Sunday, August 28, 2016

It Was a Dark and Silly Night... (2003)

Comics by Lemony Snicket, William Joyce, Neil Gaiman, and more! Ed. by Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly.

We were looking at comics and graphic novels for a display at the library and I picked this up randomly. What a delight! 14 authors/illustrators were asked to create something on the topic "It was a dark and silly night..." and the results were entertaining. The authors I was familiar with seemed familiar in their approach, e.g. Lemony Snicket and Neil Gaiman. Some told a story, some made a game out of it - order the panels in the right order, find the differences, fill in the story with your own random nouns, verbs, etc. or even finding items by Where's Waldo author.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy (2014)

I hope I find where I started to review this feel good book about various people that live on Chestnut Street. But since I haven't so far, I will just say that Maeve Binchy just makes me feel good. She looks at young and old, people with secrets, problems, and just normal folks and intertwines them in a wonderful way. The one that I remember even months later was a taxi driver. He picks up a happy couple one night, but then some time later takes the guy to meet another woman and sees the first woman become lonely and sad over time. No one really paid attention to him as the driver, but he sees other people's lives, as his routes go through this neighborhood quite often.