Friday 9 July 2010

Book news

A mixed bag today (and no, the book diet isn't over, these are long-ordered things, mostly second-hand):
Agnès Poirier's Touché: Why Britain and France are so Different. I like her writing in Libération (very unpleasant website design) and The Guardian anyway, and I'm running a course on British Culture next year (heaven knows what I'll to fill in the other 12 weeks), so an critical friend's view (often very amusing) is always useful.

Final Crisis. Though not the magnificent graphic novel or comic strip I thought I'd ordered, but the crappy novelisation. What a ridiculous thing to do - turn a piece of complex visual art into a chunk of lumpen prose. You shouldn't do it the other way round either.

Warday - just another addition to the post-apocalypse genre.

Finally, magnificently, the final volume of the collected Moomins comic strips from the 1950s. Drawn and Quarterly of Montréal have done a wonderful job with these. The strips are beautifully written and drawn, and the books are works of art in themselves. If you've never read the Moomins books, there's a secret gaping void in your life.

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