I love the non straight lines, it makes this book case a little different:
It’s also available in black at Ligne Roset (but no idea how much it is, I’m guessing quite a bit).
Via The Sassy Kathy
Now for the second part of my Christmas wish list. I already blogged about the normal books last week and this time I’ve listed the comics/graphic novels I want. I’ll try to be a bit more informative than the previous post, actually writing a bit about the books (was impossible last time with the amount of books in that list). The main reason I’m writing about these is that they all look like great books and you might get inspired to get these for the geeky gal or guy in your life.
This series has been on my list for some time now; it’s about Scott Pilgrim, a guy who falls in love with a girl, but has to beat her 7 evil ex-boyfriends in battle before he can date her. A film adaption is currently being made based on it, and it looks awesome! Here’s the description:
Scott Pilgrim’s life is totally sweet. He’s 23 years old, he’s in a rock band, he’s “between jobs,” and he’s dating a cute high school girl. Nothing could possibly go wrong, unless a seriously mind-blowing, dangerously fashionable, rollerblading delivery girl named Ramona Flowers starts cruising through his dreams and sailing by him at parties. Will Scott’s awesome life get turned upside-down? Will he have to face Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends in battle? The short answer is yes. The long answer is Scott Pilgrim, Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life.
The first volume Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life is available on Book Depository for £6.07.
I love stories with people discovering they have special powers and Runaways has an interesting slant to it: a group of kids find out their parents are “The Pride”, a criminal group of mob-bosses, dark wizards and ‘more evilness’. They runaway and learn that they’ve inherited their parents powers.
All young people believe their parents are evil… but what if they really are? Meet Alex, Karolina, Gert, Chase, Molly and Nico – whose lives are about to take an unexpected turn. When these six young friends discover their parents are all secretly super-powered villains, the shocked teens find strength in one another.
The first collected edition Runaways vol 1: Pride and Joy is available on Book Depository for £4.08.
J. Michael Straczynski! Ever since Babylon 5 I’ve wanted to read some of his non TV show stuff, and Rising Stars looks like something right down my alley. It’s about 113, called “Specials”, born with special abilities after a comet struck near their hometown while they were in utero. The series explores how society may react to the advent of superpowers and how those who are Specials may react towards society and each other.
There are multiple editions of this series and it can be kind of confusing what exactly is what. The easiest to get is the Rising Stars Compendium, which collects all publications in one volume (£27.93 on Book Depository for the paperback, £56.30 for the hardcover). This version covers everything, so you don’t have to get anything besides that. Besides that though, they still also sell the thinner volumes, each covering parts of the story (5 volumes in total), but I’d suggest the compendium is easier (plus cheaper on the long run).
I loved how Buffy ended it’s TV show, but still I was happy to find out that it would continue in comic book form. I’ve read the first three collected editions so far, and want the fourth and fifth ones that are out now (Time of Your Life and Predators and Prey).
The actual issues have been coming out almost once every month since March 2007, and in total there are now 30 issues. I tried collecting these issues, but it was easier to just wait for the collected editions. Each collected edition bundles 5 of the issues together (so far there are 5 of these, covering issues #1-#25). I’m not sure how much more I can say about this, it’s a definite must-have for every Buffy fan.
The first collected edition The Long Way Home is available on Book Depository for £6.51.
Yep, another Buffy/Joss Whedon comic. Well, technically it’s not ‘Buffy’, but it is part of the Buffy-verse. Set in the future, Manhattan is now a slum, run by mutant crime lords and disinterested cops. Stuck in the middle of this all, is Melaka Fray, a vampire Slayer.
Fray is available on Book Depository for £10.07.
I adore re-interpretations of mythology, fairy tales, and other old stories. While it’s not that difficult to find good re-imaginings of mythology, it always is a bit trickier with fairy tales. Fables though seems like exactly the type of re-interpretation that I’m interested in.
The series deals with various characters from fairy tales and folklore – referring to themselves as “Fables” – who have been forced out of their Homelands by “The Adversary” who has conquered the realm. The Fables have traveled to our world and formed a clandestine community in New York City known as Fabletown. Fables who are unable to blend in with human society (such as monsters and anthropomorphic animals) live at “the Farm” in upstate New York.
The first volume of Fables (Legends in Exile) is available on Book Depository for £5.16.
I blogged about this series last week, and as I said then I would love to have these in English (so that I can lend them out and show people how awesome it is). If you haven’t seen that post and are too lazy to click through and read there what it’s all about, it’s about a young Japanese electrical engineer who gets mixed up in time travel, space and all sorts of other sci-fi-y adventures.
The first volume On The Edge of Life (weird, it’s actually not really the first volume, not according to the original French version, but it’s the one they started publishing in English first and is numbered as #1) is available on Book Depository for £4.45.
Any tips on what other comics I should get? Or I should put on my wish list next time?
Besides my new Shelftastic recurring posts, I’m also starting Book Lust (yeah, I couldn’t find a more original name, any other suggestions?). I’ll feature books that are coming out in the future, specifically those with shiny pretty covers.
I already blogged about Naamah’s Kiss in my Christmas Wish List, but the cover of it’s sequel has just been released and it’s just as gorgeous:
As I said before it’s the sequel to Naamah’s Kiss, Jacqueline Carey’s third trilogy set in the world of Terre d’Ange. The hardcover will be coming out in June 2010. Here’s the blurb:
Far from the land of her birth, Moirin sets out across Tatar territory to find Bao, the proud and virile Ch’in fighter who holds the missing half of her diadh-anam, the divine soul-spark of her mother’s people. After a long ordeal, she not only succeeds, but surrenders to a passion the likes of which she’s never known. But the lovers’ happiness is short lived, for Bao is entangled in a complication that soon leads to their betrayal.
I mentioned last week that I’ve got a ton of gorgeous bookshelves and other creative book storage solutions to share with you, so I’ve started a new recurring blog post: Shelftastic!
To start thing off, this first Shelftastic features a cool book case design: the stair-case!
I think it’s a pretty cool design and would work perfect in rooms with high ceilings. Imagine if it went higher than this and you could pull out more than just the 3 parts shown in the image above? It’s designed by Danny Kuo:
The initial keywords: space, storage, future. In the future space becomes more desireable because big apartment buildings are taking over normal 1, 2 or 3 level houses. Building vertically is more efficient because less ground square meters are needed to house people. Therefore focus will be on height rather than width in the future. However current storage furniture is designed for humans with a length of 1.7 or 1.8 meters also our furniture needs to grow in height in in order to be more efficient. This StairCASE is an answer to this need. It reaches the ceiling and the topshelves are still easy to reach without getting into awkward positions or getting help from another furniture piece.
It’s officially December! Time to bring our the Christmas carols and decorations. It’s less than a month to Christmas, so I thought I’d help out all those wonderful people who will have to buy presents for me. My birthday is only 2 months after that, and I always end up just using the same wish list.
I read tons of books, so this first part just contains the books I want. Look at all those pretty covers! (Just click on the images to go to Amazon and see more details).
Books from writers of which I’ve already read previous books:
Books from writers I’ve never read before:
I’ve also finally set up my GoodReads account with all the books I’ve read. Well, that’s not completely true; it contains all the books I’ve got here in the UK in my bookcase and all the books I remember reading. I know there’s a plank at my parents with some books I couldn’t get through, and I don’t think I’ve added all of those (another thing to go on my TODO list when I’m in NL).
Ages ago back in March 2008 I wrote a blog post about how I was a comic book newbie, and needed some help in figuring out where to start. Then last week it hit me. I was never a newbie. Not at all. I don’t even know how I could have overlooked it, but I grew up with comic books. Lots of them, in fact. Just not the typical US/UK type comic books, which is why I kind of “forgot” and regarded myself a comic book newbie (weird how your mind works sometimes, but in my mind these ‘comics’ I used to read, just didn’t register as comics).
The comic books I grew up with were mainly European ones. My mum collected all types of comic books since she was a kid, but when she “grew up” got rid of most of her collection (like 90% of them, I believe), keeping only a fraction of the huge collection she used to own. I called her last night to ask again what comics she used to have and it was even more than I initially had thought. Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Fantastic Four, and more, she bought all of them when they were first published in the Netherlands (so all in Dutch, of course). Then also the French and Belgium comics, like Michel Valiant, Tintin, and stuff that I had never even heard of before.
Her collection must have been massive (she got rid of a part of them when she was sixteen, getting rid of the ‘childish’ ones. Then later when she was about my age it got trimmed again. And then once more when she moved to Australia with my dad) and I’m a bit sad I never got to experience her full collection, I truly wish I had. I grew up with about 200 of her comics, and, like I said before, that was only a tiny bit of what she once used to own.
So, yeah, I’m not really a comic book newbie. Not really. I am when it comes to the US/UK ones, the ones that most people here will be familiar with. But I’ve actually been reading comic books for ages, and stupidly enough it took me until last week to really realize that.
Here’s a short list of my favourite comic books that I devoured as a kid/teenager, and I have a feeling most of them may be unfamiliar to you.
Yoko Tsuno is a Belgian series (written in French) which started in 1970 of which there are 24 volumes in total (with a 25th one on the way). I love this series, and have read all of them, except for the latest volume. The series tell the story of Yoko Tsuno, an electrical engineer, who was raised in Japan now living in Belgium. How cool is that, right? A main female character who’s an electrical engineer!
The stories were a great mix of sci-fi and fantasy, featuring things like outer space, time travel and robot dragons. There was a whole storyline devoted to the Vineans, a blue skinned alien race that have come to Earth in the distant past due to catastrophic changes to their own planet.
So far there have been four volumes translated into English (although not in the same order as originally written, which is weird) and I highly recommend them if you want to try out something new: On the Edge of Life, The Time Spiral, The Prey and the Ghost, and Daughter of the Wind (Amazon US, Amazon UK, Book Depository).
Franka is a Dutch comic books series that also started in the 1970s by the graphic artist Henk Kuijpers. The lead character is Franka, a young adventurous private investigator from Amsterdam. The cases she solves often take place in the worlds of art, antiquities, fashion and film, and also often feature exotic locales full of smugglers, pirates and other shady businessmen.
The latest volume came out last year, and I think they’re still continuing with it. In total there are 20 volumes, with one being published every 1-2 years. I love the drawing style in this; some of the ‘sets’ and clothes are gorgeous. I’ve had a look to see if there are English translations, but I couldn’t find any; it has, however, been translated in German, Spanish and French.
Suske en Wiske might be the most well-known one on this list, being translated into English under different names: Spike and Suzy (UK), Willy and Wanda (US) and Bob and Bobette (Australia). This series started in 1946, and as of today there are over 300 titles. From what I understood from my mum she started collecting these from an early age and had over a 100 of them, including some of the rare early editions. She got rid of all of them.
When I turned 8, a week before moving to the Netherlands from Australia, I got 2 English translations of Suske and Wiske for my birthday. Ever since then my family started collecting Suske and Wiskes again, and I think our collection is almost complete again.
The series is about the adventures of two kids Suske and Wiske, and their friends Aunt Sidonia, Lambik and Jerom. The stories combine elements of comedy, fantasy and science fiction, like talking animals, time travel and ghosts. It wasn’t my favourite series, but it was the one we had the most of just because it was so popular (300 volumes in 50 years, in comparison to the above 2 series, which each only had 20-30 in 30 years).
This one I’ve only read in Dutch, and it was only now that I discovered the terrible pun of the French name of this. Ric Hochet is a French detective comic book series about the reporter Rik Hochet. It started in 1955 and currently has 75 albums. I think I made it to album 50 or so, up until the point where my mum stopped collecting. Unlike the other series I don’t remember much of the actual story lines, just that I did read these more than once.
Natasja is another French-Belgium comic from the 1970s. It tells the adventures of a young sexy air hostess and her colleague and on-again off-again boyfriend Walter. Again I don’t remember that much of this series, just that I did read it a lot.
So that’s it; those are the 5 main comics I grew up with. There are a couple more, like Michel Valiant and Barbara, but the above 5 are the ones I remember reading and re-reading and re-reading. Looking at the covers above makes me want to read them all again. I know what I’ll be doing during my Christmas holiday!
Which comic books did you grow up with? What were the ones you read over and over again?
And yet another bookshelf I so want to have (maybe I should start another recurring post for bookshelves, I’ve still got a whole list of pretties that I want to share with you… any name suggestions? Book Beauty? Library Lust? Shelftastic?).
The Piniwini design is pretty neat (take a look at the brochure if you don’t yet understand how it works), but the price tag? €51?!? For just one pin. The book space-t0-price ratio is so not worth it (although I’ve ended up now with a big lumpy cupboard, that only fits on one spot in our entire house, just because this one could fit tons of books… without realizing 3 rows of books in front of each other means I don’t actually see my pretty books).
Via swissmiss
Having learned a lesson about thwarting the gods, Imriel and royal heir Sidonie confess their affair, only to see the nation boil over in turmoil as a result. Many cannot forget the betrayals of Imriel’s mother, who plunged their country into war. According to the Queen’s decree, the only way the lovers can be together is if Imriel performs an act of faith: search the world for his infamous mother and bring her home to be executed for treason. But just as he and Sidonie prepare for another long separation, a dark, foerign force casts a shadow over Terre d’Ange. With their world suddenly turned upside down, alliances of the unlikeliest kind are made, and Imriel and Sidonie learn that the god Elua always puts hearts together apurpose.
I loved the first Kushiel trilogy from Jacqueline Carey, and was hoping her second set could live up to those ones. I’ve been disappointed in the past by second generation stories (Sara Douglass, I’m looking at you), with the beloved characters you know and love not aging well at all. This Kushiel trilogy is focused on Phedre’s adopted son Imriel, son of the traitor Melisande.
After reading the first two of this series (Kushiel’s Scion and Kushiel’s Justice), I knew I had another beloved set of books in my hands, with Imriel being a great and interesting character. But would the grand finale ever live up to it’s predecessor’s finale? One word: YES. I think I might like this series more than the first one to be honest. While I adored those books, here the focus is much more on the love story between Imriel and Sidonie, which resonated much more with me.
The book starts out pretty predictable with Imriel and Sidonie officially declaring their love for one another to the queen. Of course, the only way for them to be together is for Imriel to bring his mother to justice. I so was expecting that that was the direction the book was going, but then it did a complete 360º and does something completely unexpected. I won’t say anything more than that, cause I truly don’t want to ruin the book for you. I love how Carey’s mind works, and she’s delivered a unique story unlike anything I’ve read.
The Kushiel books are among my all-time favourites, so of course I highly recommend them to anyone. I know there’s already another sort of sequel set in the same world, but taking place 100 years later. Bring it on!
Kushiel’s Mercy is the third book in the second Kushiel trilogy from Jacqueline Carey – £6.96 on Amazon.co.uk, $7.99 on Amazon.com, £6.95 on BookDepository.co.uk (free shipping!)
Most of the time I’ll be reading several books through each other, so my bedside stand always has a huge stack of books on it.I don’t really have room for those though; if it was just two or three books it might have been okay, but most of the time it’s more like 9-10 books. I’ve thought of possible solutions, like a special separate mini book shelf above my bed, but never have gotten around to actually implementing something.
At first glance, this design seemed perfect:
Don’t you love the little glasses hook? I’m wondering though how much this would ‘damage’ the book. I already hate using bookmarks (they cause unnatural creases in your books, I find. Then again I get slightly panicked whenever there’s a fold in anything made of paper I own) and I can’t help but worry what these would do to my books (yeah, I know, I’m weird). Plus I can already imagine me bumping my head against these at 3 in the morning.
Despite my moaning though: super cute design!
Via swissmiss
Gillengaria seethes with unrest. In the south, hostility toward magic and its users has risen to a dangerous level, though King Baryn has ordered that such mystics are to be tolerated. The King knows there are those in the noble Twelve Houses who could use this growing dissent to overthrow him, so he dispatches the mystic Senneth to access the threat throughout the realm.
Accompanying her is a motley band of magic users and warriors including Tayse, first among the King’s Riders – who holds a hard view of mystics in general, and Senneth in particular. But as the unlikely allies venture farther into the south, they will face death in a land under the sway of a fanatical cult that would purge Gillengaria of all magic users. And they will come to realize that their only hope of survival leis in standing together…
I stumbled on one of Sharon Shinn’s stand-alone book last year (Summers at Castle Auburn) and had been meaning to try out one of her series. The Twelve Houses series is set in the world of Gillengaria, your typical fantasy kingdom with a king, knights and magic. The kingdom is split up in 12 separate parts, each ruled by a different noble house: together they form the Twelve Houses. In the book you slowly learn who the different Houses are, their leaders, their traits, and the political intrigues between them. I always love the more political side of fantasy novels, with scheming, plotting and manipulating, and here in Mystic and Rider you get just that without it being too overwhelming.
The book starts off with the group saving a young man, Cammon, who is rumoured to be a mystic, and through him, we are introduced to all the characters. The group is led by Senneth, a mysterious woman with the power of fire. She has been ordered by the King to look into the southern Houses, to figure out if they’re on the brink of a civil war. Accompanying her are two other mystics, both shapeshifters, Kirra and Donnal, and two Riders, Tayse and Justin, loyal knights of the King.
It took me some time to really get into the book, and start caring for the characters. Mainly because you don’t know anything about them besides their names and the fact that 4 of them are mystics and 2 of them are Riders. Once the characters start opening up to each other (and to the reader) you slowly learn who they are and it really becomes interesting. Senneth in particular has difficulty opening up to people, but you slowly discover her background and the reasons to why she’s there.
Some might pick up this book thinking its a romance, but it’s not. There’s a faint romantic thread in it, but the main focus is the mystery of the southern Houses. I really enjoyed the book, and I’m definitely going to pick up the next ones (although not until I’ve worked through my 50+ ToRead list, eek!).
Mystic and Rider is the first book in The Twelve House series by Sharon Shinn – £4.85 on Amazon.co.uk, $7.99 on Amazon.com
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