Brady's Book Log
Started as a New Year's Resolution to track my reading, January 2006

1/15/07 - I've not been keeping this log up. I feel guilty about it. But I can't try to go back and write about every single book I've read now, so I'll just list all of them except the most recent one that I finished today, and then I'll do better. Great? Great. I read Robert Caro's first book in the Lydon Johnson series, The Path to Power. It was great. Of course it was great. It's Caro. he's the greatest writer of non-fiction that ever lived. If only there were nine of him. Scratch that - I'd never have time to read all their books. I've only done two of Caro's so far. I also read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. It was all right, but ultimately I read it to get a girl and, lo and behold, it sort of worked. So I guess that was worth doing. We aren't together anymore, but, what the hell. The tactic of showing interest in a girl's interest had never worked for me before. Did this time. That's pretty badass. I also read Emily Schultz's Joyland. I picked this up for $7 at the Small Press Expo from the illustrator. I have to be honest, I had the devil's own time following it and it slogged. Not really very sure about the characters even now.
Okay, here's what I just finished, though: Gerard Jones's Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book. This book was interesting both in the topic, writing and my own experience. Normally, I have to struggle through non-fiction, even on a cool topic. I did not struggle through this book. I read it really fast! I think I started it last week and I just pounded through it. Is it because it's a topic that I'm really, really invested in or because Gerard Jones did such a good job? I hope it's the latter, because that means that I don't really care about political history or social policy and all I really want to do is sit around thinking about comics all the time. Because it's the books about that other stuff I have a hard time with. Seriously, though, I realized that my history of the comics was all press simplistic, and this book put a lot more flesh on the real story. It also does an excellent job of defending the superhero and defending it's place in our history and in each generation's zeitgeist. For example, my sense of history placed E.C. comics much earlier in the tale of comics sordid history. Not true. It was more like the 60s, roughly. Who knew that the reason E.C. was so racy and horrific was because it was run by a bitter son who wanted to do whatever he could to piss on his father's efforts to make wholesome, enriching children's comics that no parent would object to? It's sort of beautiful when you look at it that way. I read this book and also thought a lot about censorship. Both externally and internally. An ongoing theme of the book is that artists do their best when they aren't trying to have a message, be a certain way or toe a certain line. They are at their best when they just cut loose and write/draw as themselves. So, I loved it. I thought the book was a little more Superman oriented than I would have preferred, but it's still an awesome book and I highly recommend it to anyone that cares about the medium.