#bookcrit

[spidersrightsactivist]

just finished the hazel wood by melissa albert and this didn’t really dawn on me for the past 6 or so fairy tale retellings where the fairy tales are real and trying to kill you and were also compiled by a reclusive witchy woman into a disturbing anthology volume that i’ve read but. it’s genuinely so irritating that all these fairy tale retellings have their vision of these stories hinge on one specific literary compilation created by one person? like the oral tradition is very much still alive and 80% of the fairy tales i heard as a child came from there. when i say i was 'raised on fairy tales' i don't mean a creepy anthology i mean. jack tales. the absence of the oral tradition in the 'folklore is real and wants to kill you' genre will be the death of me

[thebookofmaev]

I just finished reading “I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There” by Róisín Lanigan, which takes a pretty genius concept (haunting as a metaphor for housing anxiety and perpetual renting) and maybe doesn’t quite pull it off.

I want to loan it to my friend so that we can talk about it (I always want to talk about books I like) and as a kind of explanation for why I spent eighteen months of my life as a lunatic recently.

But…one of the characters (who is a pretty miserable piece of work) has the same first name as her, and I’m worried that it could seem like a weird passive-aggressive something or other.

The book also nails the mild-but-more-than-expected culture shock of being Irish in London, which I think she will appreciate.

The whole time reading it, I kept thinking “this sounds like East Dulwich” (this being the boujie area of London the character gets a suspiciously cheap flat in)…and then I read an interview with the writer, and she said it was based on East Dulwich (with a dash of Stoke Newington and Crouch End). I hadn’t realised my London radar was that good.

[jessiecontext]

Book Crit feedback from Saatchi & Saatchi

Yesterday we had a visit from Callum Langley. Callum is a creative working in Saatchi & Saatchi, he told us his story and gave some great advice to aspiring art directors and copy writers. Callum also gave some one on one feedback which I took and found really helpful. He had a glance over some of my work also and gave me some tips to take on board.

1) On my Nike #generationJDI project, he pointed out that the two men kissing ‘I can marry whoever I love’ are the only two characters that I’ve drawn without a sport related feel to them.

2) with regards to the Survival International brief that I’m currently working on, he had a look at one of my story boards and said that in my book I should include a short synopsis before presenting my work straight away.

3) he asked if I could cut down the amount of drawings in my story board

4) He advised my to trim down my VO part

5) He liked my AI idea and told me to think about other possible ideas relating to this concept.

6) He told me to just keep creating and keep pushing on the art direction and copy writing front and through persisting with this for a few more months I would be bound to have improved. 

[bookcritreenactments-blog]

acting casual after being offered a placement