getting graphic

On Sunday afternoon, two miracles coincided. First, the local library just around the corner from our house was open. Secondly, I walked past just then! I had been meaning to go for months, because this branch has the added pull of being the comic and graphic novel library for the city, and I had never even heard of anything like that before. I was given a copy of Art Speigelmann’s Maus as a present once, and also read and enjoyed Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. In a similar thread, Rutu Modan’s visual blog was a delight with every post.

So the prospect of a whole libary full of graphic novels was thrilling! This time I picked up Marjane Satrapi’s latest, Chicken with Plums, and requested Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, which I have been meaning to read for a while. But the best part about a library is chancing upon an interesting-looking book you’ve never heard of before and getting to take it home for free! This time that book was Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang, about his travels in North Korea. I’m not due to go there anytime soon (not that it wouldn’t be interesting!), but am heading right for the book for this evening’s entertainment. Recommendations for what I should borrow next are very welcome! Let’s just hope the coinciding miracles were not a one-off.

shacked up

I have never surfed in my life, but one snowy Christmas I chanced upon a whole series of Bruce Brown’s legendary 60’s surfing films, a new one being shown every night at about 1 am. Nothing could have been further from reality outside the window, but I was transported. Since then, all surfing pictures about catch my eye, and I love Japanese sea and wave pictures like this.

Chris Gentile is a New York artist and surfer who plays with everyday objects and his camera to reflect on the art of surfing, like in the picture above of the corner of an Uzbek carpet called ‘Shacked’, meaning to be inside the curl of a wave. I would love to find myself there one day.