try and sell a few notebooks?)

The spine fabric is block-printed, although not by me. Also, I had a variety of papers in here, including some offcuts from printmaking that still had the deckle, so I kept all those on one side. I quite like a fuzzier edge to a book.

For the end papers I had some test prints from my letterpress internship. Those are some demo sentences that I typeset for all the fonts they have - "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs". We like to use slightly suggestive sounding pangrams.

I got a whole lot of cheap cloth offcuts from a haberdashery, and used them for bookcloth.

For this notebook, the torn edges are at the side. There's also a whole variety of different kinds of paper in there.

Weddings!!

I've been asked to make the save-the-date cards and invitations for the wedding of two very good friends of mine, so I've been doing a bit of research on what kind of wedding stuff is out there. After spending hours and hours looking through invitations and so on produced by all kinds of fancy letterpress and design places, I have come to this conclusion: most of it is rubbish. I saw too many unimaginative scroll designs, too much terrible calligraphy, and a lot of pretentious cutesy little details.

I think I had better just come up with something true to what I can print well and what I'd like to make, and something that would suit the lovely couple. Having said that I found a few things that I liked the look of, or used a design element that I would quite like to employ. I'm going to post some of those here.

This is Foreshadow Press. I sort of like the the curved corners of the cards, the bright colours, and the white text and design on the white background.

This is Foreshadow Press also. That pale orange on cream is not bad.

This is Wk Studio. Not a wedding invite, obviously.

Ha! Also not a wedding invite. Give this to a friend on their birthday if you want them to feel vaguely icky. WK Studio. I like the strong text over the paler but still legible image printed under.

This was the most hipsterish wedding ever, but I kind of love the invite. I am not too keen on san serif fonts for this purpose, though. This is Wiley Valentine, featured on Once Wed.

I agree, silkscreen and letterpress would be great together! Or a linocut and letterpress, alternatively. The slightly less regimented line of the hand-drawn/cut image vs. letterpress for a cleaner feel, retaining some personality. Special = a promising new thing starting up in Portland.

I can't really remember why I put this one in. I guess because he was from New York and she was from Toronto and they lived in London, or something, so the design included a famous building from each. Kind of cute. This is just too much stuff they are sending out, though. Pantry Press.

I include this one because I like the torn edges. I think it would be quite neat to hand-tear all the edges, although that would preclude using cardstock - probably a cream Rives BFK would look nice, and of course be great for a linocut image. Oblation Press, a shop based in Portland.

Put a bird on it! But this has three colours, which I think would be quite nice; I'd like to do two colours on the design, and a different coloured envelope. Oh, this also has a tree - an awful lot of invitations have a tree on them. By Kyle Van Horn.

This has the paler blue under the text and another image, which is quite nice. Plus a nice serif font, and something a bit personal to the couple (rather than a tree or some squiggles). Keegan Meegan, based in Portland. These guys are awesome, I have one of their prints.

I love the two colours here. This is Julia Rothman for her own wedding, she's a pretty cool illustrator and pattern designer.

Kinda cute. I guess the couple met in elementary school, so it's a school theme. Hammerpress, Remington design.

This is Hammerpress too. Usually I wouldn't be keen on this sort of thing, but being Hammerpress it's very well done.

This one's from Dutch Door Press. Kinda love those colours - the pale gold and the teal. Another thing I like: when there's a two colour design, and the names are picked out in a different colour from the rest of the text. Subtle, but underlines the important bit of the invite.

I am a sucker for that colourful butcher's twine stuff. I know it is very fashionable crafty right now, but it still looks cool. Printing on brown card is another thing I like to do - a screenprint of a lighter colour on brown can be pretty sweet. This is Little Miss Press, from a feature on Design Sponge.

Kinda cute, thinking outside the box a little bit. A wedding in a greenhouse, via Design Sponge again.

Not sure what I put this one in for. Caitlin Harris.

Yellow Owl. Very nice woodcut stuff, and nice use of white.

Yellow Owl. This one is hand-coloured, which is something I could do. I know it might seem like hand-colouring 100 cards is a daft thing to do, but that's the kind of thing I enjoy as an artist.

Yellow Owl. This one has a hand-printed look to it, which again is an option for me. That might be an even dafter thing to do, though.

It folds out! So fancy. Brown envelopes are an idea, too. Yellow Owl.

A good job with hand-lettering, here. And yeah, a good use of the two colours, with white effectively acting as their third colour. I guess this couple really like their dog. Yellow Owl.

This invite was printed on vintage hankies, so each one is unique! Pretty fun idea. Bird and Banner.

Nice use of hand lettering, but imagine it not on blue - it might look a bit rubbish. So a good use of colour. Bird and Banner.

Nice idea, with the sewing. Bird and Banner.

See here's what I mean about the names being picked out in a colour from the accompanying design. Not really so keen on fuchsia and grass green together, but there you go. This is by 9 Spot Monk.

I like this one because it's a simple, nice, straight to the point save-the-date card. Nothing pretentious. 9 Spot Monk.

One last thing: the place I intern at sometimes, EMprint Press, has a really nice portfolio of wedding invites.

Funnest Door Ever

Just moved into an awesome new house - lots of room, lots of light, great colours, no nasty surprises! (Yes, I have encountered my fair share of icky student housing. No ants, mould, rats, mice, absentee landlords or creepy neighbours for us.)

One of my favourite things about my new bedroom is that I have a chalkboard door. Yay! Having a chalkboard door/wall/whatever always looked like so much fun, and I can confirm it is indeed fun. I got out my 36-colour pastels set the other day, and did my first drawing. I also put a calender on there, because I have misplaced my diary planner in the move and it's nice to know what the date is.

My room will look a bit better when I've gotten around to putting up pictures.

PDX friends - come visit our new place! Friends from elsewhere - take a plane, and then come visit our new place! We have a spare bed!