Day 1: The Best Book You Read Last Year

What do you remember about the first time you fell in love?

Think for a moment. Do you remember the intensity? Do you look back ruefully at how you were mystified at how completely, hopelessly caught up you were with another person, separate and distinct from you? The first kiss- and all the other firsts it heralded? The self-consciousness? The longing? The bittersweetness of goodbye?

Craig Thompson’s autobiographical graphic novel Blankets is a lovingly illustrated story of first love, which also details the author's coming of age; in life, love and in faith- the overarcing themes running through the book.

We first meet Craig as a boy growing up on his family farmhouse in Wisconsin, a quiet, shy child with an affinity for drawing. The older of two sons brought up in a devoutly Christian family, his unthinking faith and his inherent 'otherness' immediately casts him as an outsider in school, an easy target for bullies. He is close- for want of a better word- to his younger brother, the closeness of fellow prisoners trapped in a bewildering and strange world.

We follow him as he navigates the challenges unique to being brought up in a hyper-conservative version of Christianity. The inspiration, the goodness, the beauty, the sense of a 'higher call', all come at a cost- the hypocrisy, the proselytizing, the incessant guilting. As a mostly-practicing somewhat-Christian myself, this theme particularly resonated with me- his recollections were both familiar and completely horrifying, as though someone had taken my happy childhood recollections of feel-good Sunday sermons and choir lessons, and dipped it in nightmare-acid. Craig has always accepted his faith with unwavering devotion, but as he matures, he begins to have crippling doubts about the role religion plays in people's lives. This forms one of the major points of conflict in the novel, as he tries to reconcile what he sees and knows to be true, with what he's been taught.

And then he meets Raina. 

Starved for sympathetic companionship, Craig finds a friend, philosopher, and guide in Raina, and falls headlong in love. I remember reading somewhere that Thompson wanted to describe what it felt like to ‘sleep next to someone for the first time’. This is beautifully portrayed, and anyone who remembers their first love will immediately identify with Craig's happiness, almost painful in its intensity. Their relationship is a delicate and fragile thing, a thing of beauty, but as it unfolds, Craig realizes that love comes with its own gifts of pain. I won't give away any more of the plot, you'll just have to read it yourself and find out what happens.

Verdict
A thoughtful and introspective autobiography, this novel is a departure from the type of work I'd normally associated with graphic novels, in my limited exposure to the genre. This is clearly a labour of love, the artwork beautiful and lavishly detailed, the writing quiet and elegant. Thompson's voiceover in the narrative never grates, and he comes across as a person one would like as a friend. I especially liked his choice of choosing stark black-and-white over colour- it seemed a fitting commentary on how, in childhood, there is always a touch of melodrama to our feelings- both sorrow and joy is felt harder and deeper.

And so that is why, in a year where I read, among others, Nabokov's Despair and Lolita and C. S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, I'm going to go with Blankets as my favourite find of 2011.

Blankets is available on Amazon & flipkart.

Many thanks to Severus for the recommendation, and to the Two-Headed Liar for making this review possible :)

The Heartcry of a Hygienically OCD-ed Soul

Why, oh why, do women make calls in the loo?
('Course, I wouldn't know if men do too.
Although for them, by the very definition,
Peeing- hopefully!- precludes such ghastly intentions.)
Tell me, does it signal deep affection?
Or merely mental retardation,
Taking calls this way?
Why don't they ever just say,
"Excuse me, I'll get back to you. I'm on another call."
Or better yet, don't answer that phone at all.
Like other, normal people do.
It's just so eww, ewww, ewwwwwwwwwww!


*conclude with dance of horror*

Book excerpt: Jane Eyre

"In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom," said Mr. Rochester; "and in the interim, I shall myself look out for employment and an asylum for you."

"Thank you, sir; I am sorry to give--"

"Oh, no need to apologise! I consider that when a dependent does her duty as well as you have done yours, she has a sort of claim upon her employer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her; indeed I have already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a place that I think will suit: it is to undertake the education of the five daughters of Mrs. Dionysius O'Gall of Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland. You'll like Ireland, I think: they're such warm-hearted people there, they say."

"It is a long way off, sir."

"No matter--a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance."

"Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier--"

"From what, Jane?"

"From England and from Thornfield: and--"

"Well?"

"From YOU, sir."

Six Injured in Savage Strike by Were-Cat

Newspaper name reference from here. :)
Newspaper clipping generated via here.
Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Take Who's the Greatest Comic Writer Ever Poll!

No, I’m not going to wax lyrical about how funny they are and why you should read these chaps. I’m not, for example, going to tell you that Plum has been called by Hugh Laurie as “the funniest writer to have ever put words on paper” and been admired by both Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. Neither will I tell you that Terry Pratchett is currently the second most-read writer in the UK, and seventh most-read non-US author in the US, or that Douglas Adams’s answer to the question of Life, the Universe and everything is endorsed by Google Calculator.

I ask, merely, for a few minutes of your time. Browse through the quotes* here at leisure, try not to chuckle out too loudly, and then, having been converted, head for the nearest bookstore. Or Flipkart.


With no further fanfare, I give you three of the greatest comic writers ever, in no particular order**:

Presenting our first nominee, P. G. Wodehouse. Also known as Plum. Approach the Master with reverence!

Image courtesy Wikipedia

• To my daughter Leonora, without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time. ~ (the now famous dedication from “The Heart of a Goof”)
• He had a face like a gorilla- much more so, indeed, than most gorillas have. ~ Laughing Gas
• The more I see of women, the more I think there ought to be a law. Something has got to be done about this sex, or the whole fabric of Society will collapse, and then what silly asses we shall all look. ~ Picadilly Jim
• The shock to Colonel Wedge of finding that what he had taken for a pile of old clothes was alive and a relation by marriage caused him to speak a little sharply. ~ Full Moon
• It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't. ~ Ring for Jeeves
• Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only to find the vodka bottle empty. 
• It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it after all.
• Like so many substantial Americans, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag. ~ Summer Moonshine
• She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight about the hips that season. ~ My Man Jeeves
• The least thing upsets him on the links. He misses short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. ~ The Clicking of Cuthbert
• There are certain females who one respects, admires, reveres, but only from a distance. If they show any signs of coming closer, one is prepared to fight them off with a blackjack. ~ Jeeves in the Offing
• "Are you," asked Lord Emsworth, "interested in pigs, Mr Er-Ah-Umph?"
  "Plimsoll," said Tipton Plimsoll.
  "Pigs," said Lord Emsworth, raising his voice a little and enunciating the word more distinctly.
  ~ Full Moon
• Many men in Packy's position would have shrunk from diving into the rescue, fully clad. Packy was one of them.
• I suppose I'm one of those fellows my father always warned me against. ~ Right Ho Jeeves
• His manner was now meek and conciliatory, like that of a black-beetle which sees the cook reaching for the insect powder and does its best to show her that it fully realizes that it has brought this on itself.
• ...fell into the washing machine and did as many revolutions per minute as a small African republic....
• In the summer the river is at the bottom of the garden, in the winter the garden is at the bottom of the river.
• He was standing on his left leg. With a sudden change of policy, he now shifted and stood on his right.
• "Yes, sir," said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend. ~ Carry On, Jeeves
• "Here," said Murgatroyd, "Wake up. Sir Jasper's calling you."
  "Calling me what?" asked Wilfred, coming to himself with a start.
  "Calling you very loud," growled the butler.
• Introduced to his child in the nursing home, he recoiled with a startled "Oi!".. The only thing that prevented a father's love from faltering was the fact that there was in his possession a photograph of himself at the same early age, in which he, too, looked like a homicidal fried egg. ~ Sonny Boy
• Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.
• I suppose the fundamental distinction between Shakespeare and myself is one of treatment. We get our effects differently. Take the familiar farcical situation of the man who suddenly discovers that something unpleasant is standing behind him.
  Here is how Shakespeare handles it (The Winter's Tale, Act 3, Scene 3).
  "... Farewell!
  A lullaby too rough. I never saw
  The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour!
  Well may I get aboard! This is the chase:
  I am gone for ever."
  (Exit pursued by a bear.)
  
  Versus:
  "Touch of indigestion, Jeeves?"
  "No, Sir."
  "Then why is your tummy rumbling?"
  "Pardon me, Sir, the noise to which you allude does not emanate from my interior but from that of that animal that has just joined us."
  "Animal? What animal?"
  "A bear, Sir. If you will turn your head, you will observe that a bear is standing in your immediate rear inspecting you in a somewhat menacing manner."
  I pivoted the loaf. The honest fellow was perfectly correct. It was a bear. And not a small bear, either. One of the large economy size. Its eye was bleak and it gnashed a tooth or two, and I could see at a g. that it was going to be difficult for me to find a formula.
  "Advise me, Jeeves," I yipped. "What do I do for the best?"
  "I fancy it might be judicious if you were to make an exit, Sir."
  No sooner s. than d. I streaked for the horizon, closely followed across country by the dumb chum. And that, boys and girls, is how your grandfather clipped six seconds off Roger Bannister's mile.
  
  Who can say which method is superior?
  

If you've finished cackling, we now move on to our second nominee, Sir Terry Pratchett.

Image courtesy Wikipedia

• Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life. ~ Discworld saying
• Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. Lord Vetinari was the Man; he had the Vote. ~ Discworld politics explained
• The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it. ~ On Discworld wildlife
• "It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocalypse." ~ The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse encounter unexpected difficulties 
• He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.
• "But you read a lot of books, I'm thinking. Hard to have faith, ain't it, when you've read too many books?"
• Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
• It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.
• If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.
• Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.
• In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
• Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.
• It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.
• In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
• Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.
• Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
• Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
• Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.
• If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!
• His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.'
• Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
• There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
  The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?
• Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
• If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
• The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.
• Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove. 
• “In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
  cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat
  could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious. -- Schrodinger's Moggy explained”

And now to our last and final nominee, the amazing Douglas Adams!

Image courtesy Wikipedia

• He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
• In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
• There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
• Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. (Douglas Adams, h2g2)
• "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
  "Very deep," said Arthur, "you should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you."
• Ford: "It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
  Arthur: "What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
  Ford: "You ask a glass of water."
• He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
• "Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it." (Douglas Adams, h2g2)
• It said: "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
• "For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?"
• Listen, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third..."
  "What?"
  "There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!"
• The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate. (My personal anthem :))
• It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
• He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off.
• "He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arms out wide. `I will go mad!' he announced." (Arthur discovering a way of coping with life on Prehistoric Earth, (Douglas Adams, h2g2))

Yeah, you’re welcome. :)

Done? So tell me. 

Who's the awesomest comic writer of all time?

*Apologies for the bare-bones selection here. I had to depend on the interwebz for the ones here. Got a favourite quote I've missed? Add it in the comments, I'll update the post :)
**I lied. Of course I think Plum is the funniest, though I love TP & DA too. Okay, I’m biased. So what? :P

Cry me a river

Fellow drawers, do you find yourself making faces as you draw a particular expression?
I do. All the time, I might add- to the bemusement of those in my immediate vicinity.

This one was supposed to be another effort in watercolouring, but I liked the mood of the sketch so much I changed my mind. Hopefully I'll try a version in colour soon- the original is a powerful image, as a quick Google will reveal- and colour would add a lot more impact.

Details:
HB pencil, with a little contrast addition in PS.

In which I attempt watercolouring

Shading in water colour is waaaay harder than with pencil- you actually need to know what you're doing, as opposed to my preferred method of just making it up as I go along. Of course, that didn't stop yours truly from leaping in, but I admit I was so afraid of messing it up that I actually took a backup of the base pencil sketch :)

The dancer does look like she has eczema, and the kasavu is just a disaster, but I'm pretty  pleased with the overall result, if I do say so myself :) 

Details:
Camel student water colours + detailing with Faber Castell watercolour pencils, with a little contrast addition in PS.