Russ KickReseñas

This is a pretty wide-ranging graphic sampler of crime and mystery fiction, spanning almost the entire history of literary creation. Everything from ancient Greek tragedy to the Bible to Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe are represented, in a variety of graphic styles. Each piece has a nice introduction, to both the original work and the graphic (and sometimes textual) adaptation. There are a whole bunch of these volumes, and I'll probably continue to delve in, but in some ways they are like short story collections, with some pieces only a couple of pages long, some longer, and others really like annotated paintings, with only the barest interpretation of the original work. It's an interesting approach, though I do tend to favour long-form literature, so I'm not sure how much I got out of it. I did share a couple of snips with others though.

I enjoyed it when I read it in high school but very much a book that is only good when it is applicable to your life.

This took me forever to finish, but it's wonderful. Some items are adapted in total, some partially; some are from stand-alone adaptations, some are done specifically for this volume. Wonderful survey of literatures and introductions to some artists you might not already know.

I thought this was a lot better than the 3rd volume, for 2 reasons, I stopped reading the commentary by the editor, who I found annoying in volume 3 and also I like the source material in volume 1 much more, now I'll have to grab volume 2.

Admittedly, this was not a cover-to-cover read, but a pretty thorough dip into an extraordinary, comprehensive compilation of great works of literature. I was pleased to see it is not confined to the typical "Western" collection so many of us were schooled in until the later decades of the 20th century. I was impressed both with the commentary -- insightful and incisive, and the varied and visionary art that represented each work. Some styles were not to my liking or what I would have chosen, but they still ( in most cases) did homage to the original material. I thought 95% of it came across as a labor of love. The Canon was both a memory-jogger of works I'd read and an invitation to read those I hadn't. Either way, it propelled me to turn to literature. Some standouts in my opinion: "Coyote and the Pebbles," "Poems" by Rumi, (both to my point of inclusiveness) "Canterbury Tales"- Wife of Bath!, and Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18." Yes, the entire thing is only excerpts, but as such, is a great appetizer for the works themselves. I marvel at how the works, then the excerpts, then the medium was chosen for each. Definitely not for kids -- but maybe an apt gift for the potential English or Classics major.

Great Book

At times reaffirming, at other times informative and at still other times, questionable. 100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know is filled with information. Some of it I was aware of and knew to be true, other stuff I looked up to confirm and other stuff just bumped this from a higher rating to a lower because now I am more deeply questioning anything I haven't looked up yet.

There's the false assumption that if some states something as "fact" and backs it with some kind of citation that challenges a long-held belief, the long-held belief was wrong. But it doesn't work that way - it only works that way if the evidence strongly supports the repositioning of a belief. So, the lost nuclear warheads - it's been officially documented and there's no reason to not believe that since it's something the U.S. Government wouldn't benefit from saying. Other things like old laws still on the books are verifiable, just maybe not common knowledge. And still others have been shown to be true long after the publication of this book, giving Kick some good proof of his research.

However, quoting Dr. Mercola, the anti-vaccine proponent for a piece about how sunscreen causes cancer made me raise an eyebrow. Having researched Mercola and written an article about him, I don't find him as a dependable source. I do find him as an opportunist though, and it was disappointing to see Kick give him ink. It did have the silver lining of shaking me out of the mental complacency I mentioned earlier - believing something just because it's "authoritative" and contrary.

There's interesting information here and a lot if not most is true and accurate (and depressing) but I don't have faith that it's all true, so read with open eyes.

Volume 2 in a series of condensed or excerpted literary works, from Kubla Khan (1797) to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). All kinds of artistic styles and media are on display, including some exceptionally clever adaptations. There were a handful of samples I found dull or impossible to follow, and a number of others whose original works I hadn't heard of, but it was overall an entertaining trip through the long history of world literature. Volume three completes the chronological journey.

A rich and fun collection of condensed or excerpted literary works from Gilgamesh (1000 BCE) to Dangerous Liaisons (1782). All kinds of artistic styles and media are on display, including some exceptionally clever adaptations. There were a handful of samples I found dull or impossible to follow, but it was overall an entertaining trip through the long history of world literature. Volumes two and three continue the chronological journey.

This is a tough one to review. Overall, I think it's a really cool collection, with a nice diversity of samples of crime and mystery literature. Unfortunately, a great many of the stories were not my cup of tea. However, the art, and the variety of styles, is a treat! I think this almost feels like a textbook of sorts, more designed to expose the reader to a great many ideas and styles than to entertain the reader. Don't get me wrong, at times both things are accomplished, but for me not frequently enough to give it a higher review.

A beautiful collection of dozens of classic children's stories rendered in graphic novel format by some of today's top illustrators and comics artists. I enjoyed paging through the variety of artistic styles here, though being a non-creative type could make neither heads nor tails of a few of the more abstract illustrations and would not have known which tale I was reading had I not studiously read each introduction prior to its work. Recommended.

Found this at National around when I was in college. Was impressive back then.

I liked it. Grief is a lifelong process, and it's good to have literary company.

the selections vary in execution. Some will be to one taste, some to another.

I read the third installment of this interesting graphic project with more interest than the previous one, which I never finished, and not as much as the first. (Nineteenth century literature just doesn't really do it for me*). I am a child of the late twentieth century so many of the adapted books in this one were familiar to me. The quality varied. The most successful adaptations actually tried to present (or represent) the works in comic form: words and sequential pictures. The least successful were single, obscure images which contained very little meaning in the absence of the work they were supposedly derived from (or in some cases, even if I knew the work). Unfortunately there were quite a few of this type. They allowed for more pages and more works to be covered, but there was a cost. In these cases the editorial was more verbose and informative than the artwork; I found the editorial explaining both story and artwork. Fail! The worst was a poem rendered in 'radical' (ie. not readable) typography and no image at all. There were no comics which completely amazed me and a few whose style annoyed me (always a risk with anthologies). My favourites were ones which told a story: Ernest Hemingway's 'Living on $1000 a year in Paris' (Steve Rolston) and 'A Matter of Colour' (Dan Duncan), and H. G. Wells' ' The New Accelerator' (Cole Johnson). An OK collection, but the obscure single-image adaptations made chunks of it come across as an illustrated '1000 books to read before you die', a catalogue of canon rather than a collection.

Upon re-reading this in 2022 I would note that this is more of an art project than a comics project. I tried to appreciate the single-page graphics a little more but still found a disconnect between them and the works they portrayed.

* A notable exception is Walden by Henry Thoreau, which was nicely adapted in volume 2 of the Graphic Canon

Not a bad collection of essays on religion and spirituality. Like all collections there are some really good essays and some really bad ones. I would recommend skipping the last section of the book as it is poorly written and doesn't even attempt to be objective.

The book presents a good cross-section for the Big Five religions.

Try it.

Odd stories, brought to you by those quirky (Left? Right?) investigators over at Disinfo.com.

I've heard of some of these. For example a plane containing 2 atomic bombs crashed in NC. Rumor is that 3 out of the 4 safety arming devices were actually armed as a result of, or during, the incident. Instead of saying "kudos to the systems safety guy who insisted on 4 arming steps", the story is, "NC was nuked." Shrill, shrill, shrill.

Or, most Doctors DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW HIGH RADIATION LEVELS ARE, DURING A CAT SCAN!" So? These levels are still usually within safety guidelines. I think most of us can avoid a few dozen CT scans per year.

Mildly fun and disturbing. Some of the more interesting included "Kent State wasn't the only College massacre", "the 10 Commandments we know are not the real 10 Commandments", and "The World's Museums Contain Innumerable Fakes".

Years ago I was in Circus of Books on Sunset, probably on my way to a concert, and I happened across this book (or one of the two books its made up of) and I was totally interested. But I was poor, and didn't buy it. More recently, my fiance gave me this, and I love it.

This is really cool and I want it.

I haven't had time to read through the whole thing, but I've flipped through and looked at all the pictures. I just think it's a brilliant concept and a great companion to my literary tastes.

It's something that would be lovely to have sitting on my shelf so I could occasionally pick it up and read a story or two.

Okay, I've been reading The Graphic Canon, looking for a reason for it to exist. It contains abridgements or excerpts of tons of terrific stories, from Gilgamesh to Les Liaisons Dangereuses, in comic book format. But who cares about abridgements or excerpts? To whom are they useful?

I started, as promised, by comparing Valerie Shrag's adaptation of Aristophanes' best-known and dirtiest play Lysistrata (411 BC) to [b:Douglass Parker's translation.|1560|Four Plays The Clouds / The Birds / Lysistrata / The Frogs|Aristophanes|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327992767s/1560.jpg|5696] I was...actually sortof into it. It's charming and effective. Certainly summarized: it cuts so many lines out that it can't really be called a translation. It loses, for example, the terrific oath sworn by the Greek women:

I will withhold all rights of access or entrance
From every husband, lover, or casual acquaintance
Who moves in my direction in erection...

until the Peleponnesian War is ended. You can't say you've read Lysistrata if Shrag's graphic version is the only one you've got.

But it does get the basic points. And it gets the spirit of the thing probably better than Parker's does. Parker comes across like a teenager, eagerly and clumsily over-trying to match the original's tone; Shrag feels like your friend's hot older sister, breezing through. Parker seems terribly proud of himself when he gets through a dirty part; Shrag is more, y'know, "And then there were boners."

(Don't be taken in, by the way, by the intro, which pats itself on the back fr being the only translation to really show how dirty Aristophanes was. Just because you say "dick" instead of "sex" doesn't mean you're the bawdiest person in the room - even if "dick" is, in fact, a better translation of peous, as Parker (weirdly) acknowledges himself. Parker's is plenty dirty, and nobody's ignoring the boners.)

So okay, Shrag's Lysistrata is very cool. I like it better than Parker's version. I don't think it's exactly the entire play, but whatever.

The rest of the volume is mixed. Tori McKenna's Medea is wonderfully moody, but it misses all of the subtlety of [b:Euripides' original|8886061|The Complete Euripides, Volume 5 Medea and Other Plays|Euripides|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1288639657s/8886061.jpg|13761999] so it's not really a viable version.

Edmonds and Farritor's "Coyote and the Pebbles" is stunning; I haven't read that Native American folktale in any other version, so maybe that's why I'm so impressed. Anyway, it's great to me.

The Dixons' rendition of the Bull of Heaven bit from [b:Gilgamesh|779852|Gilgamesh A New English Version|Stephen Mitchell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178286566s/779852.jpg|18338203]vis fun, but who cares? It's a minor episode. One wonders why they picked that instead of the way more interesting and complicated Humbaba episode. (Right? "A gentle rain fell onto the mountains. A gentle rain fell onto the mountains." That shit is bomb.)

The extremely brief excerpt from [b:Lucretius|195769|The Way Things Are The De Rerum Natura|Titus Lucretius Carus|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172596187s/195769.jpg|189338] is cool and all, but...again, what do we gain from two pages of a 200-page book? If that's all you know, you're apt to think that shit is like [b:Silent Spring|27333|Silent Spring|Rachel Carson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167880280s/27333.jpg|880193] or something. That's not what it's about.

You can't get a decent sense for most of these works from reading this book. So why does it matter? I'm kinda torn. It's fun for me; I've read most of this stuff, and seeing it another format - a usually good format, if truncated - is fun.

What I really imagine is this: I imagine a kid of mine, maybe ten years old, rooting through my bookshelves the way I rooted through my mom's when I was that age, looking for weird stuff. Maybe he's looking for something a little naughty, because he's ten. I found [b:Looking for Mr Goodbar|166982|Looking for Mr Goodbar|Judith Rossner|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1242789286s/166982.jpg|161255] that way and read it cover to cover, just because it had sex scenes. I also discovered Jimi Hendrix when I did the same thing to her record collection. Maybe my kid finds this, and he or she is like "Ha! Naked people! Aristophanes is awesome!" And maybe he or she will always remember Lysistrata, and The Inferno or whatever, because of this weird early experience. Or maybe he or she will be scarred for life by Medea. That play is dark.

If you want your kid to grow up literate and pretty weird, maybe buy this book and hide it, to make sure your kid finds and reads it. Otherwise? Eh, I don't know. It's vaguely entertaining.

A very intriguing anthology of classic literature translated into graphic novel form, by various artists in various styles. Some works are made more accessible by this approach (and a few less so). Some works I had never read were represented in this volume too,like the Mayan creation epic Popol Vuh. I also learned that Mary Wollstonecraft was Mary Shelley's mother. Some stories, like Lysistrata, I probably wouldn't have read in their original form. Others, either too wordy or not wordy enough, left me wanting to read the source material. Many of the adaptations were excerpted or abridged from larger works; probably necessary in an anthology of this size but a bit frustrating sometimes. My favourite adaptations were: On the Nature of Things (Lucretius/Tom Biby), Lysistrata (Aristophanes/Valerie Schrag), The Fisherman and the Genie (Arabian Nights/Andrice Arp), The Divine Comedy(Dante Alighieri/Seymour Chwast), and The Wife of Bath's Tale from the Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer/Seymour Chwast).

This is the kind of stuff that I love reading about, but then I get nightmares once I close my eyes...it's informative, but depressing. I made the mistake of reading its larger brother (_Everything You Know Is Wrong_) almost cover to cover on a weekend trip to Seattle...VERY depressing stuff, I tells ye! But good, if you can handle it :)

This book could have been much better, if it had been a bit more selective in the collected papers. The editors allow a little too much gullibility to slip into the pages of the book, giving way too much space to conspiracy theories that have been solidly debunked. Other than that, there were some decent things in the book, but like all collections of papers, the quality and the interest were spotty.½