Dynamite Entertainment has established a new partnership with Humble Bundle. The two collaborators will offer a deal called the “Best-Selling Authors Bundle.”
Customers can choose between the publisher or a non-profit as the recipient of their money. They will have three charity options: the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Doctors Without Borders (a.k.a. Médecins Sans Frontières), and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Here’s more from the press release: “The ‘pay what you want’ model offers readers the chance to unlock over 120 comics, and over 3,500 pages of content. This will give graphic lit fans access to: Charlaine Harris’ Grave Sight Part 1 by Charlaine Harris, The Shadow Vol 1: Fire of Creation by Garth Ennis and Aaron Campbell, Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thomson: Hopcross Jilly by Patricia Briggs, The Complete Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Leah Moore, and John Reppion, Sherlock Holmes: Year One by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Scott Beatty, The Spider Vol. 1: Terror of the Zombie Queen by David Liss and Francesco Francavilla, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Echoes by Tom Clancy. As the bundle progresses, there will be a running average.”
As I pack away my Christmas tree for another year, I took stock today of my Christmas haul of books. I’m planning on reading more classics in 2015 and was fortunate enough to receive a few beautiful clothbound editions for Christmas. I hope you too were lucky enough to receive a book or two at Christmas time, […]
I don't know if you notice to the swath of "summer reading" lists that are posted on every media platform known to man each year around this time? I do, because its my job, and most of them suck. The vast majority of the books on parade sound like a great way to ruin all the good weather and pleasant scenery that mother nature could muster on even the best summer afternoon.
Just because it's summer does not mean you have to read crap. Reading this Esquire article, I am not alone in my views. The columnist took one for the team and actually sat down to read Dean Koontz, Harlan Coben and David Baldacci - so we wouldn't have to. Here is his take:
Stupid books take almost as long to read as not-so-stupid books. The chapters are short, the dialogue is "snappy," and still things go on forever. There's a reason only very special episodes of CSI stretch past the hour mark. These books are interminable — imagine a poorly produced thriller starring Tim Allen or Jim Belushi that lasts something like 12 to 15 hours.
This is the point where I'm supposed to find something positive to say about
these books. That's how it works. You're supposed to get all counterintuitive
and say that Sarah Palin is so freakishly stupid, she's actually some kind of
genius. Here's what I can say: The Coben is not quite as bad as the Baldacci,
which is not as god-awful as the Koontz.
It seems it's widely considered bad form to call stupid things stupid. But that's mostly what these books are. They'll cost you $25 a pop, waste a half day of your life, and leave you neither smarter nor happier, just kind of bored and a little depressed. That's no way to spend a summer. Screw these books. Take a walk.
I like a walk as much as the next guy but I also like reading in a hammock. So I want to ask, what is the best book you have read so far this summer? Maybe we can collect some comments and post a list of books that you may actually WANT to read this summer.
I don't know if you notice to the swath of "summer reading" lists that are posted on every media platform known to man each year around this time? I do, because its my job, and most of them suck. The vast majority of the books on parade sound like a great way to ruin all the good weather and pleasant scenery that mother nature could muster on even the best summer afternoon.
Just because it's summer does not mean you have to read crap. Reading this Esquire article, I am not alone in my views. The columnist took one for the team and actually sat down to read Dean Koontz, Harlan Coben and David Baldacci - so we wouldn't have to. Here is his take:
Stupid books take almost as long to read as not-so-stupid books. The chapters are short, the dialogue is "snappy," and still things go on forever. There's a reason only very special episodes of CSI stretch past the hour mark. These books are interminable — imagine a poorly produced thriller starring Tim Allen or Jim Belushi that lasts something like 12 to 15 hours.
This is the point where I'm supposed to find something positive to say about
these books. That's how it works. You're supposed to get all counterintuitive
and say that Sarah Palin is so freakishly stupid, she's actually some kind of
genius. Here's what I can say: The Coben is not quite as bad as the Baldacci,
which is not as god-awful as the Koontz.
It seems it's widely considered bad form to call stupid things stupid. But that's mostly what these books are. They'll cost you $25 a pop, waste a half day of your life, and leave you neither smarter nor happier, just kind of bored and a little depressed. That's no way to spend a summer. Screw these books. Take a walk.
I like a walk as much as the next guy but I also like reading in a hammock. So I want to ask, what is the best book you have read so far this summer? Maybe we can collect some comments and post a list of books that you may actually WANT to read this summer.
As promised, I'm catching up on reviewing some of the many comics I seem to have been reading lately. This will be Handsell style: just a quick description/pitch.
A note on linking: I'm trying something new. I'm using my own images and linking them directly to the IndieBound book info page, rather than using the affiliate links, which require an extra several clicks before you get to the book. It takes a bit longer for me, but seems more likely to be click-through-friendly for you. Let me know what you think.
Miss Don't Touch Me
by Hubert & Kerascoet
(NBM/ComicsLit)
This graphic novel is a study in contradictions: it combines a somewhat lighthearted tone - "prudish girl finds herself working in a high-end whorehouse, bring on the sex comedy!" - with some rather grisly plot points, including some pretty dark perversions and more than one bloody murder. The very French drawing style -- quick and flowing, almost sketchy, a la Joann Sfar of The Rabbi's Cat -- contributes to this strangeness. It's a grippingly suspenseful plot and the characters and images are very well-done and sometimes even sexy, but I'd suggest it only to readers with strong stomachs and a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance.
Luke on the Loose
by Harry Bliss
(Toon Books)
This is my favorite of the latest season's offerings from Toon Books, the comics-as-early-readers line created by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly. The plot and dialogue are intended for early primary kids: Luke, while on a walk with his dad, gets interested in chasing some pigeons and rampages across New York City like a hurricane -- but grownups will enjoy reading along for the fun of recognizing both many NYC landmarks and scenes and the unstoppable energy of a small boy. Harry Bliss, a Brooklyn native, brings this episodic tale to life with kinetic drawings perfect for the target age group, who will likely see themselves in Luke's exuberant flight.
08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail
by Michael Crowley and Dan Goldman
(Three Rivers Press)
Admit it: you kind of miss the never-ending drama of campaign season. This unique work manages to recapture the suspense and comedy and nobility and absurdity of it all, even though we know how it all comes out. Goldman, co-author of the Iraq/media/blogging satire Shooting War, is no stranger to capturing political realities and metaphors. Through the personae of two reporters who have seen it all, he and Crowley let you relive the political year moment by moment, and use the graphic novel format to get across the non-verbal subtleties as well as the rhetoric (every line of dialogue spoken by a candidate or other figure in the book is from their actual recorded words). Highly recommended for political junkies and those interested in what this medium can do with recent history.
Frankenstein: Prodigal Son 1
by Dean Koontz, Chuck Dixon, and Brett Booth
(Del Rey)
This book for me is that rare challenge: a negative handsell. I found the dialogue unintentionally laughable and the art cliched -- in fact, what amused me most about the book is that while the plot involves a still-alive Frankenstein creating an army of creepily perfect artificial people, it was impossible to tell his creations from anyone else in the story, as EVERYONE is creepily perfect, in a boring superhero comic kind of way. However, the plot kept me reading (against my better judgement) through the end of this installment, and the newly imagined Frankenstein's monster is kinda sexy. I suspect I'm just not the target audience for this sort of thing -- at ComicCon the folks behind this book touted it as a way to bring Koontz's work to teen readers, and it might work for teens. I'd sell it to those who were interested in Buffy or Twilight-style melodrama, with the caveat that there's much better work out there.
Scott Pilgrim #5: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Universe!
by Bryan Lee O'Malley
(Oni Press)
This is it! The big book of ComicCon 2009! So popular that you can't find it in stores! The penultimate book in O'Malley's manga/kung fu/video game/slacker culture/coming-of-age masterpiece! Could it possibly live up to the hype? Well, yes actually. Scott Pilgrim, still working through his quest to defeat the seven evil ex-boyfriends of the mysterious Ramona Flowers, is becoming a character of more depth and maturity, and the story is beginning to focus more on the limitations of a battle fighting, rock and roll playing, partygoing approach to solving the real problems of love, friendship, identity, and one's place in the world. Because it's the second to last, this one ends on an Empire Strikes Back-level cliffhanger, which means I will be in agony for the next two years or whatever it takes O'Malley to bring out number 6. But I can always go back and read 1 to 5 in the meantime, reveling in the layers of humor and visual motifs and hints about the outcome that the work provides in spades. I'd recommend you do the same, if you are the kind of person who likes fun, especially when it gets serious. Seriously, please just buy (or reserve) #1 at your local indie bookstore or comic shop as soon as possible and begin the Scott Pilgrim adventure.
Nocturnal Conspiracies
by David B.
(NBM/ComicsLit)
David B. is one of the stars of the very sophisticated French comics scene; his memoir Epileptic was a bestseller and highly acclaimed here in the States. I'm still reading my way slowly through this rich, eerie, atmospheric and thoroughly enjoyable book, a compendium of some of the author's own dreams over a period of decades. It's a kind of counterpoint to another recent favorite, The Night Of Your Life by Jesse Reklaw; while Reklaw compresses other people's dreams into four surreally humorous panels, David B traces his own dreams at length through their irresistible desires, pressing demands, and French Resistance-influenced atmospherics and drama. I found each meandering episode both deja vu familiar and utterly other, as other people's dreams often are. The combination of words and pictures seems like the perfect -- maybe only -- way to convey both the visual nature of dreams and the fact that our understanding of a dream situation goes beyond what we can see (the "it was you, but it didn't look like you" phenomenon). Another example of the best of what's going on in the genre -- some nudity and dream violence make it unsuitable for the youngest readers, but for all others it's definitely recommended.
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at ComicCon the folks behind this book touted it as a way to bring Koontz's work to teen readers, and it might work for teens.
hm, I wonder about that, would love to see some eventual actual data here. I mean, I do keep hearing people swearing up and down that it's true? But unless things in the US are so very different from my country (South Africa) teens needed little help at all to read Dean Koontz, Stephen King and even Anne Rice in prose form.
Jim Butcher I'm thinking should appeal hugely to teens as well.
(I'm talking about teens who do read, of course, the ones who don't aren't going to no matter what you do. They'll be deliberately obstinate if people force them in fact).
anyways, I can see the market for this as selling the stories to comics readers, there are enough of them who don't read book at all, but as a vehicle to hook teens on books?
put me on the side of the skeptical.
some of these graphic novels look interesting, ta for the reviews.
oh, I kind of went off thought there midway through -- I meant to say I also worked in a bookstore, so I am basing my recollections of the teens that bought and read books on actual fact. but this might be very different in the US, that is possible.