Book review: graphic novels

I recently was at the library and decided I should get a library card. This library has a selection of graphic novels/comics/manga, so I found a number of books there that seemed interesting. Comics are especially better to read in a physical book, so having a library card now means I can read the various comics they have available there. 

I'm unsure as to whether to count any of these graphic novels towards my reading challenge. I think I should probably keep them in a separate section since they aren't quite the same as regular text-only books. 

One of the comics was a manga recommended by my friend. This one was 'Uzumaki' by the famous horror manga artist Junji Ito. It was very surreal in that uniquely Japanese way that I don't really see in American media. The story just got more and more surreal as it progressed. I didn't find it scary exactly, but it was very intriguing, riveting and suspenseful. It was a relatively quick read even though it was a fairly thick book. It has to do with spirals wreaking havoc on the residents of a town in Japan. 

A minor yet interesting detail in this manga is that apparently hurricanes are described with numbers in Japan. There's a section of the manga where various hurricanes strike the town, and they're described in the news as "hurricane 1" or "hurricane 4" and so on. In the US, hurricanes are described by names, with each subsequent storm getting a name in alphabetical order. 

I also saw a graphic novel adaptation of a short story by the now-disgraced author Neil Gaiman. I'd never read any of his work before because it just didn't interest me, but this one looked short enough that I was willing to give it a try. I read this one in about 10 to 15 minutes while at the library. 

This story, titled 'How to Talk to Girls at Parties' was more of a magical realism type of thing, which is not a genre that interests me. I see magical realism as being different than surrealism, though perhaps it could be said that magical realism is a subset of surrealism. In any case, magical realism isn't a genre I like. I prefer surrealism that's more science-fiction based and/or dystopian and unsettling in some way. 

Something about the story seemed rather hollow to me. I'm not sure if all of his work is like that, or this was just one of his weaker works. The story was written by Neil Gaiman, but illustrated into a graphic novel by some other artists. The premise of the story, which is revealed gradually, is that the girls in question are not actually human. They're some kind of alien (insect?) creatures that are just inhabiting human-looking bodies. 

The art style wasn't really my favorite either, I just wasn't very impressed by it. Maybe it felt like it didn't fit the plot of the story? There were some other graphic novels with stories by Neil Gaiman but I'm not all that inclined to read more of his work. Not necessarily because he's a scumbag, but because it just doesn't interest me in terms of genre. 

The third graphic novel was called 'Upgrade Soul' by an author/cartoonist (Ezra Claytan Daniels) I hadn't heard of before. This one interested me because the premise had to do with people having a new version of themselves created that was physically and intellectually superior, but disfigured. The whole concept of having a new version of yourself is a theme/premise I find interesting (The Substance and Mickey 17 or Mickey7), so I wanted to see how this comic would approach it. 

I found this comic rather weak in its execution. The cover art was also done in a very different style than the actual comic. The execution of the plot wasn't great and I also didn't like the art style very much. The plot was too hard to follow, as there were various flashback scenes that didn't seem differentiated enough from whatever was happening in the "present day" of the comic. 

The characters, I don't know if they needed more development (i.e. making the comic longer) or if they just needed a better author to develop them over the same span of the existing comic. Between The Substance, Mickey 17 or Mickey7 and Upgrade Soul, I found Upgrade Soul to be the worst or most poorly executed. Although its premise is interesting, the author just wasn't able to present it in a way that felt well-done.  

I'm glad I didn't spend money on this book, but I wouldn't mind owning a copy of Uzumaki if I found one used at a good price. Some other reviews on Goodreads compared Upgrade Soul to Flowers for Algernon, and I guess I can vaguely see it, but Upgrade Soul is pretty underwhelming and mediocre, at best. 

In the future, I should be more picky about which graphic novels I choose to read and only choose ones with premises and art styles that I like. I'm still pretty happy about my SPX purchases even though I haven't fully read either of them... I better work on saving up money for the next SPX so I can buy more independent and experimental comics. 

I still have some more graphic novels to read, so I'll do another review of that batch later.       

Book review: If There Is Something to Desire; also a reading challenge update

I was sick during the beginning of February and felt very mentally lethargic, even more so than usual. So I got behind on my ideal schedule to accomplish my reading challenge for this year, which is to read at least one book per every letter of the alphabet. 

In order to complete the challenge within a year, I should read at least one book every two weeks, which works out to two books per month. Per the terms of the challenge, I decided that any book counts towards it as long as it's primarily text and written for an adult audience (so no picture books, like Goodnight Moon).

If There Is Something to Desire, by Vera Pavlova

I found out about this collection of poetry when I was looking for some contemporary Russian literature available in English translation. It was mentioned in the same list as The Hall of Singing Caryatids. I found this poetry overall very mediocre and didn't really want to finish the book, but I managed to push through because almost all of the 100 poems are very short (like 15 lines or fewer). 

I don't know if the mediocrity of the poetry is due to poor translation, or if they are similarly mediocre in the original Russian (if you can read and understand Russian). Apparently, this poet is pretty popular in Russia. The poetry was rather terse and bland. Sex was a recurring topic, and it wasn't done in an artful way. 

There was maybe about 20% (at most) of the poems or lines that I liked, but on the whole, I did not like this poetry. It mostly made me feel bored and a little exasperated because I didn't like it. Good poetry makes you feel intrigued and/or maybe emotionally moved in some (positive) way. And/or impressed by how good it is. 

In general, I prefer poetry that's more descriptive and involves more metaphor or other creative, unique use of language. Poetry that sets an interesting scene and layers it with some kind emotion. 

Progress of the reading challenge

So far, I've read 6 books this year, including the one I reviewed in this post. So actually, I'm back on schedule now due to recently finishing Mickey7 and If There Is Something to Desire. Both were pretty quick reads, so it still feels a little bit like I was slacking by not reading something more involved and dense. 

I've reviewed some of the books here, though there are others I did not end up posting a full review of. I might do brief reviews of those that do not warrant their own posts and compile it into a single post. Books I have read but not yet reviewed: Grapefruit, by Yoko Ono. I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman. They Were Soldiers by Ann Jones.   

Actors, like James D'Arcy

In the last few years, I haven't really kept up with the recent (or not so recent) work of various actors I proclaim to like. It takes time to watch movies and TV series and most of the time, it feels like I'm not in the right mindset to sit down and commit to watching a given movie or series that some actor has been in. 

The most recent thing I watched starring an actor I like was "Memory," for Peter Sarsgaard. It is actually a significant time and effort commitment to try and watch all or most of a given actor's (or director's) filmography, and I have to say I've not accomplished that goal for any actor or director. 

Yes, I'm slacking on my duties as a so-called fan of these actors. Because I was impressed with Robert Pattinson's performance in Mickey 17, I might try and take a look at his past work to see if anything looks interesting enough to watch. 

Anyways, in my recent review of Mickey 17, I mentioned some actors I think might have been better to cast in the role of the primary villain, the spaceship's commander. One of them was Peter Sarsgaard, and another was James D'Arcy, a British actor who is probably (?) lesser known than Peter Sarsgaard. It's been awhile since I've watched anything with him in it, but I seem to have the recollection that he tends to play characters that are a bit cold and icy, or at least that's what's most memorable to me. 

Interestingly, I just found out that James D'Arcy had some smaller role in the major film "Oppenheimer."* He's had a small role in some Marvel stuff too, but I don't care about superhero garbage. I think he plays someone's assistant, or something. 

Anyways, I wanted to see what he has been in over the last few years that I haven't been keeping up with that, so I was going to look at a fan website (jamesdarcy.net) I remembered looking at in the olden days. Unfortunately, it appears that fan website no longer exists, and the Facebook page for it has not been updated since spring of 2022. There are some archives of the site on the Wayback Machine, showing the site itself was last updated in 2020 and went down sometime between 2022 and 2023. 

I have no idea what happened there and why the site ceased to exist. It's disappointing to me, so this blog may have to also take up the mantle of a part-time unofficial James D'Arcy fan site too. I hope Peter Sarsgaard doesn't get jealous (I'm being sarcastic. No one even reads my blog, much less these actors. It's okay though, I still like them. I think it might be kind of embarrassing for them to read it, in any case). 

It also made me think of Kaitlyn Tiffany's now-defunct Jake Gyllenhaal newsletter, which was titled "Our Bodies Are Controlled by the Moon," which apparently was drawn from something Jake Gyllenhaal had said. It was published via Tinyletter and I thought maybe the archives would still be up even though she stopped writing it some years back, but Tinyletter shut down too, so no dice there. 

A belated goodbye to these figments of the old internet...       

* He posts sporadically on Instagram. Back when Oppenheimer was going to premiere, he posted an image of the poster with the caption "I can't believe they forgot to put my name at the top. In theatres 7/21/23. Or 21/7/23 if you like your dates the right way round." My impression from interviews and such is that James D'Arcy has a dry sense of humor. Maybe because he's British? 

10 year blogaversary!!

I was looking at how a recent post looks on my blog (instead of just the post editor) and saw the sidebar with the blog archive widget (I <3 old school web design, which is why this blog looks so outdated. It will remain so. Pry this theme from my cold, dead hands.). Looking at that, I realized that it's my 10 year blogaversary! Or rather, was in January, but it's still relatively early in the year, so close enough. 

It feels satisfying in a small way to have maintained a blog continuously for so long, even though at times the posts were extremely sporadic. Still, I posted at least a few times every year of this blog's existence. I'm sure there's plenty of stuff in the archives that's rather cringeworthy, but I'm keeping that all up for the sake of posterity. I hope to continue to make posts about "a... unique topic." 

It's actually rather strange to think about, the more I think about it. There's random stuff from the past 10 years that at some point I thought about and decided to make blog posts about. Isn't it strange to think about, having a blog that's been around since 2015? It feels like almost an entirely different era by now, and honestly, it kind of was. But this blog has been around all this time, chronicling (some) things I've thought about over the course of that time period. I have grown up and changed in some ways since then, but in other ways I think I'm relatively the same. 

I am/can be an extremely verbose person, which this blog allows me to have an outlet for even if no one reads it. If you do read it, whoever you are, thanks, I guess? I'm honestly not sure what anyone might get out of reading this blog, but that's the reader's prerogative. 

I <3 blogs. I wish blogging would make a comeback, just people writing blogs about all sorts of stuff (like this one!). General personal blogs, blogs about a specific interest, all kinds of blogs. Blogging feels like the anti-Instagram, the anti-Tiktok in this day and age. No algorithms, no filters, just words and sometimes photos. A vestige of the old internet. Blog like it's 2005, or 2010, or 2015. It's what newsletters are supposed to be. GTFO of here with long-form "newsletters" in my "inbox." Just make a blog, cowards.  

And since it's now the 14th, happy pi day! 3.14.25    

Movie review: Mickey 17

This is also partially a book review because I read the book prior to seeing the movie. I saw a poster for this movie in a theater lobby, which intrigued me enough that I looked into more information about it. I found out that it was based on a book, Mickey7. This review contains some spoilers for Mickey 17 and The Substance.

Mickey7, book

The book was a relatively quick read. It was published within the last few years, so it's fairly recent. I thought the premise was pretty interesting, although the execution by this author wasn't my favorite. I would've found it more interesting if a different author had written something with this premise, such as Murakami. 

Additionally, the book had a rather young-adult fiction writing style, which isn't my favorite. I prefer books that are a bit more literary in style, or at the very least, are not written in the style of YA, even if they're not high literature either. 

Still, I found it interesting enough to finish and the concepts it involves are interesting to think about, even if the author could have approached them in a more artful and skilled manner. For some reason I don't feel like I can remember much detail about the book, even though I read it within the last week or two. I think that I wished it had addressed the premise/themes in a deeper way somehow, rather than being more surface level.

 

However, in some ways, the book did delve a bit deeper than the movie did. The ship of Theseus idea is specifically discussed in the book, and Mickey ends up using his spare time to read about what caused the success or failures of other space colonies, wondering what implications that might have for the planet he has traveled to. There's also some more depth in what's going on with the strange worm-like creatures inhabiting the planet. 

Mickey 17, movie

This movie was directed by Bong Joon Ho and starred Robert Pattinson as the eponymous character, Mickey 17. I was curious about what the adaptation would be like. I have not watched any other work by Bong Joon Ho, or Robert Pattinson (aside from maybe some of the Twilight series, years ago. I was somewhat interested in the series around the ages of 10 - 13, which is when it was really popular). 

The movie differs rather substantially from the book. Although there are similarities in some of the broader elements, much of the details were changed, including some of the plot. I was hoping that the movie would take a deeper approach to some of the ideas in the book, but this wasn't really the case. The movie went in a different direction than the book, and the themes and/or emphasis were changed. 

Thematically and tonally, the movie was somewhat disjointed. There were a lot of different elements that just didn't get explored too deeply. Robert Pattinson's acting was very superb and he really managed to embody the two versions of his character. There's a certain intensity (and depth?) to his performance that reminds me of Peter Sarsgaard a bit. 

I thought that Robert Pattinson didn't really look like I expected him to for some reason. My mental image of him is more like a vague recollection of what he looked like in the Twilight series, which is different enough than what he looks like in this movie and maybe in real life too. In this movie, his hair was darker and not as curly or tousled looking. In Twilight/etc, I think his hair was more coppery (lighter in color, I guess from highlights of some sort) and had a slightly curly texture. He also had vampire makeup for that series to make him appear very pale and sparkly. He was rather pale in Mickey 17 too, but not sparkly. He appeared very hairless (regarding body hair) in this movie, which I'm not sure if that's how he naturally is, or whether he was shaved and/or waxed to look like that. In any case, he's an attractive man. 

Pattinson played his character rather straight and seriously, which is in extreme contrast to the caricatured performance that Mark Ruffalo gave as the movie's primary villain, the commander/caption of the space expedition. I found this juxtaposition rather disjointed and Ruffalo's performance and character seemed out of place with how the rest of the characters were portrayed. 

I would have preferred to see a more subtle and sinister or ominous portrayal of the villain, instead of a bombastic, over-the-top demagogue. Although the movie was originally filmed a couple of years ago, Ruffalo's character is like a strange Trump-Musk amalgamation. I could actually see Peter Sarsgaard playing this role how I envision it, or maybe Jeff Goldblum? Perhaps even James D'Arcy. I'm not familiar with Ruffalo's other work so I can't really say whether he's generally a mediocre actor, or it's just this performance that wasn't great. 

I also possibly would have liked if the movie had a different director, someone who'd emphasize the more surreal and deeper ideas/elements rather than trying to incorporate a significant campy, satiri-comical tone. Maybe someone like Darren Aronofsky? 

The ending of the movie (which is a little similar to the book, but also has significant changes) was a bit contrived too. Ultimately, I don't think it necessarily benefited from the plot and other changes that were made in the adaptation, particularly the way the commander character was built into something rather different than the analogous character from the book, and the impact of that on the plot. 

In an interview I read prior to seeing the movie, Pattinson did mention that he was surprised about how the director adapted the source material. It might be more enjoyable to watch this movie without having read the book first, because it doesn't feel like a highly satisfying adaptation of the source material. In some ways, the source material is rather corrupted in the adaptation. 

I wish the movie had been more of a character study (of Mickey) since it would be an interesting way to explore the premise. It also would've benefited from more development of Mickey and Nasha's relationship, as well as the other woman that sort of almost gets involved in a love triangle. The book does this at least somewhat better, if I recall correctly. 

I would have liked to see more reflection from both/either Mickey and Nasha about the strange situation with there being two of him and what they thought about it. In the movie, Nasha is eager to have a threesome with the twin Mickeys (the threesome also occurs in the book) and does notice the difference in their personalities. She describes 17 as mild Mickey and 18 as habanero Mickey, but doesn't end up addressing these differences further. 

I thought it was interesting that there's a tenuous connection to the premise of The Substance, but Mickey 17 takes a very different approach to it. 

The common premise in these two movies is the idea of having two bodies, which are two versions of yourself that are both technically supposed to be you, but they're at odds with each other in some way, and are different from each other in some way(s). 

In Mickey 17, he ends up with two versions of himself unintentionally and is part of a larger crew of people in a space colony, whereas in The Substance, Elisabeth voluntarily takes a substance to create a better version of herself and is rather isolated personally. The Substance, overall, was much more expertly executed in terms of the direction and plot. I also enjoyed its allusions to Requiem for a Dream and some of Kubrick's work.  

In both, it was interesting to see how the different bodies/versions of the character were foils for each other. Since the context and premise of the movies are pretty different, this foil effect plays out in distinct ways. Both Mickeys are physically the same, but differ somewhat in personality. Mickey 18 is more diabolical than the hapless and nervous Mickey 17. 

Elisabeth is using the different, younger body of Sue to live vicariously, trying to relive Elisabeth's former glory. Her desire to continue living as Sue instead of Elisabeth ultimately leads to Elisabeth's destruction. Mickey 18 holds a bit of disdain and disregard for 17, and for some reason is more diabolical than his previous version. The reasons for him being more diabolical are never directly explained. Perhaps it's just a reaction to being confronted with a duplicate version of himself, putting them both at risk in the context of the ship's regulations?       

   

Overall, I did like the movie and would probably watch it again at some point, it's just that are there some aspects of it I have criticism of and think should have been done differently. It was somewhat underwhelming relative to what I think/wish it could have been. I like this review on Reddit that also discusses the differences between the movie and book.

I took a look at AO3 to see what fan fiction about the movie exists, though it seems like the majority of it involves clone sex because I guess people just wanted to get their freak on and write about that. Personally, I think that's one of the more uninteresting ideas that could be explored in fan fiction for this movie.