Books from March 2024
My monthly digest of book discoveries.
A slightly different take on the monthly book digest this time, kids! It was a slower month for children’s picture books, but a faster month for other kinds of bookish journeys, primarily in the form of novels, Kickstarter projects from friends, and a film/music/art thing.
So here we go…as always, wherever relevant, clicking the images below will open them up in Instagram, where you can see a selection of pages & more images.
First of all, in the realm of picture books for kids, I highly recommend this hilarious gem entitled A DUCK CALLED BRIAN by Al Murphy. It’s laugh-out-loud bizarre and delightful. Trust me. (You already do, right? I hope so. Sometimes I might worry.)
And now for something completely different — and most decidedly not for kids — but I recently re-watched the PINK FLOYD THE WALL movie from 1982 and listened to the album again several times this month (on a bit of a Floyd kick of late), so I was delighted the library had this gargantuan volume of behind-the-scenes retrospective by Gerald Scarfe on the art he did for the Floyd concerts and films. This album changed my life when I discovered it back in high school, and it’s still one of my favorite things. I’ve always loved Scarfe’s design style (even the work he did for Disney’s Hercules is pretty fun) and this book is loaded with sketches, animation cels, photos, anecdotes and other cool stuff. The Wall is dark, disturbing, and weird to a bombastic degree, and I’ve always been here for it.
In the realm of art books for everyone, I was delighted to pledge my support for this “Coloring Book for Grown-Ups” SERIAL ADVENTURES AND DAYDREAMS by fellow artist and friend Stephen Hesselman. I finally got to meet Stephen in-person at Hutchmoot last year after years of online fellowship. Here he is at the drawing table!
Check out his work — his new book makes me smile, not only for the glorious detail of his ink drawings but the captions and story snippets that go alongside them. The book is drenched in ink and smells really good too!
You can order your own copy from The Rabbit Room Store. »
Also in the realm of Kickstarter projects and books by friends, I was delighted to pledge for this novel by my friend Jamin Still — another amazing artist, painter and storyteller. I’m always a sucker for any painting or book cover made by Jamin, as I love the unique style of his work. We also finally met at Hutchmoot after years of collective online conversations about art & life.
His new novel THE MASTER OF TIDES is highly recommended if you love mystery, high fantasy and adventure — it’s spooky and exciting with appealing characters, and I enjoyed it a great deal.
You can also order your own copy from The Rabbit Room Store. »
And finally, in the realm of novels, after a few attempts over the years to start but never finish (“They tried and failed?” “They tried and died.”), I finally barreled through and finished reading DUNE.
For decades, my primary frame of reference for the story of Dune has been the glorious visual stomach ache of David Lynch’s uber-’80s epic film with an incredibly cheesy Toto soundtrack that I still love even though it’s silly as hell. I’m still a sucker for the look and feel of this 1984 slice of weirding weirdness — and I’ve always been captivated by the world building and cool-sounding names like Kwisatz Haderach and all the rest of it.
The new Dune films by Denis Villenueve (especially seeing them in IMAX with killer picture and SOUND) have won me over, blown me away, and sucked me deeper into the lore of this world, so I made a pledge to myself to finally experience the source of the spice and see where all these various adaptations come from. The newly-confirmed third chapter draws upon DUNE MESSIAH so I have this on hold to delve into next. Maybe I’ll keep going into the rest of the series — I hear it gets darker and weirder.
Anyway, I loved the original book and all its dense strangeness of political intrigue, psychedelic mind-expansion and whacked-out wormsign. I’m a fan and pleased to add this feather to my nerd cap. Always late to the party, but I guess my plans are measured in centuries.
There is so much art and so many wondrous stories and people in this world. It’s a mystery and a gift to take the time to know them.