books

There's No Place Like Here: Brazenhead Books from Etsy on Vimeo.

HT @DavidDark

patti

"...more her sense of wonder, her openness to the possibility of wonder in herself and others. It underlines in her an unexpected warmth and delicacy. The openness has always been a kind of survival strategy too..."

Great article on Patti Smith in today's Guardian.

I finished Just Kids earlier this week. I was delighted too.

what is precious

Really, one of the best 'things' I have ever read.

a king

Was not at all happy with this picture - bears only a faint resemblance to King Zero - but decided to mess it up a wee bit and commit to posting. Even if my drawings are unrecognizable it is a way to keep from freezing.

Most of what I know about Burma comes from Guy DeLisle's Burma Chronicles. He has a fun mash up of his book on Pyongyang here.

Generally the news is that I am feeling very energized and up at the moment. A commute with long reading times helps. Surprisingly structured pattern to my reading ways to and fro. And I find that the transition to a new job has been helped greatly by a different perspective that developed while I was out of employment. I summed up some of that here (thanks again Pip!). I'll look for a way to express the rest.

ordinary victories

I think this is the best book I have read so far this year.

A quick stream of conscious response: Some of my opinion formed out of the sheer surprise of Ordinary Victories (I did not know who Manu Larcenet was this time two weeks ago) but most of it comes from the fact that the story is just that good. It captures a person trying to heal himself - and learn what being forgiving might mean and understand what his art means - better than just about anything else I have ever read.There is a life and vividness to all of the characters that has stayed with me and wandered around with me as I go about my days since first finishing. (After a day's rest I decided to read it all again.) And it has helped me think a lot about art and relationships and energized my drawing all over again.

Wow.



"Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic... Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself."
Zadie Smith

this charming man

Eddie Campbell Reading - July 2008 from Jessa Crispin on Vimeo.

I am marveling my way through the Alec Book at the moment and found this very charming man on video at his own blog.

'the loving care he gave to that bread'

Pip Wilson has a blog, which has been a helpful blessing to me in more ways than I can say. And now he has a book too (actually one of many). Opening the book at random I came across this (and it touched me):

One man, a Chef in a college community,
striving to meet the needs of young humans,
started to tell me how he baked bread.
And then he started to weep as he told me
of the loving care he gave
to that bread -
to those humans.
Beautiful

The last few weeks for me have contained a big mix of stresses (some good). On the blog, Pip had recommended acknowledging feelings but not being ruled by them. Recognize the fear, paranoia, stress, anger - acknowledge and then realize that the feeling does not have to rule your behaviour. I am sure I am not quite capturing the message but the exercise has been enormously helpful for me the past view weeks - freeing. Certainly helping me to see the world differently.

This is some of what I have been up to.

I don't always feel as clearly but here is the part of the Auden poem I was thinking of.

You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,

you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon

making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,

wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.

How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.

The rest of it is here.

epicness

Friends have kindly parted with these for as long as it takes me to read them. Finished the first one at lunch - fantastic. Biggest surprise for me is how clearly it feels like Toronto. Reading on.

trondheim

Not only a place but also a man. I've just started reading some of his books and they are enormous fun. He has collaborated with Joann Sfar, and shares his looseness. A lot of his work seems to have been translated into English and you can read some of his Little Nothings cartoons in French on his blog. Reading it all makes me happy. And he plays ukelele (with Sfar).

for the backstory and the ongoing drama

I have been following the wonderful Mike Riddell as he blogs the (very high) highs and (very low) lows of putting together the film of his book The Insatiable Moon. Filming has begun. Worth reading the blog from the beginning - or at least looking over the journey of the last few months. Mr. Riddell and his supporters are overcoming the seemingly insurmountable odds against them in real time.

Mr. Riddell has played with the novel form several times over the past few years. I have not been able to get a hold of The Insatiable Moon but did find Deep Stuff to be wonderfully thought provoking. Must be read slowly.

i missed blogging

I have been having a fairly terrible time at work over the past few weeks. This has raised huge questions for me. Immediate ones to do with work and what I will do next. And then there are problems that I need to try and answer in the long now if I am to live with a stronger sense of calling, vocation and purpose.

We went to a panel discussion that involved the very delightful Emmanuel Guibert the evening of the first day that had been really bad for me in my job. The panel discussed this book, which M. Guibert co-authored with the photographer Didier Lefèvre. It was a blessed relief to be taken so far from my own problems and reminded of the wider world out there, full of need and wonder.

I stole this drawing as a way to try and gather my thoughts and calm myself.