From 2003-2007, I produced the monthly email newsletter, "All the GEEK That’s Fit To Print" that kept subscribers to my GeekConfidential e-group appraised of my monthly happenings. As part of my missives, I also recounted what I was currently reading. Perhaps the most mentioned aspect of the newsletter appeared under this heading: And since what I’m reading in the bathroom fascinates many of you.
With the advent of the Geek Curmudgeon blog, the newsletter became redundant and so I let it fall by the wayside, but what books are currently in my bathroom continues to fascinate, so I’ve decided to resurrect that part of the newsletter under the heading of "Readings From the Throne Room" as a regular monthly feature here at The Geek Curmudgeon.
Without further ado, here’s the current reading contents in my bathroom:
AX Volume 1: A Collection of Alternative Manga Edited by Sean Michael Wilson
This 400 page collection of alternative Japanese comic book stories represents the nearly ideal bathroom reading experience. Short stories that can be read in one sitting packaged within a paperback.
Ax reprints the stories in the traditional Japanese manner from right to left. This has become the norm for translated manga. Beggars the question though, are English-language comics that are translated into Japanese presented from left to right?
Revolver by Matt Kindt
The latest graphic novel from the creator of the excellent Super Spy recounts the flip-flopping worlds–one a post apocalyptic nightmare, the other an idealistic reality–of the unhappy Sam. Halfway through this clever exploration.
Double Play by Robert Parker
So far I’m mostly reading at this baseball novel, waiting for it to engage my full attention.
Parker: The Hunter Adaptated by Darwyn Cooke from the novel by Richard Stark
Something weird and unexpected happened over the past month. Brandy, who generally does not like her fiction "hard," discovered Donald Westlake. It started when she picked up Westlake’s final novel Memory off my best side table. She loved it and asked if I had more. In the last month she’s read 361, The Cutie, and most astoundingly the classic Richard Stark The Hunter. She loved them all and decided she wanted to read the sensational Cooke adaptation of the first Parker. And that’s how it ended up in our bathroom.
Amidst the issues of Wired, Mental Floss, MSFocus, Momentum, and Moving Pictures, lies the Fall/Winter 2010 University of Texas Press catalog. Book catalogs make for some of the best bathroom reading.