Reader's Diary #2019- Deb Olin Unferth: Likable

My wife and I are currently, seemingly, switching paths. She's becoming less social, whereas I am becoming more so. We're roughly the same age as the main character in Deb Olin Unferth's "Likable." This woman is also wrestling with a change in her sociability but unlike my wife and I has the added complication of social anxiety. She believes she become more unlikable the more she talks.

There's a sense that maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy is at work which complicates the ending-- while making it decidedly more wicked.

It's a very relatable piece with a sly sense of humor.

Reader's Diary #2018- Maggie Bolitho: Same Old

There's something about Flash Fiction, perhaps that their length is typical of jokes and punchlines, that makes twist endings particularly common.

I'm not 100 percent sold on the twist of Maggie Bolitho's "Same Old" because I questioned for a second that a character was actually a dog and maybe I'm an idiot, but I did appreciate the tone (lightly dark and funny is always good) and that Bolitho shared the writing prompt that led to the story in case we want to play along at home.

Reader's Diary #2017- Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose (writers), various artists: Hungry Ghosts

I'll be upfront that I may have misjudged Anthony Bourdain, a little too harshly, a little ignorantly. Based solely on commercials for Parts Unknown, I had decided his was an arrogant prick. Since his suicide however, the more I've heard about him, the more I feel I was way off the mark. He seems at least to have been a pretty nice guy, and perhaps even a progressive, really nice guy.

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear that he'd written a horror graphic novel. Partnering with Jose Rose, this is a collection of tales framed as being told by a group of chefs, each one trying to out do the last. Various well-known artists take turns illustrating.

It had a very strong Tales From the Crypt vibe, which was intentional according to Rose's afterword. As most fans of that series could tell you, this means that it's more often gruesome and darkly comedic rather than really scary, but a lot of fun. Also like Tales From the Crypt, some stories are clearly better than others. The weaker ones here suffered from Saturday Night Live syndrome in their weak endings.

The art was consistently strong and not as jarring in style as you might expect despite featuring work by people I typically admire (such as Francesco Francavilla of Afterlife with Archie) and by people I'm normally not particularly fond of (such as Paul Pope of Battling Boy).

I do wonder though how Japanese people would feel about Bourdain telling these stories largely based on Japanese folklore.

Reader's Diary #2016- Hugh Behm-Steinberg: Taylor Swift

Hugh Behm-Steinberg's flash fiction "Taylor Swift" is quirky and funny, no doubt about it. It's based on a world where people can online order clones of Taylor Swift to be delivered right to their door. Many people have a few Swifts knocking about, some of whom are used as servants, some for sex, some for entertainment.

Underneath it all though there's a sinister statement about fame and one's transition from person to product, about how we're all guilty of this to some extent. I found myself wondering what Swift herself would think. Some people love marketing themselves, some regret the loss of privacy that arises while pursuing their art as a business. Of course, Behm-Steinberg isn't the first to philosophize about the situation (arguably this was the point of Kanye West's Famous video which also featured Swift) but it has to be one of the more amusing takes.

Reader's Diary #2015- Yvan Alagbé, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith: Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures

The art work in Yvan Alagbé's Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures is unlike anything I've encountered before. The black ink is heavy and rough but there's still a grace to the linework, especially the curves. It's artistic and simultaneously challenging and inviting.

The stories themselves I found to be mostly incoherent. Panel by panel, I could, and sometimes did, take it to be much like visiting an art gallery. They were provocative and left a lot of room for interpretation. However, when hints that they were supposed to be part of a larger narrative arose I found it more frustrating. There were gaps in the plot, it wasn't always clear who was speaking, and so on.

Reader's Diary #2014- Gord Hill: The Antifa Comic Book

Gord Hill's illustrations in The Antifa Comic Book reminded me a lot of Ed Piskor's in his Hip Hop Family Tree. As a fan of that series, this is a good thing. However, it also made me compare the writing. Piskor slows down the history of hip hop to a snail's pace and in doing so, he's able to better flesh out the characters and stories to make it all more palatable, more than a simple timeline of facts. Hill however covers all the way from World War 1 to the present in 127 pages and at times it's near impossible to keep track of all of the various fascist and anti-fascist groups.

It's still a good, educational read. I appreciated in particular the way that he destroyed the myth that Europe and North America is civilized (compared to the rest of the world, as was implied during my own schooling and upbringing). I also thought it quite fascinating and worthy of noting how many groups co-opt positive or progressive sounding names for their fascist, right-wing, racist ideologies.

Fascism itself is a term that I've never fully understood beyond a catch-all definition for asshole dictatorships. However, Hill does an excellent job defining it on the very first page and if readers don't think immediately of Trump they're quite frankly idiots and/or fascists themselves.

Reader's Diary #2013- Brett Milano: Vinyl Junkies

When I first got into record collecting a couple or so years back, I was very eager to grow my collection fast but despite a vinyl resurgence there was still nowhere to buy in Yellowknife, except the occasional rare find at yard sales. Then I saw that someone had taken out an ad in the local classified looking to either sell, buy, or trade records. Paydirt!

However, after a rather long and awkward phone conversation I had determined that I'd never be paying a visit to his home, let alone flipping through his collection. No matter what gems he may have had. He was a completely different kind of collector, a serious collector, and me? I just wanted some good stuff to listen to.

In Vinyl Junkies, Brett Milano tries to make the case that even those who don't think they're serious collectors usually are, or at least have a bigger problem than they're willing to admit. After reading about some of the collectors he describes, I'm not convinced.

The thing is, I'm not an audiophile. With some exceptions, I can rarely tell the difference between an mp3 and a vinyl track. I don't have a top of the line turntable and the one I have is hooked up to a small single speaker. I'm also not interested in making money off of my collection, I'm not looking for rare foreign pressings. But I do like the object. I do like listening to a whole album (or at least a whole side) again. Collecting takes me back to my youth somewhat when I collected cassettes and then CDs. And my collection shows my nostalgic bent: I have classic albums that predate me and I've got a few from the past 5 or so years, but my interest is really in getting 90s albums on vinyl, a large number of which were never even originally distributed on such a medium. So far I've gotten Oasis, Nirvana, Tragically Hip, Tori Amos, Bjork, Weezer, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Pearl Jam and my list of must-haves from that decade is much, much longer. Bored yet? Than Brett Milano's Vinyl Junkies is definitely not for you.

Reader's Diary #2012- Madeline Ashby: Domestic Violence

While I quite enjoyed Madeline Ashby's short story "Domestic Violence," the world-building, the characters, it felt like I read it before or was it a Black Mirror episode? Or am I mixing up a couple of things. In any case, it rendered the twist at the end a little ineffective as I saw it coming, but the story was engaging and provocative enough up to that point for it not to matter.