Notes from a bibliophile

We live in an age where people are shouting about freedoms everywhere. And it's great to be able to live in a country where we are so free, but one thing we often forget is that other people are also free to disagree with us. Just as we are free to shout our beliefs and opinions from the rooftops, we have to allow others to do the same, no matter how wrong we feel they are. Freedom is hard won and difficult to foster. But it's beautiful just the same. One of the most discussed freedoms (especially now) is freedom of speech and press. I've only recently gotten interested in comics/graphic novels, so the history of the genre is lost on me. I'm not surprised though to learn that comics have suffered the same strong-arm tactics that face controversial novels. It just seems sillier. To arrest people for selling comics that have boobies drawn in it seems truly a waste of law enforcement's time. That's one of the scenarios addressed in this collection of comics, w...

I finally finished a book with no pictures. Holy cow, I sure didn't think I'd do that this year, the way I've been going. But I'm not surprised it's Hornby that's broken my funk; I'm surprised it's a book about music. Anybody with a passing familiarity with Nick Hornby knows he is a music fan. Perhaps that's putting it lightly really. Hornby seems to be a music fan the way people are fans of oxygen. He knows his shit and it works its way into a lot of his novels. I am not a music fan to this level. That's not to say I don't like music; I love it. But I don't breathe it the way Hornby does. I'm not even sure I would be classified as an enthusiast. I'm like the John Cleese character from a Monty Python sketch that says, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." This book is a series of short essays about just that, songs that Hornby likes. Songs that meant something to him at some point in his life. It...

In the continuing quest to break myself out of my reading funk, I found this graphic novel on the shelves at my local library. Being a small branch it doesn't have a lot to offer. Mostly I have to know what I'm looking for and then request it from another branch. I know libraries need to purge occasionally, but it would be nice if they wouldn't purge the first volumes of series. However, maybe it makes it possible to have these standalone novels, so like with everything in life, compromise is the key. This is the story of a young boy. When he was born he was sickly, but his dad was a doctor. Apparently at the time, the medical community thought that x-rays were some sort of cure-all for many diseases, so dad treated his son in what was, at the time, the proscribed treatment. No one knew the consequences. Years later he suddenly develops a growth on his neck. They leave it for years, thinking it's just a cyst and that it would go away. Eventually he underwent two surge...